by Star Jones
“Hey, Doc,” he said, following the doctor from the room. The doctor turned around to eye him.
“Um, I got a hypothetical question I need to ask you,” Josh said.
WHEN RILEY DUFRANE CLOSED the door to his massive Madison Avenue apartment, he had one thought on his mind: Whitney. He hadn’t seen her since the debacle that was Maxine’s dinner party, and he was having serious withdrawal pains. He had spoken on the telephone with her just once, but she was so distracted that it was not satisfying at all. Riley wanted to ask her if she was still mad at him for the way he handled the revelation at Maxine’s—waiting until they had sex to tell her about Eric—but it seemed like it would be entirely too selfish to ask about her feelings for him in this situation. So he knew he just had to wait her out. Eventually she would emerge from this traumatic situation and would be able to spend even more time with him. At least that was his hope.
Riley put down his briefcase and poured himself a scotch on the rocks to smooth his mind out before he had to sit down with Ginny for the rest of the evening. He even opted for the really good stuff, the thirty-year-old Laphroaig single malt. With Whitney on his mind and Ginny in his face, he needed to make sure he had plenty of salve. He had put in a full day of work on a Saturday, and all he wanted to do was put his feet up and relax. But when he wandered into the bedroom with his glass, he was surprised to see Ginny getting all dolled up, putting the finishing touches on her makeup and wearing a slinky black dress.
“Oh, hi, honey!” she said as she peered into her makeup mirror.
“You going out tonight?” he asked, hopeful.
“Yeah, I’m going out to this hot new restaurant with Monica and Jasmine. Didn’t you get my text?”
Riley shook his head. “No, I didn’t see a text,” he said. But what he did see right before he left the office was her friend Jasmine, who was married to one of Riley’s top-level executives, Phil Breeden. Riley had made Phil work on Saturday, as did about a dozen other top execs. They were still working on the fall schedule. Jasmine was all dressed up and had come to pick up Phil for a fancy dinner to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Riley had had a conversation with the two of them about their anniversary for at least two minutes before he got on the elevator. He had apologized to Jasmine for making Phil work on a Saturday. So right away, he knew Ginny was lying.
“Monica and Jasmine, huh?” he said, giving Ginny one more chance to correct herself. “Are their husbands going too?”
Ginny gave him a suspicious glance in the mirror. “Of course not, silly. It wouldn’t be a girls’ night out if their husbands were going.”
“Oh, okay,” Riley said. He sat down on the end of the bed, watching his wife prance around the room, a bit more pep in her step than usual. What is this woman up to? She slipped on her shoes and came over to give him a peck on the forehead.
“I don’t know how long I’ll be out,” she said. “Don’t wait up.”
And with that, she was gone. Riley was extremely suspicious. He jumped up from the bed and drained his glass. He felt the scotch in his steps as he headed for the door. He needed to get downstairs at the same time that Ginny did, so he took the stairs rather than the elevator. He heard the bell, indicating that Ginny had been picked up and was on her way down. Riley sprinted for the stairs and took them three at a time. When he reached the bottom, he saw her exit the building and move toward a cab that the doorman had hailed for her. Just as she squeezed into the back of the cab, Riley stepped out of the building. The doorman looked at him with a frown. Why hadn’t he left with his wife?
“I need a cab, Pablo,” he said, not bothering to offer an explanation. When another cab pulled up, Riley got in the back without taking his eye off Ginny’s cab. He leaned toward the driver and pointed. “See that cab up there, number 2698? Follow it. My wife is in there and I need to find out where she’s going.”
The driver gave him a knowing grin. “You got it, boss,” he said. He pressed the gas and lurched away from the building, steadily picking up speed until he was right behind Ginny’s cab. Riley’s driver weaved through Saturday evening midtown traffic like the skilled pro that he was, always staying within fifty feet of Ginny’s cab. When they got to Fifty-third Street, Ginny’s cab slowed down. It stopped in front of a Sheraton, one of those massive, dog-eared Sheratons used primarily by tourists and conventions. The meter said fourteen dollars, but Riley gave the cabbie fifty for his trouble.
“Thanks, chief,” the cabbie said as Riley hurried out the door. “And don’t let her get away with nothing!”
Riley turned and gave the man a thumbs-up. As he ran behind her into the building, making sure he didn’t get too close, Riley felt like a detective on one of his prime-time shows. He saw Ginny rush into the lobby. She headed straight for a man who stood when he saw her. She ran into his arms and they shared a passionate embrace. He saw Ginny glance around quickly, nervously, then lift her head to meet his lips in a long kiss. He said something to her and she giggled in response. The man was young, much younger than Ginny, and from what Riley could see, the guy was beautiful. He looked like he could have been Latino, with a square jaw, high cheekbones, and thick eyebrows. He actually looked a bit like Enrique Iglesias, the heartthrob singer. Riley was surprised to feel the hairs start to rise on the back of his neck. Though he had been feeling nothing but contempt for Ginny for at least the last five years, Riley was actually jealous. More than jealous, he was mad—even though he had been carrying on his own torrid affair for years. But as illogical as it might have seemed, he couldn’t control what he felt. And what he felt was betrayal. Ginny had been slipping out and getting her own, from this gorgeous young stud. From the way they were acting together, he could see this clearly was not the first time they had met. Ginny locked her arm in the young man’s and they headed for the bank of elevators, surely to go upstairs and screw their brains out.
Riley trudged slowly back outside and hailed a cab to take him back uptown. How ironic that when his lover had become off-limits to him, he discovered his wife meeting her own lover. What a mess of a marriage I have, he thought. When he got back home, he pulled out the bottle of Laphroaig and had four more glasses over the next two hours. He fell asleep on the couch in the media room with the television blasting. That’s where he still was when he woke up the next morning with a vicious headache.
With his head pounding, Riley plodded into his bedroom, where he was surprised to find Ginny bouncing cheerily around the room with the television turned up too loudly.
“Hey, Riley!” she said with a smile when she spotted him.
He scowled back at her, which drew a frown from her. “What’s your problem?” she said.
Riley sat down on the edge of the bed. He had debated with himself all night before he fell asleep about how he was going to handle the confrontation. Should he get pictures and bust into their hotel room, catching them actually humping—or should he merely point a finger in her face and accuse her of cheating? He hadn’t expected the opportunity to come so fast.
“I don’t think you really want to know what my problem is, to be honest,” he said.
Ginny stopped moving. “What in the world are you talking about, Riley?” she asked him.
He pivoted on the bed. “I followed you last night, Ginny. I saw you run into that boy’s arms at the Sheraton. He looks like he’s half your age! That made me wonder whether you were paying him. ’Cause surely it can’t be love!”
Ginny stared at Riley, blinking hard, deciding on her next move. Finally, she put her hand on her hip and cocked her head to the side. “You know what, Riley? You don’t need to worry about his age because, judging by the way his body reacts to this old girl right here, he’s certainly got no complaints! He’s an amazing man and we can’t seem to get enough of each other.”
Riley’s eyes widened. “That’s fuckin’ disgusting!” he bellowed, spittle flying from his mouth. “I can’t believe you betrayed me like that!”
Ginny wav
ed a hand in his face. “Oh, please, cut the drama, would you?” she said. “I know you’ve been fucking Whitney Harlington. For a long time.”
She caught the look of surprise on his face. “What, you thought I didn’t know?” she said, laughing. “Ha! And you thought I was so desperate to get on that damn show—actually, I have a new hobby now, and I’m not giving him up!”
She turned away from him, then she thought of something else. “Too bad your whore is going to be too busy trying to recover from being a pervert’s wife to spread her legs for you anymore!” She laughed again, then added, “Ooops . . . so sorry!”
Riley wasn’t used to a woman getting the best of him. He needed to make her hurt at least a little bit, to inflict some more long-lasting damage. He looked up at the television and saw a pretty, extremely voluptuous black woman on the screen, making fun of celebrity children on some VH1 show.
“You know, I had been considering adding you to the couch on The Lunch Club,” he said. “Shelly is leaving and a spot is opening up. But now I think I’m going to go in a different direction. I’m going to get the furthest thing from your bony white ass that I can find.”
Riley paused for dramatic effect. “Somebody like her.”
He pointed at the screen. Ginny laughed from her gut. Riley had truly lost his mind if he was actually considering this woman on the television right now. She looked like one of those video hoes who was just twenty minutes off the pole. She had yards of flowing blond hair falling down her shoulders, and very large boobs that were prominently displayed in the leopard-print top she was wearing; and when the camera panned away to show her comic gesticulations, it was clear that she had a big round ass to match the boobs. In other words, she was Ginny’s total opposite—the social and physical counterpoint to a skinny, middle-aged, overexercised, underfed, anorexic Upper East Side WASP, a creature that Tom Wolfe had memorably dubbed the “social X rays” in Bonfire of the Vanities.
She might be raw, but in that moment, Riley decided that adding this woman to The Lunch Club would be like throwing a Molotov cocktail onto the set. He didn’t even know her name, but already he was convinced that she was exactly what NBN needed. It was one of the famous Dufrane hunches, something that he had used on many occasions to pick successful TV shows and for which he had become renowned. Just as he was about to leave the room triumphantly, with Ginny’s cackling in the background, he saw her name displayed on the bottom of the screen: “La—ah Meeks, stylist.” Riley cocked his head to the side. Surely someone had messed up her name, adding some strange dash to the middle of it. He hurried into his office to write the name down. He added the dash, just in case.
WHEN MOLLY HEARD ABOUT Shelly’s impending departure over the weekend, she felt so relieved that she wanted to thank the heavens. It was the break that she needed, the insurance that she wouldn’t be axed from the couch anytime soon. So when Karen Siegel knocked on her door on Monday after the show, Molly wasn’t the same person she had been a week earlier. She was not quite as desperate to be in Karen’s good graces.
“What is it, Karen?” Molly said warily as Karen sat down. Molly was holding one of the pink pigs from her collection that was scattered around her office, this one a snow globe with a pig in a Santa outfit. It always made Molly laugh because it made no sense at all.
“We need to talk,” Karen said ominously.
Molly waited. She knew where this was going and she was all set to protest, to defend herself.
“I think that you need help, Molly,” Karen said. “I think you have a problem with the pills.”
Molly shook her head vigorously. “No, Karen, you’re wrong!” she said angrily. “If you’re talking about what happened last week, you just happened to catch me on a bad night. I couldn’t get to sleep and I wasn’t myself. If you had—”
“Molly, stop!” Karen said, putting up her hand. “I’m not telling you that you are going to be removed from the show. You are extremely valuable to us here and you’re not going anywhere. I was not going to let that happen, even if Shelly wasn’t leaving.”
Molly was doubtful that Karen would be able to save her if Maxine wanted to axe her, but she appreciated the support.
“I think we both know that the pill thing has gotten out of control,” Karen said. “It has affected your work on the show and clearly it’s affecting you in your private life. I have a list here of several places that I think would be able to help you. We have a hiatus coming up after sweeps, so no one will suspect anything. If you want, we can even keep it from Maxine. I will be there for you every step of the way.”
Karen sat and watched Molly’s face undergo a slow, startling transformation. Her expression started at angry and defiant, it slowly moved to concerned, and it ended up at happy and grateful. Molly got up from behind the desk and ran over to Karen and embraced her. Molly started crying, and she refused to let go of Karen. The emotion of the moment brought tears to Karen’s eyes. For several minutes, they awkwardly held the hug while Karen sat and Molly stood, both of them quietly sobbing. Molly felt several years’ worth of stress and worry flow out of her. If someone like Karen was willing to support her, she knew she would be all right.
MAXINE WAS NOTHING IF not a survivor. She had faced down despots and doped-out movie stars, she had been hired, fired, laughed at, and lauded. Missy’s little book would surely sting . . . but it wouldn’t puncture. She’d come through the embarrassment of those horrific revelations like she’d come through everything else. With her head held high and a long fucking memory. Yes, Missy . . . you’ll win this round . . . but trust me, Maxine thought, I’ll just sit by the bank of the river and wait for the body of my enemy to float by. In the meantime, Maxine had come up with a plan that she figured would serve a double purpose: she would get out ahead of Missy’s book, doing as much damage control as she could, and in the process she could get William to come back to her. But in order to execute it, she needed someone who would be able to navigate the legal system quickly and with some vigor. In Dara Cruz, she knew she had the perfect weapon. She picked up her phone and summoned Dara to her office.
Dara and Maxine had never really had a chance to bond since Dara had joined the cast. They hadn’t had many occasions to be alone together, something that was clear to both of them as Dara sat across from Maxine.
“As you know, Dara, this book that Missy wrote is pretty hard on some of us here on The Lunch Club,” Maxine said. “But one of the things that the book reveals is that there’s still a man in jail who was convicted of raping Missy, but in fact she fabricated the whole thing. I agreed to keep her secret and allow her to leave The Lunch Club with her past in her pocket—and that was wrong. It has haunted me for years. So what I’d like to do is put together a special show on wrongful convictions. I’d like for you to see if you can move the system to get this man released, then have him sit on the couch with us on the day he walks out of prison.”
Dara’s eyes widened. “Wow, that sounds like a fabulous idea!” she said. “What a great show that would be. I would love to do that, Maxine!”
Maxine smiled sweetly at Dara. Of course, there were some crucial details that she had left out—namely, that she could have gotten the man out of prison three years earlier, but she didn’t because it was her idea to exchange her silence for Missy leaving The Lunch Club. It was ironic that this “deal” she’d made with Missy was what had led to them choosing Dara to take her place—so without the innocent man in prison, there’d be no Dara Cruz. Maxine knew that Dara would eventually find out Maxine’s dastardly role in all of this—but by then she would have gotten the man out of prison and Maxine would have what she desperately wanted, which was to get William back.
“Okay, well, I’d like to have this show air in the next two weeks, so that we can preempt Missy’s appearance on Heather Hope’s show,” Maxine said cheerfully. “You think you can pull it off, Dara?”
Dara grimaced, but then she smiled at Maxine. “I’ll give it a try, Maxine. I’l
l truly give it a try.”
WITHIN A WEEK, DARA had met with remarkable success, assisted greatly by all the documents Maxine made available to her, which all seemed to appear magically every time Dara made an inquiry. When it gets wind of a wrongful conviction, especially when there is media interest, the system can move remarkably fast, even in archly conservative states like Alabama. Dara, through Maxine’s contacts, got Barry Scheck, Peter Neufeld, and the Innocence Project involved and they hit the ground running. Ten days after her conversation with Maxine, working long hours and even traveling to Alabama, Dara had helped get an expedited hearing on the writ of habeas corpus and based on “newly discovered and compelling evidence of innocence; in the interest of justice,” with no objection from the “victim,” Missy Adams, the court ordered the man, Roosevelt Allen, to be released. Maxine was giddy, gushing over the phone to Dara that she was “amazing!” It was the first time Dara had gotten such an effusive compliment from Maxine and she grinned broadly in response. She told Maxine that in five days, a Tuesday, Mr. Roosevelt Allen would walk out of Limestone Correctional Facility in Harvest, Alabama, as a free man and he had agreed to tell his story on The Lunch Club to show his gratitude. Somehow he wasn’t bitter at the injustice that had been heaped upon him, first by a lie . . . and then by a cover-up. Some people are just wired to see the good side of life. Maxine had never experienced that gift; but she envied those who had it.
Once she got the date from Dara, Maxine immediately picked up the phone and called William. She knew he wouldn’t answer, so she left him a message.
