Chapter 12 – Gale and Jinny
Gale asked Jinny, “Do you pay income taxes?”
Jinny looked up at Gale, even though he had shoes on and she was barefoot. Jinny looks up to almost all women, but that doesn’t bother him. He is self-confidence personified, a condition that had been solidified a year earlier when a woman named Monique had taken a shine to him. Monique is French and is George Clooney’s personal assistant, living with Big George in whatever mansion he happens to be spending his time. Her favorite is the place on Lake Como, in Italy, but she knows beggars shouldn’t be choosers. She and her boss had stayed in Charleston a few months, working with Roger and Gwen on a production that was part film and part play. Jinny’s role in the production was to act as bodyguard for the famous actor, protecting him from rabid fans, an Iranian assassination team whose mission was kill one of the production team members, and Gale herself, who was obsessed with getting Big George tied to her bedposts, after which she wanted to drain every bodily fluid from him, again and again. Monique is a five foot ten bombshell with a physique that would instill in many Sports Illustrated swimsuit models a massive inferiority complex, and why she latched onto Jinny during her stay in Charleston was a mystery to the other team members, as much as they respect and love him. Even before then, Jinny liked who he was, but afterwards he felt the world was his oyster where women are concerned. Gale was different for some reason, like the sister he’d never had. Well, he did have a sister, but she got drafted into the Russian anti-terrorist services and sent to the Chechnya border areas right after she strangled a fellow student on the playground who had made fun of her mustache. While Jinny was duly proud of her being the youngest ever so adopted into that apparatchik service, this happening when she was fourteen, he never had found her company to be supportive and comforting, sisterly, in a word, the way he did with Gale.
He said, “What? Taxes?”
“Yeah, income taxes that pay for our cruise missiles and other stuff we’re world famous for. Ya know, America the Beautiful.”
“Um, no, no taxes from me. I’m a pacifist.” This coming from the guy who caught the Iranian assassins trying to fuckup Gwen’s production, took them down the street to the park, stuck a gun in their faces, stripped ‘em naked, and made ‘em run around in front of all the College of Charleston coeds that sunbath in the park, getting their weekly doses of solar radiation poisoning. “Do you?”
“Naw, not anymore. I used to when I was younger and did modeling jobs, stuff like that, but now my money comes from the June’s capers and poker, and that money’s different.”
“How? Money’s money. If you get it, being a patriotic American, aren’t you supposed to help pay for the missiles?”
Gale never had thought of it that way, did so now, found the proposition uninteresting, and asked, “How much money you got?”
Jinny didn’t mind the question at all, and said, “I think I got about two million. Around there.”
“You bring any of that with you when you came to the States?”
He shook his head. “Some guys in Saint Petersburg stuck me in the hold of an Aeroflot cargo plane headed for Pittsburg. No heat. I still was in my prison clothes. Not only did they give me no money, I didn’t even have underwear on." He paused. “If that isn’t a tribute to the greatness of America, I don’t know what is. Now I live on the beach and hang out with people like you and Monique. How much money do you have?”
Gale hadn’t figured he might ask her the same question she asked him, and wasn’t quite as liberal minded and open to inquiry about the subject as he was, her having grown up in the historic district of Charleston as opposed to the stinking docks of the Russian port city. She figured fair is fair, not really thinking of Jinny as a brother in the same way he thought of her as a sister, or at least quasi sister, but viewed him more from her perspective of a genteel and good-hearted dominatrix, and answered, “I don’t keep a lot in the bank. It seems to go out as fast as it comes in, but I always have enough to do what I like to do. Where do you keep your money?”
“At the house.”
“You keep two million dollars at your house? What if the house catches fire?”
“I been here four years. If the money burns up and I don’t go with it, I always can get some more.” Jinny was an easy come, easy go sort of guy.
“You shouldn’t tell people you keep a lot of money in your house. Someone might steal it. Since I helped you and Gwen steal the painting, got a taste of that, maybe I’ll come over some day and take your money. Go to Tahiti.”
“You never stole anything before? How old are you?” said Jinny.
“I’ve never stolen anything like that before, or in that way. I steal all the time from the guys I play poker with, the nitwits.”
“Hey, you need some money, all you gotta do is ask.”
“I’ve never had to do that before. Guys seem to want to give it to me, and I don’t want to hurt their feelings, so I say yes. I’m good, but thanks.”
“So what are we going to do now for fun? Is Gwen going to steal something else, need our help?”
“I doubt she’ll do that again before Roger gets back from France. She’s having her fun looking at herself in the painting. Very narcissistic, seems to me, weird, but whatever. I don’t know what to do for fun right now, but walking on the beach here is ok.”
Jinny said, “You want to go to Pierre’s with me?”
“Why would I want to go to there with you, watch you get your second shave of the day? That’s like watching lumberjacks cut down spruce trees with chainsaws. It’s called Pierre’s Men's Salon for a reason. It’s for men.”
“Monique used to go with me. Drink wine and watch. It’s a very chi chi place, lots of things go on in there behind the scenes.”
“I don’t think I want to know.”
“But I’d like to watch you at your toilette. Grooming and stuff.”
“That’s different. I’m a babe. Everything about us is attractive, desirable. Guys are good for one thing; other than that you’re a bunch of simian brutes.”
“Please? Come to Pierre’s. We got nothing else to do. You can get a wax job from Pierina.”
“Ok.”
Gwenny June's Tommy Crown Affair Page 12
