by Star Jones
“Oh yes, I saw—” Lance tried to get a word in, but like many celebrities, Maxine never considered that somebody like Lance might actually contribute something to the conversation that she’d be interested in hearing.
“Yes, Heather Hope was on, talking about upcoming guests on her show. Apparently our former cohost, Melissa Adams—you remember her, right?—has written some kind of book, supposedly a tell-all, about her time on the show. Now, I don’t think we have anything to worry about. I think Missy is just trying to make a quick buck. But if you have some time, I was just wondering if you might make a few calls and see if you can find out what’s in that book.”
Now Maxine paused, waiting for Lance to answer. Maxine knew that Lance didn’t really have much access to the good dirt anymore. Even if his old crowd of aging Broadway and Hollywood stars and media moguls who used to hold court at the 21 Club tried to do something juicy and scandalous, these days no one would care. Now it was all about the kids. The single-name celebs had gone from Cher and Madonna to Lindsay and Rihanna and Zac, with a few rappers, the Kardashians, and Hollywood bad boys thrown in for good measure. But it couldn’t hurt having Lance Overton feel like he had been given an assignment by Maxine Robinson. It had been a while since Maxine had initiated the contact, but the two of them had worked as a team for years. Maxine would invite Lance to her parties, where Lance would inevitably scrape together enough material for at least a week’s worth of columns. In return, Lance would trash whoever crossed Maxine.
When it came to Missy and the book, Maxine didn’t have high hopes. But if Lance made enough calls, they both might get lucky.
“Sure, Maxine. I’ll shake the trees and see what falls out,” he said, using one of his favorite expressions for gossip gathering.
Maxine thanked him and rushed him off the phone before Lance tried to change the subject. Maxine scrolled through some more numbers on her BlackBerry. After years of stubborn resistance, she had finally given in to the pleas of her staff and friends and allowed someone to hand her a BlackBerry. At first she found the endless array of keys and commands to be hopelessly confusing and pointless. But now that she had gotten the hang of it, she couldn’t live without it. What she enjoyed most was the privacy that it provided. No longer did she have to rely on assistants and secretaries to retrieve names and numbers—meaning that it was harder for those around her to keep tabs on what she was doing. Privacy was one of Maxine’s most prized possessions, more than all of the ridiculously expensive items she had acquired over the years. She guarded it with the same intensity that she brought to everything she did.
Maxine made two more desperate calls around town, casting her net to see what she could pull in. She could feel her chest start to tighten. She tried to shake it off. She liked to think of herself as a cool customer—she didn’t appreciate that this book had her so frazzled. She looked up at one of her favorite pictures, a shot of her standing on the steps of the White House before one of her presidential interviews, looking like she owned the place. Behind that portrait was a safe.
Inside the safe was “the book”—her own secret.
Every year for thirty-five years, Maxine’s loyal butler, William Clark, had been presenting her with the annual Christmas gift of a diary. Specifically, a Smythson of Bond Street diary, the lovely little leather handbooks from London. This year’s version was cased in yellow goatskin leather with a natural horn clasp, and just four months into the year Maxine had filled half its pages. The color of the diary rotated every year, but its purpose never changed. Maxine kept all her secrets and private thoughts in this little book, then stashed the volume in a safe at her Park Avenue home every New Year’s Day. She would start each book with a page listing her “Goals for the Year”; on the last page, sometime before the clock hit midnight on New Year’s Eve, she would look back and record how many goals had been successfully accomplished. As Maxine got older, she became even more meticulous, preparing for her own big tell-all memoir. Her few close friends called the books her “dirty diaries,” knowing they probably contained enough dirt to bury a whole roomful of celebrities. Every year, she postponed starting the memoir, thinking she wasn’t quite old enough yet. But though she loved her books, they had caused her a great deal of anguish. The Missy Adams mess almost made her want to throw the little yellow book across the room.
A few years earlier, during a lunch with Paul McCartney, whom the tabloids suggested she was “doing” at the time—as if—Maxine got so frazzled by the horde of paparazzi hovering outside the restaurant that she left her purse in the ladies’ room at the Carlyle. It was just her luck that Missy Adams was the one to go in the stall after her. Maxine almost had a breakdown when she discovered the purse containing her private diary was missing. She actually did have a small breakdown when that little bitch Missy sweetly returned it the next day—the day that coincidentally was to be Missy’s last on The Lunch Club. Dammit. One slip and now she had to worry about what Missy saw in that book, even though Missy swore she didn’t read one word. Lying tramp! I should have beat that bitch with a bat when I had the chance, Maxine thought.
As she riffled through the current diary, trying to get some ideas, her intercom buzzed. It was her secretary, Eileen.
“Miss Robinson, it’s Riley Dufrane for you on line two.”
Maxine scooped up the desk phone. To reach out this quickly, Riley must have been watching the show.
“How can I help you, Riley?” she said, hoping she sounded calm.
“Uh, well, how have you been, Maxine?”
Maxine rolled her eyes. Again with the dumb small talk. She wished he would get to the point, which she knew was to ask her what the hell had happened out there on the set. But Riley always acted a little goofy around her. He was one of the most powerful men in the television industry, and she knew he had a reputation for quick and decisive action, but whenever he was around Maxine, he seemed a bit tentative, maybe even intimidated. Riley was gorgeous, in a square-jawed, patrician sort of way. If you were trying to cast a network president, Riley’s portrait would be the first one the casting director would send over. He was more than a decade younger than she was, but his awkwardness around her didn’t seem to be about age. Maxine wasn’t sure what it was that shook him so, but the idea amused her—though it was an effect she had grown accustomed to having on both men and women. In Riley’s case, she pushed her advantage as much as possible, which usually made him even more uncomfortable. As a result, he just tried to stay out of her way.
“I’ve been fine, Riley. How is the family? I hope Virginia is well.”
“Yes, Ginny is well. As are the kids. We are all great.”
“Sooo . . . how can I help you, Riley?”
“Yes, well, there are a few things I’d like to discuss with you. I’m wondering if you might be available tomorrow for lunch?”
He wanted to waste an entire, uncomfortable lunch hour just to talk about Heather Hope’s appearance? Maxine thought that was a bit over-the-top. She decided to just get it over with now.
“Is this about the show we just did with Heather Hope?” she asked, trying hard to soften her tone.
“Uh, no, not really. Although I was curious about what happened out there. But I wanted to talk about something else.”
“Okkaaaaay,” Maxine said, pointedly reacting to Riley’s mysteriousness. “I’m sure I can make myself free if you need to talk.”
“Great. One o’clock at the Four Seasons . . . the restaurant, not the hotel.”
No shit, Sherlock, Maxine thought. What a moron. Like she’d ever mistake the two.
“Sounds fine,” Maxine said.
“Oh, and about today’s show, that looked a bit, uh, painful out there. I couldn’t imagine a situation that would have all five of you ladies with nothing to say.” He had meant it as a joke of sorts, but Maxine thought she detected a hint of sexism and condescension in his comment. So she just let it sit there.
Riley realized his error right away. He
hurried on, sounding even more flustered. Maxine guessed that his lovely, perfect face was probably turning a nice shade of crimson about now.
“Anyway, uh, have you been able to find out any information about Melissa’s book?”
Instantly, Maxine understood. Riley had plenty of his own secrets that he needed to keep hidden, things that could jeopardize not only his reputation but also his marriage and possibly even his career. A little smile formed at the corners of Maxine’s perfectly shaded lips.
“No, I haven’t, Riley. But I’m working on it. Perhaps I’ll know something by tomorrow. Good-bye.”
FOR THE THIRD TIME since she entered her office, Molly made sure her door was locked. She did not need any intruders right now. She had become overly neurotic about intruders because one of the set assistants had walked in on her a few months back while she was struggling to get out of an itchy wool dress after the show. When she had finished pulling the dress over her head, there he was, standing with his hand still on the doorknob and his eyes wide in shock and terror. Her breasts, spilling out of her bra, heaved in panic. The situation cried out for a joke, something to bring down the tension, but all Molly wanted to do was scream. She was standing, nearly naked, in front of a twentysomething kid barely out of college. She had hoped the joke wasn’t on her. Every time she saw him for the next six months, she felt her face turning red. She was relieved when he got a job on another show.
After the bombshell Heather had dropped, Molly felt like she was about to lose it. What if Missy told the world about the little bottle that she kept in her bag? She kept telling herself to calm down, to breathe easy, to relax, but it wasn’t working. She needed some help, some assistance in settling her nerves. What she needed was in her bag, locked in her desk drawer. She needed her pills. From day to day, hour to hour, Molly had been fighting with herself for at least the past two years, trying to stop herself from downing another pill every time she felt the slightest anxiety. But it was a battle that she had been losing. Badly. She tried to think of something that would take her mind off the Xanax. All at once, she loved and loathed the pills, thanked and cursed the day that she first met the little bastards. She looked around the office, pushing away the panic. Did Missy know about her, um, problem? If word got out that Molly was a drug addict, she knew Maxine would kick her under the nearest oncoming bus with about as much thought as Maxine put into applying deodorant in the morning. You could be a pill-popping, pot-smoking, blond-wig-wearing tranny with a rubber fetish on your own time, but if you made Maxine look bad or caused her to be cast in a light other than rose-colored, you were toast. God, just the thought of that heartless bitch gave Molly the shakes!
As she held her hand to her chest, Molly was comforted by the massive collection of pig-themed doodads that engulfed her office. The collection included magnets, stuffed dolls, napkin holders, and even a gold-plated piggy bank. Over the last decade or so friends and colleagues had tripled the size of her collection. She saw a wine opener with a pig’s-tail corkscrew from Sonoma Valley and remembered all the wonderful restaurants she had hit in the region. And of course the thought of restaurants brought her to food. She always made her way back to food.
Molly unlocked the desk and reached behind a stack of anonymous files, where she hid her food stash. Drakes Apple Pie. Her latest food obsession. Food had been Molly’s archenemy for as long as she could remember. Even when she was in elementary school, she would hide stashes around the house, insurance for her mother’s arbitrary food restrictions. One week potato chips were off-limits, the next week she’d let Molly stuff her face with a family-size bag of Lay’s in one sitting. In fact, it was food that led to the “problem” with the Xanax. Molly had made the monstrous error of signing on to become a celebrity spokeswoman for a national weight-loss company. The popular company was started by a former television actress named Karen Collins and Molly was all over the television airwaves and magazine covers because of her pledge to take the “Collins Challenge” and try to lose fifty pounds in six months. The money was good, but it was so not worth it. What was it her ex-agent used to say? “Scared money never wins”—and he ain’t never lied. That paycheck almost sent her to the nuthouse. The campaign, so public and in-your-face, turned Molly into a nervous wreck. Suddenly her weight and eating habits were the subject of water-cooler discussions and late-night comedians—all of whom were her buddies, all of whom were having a field day. Her doctor prescribed anti-anxiety pills to calm Molly down, and to her amazement, they also killed her appetite. She was thrilled at the twofer she got—lessen anxiety and lose weight at the same time! She wondered why she hadn’t stumbled across this magic formula decades earlier. With the help of her darling little pink pills, she actually lost the weight. It was a huge story. Molly even posed on the cover of People in a bikini. She looked fabulous! But after a short while, the pills lost their appetite-suppressing properties and she found that she was craving food again. She began to steadily gain the weight back—causing her even more anxiety. The heavier she got, the more she pounded the pills. To top off the story, Karen Collins fired her from the campaign, giving the comics and the tabloids weeks’ worth of material. One of the late-night hosts, Jimmy Kimmel, that fat fuck, even came up with a name for her: the Unsinkable Molly McCarthy—because she was the size of an aircraft carrier. As she had blinked through the tears watching Kimmel’s show, Molly vowed never to speak to him again.
Molly could tell that the other ladies on the couch suspected that something was wrong with her. They didn’t talk about it, but she had seen the many strange looks from them. Before the pills, she was a big, fun, hyper ball of energy. Now she needed to summon all the grit she could muster to display even half the energy she used to have. And she was doing weird stuff, like talking to herself very loudly in her office, or accusing the secretaries around the office of laughing at her. But Molly figured she was okay as long as her “problem” didn’t become public knowledge and embarrass the show. She knew this view wasn’t shared by the rest of the hosts, especially Whitney and Dara. But even if she were to admit that she needed help, which she wasn’t quite sure she was ready to do—she still thought the problem was the food, not the pills—how could she ever get it without the whole world finding out about it, thus ending her career? No, Molly knew she was better off staying under the radar, out of the limelight.
She just prayed that Missy wasn’t about to mess it all up.
For the third time in an hour, Callie Sherman loitered outside of the office of Josh Howe, the executive producer of The Lunch Club. Josh’s secretary eyed Callie but didn’t say anything. Callie hated to look like a stalker, but she couldn’t help herself. Something about Josh’s ways brought it out of her. Callie was a production executive for the NBN network, assigned to The Lunch Club, and it was her job to make sure that NBN knew every bit of minutiae about the program on and off the set. Especially anything that might cost the network money or ratings. Callie and Josh had been carrying on a torrid affair for years, almost since the moment she began working with the show. The steamy relationship had its ups and downs, ebbs and flows, sometimes introducing more than its share of drama to the set. After the Heather Hope appearance, Callie was desperate to talk to Josh, to see how much damage he thought Missy’s book could do to the show—and more specifically, to the two of them. Josh was married with three kids, so he certainly would have no interest in having their affair outed in a tell-all book. Callie had an even deeper secret, one that was considerably more explosive than her affair with Josh. Up until that morning, Callie was sure that she would be able to take her secret with her to her grave if she wished, she was so certain that it would never get out. But Heather Hope’s statements on the couch had frightened Callie to her core. She just had to talk to Josh.
“Is he still in there with Shelly?”
The secretary looked at her and nodded curtly. Callie knew the woman was probably cursing her under her breath. It was important not to annoy a man’s secretary if
you wanted any kind of access to him, but Callie was much too far down the road to panic to be thinking logically. Why was he spending so much time with Shelly? Could there possibly be something going on between them? With Josh, she knew anything was possible. She turned abruptly and made her way back to her office, which was a floor below Josh’s. As she scurried down the stairs, her long, shapely legs moving so fast that the heels of her René Caovilla stilettos clacking on the hard concrete sounded like machine-gun fire, she thought back to that first time with Josh, when all of this madness officially began.
Almost from the first day that she began working with The Lunch Club, Josh had been all over her. She was accustomed to male attention, something she had gotten from the moment puberty bloomed at age thirteen. Callie somehow managed to be long and lean but very curvaceous at the same time, like the women you’d see walking the streets of Paris and Rome. In fact, with her long, dark hair and easy, beautiful smile, Callie was sometimes mistaken for a European. Callie was disappointed to learn that Josh was married to boring-ass Barbara, his high school sweetheart, and they had three kids and a big house in Bridgeport, Connecticut. But he also had an apartment in the city and a reputation as a walking hard-on. Josh had tried to bed every attractive woman remotely connected to The Lunch Club, and in many cases succeeded. Although Callie found him attractive in a clean-cut, Connecticut-preppie sort of way (which was ironic, since Josh was originally a country boy from Nebraska), allowing him into her panties was the last thing she thought she’d do. But he wore down her resistance with his quick wit and inviting smile. She found herself looking forward to the time she had to spend with him talking about the show. Soon they started finding excuses to have even more frequent meetings, then lunches outside of the office. After several months, during a lunch filled with longing, fuck-me stares from both of them, she accepted his invitation to go back to his apartment. He might have started out as a country boy from Nebraska, but somewhere along the way Josh Howe had learned how to make a woman bay at the moon. Callie couldn’t believe the way her body responded to his touch, to his tongue, to him inside her. It was like he turned into a totally different person in the bedroom, a sexy, sensitive version of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator cyborg—he wouldn’t stop until she had had at least five orgasms and felt like she might pass out. After that, Callie was hooked, “turned out.” She couldn’t get enough of him and his magical penis. She didn’t even care that he went back up to his idyllic existence in Connecticut most nights and on weekends. As long as she got a healthy dose of Josh a few times a week, she was good.
