Blind Ambitions Read online

  Sharon gasped, then laughed.

  “I can’t believe you just said dick.”

  “Yeah,” Desi said, stirring her tea, “I can’t believe I said it either. It’s the company I keep … hint, hint.”

  Sharon laughed again. This time, it was accompanied by a nervous quaver.

  Desi took a sip of tea. Sharon, overcome with frustration, let loose with an anguished cry.

  “Aaaaaaaaaaarghhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!” she screeched. “Dezzzzz!!! How could I let this happen?! This is sooo crazy! I should have more sense than this!”

  “Sharon, just calm down. Besides, you don’t know for sure if you’re pregnant.”

  “Yes, I do. I get my period like clockwork. I always have. If it’s a nanosecond late, I know something is up.”

  “How late is it?” Desi asked.

  Sharon was silent.

  “Sharon? How late is your period?”

  “Three weeks,” she answered, her voice barely audible.

  “Sharon! And didn’t you just have sex with him last night?”

  “Three times.”

  “All unprotected?”

  “All unprotected.”

  Desi sighed. She didn’t know what else to say.

  “Dez,” Sharon pleaded, “don’t sound like that. You don’t understand what it feels like when I hold him and he holds me, and I feel him inside me, skin-to-skin.”

  “Does it feel like a death wish?” Desi responded. “Because that’s what it sounds like the two of you have.”

  The comment pissed Sharon off.

  “How dare you judge me,” she snarled.

  Desi realized her error. If Sharon was pregnant, the last thing she needed was Desi making things worse.

  “I’m sorry, honey. Look, I’m not judging you. I just can’t see how the two of you can be so reckless. This is LA, the original Den of Iniquity, right after Sodom and Gomorrah. I know you and Glen spend most of your free time together, but how can you be sure that you’re the only one?”

  “Because he says I am,” Sharon remarked.

  “And, of course, men don’t lie.”

  “He has no need to. His word is bond.”

  “Absolutely,” Desi said. “Why would Glen ever need to lie anyway? It’s not like you’re one of the most powerful, if underemployed, producers in Hollywood. You have no value. You certainly couldn’t hook him up with new clients, introduce him to other powerful people, or anything like that, now, could you?”

  Sharon felt a flash of fire fan within.

  “So you think he’s with me to use me? ’Cause if that’s what you’re suggesting, which it sounds like it is, you need to say so. It sounds like you’ve been thinking it for a while.”

  Desi raised the cup of tea to her lips, the steam causing her brow to reflexively knit. She sipped cautiously.

  “You think he’s using me, Dez?”

  Sharon’s voice took on a dangerous edge. Desi knew her well enough to know it meant proceed with care.

  “Sharon, I’ve never even met Glen before. I know who he is by name, but I wouldn’t know him if he ran up and bit me on the titty.”

  She waited for a laugh. Nothing came.

  “Do you think he’s using me, Dez?” Sharon persisted.

  Her tone was firm and deliberate. The edge was razor sharp. Desi took another sip of tea, the mist from the surface now lingering against her forehead, jump-starting a sweat.

  “I’m not saying that, Sharon,” she replied. “I’m just saying … heck, what am I saying? Just don’t undervalue yourself, that’s all. He may be a high-powered attorney with high-powered clients, but you’re still more connected. He’s young and he’s new to the game. There are people you can reach with just one phone call. People he might not ever get next to. Look at me … I didn’t even know you knew Spielberg until last night. I would imagine Glen has an idea that you’re the mother lode when it comes to that six-degrees thing. Half the time, with you, it’s only one degree.”

  No sound, not even breathing, came from Sharon’s end of the phone.

  “I’m not saying he’s using you. I know you’re much too smart for that.”

  She could hear Sharon’s breathing now. Desi waited for her to speak.

  “Maybe I’m in love with him,” Sharon whispered helplessly. “Did that ever occur to you, Dez? Huh? And maybe he’s in love with me. That could have something to do with why all this is happening.”

  “If that’s the case, the two of you can have protected sex and still be in love,” Desi replied. “Then you wouldn’t be worried about getting or being pregnant.”

  “Well now,” Sharon replied flatly, “it’s too late for that, isn’t it?”

  Desi shook her head, gently tracing her finger around the edge of the teacup.

  “How did you get into a mess like this?” she asked absently.

  “Desi Marie Sheridan, don’t you dare talk to me like I’m a fucking idiot!” Sharon hissed.

  “I’m not talking to you like that, Sharon,” Desi said quickly, the mist on her forehead now a full-fledged sweat. “I just want you to be sure …”

  “Fuck you, Dez,” Sharon barked, cutting her off. “I called you as a friend. I already know what I need to do. I don’t need a damn lecture from you about anything. And I damn sure don’t need you to judge me.”

  “Sharon, I’m not lecturing you,” Desi replied in a pleading voice. “I’m not judging you at all.”

  “Yeah, Dez, you are judging me. You come out here with your Southern ideals and your homespun Alabama ass-backwards advice, and where has it gotten you? You’re no better off than me. I don’t see you living the lifestyles of the rich and famous. And I damn sure don’t see Mr. Right sportin’ you around like you’re the answer to his prayers.”

  Desi stared ahead at the butter yellow kitchen wall, wondering how the phone call had spiraled so out of control. Sharon was angry. Her rage was blazing through the line. She had never been angry with Desi before, not like this. They had cute little skirmishes that always ended in happy banter. She’d never felt the ire that she’d seen Sharon direct at others.

  Desi figured the best thing for her to do was just let Sharon vent until her rage passed through.

  “Can’t we just talk about this rationally?” she asked.

  “Just forget I ever called,” Sharon replied.

  There was the sudden sound of a dial tone in Desi’s ear. She clicked the phone off, laid it on the table, closed her eyes, and took another sip of tea.

  She sat still, letting the warmth of the liquid course over her tongue and caress it in a fluid stream. The steam from the surface of the tea passed through her nostrils, invigorating her lungs. She took in a deep breath as she swallowed.

  She picked up the phone and dialed.

  “What,” the voice answered flatly.

  “Look … I’m kinda broke right now,” Desi said. “I ain’t got no expendable cash to take you to the Polo Lounge, and I wouldn’t know where to buy you some weed if I had the money to do it. You don’t need to be smoking weed anyhow. You’re pregnant.”

  Sharon was silent.

  “Have you been smoking weed, too?” Desi asked, shocked.

  “What do you think?”

  Desi remembered that Sharon had been getting high when she called her two days earlier to confirm Randall James was who he said he was. Sharon was definitely still smoking weed. Desi figured she’d best keep her thoughts to herself.

  “So what’s it gonna be?” Sharon asked.

  “Huh?”

  “How are you going to make up for hurting my feelings?”

  Desi smiled.

  “Well, Sharon, I don’t know. I told you—”

  “Kiss my ass,” Sharon replied.

  “No, I mean, really—”

  “No, Dez … I’m serious. Kiss my ass.”

  Desi didn’t say anything, confused by Sharon’s words.

  “Start kissing right … now!”

  Sharon sounded as if she
had just started clocking a race.

  Desi still said nothing.

  “You seem a bit befuddled,” Sharon said. “Let me help you out a little.”

  She began to make kissing noises into the phone. Desi giggled.

  “I’m not laughing,” Sharon declared, interrupting herself. “Get to smacking, you judgmental bitch.”

  Desi, still giggling, kissed the air in rapid succession.

  “My ass stul feels dry. Kiss harder.”

  Desi made loud, wet, smacking noises.

  Sharon began to laugh. Desi broke down and joined her.

  “I need to teach Glen that trick,” Sharon muttered.

  “Teach him how to use a condom first,” Desi commented, unable to restrain herself.

  “Just for that, gimme one more smack. And make it good.”

  Desi kissed the air. Loudly.

  “Now shut the hell up,” Sharon giggled, “before I ask you to do something worse.”

  The giggles faded into silence. Both women sat holding their respective phones, breathing quietly.

  “What are we gonna do?” Desi whispered.

  “What do you mean, we?”

  “Now come on, Sharon. You know I’ve got your back.”

  “I know, Dez,” Sharon replied softly, her voice thick. “I know you’re here for me.”

  “We’ve gotta do something. Before you hung up on me, you said you already knew what you had to do. Did you mean …”

  “I don’t know what I meant,” Sharon moaned. “I was just talking. You ought to know by now that I’m not the most rational bitch around. Listen … can we meet later today? I think it would help me to see you, not just talk to you on the phone.”

  “Sure. What time?”

  “What time is good for you?” Sharon asked.

  “Well, I’m expecting to hear back from Ken sometime soon about this thing with Randall.”

  “Oh yeah,” Sharon said. “I almost forgot. Did you ask Ken to find out if Randall and his partner are going to be writing for the show full-time?”

  “Yeah, I asked him.”

  “Good.”

  “I should be free later in the afternoon,” Desi said. “How about we meet at Magic Johnson’s Starbucks around three?”

  “That’d be fine.”

  “In the meantime,” Desi said, “try and calm yourself down.”

  “I’m calm,” Sharon lied.

  “Yeah, like a tidal wave.”

  They both laughed. Sharon’s phone beeped.

  “Hold on,” she said, and clicked over. She was gone for three minutes. Long enough for Desi to finish most of her tea.

  “Sorry about that,” Sharon said, clicking back. She sounded excited. “Look, I gotta take this call. It’s Jackson Bennett.”

  “What does he want?” Desi asked.

  “You’ll never believe it. He’s still explaining it to me now. Let me go. I’ll tell you everything this afternoon.”

  “Alright, I’ll see you later.”

  “Peace!” Sharon said, and hung up.

  Desi clicked the phone off and set it on the table.

  “And I thought my world was raggedy,” she said aloud. “Looks like we’re all messed up. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.”

  She drank the last of her tea, wondering how Sharon was going to deal with her situation.

  She also wondered what was going on with Jackson Bennett.

  Desi got up from the table, tossed the teabag in the trash, and put the cup in the sink. She arched her back, stretching, then leaned forward and stretched some more. It’d probably be a while before Ken called.

  She decided to take a mid-morning run.

  BREACH BLONDE

  We quit,” Randall and Steve announced after lunch.

  Actually, it was after lunchtime, but they hadn’t had lunch yet. They figured they’d eat once the deed was done.

  They were inside Meredith’s office. Uninvited.

  Her door was wide open, and her pitbull assistant Jeannie had been nowhere in sight, so the two unceremoniously waltzed in.

  The view from Meredith’s sprawling office on the tenth floor was breathtaking, literally, if not simply because of the sheer thick of the LA smog. It was a sweeping, panoramic glimpse of the house-dotted hills with a view of downtown in the distance to the right.

  The design within was an interesting mesh of styles that went beyond eclectic, ranging from things neoclassical and impressionistic, to arts decoratifs, moderne, and nouveau.

  Anyone who walked in knew Meredith Reynolds was an important woman who was apparently quite full of herself. Which was exactly what she wanted them to know.

  Randall’s and Steve’s respective offices—while functional, relatively spacious, and tastefully decorated—could in no way compare to the combined elegance, artistic abandon, and flat-out hedonism that was represented in Meredith’s expansive domain. An obvious perk of having the double advantage of being the VP of Entertainment and Development and the boss’s kept woman.

  A plush red velvet couch, with decadently curved mahogany arms and legs and sumptuous cushions that seemed to swallow whole all who perched there, sat angled across from her desk, facing the magnificent hazy view. An inviting black leather chaise, a lush combination of deco curves and nouveau lines, was just off to the side. There was a double-wide massage table, complete with all the accoutrements aromatherapy had to offer, gracing the area just outside the built-in, bone-colored marble shower and bath-cum-Jacuzzi.

  A copy of Matisse’s Notre-Dame, une fin d’après-midi was ornately framed in black on the wall just behind the couch. The wall contiguous wore an Ingres, his Valpinçon Bather, also framed in black. Meredith had seen it once in the Louvre, during a Parisian work junket-cum-holiday with Wade, and just had to have a copy framed for her office. Wade, ever willing to indulge her, obliged. Degas’ Portrait of a Dancer hung a few feet away, in a direct opposing line with the black chaise. Meredith liked it most, she’d once commented, because “it matched the couch.”

  The delicately sculpted form of a woman in dancer’s repose, an Erté, a real one (the accounting department had the forty-thousand-dollar receipt to prove it) adorned a glass coffee table. The base of said table was an interesting study in black wrought iron with a series of leaves wending their way through the table’s limbs.

  Lastly, but always of most interest to Randall, were the two zebra chairs made of real fur. They sat right in front of Meredith’s desk.

  Somewhere, Randall mused, two butt-naked zebras had been made pariahs of their tribe.

  The office was an eyeful. The Diabolical Miss M., as Steve often called her, had, if nothing else, a splashy sense of LA flair.

  Meredith was behind her big, expensive black lacquer desk, leaning back in her red leather chair. She was deeply engrossed in a thick document, which was raised close to her face. The chair was turned to the side, revealing her profile.

  The thick sun-streaked blonde hair was blown straight and hung past her shoulders. The long, slender legs were crossed. Her tan, compliments of the prior weekend with Wade in Palm Springs, was fresh and flattering. It went well with her dark gray minisuit and simple black block heels.

  Physically, Meredith was hot, Randall noted, which explained one of the reasons Wade was trying to hit it every chance he got. At thirty-six, she was only nine years younger than Anna Weldon, and she embodied a passion and hunger that kept her youthful and kept Wade obsessed.

  Meredith’s eyes were the only things that gave her away. Despite their bright blue hue, they were angry and dark, and seemed a thousand years old. If she looked at a person long enough, it almost burned.

  Meredith’s eyes revealed her desperation. She was determined to make it to the top, and she was not going to let anything, or anybody, get in her way.

  Originally from Boston, she was born Hazel Atkins. Hazel had grown up in foster homes. She had no idea who her parents were, and not once in her life did she ever care to find out. Betwee
n the ages of seventeen and eighteen, she lived on the streets.

  After spending two years working as a maid at a TraveLodge in Woburn, a gritty, blue-collar suburb of Boston, she took up with fifty-year-old salesman Emerson Cody. Emerson was leaving his wife and running away to start over. Hazel was sick of Boston and all of its suburbs, especially Woburn. She was desperate for something better. Emerson was her ticket out.

  He was lying on the bed, watching television in his hotel room, when Hazel first met him. She stuck her key in the door and barged right in.

  “I didn’t hear you knock,” said the pallid, short, pudgy, balding man. He was wearing only a white T-shirt and briefs.

  “Should I come back?” she asked, unashamed.

  “No. Go ahead and clean up.”

  Emerson watched her as she vacuumed the room. Her thick, dark brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail. He asked her general questions. She gave him general answers. They talked. At one point, Hazel was sitting beside him on the bed. Inside of an hour, she was down on her knees.

  They drove to Los Angeles, California, in his sky blue Chevrolet Caprice. Twenty-year-old Hazel shacked up with him for four months in a little back house in Hawthorne. Emerson drank a lot and didn’t work. When she asked too many questions, he beat her.

  Emerson had a stash of money, three thousand dollars, that he’d brought with him from Boston. Hazel had seen it. He kept it stuffed inside a sock in the back of a drawer.

  He made her take a waitressing job and, every night, demanded she hand over any tips she had made. Usually, the money went for booze. It was up to her to put enough aside to pay the bills and living expenses. When the tips seemed too slight, Emerson, in all his short, pale, pudgy baldness, beat the bewildered girl some more.

  Hazel came in one night after work, her feet aching so badly she could hardly stand, and found Emerson passed out on the grimy couch. In his hand, he clutched an empty bottle of gin. Without hesitation, she gently pried the bottle free and smashed it across his head. Emerson regained consciousness momentarily, then hit the floor with a thud.

  She walked into the bedroom, opened the drawer, and removed the sock filled with money. She took the keys to the sky blue Chevrolet Caprice, and Hazel Atkins was never seen again.