Tripping on Fame
“Consciousness raising?” Rochelle said. “I don’t know.”
“You stirred people up with the articles you wrote back in school,” Reebah said. “We need someone with a strong voice, a good presence. You know, smart and sexy and —”
“White?”
“Black and white. You and me. A coupla chicks beefin’ loud and live on the air.” Reebah’s face lit up when she laughed, her dark face glowed, her smile was electric. She had worked hard down south, promoting consciousness for civil rights, and now she was back east determined to raise some ire on the radio. The local public station wanted a weekly show about activism. They wanted a format that would cover black and white and black-and-white and women and the war. One of the producers, Arnie Kahn, had met Reebah in Georgia and recruited her to host his show which he was calling “Live Talk.”
“I already told them about you and they’re interested. This is an opportunity, Rock. We could do something with this. I don’t want to see you shut down into this, you know, married woman cop-out thing.” An indignant tone in Reebah’s voice tapped Rochelle’s vein of defiance. She had married a doctor, after all, and become a doctor’s wife. The question remained to what degree she would be a doctor’s wife. She knew she couldn’t follow her mother’s prescription too exactly. She knew, in the twist of that moment, that she would agree to do the show.
“Live Talk” was set to air on a Saturday afternoon. Rochelle and Reebah, twenty-five years old, sat together at the console, attached to headsets which gripped Reebah’s massive Afro and sat tightly on Rochelle’s frizzy auburn hair. Rochelle wore hiphugger bellbottoms and a tight ribbed orange turtleneck. Ree bah wore an ankle-length red dashiki. Neither wore makeup. They sat side by side on swivel chairs, backs straight, knees touching, eyes on Arnie Kahn in the control booth. He was a dark, bearded man, a contrast to his wife Susan who was slender and light. They worked together as co-producers, and though Arnie had conceived of “Live Talk” it was Susan who had pitched and sold it to the station’s executive director.
Susan slipped into the room and showed Arnie something on a clipboard. He read it and nodded. She handed the clipboard to the announcer, George, who sat hunched in front of a microphone, watching the clock. A red light above the glass separating them from Arnie and Susan turned on. They were on the air.
George’s deep voice said: “Hello, we’re back. Get ready for something really special. We’ve got a new show and we know you’re gonna like it. Say hello to Reebah Jameson and Rocky Love. They got it and now you got it — half an hour of talk and whatever — here they are, our very own — Mad Girls.”
First there was silence on the air. Then, Reebah’s voice asking, “Girls?”
And Rochelle’s voice: “Women!”
And they were off at a gallop, talking to each other, with each other, at each other, verbally picketing every injustice that came to mind. That half hour slot became a riot of laughter and anger, a coupla chicks beefin’ about racism and sexism and rallying against the war. Two women talking, strongly, smartly, about everything. Discrimination. Pollution. Female orgasm. Fantasy. Pay equity. Everything.
On the one year anniversary of Mad Women and the launch of the show’s national syndication, the network threw a party at Studio 54. Everyone who was anyone was there.
Mabel faced her daughter in the mink coat Norman had given her for their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary. A photographer approached, lifting his camera, and Rochelle laughed and struck a pose in her black beaded maxidress. She flicked back her long hair. Flash. Knowing that Reebah was somewhere across the room, contending with her own family and the same greedy press, gave Rochelle courage. The mad women were on to something and they both knew it, and the fact that some were vehemently against their message was only testament of its power.
“Mom, I wish you would relax,” Rochelle said when the photographer had departed.
“I don’t know why I’m here.” Mabel looked at Norman.
“She’s our daughter,” Norman said.
Mabel’s face went burning red. “And I am your wife.”
Bobby calmly asked Mabel, “Have you read the press on the show, Mom? People are really relating to the openness of Rocky and Reebah.”
“So now you’re calling her Rocky too? I could vomit. I listened once to that show, enough to hear it’s nothing but trash. Norman?”
Norman slowly shook his head. “No, this is Rock’s night. Just one more hour, you can do that, can’t you?”
“Mom, please,” Rochelle said, then flash she smiled for a camera.
“Yes,” Mabel said, “I could stay, but I’ll tell you something, I choose not to.”
As Mabel left — a small angry mink blending into the crowd — Rochelle could feel Norman’s wish to leave with her. But he didn’t; he stayed with Rochelle and Bobby. He stayed to meet her producers and Reebah’s family and every techie connected with the show. He even greeted Leo’s new beau, John, who was dressed like a cowboy in studded leather and a ten gallon hat.
By the end of the evening, Rochelle was high on wine and the realization that she was a star. She felt that her father was proud of her, and was happy about that; but then he said a funny thing. He was leaving, hovering by the entrance in his gray coat. She leaned over to kiss him goodnight. He hugged her very tightly, and said, “Rocky, don’t let this sudden fame hurt you.”
She didn’t understand it; how could it hurt her? What could go wrong?
Rochelle’s mad woman was Rodney Parker in drag: a man in a woman’s body working the world like a crowd of suckers. Using, cajoling, telling the truth, then not giving much of a damn about it. The mad women spotted hypocrisy then played it for all it was worth. They were loved and hated, inevitably.
Their new fame was a paradox. They were lauded for creating live talk heroines as heroic as heroes created by men in the great white male venues, and they were ridiculed for being two women, one black and one white, who were helping to catapult other women from the role of straight man in the joke of daily life, to Riddler, Joker. For perpetuating, on the air, the idea that women could play the game by their own rules and not men’s. For saying I want, give me, then taking. For discussing recipes and penises in the same five minutes.
The mad women said things that good women didn’t say. Most female listeners thrilled to their courage. Male listeners vacillated between thinking they were hot babes and angry bitches. And then of course there were those who understood it was just live radio. But what got everyone about the mad women, what no one could deny, was that they were smart. They whipped you awake by hitting bone. And all they were doing was speaking their minds.
Rocky Love. ROCKY LOVE. Rochelle loved her new persona; it thrilled her, empowered her. She became enthralled by the sound of her own voice. She never knew what she was going to say until she’d said it. And it was right... at least on the air. At home, it was a different story.
Bobby was a man. Black or white, a man. With Reebah the color mix was dynamite, it worked, because more than anything they were women. At home, more than anything, Bobby and Rochelle were husband and wife.
Bobby worked long hours, both in his office seeing private patients and at the hospital. Often he received calls in the middle of the night and would rush to the hospital to deliver a new life. He never spoke to her when those calls came, he would dress in silence and leave. This was worse than demanding children from her; this wrenching silence pressured her more than words. With each birth, Rochelle’s guilt rose, followed quickly by resistance. Bobby’s desire for family, though mostly unspoken these days, worked directly counter to her urge for freedom and sometimes, she thought, flight.
Then one day her marital ambivalence bubbled up on the air. Without thinking, Rochelle said, “Married women work twice as hard as single women, and let’s face it, our free time is never really free.” She saw the look on Susan Kahn’s face: standing behind the glass partition, studying notes on her clipboard, she looked up suddenly, startled, like a soldier whose camouflage had been discovered. Susan quickly shook her head.
Rochelle said, on the air, “Ask someone if they believe in animal rights. The answer? Yes! Ask that same person if a woman deserves to have rights. The answer? Maybe. How about a married woman? He rules, she obeys, there’s your answer. If you don’t do what he wants, you’ll suffer.”
Rochelle felt excitement speed through her. Behind the glass, Susan wilted onto a stool. Arnie rushed into the room and was speaking to her. There was a flurry of flashing red lights on the telephone.
Reebah took the floor: “Hey, maybe Rocky’s got something. I’m a single woman, and yeah I kinda like it, you know? I own myself. I do what I want. And speaking of rights, Rocky, how about abortion rights? The sexual revolution ain’t no revolution until we have the right to choose what happens inside our own bodies. Legalize abortion! Write to your congress person! Get a voice in D.C. Roe’s going to the Supreme Court soon and they have got to know what we think.”
As Reebah read phone numbers and addresses into the microphone, Rochelle stared into Susan’s eyes, through the glass, smiling. Arnie was on the phone behind her, talking animatedly, going from one call to another.
Finally, Susan smiled back.
Six months later, Reebah published a book called The Choice examining the history of abortion in America and arguing for a congressional action in favor of legalization. Roe v. Wade was headed for the Supreme Court and Reebah’s book became a focal point in the media, bolstering the argument for free choice. She hit the lecture circuit with force, talking to women and men about human rights, civil rights, women’s rights. Reebah Jameson became a household name, a black woman with a voice, using it. She returned as much as possible to do the show on Saturdays. But when she couldn’t, Rochelle worked alone, focusing on what she called “the marriage net” and taking calls from listeners.
After a while, Arnie and Susan decided to spin off another show. They would drop the plural from Mad Women and Reebah would carry the show alone, live, from wherever she was. Rochelle would launch a new show on Monday mornings, an hour format: half an hour of Rocky Love talking, and half an hour of listener calls.
And so was born the Mad Wife.
Bobby lay beside Rochelle, neat and straight down the bed in his cream silk pajamas. She rolled next to him and he calmly, routinely, put his arm around her shoulders. She kissed him and his lips did not respond.
“Let’s make love,” she whispered in his ear, slipping her fingers under the neck of his pajamas. His luscious skin felt softer than the silk.
He was silent, still.
The tip of his tongue traced his outer ear, then slipped inside.
“Stop it, please.”
She leaned back on her elbow. He had never refused her before. No man had. “What’s wrong?”
He looked at her with the stern expression of a doctor delivering an unwanted diagnosis. “You don’t want a husband, Rocky, you want an antagonist. You use me like you used your mother to bounce yourself off into the world. It isn’t working for me right now. You may not realize it, but every time you push yourself off you push me away.”
“Away?”
“Emotionally,” he said.
“Are you leaving me?”
“No, I think you’re leaving me. You’ve distanced me with your show. You know that, don’t you? You do know that.”
“You know that what I say on the air isn’t all true, Bobby.”
He looked incredulous. “Of course it is.”
“The stuff I say is about women’s lives. Other women’s lives, not mine. It has nothing to do with you.”
“Maybe you’re only fooling yourself,” he said, and rolled over to face the wall.
He hadn’t asked her for a baby since the Mad Wife was launched. It struck her now that he was leaving her slowly, gradually, like sand slipping off the castle until it was just a lump on the beach. She didn’t want to be a lumpwoman on the beach alone. She wanted him, she wanted Bobby, she wanted Dr. Love at his office all day and Mr. Love at her table in the evening and Bobby Love in her bed every night. She wanted him for the stable center of her life so she could swing wildly without fear. And she wanted him not to mind it. Was that really too much to ask?
Rochelle swiveled to face her desk. Behind her, two large windows met in a corner like an open book. Her view was mainly industrial, with the Hudson River snaking by the New Jersey shoreline. The television studios were housed in a former warehouse space, far west in midtown, but the executive suites were as plush as the view was grim. Charlie Webb, her agent, had negotiated this prize corner office in her contract with the network. He always said you had to get what you could during the negotiations, because once they had you, you were theirs.
Rocky Love, Live aired as a daily morning show targeted at married women. Charlie alone knew that Rochelle had only recently signed her divorce papers. She had intended to tell her producer, but Charlie shook his head and shut her office door and shook his head some more for dramatic effect. Rochelle leaned her elbows on her desk and said, “Why not?”
Charlie was a small man, a good eight inches shorter than Rochelle, who was relatively tall for a woman. But Charlie was the kind of short man who didn’t look short until you stood next to him. He didn’t notice his height so didn’t project any insecurity about it. He stood in front of her door, legs planted wide, arms folded, shaking his head. He wore a brown and white checkered suit, an electric blue shirt with long pointy collars, and a wide tie. His brown shoes were squarish at the toe and had chunky heels. He was very stylish.
He said, in a loud whisper, “Rocky, honey, you tell them your husband left you and you’re pfft around here.”
“It was a mutual separation.”
“Whatever. But between you and me, he wanted out, am I right? And what’s worse, to network honchos, is that you left the home. You left the home, Rocky, do you hear what I’m saying to you? No, don’t tell them anything. Just keep it like I told you, you and your husband, you moved. Change of address, that’s all. Say yes, baby, keep the contract alive.”
Rochelle said, “Maybe I’ll frame the divorce paper and hang it on the wall.”
“Honey!”
Rochelle laughed. “You’re a kick, Charlie.”
“But are you listening to me? Are you hearing me? That’s all I want to know.”
“I hear you. But it’s bullshit, you know that, right?”
“Gotta face the realities.” He took a step forward. “So listen, did you find out? You know?”
“Suzanne?”
“Did you ask her?”
Rochelle leaned back in her purple and black striped chair. “I’m not sure you’re her type.”
“You didn’t even ask?”
“She’s young.”
“What, so I’m ten, eleven years older.”
“She’s sort of an intellectual, Charlie. Not your type.”
“She’s my type, believe me, I know my type when I see it. Ask her or I option out.”
“You slimebag. You need me more than I need you.”
“You’re finally learning how to think, honey. Ask her. On what you’re paying her, she could use the free meal.”
Though they were close in age — Suzanne was twenty-eight and Rochelle was almost thirty-one — their circumstances polarized them and naturally precluded friendship. Suzanne was smart and ambitious and intended to work hard and build a career. Rochelle was smart and ambitious and wanted everything now and got it or walked away. Suzanne’s doggedness worked in an assistant; Rochelle, however, would never want to actually be that way herself. She dealt with Suzanne in the same way she dealt with everyone else: with directness, warmth, and an expectation that she would have her way. She would not, though, push any woman to date a man against her will.
After Charlie left, Rochelle waited a few minutes then went to Suzanne’s desk, clustered in the hallway outside her office along with the other assistants’ desks. She was on the phone, booking a guest for the show. Rochelle lifted her hip onto the desk and waited.
Suzanne was an athletic young woman with olive skin and silky black hair. Often, as today, she wore loose Indian dresses and flat leather shoes to work. She had a healthy, wholesome look, not beautiful, barely attractive. Rochelle heard a little Mabel-voice calling up from the depths of her mind, wondering if the girl’s looks wouldn’t be improved with a little makeup. She pushed the thought away.
Hanging up the phone, Suzanne said, “That man asked me what my breast size is!”
“Dr. Carlotta?”
“He should be sued.”
“He will be, after the show.” She laughed. “Did he agree to do it?”
Suzanne said, “Yup,” and made a notation on a list in front of her.
“Plastic surgeons are desperate for breast implant customers now that thin is in,” Rochelle said. “So, speaking of the war between the sexes, I want to bounce something off you.”
Suzanne swiveled to face Rochelle. “Shoot.”
“Charlie Webb.”
Suzanne’s face arched in smile. “What a strange man.”
“Would you go out with him?”
“Are you doing a show on creepy guys or something? Am I research?”
“No, this is real life. Sorry, Suze, but he wants to take you out on a date.”
Suzanne stared at Rochelle for a moment, before asking, “Is this an imperative? I mean, are you telling me —”
Rochelle snapped her head back and forth. “Never. He wanted me to ask. I’m asking. Do what you want.”
“I’ll pass, then.”
Rochelle leaned towards Suzanne, and asked, “Just out of curiosity, would you have done it if I said I wanted you to?”
Suzanne thought a moment. “Unfortunately, probably, yes.”
Rochelle slid off the desk. “Never do that,” she said. “But I’m glad I asked. Anyway, Suze, I think you made the right decision.” They giggled together and for a moment they were two young women united. Then Rochelle abruptly returned to her office, sidetracked into thoughts of women and men and power and love and dating and wondered, swiveling to absorb her view of the river, just how far she could push the limits of her power, if she tried.
Rochelle lifted her face to a powder puff and held her breath. She didn’t like to inhale the murky powder, and made a habit of washing her face immediately after the show was finished. She saw her own hairdresser and chose her own clothes, but the television network insisted she let the in-house makeup artist, Arlene, do her face before each show.
Arlene had a tendency to be heavy-handed, though, and after she plucked out too much of Rochelle’s eyebrows one time, she was not allowed near her face with tweezers. Rochelle then did a show on body image: fat, height, breast size, body hair. The show was called “Loving Yourself” and challenged the Twiggy look which was the rage at the time, prompting women to starve themselves to the bone, perpetuating a nationwide anorexia. In protest, Rocky Love took to flaunting her heavy breasts and untoned muscles and hairy eyebrows. For the body image show in particular, she refused to wear any makeup, despite her producer’s argument that she would lose viewers by neglecting her appearance. She gained viewers, and had that week’s winning ratings framed and posted on her office wall.
Hanging next to her proof of that success was a framed mock-diploma reading “Class of ’72” in calligraphy, with a gold seal in the lower left corner. This was a gift from Reebah, who had helped to champion the Equal Employment Opportunity Act and celebrated its passing by honoring all the women she knew who breezed up toward a suddenly heightened glass ceiling. Rochelle was one of them. She was lucky enough to have been her sexy opinionated self at a time when society was beginning to give noisy women credence, power, space to move and run. From the minute she had opened her mouth on the radio, Rochelle became a prototype, without even meaning to; she was just being herself. Her sexual rawness translated well from radio to television. They gave her a large wardrobe budget in addition to a hefty salary with good benefits, and let her spiff herself up while holding the belief that none of this would ever change her.
She liked to arrive in the office early, to prepare for the show which aired at nine-thirty. She figured the programming people had deliberately scheduled the show at a time when most husbands were out of the house. Why infuriate half the viewing public? Let the nonworking wives hunker down by the tube, after breakfast, and get revved up for the day with a dose of Rocky Love. It was good timing for everyone: the ratings were high, women got what they wanted, men weren’t bothered, and everyone got to glory in the appearance of rocking the status quo without rocking it at all. She was a safe, opportunistic star. Charlie had positioned her that way. She managed to keep the balance between Charlie’s “realities” and the real ones, until one evening, in a most unlikely place, she found herself broadsided by her past.
She sat in a clear Plexiglas chair, covered to the neck in a hot pink nylon cloth emblazoned at the neck with Lisa Long’s scripted LL logo. It had been a tough day, and Lisa herself had stayed late to do Rochelle’s hair, an honor bestowed only upon star customers. The slender Chinese woman whizzed behind Rochelle with scissors, comb and spray. These days, she wore her hair trimmed to the shoulder, hennaed and straightened. She enjoyed watching the kinks and curls disappear, and loved the feel of the firm steady tug of Lisa’s comb massaging her scalp. She was just curving into alpha when Lisa said, “You have such beautiful hair, it’s so thick and curly. Why don’t you let it go natural like when you were a girl?”
“When was I a girl?” Rochelle said.
“In the pictures. You were so earthy, so sexy.”
“Pictures?”
“In Playboy, the new issue. Haven’t you seen it?”
“No.” Rochelle’s adrenaline started pumping.
“We have it. Wait, I’ll show you.” Lisa walked off and returned a minute later with the magazine. She quickly flipped through the pages. “Here. That’s you.”
The familiar images stunned Rochelle: herself, young and carefree, striding naked across a room; herself, young and busty, stretched naked on the sand; herself, young and innocent, spread-eagled on a bed. A short piece described “A Brief Encounter with a Mad Woman” and bore the byline Tad Crawford.
Rochelle turned bright red and shot from her chair like a rogue missile, heading for the pay phone on the wall.
When she was told that her attorney was on vacation, she demanded his secretary reach him in St. Croix. The woman sounded a little testy when she told Rochelle that she would have to consult with his partner, who specialized in libel suits.
Rochelle taxied directly to the offices of Barthoff & Singer and marched past the receptionist like the Queen of Mod in her denim pantsuit and purple suede boots with chunky four-inch heels. She wore her diamond engagement ring from Bobby on the middle finger of her right hand, which clutched the rolled-up Playboy.
A tall man in brown slacks, a tweed jacket, yellow shirt and burgundy knit tie came down the hall with his arm already reaching for a handshake. He had brown hair that curled down below his earlobes and a neat brown beard. He wore gold-rimmed aviator glasses.
“Rocky Love?” His voice was deep and creamy like double chocolate ice cream.
“Jason Barthoff?”
They shook.
“Thank you so much for staying to see me,” she said.
“I was working late anyway.” He directed her into his corner office. He sat casually on the edge of his desk, one hip hiked up and the opposite leg stretched long like a dancer’s, showing his pink and yellow argyle sock. “May I see the photos?”
She handed him the magazine and he opened it to the dog-eared page, which he scanned thoughtfully, nodding, licking at his mustache.
He’s cute, she thought, glancing around the office for evidence of marriage — rings, family photos — and finding none.
“Actually,” she said, “I’m feeling too upset to keep my dinner engagement. May I use your secretary’s phone?”
“Dial nine for a line out.”
She shut his office door and lifted the phone receiver, dialed her home number and listened to it ring for a while. Then she hung up.
“Everything all right?” Jason asked when she returned to his office.
Rochelle sighed. “Poor man, he’s madly in love with me. But it’s so new, and my divorce isn’t even final.” She laughed and Jason grinned. He handed her the magazine.
“They’re lovely photos,” he said. “You haven’t changed much in ten years, I see.”
Rochelle could feel the blush rising from her breasts up to her face. “I was so young then,” she said. “And stupid. When he started taking a lot of pictures, it disturbed me and I left. It didn’t occur to me to take the film.”
“It would have saved you some trouble now. Crete?”
“Matala was a beautiful village, but what an awful man.”
“It’ll be a simple matter,” he said, “if you didn’t sign a release. We’ll file an action against Crawford and Playboy and they’ll do half our work for us. If he’s an independent contractor they won’t defend him, they’ll cut him loose to defend himself. They’ll never use him again which is just a little extra icing on the cake. You never signed anything?”
Rochelle said, “I didn’t sign anything. I’m not even sure it’s me in those pictures.”
“Oh?”
She knew she was pushing it too far; it had just been so tempting to say that. “It is me,” she said. “But I hate to think about that miserable time in my life.”
“We’ve all made mistakes.”
“But if you’re a public figure, they don’t let you forget it.”
“Want me to nail him?”
“Would you?”
“I’d love to.”
Jason Barthoff was a man possessed, and she knew it, and he went after Crawford with a passion he would rather have applied to his client, and she let him. They spoke on the phone so frequently that when Suzanne buzzed to introduce the caller, she merely said, “Jase,” and hung up.
The network, meanwhile, recovered from its shock after a mind-numbing meeting with Charlie Webb, who felt he had no option but to go for broke and convince them to accept Rochelle’s idea of doing a show on the magazine article. The network executives didn’t know if they were committing suicide or if it was a brilliant idea. They opted to listen to Charlie.
Rochelle did the show. It was a hit.
Jason Barthoff was right about Playboy: they disowned Crawford and even supplied his home address. When Rochelle’s lawsuit reached the press, it frightened him into action.
He showed up one night, just past seven, as Rochelle was getting ready to go out to dinner with Leo and his new boyfriend, Rich. She had showered and stepped into her green leather dress with a tight bodice and full skirt, had just slid one dangling strand of opals into her pierced lobe and was about to insert the other one, when the intercom buzzed. She assumed it was the boys, early, so she ran to the intercom and buzzed them up. She got the second earring in on her way to the bathroom, where she bent over, gave her hair a few whacks from beneath, and flipped up to standing. She quickly powdered her face, blackened her lashes and reddened her lips.
The doorbell rang.
She flung open the door singing, “Hi!” and then stopped. It wasn’t Leo, it was someone else.
She didn’t recognize Tad Crawford for a few minutes, but when it hit her, memory reeled in ten years and there she was, in bed with this very same stranger.
He looked basically the same, but older — the same tight body and thick black hair, the same darkish olive skin, the same black eyes and square jaw. His hair was very short now and stood straight on his head like a brush in the center of which was a spiral cowlick. She recalled in an instant her attraction to him back then. But he had betrayed her, and that thought sent the door slamming shut.
He pounded on the door. “I want to talk to you! Open up for a minute, I just want to talk to you!”
“Talk to my lawyer!”
“I did! I’m settling with you. I want to apologize, Rochelle Libbon. Hey, you said you were twenty-five.”
She laughed, remembering. He had been intense, too sexual for her inexperience to appreciate. But now, she thought, now she would relish him.
Rochelle unlocked the door and opened it a crack. “I shouldn’t talk to you,” she said. “You did a rotten thing.”
“I’m sorry. But listen, my picture’s been in the papers, too, and so has my girlfriend’s. We’re suffering over this. Don’t think it won’t be a while before I work in New York again.”
“If ever.”
He was wearing a black leather jacket and jeans, and his dark beard was unshaven. He looked tired and angry.
She said, “I’m expecting someone.”
“You have to admit, the photographs are good.”
“They’re interesting.”
“I’ll sell you the negatives.”
“Do you have them?”
He patted his rear pocket. “Right here.”
“You never had an assignment for Life.”
“Yeah I did. They bought my pictures of the caves, used two of them. But you, lady, you didn’t have any assignment.
“You believed me.”
“What, are you going to a St. Paddy’s parade or something?”
“I happen to look good in green.”
“Didn’t say you look bad. I know they’re real.” His nostrils flared. “Yeah, I remember them.”
He meant her breasts, and she knew it. No fewer than three men had asked her if her breasts had been enlarged with silicone.
“Real as ever,” she said.
“Well, I liked you, really,” he said. “I’m sorry I did that piece. I was low on money. I panicked. I made a mistake and I’m sorry.”
“Do you really mean that?”
“Yes, believe it or not, I do.”
“I want to see those negatives.”
She invited him in and they drank Scotch. When she thought his defenses were sufficiently down, she reached behind him for the milky paper packet of negatives which were sticking out of his back pocket.
He caught her hand. “Not so fast, lady.”
“My brother’s coming,” she said. “Can I have the negatives, please?”
“You gave me some problems by taking that rental car, you know.”
Yes, she remembered now; she had taken off in the rental car while he was still asleep in the hotel.
“You know, my girlfriend can’t stand your show. She thinks you’re slutty. I’d have to agree.”
“Oh, fuck you.” She grabbed for the negatives.
He was so very sexual and she had been celibate since Bobby and she was making Jason wait until the case was over and she was, well, horny, that was what the mad wife would have said. Somewhere deep down inside her, Rochelle Libbon Love was the mad wife, it was inevitable. Maybe Tad Crawford had helped get that closet crazy lady started, and now he was going to tap her again.
It was insane, Rochelle knew that, even as it was happening. She could hear the chorus of her family in the deepest seed of her mind as Tad lowered his jeans and raised the skirt of her green leather dress and she very willingly let him. Mabel crowed you whore you have shamed me in front of the world now and Leo watched thinking he wanted this too and Norman said honey don’t let fame hurt you and Bobby said I want you pregnant now and Nathan said marrymeohmarrymesister.