An Accidental Affair (14 page)

“Enough to see what you’re working on?”

“Not even close.”

As her image and voice filled the room, she took a cushion off the sofa and dropped it to the floor. She opened her purse and removed a Listerine strip, put it inside her mouth, smiled at me, motioned for me to come closer. I did. She lowered her body until her knees sank into the soft leather of the Italian cushion. She winked up at me as she unzipped my pants.

She said, “You’ll beg to show me.”

“Won’t.”

She said that she was wet, very wet, and started to talk dirty, let dirty and vulgar words come out of her pretty little mouth, gave me head, and massaged the area behind my balls.

“Your dick is amazing. You’re so clean-shaven down here. You taste so clean.”

I thought that what she had done in the car was the best blowjob ever.

I was wrong.

I opened my eyes and she was staring up at me, once again smiling.

She said, “I love that expression. You look so weak, so stunned. You are so into it.”

Again I swallowed and moaned. She kept on masturbating me as her other hand opened her purse. Moments later, she sprinkled white powder across the length of my erection.

I took a breath and managed to say, “You need to take it easy powdering your nose.”

“I’m just trying to fit in.”

“You’ll end up fitting in a coffin.”

“Stop it. Right now all I’m worried about is you fitting inside of my mouth.”

After she had inhaled the white, she licked my flesh and took some of me inside her mouth. The coke had eased into my pores. It fueled
my erection. I held her hair, guided her, watched her face, how it had changed shape, watched her with her mouth full, then I heard her voice, heard her talking in the film and turned my head, watched her larger-than-life image on my screen. As she took me deeper, I watched her in a film where she played the part of a nun.

She whispered, “Are you going to tell me about your next goddamn script or what?”

“You’ll have to…stop doing that…let the blood flow back to my brain for a moment.”

“Poor baby can’t talk while I do this.”

“No. I can’t. Just like you can’t talk while I’m licking you.”

“Try. Come on. Try multitasking. Impress me, Thicke. Impress me.”

I moaned and told her about my screenplay.

She stopped sucking me and used her hands. “Anybody interested?”

“The usual suspects; Cruise, Jolie, Bergs, Pitt, Theron, and Damon.”

“Wide range.”

“On this one, I did two versions. One with a male as lead, one with a female.”

“A female lead is possible? I’m dying to get on board a project like that.”

I said, “I have a meeting with Hazel Tamana Bijou soon. A power meeting. I can bring up your name, see if there is any way that she can push to get you attached.”

“No. If you do that, then this affair becomes a backroom casting couch.”

“No it doesn’t.”

“If there are auditions, I’ll tell my agent. I’ll earn my way in. Not through you. And definitely not through Hazel Tamana Bijou. I’ve heard her conversations. I don’t want to be owned by her.”

She stood up. “Told you that you’d tell me.”

She kissed me, smiled, and led me to the living room, to the Italian
sofa, and then she rested on her belly and raised her white robe up, pulled it until it bunched at her slender waist, and grinned back at me. I didn’t pull her thong off, just tugged it to the side. She was already wet. I barely touched her, but she shuddered and moaned like she was dying. I tossed my robe away, let it fly to wherever gravity took it, and went inside her with eagerness and ease.

With a soft smile, with a broken voice, she whispered, “You have talent, you know that?”

“What does that mean, Regina Baptiste?”

“Do we have to talk about all of this now? While you feel so good inside me, is that really the conversation that you want to have? Or do you want this conversation. Like that move?”

“You’ve been holding out on me.”

She took me on a ride that became wicked, and its own wretched fire burned with incredible noise and fury. I led her into the master bedroom and we both staggered across the suite and collapsed on the king-sized bed. We looked at each other and breathed in silence.

Regina Baptiste said, “James, this script is fucking brilliant.”

Three hours later her assistant had come and gone and we were inside my laundry room, a room painted golden and filled with framed posters from some of my favorite movies.
Casablanca
.
Fort Apache
.
Doctor Zhivago
. Akira Kurosawa’s
Dreams
.
Unforgiven
.

Regina had grabbed my dirty clothes and put all of our laundry together, used one washing machine for dark colors; another for whites, and the third for bright clothing.

Her assistant had brought her more clothes. Now she had on wrinkled Levi’s, her hair in a ponytail and was wearing my
DON’T FUCKIN’ JUDGE ME
T-Shirt. Regina Baptiste was on top of the middle washing machine, my script in her lap, a grin of victory on her face.

I was seated at the folding table, Gunnar Staalesen’s
The Writing on the Wall
in my hand. Regina Baptiste had texted her assistant and told her to bring it with the laundry and extra clothing. Regina Baptiste read the one and only copy of my script as I enjoyed Gunnar’s work, a story about a man named Varg Veum. That name would stick with me for a lifetime.

She said, “You actually use a typewriter?”

“The rumors that you have heard about me and my typewriter are true.”

“Get out.”

“I’ve used the same typewriter since I started writing. My mother bought it for me.”

“You’re amazing. I know I keep saying that, but damn I am impressed.”

Before I knew it the dryer buzzed. That load of sheets and towels was done.

She commenced folding our dark clothes; boxers, T-shirts, jeans, panties, socks, thongs, and bras. I put the novel at my side and picked up my Nikon, took photos of a priceless moment.

No makeup. Hair pulled back. I let her become a domestic queen and I went back to reading. But a minute later, the second dryer buzzed. She went to the dryer and opened it up.

She said, “Sheets. Help me fold.”

I put the book down, grabbed one end of the sheets while she grabbed the other. The sheets were hot, and like a warm lover, felt good in my hands. We worked well together. Then we got to the part where we had to meet halfway, the part where we had to touch.

We held that position. She took the warm sheets from my hand.

She whispered, “Jesus.”

“What?”

She leaned in and we kissed again. Short kisses. Fun kisses.

Her cellular rang. She had an app on her cellular and she could access Skype.

It was Bobby Holland. She answered and told him that she was doing laundry. Her camera wasn’t on, but his was. I saw his face. I saw Bobby Holland right in front me.

She said, “You were supposed to call me two hours ago.”

“We ran over. Had problems with one of the cameras. Where are you?”

“I’m home waiting on you to call. My publicist called me, Bobby.”

I saw his long blond hair and blue eyes as I heard her smooth lies.
He asked her to turn on her video. She told him that her camera wasn’t working. He asked her to check the settings.

“A process server came this morning, Bobby. They gave the papers to my assistant.”

“I’ll take care of it, Regina. It will all be taken care of.”

“Who is the woman?”

“Calm down, Regina.”

“Don’t act like I’m a fucking moron.”

“It’s a lie. They are trying to slander my name. I’m filing a defamation of character suit. My lawyers are serving them. When the truth comes out, you’ll see that it’s all a lie.”

“How long have you known about this kid? I swear, Bobby, if one reporter, if one fucking camera shows up on our front porch…just don’t fuck me over, Bobby. They called my goddamn publicist and asked for a statement. They didn’t comment because they were blindsided.”

She left the laundry room and went to the other side of the pool. A half hour passed before she finished her call and came back to the laundry room.

I asked, “You okay?”

“You folded everything.”

“You were occupied.”

“Thanks. I really need to apologize for that. But I’ve been holding that in all day.”

She put her hand up to the side of my face and smiled.

She said, “So, what does that terse expression mean?”

A million thoughts were in my head. Regina Baptiste’s expression mirrored mine.

It looked like she wanted to say something, like she was ready to tell me good-bye.

She asked, “May I stay the night?”

“Sure that’s possible?”

“It’s possible.”

Then she pulled my pants down, yanked her own pants down, and turned around, her face so intense, her lips pulled in. I took her just like that. I went inside her and held on as she backed into me over and over. She cursed and moaned. This was her
Monster’s Ball
.

Three more days went by. Regina Baptiste was still sleeping in my bed.

Driver came for us, and we sat the behind tinted windows of one of my luxury cars as he drove us to Geisha House for sushi, and from there to Club Mapona. It was the nicest and hottest club between Hollywood and Dubai, six dance floors and twice as many bars, an evening there costing as much as a month’s rent in San Francisco. It was designed to keep riffraff out, but unfortunately, from hip-hop to the Hiltons, L.A. had moneyed riffraff and rich Poor White Trash. I took her into the owner’s suite overlooking the spectacular club, a thousand-square-foot room that made the people who bought two-thousand-dollar tables in VIP look like they were in the slums. We had the suite to ourselves, along with top-shelf service, and privacy.

House music played and she danced and sweated and danced and laughed and danced.

She beamed. “This joint is your club?”

“One of my investments. Part owner. Not my favorite investment either.”

“This suite is larger than my first apartment in Livingston.”

“Nobody uses it but me. It has a full bath and a Murphy bed in case I ever want to stay.”

“Or get butt-naked and get your freak on while everyone out there gets their party on.”

“That too.”

“Come here often? Pun intended.”

I smiled. “I rarely come here. Mostly just to check on things.”

She laughed. “Jesus. I had no idea. I’ve been here more than a few times.”

“I saw you from up here. You were with Holland. Hilton and Dash were here that night.”

“
Small
house in Los Feliz. A
half-dozen
cars and each cost as much as a starter-home. This club that has a
two-hundred-dollar
cover charge. You’re too modest for your own good.”

The private line in the room rang and I took the call. When I was done, I went to the camera that showed people coming inside the club and saw the celebrity of the hour.

I motioned at one of the monitors. “That ruffian Johnny Bergs just entered the building.”

“Oh.
People
’s Most Handsome Man of the Year. Friend of yours?”

“He’s Johnny Bergs. I invited him down. Good for business, if nothing else.”

That night. The fight at the club. We’d been in my suite, looking out of the one-way glass for about thirty minutes, dancing and people watching and drinking while Driver stayed at the car and waited, and it was just before one
A.M.
when the commotion at the bar pulled our attention.

It was Johnny Bergs and his crew fighting with a bunch of guys who looked like Jay-Z and 50 Cent and T.I. and Lil Wayne clones. At least five hundred paying Patrón drinkers were at the bar, most of them the Hilton, Kardashian, and Lohan types. Two drinks and they would have sex in the booths and bi-curious activity in the bathrooms. One of the drunken Jay-Z types came at Johnny Bergs and Bergs threw a hard right punch into his face and took him down. It was one-sided. The guy was smaller and already three sheets to the wind. Before the guy could get up and come back after Johnny Bergs, a T.I.-type jumped in, but the mean-looking guys in Bergs’s party beat
him down. The rest of the hip-hop guy’s friends jumped in and Bergs’s boys attacked them all, threw barstools, punches, bottles, and glasses.

Regina Baptiste was in shock. “That girl in the dreadlocks is fighting with them.”

“Which girl?”

“She was knocked down. She’s on the floor in the middle of the crowd.”

It took a good five minutes—drinks flying, women ducking, cell phones recording—before the bouncers had everything back under control. Johnny Handsome stood with his entourage. Then came the applause. They always applauded him for his wrongs. The crowd applauded him as the bouncers pulled the other guys, the riffraff that had much money and little class, out of the club, fighting with them all the way to the front door. I shook my head. Johnny Bergs was just as much riffraff as the ones ejected.

Regina Baptiste said, “Jesus. I bet that will make
TMZ
and
Entertainment Tonight
.”

One of the managers came up to the booth and explained to me what had happened.

He said, “Johnny Bergs sends his apologies. He heard that you were up here.”

“I’m not here, Flaco. I’m never here. I’m not here now and never will be here.”

“Sorry. Didn’t know.”

“What does America’s favorite action hero slash lover boy want?”

“He got excited when I said you were up here. Something about a script that you wrote.”

“Flaco, look. Tell him to get in line. What just happened? Besides another lawsuit.”

“No idea. Bergs said that the other party started it. The other guys said that Bergs and his party stepped on their shoes and didn’t
apologize. Bergs said that he’s always being challenged because of his action-hero status. He wants to come up and tell you in person.”

“Who is he with? Bodyguards?”

“Most of them are his brothers. They just kicked seven shades of shit out of those guys.”