Jezebel's Ladder

by Scott Rhine

  Claudette laughed so loudly that a neighbor in a room near the elevator poked his head out to see what was wrong. “I’ve heard of that. It kills brain cells in an incredibly painful fashion.”

  “It’s no joke, that man had a horny, pheromone-boosted, nineteen-year-old beauty queen throw herself at him yesterday after he left us. If we don’t do something soon…”

  “You have to be able to trust him if your relationship is going to last,” the older woman advised.

  On the drive home, Tan and the guard sat in the front, while Jez snuggled with her boyfriend.

  When she told him the rest of Sedna’s story, he said, “I never want to leave you alone again.”

  The Brooklyn-raised driver, Carl, broke his usual silence and asked, “So let me get this straight. This lady came in to whack you, and you squeezed three favors out of her before she left? All this, you did from a wheelchair with one good hand?”

  “Close enough,” she admitted.

  “I know mob people who don’t negotiate as good as you,” said the driver.

  At the house, Benny took great pains to point out, “This wing is Tan’s. The two parts of the house join in the kitchen, and he can lock this door for privacy. You’ll be staying in an office on his side.”

  “Protecting my virtue?” she surmised.

  “Removing temptation,” he admitted.

  She rewarded him with a deep goodnight kiss. “Something to remember me by.” Her eyes were shining with something more than admiration when he left for a cold shower.

  Tan pushed the wheelchair to her room. In addition to her laptop and overnight bag, the spare room had a desk, a queen-sized futon, and a rack of faxes, phones and color printers. “It’s perfect,” she said. In the corner was a box full of large t-shirts left over from the international charity’s last fund-raiser.

  Her host seemed embarrassed. “I asked, but your security people wouldn’t bring any clothing. What did not burn may have listening devices, poison, or smoke damage.”

  “I think I pissed Fortune off,” she guessed.

  “You saved his life and Mr. Ben’s, too. Mr. Fortune gave me this check for you, with instructions that no one else see it.”

  It was her turn to cough with surprise. The check was made out for a million dollars. On the memo line, the only explanation was the word “Bonus.” Based on past experience, it was the closest she would ever get to a thank you from the billionaire.

  She laughed at the irony of her new-found wealth as she slipped into a borrowed t-shirt for bed.

  Chapter 28 – Meet the Press

  Unable to sleep, Jez converted the schedule on her borrowed phone into a company website for the funerals in the coming week. She attached a photo to each code name, wrote the person’s real name, and something nice she could say about the deceased. She printed out a copy and stuck it to her wall in case Benny needed his phone back.

  Underneath, she put a sloppily-written list of her new assistants and a Post-It note for every loose end. She could use her fingers easily, but writing with her injured hand was painful and awkward. Holding fat markers like a two-year-old worked best. For more than a few words, she would print a whole page, slice the text off with the paper cutter, and tape it to the wall.

  Realizing many people couldn’t get to the secure server, she opened the permissions on the web page, then linked it to her Facebook page. She sent notices out to the entire LA mail alias.

  The most obvious problem to resolve was two viewings that were both scheduled for 7:00 p.m. the following day in different parts of the city. On Facebook, she suggested that she might be able to extend the viewing hours and get a van so everybody interested could attend both. She sent emails like a madwoman. Marcie found volunteers to drive the three company vans.

  Next, she needed a suit by eleven the next morning. Although Jez had some clothes at the cleaner, they had pants. Worse, she wasn’t even sure which cleaner because one of the Nenas had taken them in. She’d have to buy a new outfit. On Benny’s phone, she scheduled a shopping trip for 9:00 a.m..

  Only half the dead men had wives, but most had left some significant other behind. Jez knew what that felt like. Her next obstacle was a way to extend widows’ benefits to women who had merely been living with agents. According to a text from Adrien, Jez’s new check wouldn’t clear fast enough to use this week. Without it, she could only scrape together about ten thousand for each woman. She wrote an apology on her site that this would only be a start until she could light a fire under human resources to write a new policy.

  After the funeral page, she felt a little closure, so she followed up with two status sheets for the injured, inpatient and outpatient. Both were annotated with things the family might need, including simple services like lawn mowing. The sticky notes on her wall were starting to gather like mosquitoes on a sleeping camper.

  She might have gone to sleep then, but she hadn’t bathed in three days and felt ookie. Ignoring the wheelchair, she hobbled across the hall into the bathroom. While washing her hair, leaning over Tan’s guest tub, she found spare poster presentation boards stored there. This inspired her to start planning her new projects. By now, she had her second wind.

  The first poster board started with a list of dream recruits for the red-giant map. She wrote a list of questions she needed to have answered and material she needed to brush up on before she could dare risk reading that page. She printed the technical lead’s e-mails from the previous day, noting that there were external subroutines grafted on to the core of the code to adjust for wobble, much like the algorithmic Hubble telescope adjustments. She posted a note: “Why Hubble distortion?”

  By 6:00 a.m., she was sitting back in the wheelchair, texting, emailing, and phoning simultaneously. She had both her new laptop for social networking and Benny’s old desktop for corporate and scientific research. When the men came in from their workout, Benny remarked, “I was going to invite you to breakfast, but I see you’ve already made yourself at home.” He gestured to all the poster boards and sticky notes splattered on every available surface.

  Sheepish, she said, “Sorry, I borrowed a few of your things without asking. I can give your phone back now.”

  He flipped through his calendar and announced, “Hey Tan, I’m buying a new dress at nine!”

  Unfazed, the Asian man said, “That will give me time to teach my morning class and you a chance to catch up on all the urgent business I put on your desk.”

  After giving her a peck on the cheek, Benny passed the phone back to her. “You need it more than I do. The other boards I understand, but what’s this documentary project?”

  “Well, you’re so passionate about the planet search; I figured we could turn that into the opportunity we were looking for. You know, educate the masses and encourage talented people to join us?”

  Benny winced. “I don’t know, babe. I haven’t been in show business for a while. I can talk to project people about this all day, but no one is going to be interested.”

  She swatted him playfully. “Nonsense, you have a captivating voice. Your father’s already volunteered to direct. One of his poker buddies is willing to do the camera work for union-scale wage.”

  Seeing the name, Benny noted, “He has an Oscar.”

  “Well, I kept offering to pay people more, but they’re so bored at that home, everyone is volunteering just to get out.”

  The actor began to seriously consider her plan. “I’ve, um, never worked with my father before. That would be… Wait, when did you arrange this with him?”

  She shrugged. “Bernie doesn’t sleep much. I caught him on Facebook at two in the morning–he’s Cigar47.”

  “You talked to my dad in the middle of the night?”

  “Does that mean you’ll do it?” she begged. “You could be the next Inconvenient Truth.”

  “I don’t know. It would take a lot of time away from my charity.”

  “We got that guitarist from Zeppelin to do the backgrou
nd music,” she said, baiting him.

  He made a face she had rarely seen outside of sex. “Oh my God. He’s going to play guitar for my documentary?” Benny kissed her so hard that when he removed his arms, she fell back into her wheelchair, dizzy.

  “Wow,” she said.

  He gazed adoringly at her before saying, “After I shower and get my work done for this slave driver, I’m going to take you shopping on Rodeo Drive to celebrate. Zeppelin!”

  When her boyfriend was out of earshot, Tan asked, “How did you manage that? What do you have to do in return?”

  “I may have to be in a rock video or at least consult when I can walk again,” she admitted.

  “You make him ten years younger. Although I’m not always sure that is a wise thing,” he said, before leaving for his dojo.

  When someone knocked fifteen minutes later, Jez wheeled her chair over to the door and opened it with her good hand. Standing there was an attractive, African-American woman with an enormous purse. Its depths held, at the very least: a notebook, a camera, a bivouac of pens, and an old cassette recorder.

  “You’re Benny’s Public Relations expert?” Jez asked. Before letting the woman answer, she added, “I wish I had the nerve to wear short hair like yours. Mine has been such a pain to take care of lately. I like your taste in shoes too, a good first impression, and easy on the feet if you have to stand all day.”

  The woman was clearly thrown off by the avalanche of commentary as well as the wheelchair. “I’m Elspeth Richards, I was expecting…”

  “A bubble-gum-cracking trollop in heels and bikini? Sorry to disappoint. Let’s do this in my office. We only have about two hours.”

  “That’s a sizable amount of time.”

  “I only want to go through this once but I understand your need to be thorough. Benny’s trying to get some work done for his hospitals before we head off to the funerals.”

  On the way back to her makeshift office, Jez offered her guest some of Tan’s tea and whispered, “The first thing I want to counter is that whole gold-digger image. I could have dispelled it already, but I want to do it tactfully. I don’t want to seem like I’m emasculating Benny.”

  Elspeth added sugar to her cup. “I don’t understand.”

  “As head of the think tank, with bonuses, I’ll probably make twice what he does this year, even counting his residuals. Some men get sensitive about that. He gives so much to his charity that it’s not a fair comparison. Don’t you agree?”

  The African-American woman nodded and Jez continued, “I wanted to make it clear that I’m here at Tan’s invitation, not Benny’s. I’m grateful for the space because I recently lost my apartment and everything in it. I know they both just want to protect me from the same ‘pharmaceutical interests’ that blew up our headquarters.”

  “I heard about that,” said her guest. “Is that how you got your injuries?”

  “Actually, the hand was from a bullet.” She was interrupted by a text message. “I’m sorry. I’ll turn this off. It bugs the crap out of me when Benny does this on a date. I managed to convince a lawn service to help out the victims if we switched our corporate accounts to them. I have to post the coupon code so they can use it!”

  When her guest saw the wall of victim photos, she asked, “You did all this?”

  “I put together the pieces but I have two, no, three assistants helping me with the leg work.”

  Noting the timestamps, the other woman said, “Have you been doing this all night?”

  “I multitask, but, yes. I couldn’t sleep when these people needed me. They were my neighbors, my co-workers, and a lot of them died defending me. What kind of sorry bitch would I be if I didn’t do everything I could to help them and their families when they needed it most?” After a moment, Jez realized what she had said. “I’m sorry; I know I’m supposed to practice being a lady around the press.”

  “No, it’s fine if you only use the word in reference to yourself and don’t mind being quoted.” Elspeth pointed to her feet and asked, “What about your casts?”

  Jez opened her mouth, and then covered it with a finger. She removed an NCIS business card from her pocket and recited from the back, “I cannot comment on an ongoing investigation involving matters of national security.”

  Her guest’s eyes were as big as saucers.

  “However, I can tell you that Benny got his injuries saving me and still carried me out of that hellhole on his back. I can also answer any other question you think will help. No boundaries, for this session only.”

  “I wasn’t expecting this much detail, and I don’t want to get anything wrong. Do you mind if I record our talk?”

  Jez shrugged, “I don’t care. We have nothing to hide.”

  “I get that impression. Do you mind if I snap a photo of you in all this? It might help to counter some of the negative press you’ve been getting.”

  “Go ahead,” the former dancer replied. She used an expression of Claudette’s. “I look like twenty miles of bad road, and I haven’t done the makeup thing in a week. So what you see is what you get.”

  Elspeth took several shots of the room. “Wasn’t Sedna the tenth planet for a few minutes before Pluto got kicked out too?”

  “Yes, she got a raw deal. I think it was because she was a woman. A guy probably would have been promoted.”

  The woman smiled at what she thought was a metaphor. “Seriously, what’s with all the astronomy terms?”

  Jez was getting more skilled with the honesty problem. When there were several choices, she found she could focus on something appropriate and relevant to the audience. Jez evaded sensitive issues by talking about the documentary first. She worked from memory, having recently absorbed much of it. She stopped with the orbital equations when her guest’s eyes started to glaze over. “Sorry, math-geek overload. With the folks I get to work with, I forget sometimes that not everyone drinks from a fire hose. Benny’s so excited to do this new project. After all he’s done for me, I wanted to help him with this.”

  “What else did he do for you?”

  “He convinced me to stay in rehab, got me a job with Elias Fortune. Believe it or not, even being a sexist pig, Fortune runs a true meritocracy. I had to fight my way up that ladder.”

  Jez tried to concentrate on the documentary, but the woman kept trying to guide her off the path into the personal. “What’s Hollis like in bed? I’ve always wanted to know.”

  Jez laughed, “You and half the women at his country club. I’ve fallen asleep on him, but never slept with him. He keeps you warmer than an electric blanket.”

  “Girl, you expect me to believe you two haven’t done the deed?”

  “Tan locks the door to this wing every night, and he’s a black belt. It’s not like we’re seventeen and half your day is about sex. We have two friends in that stage now where we have to pry them apart: Trina and Daniel. Everyone calls them Triniel. When you get older, you start to think about the next thirty years. Don’t get me wrong, I would love tell him how I feel in more than words. But he has very strong religious convictions and I have to respect that. His decency and caring are the things that attracted me to him; how could I trample that? So I’m doing everything by the book. I’m meeting his pastor on Sunday and his mother on Tuesday. Talk about pressure.”

  This got a smile of sympathy. “You’ll do fine.”

  “His dad was a teddy bear, and his friends have been very supportive. I wouldn’t have pulled through this last week without help from Claudette. I came from a trailer park and sometimes people don’t see past that label.”

  “Claudette who?”

  “Fortune, my boss’s ex. She’d be here, but she’s getting reconstructive surgery on her face today—necessity, not vanity. Don’t say anything about that. Claudette’s very sensitive about the scar that rapist gave her,” Jez pulled back from the private details just in time and changed topics awkwardly. “She’s been helping me adjust to the religion thing.”

 
This impressed her interviewer. “So what do you think of it so far?”

  Jez said, “The core values are essential. Parts are absolute poetry. Ruth could be a story from today.”

  “But?” Elspeth prompted.

  “Parts are obviously patriarchal and have nothing to do with a Divine being. I mean, the being who engineered us knows how the menstrual cycle works. He wouldn’t make us sacrifice a sparrow every month just because he didn’t understand why we were bleeding.”

  That got a laugh. “Girl, is there anything you won’t talk about? Politics?”

  “I haven’t paid any attention in that area. My think tank has been designing new models for society that might force corporations to have a conscience. We also want to fix the problem of criminals getting separated from society permanently. There are so many issues to work out if we’re going to succeed outside this planet. Compared to that challenge, my non-existent sex life is easy to talk about.”

  “Why are you so passionate about space?”

  “Because, with the current rate of discovery, we’re going to be there in about five years. If we reinvested a fraction of all the money earned by space movies, NASA could have a colony on Mars today.” Jez successfully steered the discussion back on topic.

  They continued chatting in this fashion for another hour. When Jez needed to go, she wrapped up with, “I’m sorry. I can’t go to the funeral in my boyfriend’s t-shirt. Is there anything else you’d like to ask before I have to leave? Don’t be afraid; I can take it.”

  Screwing up her courage, Elspeth asked the one question she had been avoiding since her arrival. “Other than the dead guards, why are there so few people of color on your wall?”

  Jez cocked her head. “You’re absolutely right. I just started, but you’d think statistically 10 percent of the people would have to be. I just hired Mr. Rama, so he doesn’t exactly count. The original set seems to indicate a racial bias on the part of the selector.” She rolled over to her laptop. As she typed, she said, “I’m sending a note for Claudette to check this lead out. Thank you for that observation.”