Текст книги "Beg"

Автор книги: C. D. Reiss

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Darren was already making coffee.

“Where were you?” he asked. “It’s six thirty already.”

“Driving all over the west side with I-won’t-say.”

“Mister Gorgeous?” He said it without jealousy or teasing.

“Yep.”

“He’s nice to you?”

“He wants to sleep with me, so it’s hard to say if he’s being nice or being manipulative,” I said. “How’s Gabby?”

“Same.” He got out two cups and a near-dead carton of half-and-half. “She’s volatile, then deadened. She started shaking because she wasn’t playing last night. Missed opportunity and all that. Then she rocked back and forth for half an hour.”

“Did you sit her at the piano?”

“Yeah, that worked. We need something to happen for her.”

“She’ll still be who she is,” I said. “She could play the Staples Center, and she’d be this way.”

“But she could afford to get care, the right meds, maybe therapy. Something.” I nodded. He was right. They were stymied by poverty. “And Vinny? I haven’t heard a damn thing from that guy. I tried calling him and his mailbox is full.” He was losing his shit, standing there with a coffee cup in his hand.

“We have six more months on our contract with him and we’re out,” I said.

“She doesn’t have six months, Mon.”

“Okay, I get it.” I held him by the biceps and looked him in the face.

“She’s like she was the last time, when you found her. I don’t want—“

“Darren! Stop!”

But it was too late. The stress of the evening had gotten to him. He blinked hard and tears dripped down his cheeks. I put my arms around him, and we held each other in the middle of the kitchen until the coffee maker beeped. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve, still holding the empty cup. “I’m working the music store this morning. Will you stay with her until rehearsal?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I shower here? My water heater’s busted.”

“Knock yourself out. Just hang the towel.”

He strode out of the kitchen, and I was left there with our dripping sink and filthy floor. The roof leaked, and the foundation was cracked from the last earthquake swarm. It had been nice to sit in that Mercedes and drive around with someone who never spent a minute agonizing about money. It had been nice to not worry about anything but physical pleasure and what to do with it for a couple of hours. Real nice.

Darren’s laptop was on the kitchen table, set to some Protunes thing he probably hadn’t gotten a chance to touch in the middle of taking care of Gabby. I fixed my coffee and slid into the chair, opening the internet browser. We stole bandwidth from the Montessori school during off hours, so I checked my email. I remembered my conversation with Jonathan about his ex-wife, so I did a search for her: Jessica Carnes.

I got a different set of pictures than Darren had shown us the other day. Jessica was an abstract and conceptual artist. Searching under Google Images brought back a treasury of pictures of the artist and her art, which despite Kevin schooling me in the vocabulary of the visual arts, I didn’t get at all.

Jessica had long blond hair and an Ivory Girl complexion. She might have worn a stitch of makeup and maybe used hot rollers. She wore nice flats, but flats nonetheless. Her skirts were long and her demeanor was modest. She was my exact opposite. I had long brown hair and black eyes. I wore makeup, tight jeans, short skirts, and the highest heels I could manage. And black. I wore a lot of black, a color I hadn’t given a thought to until I saw Jessica in every cream, ecru, and pastel on the palette.

On page three, I came across a wedding photo. I clicked through.

The page had been built by her agent, and it showed a beachside extravaganza the likes of which I could only aspire to waitress. I scrolled down, looking for his face. I found him here and there with people I didn’t know or side-by-side with his bride. A picture at the bottom stopped me. I sighed as if the air had been forced out of my lungs by an outside force. Jessica and Jonathan stood together, separated from the crowds. Her back was three-quarters to the camera, and he faced her. He was speaking, his eyes joyous, happy, his face an open book about love. He looked like a different man with his fingertips resting on Jessica’s collarbone. I knew exactly how that touch felt, and I envied that collarbone enough to snap the laptop closed.

CHAPTER 6.

I tapped my foot. Studio time was bought by the hour and not cheap, yet Gabby and I were the only ones there. She was at the piano, of course, running her fingers over the keys with her usual brilliance, but it was only therapy, not real practice. Darren’s drums took twenty minutes to set up. The chitchat and apologies would take another fifteen minutes, and I still had to practice some dumb standards for the solo gig at Frontage that night.

I sat on a wooden bench facing the glass separating the studio from the control room. The room stank of cigarettes and human funk. The soundproofing on the walls and ceiling was foam, porous by necessity, and thus holding cells for germs and odor. Though I thought I’d rubbed away the ache Jonathan had caused, I woke up with it, and good scrub and an arched back in the shower did nothing to dispel the feel of him. I needed to get to work. Letting this guy under my skin was counterproductive already.

I whispered, “I’ve got you, under my skin.” Then I sang, I’ve got you, deep in the heart of me. So deep in my heart, that you’re really a part of me.

No. But yes. It was a good song. It was missing how I really felt: frustrated and angry. So I belted out the last line of the chorus, I’ve got you, under my skin, without Sinatra’s little snappy croon, but a longing, accusatory howl.

“Hang on,” Gabby said. She took a second to find the melody, and I sang the chorus the way I wanted it played.

“Wow, that’s not how Sinatra did it,” she said.

“Play it loungey, like we’re seducing someone.” I tapped her a slower rhythm, and she caught onto it. “Right, Gabs. That’s it.”

I stood up and took the rest of the song, owning it, singing as if the intrusion was unacceptable, as if insects crawled inside me, because I didn’t want anyone under my skin. I wanted to be left alone to do my work.

Having the guys here to record it so I could hear it would have been nice, but I could tell I was onto something. The back room at Frontage was small, so I needed less rage and more discomfort. More sadness. More disappointment in myself for letting it happen, and begging the pain away. If I could nail that, I might actually enjoy singing a few standards at a restaurant. Or I might get fired for changing them. No way to know.

I did it again, from the top. The first time I sang the word, “skin,” I felt Jonathan’s hands on me and didn’t resist the pleasure and warmth. I sang right through it, and when Gabby accompanied, she put her own sadness into it. I felt it. It was my song now.

My phone rang: Darren.

“Where the hell are you?”

“Harry just called me. His mother is sick in Arizona. He’s out. For good.”

I would have said something like, so no bassist, no band, but Gabby would have heard, and she wasn’t ready for any kind of upset.

“And you’re not here because?”

He sighed. “I got held up at work. I’ll be there in twenty. Tomorrow night, I have a favor to ask.”

“Yeah?”

“I have a date. Can you get her home after your gig and make sure she takes her meds?”

“Yeah.”

“Thanks, Mon.”

“Go get laid.”

I clicked the phone off and used the rest of the time to work on our performance.

* * *

Thursday afternoon shift at the Stock was slow by Saturday night standards. I earned less money, but the atmosphere was more relaxed. There was always a minute to chill with Debbie at the service bar. I liked her more and more all the time. I tried to keep it light and hold my energy up. Just because this gig tonight wasn’t my own songwriting, I still wanted to do a good job. But after Darren’s call and the sputtering dissolution of the band, I lost the mojo, and I just sounded like Sinatra on barbiturates. I had no idea how to get that heat back.

Debbie got off her phone as I slid table ten’s ticket across the bar. Robert snapped it up and poured my rounds.

“I think he likes you,” Debbie said, indicating Robert. He was hot in his black T-shirt and Celtic tattoos.

“Not my type.”

“What is your type?”

I shrugged. “Nonexistent.”

“Okay, well, finish with this table and go on your break. Could you go down to Sam’s office and make a copy of next week’s schedule?” She handed me a slip of paper with the calendar. The waitstaff hung around waiting for it every week as our station placement and hours determined not only how much money we’d make over the next seven days, but our social and family plans as well. And here she was giving it to me two hours early. She smiled and patted my arm before walking off to greet three men in suits.

I went to the bathroom and freshened up, then headed for Sam’s office.

It wasn’t a warm, fabulously decorated place like Jonathan’s at K. It was totally utilitarian, with a linoleum floor and metal filing cabinets. The copy machine was in there, and I put the schedule on the glass without turning the lights on. The windows gave enough afternoon light.

The energy saver was on, meaning the copier was ice cold. I tapped start and waited. Lord knew how long it would take. I stretched my neck and hummed, then whispered, I’ve got you, under my skin. I’ve got you, deep in the heart of me. So deep in my heart—

I gasped when I smelled his dry scent. When I turned, Jonathan stood in the doorway with his arms crossed. That was the first time I’d seen him in daylight, and the sunlight made him look more human, more substantial, more present, and more gorgeous, if that was even possible.

“Jonathan.”

“Hi.”

I realized the deal with the schedule copying just then. “Debbie sent me up here.”

“You didn’t know she was a yenta?”

“You’re very persistent.”

“I just kept telling myself I didn’t want you, but we said no lies, and I think that includes lying to myself. How about you?”

I didn’t know what to say. I had shut out thoughts of him for almost a week. I thought about baseball, chord progressions, and getting a new manager whenever he came into my mind. So having him in front of me was like opening a closet door and having all the stuff come tumbling out.

I took a step forward, and he did, too. We were in each other’s arms in a second, mouths attached, tongues twisting. He reached back and closed the door.

Okay, I was going to get this over with now. Me and him. Right there. Just get it done so I could move on. He thrust me onto the desk and I opened my legs, wrapping them around his waist. He was pushing against me again, like on the hood of the Mercedes, a million years ago.

He put his hands up my shirt, across my stomach and to my breasts.

“Yes?” he gasped.

“Yes,” I whispered. “Yes to everything.”

“Yes,” he whispered in my ear, then pushed my bra up and cupped my tits, finding my nipples and rubbing them with his thumbs. My hips levitated from the desk, and I made some noise deep in my throat. Damn, he was good. Lots of practice. He knew exactly what to do.

He looked down at my chest, nipples hardening from his touch and the cool air. “My God, Monica, you are magnificent.”

I laughed, because being admired like that made me nervous, but he shut me up when he put his mouth on one nipple and his fingers on the other, pressing and twisting. My legs tightened around him, hitching my skirt up to my waist. With only my panties between me and his jeans, he felt harder and more forceful. He pushed against me, and I flowed with him, my hips to his rhythm as I gripped his hair. I’d almost come like that, eons ago, with some guy in freshman year I couldn’t even remember now, and it felt like it might happen again.

As if reading my mind, he pulled away. His own breathing was heavy as he looked at me, not as if he was undressing me with his eyes, but as if he was making plans for the body in front of him. He moved his hands down my sides and pulled my skirt up, bunching it at the waist. My underwear bottoms, which I hadn’t given a thought to when I’d dressed in the morning, were the only thing between me and the world.

“Listen,” I started, “I don’t know if Sam would think this is ok.”

He put his fingertips to my mouth, and I shushed. Let him explain to Sam. Let me get fired. I parted my lips and took two of his fingers in my mouth, sucking them down to the back.

“Ah, Monica,” was all he said as he pulled them out, slowly, and pushed them back in at the same pace. I cupped my tongue around them and sucked. Not too hard, just enough. I knew I was doing it right when his eyelids closed just a little, and he opened his mouth for something between a gasp and an aah. He rubbed them over my bottom lip, curling it back, then put them back in my mouth. I took them eagerly, tasting his skin, feeling his warm breath on my face.

He slid his fingers out and stepped back, taking his crotch away from mine. I suddenly felt exposed and started to close my legs, but he pressed them apart. I reached for his buckle, but he pulled away.

“I want to touch you,” I said.

“Not yet.”

“I’m going crazy.”

“No, you’re not. Not enough.”

With that, he moved the crotch of my panties to the side and put the finger he’d just removed from my mouth onto my wet folds. We both gasped. Then he slid two fingers into me. Slowly.

“Oh, God,” I whispered.

He slipped them out without a word and put his thumb on the thin strip of cotton covering my clit. Lightly. Barely touching it. Just enough so I knew it was there, and he leaned over to kiss me, flicking his tongue in time with his thumbnail as it gently scratched the fabric of my underwear.

I thrust my hips forward. His fingers went deep into me, but the thumb wouldn’t press down any harder. It just grazed the cotton as he glided his two fingers in and out.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“I want you to fuck me.”

“What’s the magic word?”

“Now?”

His fingers worked my body while he bent down to whisper into my ear. “You have three minutes of break left.”

“I don’t care.”

“I’m going to spend hours fucking you.”

My hips pushed against his hand, but he kept control: a light touch of the thumb and a slow grind with the fingers. I was on fire. I thought I had known what that meant, but I didn’t.

“After your shift.”

“I have a gig right after. We have to do it now.” He might have considered it for the next three thrusts, but he didn’t give my clit more than a stroke through fabric. I couldn’t decide if that was pleasure or torture.

“After your gig,” he said. “I have a dinner meeting anyway. Meet me at the hotel tonight. Room 3423.”

“I have to take care of my roommate.”

“Figure it out.”

He pulled his fingers out of me. I felt the loss of them and his tormenting thumb so deeply I moaned. Sitting there, splayed and nearly naked on Sam’s desk, I felt foolish and exposed, not to mention ravenously aroused.

“Don’t.” I didn’t have anything more to say, except don’t stop there; don’t leave me like this. My eyes must have pleaded with him for some release, because his face, with its parted lips and heavy lids, shone with a lustful satisfaction. He knew I wanted him to fuck me for hours, starting on that desk. “You are despicable,” I said.

He pulled my skirt down, and when he leaned down to kiss me, I returned it with no little anger on my lips. “Too true. And tonight, you’re mine.”

“What if I don’t show?”

“You’ll show.”

After opening the door as little as possible, as if to protect my destroyed modesty, he was gone.

* * *

I had another three hours to work, and I couldn’t keep my mind on the task at hand: pouring drinks. A moron could do it. First example: Robert. A hunk by any measure, but dumb as a post.

He slid the tray over the service bar. Each had the requisite alcohol as listed on the order ticket, clockwise from twelve o’clock, where he’d put the ticket. My job was to fill each glass with mixers from the soda gun and juice bin.

Like I said, a moron could do it. But I stood there, with Debbie next to me checking stuff off the inventory list, and I put soda in a whiskey. I stared at the glass and watched it over flow and why? Because the pain between my legs was uncomfortable and exquisite, and I was counting down the hours before I could get home and release it.

“Whoa!” Robert shouted, waking me up. “You got soda all over the tray!”

“I’m sorry!”

“Monica,” Debbie said, slipping her pen onto the top of the clipboard, “come sit with me.”

She pulled me over to an empty table by the kitchen door. We tried to keep it clear until the bar got too packed. I pressed my legs together when I sat even though my skirt was long enough. I felt like she could see my arousal.

Debbie placed her clipboard in front of her and leaned forward. “What’s happening? You took the wrong order to Frazier Upton; you stepped on Jennifer Roberg’s foot. That’s not how we do service here.”

“Why did you do that, Debbie? Why did you set me up to meet Jonathan upstairs?”

“I saw you looking at him the other night. I thought it would be a nice surprise.”

“If you could avoid doing that again, that would be great.”

“Of course. I’m sorry, I thought I was doing you a favor.”

“You were. It’s just…” I looked at my hands in my lap. “He’s… I don’t know.” I felt suddenly embarrassed talking about a man’s hold over me with my manager. I should have been mad at her, but in the world I lived in, she had done me a kindness, and it wasn’t like he’d raped me. I’d loved it. I hated it ending when it did. “I just don’t need to be with anyone right now. Or ever. I had this boyfriend, Kevin, a year and a little ago. He wouldn’t let me sing. It was awful, but what I’m trying to say is, I don’t want to be that person again.”

“Okay.” Debbie sat up straight. She pushed her long, straight hair out of her face with a single, French manicured finger and got down to business. “I am going to tell you things you need to hear, but don’t want to. Are you okay with that?”

“Sure.”

“Jonathan Drazen is not going to stay with you long enough to care what you do with your spare time. He is very attracted to you, that much I can see. But he is in love with one woman, and one woman only.”

“His ex-wife.”

Debbie nodded. “When Jessica left, he begged her to stay. She wouldn’t. He broke down at a shareholder meeting. It was ugly. He was humiliated. He’s still humiliated. He won’t put himself in that position again, I promise you. So if you like him, I suggest you enjoy yourself with him. He will treat you very well, and then you’ll go your separate ways. He can be a valuable friend.”

I nodded. I got it. I felt comforted, in a way, that I could meet him later, have mattress-bending sex, then go home without worrying. I knew I wasn’t getting involved, and if he had the same idea, I was safe.

Debbie gathered her things and started to stand, but I wasn’t done.

“Why did she leave?” I asked.

“Another man,” she said, “and everyone knew it.”

“Ouch.”

Debbie nodded. “Ouch is right. It should never happen to any of us.”

CHAPTER 7.

I hated gigs like Frontage. I had to sing songs someone else wrote to people who weren’t there to see me. I had to sing through waiters taking orders and customers being seated. I couldn’t sing too loud or I’d disturb everyone, and I couldn’t improvise at all. Ever. I was background.

But it was money, if not a lot, and it was practice. It wasn’t as if Vinny had shown up and booked anything fabulous. It wasn’t as if he’d shown up at all in the past two weeks. I simply had nFothing else going on.

We had a dressing room with a smudged mirror and filth on everything. Some time in the eighties, a tube of lipstick had been jammed into the seam between the two pieces of plywood that made up the counter, and the red goo that was out of reach of a folded paper towel had turned brown and crusty. The carpet stank of beer vomit, and the bathroom had been casually wiped down a few days previous. I felt like a superstar.

Gabby was already out there, tinkling the piano. She had a jazzy way of rolling her fingers across the keys, creating a melody from nothing, building on it, and landing into something else without a hitch. Her bag was open on the counter, and I did what Darren and I always did. I took out her meds and made sure she had one less Marplan than she had last night. Ten milligrams, twice a day. Eleven pills in the bottle. Darren had texted me this morning with the number twelve. Good.

I called him. He was headed out for another date with this girl whose name he wouldn’t reveal.

“Hey, Mon,” he said.

“Eleven,” I said.

“Thanks.”

“What are you doing tonight?” I asked.

“Date.”

“Are you going to tell me her name?” I sat on the torn pleather chair, letting my short skirt ride up since I was alone. My hair was up, and red lipstick coated my lips like lacquer. I looked like a 1950s pinup.

“Not yet,” he said.

“Is it an early date or a late date?” I swallowed hard. I was about to ask a lot.

“Maybe both. Why?”

“I wanted to…” I drifted off, because I wanted to meet Jonathan and relieve the ache he created, but I didn’t want to get into too much detail with Darren.

“Ask. I’m shaving and it’s messing up the phone.”

“I wanted to see Jonathan Drazen tonight. After the gig. Right after. I can be home to watch Gabby by eleven.”

“Can’t. Her boss got her tickets to Madame Bovary.”

Great. A date including a musical would go from dinner at seven p.m. to curtains at eleven thirty. He must like this girl.

“Sorry,” he said. I heard the water running.

“No problem.” I hung up.

Eight months before I ever worked at K, I found Gabby sitting at the kitchen sink, on the high stool I’d used to get cereal as a kid. Her head was on the counter and one wrist had flopped over, spilling blood onto the floor.

I’m so sorry I messed up the floor, Monica, she’d said the next day, in her hospital bed. That was what she was worried about: That I would be mad I had to clean up the floor. I’d just ripped up the whole thing and put in new press-on vinyl tiles. I couldn’t find another way to think about something besides how dead and cold she looked when I pulled her off the stool, or the blood trapped in the drain catch, or the way I’d screamed at her the day before for eating graham crackers in the living room, or the way she’d wept when Darren and I broke up, eons ago. I cried over cracking linoleum flooring because the ambulance had arrived a full nine and a half minutes after I called, and I spent them slapping her because it made her groan and I didn’t know what else to do to prove she was alive.

So though I wanted Jonathan to treat me like his own personal toy for a few hours, I had to get Gabby home and stay there until the next morning, when Darren would show up.

The lights kept me from seeing any of the diners. I smiled at a bunch of silhouettes because even though I couldn’t see them, they could see me.

Gabrielle hit the first song, Someone To Watch Over Me, then went to Stormy Weather. I had my groove on then. I sang with the feeling she and I had practiced, but as I got to the middle of Cheek to Cheek, I caught a whiff of cologne I recognized: Jonathan’s. Someone was wearing his cologne, and the weight between my legs came back from the memory of the afternoon. I sang about his cheek on mine, about the scent and feel of him. Under My Skin came out like a seduction. I sang the words, but all I could feel was sex, the need for it. I begged for it with the lyrics, the snappy little Sinatra tune gone, replaced by a moan for gratification.

When my voice fell off the last note, I was ready for that hotel room.

They applauded, quiet but earnest. You weren’t supposed to clap at all at these types of gigs, and I said, “thank you” with an embarrassed smile. I was convinced they could see my arousal like a dark patch soaking through my dress. I looked back at Gabby, and she gave me a thumbs up. I think I must have been a hundred shades of blush. I put the mike down and the spotlights went out. The diners started up their conversations again, and I headed back to the shitty dressing room.

Jonathan was in a booth, staring at me.

Of course that was where the cologne smell had come from. The source. It wasn’t like he’d gotten it at Barney’s. If it wasn’t a handmade scent, I’d eat my shoe. But I hadn’t even thought of that until I saw him in a booth at Frontage with a gorgeous redhead sipping a cosmopolitan. He tipped his glass to me.

He leaned toward the redhead and whispered something to her. Right into her ear. Like tipping his glass to me and breathing on her in any ten second interval was perfectly okay.

I was going to run and get as far from him as possible. I couldn’t believe what I’d almost done. I wasn’t kidding myself into thinking monogamy was on the table, but I’d think a day would pass before he’d put his hand up someone else’s skirt, or that he’d take the trouble to not shove it right in my face.

But instead of running away like a sensible person, I walked up to the booth. “Hi, Jonathan.”

“Monica,” he said. “This is Teresa.”

I nodded and smiled, and she held her glass up to me. “That was beautiful.”

“Thanks.”

“You were incredible,” Jonathan said. “I’ve never heard anything like that.” I stared at him. Something had changed in his face. I couldn’t pin it down. Softer? Was he tired? Or did Teresa have a relaxing effect on him? His happiness made me feel evil and sharp.

“I’ve never heard of a man trying to sandwich another woman between fingering me and fucking me in the same day.”

Teresa, who looked as though she was one hundred percent lady, almost spit out a mouthful of her cosmopolitan. Jonathan laughed too. I personally didn’t find any of this funny. I stepped back, and Theresa stood as well. Maybe she was pissed. Maybe her laugh was the nervous kind or maybe I’d just shocked her. But she was as composed as possible as she turned to Jonathan and said, “I’m going to the ladies’.”

He nodded, then scooted over once she was gone. “Would you like to sit?”

“No.”

“For someone who doesn’t want to get involved, you have a way of being involved.”

“Even I have limits.”

“She’s a natural redhead.” His look was full deadpan, and though what he said had a hundred filthy connotations, the one non-pornographic one became apparent with the straight-faced look.

“She’s your sister,” I said.

“Two years between us. She’d appreciate it if you assumed I was older.”

“I’m so embarrassed,” I said. “I have to apologize to her.”

“Are you going to sit? Or am I just going to stare at your body without touching you?”

I slid in next to him, and he put his arm around me, his fingertips brushing my neck.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“I was having dinner with my sister. No, I was not stalking you, though I have to say again, I think you have a gift. I think I felt a half a tear, right here.” He touched the inside corner of his eye.

“Are you making fun of me?”

“No. I promise you. You were…I don’t have a word big enough.” He looked at my face, and I noticed his eyelashes were copper, like his hair. I was overcome by his presence. “Now I know what you’re protecting by not getting entangled.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate that. I really do.”

He ran his finger over my collarbone with just enough pressure to make me breathe a little more deeply. “Am I seeing you tonight?”

I tried to stay cool, but I wanted him all over again. “I don’t think I can. I’m not avoiding you. I have something else going on. Tomorrow?”

He shrugged. He must have thought I was playing games with him, which he’d probably be exquisitely sensitive about after the cheating wife. But I wasn’t playing a game. Not at all.

“I have a flight out at five tomorrow. After two weeks, you might forget me.”

“I should do to you what you did to me this afternoon,” I said.

He let out a short snort of a laugh into his whiskey. “You don’t have the self-control.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Wanna bet?”

“Yeah. I wanna bet.”

He pulled me close and spoke so softly I could barely hear him. “You get me to beg for it, and tomorrow I will take you to Tiffany on Rodeo Drive where you can pick out anything you want.”

“Anything?”

“Anything.”

“And what if I don’t? Which I won’t, but just for argument’s sake.”

“Then you cancel whatever it is you’re doing, and I take you back to my house, where you will obey my every command until the sun comes up.”

“I am not scrubbing your kitchen floor.”

He smirked. “That’s not what I had in mind.”

I hadn’t noticed the piano had stopped until I mentioned the kitchen floor.

“I’ll be right back,” I said, getting out of the booth before I had a chance to explain that I wasn’t ditching him or manipulating him. I’d let Gabby go off by herself, and I didn’t know if she’d seen me with him and taken a cab home.

I ran into Teresa in the hall on the way to the dressing room.

“I am so sorry,” I said. “I was rude and unbecoming.”

“My brother’s an asshole, so I don’t blame you.” She said it with a smile, taking my hand and squeezing. “We both loved your voice.”

“Thank you. I have to go. I’ll try to see you on the way out.”

I got into the dressing room just as Gabby shouldered her bag.

“I was looking for you,” she said.

“I was talking to Jonathan. You ready to go? I want to see him on the way out.”

“He’s here? Oh my God, Mon, he can help us get an agent or something. Another manager. Anything.”

“He’s not in the business, Gabs, please come on.”

She tugged my sleeve. “Wait. First of all, everyone’s in the business, even if they’re not. Okay? And what are you hiding from me? What?” She was a few inches shorter and looked up at me like she could pierce me with her eyes.

“Nothing.”

“Monica.”

“I want to go home.” I took a step toward the door, but Gabby leaned against it. I dropped my bag, giving in. “Fine, he wants to make this bet, and it has to do with sex, and I’m not hanging out with him tonight, I’m hanging out with you.”

“Cancel with me.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because Darren would kill me.”

“God damn the two of you!” she shouted.

“Gabs, please. Give me a break.”

“No, you guys won’t leave me alone to take a dump and you think I’m too stupid to notice? Now you have the chance to get the ear of a major fucking player—”