Bad Duke

by Emily Bishop

  “The homeless ones?”

  “They’re not homeless. They live with me.”

  “It’s practically the same thing. Total financial despair. Never trust poor people with valuable information, Roxy.” Candace pinches her nose and tries to relax. “Well, what’s done is done. This completely avoidable disaster has happened, and there’s nothing to do now but damage control. Walk with me, Roxy.”

  She continues doing breathing exercises, reminding me of Blake, as we march into the production building and toward her office. “Did you learn that from Blake?” I wonder.

  “Lamaze,” Candace lies. I’ve never heard her breathe like that a day in her life. We enter her office, and she gestures for me to sit. “Here’s what we’re going to do!” Candace announces excitedly, sauntering over to her side of the desk. “You’re going to deny that you are pregnant. You don’t look pregnant. For all you know, you’ll lose the baby anyway.”

  I gasp. “Candace!”

  “What?” she blurts, blinking at me. “It’s true! Anyway, deny the rumors, say that you and Blake are good friends, and you’ll always treasure what you had in Greece, et cetera. Very classy. The paparazzi will lose interest in you if you become irrelevant, so stay the fuck away from this set, and stay the fuck away from Blake in every respect. I’ll keep him away from you, if you can uphold your end of the bargain.”

  “I don’t know that I can,” I answer in all honesty. “I think I’m in love with him, Candace.”

  Candace scowls at me like I just told her that I think there is a possibility that gravity is just a shared hallucination. “You don’t need to stay away from him for-ev-er,” she clarifies loudly. “Just stay away from him for the rest of my goddamn show. How about a little respect for our attempts to run a serious business here? Right?”

  “Right,” I admit. This place was my paycheck not too long ago.

  But I guess nowhere is my paycheck now.

  In fact, unless I actually start asking Blake for child support while I’m still pregnant, I’m not going to be able to make rent.

  “So, stay away from the set, stay away from Blake, deny your pregnancy, and give me another month to wrap this up. Then you’re free to hold naked photo shoots with Time Magazine, or whatever your heart so desires.”

  “I can do that if you give me something,” I wager.

  “Of course. Of course, you can. All right. What do you need?” she asks.

  “I need you to help me get another job,” I tell her. “Mr. Montana fired me after all this insane press coverage. He said you might be able to find something else for me, and I think he was right.”

  Candace tsks. “I don’t know,” she says. “No one wants the eye of a media storm on their staff. Not him. Not me. No one in Hollywood Studious.” Her shoulders slump. “But that is what we’re stuck with. Let me think. I’ve got to dredge up all your skillsets from memory now.” As she paces, she opens a cabinet and flicks a file to me. “That’s the folder that Jared might have seen, by the way. You should take a look at it and see if there’s anything you want to change or protect or whatever. Again, might have seen, and we’re not even sure that it was Jared. The man in our footage is masked.”

  I skim the information and, when I hit the line that says ADDRESS, my heart suddenly loses about twenty pounds of strain.

  “The address is outdated,” I breathe. “This is the address where I lived for the first year that I worked here.” My glowing eyes meet Candace’s. “He can’t find me with this.”

  Candace can’t smother her own grin. “Thank god,” she says. “Thank fucking god.” She taps her desk thoughtfully and adds, “You know, there’s this indie bar downtown, and it’s got low lights and lots of older people, really chill lounge,” Candace suggests. “They have live music. You ought to apply down there. It’s a completely different atmosphere, and they’ve taken in a lot of strays over the years. I’ll talk to the owner for you. Put in a good word.”

  Chapter 13

  Blake

  “She is not Sir Blake Berringer’s girlfriend.

  She was not a regular contestant.

  Everything that has been published lately is pure conjecture, or coincidence, completely unrelated to the show My Billionaire Bachelor…”

  Flashbulbs go off all around Candace and me. We stand as a unified front before the press corps, beneath a banner which reads in pink cursive: My Billionaire Bachelor. Then, in black and neon splatter: SEASON 6!! I’ve donned a cool, ice-blue suit and a black tie for the occasion. My hair was styled meticulously by the new makeup artist, whose name I can never recall to save my life.

  “Are you ready to do this?” Candace asks from behind her smiling–or clenched – teeth.

  “I would have quit a long time ago,” I smile-talk back to her, “if Roxanne hadn’t begged me to do this for you.”

  Candace swats me hard on the back with an open palm, probably meaning for the gesture to be one of camaraderie. “Good man.” She says that with her actual, unsmiling mouth, then nods and smoothens her black blazer and matching skirt. She wears coral-colored lipstick today, hardening an already intimidating and rigid mouth. But I feel comfortable facing the cameras and the reporters with this hard-headed bitch at my side. I might have been born doing this, but she was born ready for it.

  Deny the pregnancy. Deny the relationship. Finish the show. Those were Candace’s ironclad demands.

  Increase security. Find Roxanne reliable and safe work outside of show business. If Jared comes back into the picture, all bets are off. Those were our demands.

  Candace and I both turned to Roxanne for the final say, and she nodded in affirmation once. I agree with my baby. If this deal sounds good to her, then it sounds good to me.

  I tried to get my phone back during negotiations, too, but Candace shook her head before I could finish asking the question. “Your girlfriend has my phone number,” she said. “If she really needs you, she can call me. Then I’ll decide if she really needs you.”

  “Thank you all for coming today,” Candace warmly greets the members of the press, putting on a face for them that I’ve never seen her wear before. It’s so strangely inviting. “Thank you for giving us the opportunity to straighten the record before all this conjecture gets too far out of hand.”

  “Is Roxanne Meriweather pregnant?” an eager reporter shrills from the flock.

  “I cannot absolutely disclose that,” I lie. “But I can tell you that the sources cited in all of these claims are very soft, so it is doubtful.”

  “Doubtful,” Candace echoes assertively.

  “There have been rumors that she was fired from My Billionaire Bachelor. Can you confirm or deny that, Ms. Madden?” someone else yells.

  “Miss Meriweather was offered an opportunity at another location,” Candace clarifies. “There’s been so much confusion regarding the salmonella outbreak in the Greece episode, we decided it might be best to just put some space between her and the show for the rest of the season. We do not discriminate against pregnant women, of course, but the media has been very distracted by our makeup artist’s appearance in one episode. She is not Sir Blake Berringer’s girlfriend. She was not a regular contestant. Everything that has been published lately is pure conjecture, or coincidence, completely unrelated to the show My Billionaire Bachelor.”

  A flurry of flashbulbs hit us, and my hands tighten into fists. I hate this. “Sir Berringer,” someone calls to me. “Who is the girl from the background image?”

  “No comment,” I say closely to the mic.

  “Are you at liberty to date a staff member from the show, if you so choose?” someone else calls.

  “No comment.”

  “Do you regret agreeing to do the show, considering your issues with the media in the past?”

  “Absolutely not.” It’s only half of a lie. I did this show for Roxanne, and in that sense, there are no regrets. But I wish the paparazzi didn’t poison everything. Now the mother of my child is vexed by them
, so much so that she had to change career paths midstream.

  Candace tells me that she sings in a lounge called Fancy’s now.

  “Thank you all so much for your time and your interest,” Candace bids them farewell. “In this world of ever-increasing technology and in a troubled economy, it’s easy to be fooled by our own eyes, fooled by charlatans who desperately need to make a buck. Let me say that we bear no ill will toward the publications which have wrongfully reported on this alleged development. Thank you again.” She ends it with the flourish of one last princess wave and exits stage left.

  I follow behind her and pat her back. “You should have gone into acting,” I tell her with a little chuckle. “That was very believable.”

  “And look at you over there,” Candace returns smilingly, “with all your no comments.” She winks. “Just remember: keep it up for three more dates, lover boy, and then you can go make out with Roxanne in the middle of Times Square if you want to.”

  “I can do that now,” I remind her. I do not like the way she sounds as if she believes that she owns me. I’m doing this out of loyalty to Roxanne. No paltry contract could hold me. “You remember that.”

  ***

  The final date of the season is mind-numbing, and I have senioritis like never before. My body is electric with impatience more than giddiness as Roz and I thread through the candlelit, murmuring crowd. Roz is a local aspiring model (slash retail worker) and the eighth contestant of the show. I accidentally call her Rox more times than I can count, and surely more times than she wanted to hear. She’s as cute as a button, an unusually young and alternative-looking girl for this brand of television. She wears a loose-knit beanie and a cheap-looking striped dress with sandals. Over drinks, I really try to be interested in her college experience.

  In the ride over to the chic little coffeehouse, The Tiny Tea Rack, Roz says, “So, seriously, what are my chances of winning the show?”

  I laugh uncomfortably. “Why would you ask me that?”

  “After Greece?” Roz says. “And Roxanne?”

  “We held a press conference,” I remind her. “Roxanne’s pregnancy is a coincidence.”

  Roz chuckles knowingly. “Right.”

  “Is the experience not good enough?” I ask with a forced smile, and Roz laughs louder now.

  “Right,” she says again. “The experience and the paycheck.”

  We arrive at The Tiny Tea Rack, a local poetry bar, and the smells of patchouli and wine are strong in here. On the show, it will seem to be an intimate setting, filled with low lights and murmuring patrons, but that is because the viewers at home aren’t able to see the fringe of cameras following us everywhere, turning every room into a stage. At least the lights are very low, too low to even tell what someone really looks like, unless they’re up on that stage, sitting on the stool, reading bad poetry.

  As we sit and chat and I try to listen and absorb the American experience–as if I’ve never been here before, although, admittedly, I’ve never been here before–my mind drifts back to Roxanne in spite of my best efforts. I think about the next time I’ll see her.

  I wish I could call her. We haven’t spoken in almost a month, and I only know she’s okay because Candace claims she is.

  I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to go two months without a phone. They pass slowly. There isn’t much to actually do around that fake mansion. It’s mostly a blur of stand-offs with Candace and breathing exercises, covering cameras so I can masturbate and think about Roxanne, and pantomiming interest in these grotesque renditions of Americanized dates. I went to a dance in a barn in Appalachia. I visited the monuments of Washington, DC. Something tells me these aren’t typical first dates for the average American, but I went anyway, doing exactly as Candace needs, as per our arrangement.

  Now there is only one episode left: selecting my favorite date, and sweeping her off on the vacation of her choosing.

  And Roz is right. She doesn’t stand a chance. I’m sure the Internet will go up in flames, but I don’t give a shit. I’m going to choose Roxanne.

  The next poet to ascend the stage and perch on a stool in the limelight is a young and dramatically pregnant blonde girl. She wears glasses, pigtails, and a plaid maternity shirt with little maternity skinny jeans, which I did not know existed. Her belly could pop at any moment, and my heart instinctively aches for Roxanne. This has been the longest month of my life.

  The pregnant girl waddles over to the stool and slowly situates herself on top of it. “Hey everybody,” she greets, shoving her large glasses up her nose. A cheer ripples through the crowd. Maybe she’s one of their regulars.

  “Lulu!” someone calls out in encouragement, and she blushes. I guess she is a regular performer.

  “I’ve got a new one,” she announces bashfully.

  “Lulu with that new-new!” someone else calls out.

  Lulu clears her throat and settles up against the mic, beginning to read. The imagery is dark, lonely, and feminine. There are tons of allusions and references to natural phenomenon. It dawns on me that the poem is really about being pregnant and alone–pregnant and single.

  “But this is my cross to bear,” she finishes, “and my hatchet to bury.”

  Everyone extends their arms and snaps for her instead of giving applause. Feeling clumsy, I snap my fingers along with the crowd, and Roz twists to ask me if I’ve ever written poetry for fun before.

  I say no. I can barely focus on what she’s saying, though, and she does have to repeat herself.

  As I watch Lulu saunter off the stage, so small with her big belly protruding out in front of her like a piece of furniture being toted, I imagine Roxanne in her place, and my heart softens. I don’t know if I can do this anymore.

  I don’t know if I can wait one more goddamn week to see her.

  “You know, I don’t know how anyone does what that little girl is doing,” Roz offers contemplatively.

  “What?” I ask.

  “I don’t know how women can just be pregnant and alone. It’s so…so sad. Almost scary, you know? It’s just not right.”

  I swallow thickly. “Right,” I say.

  The room feels like it’s closing in on me, breathing down my neck. I’ve got to get out of here before I really snap and just disappear.

  “That little baby is so vulnerable,” she goes on, still staring after Lulu as the young girl threads through the crowd. Her eyes turn to me and she watches closely as she adds, “It needs its daddy.”

  My jaw clenches. I don’t know if this girl is trying to test me, but if she is, she’s won. I break. That’s it. That’s enough.

  I shoot up from the table and barge through the crowd, abandoning Roz as she yells after me, confused about the sudden veer this episode is taking.

  Well, Shannon or Sharron, or whoever could tell her all about it. This is just what a date with Blake Berringer is like. Someone out there loves it, even if most women find the unpredictability pretty infuriating.

  “Try and follow me,” I dare the camera crew as several of them jostle through the crowd, struggling to keep up with me without damaging their equipment. “I’m about to introduce you to the winner of season six, everybody.”

  Candace is screeching so loud through one cameraman’s earpiece, I can hear her myself.

  I grab a cab and let the driver know that I’m heading to a little jazz lounge called Fancy’s.

  Chapter 14

  Roxanne

  “How long has it been since I’ve been inside you?”

  My eyes turn over the notched wooden chairs littering the wide structure of Fancy’s. Warm yellow lamplight glazes every round tabletop. The walls are packed with framed celebrity relics, from the high heels of sultry jazz singers to the nine iron of 1967’s PGA winner. It’s kitschy and amusing. I like it, though the smell of liquor was overwhelming at first. Now it’s oddly comforting.

  Fancy’s has become my new home. Two hours before my first shift will begin, I’m still wearing pajam
as and flip flops. I sit at a lone table and tuck my hands around my knees.

  I miss The Lofts.

  Iggy and Pepper didn’t want to kick me out, and I didn’t want to go, but the paparazzi thronging outside of our windows was making everyone’s life hell. They would camp. They would sleep in shifts. All believing that one of them might snap the moment that an enraged and/or lustful Sir Blake Berringer might storm up the walk and take me in his arms, or throw me up against a wall. There might be a loud argument about whether or not to get an abortion, right? There might be sex. There might be tears. So they camped.

  Vultures.

  There was also a slight chance that so much exposure would incidentally reveal my address to Jared, if he searched hard enough. It just wasn’t worth the risk. So I disappeared again.

  Backlit liquor bottles line the shelves behind the bar, where Rudy, a first-generation Russian immigrant, polishes glasses and waits.

  I watch Rudy and smile.

  I was terrified when I first met him, just like I was with Candace.

  I just met Rudy last month, but still. I was terrified again.

  I swallow and tell myself that I’m back on my feet now. Jared has no dominion over me here. His threats will remain empty.

  Rudy is bald and pink, with a faded ring of golden hair around his head. He’s a thick man, with beefy arms, a barrel chest, a strong nose, and a mustache in the shape of a damn sausage link. He’s intense. As you get closer, you find that his chestnut eyes have unexpected moments of kindness, just like Candace’s blue ones.

  And, like Candace, he offered me a place to stay. There’s a room in the back of the house not being used for anything but the occasional nap. He said that I could take it. I don’t own many possessions anymore, so it was as easily said as done.