double life

Libra liked the idea of walking into Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills, counting nineteen crisp hundred dollar bills, and zipping out with the royal blue leather Yves St. Laurent satchel purse she always coveted but never could afford. This particular handbag was not paid for by her sugar boss Rodney Muir, who was affectionate but sometimes stingy, which annoyed Libra greatly; certainly not from Lester Barnes, happy to give his sugar daughter a little something extra for the road, which made up for those nipple clamps she abhorred; the cheddar was not from Walter Nikolovski, whom Arthur Livingstone had ostensibly arranged for Libra to strategize about a CE gig at Paramount but instead they got a suite across the street at the Park Hyatt (she charged him triple for their clumsy hour and a half, waiting outside Wells Fargo for the sugar llama to hand over stacks of banded twenties). In truth, it was new regular Dollars Muttlan, (flavor-of-the-month screenwriter turned industry leper after Warlords of Arkadia bombed) who booked her every Friday night in August for a porn star experience at twenty-five hundred a pop after a midnight show at the New Beverly where they watched TRUE ROMANCE, THE LAST WAVE, NUDE NUDES, and THE 4TH MAN, ending up at Swingers in the Beverly Laurel Motor Inn, bemoaning the business over strawberry milkshakes and sweet potato fries with ranch dressing, checking into the “romance room” upstairs where Dollars would occasionally make Libra come.