14 Hours Later

Manhattan

MANHATTAN, the good life, 5th Ave, fashion divas, money, lots of fucking money. Couture is everywhere, Dior, runways, bulimia and super models barfing in the toilets. Make up, anonymous sex, gay, straight, Bi, hook ups, let downs, one night stands and prowling Lincoln Town cars. Clubs, dinners, hang over’s, drug abuse, actors, musicians, celebrities, writers and so many cocaine blues. ‘E’ moments to forget, all of it, status, Oprah, Dr. Phil, fixer of sick minds, book signings, fucked up denial, privileged, Hampton weekends, that was her town.

Jane Braden’s town.

Jimmy Choo’s, 3 inch heels, tip tapping in the penthouse crib, sky scrapper with a view of The City, I- Pad-4 and Apple lap top on the mirror surface of her mahogany desk. The view, primo, East river wet, like her misused cunt. She’s so smart, parents of wealth, agents, publicists, no one says no to her, ever.

She is so blond, 29, jet set blue eyes with a hard-gym fit lithe tall bod and teenage hips, white eyebrows and alabaster skin. Once when she was younger she had an eating disorder which ran amok. She was an enigma for to the world it appeared she had everything. In reality she was miserable because she has every thing but sexed up luck.

She had a secret life no one knew of and it was filled with shadows and enigmas.

She’s frustrated, her electric vibrating dildo her lover, face cast like a diva of perfection, no Botox yet, still a real beauty.

FUCK that got her a one way ticket to no where.

Wanting it all, she had become cosmetic frustrated and had been dreamin’ of girls, a girl world. No more denial for her, for sense she could remember all she could ever dream of was another girls lips.

She hadn’t come out, yet and she felt ashamed about that little fact. She was done line dancing within a life time of lies and fucking the men she had pretended to like for so long in The City. Let’s just say she was sick of it all not to mention frustrated out of her hard wired mind.

A girl can only fool themselves for so long and the available options we’re the usual men, power brokers, Wall Street ghouls, twisted politicians, Actors, etc. Decent men, some of them at least she supposed but they just didn’t punch her ticket.

She didn’t hate them, but knew so many we’re on the continual prowl, always searching for some model piece of arm candy with air between their ears. Like everything else in Manhattan they we’re so jaded and she a long time ago had given up on them.

But what was she going to do? What? Maybe, breath some silver breath of a golden girl, a milk and honey, out of control totally insane girl girly girl, filled with smut, just like her? Maybe, probably, it’s on the top of her CEO list.

Almost since she could remember she has been fantasying about a little girl on girl action. But not now, not this moment for she has other things on her mind. As usual that thing was making a boat load of money off someone else’s talent.

It was her agency, she was CEO of Broust/Braden Talent LTD, and this was the most important day of her company’s life.

Jane Braden, graduated from Harvard Business School at 24. It was a real killing ground of brains, turning out financial hit women and hit men who had learned to kill with heartless, homicidal computers.

You know, using Algorithms, Algos and Super Computers, lightening speeds, trades cut from the arteries of Modem Patterns.

It was of course all about the math, quantum mechanics, quarks and shadows margins in a technological arms race. It was all happening in milliseconds, murdering everything in their paths. That of course included other traders not as fortunate as to have three story banks of computers struck into concrete silos just across the river there, in New Jersey.

She could have gone Wall Street, but she had not. It just hadn’t matched her passions, they being mostly her love for raw talent.

At the time she had loved twisted writers, artists, athletes, moronic models, actors and celebrities. Celebrity, it was a word she hated within such vapid Snookie days.

She liked the glamour of it all, or at least she had at one time. Luck, always a good thing and her super wealthy and connected parents had given the boss there, Ben Broust a shout out. He hired her on the spot.

Hooked up the agency at twenty five, she had chewed her way through the blood soaked hallways there. Five years later Jane was at the top of the celebrity garbage heap. A full partner, she was CEO and not a very happy gal or a contented gal for that matter. Her world was just so limp, so empty, so Platinum plated, so radioactive sterile.

Nervous through the morning, it was something that usually didn’t happen to her. Her three inch stilettos seemed to be tapping the teak floor harder as she stared out at the fab view at the East River.

She had become jaded, of course who would not have become that in her world. In her world there were still some magic moments, perhaps within the nether world of rare talent. Her agency represented some gifted artists, writers, actors and sports girls and boys. They were the rarity in her celebrity life where more and more celebrity for celebrity sake seemed to be the norm.

As the dumbing down of brains, morals and talent in America increased she had grown more sickened by it. When pukes like those on The Jersey Shore, or Paris and Lindsay types made multiple millions just because they could breathe or be obtuse, or born beautiful sickened her. She had become disillusioned by all of it.

Though she tried to avoid it, the fact that society ills had more and more sold out, just for the big bucks made her sick. It was something she was not proud of.

Rich, she was considered beautiful and still HAD IT she had been told, which meant nothing to her. A metamorphosis had been crawling along her skin and mind lately.

She had been shape shifting like a vampire terrified of the clarifying light of day.

She was in a state of cocooning, hoping soon a butterfly might be exposed, beautiful, meaningful, where only nothing but numbness was before.

In reality having oodles of money hadn’t made her happy. Why would it?

Had killer digs over at Trump Towers, big yawn that used to mean something to her, as did Lincoln Town cars, chic bistros and fashion shows.

You know, where bulimic stick, sick girls walked the walk of the dead showing the latest fashions to vampire old women lining the cat walks, faces and skins stretched along emaciated bodies. She knew that coffin would be her next stop if she didn’t change her life, like right now.

Once a victim to fashion, she never missed Fashion Week Paris, NY, Milan, you know, stuff that was so vacuous, so empty in the long run. Slowly, she was changing her skin color, a chameleon now, trying to shed that materialistic skin. Image, her image as a beautiful straight female, well, she just couldn’t handle it any longer. She was Gay, and she knew it, and now she was going to come out one way or the other.

Back to today, and the creature, (she called her that for she was almost alien beautiful) a young girl that would be there soon, in about twenty minutes as she glanced at her gold Cartier watch. She wanted her on her client list more than any other female that she had ever wanted. She wanted to represent her, more than that, she wanted to protect her.

Her name was Ash Bai, a savant of intelligence. She was a brilliant young, almost nineteen and so stunning that already she had been called the most beautiful and exotic teak colored female on the planet; more on her in a moment.

Of course everyone wanted her, but she had an in. Her mother was the beautiful and elegant Finnish/American, blond cellist, Mika Bai. She was a gifted beauty that had captured the hearts and souls of every great conductor from New York, to Paris to London and her agency represented her.

The second part of this story was her father, the East Indian/British genius soft ware billionaire Sanja Bai.

Ash had other talents and of course that is why the young girl, so adept at sport and who had taken the world of tennis in a holocaust of press in a matter of months was the reason for the meeting at the agency.

Besides her accolades in sport, she had been labeled a genius. Her IQ wandered along her cerebral cortex at 180, a cellular passage from her parents to her as it so often happens. She was a gifted at sport, a linguist, French, Hindi, Italian, just to name a few. Above all she was a writer, though what she wrote was almost impossible to comprehend for it was so savagely sexual and how could that be at such a young age?

Already what she had read has stunned her and had pushed her towards “The Lesbian OUT Door.” It was a door she had wanted to walk through for ever.

The world wanted Ash, as did Jane, for very different reasons than just a cash-out on her talent.

There were pitfalls before her and Jane knew all of them. Ash could easily be sodomized of her talent. Money and fame would be proffered to her if she would succumb to the golden apple that would be promised to her from the soulless werewolves in the city, or any city for that matter.

It was time.

The meeting was at eleven and her agents, literary, sport marketing, celebrity, fashion, philanthropy, very important to Ash were waiting in her conference room. Feeling her pulse hacking in her temples, she was thrilled at the chance. Jane felt excitement that finally in a tinsel, fake world she perhaps would be able to represent, guide and yes, even protect some rare creature before the rest of the piranhas could get their teeth into her, thus killing her.

Remembering something from her morning life, she opened the drawer of her desk, and stared at the black handgun in it. She loved guns and had a license to carry them, and she did often. Rape along a Manhattan night was not on her agenda. No guns were needed for her meeting, so she closed the door.

Gathering her I-Pad, she stood, moved a few steps, turned to her wall mirror and stared at herself, never a pleasant thing lately. But, she wanted to look good, vanity still present in her. She was working on that.

She worked out at The Vertical Club of course, great gym, all the beautiful people worked out there. It was private and had state of the art stuff and that was of course why she had joined. Not much longer though, for she knew that change was coming to her, quickly and thankfully.

Slender, muscled, she was so tall, thin about 120 Lbs, small breasts, short page boy blond hair, small nose, sorta of a Meg Ryan type, she had been told look alike. As usual she had on a pair of utilitarian Sarah McCartney black gabardine trousers on her hips, cut at the ankle, her three inch, black heeled Jimmy Choo’s making her look just that more leaner.

She had polished off the simple togs with a white Givenchy, long sleeve and collared men’s dress shirt, casually tucked into her trousers. Diamond studs were on her small ears, less was better, no gold, nothing more needed. She was no longer a victim, a victim to Haute Couture. Thank fucking god for that.

Finding it harder and harder to define her image she sighed, cowboy upped, and with her Apple wafer in her hand she groaned at herself reflecting back at her from the mirror. Shrugging her shoulders, she sighed again and out the door she went.

Walking through the stylish Agency with the pegged pine floors, Persian rugs everywhere, fine art on the walls as well as pictures of her clients were everywhere on the walls. She felt her heart thumping in her chest. Continuing, she moved past the cubicles, the offices and down the hallways towards the agency’s conference room.

The place was humming, prosperous and she smiled. She had worked very hard for her life. Nodding as she walked, she returned good afternoons and such, really hearing none of it from her agents, their assistants and other legions of worker bee secretaries.

Once at the door of her vast conference room, she inhaled and calmed herself. She opened the chrome and glass door and entered through it, closing the door behind her.

Her reputations was sacrosanct hard and a no nonsense one.

Don’t talk to her, unless you are talked too.

She was not proud of that, for she was fear consummate to her agents.

It was dog eat dog universe, brutal, vicious, her world and something she was slowly working on to change. Yet, she was stainless tough and had to be or another agency exec would eat her balls, if she had balls, which virtually she did.

Once through the door, she stalled out and stared out through the floor to ceiling windows at a light rain that cried out of the grey clouds of Manhattan.

She was silent, immediately took inventory of the three young agents sitting at a mirror surfaced, some twenty foot long teak table, black comfy leather chairs surrounding it.

There was Claudio Venarusco, and he was something. He was thirty three years old and handled her celebrity and model book and she had stolen him some two years earlier from Elite Talent in Milan. He already had doubled her commissions.

He was so Italian, six foot one, that black wavy hair and with his slightly bent Italian nose, those perfect teeth he looked dashing in his black Armani suit, white shirt, red tie and a gold Patek Philippe watch on his wrist.

What he did not know about fashion, models, talent and celebrity management was not worth knowing. Yes, he was, as Italian men so often were, a pure player with the females. Not exactly a womanizer, he was close. She could not fault him, for one could not blame a pure stud when they found themselves in the candy factory of Manhattan. It was an endless young model world, where he often tasted so many delicious young female pieces of sweet chocolate that were everywhere and ready to be gobbled down.

On the table in front of him was his Apple notebook, as well as a black Fendi leather day reminder, he was prepared. She would have not expected any less from him.

Next to him was her delicious and brilliant nerd, Ann Morgan. Jane knew not to be fooled by her no nonsense appearance. Ann was her usual, black hair in that page boy doo and her black geek framed glasses on her small pointed nose all silhouetted against her polar white skin.

Her blue eyes had never looked brighter, and under her disguise was a beautiful twenty eight year old genius. Jane was almost positive that she was a lesbian, bi-sexual at least.

She heard the rumors and had never seen her with a guy, really hadn’t blamed her for that. Jane, the NEW Jane had fantasized several times about kissing her lips.

Never shit where you eat, and she had not.

Jane of course was so close to finding herself THAT girl, but being terrorized by her needs and reputation, she had not. She was almost ready to take the leap. Was Ann gay? She never asked.

As usual, she was wearing a form fitting, black men’s suit, gabardine, very chic, Givenchy, most likely, and white cotton mans shirt and black necktie. She wore simple gold hoops on her small and delicate ears.

She handled literary for her, and had done her time right out of Brown with a Masters in Literature at twenty three years old. She served her time at Little/Brown, rose quickly through the ranks. Jane scooped her up, right quick like and she was one of her crown jewels. She adored her.

Right next to her Apple lap top was a stack of ringed binders and folders all holding thick manuscripts inside of them. Of course those were one of the main reasons they were meeting Ms. Bai today. Ann had told her that what she read, well it stunned her, horrified her, captivated her and, then finally shocked her.

Jane read them too, and was so stunned, as well as unnerved by them, well Jane was in her boat too.

Sitting next to her was Carol Smith, a glam goddess that came right out of Wharton with a MBA at twenty four. She then got a major sports managing degree from Dartmouth, schooled with that ONCE super sports agent Leigh Steinberg. When he fell, Jane made her an offer that she could not refuse. She had not.

Thirty three years old, she was tall, thin, scorching red hair, soaring cheekbones with a high forehead to hold that brilliant brain of hers, all offset by odd, amber eyes. She was so intelligent that at times Jane thought she was being polite with her, mollifying her, tolerating her with the business they did with so many elite sport stars.

She was a stunning star, and she knew it and a true ball breaker when it came to men, maybe women. Jane was not clear on that either. It was 2012 and the wall between sexes was diminishing as more and more female obliterated the usual sexual norms between men and women. Women everywhere were finding that female’s, their kisses, their satin skins and their ability for sexual fulfillment was a ticket to their sexual bliss. Jane was almost there too.

In reality Jane was positive that Carol Smith was one very fucked up female, lonely, alone, perhaps even lost, for her only passion seemed to be the agency.

She was sure she would burn out young, but that was not her business. Carol was racking in the Euros, Pesos and Dollars and that was a good thing. She imagined she would be a partner soon. She couldn’t afford to loose her.

In three years she tripled the agency’s sport book. Jane could see that she was excited about their potential to rake in endorsements with Ms. Bai that she could see her pulse as it throbbed in her neck.

Planted in front of her was her Apple lap top, an Apple wafer note book like the rest of her team. They we’re, an APPLE agency. They all had their cell phones sitting before them, all reading text mails or sending off more cyber words to their clients and advertisers plastered around the planet.

What they were, most of the time were premiere baby sitters for some of the most talented and spoiled people in the world. It was a 24/7 day a week ordeal and it never stopped, never.

OK, it was time to get the rundown, one more time, though they all had gone over and over miss Bai many times. But, practice made perfect and they were not a loose shoe string kind of Agency.

Moving to the head of the table, Jane sat, glanced at her I-Phone and saw they still had about fifteen minutes as she saw about fifty text mails and groaned. Placing her cell on her desk, she placed both hands on the mirrored surface of the teak. She cleared her throat and stared at Carol, her sports guru who was texting away.

“OK, Carol, lets hear it.”

“Slap, Slap, Slap” echoed through the conference room as her elite crew’s cell phones clacked shut and everyone sat at attention, staring at her.

“Jane, well it’s almost unfathomable, actually almost limitless in scope the potential of this, aaaah, well, phenom.”

Jane was silent, nodded for her to go on.

“Here’s what we know, Jane. A year ago, this stunning, teak colored, bi racial, six foot one, at least, eighteen year old girl walks onto The Italian Tennis Open as a UN known qualifier. She then, in progression eviscerates every player. All of the top ranked gals included, Markapova, Kruger and Pasarenka, etc fall to her, and she wins the damn thing.”

A drama queen, Carol paused for effect and continued.

“The world press went insane for a lot of reasons. The fact that she was fluent in Italian, though a British-Indian by birth, well the Italians went ballistic for her as they often tend to do. No offense Claudio.”

“None taken, Bella.” Claudio said, through a smashing Italian smile.

“With her father’s Indian teak colored skin and her almost alien face, I mean this girl is surreal beautiful, she captivated the tennis world. She has this small head, you’ve seen the pictures, jet black short hair, pointed nose, high cheek bones and full lips that all most spread across her entire face. Well, I have never seen a girl so exotic and stunning.

She has these eyes, her Finnish mother’s eerie green eyes I assume, big, really big, wide on her face, shaped like almonds. In my opinion, if I did not know better, I would bet that she is an extraterrestrial, somehow living on this planet.”

Jane’s eyes closed and of course they all had stared over and over at her videos and photographs. Almost unbelievable was another fact. She had refused to grace the pages and covers of every fashion magazine on Earth, which had confused her crew, as well as Jane even more.

“Go on Clare. Let’s wrap it up.”

“Alright, you all know the story, so here it is again. She gets seeded at The Australian Open and absolutely crushes the competition as her power and grace stun the other players as well as the tennis world. Of course this, needless to say, makes her a super star, which unbelievably she does not promote, or apparently want. Thus, she shuns any and all representation and endorsements that obviously have besieged her.

Seldom had she seen Carol so edgy as she sipped from a bottle of water, exhaled her angst and continued.

“She wins the French Open and, then a month ago she demolished everyone at Wimbledon and of course all hell broke loose. She has been besieged, attacked mind you, not only for her wins, her looks and sparkling personality, but for her political stands, mostly for world famine and women’s rights, just to mention a few.”

Jane closed her eyes, sighed and, then nodded for Carol to continue.

“It’s like an eighteen year old Linda Evangelista, with a Stephan Hawking IQ suddenly picked up a tennis racket and mowed through the elite players in the world. More, the fact that she seems ego less, and self effacing, not to mention having a razor wit and an intelligence off the charts. She also donated her multiple winnings to her various causes and charities. This of course absolutely vaporized everything we thought was possible in these usual ego centric divas.”

Jane audibly groaned as did her other stars as she nodded at Clare to continue.

“Doctors With-out Borders, World Hunger Forum, Save Darfur, battered woman shelters, just to name a few, that’s where her purses went. She donated her entire Wimbledon purse to Planned Parent Hood and I guess Jane, that’s why her parents came to you.”

Jane shook her head from the information she already knew, as Carol continued.

“The Christian Right and The Republicans went ballistic with her views on abortion. And through all of the vicious attacks, she smiled, fended away any compliments, as well any hatred away from her. She constantly brought the subject back to a world, that she describes is disintegrating from greed at every level. Her ace in the hole to this moment is that she has refused to capitalize financially on her fame, thus giving validity to everything that she has said and done.”

“The bottom line Carol, what do we have here?”

“One-hundred-million dollars at least in endorsements, at least. Nike, Addis, Cheerios, Rolex, BMW, Cadillac, commercials, you name it. You know Jane, it basically is unlimited her potential, but I think we have problems. I mean, well, Claudio, Ann, lets hear what they have to say.”

So understanding Clare’s concern, she of course knew the problems she was speaking of. For the young savant female could, and would be destroyed if a firewall, Jane, she hoped could not protect her.

Already, there was an insidious vitriol from Fox News raining down on her in hellish fire balls of their hate for her stand on the matter of ‘Free Choice’ for females and it was hyperbolic in its form.

“Claudio, please make it short.”

Claudio smiled with that dashing look of his and in his Italian accent he casually told her what she already knew.

“Yes Jane, our Carol is right. World wide, she speak the Italian, Spanish, French, above all Hindi. They go crazy for her already in India, more billion people there and she could be on all cover of every fashion magazine in world. Many, many millions, Jane, I say no more about the obvious, Ann say more, yes. Claudio think, there in the writing is key.”

“Thank you Claudio, Ann, please be brief.”

Tapping her thin fingers on the pile of binders that were over a foot high with Ash Bai’s written words in them, Ann stared over the top of her black framed nerd glasses, took a deep breath and began to speak.

“We have all read this work of hers, and frankly Jane, none of it is possible in my opinion. This girl is not yet nineteen yet and these five novels, as well as her short stories, more on those in a moment are so savage, brilliant, sexual and above all ground breaking, it just doesn’t seem possible some one so young could have created them. Apparently she has been writing since she has been twelve.

In my opinion she has blasted through the walls of everything the world has ever thought normal in relationships, prejudice, marriage, choice of sexuality, jealousy and possessiveness, etc. She will be savaged when these works finally hit.”

Taking a sip of water, Jane watched Ann, who was clearly excited take a sip of water and continue.

Is she a lesbian, Jane, I think it’s important that we know?”

“I don’t know Ann, why is that important?”

Ann started to giggle, and seldom had she seen her like that. She was usually so demur, but the obvious was the obvious as she swallowed deeply at her and continued.

“Fuck Jane, the girl is a genius, and that word is so lacking describing her talent and already she is under attack for her support for abortion, contraception, women’s rights, world hunger, just to mention a few.

Add the fact that she may be a lesbian, well in my mind, and I know I’m speaking in a strict commercial way, there is no ending to how much money we, she can make, but we have to, if given this gift, protect her.”

“Yes, that’s why her parents came to me, and we will protect her. Please, Ann, we have five minutes, the novels.”

Jane felt like puking, for many reasons. Why not her coming out if some teenager had the guts to break down every door Jane refused to walk through. She felt ashamed as Ann continued.

“Frankly, I have never read anything remotely so honest, so brutal, so futuristic in there thinking. It is her generation Jane, liberal, exploratory in pursuits of sexual needs, no gender definition, no jealously, no prejudice based on antiquated sexual norms, total freedom in love, sex, and the odd relationships her mostly woman create. Girls and girls, girls and men, lesbian and female bi sexual and transgender unions is what she is passionate about.

Simply said, these will be “The Tropic of Cancer” of this generation.”

Jane of course had read them, consumed them, confused by them and, then vaporized by them and of course they we’re the main reason she’d been thinking of finally taking a female as a lover.

They were, as Ann said, so brutally honest. They were almost so futuristic that they had opened her eyes, nudged her forward and made her think of what was possible between people. Humans that neither judged nor held prejudice nor jealously in their hearts and were so simply said, honest with in all matters of sex and love.

At University she had sub majored in music, and well understood that phantoms of genius could appear almost at birth.

Chopin at six years old was already composing polonaises and his mastery of observation, sketching and mimicry had never been seen in any composer at any age. At eight he was playing concerts for the Russian Czar Alexander, and he stunned the world.

Amadeus composed at five, and on and on. As she listened to Carol, she was wondering that within an eco skeleton of such impossible physical beauty, perhaps even in evolution, had God placed so young a rare and almost unbelievable talent in Ash on earth.

That answer soon would be exposed. When it would, nothing any of them could have ever done could have prepared them for the acid rain of fire that would come.

“Ann?”

“So much more, Jane, but that is for another day, let’s see. Let’s just see.”

“Buzz, buzz, buzz.”

Eyes darting at her I-phone, she picked it up and saw a text from her secretary telling her that Ms. Bai had arrived. She gulped her angst, her fear and texted her secretary to send her in.

Jane could hardly wait. They’d all seen the pictures of her, the video, heard her speak, and had been stunned by that little matter. She talked like an eighteen year old, nineteen forties Kate Hepburn, a tinted British accent, all mixed together with a Holly Go Lightly, Audrey Hepburn way. This of course sent the world press on its ear.

Then, the door opened, and in unison, THEY, all hardened veterans by so much beauty in their business collectively gasped as their jaws dropped as Ash Bai strolled in.