Girlfriends (Patrick Sanchez) (33 page)

“What the fuck are we going to fucking do?” Gina said to Cheryl as they drove away from the bookstore. “Any day now we could be all over the Internet in all our glory.”

“I can’t believe this. This is insane. He can’t do this. It’s not legal. It can’t be.”

“You’re right, Cheryl. It has to be illegal.”

“Then we’ll go to the police.”

“And say what? Oops, Officer, I banged an old fat guy. Please lock him up.”

“Let me ask you something, Gina. Why did you get tested for HIV? You can’t remember if Griffin used a condom. Can you?”

“How did you know?”

“Because I can’t remember either. The whole night is a daze. I think he drugged us, Gina.”

“You think? I guess it’s possible. I had a couple of drinks with him. He could have slipped something into one of them. I don’t remember much about my encounter with him, but I wasn’t ever unconscious or anything.”

“I’ve seen pieces on the news about that date rape drug, Rohypnol. Maybe he drugged us with Rohypnol. If that’s the case, we can press charges,” Cheryl said.

“I don’t think it was that date rape drug. I’ve seen information about it on the news too. I think it basically renders its victims unconscious. I wish I could say I was unconscious, but I wasn’t. I just don’t remember the night very well.”

“Okay, so maybe it wasn’t Rohypnol, but it could have been something else.”

“Sure it could have. Anything’s possible. Anyway, at this point it doesn’t really matter how it happened. We need to figure out what we’re going to do about it.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“Grab the phone from the glove compartment, would you?” Gina asked Cheryl, who reached for the mobile phone and handed it to Gina. Gina dialed information and asked to be connected to Myers’ Books and Magazines.

“Bookstore,” the woman at Myers’ said.

“Hi, I’m trying to reach Griffin . . . ?”

“Cirelli,” Cheryl said.

“Griffin Cirelli. Is he there?”

“No, he’s not here right now, but I expect him any moment. They’re filming tonight. May I take a message?”

“Any moment? No. No message,” Gina said, hanging up the phone and switching lanes so she could turn around. “Well, Griffin is apparently on his way to the bookstore as we speak. I say we just confront him and tell him we’ll go to the police if he doesn’t give us the films.”

“God, we have to see him again. I’m not sure I can bear it.”

When the girls reached the store, they went back to the woman behind the counter and asked for Griffin.

“He’s busy right now. If you want to leave something, an article of clothing perhaps, I’ll have him autograph it, and you can come back and pick it up.”

“Autograph? We don’t want his autograph,” Gina said, trouncing behind the counter toward the back room with Cheryl following.

“You can’t go back there,” the woman called behind them, but it was too late. Gina and Cheryl were already in the back of the store, which was more than four times the size of the front area. What appeared to be two stages or television sets took up the bulk of the space, and professional lighting and camera equipment was strewn about. A short, skinny man was directing a young woman in the bedroom set. She had long, black hair and was wearing a tiny silk bathrobe. Gina recognized her as the woman who was walking out of David’s house the day she was on her stakeout. When she saw Gina and Cheryl walk into the back, she got distracted, prompting the director to speak to the two girls.

“May I help you, ladies?”

“We’re here to see Griffin,” Cheryl said.

“He’s not available. He’ll be having a publicity event later this month, if you’d like to come back.”

“No, we wouldn’t like to come back. We’d like to see him now,” Gina said firmly.

“What part of my words did you not understand? I said he is unavailable.”

“I don’t care . . .” Gina started to say, when Cheryl nudged her on the arm and pointed toward a door to the left of the set. It had a small star and the words “The Big G” painted on it.

Gina and Cheryl started toward the door.

“Where do you think you’re going?” the man asked.

Ignoring him, Gina banged on the dressing room door. “Griffin, open up.”

“Who is it?” Griffin called from behind the door.

Without answering, Gina opened the door and saw Griffin sitting, stark naked, at his desk, which was loaded with food.

“I’m in the middle of my dinner, ladies. What do you want?”

“We know all about your little scheme, Griffin.”

“Who are you?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t recognize us.”

“You look vaguely familiar, but I can’t place the name. What? Did I fuck you? ’Cause I fuck a lot of women. You can’t expect me to remember every pathetic bitch I prod, now, can you?” Griffin said, dropping every pretense of the shy, middle-aged man the girls had met at Rumors.

“Asshole!” Cheryl said.

“Don’t waste your breath, Cheryl,” Gina said. “Now, listen, Mr. Big G. We know all about your sad little baseball cap with the hidden camera. We want any films of us, and we want them right now. We don’t care about the other women, but give us our films or we’ll go to the police.”

“The police?” Griffin said, laughing. “You chicky babes are stupider than you look. Go ahead—call the police. What do you think will happen besides this whole story reaching the media and your faces being plastered all over the news? Please, go to the police. At worst I get a slap on the wrist and tons of publicity for my movies and my Web site.”

Gina and Cheryl stared at him briefly in silence.

“You’re going to give us those films. You may not know it yet, but we will get them back. Let’s go, Cheryl, before he stands up and we have to look at that tiny little dick of his,” Gina said to Cheryl before turning her glare back to Griffin. “Big G. What does that stand for, Griffin? Do you have a very big goat?”

Griffin laughed. “I love a feisty little filly. Keep talking, and I won’t need to stand up for you to see my—”

“Bastard!” Gina said, interrupting Griffin before following Cheryl out the door.

Pretty Girl

G
ina, Peter, Linda, and Annie were at Pizzeria Paradiso, enjoying some of the best pizza in D.C. They had just come from Peter’s office. Gina and Linda had waited in the car while Peter and Annie went up to Cameron’s cube to work their magic. Annie had tried to write out detailed instructions for Peter that told him exactly what he needed to do, but as she went over them with him, she could see his utter confusion at the daunting task. Annie worked with computers all day, every day, so it wasn’t uncommon for her to discuss technical jargon with the less computer savvy and often get impatient with their lack of understanding. Such was the case with Peter. Rather than field his questions for an hour and help him through the job over the phone, she decided just to come along and do it herself. The least Peter figured he could do was take her out for a bite to eat.

“God, Annie, you’re amazing. I can’t believe you did it so quickly,” Gina said from across the table. She tried to add to the conversation every once in a while, but she was hardly in the mood to be out on the town. Her test results were due back the next day, and she was a nervous wreck. If that weren’t bad enough, her drunken image was about to be plastered all over cyberspace, having sex with an old fart.

The only good thing about the whole mess was that it helped Gina put a few things into perspective. She may have been single with no immediate hope for a meaningful relationship and stuck in a dead-end job, but recent events prompted a few revelations. For one, she had her health, something she rarely thought about until there was a possibility that it might be taken away. If her results came back negative, she swore she would never take it for granted again. She had really great friends who would do almost anything for her. Gina realized that even Shirley, with all her faults, was a blessing in her life. Under a cloud of HIV and unwanted Internet exhibitionism, she realized the silliness of being jealous of her friends and generally miserable over the state of her life. Once it was over (and oh, how she hoped it would be over), she vowed to live her life differently.

“Please, it was nothing. Actually, it’s more fun than I’ve had in a while. Little did I know, I’m in the wrong business. I shouldn’t be helping businesses with software issues. I should just start helping people screw over their colleagues.”

Peter laughed. “Not a bad idea really. I’m sure your services would be in great demand.”

“How did you learn so much about computers?” Linda asked Annie.

“I don’t know. It just sort of happened. I was temping as a secretary in the IS department of an insurance company downtown, and I guess I really started to get into it. I wasn’t that busy, so I offered to help one of the programmers. He showed me some of the basics. I was eventually hired as an analyst and then took a few courses at George Mason. I kept taking classes and continued to learn on the job, and a few years later I was the vice president of Systems and Programming.”

“That’s fantastic. I’m terrible with computers.”

“I’m sure you’re not. Everyone is so afraid of technical jobs. People think you have to be some kind of computer geek or math genius to work in technology, but it’s really no different than banking or any other field. You just get the training and keep learning as you go.”

“I’d be afraid I’d screw up.”

“Of course you’d screw up. I screw up all the time, but you learn from your mistakes, and you make less and less of them. You should think about it. You’re a bright girl, Linda. I’m sure you could learn to do anything you wanted. Not to mention technology jobs are booming, and employers are paying steep price tags for qualified candidates.”

“Really?”

“I do some consulting for my old company, and they pay me two hundred dollars an hour. Who knows, get some training, Linda, and maybe you can be my first employee.”

“Careful what you offer. I might just take you up on that.”

“That’s fine with me. I’d love to have such a pretty girl work for me.”

Oh, that was subtle, Gina thought, observing the two girls.

Linda almost started looking around to see who the “pretty girl” was, when she realized that it was her. Lord, when it rained it poured—first Rosa, and now Annie. Linda smiled at Annie, acknowledging the compliment and sizing her up.

She is sort of cute, although a little pudgy, and she’d have to do something with that hair, Linda thought to herself, although not really interested in bantering with Annie. She was so happy to be with Rosa, someone she actually found terribly interesting and sexy. It was so nice to be hit on by Annie and be able to essentially say “Thanks, but I’m taken.”

Caught in a Lie

T
hank God, it’s almost lunchtime, Cheryl thought to herself. She’d been in the same meeting for over three hours. Ever since she was promoted to implementation manager she had to go to so many meetings. When she was promoted to oversee the implementation of new client accounts, it was going to be her responsibility to make sure everything got up and running smoothly. Only problem was her company hadn’t landed any new clients in months. This left Cheryl without an exact job to do, so she was constantly pulled into various projects. Today she was supposed to have reviewed a one-hundred-page quality improvement plan that everyone was discussing in the meeting.

“I think it was a bit too long, especially the account management section. We should probably tighten up the claims section as well,” Cheryl lied. She hadn’t read either section, but she had overheard another manager saying almost the same thing in the hallway before the meeting. There was no way Cheryl could concentrate on some convoluted document about quality improvement initiatives the company was never going to spend the money to implement anyway. Her HIV test results were due back today, and she had been such a nervous wreck all week, she had barely gotten any work done at all.

“Well, it’s almost time to break for lunch,” Cheryl’s boss, Sandra, said. “Why don’t we wrap things up. Let’s do a quick round-table. Why don’t you guys update me on your projects, and then we’ll call it quits until two o’clock.”

Sandra looked at Veronica on Cheryl’s left and gestured for her to begin.

“Well, I’m working on the new account management manual that I told you about last week. I’ve pared it down to four hundred and twenty pages and should have a draft for you to review next week. I’ve also been meeting with Janice in the Claims Department about developing some standard letters to send to clients. . . .”

Cheryl just looked at Veronica as she continued to drivel on about all her various projects. Veronica was a major workaholic and was always juggling several different projects at once. As Veronica continued talking, Cheryl desperately tried to come up with something she could say she had been working on. She had been so preoccupied with her HIV test, and the whole mess with Griffin, she really hadn’t accomplished anything all week.

“Thanks, Veronica,” Sandra said as Veronica finished up. Then she looked at Cheryl.

Shit! Cheryl thought. If Cheryl had known Sandra was going to ask them for progress updates, she never would have sat next to Veronica. She certainly didn’t want to have to follow her. Cheryl had been working on a project to revise one of the company databases with a guy in Information Services the week before. Maybe she could just say she was still working on that.

“Gosh. I’ve been real busy this week. I’ve been working with Ron Lopez in IS on revising the client database and—”

Cheryl didn’t finish before Veronica cut her off, “Ron Lopez? He’s been on vacation all week.”

Fuck! Cheryl thought.

“Yeah, I think he’s in Bermuda or the Bahamas or something,” another meeting attendee interjected.

Fuck! Cheryl thought again, starting to feel flushed. “Oh, that’s right. Not Ron . . . I meant . . . ah . . . I don’t remember the name of the guy, but I’ve been working on that database.”

“I thought that was finished,” Veronica added. “I saw Ron last week, and he said you guys had finished that.”