“That’s my sweetie!” said Marcy, shrieking with joy. “You work at IAA?”
“Yes,” said Victoria. “You must be Marcy! I’ve talked to you on the phone! Let me tell you, Justin’s a great guy. And he is madly in love with you!”
“Awwwww, he’s so cute,” said Marcy. She got lost in her thoughts and then she turned back to Victoria.
“What’s your name?”
“Victoria Rand.”
“I’m Marcy Ostroff.” She said the last name clearly, making sure Victoria heard it. “You want to grab some lunch?”
“Sure,” said Victoria. If she had to get to Justin through his lady, so be it.
“Don’t stop, fucking me,” chanted Victoria. “Give it to me—harder, harder,” she repeated.
Justin had her pinned against the door to his office. He had ripped open her shirt, popping off all the buttons, and had yanked down her panties. Now he had one leg up, and the other clasped around her. With his pants around his ankles, he was pumping Victoria with a ferocity that she had never experienced before.
“Harder, harder,” Victoria begged.
“You slut!” said Justin, and he slapped her around the face. She liked it rough. It was always the best sex.
Seconds later, Justin’s body shook and he came into her. He immediately pulled back and yanked up his pants, buckling them before Victoria had a chance to take a breath. She could feel his cum start to drip down her leg, and the sweat under her armpits. Breathing heavily, she pulled down her skirt and collapsed on the couch in his office.
“Hey, watch the sofa. I just had it upholstered,” said Justin. He was looking at himself in the mirror that he kept in his top drawer, running his hands through his hair to straighten out the cowlicks.
Victoria flung her legs down on the floor and sat up. “Wanna go to dinner?”
“Can’t,” said Justin, still looking in the mirror.
“Marcy?”
“Just can’t,” said Justin.
It had been three weeks since she had become Marcy’s best friend and one week since Justin had finally succumbed to her advances. She had organized her seduction the way she organized her projects from business school. Marcy’s continuous gushing about Justin had helped Victoria fill in the flash cards. And luckily Marcy was vain and indiscreet, so she confessed even the most intimate details, like how Justin liked it rough, how nothing turned him on more than anal sex, and how his biggest fantasy was getting a blow job under the table at a restaurant. Piece of cake.
At first Justin seemed irked that Victoria had struck up a friendship with Marcy. He ignored her, but when he couldn’t, he gave her every indication that her presence was not welcome. But then one night the three of them went out to a Polish restaurant in the valley. Victoria had picked the place when she heard from her hairdresser (whom she normally ignored) that not only was the food good (which it wasn’t) but the dimly lit restaurant had dark leather booths with thick red tablecloths that swept the floor. He told her that he and his lover had gotten busy under the table one night, and that was all she needed to know. Getting Justin to come along was a challenge, but when she told him it was supposedly George Clooney’s favorite restaurant, he agreed (always the star fucker). And when Marcy went to the bathroom and Victoria slipped under the table and pulled down Justin’s zipper, he was glad he’d agreed. Marcy returned and asked where Victoria was, and in his compromised position Justin was able to motion outside and mumble that Marcy should go check on her, and by the time she returned, confused, Victoria was sitting back at her seat, pretending all was normal. They laughed over the confusion, and Justin became very animated the rest of the night. From then on, it was a sexfest.
But even though Victoria was having sex with Justin, she still couldn’t get him to cancel the wedding or dump Marcy. He was determined to marry her. And when he did, Victoria returned to her last year of business school furious. She had always gotten what she wanted when it came to men, and she certainly would with Justin. The more unattainable he was, the more she desired him. In her mind, he had become her greatest challenge, and that somehow elevated her opinion of him in general. She knew he would be successful because he could push people’s buttons. His success would be her success. He was a competitive guy; she just had to figure out what he really wanted, or what made him want something. It took some research, but she eventually learned what he wanted. He wanted to screw over his enemies at any cost. And his biggest enemies were the rival agents who stole his clients.
Upon graduation from business school, Victoria returned to L.A. and went to work at Fox. One day, she “accidentally” bumped into Justin at lunch at the Ivy. She asked after Marcy, and he was vague. He asked her what she was up to, and she was vague. But later that week she went to lunch with Marcy, and told her that she was seeing Wayne Mercer, Justin’s biggest enemy. At the time, it was a lie, but it certainly got Justin’s attention. That night there was a knock at her door. Justin was there, flowers in hand. She wouldn’t let him in, telling him she had company. For three months she held out, blowing him off, and he wooed her as if she were the biggest celebrity on the planet and he was dying to represent her. The perks were amazing: new clothes, use of private jets, a BMW made available to her (all courtesy of IAA). In the end, it was the smallest thing that got her. Sure, the buckets of roses were amazing, but it was the single daisy that he placed on her doormat one morning next to the small handwritten note that got her. Please say yes. She would finally say yes. The divorce was done in record speed, and Victoria and Justin eloped in Vegas.
Happily ever after, laughed Victoria. Not. A marriage built on a sham always remains a sham. Justin didn’t care about her, and she didn’t really care about him. But right now, Wayne was more of a problem. He was dangerous, unlike anyone she had dealt with. It was time to pull the plug.
•• 14 ••
“When all of a sudden you have been given permission to reenter the world of the swinging singles, every member of the opposite sex somehow seems amazingly attractive—you know what I mean?” Helen asked Eliza during the break in their YAS class. YAS, or Yoga and Spinning, was located in Venice, and Helen had insisted that Eliza come along and check it out. The first thirty minutes were spent spinning on bicycles, trying to get cardio out of the way, and the second thirty minutes were spent stretching out in yoga. A perfect combination.
“I guess,” answered Eliza.
“No more sublimating every sexual yearning I feel. I mean, look at that guy over there,” whispered Helen, motioning toward a slight man with longish blond hair unrolling his yoga mat. “He’s hot. Starving actor probably. Me likey,” she said with a smile. That was exactly Helen’s type: slender, fair-haired, and creative. At least that’s what Helen always said, even though her husband was clearly not slender or fair-haired. Creative, yes.
Eliza looked over at the guy. He was cute but he definitely wasn’t her thing. “He looks about twelve,” she said.
“No way,” said Helen, shaking her head. “You think?”
“Fetus,” Eliza confirmed.
The teacher came in and the members of the class went to their mats and started their sun salutations. Downward facing dog here, upward facing dog there. Everyone was rhythmically contorting his or her body into pretzel positions, attempting to gain serenity and drop some pounds at the same time.
Helen had come to terms with the idea first and now fully embraced the decision to be unfaithful. It wasn’t that she took her marriage vows lightly. But she felt that over the past two weeks she had done a three-dimensional analysis of her marriage and her relationship with Wesley and realized that nothing would suffer if she were to sleep with another man. First of all, was it really natural for human beings to be monogamous? Or was it just a myth that society created to keep people in check? They weren’t totally monogamous in ancient Rome, and that was a flourishing civilization—some might even say the benchmark. True, it collapsed, but at the rate the U.S. government was racking u
p enemies, who knew how long our society would exist?
Secondly, she and Wesley rarely had sex. And that certainly was not natural. Before marriage, she had been extremely sexually active, some might even say promiscuous. Okay, a little slutty, in retrospect, but she’d been finding herself. There were just so many men that she found attractive, why not check them all out? She wanted to have a real connection, to allow someone to see deep into her soul and make her heart beat again. And that might even help her marriage.
“I don’t think he was that young, Eliza, really. I think he was about twenty-four,” said Helen after class was over and they were walking to Jin Patisserie to get some tea and sandwiches. She had been watching the hot blond from the corner of her eye for the entire class.
Eliza rolled her eyes at Helen. “Delusional. He was young. But hey, that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t go for it.”
“You think?” asked Helen, her eyes brightening. “I mean, yes, here he sees me all sweaty and gross, but the other day we had a very long conversation about the yoga retreat that he went on in Fiji. He said the nature there is astonishing, and he felt like he had been rebirthed.”
“Rebirthed? Okay, he sounds a little pretentious,” said Eliza. Helen always seemed to buy into those conversations. Could she really take someone like that seriously?
“I’ve read a little about it. I think it’s fascinating. If you want, there’s a lecture next month at UCLA,” said Helen.
Eliza stopped and turned to face her friend. “Helen, are you seriously thinking about doing this?” she asked.
“The lecture?”
“No, sleeping with this guy,” said Eliza.
“You know, I really think I am, Eliza,” said Helen. “I need to be defibrillated. I need to become whole again.”
“And having sex with this dude from YAS will do all that?”
“Maybe not him, but I have to try. I have to begin my journey.”
“I don’t know, Helen.”
“And I think you should, too. But only with Tyler. Because you definitely have something out there with him, something cosmic, and I think you need to get it out of your system or it will haunt you. You’ll be on your deathbed and thinking about him. Even if you’ve had a great life with Declan and maybe you, like, won a Pulitzer Prize for your writing, you will still want to recapture that beat of your life. So, carpe diem.”
Eliza was about to protest and then stopped and shook her head. Helen was right, she hated to admit. In fact, she knew deep down that she was doing all this protesting just to get it on record. The truth was, she wanted Tyler. And now he was in town.
•• 15 ••
At ten o’clock at night, Leelee was home in front of her computer. It was her absolute favorite time of the day. The girls had gone down easily, bath time, story time, bedtime, it all ran like clockwork. She loved the ritual and so did Charlotte and Violet. Leelee knew she was lucky: she had the sweetest, most beautiful flaxen-haired girls in town. They were only two and four, but people had already told her they should model or act. She would never do that—that was beyond cheesy—but she did relish the compliments and believe that if they were really put to the test they would put Dakota and Elle Fanning to shame.
Brad was watching some game on TV, always some seasonal sports thing: baseball, football, hockey, basketball…she couldn’t keep track. He liked all of those American sports that every guy did. She went in more for reality television shows, The Bachelor and The Apprentice (especially the Martha Stewart one), but she was of course addicted to Desperate Housewives. Although, if she could pick only one show in the world to watch, it would be Oprah. She worshipped that lady.
But television was far from Leelee’s mind as she sat at her Pottery Barn “Bedford” desk in front of her baby blue Macintosh in the small office off the kitchen that she had claimed as her own. This was her tiny retreat. She’d had the walls painted a light pink and kept the trim white, putting white and pink gingham curtains on the narrow window. On one wall was a framed Mary Cassatt print of a mother and a baby, and on the other wall was a white bulletin board covered with forms from the girls’ schools and playgroups, as well as a pink and white ribbon board that held pictures and recent baby announcements. She had drawers full of stationery in her name, Leslie Swift Adams, in her and Brad’s name, Bradley and Leslie Adams, and in the girls’ names, Charlotte Swift Adams and Violet Belle Adams, each color-coded and meticulously arranged. Everything from the Post-its on her desk to the slipcover on the chair that she sat on was monogrammed. Leelee loved monogramming. In fact, the house held countless articles that were monogrammed: the doormat, the bath towels, the hand towels, the dish towels, the bedspreads, the notepads, the glasses, the silverware, the toothbrush holders, the picture frames, the photo albums, and on and on. She was always awaiting delivery of this or that from some catalog, and whatever arrived inevitably bore a giant A nestled between a smaller B and L.
Leelee was online, instant-messaging with Jack Porter. She never kept a diary, but everything she would have written in it was instead downloaded to Jack. Well, not everything. She didn’t really get into Brad or her girls, and besides, what would she say about her husband? She preferred instead to exchange meretricious gossip, current events round-ups, and everyday advice with the guy who had been her confidant since she was two. Jack didn’t mention his wife often and would instead talk about his work and his father’s, or engage in some sort of political discussion. But his favorite thing to do was to “press Leelee’s buttons,” and for that effect, he would send her the raunchiest, most explicit jokes he could find. Usually Leelee would laugh to herself and reply “Naughty boy” or just ignore them, but tonight she felt different.
When the girls all agreed to be unfaithful to their husbands, Leelee immediately pronounced herself on board because she would never allow herself to be the naysayer in a crowd. She considered herself a team player, and her group of girlfriends was extremely important to her, so she’d “take one for the team,” as they say, if she had to. In the back of her mind, she was sure it wouldn’t come down to cheating, because first of all, Eliza and Declan had a pretty good marriage, and even though Eliza had a crush on a movie star, no matter what connection she claimed to have had with him five years ago, there was no chance she was getting in his pants. Eliza was a reasonable person; she wouldn’t mess up her life for an Us Weekly fantasy. Probably Victoria would cheat, but Leelee had a suspicion she may have already. Her marriage to Justin was all messed up anyway, and Leelee had no doubt that it would end in divorce. Brad had once gone to the Peninsula late at night to meet clients from Switzerland, and he saw Justin there with two girls, doing shots at the bar. Granted, they may have been clients, but come on. He has a wife and family sitting at home. What’s he doing at a hotel with two girls? Helen was less easy to gauge, but she was so out there that you never knew. She might have a “spiritual connection” with someone from another dimension and consider that cheating. Leelee was sure in a few weeks this whole idea would be null and void.
But as she sat there going back and forth with Jack as he sent her joke after joke, each one dirtier than the next, she paused before sending back her usual reprimanding reply. What if she stopped playing the role of disapproving mommy to Jack and called him on his little flirtations? They were flirtations, weren’t they? Why else would he use the language he did and make the implications that he did with her? He had plenty of guy friends. Suddenly excited, Leelee reread the latest entry that Jack had sent:
What’s grosser than gross? Finding dandruff in your pubic hair.
Typical Jack. A little immature, a little random. Leelee took a deep breath and began to type:
I don’t have dandruff in mine. But you’re too pussy to know if I’m telling the truth. Aren’t you?
She gritted her teeth and pressed Send. It felt like four hours before Jack replied, and every emotion from exultation to panic flashed through her body while she waited. Finally a message popped up.
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Am intrigued. Is that an invitation?
•• 16 ••
Two weeks into the infidelity pact, the ladies were already at various stages in their pursuit of other men. Victoria was being cryptic to her friends, but they surmised that something was up. Helen had introduced herself to the hot young guy from YAS and asked him to coffee, which had turned into a four-hour discourse about the teachings of Deepak Chopra. Leelee and Jack were exchanging racy jokes full of heated innuendo but had not yet made the leap into cybersex, and Leelee was still uncertain if that would happen at all. Only Eliza had done nothing to contact Tyler Trask and was still wishy-washy about the entire experiment.
On that Friday night, Helen and Wesley had a dinner party to introduce their local friends to one of Wesley’s oldest pals, Harry Sutherland (a.k.a. the Duke of Locksdowne), and his new bride, Tessa, a former model who was a good two decades his junior. Helen and Wesley entertained often, whether it be dinner parties, cocktail parties, Oscar parties, brunches, Boxing Day lunch—no occasion was too small. Helen liked to entertain by theme, and because she knew that Wesley and Harry had once spent a month lounging at La Mamounia in Marrakesh, she decided to “do Moroccan” for the evening. That meant that everyone would sit on plush satin pillows (purchased specifically for this event) at a low table and feast on traditional dishes like chicken and meat kabobs, lamb tagines, and vegetable-flecked couscous followed by mint tea and baklava, all served by a waiter clad in an authentic Moroccan outfit. Helen enjoyed taking advantage of any opportunity to spice up her parties, and she had a particular interest in impressing Harry’s new bride after she’d heard how “brilliant” she was from Wesley’s usually reticent parents. If this chick had dazzled her hard-to-please in-laws, then Helen wanted to make sure that Tessa had only good things to say about her when she went back over the pond. Helen always felt that her in-laws disapproved of her, and although she usually didn’t care much (“Out of sight, out of mind,” she would say), when there was any chance that they might hear something about her, she wanted the information to be delivered with superlatives.
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