Daniel Price - Slick

“The focus group liked it better.”

She smiled along. “See that, Doug? First rule of PR. Always lie entertainingly. Help me up.”

Doug took her wrist and helped her out of bed. She grunted in pain, then glanced at me. “It’s not because I’m fat, Scott. I’ve had a bad back since I was a size six, and it’s only gotten worse. That’s why I don’t travel anymore. As you can see, I made an exception for this.”

“Understandably,” I said, stifling a yawn.

“Nothing understandable about it. I made it clear to Jeremy from the start. I don’t like his music. As a self-respecting woman who grew up on love and Motown, I’m offended by his music. But I also made it clear to C. DeLores Tucker and every other moral watchdog who dangled a check in front of me that I will not help their scapegoat crusade. I have two sons of my own and I take full responsibility for their upbringing. They know that if I ever hear them calling a woman a bitch, I will cloud up and rain all over them.”

Doug and I smiled. Maxina took my arm. She was at least sixteen inches shorter than me, but her potent stare made me want to shrink down to her vantage.

She gestured to the bathroom door. “I know you’ve been kept in the dark, Scott, so let me start illuminating. My client is in that bathroom. Your client is standing right here in front of you. Now you and I are going to be working on two very different projects, but you still report to me. Are we clear?”

“As seltzer.”

“Good. Now before you think I’m an egomaniac, I’ll also make it clear that you can say whatever you want to me. Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me I’m crazy. Tell me I’m stupid. But when we’re around Jeremy and Simba, we speak in one voice. Mine. Clear?”

“Got it.” Simba?

She shot me a penetrating smirk. “Oh, you’re one of the sharp ones. You’re a raptor. Hayley Jane was right about you.”

“She’s a good woman.”

“Hasn’t steered me wrong yet. Now let’s get you up to speed.”

“Hold it,” said Doug. He grabbed his briefcase from the bed. “Before we go in there, I’d like you to sign some nondisclosure agreements.”

“Forget it,” Maxina told him. “You know damn well we can’t sue him over a secret operation. Just like he knows damn well that I have the power to cut the legs off his career if he ever double-crosses us. Why don’t we just all accept that and avoid a paper trail?”

My stomach sank. I had much to learn from Maxina, and much to fear. She was right. She had enough contacts and credibility in the media industry to make me persona non grata. On the plus side, she made a careful distinction between messing up and double-crossing them. She’d tolerate a little of the former and none of the latter.

“Come on,” she said. “While they’re still in hot water.”

________________

As soon as I stepped into the Roman-style bathroom, I was hit by ninety degrees of moist air, the heavy scent of bath oil, and the sight of a gorgeous young family in the giant tub. The three of them — man, woman, and infant — were almost surreal in their unblemished perfection, as if they were chiseled from onyx. Ordinarily, I would feel intrusive walking into such an intimate scene, but somehow seeing them naked was no less awkward than looking at art.

With a grand gesture, Maxina presented me. “Jeremy, Simba, this is Scott Singer. Put your trust in this man. He can spin straw into gold.”

“Let’s hope so,” said the woman, extending a wet hand. “I’m Simba Shange. The dutiful wife.”

She had the darkest skin of anyone I’d ever met, the color of walnut. Although her name and her features were both exotic, her dialect was as American as mine. I had no idea what her story was, but I could research her later. My immediate goal was to avoid ogling. When isolated from the family picture, she was a glistening feast for the eyes. Everything about her was long and sculpted: her wet hair, her lithe arms, her flat stomach, even her protruding toes. Fortunately, my lascivious peepers were still snowblind from Keoki Atoll.

With a warm, chaste smile, I greeted her. “A pleasure. Who’s the little one?”

“This is Latisha,” she said, squeezing her daughter. “She’ll be one next month. Baby, say hi to the tall man.”

The girl was adorable and somewhat scared of me. In lieu of waving, she shyly bit her fingers. It intrigued me that her ears were already pierced, decorated with fat gold studs. I questioned the wisdom of puncturing your kid before she learned how to say “ouch.”

Throughout all of this, the star of the show kept his eyes on the wall TV, currently tuned to NBC. He only gave me a cursory glance. I couldn’t help but scrutinize. The man had the face of a model, the body of a superhero, and…honestly, I didn’t look every where. I didn’t have to look. Jeremy Sharpe had enough sexual confidence to make me cower in the corner of my mind. Even while sitting in a tub watching Providence , he radiated more manly eros than twelve of me ever could. I had the sinking feeling that if he’d taken Miranda to my bed last night, she’d still be there now — still naked, still gasping, and now utterly convinced that she’d wasted years of her life on effete and cerebral white men.

“So you the hired assassin,” he said, without looking away from the TV.

“I don’t kill people. Just scandals.”

He finally turned to me. “Yeah? Well what you do when a person is the scandal?”

Maxina shut off the TV, then sat down on the closed toilet. “All right. Enough of that. Time’s short. Scott, take a load off.”

For lack of space, I had to sit on the edge of the tub. This wasn’t the best room for a kickoff meeting.

Maxina slapped her heavy thighs and began proceedings. She focused entirely on me.

“Okay. I assume you already know most of what we’re dealing with here. Before yesterday, Hunta was a rapper on the rise. Now he’s the gangsta who inspired a rape which inspired a school shooting.”

Hunta’s face twisted in a seething scowl. “That’s bullshit.”

“We’re not talking facts here, Jeremy. Just the press angle. This Bitch Fiend subplot is going to hatch wide open and take center stage over the killings. Annabelle, God rest her troubled soul, basically gave the authorities a paint-by-numbers account of what’s been going on at that school.”

“What has been going on at that school?” I asked.

“Pretty much what everyone’s guessed,” Doug replied. “Bunch of boys used hidden cameras to videotape their sexual encounters. Then they watched it with each other on weekends. It’s not a competition, like that Spur Posse shit. It’s just a club.”

“ Just a club?” asked Simba.

“You know what I mean.”

I yawned. Fortunately, the only one who noticed was Latisha, who yawned back.

“I assume all these guys have trashed their home movies by now,” I said.

Maxina shook her head. “Bryan Edison wasn’t exactly alive enough to run home and burn his collection. This morning the police got a warrant and seized everything in his bedroom. According to our source in the Bitch Fiends—”

“I told you, stop calling them that,” Hunta snapped.

“And I told you, you better get used to it, because it’s not going away. Anyway, our source confirmed the worst: that Annabelle’s on one of those sex tapes. Reportedly, she was having such a bad time that even Bryan’s fellow Fiends got scared when they saw it. They strongly suggested he erase the evidence.”

“Are we sure he didn’t?”

“Pretty sure. It seems Bryan was a big fan of his movie. He thought it’d be easier just to intimidate Annabelle. To threaten her into staying quiet. You can see how well that worked out.”