Slick

by Daniel Price

  The uncut version of “Bitch Fiend” was first released on the Playboy Channel last September. A strategically edited/blurred version-complete with radio-safe lyrics-soon made the rounds on MTV. There was still enough sex and nastiness to keep the video in heavy rotation, enough to make Hunta more than just a fleeting new face on the scene.

  By the time Miranda and I finally caught up with the nation, several Melrose students had spoken to the media. Once again wildly conflicting stories filled the airwaves, all under the alleged banner. The whole basketball team was secretly known and feared as the Bitch Fiends. No, it was only a few of them. No, it was all of them, plus at least ten other guys. And they had a sex club. I heard it was an S&M club. Well, I heard they videotaped all their sexual encounters and showed them to each other, just like in Hunta’s music video. Yeah, it was like a membership requirement. No, they told me it was a rape club, man.

  Shit, Annabelle. You really knew your media. Not only did you deliver a long-awaited sequel to Columbine, but you gave it a sordid sex twist and a hip-hop soundtrack. Too bad you cast yourself as the lead. The first rule of the media operative is never become part of the story. You should have consulted me.

  All in all, it was an ugly situation that would only get worse. The police had just begun their investigation. The press was on full-tilt boogie. And you could just hear the politicians sharpening their knives. They were all fixing to close in on one target: Hunta.

  Poor guy. All he wanted to do was get it on with American culture, that hot and surly supermodel. Well, he got her. But this time he was the one who was in for a rough fucking. She was about to show him what a Bitch could really do.

  3

  MARVEL GIRL

  Although she had rained on my parade, Annabelle Shane also managed to end a personal dry spell.

  Miranda caught up with me at the LAX baggage claim. By then it was two in the morning. I’d been flying high over Catalina when it stopped being my birthday.

  “Take me to a hotel,” she said.

  “You’re staying now.”

  “I called my editor. He’s putting me on the Melrose High shooting. I told him I deserved some real news after putting up with your crap.”

  “Aren’t you stepping on toes?”

  “It’s a big story. There’s plenty of room. You parked in long-term, right?”

  And just like that, I inherited Miranda. And her baggage.

  ________________

  “I can’t believe you drive a Saturn.”

  I couldn’t believe she was still awake. Miranda had been in the air for eighteen of the past twenty-four hours, crossing back and forth through six different time zones. Her inner clock must have been blinking at 12:00. Now, at 2:30a.m., she somehow found the energy to disparage my car.

  “What would you rather I drive?” I asked her.

  “You’re in Los Angeles. You should have an SUV.”

  “Short people drive SUVs. I don’t need to feel bigger.”

  I figured that Miranda, at 5’ 1”, would respond with a flip comeback, or at least a flipped finger. Instead, she merely stretched and curled in a way that was seductively catlike. I kept my eyes on the road, but I knew she was looking at me.

  “What?”

  “You liked Deb Isham,” she teased. “I could tell.”

  “Go to sleep.”

  “No shame in it, man. Her tits were huge.”

  “If that’s all it took, I’d have a crush on every woman in L.A.”

  “I mean naturally huge. I think you could have had her, too. If I didn’t ruin it.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “So what was it you liked about her? Besides her knockers. Is it that she’s young and naive? That she could gaze upon you with a sense of awe and wonder?”

  I would not entertain this conversation. Not at 2:30 a.m.

  “Scott?”

  “Oh, me? Sorry. I thought you were talking to Jim.”

  She laughed hysterically, not without bitterness. “That was so rude!”

  “I know. I’m sorry. Would you prefer pity?”

  “No. That’s why I like you.”

  “Wow, Miranda. You actually admit it. How many drinks did you have on that flight?”

  “None. I’m just really tired. Why? Are you trying to take advantage of me?”

  “Always.”

  “Good. I don’t feel like checking into a hotel.”

  I thought of several quips, all ranging from cute to provocative. Instead, I merely shut up. It had been a long day. I was too drained to handle the dilemma that was turning from humor to reality.

  From the 405, I took the Wilshire East exit. I lived in Brentwood, only a few minutes away. Miranda had reserved a room at the Hotel Claremont, even closer. The sooner I got her out of my car, the better.

  “So this is the famous Wilshire Boulevard,” she said, to my relief. That was her way of applying the handbrake.

  “Yeah. You know who it was named after?”

  “Mr. Wilshire.”

  “Mr. H. Gaylord Wilshire. He was an active socialist but that didn’t stop him from being a great capitalist. He invented the I-ON-A-CO magnetic belt, an expensive little doodad that was supposed to cure any physical problem. Made millions off of it. He bought so many buildings on this one street that they finally just named it after him. They even called his district the Miracle Mile, because they thought he was such a wizard. You want to know what the funniest part is?”

  She didn’t answer. I turned to look at her. She kept her cold stare forward, fighting back tears. Losing.

  “Ah, shit. I’m sorry, Miranda.”

  “No. No pity. Come on. You were doing so well.”

  I sped through a yellow light. A dark SUV tailgated me. Its brights were on. I had to reposition my mirror to keep from going blind.

  “Is there something I can say or do to make you feel better?”

  “Depends,” she said.

  “On what?”

  “On whether or not you want to sleep with me.”

  BAM! Both of our heads jerked back. I almost swerved onto the sidewalk.

  Miranda turned around. “Jesus! What happened?”

  I wasn’t sure until I looked in the rearview mirror again. The SUV quickly pulled back, signaling to the right.

  “We just got rear-ended,” I said.

  “Holy shit.”

  I pulled over, right in front of the Avco cineplex. In this part of town, Wilshire was an eight-lane street. At this time of night, it was deserted. It had taken an extraordinary amount of incompetence to hit me.

  I turned on the hazards and looked to Miranda. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. Did you hit the brake or something?”

  “No. He just knocked into us.”

  “Well, be careful,” she said as I opened the door. “It could be a gang thing.”

  Silly New Yorker. Crips don’t drive sport utility wagons. I was more concerned about an irrational drunk. The last thing I needed was to deal with somebody’s beer-fueled rage.

  I got out. A small woman emerged from the driver’s side. In the harsh white glow of the headlights, I could only see her silhouette.

  “Are you okay, ma’am?”

  Without a word, she reached into her car and shut off the brights. She’d done a fair amount of damage to my trunk, and virtually none to her front bumper and grille. An other reason to hate SUVs.

  I was idly intrigued by her license plate: MRVL GRL. It was easy enough to add the proper vowels and get Marvel Girl, but you had to be a longtime comic book reader in order to put the name to a face. Marvel Girl was the very first alias of Jean Grey, the female member of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s original X-Men. She dropped the moniker in Uncanny X-Men #101, when she merged with a cosmic entity to become the all-powerful Phoenix. Since then, she’s gone on to become Dark Phoenix, dead Phoenix, resurrected Phoenix, and Famke Janssen.

  The driver looked like none of them. Whereas Jean Grey was a statuesque beauty with a large
mane of flame-red hair, this Marvel Girl was a pixie of a woman, a cropped-cut brunette. If it wasn’t for her denim skirt, I might have guessed she was a teenage boy. Then I would have studied her face. Her small features, combined with contrastingly large eyes, gave her a naïve, golden-age charm. She would have been considered beautiful back in the silent-movie era. Today she was merely cute and pleasant in a Katie Couric sort of way.

  She jerked a tense shrug, then examined the damage.

  “Well, it’s ugly,” I told her, “but it could have been worse. You do have insurance, right?”

  She didn’t answer me. She kept looking at my dented trunk.

  “Excuse me? Do you have insurance?”

  Shrugging at me again, she took a handheld PDA out of her blouse pocket, then had second thoughts. That’s right, honey. It’s too dark to be taking notes. Who the hell are you?

  I held my arms out. “Uh, hello?”

  She abruptly motioned to the dark figure in the passenger seat. Get out here, will you?

  The door opened, and an icy young blonde stepped out into the night. Very young. Her exaggerated crossed-arm stance pegged her at around fifteen. She was rail-thin and, unlike Marvel Girl, a little more hip with the times.

  She studied me, then my car, and muttered an obscenity. Marvel Girl knocked on the hood to get her attention. “What do you want me to do about it?!”

  Frustrated, the driver moved her hands in blunt but methodical patterns that clearly said volumes to the girl. They told me a few things as well.

  “Wait a second. You’re deaf?” I looked to the girl. “She’s deaf?”

  “Yes, she’s deaf. My mother wants me to tell you that she’s sorry for hitting you. It was totally her fault. As if that wasn’t obvious.”

  “I didn’t...” I looked to the mother, then back at the daughter. “I didn’t even know deaf people could drive.”

  “Yeah. It’s blind people who have the problems.”

  “No. I know, but...” This was too strange. “Can you tell her I need her insurance information?”

  Annoyed, the girl signed to her mother while talking. “He wants your insurance information.”

  Marvel Girl nodded impatiently. Yeah, yeah. Obviously. But consider this.

  Unlike all the interpreters I’d seen on TV, the girl waited until her mother was done before translating.

  “She says she has insurance, but she thinks it’s a total rip-off. They’re only going to raise her premiums until she pays back twice whatever they end up shelling out for this.”

  That seemed like an awful lot of information for such a quick bit of sign language. But she was right on about the insurance companies.

  “I agree. But if she’s proposing some kind of split—”

  “You’re actually supposed to talk to her.”

  “What?”

  “My mother. She’s the one you’re dealing with.”

  I looked to the woman. She threw me a wave and an edgy smirk. Hi.

  “Uh, are you proposing some kind of...split... ? Because that’s...”

  As I spoke, the mother watched the daughter, who interpreted my words. It was very disconcerting. The mother signed back.

  “No no,” said the daughter, “she says she’ll pay for all the damage. She’d rather pay under the table, that’s all. Just get an estimate and she’ll send you a check. She’s good for it.”

  Nothing invites cynicism more than the assertion that someone is “good for it.” Reading my face, Marvel Girl held up a finger and went back to her car. Awkwardly, I turned to the daughter.

  “I’ve never talked to a deaf person before.”

  “You hide it well.”

  “What are you doing out so late on a school night?”

  “Long story.”

  “Oh. Don’t tell me you go to Melrose High School.”

  “I don’t. I’m in eighth grade.”

  “Really? You look older.”

  “Thanks. You know, you’re awfully polite for someone who just got rammed.”

  I grinned. “I’m on Prozac.”

  “Good. Maybe you can lend some to my mother.”

  Marvel Girl reemerged from the car with her insurance slip and a business card. After handing both to me, she signed to her daughter.

  “She says if you want insurance, there it is. But please trust her. If you give her an estimate, she’ll give you a check. Or better yet, she can pay in services. She’s a professional web designer. Or so she likes to think.”

  I looked at the card. Jean Spelling, Original X Web Design. Cute. She was definitely a comics fan.

  She signed some more. The girl translated. “Again, she says she’s really sorry. I told her not to talk and drive. She was in the middle of chewing me out, as usual.”

  Sensing that her daughter was going off-script, Jean tapped the hood again. The girl rolled her eyes. “Anyway, please don’t report this until she has a chance to pay you. Deal?”

  I glanced at Jean. “Look, I don’t care how I get paid. If you can go out of pocket, that’s fine.”

  On reading the translation, Jean pressed her hands, shining her relief at me. Thank you. Thank you.

  “Just drive carefully,” I said.

  She smiled and quickly signed to her daughter. “What’s your name?”

  “Scott. Scott Singer. Yours?”

  “Madison. I was the one asking. My mom wants your business card in case she needs to reach you.”

  I took a card from my wallet and gave it to Jean. She looked younger up close. Early thirties at the most. I noticed her plain silver wedding band. I wondered if Madison’s father was deaf, too. Could deaf parents even have a hearing child?

  Jean touched my wrist and, with a hint of strain in her face, mouthed “Sorry.”

  I shrugged. “Take it easy.”

  They waved and got back in the car. Sighing, I returned to my damaged Saturn and shut the door.

  Miranda cocked her head at me. “So what happened?”

  “Did you ever see The Piano?”

  “No.”

  “It sucked.”

  “So what happened? Was this woman drunk?”

  “No. Just deaf.”

  “She rear-ended you because she couldn’t hear you.”

  “Apparently she was talking while driving.”

  “That’s messed up.”

  “You know what’s messed up? That I know the history of Wilshire Boulevard. I know the mating habits of the Hawaiian monk seal. And yet I didn’t know deaf people could drive.”

  “That’s fascinating. So are we sleeping together, or am I just ugly?”

  I took a deep breath and then a good look at Miranda. She wasn’t ugly.

  ________________

  I moved to Los Angeles in 1991. Before that, I had never even been to the West Coast. I’d spent the previous four years in Georgetown, until Drea told me to flee. She had been my mentor, my lover, my sugar mommy, my idol. She represented everything I wanted to be. Then, at age thirty-nine, at the height of her career, she fell apart. Some publicists burn out. She went nova.

  “Get out of Washington,” she told me. “I want you out of this game. If I ever find you working here, I’ll do everything I can to destroy your career.”

  She had said it out of love, not anger. She simply wanted to save my soul. Consumer and entertainment PR were kindergarten compared to the lobbyist arena. I saw some of the tricks Drea pulled. I saw what they did to her. When she told me to run, I ran. To this day I’ve kept far out of politics. I don’t even vote.

  Pushing me out west was one of the best things she ever did for me. L.A. suited me. I loved the weather. I enjoyed the people (in small doses). And I cherished the space. The city did not lack for elbow room. I had my own three-bedroom duplex in the heart of Brentwood for the measly cost of eighteen hundred a month. One bedroom was a dusty mini-gym. The other was a dusty office (I do everything by laptop now). The master bedroom wasn’t dusty, but it certainly wasn’t used to company.


  Another great thing Drea did was teach me how to properly screw. Prior to her, I was doing everything wrong. This was news to me. In my four years at Cornell, I had partnered with women who were either too young to know, too polite to say, or too drunk to care. Meanwhile, I was busy making up for all the sex I didn’t have in high school. Drea was thirty-five when she took me under her wing and sheets. By that age, she knew exactly what she was doing and what she wanted done to her. I learned much.

  But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was still a mediocre lover. I never got the sense that I moved the earth, rocked my partner’s world, or even had my own world rocked. Usually, sex with me ended like the Fairmont Keoki project: a B+ effort. Maybe my expectations were too high. Maybe I simply thought too much.

  With Miranda there was no question. The sex was bad. It wasn’t her fault, or my fault. It was the people we brought into bed with us. The living ghosts of Jim and Gracie hovered nearby the whole time. The only thing more distracting and less erotic would be having my dead parents walk in.

  When we finished (at least the “me” part of “we”), Miranda broke down. I held her in my arms as she sobbed, but all I could think about was Drea. With the exception of height (Drea was almost six feet tall), she and Miranda were extremely similar. They were both strong-willed, well composed, and very masculine about their emotions. This was the first time I’d ever seen Miranda cut loose with tears. It was uncomfortable for me. I never asked for this kind of access. And I never claimed to have the skills or resources to help her out of her emotional pit.

  “What’s wrong with me, Scott? What the fuck’s wrong with me?”

  I merely held her and stared at the stucco ceiling. She’d already asked me that question in Honolulu. I didn’t lie. I truly didn’t think there was anything wrong with her, except her taste in men.

  4

  JEREMY SHARPE