In the Night of the Heat (3 page)

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3

At five o'clock, I was at the Club Bar at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills, and I was nervous. When the bar is also a Hollywood powerhouse meeting spot, there is more work than play despite the easy flow of drinks.

On my way in, I'd brushed past Kevin Bacon coming out, cursing at a lawyer or agent on his cell phone.
What chance do YOU have?
the evil voice in my head said, and that voice worked on me the whole time I waited for the Jewells. I left a foul stink in the men's room, but the guy who came in behind me didn't notice, too busy swimming in his own anxieties.

The Jewells were running late. Very late. Lynda Jewell's assistant, a curly-haired moppet who hardly looked a day over nineteen, kept me updated from her polite distance across the room while she waited for her cell phone to ring. Every fifteen minutes, she manufactured a new excuse.

Finishing a meeting. On a call. Managing a publicity crisis.

My face made Jewell's assistant stammer, so I grinned my most devastating grin at her every time she walked near. She was my staunch ally, buying me sparkling water and refilling it before I could ask. That assistant, aptly named Faith, kept me from cussing somebody out. Or running back to the men's room.

The Peninsula, like all of L.A.'s luxury hotels, is one I know well. There are several bars—one has cabanas and a gigantic swimming pool—but the Club Bar is the vortex. The bar has an intimacy the power brokers like, with dark-paneled walls of California birch, shining brass and sconces that make it look like a guest room in the White House. Or a museum: There are six marvelous paintings of scenes from historic Los Angeles and Beverly Hills. Faith had led me to an empty wing of the bar draped in light, colorful fabrics to give even more privacy to plush cushions arranged with mounds of mock Turkish pillows.

It was a pleasant place to wait, but waiting sucks. I hate waiting.

Because the invitation had been such a compliment, the delay felt like twice the insult. By the time the Jewells were an hour late and Faith was biting her lip with worry that our brief flirtation was about to end on a sour note, the Evil Voice in my head was a full-blown chorus:
You thought YOU were going to have a meeting with Lynda Jewell?

I was so mad, I couldn't trust whatever might come out of my mouth. I had to walk out.

As I reached for my cell phone to tell Len the bad news, Faith flew to me again—this time, she was smiling. “Lynda just drove up,” she chirped.

My heart somersaulted in a way that surprised me. My palms flared with the damp heat of nerves, the way they do before a demanding stage performance. Faith patted the small of my back like a mother saying
There, there, you'll do fine
. I gallantly kissed her hand, and her cheeks flushed; overripened strawberries.

BACK OUT NOW BEFORE YOU HUMILIATE YOURSELF,
my Evil Voice screamed.

Suddenly, she was there.

Lynda Jewell was sparrow-boned and barely over five feet tall, so she upturned her face as I towered above her. Her face looked up at me like a full, bright moon. She was about fifty, although it took an expert eye to see it. Her tanned skin was taut enough from subtle plastic surgery, but she was standing so close that I could see the crow's-feet bordering her large, aquamarine eyes.

“Tennyson Hardwick.” Her eyes twinkled like Aruba's ocean waves. “I'm a big fan.”

It's dizzying to hear Lynda Jewell utter your name, much less proclaim that she's a fan. My heart leapt again, until I remembered that in Hollywood the phrase “I'm a big fan” translates to “My secretary's heard of you.” Seriously.

“I'm flattered, Ms. Jewell,” I said. I hoped my hand was steady when I squeezed her dry, cool palm inside of mine. “Coming from you, that means a lot.”

Her gaze lingered, and her thin lips shifted in a way I couldn't read. She held my hand a long time before finally letting go. “Lynda,” she said after she'd studied me. “Let's sit.”

“Apple martini?” Faith asked her. She already had the drink waiting for her boss.

“Just one. Then we'll be fine here, Faith.”

While we sat in a strangers' silence, Lynda Jewell's eyes were rapt on me. Intelligent banter is one of my specialties, but I was at a rare loss for chitchat. I quizzed myself on everything April had tried to teach me, but for a harrowing moment, I couldn't even remember the movie's name. I was lucky to remember her husband's.

“So…is Ron still coming?” I said finally.

“Not this time.” She concentrated on draining her martini glass, her eyes closed. Just stress, or was she nervous, too?

Lenox Avenue,
I remembered with a wave of relief. I tried on a confident pose, more like I imagined Troy: inclined comfortably, arm draped across the sofa back, leg crossed over my knee at the calf. Much more suave than I felt.

“I'm excited FilmQuest is doing
Lenox Avenue,
” I said. “That story should be told.”

Lynda agreed vaguely. “FilmQuest has a suite upstairs from a junket. Let's move our meeting up there.”

The first alarm bell sounded in my mind. A one-on-one meeting at a public bar with a studio executive was one thing, but a hotel suite? I hoped Faith was up in the suite, too, but I doubted it. Besides, half the point of a meeting with Lynda Jewell at the Peninsula is to be
seen
having a meeting with Lynda Jewell at the Peninsula.

I could hear Len—my Good and Pragmatic Voice—talking to me this time:
Don't do it, Ten.
But Lynda Jewell was already on her feet, pulling on her oversized Mario Magro handbag. “I have a script up there,” she said. “Ron's done a terrific take on the book.”

The script was in her hotel suite. Oscar-winning screenwriter. Close enough to touch.

I gave Lynda Jewell a good, long look. I let her see I was mulling the pieces over.

“I'd love to see that script,” I said, as if I was entitled to. I was acting already. I came to my feet and gestured her forward with a sweep of my arm.
Ladies first.
I'm an old-fashioned gentleman; some clients called me the black Errol Flynn.

Lynda Jewell smiled, appreciating my flourishes. “Then let's do that.”

We were alone in the elevator, but as soon as the door closed, she took two steps over until she stood right in front of me. I could smell
her Chanel shampoo, even without trying. When the elevator stopped abruptly at the third floor, her weight shifted backward slightly, and she brushed against me, buttocks grazing my thigh. It was so bold, it was almost plausible.

Shit,
I thought.
I am so fucked.

Instead of looking at her, I gazed at the mile-long, colorful carpeting that bespoke grandness, beckoning me out of the elevator car. I remembered that tantalizing script sitting atop a desktop only yards from where I stood. Another sweep of my arm:
Madame.

While we walked together in silence, my mind raced: Okay, she was signaling big-time, but not everybody who flirts has the nerve to act out on it. If she'd just wanted to fuck me, she wouldn't have brought her assistant. Or called my agent. She would have done it another way. That's what I was telling myself as I followed her down the hall, toward a hotel suite I was almost sure must be empty.

For once, my Evil Voice was on my side:
What the hell? She'll show you the script. She might flirt a little, but that's just a game. Keep her focused on the script. This is yours.

That was my plan. Finesse it somehow. I was good at that.

If I could pull off ten minutes of charm in the room—
hey, gotta race to an appointment in Culver City, a fund-raiser for college kids, dontcha know
—I could blast out of there, mission accomplished. She'd feel good, I'd have an important new friend. I'd exit smoothly, no ruffled feathers, a peck on the lips—and if she slipped me a little tongue at the door, that's nothing to take seriously in Hollywood. In some circles, a few inches of tongue are almost a courtesy. In Lynda Jewell's circles, no doubt.

PENINSULA SUITE
, the door proclaimed. There I was.

Lynda Jewell had her keycard ready, and we were behind a closed door in a flash.

It wasn't my first visit to the Peninsula Suite, so it felt like return
ing to a rarely used room in my own house. The rug was the one I remembered, the same beautiful black baby grand piano nestled by the window. “I have a fond feeling for pianos; I still remember the three chords I learned in music class in junior high.” At more than two thousand square feet, the airy suite was bigger than the house I'd grown up in.

I was relieved to see stacks of press materials and large cardboard cutouts of Colin Farrell and Matt Damon for the movie her studio was promoting,
Outside In.
The suite was like an office, and I felt myself relax. The actors' life-size images were vivid harbingers of better times to come. They had been in this room, only hours before. I could almost smell their success lingering in the upholstery where their asses had been planted for the parade of interviewers.

Lynda Jewell was at the bar. “Drink?”

I almost declined, but my Evil Voice insisted on sociability. “Red Bull and vodka?” At least I would be alert.

“Colin lives on those,” she said. “Says he can stay up all night.”

While she fixed my drink, I sat on the plush sofa and scanned the tables for the
Lenox Avenue
script. The sooner I had it in my hands, the better. No luck.
Shit.

Lynda Jewell walked to me and handed me the drink, but she didn't sit. She stood over me, smiling with a secret. One by one, she kicked off her shoes.

“You mentioned a script…” I said.

“You don't remember me, do you?” She whispered the words.

No man wants to hear those words from any woman, much less Lynda Jewell. I could have kidded myself that we'd run into each other at Whole Foods and talked about life and the universe once, but the dance in her eyes told a different story.

My mouth went so dry, I couldn't feel my tongue. No glib answer for that, but I tried.

“I wouldn't forget meeting you.”

She chuckled, a nearly masculine growl in her throat. “I'll give you a hint: I was wearing a wig. A horrible wig at that. I looked like Little Orphan Annie. And big Elizabeth Taylor sunglasses. They probably covered half my face.”

“Are you sure it was me?”

“The Raffles L'Ermitage Hotel,” she said. Specifics have terrible clarifying power.

I felt the world slip off kilter, and my fingers tightened across the sofa cushion. My old life and my new life almost never collided: I had made sure of that. Now, I could hear my agent's frustrated mantra from those days:
It'll catch up to you, Ten. Everything always does.

As Lynda Jewell went on, I recognized what had spiced her smile when she first saw me: bemusement. “My friend Pauline put you up there. Paid every bill. Minibar. Room service. Massages. A month or more, wasn't it? You cost her five figures. And all you had to do when she slipped across the street from the studio was fuck her in the ass.”

Suddenly, I remembered the woman in the ridiculous orange wig and sunglasses, a friend my client Pauline, another film exec, brought to watch us from across the room. She'd never said a word, too shy to join in. Apparently, Lynda Jewell had recovered from her shyness.

I would have stood up to leave if she hadn't suddenly swung one leg over to straddle me, nimble as a teenage gymnast. She weighed next to nothing on my lap. Her ample chest brushed beneath my chin. I hadn't noticed her chest before, and suddenly I could feel her implants. Her skin's scent, stark and new, filled my nose.

I'd underestimated Lynda Jewell, and I'd forgotten what and who I was. I was in trouble.

Lynda Jewell savored the battle she saw on my face.

“So…here's how it is,” she said. “Right here. Right now. You
walk out with a script, and I'll personally call any casting director in town to sing your praises.”

Slowly, rhythmically, she slid herself back and forth across my lap. She exerted so much pressure that her bony hip hurt; I had to uncross my leg and shift position, which gave her even freer access to my private parts. Her warm groin against mine felt disloyal to April. When she touched my cheek, I flinched as if her fingers had sparked. My face burned.

It was hard to concentrate on what she was saying, but what I heard was enough. I wanted to clamp my palms to her tiny waist, lift her up, and deposit her away. But I didn't. A deeper instinct told me not to touch her. One person's gentle rebuke is another person's assault. Anything that happened in that room was Lynda Jewell's word against mine, and I didn't like the odds against me.

Besides, it wasn't a good idea to touch her at all. Touching would only make it worse.

“I wish I could,” I said. Truer words have never been spoken. “Please get up.”

Her smile glittered, and I knew she was going to try to make me suffer. Lynda Jewell was a tough negotiator, or she wouldn't be a kingmaker. “Really?”

She began unbuttoning her blouse, and the pang of fear in my chest felt as real and sickening as my day in the desert. As if I was about to die. Lynda Jewell was a bad dream I'd been having for years, replaying with my eyes wide open. I knew how this dream ended.

“Don't do that,” I said, averting my eyes. I raised my hands as if she had a gun.

“Or what?” Her smile slipped past bemusement to something edgier, an implicit threat. Man or woman, anyone who claims not to enjoy power is lying.

She raced through the rest of her buttons and flung the blouse
to the floor. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a zebra pattern on her bra. I couldn't help peeking. Her chest was smooth and freckled, her breasts paler than the skin beneath her collarbone. Man-made mounds rising high. Her body looked just fine.