by Star Jones
“Don’t you think about us sometimes, Lizette?” he asked, his hand feeling a bit heavier on her knee. She moved her knee to the side with a quick jerk so that his hand fell off. Enough was enough.
She shook her head. “No, not really,” she said. She was telling the truth. She hadn’t given Tim a second thought in years.
“Not even a little? Remember that week we spent together during spring break? At our place in Martha’s Vineyard? I will never forget that week, even if you don’t remember it.”
He smiled at her, his dimples still deep and affecting. The mention of Martha’s Vineyard brought the memories all rushing back. For five straight days, they had barely left his family’s gorgeous Chilmark oceanfront estate. They had had sex in every room of the house, including the two-story great room and the screened-in porch. That week, they had used each other’s body as an erotic lab of sorts, exploring the sexual frontier as only college students can. Tim was a member of Yale’s heavyweight crew team and, in addition to being in great shape, was incredibly strong. She could remember that feeling of weightlessness as they had sex while he carried her around the house, settling in front of the palatial stone fireplace, both of them laughing and moaning at the same time as her legs hooked over his arms and he managed to stay inside of her while he walked. Yes, now that he mentioned it, that was an unbelievable week. She recalled how jealous Clare had been when she got back to campus and gave her friends a blow-by-blow, day-by-day account of the week and all the places around the house—oh, and a couple of times on the rocky beaches as the sun was setting!—where they had done it. Lizette gazed across the table at Tim’s still amazing shoulders and thought about how it had felt that week to be lifted and held up by his biceps as she impaled herself on him. The memory brought a tingling sensation down below. Lizette knew she had to snap out of it.
“Okay, I have to get going now,” she said, pushing back her chair and gathering up her new red Prada handbag (like all New York fashionistas on a budget, Lizette acquired her stash from discount designer websites like gilt.com and ruelala.com). She hoped her face didn’t look as flushed as it now felt. Tim rose along with her.
“Okay, Lizette, it was great seeing you. I hope we can get together soon. It doesn’t have to be another ten years. I’ll give Martin a call and see if he might be willing to help you. But remember, if you’re going to work your magic on Martin, you have to see him in person.”
Lizette nodded. God, what kind of raging erection is this horn-dog Martin fellow? Tim’s description of him frightened her a bit, like she needed a bodyguard or something just to occupy the same space as him. But if she ever got cold feet, all she needed was a quick image of Maxine Robinson’s angry face to find some courage.
INSIDE THE HAIR AND makeup room, the ladies were laughing at Lilly the hairdresser’s minute-by-minute account of her date the previous week with a guy she had met online—turns out that the “six-two and athletic” man she was expecting to meet turned out to be the spitting image of Jason Alexander, formerly of Seinfeld.
“Now, I got nothing against Jason Alexander,” Lilly said. “I think the man is hilarious. I might even go out with Jason Alexander. So I’m not superficial! But if you tell me you’re six-two and athletic, at least be, like, five-ten, and in reasonably good shape, you know?”
Maxine, who was listening in a corner of the room, interrupted the laughter to start the topic prep for the day’s show. “Ladies,” she said, peering out from under her turban, “I have a question.” Maxine wore a turban before almost every show. It was how she preferred to cover her head before she put on her “hair” for the show.
Shelly, Molly, and Dara turned their eyes to her. Whitney uncharacteristically hadn’t arrived yet.
Satisfied that she had everyone’s attention, Maxine continued. “Are we going to ask Carla Reynolds about those gay rumors?”
All eyes shifted from Maxine to Dara, whose face began to turn a shade of crimson. Their big guest this morning, the day after Heather Hope, was Carla Reynolds, the Hollywood actress/diva who had a new romantic comedy coming out the following Friday. Though she had been an American darling in the 1990s and early 2000s, her last two movies had been big flops, and the only time she had made news in recent months was when stories had surfaced about her carrying on a relationship with a woman.
No one wanted to answer Maxine’s question. “Oh, come on, ladies,” Maxine said. “Don’t be such pollyannas! If it’s in the news, aren’t we being irresponsible if we don’t ask her about it?”
Typical of Maxine, starting shit just to be starting shit. “But she’s here to promote her movie, not talk about this bullshit in the gossip rags,” Molly said. “When she’s ready to come out of the closet, then we can ask her about whether her lovers have a dick or a va-j-j. We can even ask her who gives better head, a man or a woman. I’m sure America is dying to know! Until then, it’s none of our damn business.” Molly sat back in her chair, enjoying the snickers around the room, but she gave Dara a quick glance.
“Oh, Molly, you do enjoy the value of the shock, don’t you?” Maxine said dismissively. “And it would be so nice if that were our only concern, deciding what is and isn’t our ‘business.’ But we don’t do this show just for us and our friends on the two coasts. We do this show for the little chubby lady in Kansas with four children and six teeth, who lives in a double-wide trailer and reads the National Enquirer like it’s the goddamn New York Times. And if she wants to know if a guest likes to do it with a snake, then we bloody well better find out.” Maxine was on a roll. It was time to let these privileged bitches know how their croissants got buttered every friggin’ morning, she thought to herself. “You all may not be concerned, but there is something else we have to be concerned about. It’s called ratings. I don’t know if you care, Molly, but ours haven’t been so great lately.”
More silence. No one wanted to argue with Maxine about ratings. That was not a debate worth having.
“Oh, so what you’re saying is you’re willing to invade the woman’s privacy and try to embarrass her in front of millions of people for the sake of ratings?” Dara said, fighting through her own embarrassment.
“I said no such thing, Dara,” Maxine answered. “I merely posed a question. But maybe you need to recuse yourself from this discussion anyway, since it might be hard for you to be objective here. You seem a bit emotionally connected to this particular subject.”
“Damn, Maxine!” Molly said. “That’s fucked-up.”
“Is it, Molly? If we can’t be frank and honest with one another here in this room, then how can we be frank and honest on the set?” Maxine said.
More silence. The ladies knew that statement was bullshit—they had never had any interest in being frank and honest with one another. And nobody was less frank and honest than Maxine. Dara couldn’t believe Maxine was purposefully trying to force her to out herself . . . under the guise of being frank and honest. When that sneaky bitch had more secrets than anyone in the room. And God forbid someone bring them up even peripherally in a discussion on air. No one would dare bring up her son’s suicide, her multiple marriages or her multiple face-lifts. Frank and honest my ass, Dara thought. She wouldn’t know frank and honest if it walked in here and pissed on the floor.
There were more glances in Dara’s direction. Dara finally had had enough. She pushed herself out of the chair and snatched the makeup cape from around her neck. She stormed out of the room without saying another word.
“Well, looks to me like one of our ladies would not be comfortable with that area of discussion, Maxine,” Shelly said. “So I vote that we let the woman promote her stupid movie and keep it moving.”
“Yeah, that would be my vote too,” Molly said.
Just then Whitney breezed into the room. “What the hell is wrong with Dara?” she said as she put her handbag in a corner. “She almost knocked me over storming out of here.”
Everyone glanced in Maxine’s direction. Maxine, satisfied
that she had caused enough havoc for a morning, had had enough herself. “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” she said. She got up from the chair. “See you on set,” she said, to no one and everyone. She shot a look at Ricardo, her longtime hairdresser. Ricardo was the only person allowed to touch Maxine’s hair. Before every show, they retired to her office suite, where Ricardo removed her turban and carefully placed a wig on her head. No one on the cast or crew had ever seen her without a wig or a turban. Ricardo stood and darted out of the room, hot on Maxine’s heels.
“I’ll tell you later,” Molly said in Whitney’s direction as she pushed herself up from the chair and headed out of the room. Molly had something she needed to get from her office before the show, something in a little bottle.
When the show started and Carla Reynolds joined them on the couch, Dara Cruz’s hands shook with trepidation. But the ladies treated their guest with respect and discretion. The famous actress was funny and engaging, talking about the moviemaking process and even joking about how badly her last two movies had flopped. She never knew how close she had come to discussing the sexual equipment of her bedmates on the set of The Lunch Club in front of millions of viewers.
After the show, Maxine looked around for Lizette and was not pleased at all that her publicist was nowhere to be found. How could that girl have missed the show after a day like yesterday? Maxine marched into her office and slammed the door behind her. She was meeting Riley Dufrane at the Four Seasons for lunch and she wanted to have an update on the Missy Adams book to report to the network president. But apparently that wasn’t going to happen, since Lizette was nowhere around. God forbid Lizette be where she was actually needed. Little Lizette had better deliver that damned manuscript, Maxine thought, or she might find herself not needed in the very near future.
Maxine sat down behind her desk and shook her head, angry at herself for getting flustered. She knew she needed to calm down. After all, it was just Riley. He was about as intimidating to her as a fluffy poodle.
THERE WERE LOTS OF restaurants in the city where patrons flocked to taste some of the most inventive, interesting food around, and then there was the Four Seasons restaurant. This legendary New York institution was all about the spectacle, the place to see and be seen, where the city’s power brokers lunched like peacocks strutting through the zoo with their grand plumes on display. The food was delicious, but the reason that people like Maxine and Riley Dufrane had been flocking to this shrine of power for the past fifty years was to cement their “juice,” to make sure everyone in the city knew they still had it and how much they had. The latter was determined by where the proprietors, Julian Niccolini and Alex Von Bidder, decided to seat you when you arrived. First of all, if you were coming for lunch, once you walked up the massive staircase and were greeted by Julian and Alex, you might as well slit your throat if the maître d’ made you turn left to bring you to your table. The left meant you were being taken to the Pool Room. While it’s an incredibly lovely space with lighted trees (that change with the seasons) surrounding the square marble pool, it was the desired spot for dinner, not lunch. The Grill Room was the only spot to be for lunch. Only nobodies and tourists were brought to the Pool Room for lunch—people who wouldn’t even know how thoroughly they had just been dissed.
Maxine was a bit out of sorts as she approached Julian and Alex at the top of the staircase because Friday was not her day. Maxine had a well-established Four Seasons schedule: she usually arrived promptly on the first Monday of every month at twelve thirty, and after Julian and Alex had sufficiently fawned over her, she would be escorted to her table against the back wall, the same table where she had been sitting for the past twenty years. The back wall, known to regulars as the banquettes, was the prime Grill Room real estate for the power elite. If someone else got those tables ahead of you, it meant that Julian and Alex had seen your reservation and decided you weren’t important enough for the banquettes. The Four Seasons was such a fixture in Maxine’s life that she couldn’t even remember a major deal that she had ever signed during her career that hadn’t been first negotiated or broached there. But instead of walking into her beloved restaurant on her schedule, on her reservation, she was coming in this time as a guest of Riley Dufrane. Riley was a Friday regular.
“Ms. Robinson!” Alex cried out when he saw her. “You look marvelous! How have you been, my dear? We are so glad to see you on a Friday. Mr. Dufrane is waiting for you. Please, come this way.”
Maxine was curious to see who got a better table at the Four Seasons, she or Riley. Yes, he was the president of NBN. But she was Maxine Robinson. As she glided behind Alex toward the back of the room, she saw Barbara Walters at a table in deep conversation with Vernon Jordan. Although she’d never acknowledge it to anyone in the business, Maxine had great respect for the octogenerian broadcaster, who was for years the woman in television, after all. Maxine also spotted Diane Sawyer chatting with another woman Maxine didn’t recognize.
“Maxine!” Diane said, rising to greet her.
“Hello, Diane,” Maxine said. “You look fabulous, darling.” In fact, Maxine was thinking that Diane was starting to look her age, though she still was a very attractive woman. “Burning the midnight oil, I see,” Maxine said, as she touched the corners of her eyes as if to suggest Diane’s eyes were sagging. Of course, that was bullshit. Maxine had had more “work” done than a New York City street after a water main explosion and Diane was gorgeous, but God forbid Maxine pay another woman a compliment. Especially someone she perceived as a competitor. Her own ego was far too fragile to admit that someone else could be talented, smart, beautiful, and younger than she. So naturally she took a subtle dig every chance she could. Diane chuckled to herself at the obvious crack, but of course was as gracious as ever because she knew the deal and actually felt sorry for the aging grande dame. The two women exchanged air kisses; Maxine kept it moving and Diane went back to her conversation.
Maxine spotted Riley sitting against the wall—at Maxine’s usual table! So apparently their juice was about equal. She was annoyed to see that he was sitting with his back to the wall, the spot Maxine usually sat in.
“Hey, Maxine!” She turned toward the cheerful voice, which she recognized before she even saw the face. Katie Couric. Maxine despised Katie even more than she did Diane because Katie had what Maxine envied most . . . youth and time. Smart and likable can be manufactured, but no Park Avenue doctor with his fancy creams, gels, laser treatments, or injections—and she had tried them all—could give back to Maxine the years Katie and Diane had on her.
“How are you, Katie? When are you going to come back on the show?” Maxine said, though she had no intention of inviting her back anytime soon.
“Whenever you invite me back, I’ll be there, Maxine,” Katie said. Maxine knew that was Katie’s way of throwing in her face the fact that Katie hadn’t been on The Lunch Club since she became an anchor. But Maxine had no interest in having Katie sit on her couch, telling them how grand it was to be a network anchor, the first female anchor in CBS history, how humbled she was to follow in the footsteps of Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather. No, Maxine had no interest in hearing all that from Miss Cute, Young, and Perky. Besides, she had been there, done that—and bought the T-shirt. After their air kisses, Maxine gave Katie a wave and kept moving.
Riley rose as Maxine approached the table. But she saw someone else nearby she had to greet. Oprah Winfrey and her best friend Gayle. Riley would have to wait.
“Maxine!” she said. The two exchanged a hearty hug; there was nothing fake about it. “I haven’t heard back from you about possible show opportunities at my new network. I’ve loved everything you’ve done and want to brainstorm.”
Maxine smiled at the compliment. “I know, I know. Things got so busy. Let’s set up a lunch.”
BW, Katie, Diane, Oprah, and Maxine at the same restaurant for lunch on the same day. If a terrorist wanted to deal a death blow to female broadcasters, today would be the day to pop by
the Four Seasons. TV would never be the same.
Maxine finally faced Riley, who was still standing awkwardly, waiting for her to finish. “I’m sorry, Riley,” she said. “Please have a seat.”
They sat down together. While Maxine enjoyed the idea that Riley was intimidated by her, she hoped this lunch wouldn’t be too painful. She ordered a glass of white wine and a salad to start. She had the same thing every time she came to the Four Seasons, the Caesar salad and the Dover sole with the delicious lemon-caper sauce. For the next fifteen minutes, they crunched on crudités and engaged in a bit of small talk about the network, the news, and politics, three favorite topics for these two news junkies. Maxine wondered how long it would take Riley to get to the point of the lunch. She knew he likely wasn’t here to give her a raise, so she needed to know how bad it was going to be.
“Maxine, let’s talk a bit about The Lunch Club,” Riley said finally. “I’m sure you’ve noticed the ratings drop. In some markets you’ve been losing regularly to shows that you used to trounce. I think the show is starting to feel a bit stale. We need to do something to shake things up.”
Maxine held her breath. She prayed that this wasn’t his way of forcing her to put his wife, Virginia, on the show. He had been dropping hints now for at least a year and Maxine had ignored all of them.
“I’m thinking that we need to make some changes to the couch,” Riley continued. “I have some thoughts as to who I might like to see replaced, but I’d like to hear your thoughts.”
“Well,” Maxine said with a sigh, “this is coming as a bit of a surprise, Riley. I think I need to give it some thought before I tell you what I think.” Maxine was really thinking, What crap! Shows always tried shaking things up for ratings and inevitably there is fallout. “Riley, we’ve been together for quite a few years now and I feel like we’ve got a nice rhythm going. But of course I’ve noticed the ratings and I recognize that something probably needs to be done. Let me think about it over the weekend. I’ll get back to you early next week.”
