Satan's Sisters

by Star Jones

  WHEN THE BUZZER SOUNDED and they heard Molly’s voice through the intercom, Dara and Rain were so happy that they almost started dancing around their apartment. But when Molly appeared at the door and nearly collapsed inside, their joy turned to horror. Molly looked frightening. Her face was so pale that she could have starred in a vampire movie; her eyes were deadened, almost as if the life had been drained from them. Molly could see from the expressions on her friends’ faces that she must have looked as bad as she felt.

  “Damn, girl, what the fuck have you done to yourself?” Rain said, as she put her arm around Molly and escorted her over to the living room couch. “Is it those pills, Molly? How many did you take?”

  “No, it’s not the pills,” Molly said, annoyed at Rain’s insinuation that she was a drug addict or some crazed suicidal woman. “I think I just need to eat. It’s been a long time since I had something to eat.”

  Dara and Rain exchanged skeptical looks. In all her years of knowing Molly, Rain hadn’t ever known Molly to miss many meals, except for when she went through that Collins Challenge craziness, which most of her friends, especially Rain, had told her was a major mistake. That was a big reason why Molly had never told Rain about her recent struggles with food—and the pills.

  “Oookay, Molly, if you insist. We got food here. We can get you something to eat.” Rain threw a sidelong glance at Dara, who hurried into the kitchen and peered into the refrigerator. As Dara stood in front of the fridge, she went into doctor mode and cursed herself for not insisting more forcefully that they get Molly into rehab for the Xanax addiction. She had even discussed it with her friend Brad Lamm, who was an addiction specialist and had promised Dara that he would be able to get Molly well again and do it with discretion. But Rain had said Molly would never go along—though Dara suspected that Rain was thinking too much about the negative publicity and not enough about the best thing for Molly. In recent months Dara could see it beginning to affect Molly’s work. Her sharp mind and biting wit sometimes seemed to elude her of late. Dara would glance over at Molly on the couch and she’d seem to be somewhere else, not engaged in the conversation at all. But she still got off her trademark Stein Stingers on a regular enough basis for others not to notice.

  Dara now eyed the leftover budín, which she and Rain had barely touched after they feasted on each other the previous night on the couch where Molly was now sitting. Dara chuckled to herself at the jokes Molly would throw at them if she knew what they had done to each other on that couch twenty-four hours earlier. Instead of dessert, Dara prepared a healthful plate of cheese, crackers, carrots, and apple slices and brought them to Molly, who was busy chiding Rain for her continued insistence that the pills were to blame for her current state.

  “What do I look like, a friggin’ rabbit?” Molly said as she looked down at the plate. But she devoured the food, nevertheless, leaving the plate empty in about two minutes flat. They could already see some color returning to her face when she was done. Perhaps she was telling the truth—maybe she had just starved herself. But that begged the question: why hadn’t Molly eaten in more than twenty-four hours?

  “Explain this to me like I’m an idiot,” Rain said. “Why again would you go more than twenty-four hours without eating food?”

  “Explain it like you’re an idiot? Jesus, Rain, since when do you give me setup lines like that? I don’t even need to come up with a joke.”

  “No, seriously, Molly, I want to understand,” Rain said, not smiling.

  “All you two nosy carpet-munching bitches need to understand is that I was hungry, that’s all,” Molly said. “Stop trying to get all Sigmund Freud on me, okay? Dara, I know you’re a doctor, but you practiced medicine about as long as it takes me to douche in the morning, so leave it alone. And Rain, you got some nerve, going on about these pills. You used to do enough drugs to make Pablo Escobar nervous about running low. I’ve seen you so coked out of your mind that you once even sucked a real dick, remember that? Of course, after I found you with the guy’s thing down your throat, you claimed that you thought it was a dildo—yeah, a dildo with a gorgeous 220-pound black man attached to it! So ladies, back the fuck off with the pills. As I said, I was just hungry. As a matter of fact, I’m still hungry. You think you can steal some more food out of the rabbit’s cage?”

  Dara laughed, even though she didn’t want to. She just couldn’t help it; Molly was too damn funny. Rain shot her an angry glare. They had talked many times about how comedians often used humor to avoid difficult situations, or to escape the need for some introspection. That’s exactly what Molly was doing right now. She could tell all the jokes she wanted, while singing those wacky, satirical songs to an always enthusiastic audience, but they both knew if she didn’t confront her sickness and get some help, it would come to a tragic ending.

  “Okay, Molly, we’ll let this go for right now. But we’re going to talk about it again and again and again until you listen to us,” Rain said. “You can stay here tonight and then we can all leave for AC in the morning. I’ll call my assistant and send her to your place to get you some clothes.”

  “I don’t want one of your little peons going through my shit!” Molly protested.

  Rain sighed. “Okay, I’ll go myself.”

  “No, you two can stay here, rest, get ready for your show. I’ll go back to Molly’s,” Dara said.

  Rain smiled. “See, Molly, that’s why I love this girl,” she said. Then she reached out and smacked Dara on her butt, loud enough for it to make a big noise. “That, and this perfect, heart-shaped ass!”

  “Ow!” Dara said, pretending to scowl. Then a smile spread across her face and she stuck her butt out, pointing it at Rain. “Do it again.”

  JOSH HAD BEEN LUSTING after the secretary for weeks and on Friday afternoon he finally met with some success. He promised her that if she came back to his place, he would promote her from her lowly position in the accounting pool to work as one of his secretaries—as soon as he could. He was careful to add that last part. They were standing in a remote corridor, away from the foot traffic. Most of the staff and crew of The Lunch Club had already gone home—on Fridays, the place usually looked like a ghost town by five o’clock. When Josh had seen Kara walking by, her bountiful breasts posing a constant threat to the buttons on her preppy yellow oxford shirt, he sprung into action. With one hand on her hip and the other softly stroking her forearm, after about ten minutes of sweet cooing in the girl’s ear, Josh had come up with his quid pro quo. Blushing shyly, her perfect dimples setting his heart racing, Kara agreed.

  So when Callie came over to Josh’s office at about six, a time when he usually could be found preparing for Monday’s show, he was gone. Callie was upset. She was going to try to convince Josh to stay in New York for the weekend, maybe to go to the Central Park Zoo with her and Megan on Saturday morning. She knew it was a long shot—Josh had told her a thousand times that he had to devote his weekends to his kids, otherwise they would forget his name—but at least once every few months Josh would surprise her. Callie wondered whether he had already left for Connecticut without telling her. She scowled and headed back to her office.

  While Callie was standing outside of Josh’s darkened office, Josh’s face was buried between Kara’s legs. They were both naked on the bed in his midtown apartment. Amazingly, Kara’s body turned out to be even more fantastic naked than clothed. Josh found that that was often the case with well-endowed women—God’s work was infinitely more impressive than some gay designer’s vision of the female form covering their bodies. Kara was a dizzying collection of curves, hills, and valleys, all natural, the female form in its perfect state. My God, he thought as he ran his hands over her astoundingly smooth skin, this girl would make a killing in the strip clubs! Her breasts were particularly unbelievable to him, two illustrations of the conquest of youth over gravity. With their size and heft, Josh couldn’t fathom how they managed to jut out so far without even an inch of sag. Was this girl even in her t
wenties yet?

  “How old are you?” he asked, lifting his mouth from her tangy center long enough to get out the four words.

  Through her moans, Kara managed to shout out, “Twenty-one!”

  Josh smiled inside. He hadn’t gone this young in years.

  Two hours later, Josh wondered whether he would ever be able to stay away from this girl. He hated to think it, but Kara made Callie look like a geriatric by comparison. Somehow, at twenty-one, she had learned how to perform oral sex better than women twice her age. Better than Callie, that’s for sure. Where are these young girls learning this stuff? Josh asked himself. Kara was a firecracker, so sensitive and responsive that she had had four orgasms in the first thirty minutes they were together. Josh had already had two, and she was begging him to bring his “magic stick” back over to the bed.

  “Magic stick?” he said, laughing.

  “Yeah, like the Fifty song!” she said, giggling prettily.

  “Fifty song?” he repeated, frowning. What the hell was she talking about?

  Kara rolled her eyes. “Fifty Cent, silly! Oh forget it. Just get back in the bed.” Kara rolled over onto her stomach and jiggled her naked ass, trying to entice Josh. He groaned and crawled toward her. How could he say no to an ass like that? For the first time in his life, he wondered if he could get his hands on some Viagra. He was getting too old to expect more than two orgasms in a two-hour period, no matter how sexy the girl or mind-blowing the sex. As he climbed on top of her and slid back inside, two hours’ worth of female moistness giving him easy entry even though he wasn’t yet fully hard, Josh prayed that his wife wouldn’t be horny when he got home later that night. Friday-night sex had become a ritual of sorts for them, no matter how late he got home. He knew she would not understand if he turned her away, not when she had waited the whole week for his return. Friday night was the minimum work he was required to put in at home. But he felt a little sore even now, sawing in and out of Kara. If he was going to fuck Barbara, he would have to do it with somebody else’s dick.

  AFTER LIZETTE AND CHANNING were seated at the Union Square Cafe and ordered drinks, Lizette was pleased to see that Channing appeared to be nervous. He was normally a picture of cool confidence, but as he fussed with the napkin in his lap and fidgeted in his chair, he was anything but. Lizette also noticed that Channing wasn’t looking her in the eye. She thought that was a bit odd, but maybe he felt that his proposal would go off more smoothly if there wasn’t a deep connection between them first.

  To get the conversation going, Lizette started talking about the latest news at The Lunch Club. She told Channing about the disagreement over whether they would ask Carla Reynolds about her sexual orientation during the show that morning. It was reported to Lizette by Lilly the hairdresser, who was Lizette’s spy in the hair/makeup room. Lizette thought it was important for her to have a spy in makeup, so that she would get no surprises from the ladies and their personal lives. In fact, it was Lilly who told Lizette that Dara was a lesbian.

  “So, what happened on the show?” Channing asked. He was looking at her face now. “Did they say anything about her sexual preference?”

  Lizette shook her head. “No, they didn’t. I think Maxine decided to actually show some respect for somebody else’s privacy, believe it or not. But I’m sure Maxine would have been all up in Carla’s business if Dara and the other ladies hadn’t spoken up in the makeup room.”

  Channing grew silent, deep in thought. This was originally supposed to be a celebratory occasion. The idea was to take Lizette out to a fancy dinner and, with much fanfare, tell her about his new job. Several weeks ago, Channing had been approached by a major media company to start up a new website. The site was to focus on celebrity news and gossip and to be edgy and hard-hitting. Channing was initially tepid about the idea of doing a celebrity news and gossip site—after all, he was a real journalist, one of the finest feature writers in the country. But then they threw a number at him: they agreed to pay him a million dollars a year to run the site, with even more bonus money thrown in if he was able to hit their page-view goals during the first year. With the state of the economy, freelance writing assignments had started to shrink, even for somebody like Channing. Especially for somebody like Channing, who commanded as much as five dollars a word, far more than most of the writers he was competing with for assignments. Channing jumped at the opportunity. They even allowed him to come up with the name for the site. He chose chattercrazy.com, in honor of his deceased mother, who always used to call Channing a “chatterbox” when he was a little boy because he talked so much.

  This dinner was Channing’s opportunity to tell Lizette about his new job and especially his new salary. With money like that, they’d be able to buy a beautiful apartment downtown, where Lizette had always told him she wanted to buy some property when she “struck it rich.” Now Channing had struck it rich and he planned on making Lizette his wife so they could enjoy the riches together.

  But Channing now had a dilemma.

  When he had used some of the behind-the-scenes stuff Lizette had told him about The Lunch Club, the freshman site got more than a hundred thousand page views within a few hours—already blasting the goal they had set for his first month. And Lizette had just given him even more juicy information about Carla Reynolds that no one else would have. If he waited a while longer before telling Lizette about his job, Channing knew that he would get tons more dirt for his site. His page views would go through the roof—and untold riches would flow their way. In the end, he’d be able to get Lizette to understand. So even though the purpose of the fancy dinner had been to tell Lizette about the job, Channing made a fateful decision as he sat there listening to his girlfriend talk about her show: he stayed quiet. He took mental notes of everything that she said, then ran to the bathroom and regurgitated her comments into his little voice recorder so that he would get them right.

  Before he went back to the table, Channing stared at himself in the mirror. He knew what he was doing was wrong, but once he showed Lizette how much money was at stake, how could she hold it against him? After all, how often did people in their professions get a chance to make this kind of cash? He was doing it all for Lizette. He prayed that she would understand that. In the end, wasn’t that more important than some publicist job? With his projected salary, Lizette wouldn’t even need to work.

  As Channing returned to the table, Lizette admired the confidence in his stride, as she often did. That was one of the first things that she had noticed about him, the way he entered a room as if he owned it. Lizette had always been attracted to supremely confident men. The two of them had first met at a book party for a mutual friend. When he joined the party, she noticed him right away. It was as if all the music and conversation ceased and he moved toward her in slow motion, like the first-meeting scene in a Hollywood romantic comedy. At first she figured, This guy must be pretty arrogant, walking in here like that. But instead of dismissing Mr. Arrogance, Lizette found herself drawn so powerfully to him that she practically followed him around the rest of the night until he asked her out. As he caught her watching him appreciatively now, he smiled, his dimples so deep that they looked like cavernous valleys in the middle of his face. Lizette loved Channing’s dimples. At that moment, her feelings for Channing were as strong as they had ever been. She couldn’t wait to say yes.

  But then the suspenseful minutes turned into an hour, the entrées turned into coffee and dessert, and still Channing hadn’t popped the question. What in the world is he waiting for? she wondered. She watched his hands, which kept touching something in his left-side suit pocket. Surely that must be the box holding the engagement ring, right? For a while, she thought he was going to present the ring in the dessert, like on top of the chocolate cake, or hidden inside the banana tart. So she asked Channing what she should order for dessert. He looked at her with a surprised and slightly confused expression.

  “Uh, I don’t know, Lizette,” he said. “Since when do
you ask me what you should order?”

  Lizette frowned. Damn, no dessert surprise, huh? And why did Channing have to be so snarky about it? She had to be honest with herself—he didn’t have the glowing demeanor of a guy who was about to propose marriage. He seemed distracted and worried—but now she considered the possibility that maybe it was about something else. Maybe Channing had no intention of asking her to marry him, now or ever. Once Lizette came to that conclusion, the dinner went downhill in a hurry. She was mortally embarrassed by her presumptions, by her flattering thoughts about her boyfriend. Hell, she had even told Clare and a few other girlfriends that she thought Channing was going to propose tonight. They all had their cell phones on high alert, waiting for a text from her the second he popped the question. Now she would have to go back to each of them and report that nothing had happened. How disappointing. How infuriating.

  “I don’t even want this,” Lizette said quickly, staring down at the famous Union Square Cafe Flourless Chocolate Cake with Salted Caramel Sauce and pushing it away. “I want to go home.”