In the Night of the Heat

by Blair Underwood

  The Peninsula, like all of L.A.’s luxury hotels, is one I know well. There are several bars—one has cabanas and a gigantic swimming pool—but the Club Bar is the vortex. The bar has an intimacy the power brokers like, with dark-paneled walls of California birch, shining brass and sconces that make it look like a guest room in the White House. Or a museum: There are six marvelous paintings of scenes from historic Los Angeles and Beverly Hills. Faith had led me to an empty wing of the bar draped in light, colorful fabrics to give even more privacy to plush cushions arranged with mounds of mock Turkish pillows.

  It was a pleasant place to wait, but waiting sucks. I hate waiting.

  Because the invitation had been such a compliment, the delay felt like twice the insult. By the time the Jewells were an hour late and Faith was biting her lip with worry that our brief flirtation was about to end on a sour note, the Evil Voice in my head was a full-blown chorus: You thought YOU were going to have a meeting with Lynda Jewell?

  I was so mad, I couldn’t trust whatever might come out of my mouth. I had to walk out.

  As I reached for my cell phone to tell Len the bad news, Faith flew to me again—this time, she was smiling. “Lynda just drove up,” she chirped.

  My heart somersaulted in a way that surprised me. My palms flared with the damp heat of nerves, the way they do before a demanding stage performance. Faith patted the small of my back like a mother saying There, there, you’ll do fine. I gallantly kissed her hand, and her cheeks flushed; overripened strawberries.

  BACK OUT NOW BEFORE YOU HUMILIATE YOURSELF, my Evil Voice screamed.

  Suddenly, she was there.

  Lynda Jewell was sparrow-boned and barely over five feet tall, so she upturned her face as I towered above her. Her face looked up at me like a full, bright moon. She was about fifty, although it took an expert eye to see it. Her tanned skin was taut enough from subtle plastic surgery, but she was standing so close that I could see the crow’s-feet bordering her large, aquamarine eyes.

  “Tennyson Hardwick.” Her eyes twinkled like Aruba’s ocean waves. “I’m a big fan.”

  It’s dizzying to hear Lynda Jewell utter your name, much less proclaim that she’s a fan. My heart leapt again, until I remembered that in Hollywood the phrase “I’m a big fan” translates to “My secretary’s heard of you.” Seriously.

  “I’m flattered, Ms. Jewell,” I said. I hoped my hand was steady when I squeezed her dry, cool palm inside of mine. “Coming from you, that means a lot.”

  Her gaze lingered, and her thin lips shifted in a way I couldn’t read. She held my hand a long time before finally letting go. “Lynda,” she said after she’d studied me. “Let’s sit.”

  “Apple martini?” Faith asked her. She already had the drink waiting for her boss.

  “Just one. Then we’ll be fine here, Faith.”

  While we sat in a strangers’ silence, Lynda Jewell’s eyes were rapt on me. Intelligent banter is one of my specialties, but I was at a rare loss for chitchat. I quizzed myself on everything April had tried to teach me, but for a harrowing moment, I couldn’t even remember the movie’s name. I was lucky to remember her husband’s.

  “So…is Ron still coming?” I said finally.

  “Not this time.” She concentrated on draining her martini glass, her eyes closed. Just stress, or was she nervous, too?

  Lenox Avenue, I remembered with a wave of relief. I tried on a confident pose, more like I imagined Troy: inclined comfortably, arm draped across the sofa back, leg crossed over my knee at the calf. Much more suave than I felt.

  “I’m excited FilmQuest is doing Lenox Avenue,” I said. “That story should be told.”

  Lynda agreed vaguely. “FilmQuest has a suite upstairs from a junket. Let’s move our meeting up there.”

  The first alarm bell sounded in my mind. A one-on-one meeting at a public bar with a studio executive was one thing, but a hotel suite? I hoped Faith was up in the suite, too, but I doubted it. Besides, half the point of a meeting with Lynda Jewell at the Peninsula is to be seen having a meeting with Lynda Jewell at the Peninsula.

  I could hear Len—my Good and Pragmatic Voice—talking to me this time: Don’t do it, Ten. But Lynda Jewell was already on her feet, pulling on her oversized Mario Magro handbag. “I have a script up there,” she said. “Ron’s done a terrific take on the book.”

  The script was in her hotel suite. Oscar-winning screenwriter. Close enough to touch.

  I gave Lynda Jewell a good, long look. I let her see I was mulling the pieces over.

  “I’d love to see that script,” I said, as if I was entitled to. I was acting already. I came to my feet and gestured her forward with a sweep of my arm. Ladies first. I’m an old-fashioned gentleman; some clients called me the black Errol Flynn.

  Lynda Jewell smiled, appreciating my flourishes. “Then let’s do that.”

  We were alone in the elevator, but as soon as the door closed, she took two steps over until she stood right in front of me. I could smell her Chanel shampoo, even without trying. When the elevator stopped abruptly at the third floor, her weight shifted backward slightly, and she brushed against me, buttocks grazing my thigh. It was so bold, it was almost plausible.

  Shit, I thought. I am so fucked.

  Instead of looking at her, I gazed at the mile-long, colorful carpeting that bespoke grandness, beckoning me out of the elevator car. I remembered that tantalizing script sitting atop a desktop only yards from where I stood. Another sweep of my arm: Madame.

  While we walked together in silence, my mind raced: Okay, she was signaling big-time, but not everybody who flirts has the nerve to act out on it. If she’d just wanted to fuck me, she wouldn’t have brought her assistant. Or called my agent. She would have done it another way. That’s what I was telling myself as I followed her down the hall, toward a hotel suite I was almost sure must be empty.

  For once, my Evil Voice was on my side: What the hell? She’ll show you the script. She might flirt a little, but that’s just a game. Keep her focused on the script. This is yours.

  That was my plan. Finesse it somehow. I was good at that.

  If I could pull off ten minutes of charm in the room—hey, gotta race to an appointment in Culver City, a fund-raiser for college kids, dontcha know—I could blast out of there, mission accomplished. She’d feel good, I’d have an important new friend. I’d exit smoothly, no ruffled feathers, a peck on the lips—and if she slipped me a little tongue at the door, that’s nothing to take seriously in Hollywood. In some circles, a few inches of tongue are almost a courtesy. In Lynda Jewell’s circles, no doubt.

  PENINSULA SUITE, the door proclaimed. There I was.

  Lynda Jewell had her keycard ready, and we were behind a closed door in a flash.

  It wasn’t my first visit to the Peninsula Suite, so it felt like returning to a rarely used room in my own house. The rug was the one I remembered, the same beautiful black baby grand piano nestled by the window. “I have a fond feeling for pianos; I still remember the three chords I learned in music class in junior high.” At more than two thousand square feet, the airy suite was bigger than the house I’d grown up in.

  I was relieved to see stacks of press materials and large cardboard cutouts of Colin Farrell and Matt Damon for the movie her studio was promoting, Outside In. The suite was like an office, and I felt myself relax. The actors’ life-size images were vivid harbingers of better times to come. They had been in this room, only hours before. I could almost smell their success lingering in the upholstery where their asses had been planted for the parade of interviewers.

  Lynda Jewell was at the bar. “Drink?”

  I almost declined, but my Evil Voice insisted on sociability. “Red Bull and vodka?” At least I would be alert.

  “Colin lives on those,” she said. “Says he can stay up all night.”

  While she fixed my drink, I sat on the plush sofa and scanned the tables for the Lenox Avenue script. The sooner I had it in my hands, the better. No luck. S
hit.

  Lynda Jewell walked to me and handed me the drink, but she didn’t sit. She stood over me, smiling with a secret. One by one, she kicked off her shoes.

  “You mentioned a script…” I said.

  “You don’t remember me, do you?” She whispered the words.

  No man wants to hear those words from any woman, much less Lynda Jewell. I could have kidded myself that we’d run into each other at Whole Foods and talked about life and the universe once, but the dance in her eyes told a different story.

  My mouth went so dry, I couldn’t feel my tongue. No glib answer for that, but I tried.

  “I wouldn’t forget meeting you.”

  She chuckled, a nearly masculine growl in her throat. “I’ll give you a hint: I was wearing a wig. A horrible wig at that. I looked like Little Orphan Annie. And big Elizabeth Taylor sunglasses. They probably covered half my face.”

  “Are you sure it was me?”

  “The Raffles L’Ermitage Hotel,” she said. Specifics have terrible clarifying power.

  I felt the world slip off kilter, and my fingers tightened across the sofa cushion. My old life and my new life almost never collided: I had made sure of that. Now, I could hear my agent’s frustrated mantra from those days: It’ll catch up to you, Ten. Everything always does.

  As Lynda Jewell went on, I recognized what had spiced her smile when she first saw me: bemusement. “My friend Pauline put you up there. Paid every bill. Minibar. Room service. Massages. A month or more, wasn’t it? You cost her five figures. And all you had to do when she slipped across the street from the studio was fuck her in the ass.”

  Suddenly, I remembered the woman in the ridiculous orange wig and sunglasses, a friend my client Pauline, another film exec, brought to watch us from across the room. She’d never said a word, too shy to join in. Apparently, Lynda Jewell had recovered from her shyness.

  I would have stood up to leave if she hadn’t suddenly swung one leg over to straddle me, nimble as a teenage gymnast. She weighed next to nothing on my lap. Her ample chest brushed beneath my chin. I hadn’t noticed her chest before, and suddenly I could feel her implants. Her skin’s scent, stark and new, filled my nose.

  I’d underestimated Lynda Jewell, and I’d forgotten what and who I was. I was in trouble.

  Lynda Jewell savored the battle she saw on my face.

  “So…here’s how it is,” she said. “Right here. Right now. You walk out with a script, and I’ll personally call any casting director in town to sing your praises.”

  Slowly, rhythmically, she slid herself back and forth across my lap. She exerted so much pressure that her bony hip hurt; I had to uncross my leg and shift position, which gave her even freer access to my private parts. Her warm groin against mine felt disloyal to April. When she touched my cheek, I flinched as if her fingers had sparked. My face burned.

  It was hard to concentrate on what she was saying, but what I heard was enough. I wanted to clamp my palms to her tiny waist, lift her up, and deposit her away. But I didn’t. A deeper instinct told me not to touch her. One person’s gentle rebuke is another person’s assault. Anything that happened in that room was Lynda Jewell’s word against mine, and I didn’t like the odds against me.

  Besides, it wasn’t a good idea to touch her at all. Touching would only make it worse.

  “I wish I could,” I said. Truer words have never been spoken. “Please get up.”

  Her smile glittered, and I knew she was going to try to make me suffer. Lynda Jewell was a tough negotiator, or she wouldn’t be a kingmaker. “Really?”

  She began unbuttoning her blouse, and the pang of fear in my chest felt as real and sickening as my day in the desert. As if I was about to die. Lynda Jewell was a bad dream I’d been having for years, replaying with my eyes wide open. I knew how this dream ended.

  “Don’t do that,” I said, averting my eyes. I raised my hands as if she had a gun.

  “Or what?” Her smile slipped past bemusement to something edgier, an implicit threat. Man or woman, anyone who claims not to enjoy power is lying.

  She raced through the rest of her buttons and flung the blouse to the floor. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a zebra pattern on her bra. I couldn’t help peeking. Her chest was smooth and freckled, her breasts paler than the skin beneath her collarbone. Man-made mounds rising high. Her body looked just fine.

  “You still like cash? There’s five thousand in the drawer. Tax-free. I’ll throw that in as a gratuity, assuming you earn it.” Lynda and her friend Pauline were nothing alike. Pauline had been courtly and considerate, always calling ahead to make sure it was a “good time” to meet, never treating me like property with a price tag.

  “I should leave now,” I said.

  “No ring, so you’re not married. Girlfriend?”

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to bring April’s name into the room with us. But Lynda Jewell grinned, happy to have figured out the delay.

  “I can’t promise you Troy, understand.” She twinkled at me. “Let me be clear about something now, so I don’t get any pouting later. You’re a hidden gem, lover, but you just don’t have the recognition. But there are a dozen other parts waiting for your face, some of them very good. You’ll have to audition if you want heavy lifting, but you’re guaranteed a line or two no matter what.”

  Lynda Jewell was closing the deal. Her bra came off next, tossed away like a small animal scurrying for shelter. Her fingers were a claw as she pulled my hand toward her chest. “Pauline said you’re a magician, and I need some magic today. Impress me.”

  I yielded to her hand’s pressure, and my palm fell to her breast. Sank into her skin.

  Whenever breasts make an appearance, my body assumes it’s time to fuck. The discomfort in my groin was replaced by a sense of fullness, a remnant of the days when my erections punched a time clock. My heart drummed louder.

  I’d done it a thousand times. The right touch here, carefully chosen words whispered there, and our contract was sealed. If you don’t think a few good orgasms are worth a movie role, someone isn’t taking care of business at home.

  I felt a confusion that seemed like clarity: Maybe my past had been designed to lead me to this moment. Few men on this earth could have been better prepared to give Lynda Jewell what she wanted that day. The thought of tasting her made me feel sick to my stomach, but the call of her open legs across my lap—and the realization of how close to the Promised Land I had come—was arousing me. I was a pro, after all.

  Lynda Jewell felt the mass growing beneath her. When you’re as blessed as I am, there’s nowhere to hide. “That’s more like it,” she said, rubbing against me. Massaging. “Ten.”

  What the fuck? the Evil Voice said. It’s the only way in you’ve got.

  To this day, I’m not sure why it happened. Maybe I’d trained myself to fight my Evil Voice, so that last jab helped me wake up from the dream. I stood up abruptly, bucking my hips slightly, and Lynda Jewell let out a cry as she lost her balance and landed on the carpeted floor.

  She sat there dumbfounded, crossing her arms across her chest as if I’d burst into her room and ripped off her blouse. Her face darkened two shades. “What the fuck?”

  Ever the gentleman, I offered my hand to help her to her feet. She refused to take it, hoisting herself up against the sofa.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Jewell,” I said, torn between regret and rage. “That was an accident. But please don’t ever waste my time, or my agent’s, with this kind of bullshit again.”

  In the end, rage won. Troy himself couldn’t have said it any better.

  I’ve replayed that day over and over, trying to salvage the visit in my imagination, but it always ends the same way. Something that starts out that wrong can’t be made right. And although April made the touch of other women feel foreign, I don’t think I threw Lynda Jewell off of my lap because of April. I’d quit the sex-for-pay business five years before I ever met April.

  I just couldn’t pretend to g
o back to the person I’d been, even if it would have meant real work. Even if it would have remade my world.

  Lynda Jewell’s eyes boiled with rage and humiliation, and I recognized the poison lurking there: All I have to do is scream and make up a story, and I can take your life away.

  “I truly am sorry. I had a reflexive—”

  “You are the picture of nerve, you son of a bitch,” she said, flinging her blouse on like a cape. “Why would I cast a nothing like you in Lenox Avenue?”

  Lynda Jewell and my Evil Voice had apparently read the same script. Her words flayed me. Still, I was the only one in the room with my dignity intact, and I kept it by commencing my long walk toward her suite’s door.

  Lynda Jewell exaggerated a laugh behind me, following me step for step like a small terrier. “I wouldn’t hire a talentless whore like you as an extra,” she said. “If you don’t get back over here and finish what we started, I’ll make it my mission to drive you out of town. Do you hear me? Trust me, the future is not bright. Not for you, asshole.”

  At least she had seen my commercial.

  I stepped out into the hallway. A door to my left clicked shut, probably closed by someone embarrassed for us.

  “God damn it! Get back in here and fuck me, you sonofabitch!”

  The hallway was empty. Barren.

  I don’t remember taking the elevator, or walking from the hotel. It took me four tries before I finally got my key in my car’s ignition.

  FOUR

  THE TAU FUNDRAISER WAS A MISERY, all the more miserable for its frivolity. There are few chores worse than being the only one at the party in a bad mood.

  Scratch that. It’s worse if you’re tied to a photo booth, smiling with strangers while flashing cameras stoke a monster headache. And worse still when your girlfriend’s eyes are probing with unfinished questions, trying to take you back to an afternoon you’d rather forget.