by A. V. Scott
“Are you kidding? Little miss perfectionist will drive me insane and you know your sister, she’ll want to make it a big production and I don’t want that,” Her mother said, rolling the R’s considerably.
Melissa sat down on the bed and tried to get out of it. “I have to work.”
“Since when do you work on the weekends?”
“Ughhh, Ma!” She said, wining like a five year old.
“Okay, I’ll see you Sunday.” Not waiting for Melissa to accept or decline the proposition, her mother hung up the call and assumed Melissa had accepted. This was typical behavior for her. She always presumed because she was the youngest she would go along with every little whim of hers and sadly, Melissa always did. After all, daughters couldn’t say no to their mothers.
Standing in front of her wedding dress, Melissa knew that she shouldn’t do what she was about to. It wasn’t the right time and it would just make her feel ten times worse than she already did. But she couldn’t help it. So, she stripped out of her clothes and put the thirteen thousand dollar dress on. It felt like velvety perfection and she loved it more today than on the day she picked it out. She remembered how she must’ve tried on a hundred dresses before finally finding the right one and now she wouldn’t even get the chance to show it off.
The anger inside of her returned and this time with even more vengeance. Dressed in her wedding gown, she walked back into the living room and continued shredding Jonathan’s clothes until the shears were rendered useless. She then grabbed the hammer. It aided her in smashing the tie organizer into little bits. Ironically, she found that her high stress levels diminished with every blow, cut and gash.
Say goodbye to daddy’s things, she said to the fetus.
The only thing left were his shoes. But she couldn’t do it. Not the shoes. She put them back neatly in the closet with plans on donating them in the morning.
In a matter of minutes she had filled three bags with torn clothing and broken gifts. It was exhilarating. The bags, along with the Ab Roller she got him for Christmas, spend the night in the hallway outside her apartment. In the morning, she would take it to the dumpster.
She took one last look around her apartment and was relieved that besides the aroma of his cologne in the air, there was no sign of Jonathan anywhere. She had her apartment back. It almost looked exactly like it did pre-cheating ex-fiancé.
Finishing the bottle of wine, she still couldn’t get her mother’s wedding news out of her head. She felt she was the one to blame for her mother’s decision of walking down the aisle again. Melissa was the one that kept pushing her mother to date. But that was because she didn’t want her to die alone in that big house. But never in her attempt to have her mother find a companion did she ever think she would go this far. She wasn’t supposed to see her mother get married before her and she wasn’t supposed to be sitting on the floor of her apartment, in her wedding gown, ripping holes in her ex-fiancé’s clothes with his child inside her uterus.
Livid, Melissa grabbed her cell phone and dialed Jonathan’s cell phone. She wasn’t completely drunk so the call couldn’t constitute drunk dialing…right? It rang three times and went to voicemail. When she heard the beep she wanted to say, ‘You’re an asshole!’ and ‘I’m pregnant with your spawn you son of a bitch!’ but all she managed to say is a big fat nada.
With the insanity of the last twenty-four hours flitting around in the back of her mind, all Melissa wanted to do was call the one person who would calm her down, Angie. Instead, she ran to the bathroom to throw up.
4
Exactly one hundred and twenty minutes after Angie left Melissa in the hospital, she was in her luxury two bedroom uptown condo, wearing black lace lingerie, with black garter belts and a pair of black patent leather thigh high boots; the kind she only used during sex. There was no point in starting out naked. What would be the point in that? You had to give a man a chance to use his imagination so that his heart rate could rise along with the bulge in his pants. And that’s exactly what Angie’s intentions were when she decided she needed to see Carlos again.
After she stormed out of the hospital she decided that what she needed was stress relief and how better to do so than having another all night sex-a-thon. She knew that with the slightest thrust of his groin, Carlos could make her forget about everything and anything. And even though she was breaking her own rule about seeing a guy more than once, she knew it was damn well worth it.
As Angie sauntered toward her dressing room, in her six inch heels, she reminded herself that this was the very last time, not just this week but the last time she would ever see him again. It had to be. He was too young for her and she didn’t want him to start getting comfortable with coming to her place or find comfort in being with her. Comfort is what ruins a good thing. And she wanted to end what they had on good terms. Living in a City like New York, you never knew when you would bump into people. She didn’t want to risk having an awkward moment in the future.
Reaching inside the small drawer in her dressing table, Angie pulled out a velvet drawstring bag. Inside, there was a small vile that she opened carefully, emptying a small amount of the white powdered substance unto a compact mirror. Within seconds, she could feel her heart racing. The adrenaline was pumping through her veins. Almost better than sex, she thought.
When the doorbell rang, she quickly hid everything back into the drawer.
“You’re late,” she tells Carlos when she opens her nine foot door. “Seriously?” He hadn’t even bothered to get out of his gym attire. Showing up like that was in no way, shape or form, sexy.
“Hi doll face,” he said, moving in for a kiss. “I came as soon as you texted me.”
Angie placed her hand on his chest, pushing him back. “I don’t fucking think so.” As if she’d make out with him with the door wide open so her neighbors could see or with him smelling like sweaty ass. “Go take a shower first.” She closed the door behind him pointing the way to the bathroom. This was not what she had planned. For the last two hours all she’s thought about was him thrusting open the door and rapturing her, not showing up all grimy.
Carlos didn’t seem to notice that she was upset. He casually walked into her bathroom as if he’d done it a hundred times before. “Wow, you got a really cool set up,” He yelled out to her.
“Uhuh,” Angie said, not really paying attention. She was too busy pouring herself a glass of red wine.
“How do you turn this thing on?”
“Seriously?” Angie said loudly. Grudgingly walking to the bathroom, she proceeded to show Carlos exactly how to turn on her shower. It was a Rohl system, not rocket science. She turned a brass handle to the right and the six jet stream shower sauna turned on. With the flick of another switch, two more jet streams begin spitting out hot water as well. Long gone were the times she had to take a shower in a Motel.
“Holy shit,” he said, amazed. “You must really love your showers.”
“You have no idea,” Angie said, handing him a white towel from the linen closet and then stepping out.
“You’re not going to join me?” He asked, grinning at her in complete nudity.
She thought about it for a second and then decided even though she pictured having sex with him under the hot water, she really didn’t need to see him lathering his balls and rinsing his ass. It was a visual that would ruin the fantasy in her head. “No. You go ahead. I’ll wait for you in the bedroom.”
Fifteen minutes later, Carlos finally exited the bathroom wearing absolutely nothing. His golden skin was glistening from the tiny water beads still clinging to him. Upon seeing him, Angie quickly forgave him for earlier. Lying on her bed, she starred at the sculpted muscles on his body as he walked towards her. When he finally reached her, he softly kissed her on her lips. She felt a tingling between her thighs. She had never been with a man who made her feel so turned on from just a kiss. He stimulated her senses the way no other man had ever done. As she lay down on the bed with him,
she reminded herself that no matter how good he made her feel, she would not see him again. She just couldn’t trust herself with him otherwise.
Three orgasms later, Angie was still in bed listening to the twenty three year old hunk of a man snoring. She couldn’t believe that he had the nerve to fall asleep after sex. Should she wake him? Looking at her alarm clock she felt bad wanting to send him home at two o’clock in the morning but she couldn’t have him sleep over. That was a huge no-no. If she let him sleep over, he would think it was okay and then he would want to sleep over all the time. Plus, what the hell were they going to talk about in the morning? Cartoons and video games? Nope. It just wasn’t going to work.
She nudged him real hard. He didn’t budge. So, she placed the bottom of her foot against his muscular thigh and pushed him off the bed. There was a loud thud when he hit the ground. “Oh my! Are you okay?”
“Wha..what happened?” He said, stunned by the impact.
“I don’t know. I guess you’re not used to sleeping on my bed.” She couldn’t tell him she’d pushed him. “Well, since you’re up….”
#
The next morning, Angie looked at the missed calls on her cell phone. There were two from Carlos and one from Melissa. Neither were people she cared to talk to. Sighing, she put the cell phone away and knocked on a door with a PRIVATE sign in the center of it.
“It’s open,” a deep guttural male voice yelled out.
Angie opened the door slowly. The small, dark office looked like an episode of CSI. There was a mess everywhere she looked. An overflowing bookcase took up the entire space alongside the right wall. There were piles of paper on either side of the desk where the man was sitting that Angie guessed they were at least two feet tall. She almost turned around and walked out. But she had already paid this man a thousand dollars advance so she walked inside. “Hi. I’m Angie. I called you a week ago?”
“Oh, yeah,” the man said, as the smoke from his cigarette filled the air. “Come on in. I was just looking at your case file.”
Angie closed the door behind her and sat down on the old wooden chair in front of his desk. She’d spent months deciding whether or not she was going to go through with hiring a private investigator to find her family. With the holidays looming near she felt the timing couldn’t have been better. But she was nervous about the news that Cohen said he had for her. What if there was no one left in her family and she would be alone, forever or worse. What if he had found someone and they didn’t want to meet her? The anticipation was killing her. “What did you find?”
“Well sweet heart, imma get to the point,” he said, sucking on the cancer stick and blowing a puff of smoke into the air again. “You didn’t hire me to tell you pretty stories.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Your mother is dead. She died five years ago. Here’s the address of cemetery she’s buried in,” he said.
Angie took the piece of paper he was holding out for her and gripped it tightly. Died? And no one told her? Then again, who would? The address of the cemetery he had written down was located in Michigan. Of all the damn boring and unappealing places her mother had to die, she chose Michigan. Angie wasn’t about to break down, not now and not in front of a stranger. “Anything else?”
“I tell you, that’s the way to be. So you got bad news. So what right?” He said, putting out his cigarette in an overflowing ashtray, “Just get back in there and keep on trooping. If more people were like you and me, there wouldn’t be a need for sappy cards.”
“What else Mr. Cohen,” Angie demanded. She didn’t have time or the energy to sit there and listen to him babble on. It has already cost her a lot of money just to hear her mother died. She wanted something more tangible.
“Oh, yeah,” he said, opening a drawer in the desk. “Here you go.” He handed her something else. This time it was a file. “You have a sister that lives right here in Manhattan.”
“What?” She couldn’t believe what he had just told her. A sister? Angie opened the file. The first picture was of a beautiful young woman dressed in a couture outfit, stepping inside a limo. Her face is not clearly visible in that picture so she moves on to the next. The next one shows the lady wearing the same outfit except this time she’s exiting the limo and there is a guy with unreasonably poor choice in clothing. Well, at least he has good taste in shoes, Angie thought. As she continued looking at the picture it dawned on her who the woman in the picture actually was. Angie was at a loss for words. “Are you sure this is my sister?” She asked Cohen.
“Lady, this is what I get paid to do. My reputation depends on getting accurate information,” Cohen said.
“Yes or no!” Angie screamed at him.
“She’s your sister alright. I’ve confirmed all the information. There’s some more stuff in there but I figure you’ll get to it on your own time.” He pushed back his chair and stared at Angie, “You’re one high strung bitch. You know that?”
Angie stands, reaching inside her purse and proceeded to throw an envelope full of cash on his desk. “This bitch just kept you in business for the rest of the year,” she said, walking out and slamming the door behind her.
Strung out? Her? How dare him! Angie tucked the file under arm and walked down the flight of stairs leading to the exit. Once she stepped outside and onto the sidewalk, she took a deep breath and tried hard not to explode. How dare he call her strung out? She didn’t even resemble a drug addict. Or did she? Struggling not to drop the files, she took a compact mirror out of her purse and checked her reflection. She didn’t just look tired, her hair looked scraggly and her skin was blotchy as if it had seen too much sun. Sadly, she put the mirror back in her purse and proceeded to call her plastic surgeon.
#
A few hours later, without warning, Angie stormed into her managers’ office and sat down on one of the burgundy leather Queen Anne chairs in front of his desk without even saying hello. “Don’t say one word Charles. I don’t want to hear it,” she said.
Charles Monroe sat at his desk, carefully eyeing Angie as she sat down. It wasn’t like her to show up so early in his office. Curiosity was getting the better of him. “What is it Angie?”
“I thought about it all night long and considering you’ve done so much for me all these years I figured I should be nice. So…fine, I’ll take the supporting role instead of lead.”
Charles took a cigar from the cigar box on his desk and lit it, “Angie, you know all the big roles are taken in that film.”
Angie looked at him with fury in her eyes. “What do you expect me to do Charles, be an extra or something? I won’t do it.”
“There are a lot of other films.”
“I don’t want to be in other films. I want this one.”
“Then why are you here?” He asked, twirling the cigar in his hand and making believe he was reading something on his desk. He knew that she would be upset but he was getting tired of her rants. The way he saw it, everyone gets old and in unfortunately in Hollywood, looking good was your calling card to being in the business. He remembered when he first met Angie. She was young, sweet and took care of herself. Looking at her now, he could barely recognize her.
“I saw her you know; the young bitch that’s going around stealing all my parts,” Angie paused. “She was practically fucking Marty Steinberg right there in the restaurant. I can’t compete with her! She’s like…twelve!”
“Her name is Allison and she’s legal,” he said with a warning edge in his voice.
“Whatever.”
“She actually reminds me a lot of you. Fifteen years ago,” he knew he’d touch a nerve with her by saying that but, it was true. He hadn’t lied to her before so why start now.
“Geez, Charles, that’s a great thing to tell a woman who’s approaching forty,” Angie said, crossing her arms.
“In what Five years?” Charlie waved his hand, dismissing her statement. “Stop being so melodramatic Angie. You know I didn’t mean it in a bad way. Fi
fteen years ago you were not only still young yes, but you were still fearless, reliable and you were easy to work with.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Angie said. “People like working with me.”
“You’ve turned into a diva Angie. No one wants to work with you,” Charlie countered.
Angie thought about this for a moment, frowning. “A diva? Me? That’s not true.” She wondered who was spreading rumors. She never acted like a diva. Yes, she always requested a completely white trailer and she brought her own hair and makeup people to the set but that wasn’t such a grand request. All the big movie stars did that. Some did worse. She actually knew an actress who thought she’s such hot shit that she asked for five bottle of water at room temperature, yellow roses in a glass vase and a masseuse.
“On the last film, you asked catering to remove all the items that had peanut butter from the premises…the premises!” He started to yell which was making Angie really uncomfortable. She had never seen him this angry. But she kept her cool. She couldn’t show him that she was intimidated.
“I am allergic,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“Here’s something you may not have thought of… don’t eat it!”
“It gets in the air Charlie and then I can die.” Angie stood up and put her hand over her chest. “Is that it? You want me to die Charlie? Just let me know. I do dying pretty well.”
He threw his hands up in the air. “I can’t do this with you Angelica. I simply cannot.” He walked over to her and grabbed her hands, bringing them into his chest. “Angie, darling, if you don’t stop your Diva bitch act I’m going to fire myself. Do you want another manager? Is that what you want?”
“No.” Looking at him, Angie knew he was being serious. She’d known Charlie for too long. He had been the only constant person in her life and she wasn’t about to start fresh with someone new. No one would understand her. No one would care. Not like Charlie. “Okay. Fine. Tell me what I have to do and I’ll do it.”
