by CD Reiss
I couldn’t attach any feeling to the events I knew had occurred. I was sure they happened. I’d held her hand when her father died and wiped her tears away with my lips. We’d argued about silly things, like everyone, and we’d argued about serious things. I’d panicked when she told everyone about my kink because I thought I’d lose her. I remembered the fear, and when she told me she was leaving, everything that I was afraid of actually happened. I begged, on my knees, I’d begged her to stay. I remembered all of it as if I watched it on television or read about it in the paper, as if it was someone else’s story.
There was a sharp pain in my calf that felt suspiciously like Margie’s heel.
“Can you answer the question, Mr. Drazen?” said Rinaldo, the litigator, with a shitheel, superior tone that made me want to punch him.
I leaned forward. “You’re going to need to rephrase that.” I had no idea what the question was, and I needed him to repeat it.
“On November the twenty-fourth, what were your intentions when you met your ex-wife, Jessica Carnes, at your house?”
“My intentions? My intention was to go home and get some work done before a dinner meeting. She was already there.”
“You’re stating you did not expect her?”
“Yes.”
“Can you describe your frame of mind?”
“No.”
“Mr. Drazen—”
“I have to agree,” Margie said. “You haven’t even filed civil charges, and you want to go into discovery? Or was there something else?”
Myers cut in. “There are circumstances under which we can drop civil actions, which would give the state prosecutor little to go on. We can advocate for thirty-days probation and a standing order of protection.”
“Describe the circumstances,” Margie said.
“All financial channels between Mr. Drazen and Ms. Carnes can be reopened, permanently.”
I looked at my gorgeous ex-wife, whose need for money must be deeply shameful to her. She didn’t look at me but kept her back straight, her shoulders relaxed, and her eyes on her lawyer.
“No,” I said before Margie, and I felt her heel again.
That was apparently exactly what Rinaldo wanted to hear. He opened a folder with full-color photographs that made me want to avert my gaze. My ex-wife’s welted behind, three red slashes across it. I had no idea I’d hit her that hard. I had been pissed off, and it was difficult to feel how hard I was swinging through a haze of rage.
“You admit to giving her those?” Rinaldo seemed to be in charge of the uncomfortable questions.
“I do.”
“Why?”
“We agreed to it beforehand,” I said.
“Are you saying she asked for it?”
“Not in those words.”
“And in the month previous, you broke her wrist during sex.”
“She fell.”
“Yes, I understand that’s the story. You left her in the emergency room as well, so you wouldn’t be questioned,” Rinaldo said.
“I left her because I had a plane to catch and her boyfriend showed up.”
“Your current girlfriend was seen last night with bruises. Did she ‘ask for it’ as well?”
I glanced at Jessica. Her eyes were in her lap. “You must really want this money,” I said.
“Your comment has been noted, Mr. Drazen.”
“Monica and I fell down a hill last night. I’d laugh about it if I wasn’t so banged up myself.”
“Bruises at the base of her neck are not consistent with a fall.”
Margie clicked her pen to get everyone’s attention and spoke in a tone that stopped Rinaldo and Myers in their tracks. “Thank you, Doctor. Unless you can produce photographs of these alleged bruises, I couldn’t care less about them.”
Rinaldo listened, then smirked. “We can send a forensic photographer to her right now. The State of California doesn’t need her to accuse him of anything.”
“The State of California cannot compel a woman to use her body as evidence in a prosecution. Do you have anything else?” Margie demanded. “Because I’m seeing precious little.”
Myers nodded to Rinaldo, and the young litigator’s shit-eating grin returned. “Ms. Carnes’s phone turned itself on to record when you threw her against the table.” He pressed a button on his phone.
It started with a scream when I pulled her hair. What a convenient starting point. I looked at Jessica again, and her eyes were glued to the phone. I felt her desire to look at me as her screams echoed through the room.
I demanded a safe word. She questioned its necessity, and I said,
* * *
“Question me again, and I’m fucking your ass so hard you won’t be able to sit.”
* * *
It sounded bad. Really bad. As if she didn’t know what a safe word was or why one was necessary, and I’d interrupted her with a threat.
* * *
“It hurts. You’re hitting me.”
* * *
Calculated. So calculated. Somewhere in my mind, I admired her. She would have made a truly impressive partner if she wasn’t such a cunt.
The clacking of my belt opening sounded filthy and violent, and my telling her not to yell when I hit her couldn’t have sounded more like abuse. Listening to the scene play out was as uncomfortable as it should have been. And it was quite possible a judge would hear it. The recording could fry me.
“Wait,” Margie interrupted. “Can you pause that a second?”
Rinaldo paused it, but the violence of the encounter lingered in the room.
“Where did that start again?” Margie asked.
“With a scream.” Rinaldo had a wonderful shit-eating grin on his face that would look great once it was wiped off.
“Funny,” Margie said. “I heard this one this morning. It starts much earlier.” She pressed her own phone. My voice came through.
* * *
“Jess, how are you?”
* * *
A vanilla conversation progressed into the lead in the pipes of her studio, her hurt for money, our history.
* * *
“And you’re saying you want to try it my way?”
“I want to. We’d need to set some boundaries beforehand.”
“No, my way. Right now. Then you tell me if you can take it.”
* * *
“Stop,” said Jessica. “This is fake.”
“No,” I said. “It’s exactly what happened. I’d swear to it.”
* * *
“Okay.” Jessica’s voice, soft and audible.
“That’s ‘okay, sir.’”
“Doesn’t that seem a little silly?”
“You want to do this or not?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Stand up.”
* * *
“I don’t want to hear this,” Jessica whispered to Myers.
He whispered shhh and patted her hand as my voice came through again.
* * *
“Stop trying to look saucy. This is a functional matter and not for your pleasure.”
* * *
The next part was hard to hear, but Margie turned it up.
* * *
“This is what it is, this is the kind of sex you’re agreeing to.”
* * *
I commanded her to put her hands behind her back and face forward, then I checked on her, asking if she was all right.
I watched her reaction across the table. Her face flushed, and her jaw set. I hadn’t seen her blush since the first time I’d kissed her. The red deepened for the next part, which Margie turned up.
* * *
“I’ll undo your jeans. I’ll pull them down to the middle of your thighs so it’s hard to walk. You’ll be uncomfortable, and that will please me. Then I’ll get behind you, and I’ll grab a handful of your hair at the back of your head and bend you over that table. I’ll take off my belt, loop it once, and slap it across those sweet white cheeks until you’re pink as a
rose and your face is covered with tears. I’ll stop when I can stick two fingers in your cunt and feel how sopping wet you are. Then I’ll fuck you until you beg me to let you come, which I may or may not let you do. That going to work for you? Didn’t think so.”
“Do it.”
* * *
I noticed for the first time how shrill and desperate her voice was. At the time, it had sounded like a controlled whisper. On the recording, it sounded like a child’s whine.
* * *
“Jess, really.”
“Do it! Start with the hair. Or the pants. Whatever.”
“No.”
“Do it!”
“Stop, Jess.”
“Are you a fucking man? Or do you just beg and cry for what you can’t have? Is that how you get off?”
* * *
Then the crash.
Margie paused it. “We’ve heard the rest.”
“Where did you get that garbage?” Rinaldo asked.
“You Tube,” Margie said. “It had seven hundred views this morning. But let me refresh. Huh. Got about forty-two hundred now. Funny what people find entertaining, isn’t it?”
“A woman asking for it,” I muttered. Margie shot me a look, but I was spared the heel.
“She stole my phone.” Jessica’s eyes bore into me.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“The singer.”
“Go near her again, and I’ll kill you.”
Margie’s heel drew blood. I would have to buy her flats for our next meeting.
“Like you did Rachel,” Jessica said through her teeth. “Took sixteen years. But there’s no statute of limitation on murder, even manslaughter, Jon.”
Ryan Myers stood, closing his files. “We’re done here. Ms. Drazen, you and your client can consider our offer. Get back to me when you have an answer. The photographs still stand, as well as the possible pattern of abuse with his current girlfriend, which we’ll be sure to mention to the prosecutor.”
“Thanks for the warning.” Margie stood and shook his hand. Meeting over and, as usual, only the lawyers walked away unscathed.
Chapter 84
MONICA
I wore bruise-hiding clothes for the meeting, but as I wrapped my scarf around my neck, I wondered if Jonathan would come back to me before or after they were gone. My eyes welled, but I choked it back. Self-control. A woman of grace. I had to be that. I could crash after the meeting.
The car was, in a word, themostfantasticthingever. Fuck Jonathan. I got to the meeting feeling as though I was the architect of a major planetary takeover. I would return the car as soon as I was done there, but until then, it was like a space pod in a science fiction movie. Up the elevator, I told myself the usual. My name is Monica. I stand six feet tall in heels. I am descended from one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. I sing like an angel and growl like a lion. I am music. I am a goddess. I choked on the last word because it was his, but I believed it. I didn’t think I ever had before.
I expected to be awed by the size of the lobby or the glass-enclosed conference room, but I wasn’t. The dark wood floors, the receptionists’ desk that put their heads six inches above the person they were talking to, the marble staircase to the executive offices, all of it would have given me an anxiety attack six months earlier. But on the day I actually had a meeting that would have sent my friends into fits of envy-laced congratulations, I felt not a bit of tension or worry. Everything was in its box. Every emotion, positive or negative, was put away.
I understood what Jonathan found so appealing about self-control. I was the master of my body, my feelings, my words. I was fully in the moment, keeping my shit together. I was unattached to the results of the meeting. I was only concerned with being in it.
I’d heard those sentiments before, but I only realized that I had internalized them as I waited to be brought to a meeting where I was but a single, struggling singer in a room full of people who could make my dreams reality. I had what they needed. I had the music.
Carnival Records didn’t have a cutting edge reputation. They weren’t “street.” They recorded gangsters and drug addicts, same as anyone, but internally, they were old school and buttoned-up. The office was all business. They weren’t there to create or be part of an arts community. They took care of business. That was all. So though I’d worn a yellow dress with cream shoes, a cream scarf to cover Jonathan’s marks, my hair in braids, and red lipstick bright enough to stop traffic, the employees kept the colors toned down, the lipstick nude, and the arty affectation to a minimum.
I wasn’t waiting long before the receptionist brought me up the stairs, her ass swaying like a pendulum in her Robert Rodriguez skirt, big cloppy shoes silent from practice. She led me into the conference room. “Would you like some coffee?”
Again, Los Angeles was spread before me from Wilshire to the haze of the horizon. “Tea would be great. Just plain.”
She smiled and left. I didn’t sit but looked out the window onto the city of Los Angeles and the miasma of smog over the east side. Windows looked out into the hallway and all the blinds were up, so everyone in the office could see where Harry was and who he was talking to. He came into my sight, flanked by an entourage, mid-conversation. He smiled and waved through the window to me, stopping to finish talking to Eddie Milpas and an older woman who had a very important point to make, apparently. Two younger women flanked with notebooks and smart suits. A young man with three days of facial growth and a plaid shirt with slacks, an intern from the looks of him, opened the door when Eddie pointed to it. The gaggle of them strolled in.
“Ms. Faulkner,” Harry said.
We had handshakes and introductions. Eddie and I exchanged a meaningful look that acknowledged we’d already met. I tried to put an innocuous expression on my face to tell him I wasn’t going to wrestle with him over Bondage Girl in front of his boss. Everyone sat.
We had almost exactly the same small talk as every other meeting I’d attended. Traffic first. Los Angeles neighborhoods next. Some personal family stuff from Harry about his kid’s Little League. I avoided a conversation about baseball that could have gone on for days.
“Well,” Harry said as if he was cutting in on his own conversation, “it was something else to hear you perform last week. Wasn’t what I expected to see when I came out there.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
Jerry, the producer who first recorded me playing “Collared” with a theremin, blasted in wearing a navy jacket and a windowpane shirt with the top three buttons undone “Sorry, sorry.” He winked at me.
Harry gave him a smile that could have been swapped for a glare with no change in the message, then turned back to me. “Everyone in this room has seen you play.”
I hadn’t expected that. I thought they might have all heard Jerry’s recording, but apparently, they all stopped by Frontage at some point. Of course, Harry had heard me play the B.C. Modern.
“We’re all very impressed,” he said. “Eddie and I have been discussing some marketing strategies, and he’s come up with some ideas that are out of the park.”
Customer service smile.
If it was Bondage Girl, we were going to have a very short meeting.
If it was me pretending I was some sort of expert in the art of submission, I was taking my little F-type Jaguar home, picking up Darren, and going up and down Mulholland until I needed to hit a gas station. Then I would bring it right back to Griffith Park with an empty tank.
“Out of the park, huh?” I said. “I’m excited to hear it.”
“Were you considering doing more work like you did at the B.C. Mod show?”
Without Kevin?
Could I? I wasn’t visual. I had taste, I could put stuff together, but I didn’t have what Kevin had. “I’d like to, but it’s complicated. That was a one-off.”
He waved his hand. “It’s an attitude. The work will follow, if that’s what you want. We want to brand you
something like a Laurie Anderson. An all-around package. A musician, yes, but also an artist.”
“We want to introduce you around to some of L.A.’s art patrons,” Eddie broke in. He seemed on board with the new strategy. I hoped he’d thought of it, because if he was just along for the ride, it would be half-assed. “There’s an event Thursday night at L.A. Mod. The Collector’s Board gala. Very big thing.”
“It’s short notice,” I said. I had work, but I could switch a shift. Work wouldn’t stop me. Jonathan had been clear he wasn’t going, but maybe that had changed. I didn’t know how I felt about seeing him under those circumstances.
Harry picked up the thread. “It’s very short notice, but this event is only once a year. Next year, it’ll be too late. We want your face there, photographed with Carnival Records.” He indicated Eddie. “An artistic partnership.”
I don’t know what expression I wore, but I wore it long enough for Eddie to break the silence.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“Can I get back to you on Thursday night?”
“No problem,” Eddie said with the same tone he’d used the last time we met, as if maybe really meant yes. He held out his hand to one of the assistants, and she handed him a piece of paper. He passed it to me. “These are the terms we’re offering.”
I looked at the paper, but the words and numbers swam before my eyes. I bit my lips between my teeth to keep from smiling.
Chapter 85
MONICA
I couldn’t drive. I kept hitting the gas pedal too hard and taking unbelievable risks because that fucking car moved like a Serengeti cat. I had a heart-lightening exuberance I hadn’t felt since, well....ever.
