She Sins at Midnight (22 page)

Melinda could barely breathe she was so excited. She stood up and declared, “I’m going to go into the house to call Josh and have him FAX me the release.”

“Actually, he needs to FAX it to my assistant at Quest. We’ll make sure it’s all legal and signed by Josh and then we’ll have you sign it.” Cyn asked, “But don’t you want to talk to Oscar about this first?”

Melinda waved her hand dismissively, “No, no, Oscar wants whatever will make me happy. I don’t need to bother him with this.”

Cynthia hoped her smile didn’t look as devious as it felt, “Excellent! Tell Josh to call my assistant and she’ll give him my FAX number.”

Melinda bounced into Creigh’s house like she was in an anti-gravity chamber. She couldn’t wait to get rid of Josh once and for all. She was sick and tired of all the excuses he made for them to meet. He wasn’t doing much for her career, but his pecker always seemed to be in her mouth. What was wrong with that picture? Melinda still planned to sue the daylights out of Lila Montgomery, but only because that had become personal.

As soon as Melinda left, Cyn picked up her cell phone and called Charlotte. “Hey Charlotte, it’s me. Anything new?”

Her assistant replied, “I’ve messengered over contracts to all of your people and so far we’ve gotten ten of them back.”

“Anyone giving you a hard time about my whereabouts?”

Charlotte answered, “Who would? You’ve brought so much earning power over here that they’d probably give you a month off.”

Cyn thought she was right. “Listen, I hate to do this to you, but Josh Furber is going to be calling for our FAX number. He’ll probably just have his assistant do it, but I wanted to give you a heads up, just in case.”

Surprised, Charlotte asked, “Why would he be calling here”

“Because he’s going to be under the impression that Melinda Forrester is leaving him for me. He’s going to be sending over a parting release.”

Alarmed, Charlotte asked, “Why would Melinda sign one of those? They’re death!”

Cyn laughed to herself. Melinda had already fulfilled her two year commitment to Amalgamated which meant that she was working with them on a project-to-project basis. Either party could leave at any time, so for her to ask them to sign a release was an unnecessary step they would take very personally. She was effectively insuring they would never work together again. Cyn answered, “She’s signing it because I asked her to.”

Confused, her assistant inquired, “Is Melinda coming over to Quest, then?”

“She thinks she is.”

“But is she?”

“Don’t know yet, Char. The drama hasn’t played out yet. But let’s just say that I wouldn’t count on it.”

A
s Oscar and Creigh walked up to the club house, Oscar let out a low whistle, “This is some place. You folks in Illinois live a lot better than I ever imagined.”

The North Hills Country Club was very beautiful. The actual club house used to be the home of a department store heir and looked like the Gatsby’s country manor. The first floor was large enough to house two restaurants, a ballroom, a tearoom and six guest suites available for rental by the members.

The men walked around back and checked in five minutes before their tee time. They opted to go without a caddy so they would have more freedom to discuss the case.

The course was a beautiful rolling eighteen holes and Creigh was really looking forward to being out on the green again. He didn’t belong to a club in L.A. for the sole reason that he worked so many hours that he’d never have time to enjoy it. For a moment he thought it was too bad he and Oscar weren’t just two friends out enjoying the afternoon. But until Oscar and Melinda dropped the lawsuit against Lila, he had to view his client with a good amount of skepticism.

Oscar felt a little out of place in this waspy environment and after they took their first swing, he asked, “So Creigh, tell me, do you have any blacks or Jews as members here?”

A bit taken aback by the question, Creigh answered, “As you know Oscar, I haven’t spent a great deal of time here in the last fifteen years, so I couldn’t give you the exact statistics. But off the top of my head, I know of six African American families and at least eight Jewish families. Why do you ask?”

Looking a little uncomfortable, Oscar answered, “Just making sure you’re not a bunch of bigoted anti-Semites I guess.”

Offended, Creigh inquired, “Have I ever struck you that way before, Oscar?”

“No Creigh, you sure haven’t.” He continued, “I’m sorry if I’ve offended you, I’m just not really in my element here, you know?”

Not understanding, Creigh answered, “Well, no Oscar, not really. After all, you belong to the club in The Palisades which is one of the most exclusive in the world. I would think that you’d be totally in your element here.”

Then Oscar broke down and told Creigh all about the love of his life. She was a girl that he met in college and her parents didn’t approve of him because he was Jewish. They did everything in their power to break them up. When nothing seemed to work, they invited him to their family home for a few days. Oscar and his girlfriend both thought her family had finally relented and decided to give them their blessing. That notion couldn’t have been farther from the truth. It turned out they were hell-bent on showing their daughter how “not of their world” Oscar was.

Oscar added, “Her father even had the nerve to quote Tevya from ‘Fiddler on the Roof,’ if you can believe it. He said, ‘Oscar, my boy, birds don’t marry fish. Where would they live?’ As though we weren’t even from the same species.”

Creigh asked, “What happened to her?”

Oscar shook his head sadly and answered, “She really did love me, you know? But her family made it clear that if she married me, they would never welcome her back into their home.” Getting choked up, he continued, “What could she do? They had been her family for twenty years; I had only been her boyfriend for eleven months. I don’t fault her to this day. But I blame her parents and when I see people who remind me of them, I feel like I’m twenty all over again.”

After a moment Creigh offered, “Don’t make the same mistake you’re girlfriend’s father made, Oscar. People should be judged individually, not based on what religion, club, or profession they belong to. You’d miss out on a lot of good folks that way.”

They continued to play golf for the next few hours and Creigh realized he would have to be more careful with Oscar than ever. He also realized what a truly remarkable man he was. For Oscar’s sake, as well as his own, he hoped that Melinda became a thing of the past very soon.

L
ila dug through her old costume trunk from college and put together an outfit that looked like something a romance writer would wear. She settled on a long haired red wig with a scarf tied around the top. Then she put on an over-the-shoulder white gauzy blouse and paired it with a full, hot pink skirt. With big hoop earrings and huge pink sunglasses, she deemed the outfit finished. The end product looked like a cross between Blanche Dubois and one of the pink ladies from Grease. In other words, it was perfect. It was so over the top no one would ever guess it was really her.

Lila packed her disguise carefully into one of her carry on bags and then informed her parents she was going to spend the afternoon at the club with Jilly and the kids. She didn’t know how in the world she was going to get through the day. She just hoped against hope that when she crawled into bed that night her secret would still be safe.

Two cars followed her to the club, which she noted was a lot less than the week before. Lila hoped that meant that the tabloids were tired of digging up dirt on her. When she got to the club, she grabbed her bag out of the trunk and proceeded through the front door. She couldn’t change in the locker room because other women would certainly be there to witness her transformation. So she walked into the dining room, which hadn’t opened yet and locked herself in the ladies’ bathroom.

Lila quickly changed into her Jasmine persona. She teased the hair on the wig, applied false eyelashes (even though she planned on keeping her sunglasses on) and put on more makeup than she would normally wear in a month. Once her makeover was complete, she sashayed out the door to wait for the taxi that she had called earlier.

Just as she was about to get into the car, Lila saw Creigh walk off the golf course. She had spoken to him several times since the night he spent at her house but she hadn’t seen him until that moment. The urge to run over and throw herself into his arms was nearly unbearable. Lila laughed by how shocked he would be should some outrageous redhead jump him out of nowhere. With that image in mind, she hopped into the cab and gave the driver the address.

Lila wasn’t expecting a big turnout at the Book Nook as the store only had three days to publicize her appearance. So when the taxi pulled to a stop in front of the small store, she was more than surprised to see a line out the door. Not knowing how she was going to get through the day, Lila took a deep breath, called on all her acting training and forged a path through her fans. With an outrageous hitch in her giddy up, she blew kisses and waved at the crowd.

Once she got inside, Yolanda Fernbacker, a woman that she had known her entire life, rushed to her side and gushed, “Miss Sheath, we are so delighted to have you here!” Then she leaned in conspiratorially and whispered, “That scene in the carriage was so wicked that I read it four times!”

Lila saw Yolanda in a new light. Who would have ever thought that a dried up librarian-type like her would be reading erotica? She leaned in and drawled in a heavy southern accent, “My stars, darlin’, that’s nothing compared to some of the scenes in the sequel!”

Yolanda looked flushed and asked, “A sequel? Really?”

Lila lied through her teeth, “That’s right, shoog. It’s called
She Sins at Noon
.”

In an excited frenzy, Yolanda showed Lila to the table that was set up for her in the rear of the shop. She signed autographs for two full hours without anyone once questioning her disguise. She recognized several people, many of whom astonished her. No one even gave her a double take. It just went to show that people generally believe what they’re told to believe. She actually started to feel rather proud of herself until she looked up and saw Bitsy staring down at her.

Lila figured the only way to get through the next few minutes was to act as outrageous as ever. So she asked, “And what’s your name, shoog?”

Bitsy handed her five books and said, “Miss Sheath, I want you to know that my daughter and I are huge fans of yours!”

Lila gulped, “Is your daughter here with you?”

Bitsy answered, “No, unfortunately she’s not, but I’d like you to sign one of these books for her.” Bitsy went on to dictate the note for her to write:

Dearest Lila,

Always remember that sinning can be done any time of day.

Get Busy,

Jasmine

Lila rolled her eyes under her sunglasses. She really wasn’t sure that she was comfortable with the bizarre changes to her mother’s personality. But the good news was that if her own mother didn’t even recognize her, no one would.

She had another scare twenty minutes later when Jilly and Jessica came in to get their books signed. They also bought a book for her. They wanted that one to be inscribed:

Lila, I’m thrilled you found your own Julius to sin with! You go girl!!!

Jasmine

Lila started to wonder what kind of prude her friends and family thought she was. All this time she behaved in a perfect ladylike manner because that’s how she was raised to behave. Then she finds out that all the ladies around her aren’t quite the prissy packages she was led to believe. She briefly wondered why it had taken her all these years to discover the truth.

Fifteen minutes before the signing ended, Lila shook a cramp out of her hand and looked up to see none other than Melinda Forrester standing in front of her. Her first reaction was to pick up a stack of books and start hurling them at the starlet one-by-one. But Melinda gushed, “Miss Sheath, it is such an honor to meet you. I am one of your biggest fans ever.”

Lila thought she was going to throw up. Then she looked behind Melinda and saw that Creigh was there with her. What in the hell was going on? Why would Creigh be at a book signing with Melinda? According to him, he had signed off of her case and wasn’t even representing her anymore.

Melinda asked Lila to sign her book:

To My Favorite Star of the Silver Screen,

You were robbed of that Oscar!

Jasmine

Instead, Lila signed it:

To The Biggest Whore of the Silver Screen,

Can’t win them all on your knees.

Jasmine

When she handed the book over she told Melinda, “Don’t read it until you get home, hon. I put a little something special in there for you.”

Melinda swore that she wouldn’t and then got side tracked when she was asked for her own autograph by a couple of teenage girls who recognized her. While she was busy talking about herself to her fans, Creigh sidled up to the table and gave with a heart stopping smile.

She steamily asked, “And what can I do for you, sir?”

For the life of him, Creigh couldn’t figure out why Lila was sitting in a book store wearing that outrageous costume unless she really was Jasmine Sheath. He was both delighted and annoyed. Leave it to Lila to be a secret writer of smut. That part didn’t bother him at all. In fact, he couldn’t wait to buy one of her books and find out what her true fantasies were. He planned on making each and everyone of them come true. But the fact that she hadn’t told him made him angry. Did she think she couldn’t trust him? For that reason alone, he decided to have some fun with her. Creigh leaned across the table and answered, “For starters, you could take all your clothes off and dance naked for me.”

Lila gasped and primly replied, “That is not likely to happen.”

He said, “Well then, how ‘bout you sign a book for me too?”

Lila asked what he wanted her to write and immediately regretted it. He asked her to write: