sex.lies.murder.fame.

by Lolita Files

  “I’m not blowing you off. I so want to be here. I want to feel what it’s like inside of you…”—her ran his finger along her thigh—“slide in and out of your…”

  “Then why are you going?”

  “Because I have some important business to take care of in the morning, and if I don’t go now, I’ll never leave. I know myself.”

  “Shit,” Sharlyn said.

  “But I’d like to see you again.”

  She was looking at him, scouring his face with those dark, sexy eyes. He really did want to fuck her. Damn.

  “You know I’m married.”

  “Oh yes.”

  “My husband is a very—”

  “I know who your husband is.”

  She wriggled her nose.

  “He’s a very powerful man.”

  “He’s not the one I want to fuck.”

  She sat up, her face very close to his.

  “But you will be fucking him,” she said in a low voice. “We both will.”

  Penn pulled her mouth to his and kissed it hard, his tongue playing with the tip of hers.

  “I can taste myself all over you.” She exhaled, her shoulders going limp. “Why can’t you just do me and be done with it? Let me get this out of my system.”

  “You really think one time would get whatever ‘this’ is out of your system?” He shook his head. “I don’t think so. Not for me, anyway, and I’d dare to guess that it wouldn’t for you, either. We’re attracted to each other. All you did was bump into me, and look where it got us.”

  “You bumped into me.”

  “We bumped into each other.”

  “Right,” she said.

  She was playing with her hands. She glanced up, her eyes full of gravity.

  “Not in public. Never in public.”

  “We can do this however you want.”

  “And I’ll need to see an AIDS test.”

  “So will I.”

  She leaned back, surprised.

  “I’ve gotta protect myself,” he said with a smirk. “I’ve heard how wild celebrities can be.”

  He was at the door, about to leave.

  She had all the pertinent information, where he lived, his phone number, his name, his cunnilingual abilities. She’d given him no further information of her own than what he already had: her cell number and her Tina Turner alias at the Sherry. She was a public personality. It wouldn’t be that hard to find her.

  Her whole body was tingling as she watched him. She’d just had a tryst. That was the kind of stuff she wrote about, not the kind of thing she did. She was a bad girl, bad girl, such a dirty bad girl.

  Beep, beep. Uh-huh.

  “Keep the key,” she said. “Use it tomorrow. I’ll still be here.”

  Penn nodded.

  “Do you need me to send a car for you?”

  “That’s not necessary,” he said. “The less spectacle the better.”

  “I like that.”

  “Awesome.”

  “‘Awesome,’” she said with a laugh. “You’re such a white boy.”

  “And you’re quite the black girl.”

  “Girl?”

  “Boy?”

  “Young man.”

  “All right then. Woman.”

  “That’s better. There’s nothing girlish about me, young man.”

  He was contemplating her now, checking the whole of her out. She was suddenly aware of her nakedness and the Zanottis, and the way she was sitting at the edge of her bed with her legs open. This was a porn pose. She wondered if she looked the part as much as she felt it. With her legs showcased like this, she was even feeling a little like the real Tina Turner, a pseudonym she’d come up with after her stylist suggested she go with something more inventive than the name she’d been using, which was Ben-Hur.

  “I get tired of asking for that,” Tina had said after she’d come up to Shar’s room at the Four Seasons in Milan so she could get her dressed to attend Roberto Cavalli’s fall show. “Every time I say the name, images of Charlton Heston dance in my head.”

  “That’s not a bad visual,” said Shar. “He was sexy in that movie.”

  “That’s not the Charlton Heston I picture,” Tina said.

  “Yecchh,” said Shar, who had been standing in nothing but a bra, panties, and strappy heels at the time. “Perhaps I do need to come better than that.”

  Tina was opening garment bags and taking out clothes as Sharlyn pranced about the room, unable to keep still, high on a quick whiff of some local blow.

  “Look at you,” Tina had said. “Look at those legs. What a tall drink of water you are, Mrs. Tate.”

  And Shar had checked her reflection in the mirror and looked at Tina, and put two and four together and, like that, her next all-purpose hotel pseudonym had been born.

  “So what happens when you wake up tomorrow,” Penn was now asking, “and realize you were just a little too high and maybe drank a little too much? How do you know you won’t regret all this?”

  “Because I’m forty-three years old, Penn Hamilton, and at forty-three, you know yourself and take full responsibility for what you do. No matter how high or drunk I get, which isn’t often by the way, I don’t lose my sense of awareness. I’ll remember what I’ve done. If I’m not here tomorrow when you put your key in that door, it won’t have anything to do with regret.”

  “That’s good,” he said. “I think.”

  “You just hold up your end and I’ll worry about mine.”

  “Done.”

  He opened the door and turned.

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow,” she said. “Hey, wait a sec. What are you, a model? An actor? You have to be someone to have gotten into the party tonight.”

  “I’m a writer.”

  “A writer?”

  “Yes. A writer.”

  Sharlyn was laughing now, and shaking her head.

  “Of course. Of all the men I could have messed around with, it’s just my luck to find another scribe.”

  “Is that a bad thing?”

  “Not necessarily. You published?”

  “No.”

  Sharlyn laughed again.

  Her Sidekick was ringing. At this hour? It was probably Tina, hunting her down.

  “You going to get that?” he asked.

  “I’d better,” she said. “Good night, Penn.”

  “Good night, beautiful.”

  The door was barely shut as she crawled across the bed and grabbed her purse from the nightstand. She pulled out the phone.

  Miles.

  She laughed again, this time even louder.

  Fuck him!

  She was zinging, every pore of her, full of liberation and rebelliousness and rich, rich thoughts. She waited until the call had rolled over to voice mail, scrolled through the directory, and found her assistant’s number. It was late, very late, but hey, that was what assistants were for. The groggy girl answered after three rings.

  “Wake up, Brookie.”

  “I’m awake, Mrs. Tate. Are you okay?”

  “I want my laptop. I need you to go get it.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Where is it?”

  “It’s in my bedroom, sitting on the chaise. I need you to go over there and pick it up, and then bring it to me at my spot.”

  “Your spot, ma’am?”

  “You know, Brookie, where I hide out to write.”

  “The Plaza Athénée?”

  “I’m at the Sherry.”

  “The Sherry, of course.”

  Shar could hear the poor girl fighting back a yawn, trying to bring herself around. It was late. Or early, depending on how you saw it. After two in the morning. So what? she thought. It wasn’t like she made a whole lot of demands on Brookie (whose real name was Brookland, which ranked right up there with Milestone). Most of the time Brookie skated by, enjoying far more perks than she did practical labor. The girl, a twenty-three-year-old graduate of Spelman, was the daughter of one of Miles’s favorite
cousins and was quite efficient and full of endearing charms and Southern ways, most of which Sharlyn appreciated, although she occasionally found that Southern graciousness grating when she needed to cut to the chase and Brookie insisted on being formal or going through unnecessary pleasantries.

  The girl couldn’t help it, she’d been trained by legions of suppliant Southern women who believed in catering to others with beguiling civility, always making sure everything was “okay.” Shar had heard the phrases “Are you okay?” and “Do you need anything?” come flying out of Brookie’s mouth more times than she could count. One of these days, she had decided, she was going to say “No, Brookie, I’m not okay,” just to see what would happen. The girl’s head would probably fly off. Or not. Ol’ save-the-day Brookie had more tricks than a Swiss army knife. It didn’t help that she spoke with one of those sickeningly sweet, eye-batting twangs. The kind that, outside of the South, enslaved any man within earshot and made an independent woman’s skin do a crawl.

  “How long do you think it’ll take you to get over here?” Shar asked.

  “Is an hour all right?”

  “Try to make it in thirty, forty-five at the most.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Is the laptop all you need? Would you like me to—”

  “Just the laptop, Brookie, and make sure you bring the power cord.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Do you need any—”

  “You don’t have to bring it up to my room. Just leave it at the front desk. They’ll be expecting it.”

  “For Tina Turner, Mrs. Tate?”

  “Yes, Brookie, for Tina Turner.”

  Why was the girl taking her through this? Tina Turner was the only fake name she knew. Brookie hadn’t been around in the Ben-Hur days. Shar was sure Brookie was purposeful when she did stuff like this. It was standard passive-aggressive Southern-girl nitpicking. Breaking your will with sweetness under the guise of trying to be helpful.

  “Mrs. Tate, do you need me to—”

  “Thanks, Brookie. Hurry, hurry.”

  Sharlyn clicked off the call before the overaccommodating Brookie could squawk out anything else. She already knew the girl would come with more than just the laptop. There’d be some ghetto shit like an ice-cold pineapple Fanta and a bag of crab-flavored Utz from the bodega on the corner of her block in Harlem.

  Shortly after her arrival a year before, Brookie had somehow divined that Shar craved low-brow stuff as much as she did high-end, and the girl appealed to that yen with a quiet maliciousness that Sharlyn didn’t know how to fight against. Shar was mortified the day Brookie “accidentally” left a greasy sack of cracklins on her desk, tasty pieces of salted fried pork fat with thick crunchy skin (far more low income and lard laden than those popular bags of air-puffed pork rinds that had somehow jumped class and become Atkins favorites). Shar had scarfed the cracklins down in toto, only to be stricken with an abysmal case of shame immediately afterward. Brookie had tapped into a weakness Shar didn’t even realize she had, but Brookie never said anything, she just kept, literally, feeding the guttersnipe in Shar, taking a bit of Shar’s dignity every time she did it.

  Since then, Brookie, who also possessed superb culinary skills, had left Shar everything from popcorn with hot sauce on it to fresh-cooked hog maws (Shar didn’t even know what a “maw” was, but, damn, it was good!). Shar never ate the items in Brookie’s presence, but she never sent them away, either. The exasperating girl was always doing something, anything, to show Sharlyn that she wasn’t just another assistant, but one who paid attention to the little things, the ones that mattered, like what Shar liked to munch on when she was writing, treats that had a surprising way of making Shar creatively better, especially when she was properly motivated and the sex was great between her and Miles. But the sex hadn’t been good, even though she was still eating all the snacks Brookie brought around.

  Shar wasn’t a big fan of exercise. She was lucky she had good genes and a high metabolism, even though she had put on a couple of pounds since Brookie’s arrival. Not enough to cause alarm, still, those unsolicited, unexpected ghetto snacks had the potential to do real damage, not just to her appearance, but on the health front—all those fried pork skins and hoghead cheeses and pickled entrails, disgusting shit, really, if you considered it objectively—which was why she did her best to deter Brookie from bringing them anywhere near her.

  Shar picked up the room phone and pressed the button for the front desk.

  “Yes, Miss Turner.”

  “I’m expecting a laptop to be delivered shortly. Will you ring me before you send it up?”

  “Yes, Miss Turner.”

  “Make sure you ring me first.”

  “Of course, Miss Turner.”

  “Thanks.”

  Shar hung up the phone, her legs stretched out in front of her. She studied her calves, which were lean and shapely. Her skin was smooth and blemish free. Funny how she hadn’t noticed how attractive her legs were, not lately. She was almost as bad as Miles, the way she’d been ignoring herself. Diamond and Aurora had done her such a favor, getting her out of the house like that. She ran her hand across her thigh. It was butter-soft in the wake of her afternoon at the spa.

  She could still feel a gentle throb between her legs. The thought of what she’d done made it throb some more. The alcohol/coke buzz had mellowed into something quite nice. And she had a title now (and, perhaps, a muse?).

  The Magic Man.

  It was a start. That was all she needed.

  After that, the rest would come easy.

  Penn was

  …deep in thought, rubbing Kiehl’s on his lips with his right forefinger, thinking about how cool it was the way Sharlyn Tate had responded to his balls-out up-front statement that he was a writer, when he saw her there, sitting in front of his building.

  She was in a Dolce & Gabbana sweatshirt with the hood pulled up. It swallowed her tiny head, which was set so far back under the generous cloth, all he saw at first was faceless shadow, shadow that could have been harboring the Grim Reaper or the Ghost of Fucks to Come. But he knew it was her. Unmistakably. She was holding his manuscript in her lap. Her right knee was shaking.

  So here it was. The showdown. She’d gotten up the nerve obviously to come back and blast him. He had to give it to her. The girl had balls.

  Fine, he thought. He had other options now anyway.

  “Hi,” she said, her voice small but steady.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve got something of yours.”

  “I see,” he said, stepping forward, reaching for it. “May I have it back?”

  She clutched it close.

  “Can we talk first? I need to clear some things up.”

  He noticed the writing on his skin. Sharlyn’s penmanship. That silly contract on his arm. Her cell number on his palm. Beryl hadn’t seen either. He rolled down his right sleeve and thrust his hand into his pocket.

  “Things like what?” he said nonchalantly.

  “Inside. Can we go inside? I’m not used to”—she glanced around, nervous—“you know, being outside like this. On a stoop in the middle of the night.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “A while.”

  “Why didn’t you just try to buzz your way in or wait for someone to come out?”

  “I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to come in without your permission.”

  “Right,” he said, rubbing his chin, “yet you took my manuscript without my permission.”

  “Can we go inside? Please?”

  He wasn’t up for this. She was going to give him a tongue-lashing for using her, and top it off with a brash attack on his story. She’d read it and torn it to pieces and had come to make the pronouncement in person. It was the only means of retaliation she had.

  “If you’ve got something you want to say to me, then just say it.”

  She was standing now, still holding the manuscript. The hood was still pulled way over her hea
d.

  All she needs is a sickle, he thought. He almost laughed. Beryl the Reaper, come to lay him to waste.

  “I owe you an apology,” she said. “I shouldn’t have run off the way I did. And you’re right, I had no business taking your manuscript. Your very good manuscript, I might add.”

  This, now this he wasn’t expecting. It was a dropkick to the chest. All those months, twenty-four of them, full of rejection after rejection after smug-ass rejection, and someone was finally seeing things right.

  “Wha…” His breath was coming short. “What did you just say?”

  “I said your manuscript is very good,” came her voice from the shadows of the hood. “It’s brilliant. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

  And Penn was smiling now, his feet doing an invisible Snoopy dance of long-awaited glee. No one had said these words before. No one that mattered. No one that could make it matter, that is.

  “Are you shitting me?”

  “Not at all. But I don’t want to talk about that out here. If it’s all right, can we please go inside?”

  “Of course. I hope you don’t mind, but I need to take a shower first. It’s been a rough day. After that, we can talk.”

  He’d written Sharlyn’s cell-phone number on a piece of paper while he was in the bathroom, then he soaped the writing off his arm and his palm as he stood beneath the hot water.

  What a night, he thought. This was amazing.

  Like something out of a book.

  He smiled as he turned his face upward, directly beneath the stream of hot water.

  She was sitting on his IKEA couch, drinking a hot cup of microwaved oolong tea, and he was sitting in an IKEA chair across from her in a T-shirt and a pair of gray sweats, wanting to know everything, particularly about his book.

  “Could you just answer a few questions for me first,” Beryl was saying now, “before we talk about your manuscript?”

  “Okay,” he said, sounding guarded again.

  Beryl didn’t want to make him feel too pressed, she just needed to know the truth. She already knew what to do about his book, but everything that had led up to the moment she’d discovered it, that’s the part she needed clarity about.

  “Did you know I was an editor?” she asked.