The Prince of Punk Rock (64 page)

He wouldn’t look at
Kendall
. He looked past her, at the ceiling, across the
room, anywhere, except directly at her.
 
And he wasn’t taking his hand off the DVDs in his breast pocket.

Alyssa came to his side. “Leave him
alone,
Kendall
.
 
Haven’t you done enough?”

Kendall
snarled at her.
 
“It doesn’t concern you,
so stay out of it.
 
Mind your own
business.”
 
Then, she smiled back at
Angel.
 
It was like someone flipped a
switch.
 
Kendall
growled at Alyssa, and then turned back to Angel with a provocative smile.

“What do you want?” Angel finally
asked.

“I can’t get these images out of my
head.”
Kendall
laughed a little.
 
“Dark, sadistic, images.”

She saw the video.
 
Angel’s cheeks burned with
embarrassment.
 
He fidgeted in place and
looked away, but she remained steadfast in front of him, with that same wicked
smile.

“I keep thinking about black
leather and hand cuffs.”
 
Kendall
leaned toward him and lowered her voice to a
whisper.
 
“If you wanted to play rough,
why didn’t you invite me?”

Alyssa stepped closer.
 
“You need to back the fuck off.”

Kendall
ignored her.
 
“You could have done all
that stuff to me.
 
Or you could have
watched while I let your lover–”

Jessi slammed her hands down on the
desk so hard that Angel felt the floor shake beneath his feet.

“What the fuck are you doing?”
 
she screamed.

“I’m nowhere near you husband,”
Kendall
sneered back at her.
 
“Take it easy.”

“They’re
both
my husbands!”
Jessi ran toward
Kendall
, kicking the chair to
the floor behind her.

Tommy caught her around the waist.
“Let’s just finish what we came here to do.
 
Please, honey, let’s not make this any worse than it already is.”

It took Jessi a minute to calm
down, and Tommy wouldn’t let her go until she did.
   
“The computer’s clean.”
 
She shot an evil look at
Kendall
.
 
“You better not be hiding any copies anywhere
else.”

Kendall
put her hands on her hips.
 
She was full
of satisfaction, claiming a false victory.
 
“Now, can I have my money?”

Jessi’s face contorted into a mask
of disgust and loathing.
 
“Stupid,
stupid
girl.
 
Did you think I would let you
blackmail Angel?
 
Did you think I would
let you fuck with my family?”

“We had a deal! I can still tell
everybody what was on that DVD!
 
I’ll
tell the record label the sick disgusting things that were in that video!”

“Well, it won’t do you any
good.”
 
Jessi pulled a tiny tape recorder
from her pocket and pressed the button.
 
Kendall
’s voice filled the room.
 
“I won’t need to
extort any more money from you.  As long as you pay me $1,000,000, I won’t
broadcast Angel and Tommy’s sex tape all over the internet.  I’m not going
to blackmail Angel with anything else.  You give me $1,000,000, I give you
the DVD.  It’s that simple.”

“Last I remember,” Jessi said,
“extortion’s a felony.
 
Say one word to
the press, or anyone else, or if another copy of that DVD mysteriously
surfaces, I swear
Kendall
, I’ll have you
fuckin’ arrested.”

Kendall
lunged at Jessi and they fell to the floor.
 
Tommy and Damien tried to pull them apart, but they were hard to
control.
 
Jessi and Kendall rolled on the
floor like two wild cats, arms and legs flying everywhere.
 
Tables got knocked over. Lamps fell and
shattered.
 
Anything within reach was
hurled through the air.
 
Jimmy and Alyssa
had to intercede before they were able to restrain Jessi and Kendall and keep
the two of them apart.
 
It was like a
scene out of a college girl fight.
 
At
one point Angel caught Damien and Jimmy exchange a smile, obviously amused by
this girl on girl action, but Angel didn’t find it amusing at all.
 
He was frazzled and upset.

Damien held onto
Kendall
,
so she didn’t get into another altercation with Jessi, while the rest of them
searched the hotel room for any hidden copies of the DVD.
 
Angel felt bad for her.
 
Even though
Kendall
wanted to ruin his life, he didn’t want to ruin hers.
 
He threw $2,000 on the table.
 
“Take this, and go somewhere and start
over.
 
Make something of yourself, and
don’t’ burn everyone along the way.”

Everyone thought everything was OK
now.
 
It was far from OK.
 
Tommy and Angel’s secret sex life gnawed at
Jessi.
 
It wasn’t the secrecy, everyone
was entitled to a certain level of intimacy, it was the content that disturbed
her. She questioned whether or not they would have told her about their little
trysts if
Kendall
hadn’t exposed it.
 
Of all people,
Kendall
had to be the one to enlighten her about Tommy and Angel’s sadistic bedroom
antics. It was difficult to be in the same room with them, even in the grand
hotel suite.

Tommy and Angel walked into the
bedroom just as she finished packing a duffle bag.
 
It was the same duffle bag that housed the
fake blackmail money. She slung it over her shoulder and met Tommy and Angel’s
stare with resilience.

“Where are you going, hon?”
 
Tommy was blocking the door.

“I can’t sleep in this room with
the two of you after what I saw on that DVD.”

“I told you I was sorry.
 
We weren’t deliberately hiding anything from
you.
 
I know you’re not into anything
like that.
 
Why shouldn’t we play?
 
That’s not fair either.”

“You made a sex tape without
me.
 
Don’t you see how unimportant it
makes me feel?
 
If you wanted to make a
sex tape, I should have been part of it.
 
You made me feel left out.”

“Jessi, sweetheart, please listen
to me,” Angel said.
 
“It was
unintentional.
 
I swear.
 
Tommy found this old flogger I had.
 
We started playing around with it, as a joke,
then it got sexual, and we thought it would be fun to record it.
 
We didn’t intentionally plan on excluding you
from the DVD.
 
We made it for fun.
 
We only watched it a couple of times and then
forgot about it.
 
We didn’t even know
Kendall
had it.”

“Really?
 
Or was it your plan all along?
 
Were you trying to get me out of the way so
you could have Tommy all to yourself?”

“No!”

“Was this your idea?
 
Were you trying to entice him with something
that you knew I wasn’t into so he’d rather have sex with you instead of me?”

“Don’t talk to Angel like that.”

Tommy was defending Angel, when it
was obvious that she was threatened by him.
 
“I should have expected some kind of ruse from Angel, but from you,
Tommy?”
 
She threw the duffle bag on the
floor. “I feel like
he’s
more important!”

Tommy tried to put his arms around
her, but she backed up beyond his reach.
 
She didn’t want him to touch her.

“I love you, Jessi. I don’t care
more about Angel.
 
I love you both the
same.”

“The same?
 
Even though I don’t fulfill your fantasies?”

“Don’t say that.
 
You’ve been fulfilling my fantasies every day
since the day I met you.
 
I’m the
luckiest man in the world to have you for a wife.
 
I’m nothing without you.
 
You forget that this relationship isn’t so easy
for me either.
 
I’m stuck in the middle,
trying to please the both of you.
 
I
struggle to maintain balance so something like this doesn’t happen.
 
I’m sorry if I screwed up.
 
I’m sorry if you thought we were deliberately
trying to hide anything from you.
 
We
weren’t.
 
I know how much rough play
upsets you.
 
So we just did it when you
weren’t home.”

She thought back to the memory of
the one time they tried it with one of the men Tommy brought home.
 
It was months before they met Angel.
 
She literally tackled this guy who was
walloping Tommy’s behind, while he was tied to the bed.
 
She threatened to call 911 and aimed a
canister of pepper spray directly at his face while she chased him out of the
house.
 
After that incident, she told
Tommy she never wanted to see anyone do anything like that to him again.
 
But someone did.
 
And it was Angel.

She wiped the hot tears from her
face.

“Seriously, Jessi, would you have
let Angel tie me up and paddle me?”

Paddle?
 
Now there’s a paddle involved?
 
They probably had an entire closet full of
sex paraphernalia that they kept under lock and key.
 
“Who
are
you two?
 
What the fuck are you into?”

“It was all in fun,
sweetheart.
 
It’s not as harsh it
appeared on the DVD.”
 
Angel was
desperately trying to explain.
 
“It was just
a game.”

“What about the games we played in
bed?
 
Was it only a game when we vied for
Tommy’s attention, or were you seriously trying to get him to pay more
attention to you?”

“No! I love playing that game with
you.”

“All right, that’s enough.” Tommy said.
 
“Stop yelling at Angel.”

“Stop sticking up for him!”

“It’s not his fault. It’s mine. You
can be mad at me, but don’t take it out on Angel.”

They were banded together.
 
It was them against her.
 
They were no longer a trio.
 
They were divided.
 
“I don’t believe this fuckin’ shit!”
 
She grabbed her duffle bag.
 
“I
hate
that you made that DVD and I
hate
what’s on it!”

Tommy tried to take the bag from
her shoulder but she pushed his hands away.
 
“I need distance.
 
I need to
figure out if I still fit in this relationship.”

Tommy’s eyes burned into her.
 
“I love you, Jessi.
 
Remember how much I love you.
 
You’re everything to me.
 
Without you, I’m dead.
 
You take as much time as you need.
 
I know you’re just upset and I know you’ll
come back, but know that every second you’re gone, I’m gonna die a little more
inside.”

“Tommy, you can’t let her
leave!
 
Sweetheart, please don’t go!”

She glared at him.
 
“Get out of my way, Angel.”
 
She brushed past him, but paused in the
doorway and turned back around. “I’ll be at the show tomorrow night.
 
I already have a dozen calls to make to the
venue and I have to get wardrobe back from the cleaners.
 
I still have a job to do.
 
I just can’t be stuck in this room with you
two and I can’t sleep in the same bed with either one of you right now.”
 
She saw Tommy deflate at her last remark and
it hurt her, just as much as it did him.

Jessi left Chateau Marmont, the
historic hotel that saw the demise of the comedic talent of John Belushi, and
where Jim Morrison swung from a drainpipe off the roof and into his room –
incidents that Angel pointed out half a dozen times before they checked into
the hotel.
 
She took a room at The
Standard, further down on Sunset.
 
If she
would have remembered that it was the hotel the tour manager booked for the
band, she would have stayed elsewhere.