Jezebel's Ladder (18 page)

Daniel greeted Jez at the hospital with enthusiasm. “We
appreciate everything you’ve done for us, Jez!” He was all smiles, still
glowing from the twelve hours of ecstasy.

He was followed soon after by
Benny.

“Any problems?” she asked the
exhausted-looking actor.

Benny shook his head. “He tried to
get off the bed and walk when he came back from the dive. That hurt. Other than
the initial disorientation, he’s fine. What’s that smell?”

Jez explained briefly about the
other clone throwing up and leaving abruptly.

“Not everybody can stand the
presence of truth for long,” Daniel said.

While the other two stood watch
over the recovering girl, Jez arranged funerals and expedited insurance
payments for the victims by phone. When Daniel noticed that she was
overwhelmed, he said, “You should get Marcie to handle things like that; she
used to work for the insurance division.”

“That’s a great idea. I’ll call her
tonight. How do you know Marcie?” she asked.

“We went through secretarial
training together,” the teenage boy replied, eyes focused on the unconscious
Trina.

Benny frowned. “You’ve never been
through secretarial training.”

The boy said, “You’ll need someone
else for the Red Giant project, and a third person for Eye Corps till we
recover. We recommend Adrien. She wants to be an actress but she knows how to
handle engineers.” Cocking his head in an almost feminine gesture, he added, “We’re
going to be hungry when we wake. Can we have food waiting?”

Jez and Benny looked at each other
with dread. Casually, she asked, “Triniel, what would you like?”

The boy proceeded to order for two,
one normal meal and one softer and easier to digest. At no point did he use the
first-person “I.”

“Maybe it’s just temporary,” Benny
said, hopefully.

When Trina woke, both of their
faces lit up, and the teens gazed at each other with dopey grins. They didn’t
speak; nonetheless, information seemed to be flowing between them.

“Talk about taking a relationship
to the next level,” Benny joked.

“We’re sorry we missed Quinn,” both
said at once.

Jez covered her amazement by
saying, “At some point, she tossed a firebomb into our apartment to dispose of
DNA evidence. On the bright side, I’ll have to take you shopping for clothes
again.”

“You’re a good sister, Jezebel,”
the teens said in unison. Lost in each other, they said little else to the
adults for the rest of the evening.

After visiting hours were over, Jez
and Benny took Daniel to the Four Seasons Hotel to coach the new recruits. He
didn’t like being away from his other half for such a long period, but Benny
used his influence to negotiate a balance of work, school, and other non-Trina
activities.

Claudette already had her own room
on the same floor of the hotel and caught Jez at the elevator. They had a chat
in the hall. The starlet said, “The Fossils might not have an army left, but
they can still make life miserable for you. That racy, showgirl video of yours
was posted to YouTube. They spliced in surveillance footage of you and Benny
flirting in restaurants and his office.”

Jez felt like she had been punched
in the stomach. “It could be worse.”

Claudette swallowed. “They faked
some ridiculous footage of you staggering out of a dumpster. They even synched
a sound track to it: ‘I’m a Gold Digger,’ by Uber Skank.”

Tears welled up in Jezebel’s eyes.
It had been a very long day. Voice breaking, she said, “At least they went Top
10.”

“You have a hundred thousand hits.
The video moved to several other servers before we could stop it.” Claudette
hugged her to show support.

“I want to be the one to tell
Benny,” Jez replied.

“I’ve already called his PR firm.
They’ll be sending a woman by here tomorrow to help with damage control,” the
starlet said.

Jez shook her head. “I’ve already
agreed to stay at Benny’s place.”

Claudette raised her eyebrows. “Are
you sure that’s wise?”

“Another assassin could get me
tomorrow. Triniel has the right idea. In spite of the rules, I don’t want to
spend one minute more away from him than I have to.”

“I’ll send her to his place, then,
first thing. What rules are you talking about breaking?” the starlet asked.

“According to Dirt Bag, people with
more than two pages can’t be in the same place because it’s too risky.” Jez
snorted, “With all the people I’ve pissed off, I could move to Antarctica and it wouldn’t matter.”

Her friend seemed relieved that she
was only flaunting Fortune’s corporate regulations. “Look, I’m not the poster
girl for abstinence, but don’t rush things in the romance department,”
Claudette warned.

“I’ll talk to his pastor and wait
for Benny to ask me. I think he wants to get the casts off first so we don’t
hurt each other. But I’m afraid MSB is going to give him some kind of stroke
before that.”

“What’s MSB?” the starlet asked
with concern in her voice. “Is it something you found out about at the
hospital? Oh God, how long does he have?”

“Massive Sperm Buildup,” Jez
explained.

Claudette laughed so loudly that a
neighbor in a room near the elevator poked his head out to see what was wrong. “I’ve
heard of that. It kills brain cells in an incredibly painful fashion.”

“It’s no joke, that man had a
horny, pheromone-boosted, nineteen-year-old beauty queen throw herself at him
yesterday after he left us. If we don’t do something soon…”

“You have to be able to trust him
if your relationship is going to last,” the older woman advised.

On the drive home, Tan and the
guard sat in the front, while Jez snuggled with her boyfriend.

When she told him the rest of
Sedna’s story, he said, “I never want to leave you alone again.”

The Brooklyn-raised driver, Carl,
broke his usual silence and asked, “So let me get this straight. This lady came
in to whack you, and you squeezed three favors out of her before she left? All
this, you did from a wheelchair with one good hand?”

“Close enough,” she admitted.

“I know mob people who don’t
negotiate as good as you,” said the driver.

At the house, Benny took great
pains to point out, “This wing is Tan’s. The two parts of the house join in the
kitchen, and he can lock this door for privacy. You’ll be staying in an office
on
his
side.”

“Protecting my virtue?” she
surmised.

“Removing temptation,” he admitted.

She rewarded him with a deep
goodnight kiss. “Something to remember me by.” Her eyes were shining with something
more than admiration when he left for a cold shower.

Tan pushed the wheelchair to her
room. In addition to her laptop and overnight bag, the spare room had a desk, a
queen-sized futon, and a rack of faxes, phones and color printers. “It’s
perfect,” she said. In the corner was a box full of large t-shirts left over
from the international charity’s last fund-raiser.

Her host seemed embarrassed. “I
asked, but your security people wouldn’t bring any clothing. What did not burn
may have listening devices, poison, or smoke damage.”

“I think I pissed Fortune off,” she
guessed.

“You saved his life and Mr. Ben’s,
too. Mr. Fortune gave me this check for you, with instructions that no one else
see it.”

It was her turn to cough with
surprise. The check was made out for a million dollars. On the memo line, the
only explanation was the word “Bonus.” Based on past experience, it was the
closest she would ever get to a thank you from the billionaire.

She laughed at the irony of her
new-found wealth as she slipped into a borrowed t-shirt for bed.

Unable to sleep, Jez converted the schedule on her borrowed
phone into a company website for the funerals in the coming week. She attached
a photo to each code name, wrote the person’s real name, and something nice she
could say about the deceased. She printed out a copy and stuck it to her wall
in case Benny needed his phone back.

Underneath, she put a
sloppily-written list of her new assistants and a Post-It note for every loose
end. She could use her fingers easily, but writing with her injured hand was
painful and awkward. Holding fat markers like a two-year-old worked best. For
more than a few words, she would print a whole page, slice the text off with
the paper cutter, and tape it to the wall.

Realizing many people couldn’t get
to the secure server, she opened the permissions on the web page, then linked
it to her Facebook page. She sent notices out to the entire LA mail alias.

The most obvious problem to resolve
was two viewings that were both scheduled for 7:00 p.m. the following day in
different parts of the city. On Facebook, she suggested that she might be able
to extend the viewing hours and get a van so everybody interested could attend
both. She sent emails like a madwoman. Marcie found volunteers to drive the
three company vans.

Next, she needed a suit by eleven
the next morning. Although Jez had some clothes at the cleaner, they had pants.
Worse, she wasn’t even sure which cleaner because one of the Nenas had taken
them in. She’d have to buy a new outfit. On Benny’s phone, she scheduled a
shopping trip for 9:00 a.m..

Only half the dead men had wives,
but most had left some significant other behind. Jez knew what that felt like.
Her next obstacle was a way to extend widows’ benefits to women who had merely
been living with agents. According to a text from Adrien, Jez’s new check
wouldn’t clear fast enough to use this week. Without it, she could only scrape
together about ten thousand for each woman. She wrote an apology on her site
that this would only be a start until she could light a fire under human
resources to write a new policy.

After the funeral page, she felt a
little closure, so she followed up with two status sheets for the injured,
inpatient and outpatient. Both were annotated with things the family might
need, including simple services like lawn mowing. The sticky notes on her wall
were starting to gather like mosquitoes on a sleeping camper.

She might have gone to sleep then,
but she hadn’t bathed in three days and felt ookie. Ignoring the wheelchair,
she hobbled across the hall into the bathroom. While washing her hair, leaning
over Tan’s guest tub, she found spare poster presentation boards stored there.
This inspired her to start planning her new projects. By now, she had her
second wind.

The first poster board started with
a list of dream recruits for the red-giant map. She wrote a list of questions
she needed to have answered and material she needed to brush up on before she
could dare risk reading that page. She printed the technical lead’s e-mails
from the previous day, noting that there were external subroutines grafted on
to the core of the code to adjust for wobble, much like the algorithmic Hubble
telescope adjustments. She posted a note: “Why Hubble distortion?”

By 6:00 a.m., she was sitting back
in the wheelchair, texting, emailing, and phoning simultaneously. She had both
her new laptop for social networking and Benny’s old desktop for corporate and
scientific research. When the men came in from their workout, Benny remarked, “I
was going to invite you to breakfast, but I see you’ve already made yourself at
home.” He gestured to all the poster boards and sticky notes splattered on
every available surface.

Sheepish, she said, “Sorry, I
borrowed a few of your things without asking. I can give your phone back now.”

He flipped through his calendar and
announced, “Hey Tan, I’m buying a new dress at nine!”

Unfazed, the Asian man said, “That
will give me time to teach my morning class and you a chance to catch up on all
the urgent business I put on your desk.”

After giving her a peck on the
cheek, Benny passed the phone back to her. “You need it more than I do. The
other boards I understand, but what’s this documentary project?”

“Well, you’re so passionate about
the planet search; I figured we could turn that into the opportunity we were
looking for. You know, educate the masses and encourage talented people to join
us?”

Benny winced. “I don’t know, babe.
I haven’t been in show business for a while. I can talk to project people about
this all day, but no one is going to be interested.”

She swatted him playfully. “Nonsense,
you have a captivating voice. Your father’s already volunteered to direct. One
of his poker buddies is willing to do the camera work for union-scale wage.”

Seeing the name, Benny noted, “He
has an Oscar.”

“Well, I kept offering to pay
people more, but they’re so bored at that home, everyone is volunteering just
to get out.”

The actor began to seriously
consider her plan. “I’ve, um, never worked with my father before. That would
be… Wait, when did you arrange this with him?”

She shrugged. “Bernie doesn’t sleep
much. I caught him on Facebook at two in the morning–he’s Cigar47.”

“You talked to my dad in the middle
of the night?”

“Does that mean you’ll do it?” she
begged. “You could be the next
Inconvenient Truth
.”

“I don’t know. It would take a lot
of time away from my charity.”

“We got that guitarist from
Zeppelin to do the background music,” she said, baiting him.

He made a face she had rarely seen
outside of sex. “Oh my God. He’s going to play guitar for
my
documentary?” Benny kissed her so hard that when he removed his arms, she fell
back into her wheelchair, dizzy.

“Wow,” she said.

He gazed adoringly at her before
saying, “After I shower and get my work done for this slave driver, I’m going
to take you shopping on Rodeo Drive to celebrate. Zeppelin!”

When her boyfriend was out of
earshot, Tan asked, “How did you manage that? What do you have to do in return?”

“I may have to be in a rock video
or at least consult when I can walk again,” she admitted.

“You make him ten years younger.
Although I’m not always sure that is a wise thing,” he said, before leaving for
his dojo.

When someone knocked fifteen
minutes later, Jez wheeled her chair over to the door and opened it with her
good hand. Standing there was an attractive, African-American woman with an
enormous purse. Its depths held, at the very least: a notebook, a camera, a
bivouac of pens, and an old cassette recorder.

“You’re Benny’s Public Relations
expert?” Jez asked. Before letting the woman answer, she added, “I wish I had
the nerve to wear short hair like yours. Mine has been such a pain to take care
of lately. I like your taste in shoes too, a good first impression, and easy on
the feet if you have to stand all day.”

The woman was clearly thrown off by
the avalanche of commentary as well as the wheelchair. “I’m Elspeth Richards, I
was expecting…”

“A bubble-gum-cracking trollop in
heels and bikini? Sorry to disappoint. Let’s do this in my office. We only have
about two hours.”

“That’s a sizable amount of time.”

“I only want to go through this
once but I understand your need to be thorough. Benny’s trying to get some work
done for his hospitals before we head off to the funerals.”

On the way back to her makeshift office,
Jez offered her guest some of Tan’s tea and whispered, “The first thing I want
to counter is that whole gold-digger image. I could have dispelled it already,
but I want to do it tactfully. I don’t want to seem like I’m emasculating
Benny.”

Elspeth added sugar to her cup. “I
don’t understand.”

“As head of the think tank, with
bonuses, I’ll probably make twice what he does this year, even counting his
residuals. Some men get sensitive about that. He gives so much to his charity
that it’s not a fair comparison. Don’t you agree?”

The African-American woman nodded
and Jez continued, “I wanted to make it clear that I’m here at Tan’s
invitation, not Benny’s. I’m grateful for the space because I recently lost my
apartment and everything in it. I know they both just want to protect me from
the same ‘pharmaceutical interests’ that blew up our headquarters.”

“I heard about that,” said her
guest. “Is that how you got your injuries?”

“Actually, the hand was from a
bullet.” She was interrupted by a text message. “I’m sorry. I’ll turn this off.
It bugs the crap out of me when Benny does this on a date. I managed to
convince a lawn service to help out the victims if we switched our corporate
accounts to them. I have to post the coupon code so they can use it!”

When her guest saw the wall of
victim photos, she asked, “You did all this?”

“I put together the pieces but I
have two, no, three assistants helping me with the leg work.”

Noting the timestamps, the other
woman said, “Have you been doing this all night?”

“I multitask, but, yes. I couldn’t
sleep when these people needed me. They were my neighbors, my co-workers, and a
lot of them died defending me. What kind of sorry bitch would I be if I didn’t
do everything I could to help them and their families when they needed it most?”
After a moment, Jez realized what she had said. “I’m sorry; I know I’m supposed
to practice being a lady around the press.”

“No, it’s fine if you only use the
word in reference to yourself and don’t mind being quoted.” Elspeth pointed to
her feet and asked, “What about your casts?”

Jez opened her mouth, and then
covered it with a finger. She removed an NCIS business card from her pocket and
recited from the back, “I cannot comment on an ongoing investigation involving
matters of national security.”

Her guest’s eyes were as big as
saucers.

“However, I can tell you that Benny
got his injuries saving me and still carried me out of that hellhole on his
back. I can also answer any other question you think will help. No boundaries,
for this session only.”

“I wasn’t expecting this much
detail, and I don’t want to get anything wrong. Do you mind if I record our
talk?”

Jez shrugged, “I don’t care. We
have nothing to hide.”

“I get that impression. Do you mind
if I snap a photo of you in all this? It might help to counter some of the
negative press you’ve been getting.”

“Go ahead,” the former dancer
replied. She used an expression of Claudette’s. “I look like twenty miles of
bad road, and I haven’t done the makeup thing in a week. So what you see is
what you get.”

Elspeth took several shots of the
room. “Wasn’t Sedna the tenth planet for a few minutes before Pluto got kicked
out too?”

“Yes, she got a raw deal. I think
it was because she was a woman. A guy probably would have been promoted.”

The woman smiled at what she
thought was a metaphor. “Seriously, what’s with all the astronomy terms?”

Jez was getting more skilled with
the honesty problem. When there were several choices, she found she could focus
on something appropriate and relevant to the audience. Jez evaded sensitive
issues by talking about the documentary first. She worked from memory, having
recently absorbed much of it. She stopped with the orbital equations when her
guest’s eyes started to glaze over. “Sorry, math-geek overload. With the folks
I get to work with, I forget sometimes that not everyone drinks from a fire
hose. Benny’s so excited to do this new project. After all he’s done for me, I
wanted to help him with this.”

“What else did he do for you?”

“He convinced me to stay in rehab,
got me a job with Elias Fortune. Believe it or not, even being a sexist pig,
Fortune runs a true meritocracy. I had to fight my way up that ladder.”

Jez tried to concentrate on the
documentary, but the woman kept trying to guide her off the path into the
personal. “What’s Hollis like in bed? I’ve always wanted to know.”

Jez laughed, “You and half the
women at his country club. I’ve fallen asleep
on
him, but never slept
with
him. He keeps you warmer than an electric blanket.”

“Girl, you expect me to believe you
two haven’t done the deed?”

“Tan locks the door to this wing
every night, and he’s a black belt. It’s not like we’re seventeen and half your
day is about sex. We have two friends in that stage now where we have to pry
them apart: Trina and Daniel. Everyone calls them Triniel. When you get older,
you start to think about the next thirty years. Don’t get me wrong, I would
love tell him how I feel in more than words. But he has very strong religious
convictions and I have to respect that. His decency and caring are the things
that attracted me to him; how could I trample that? So I’m doing everything by
the book. I’m meeting his pastor on Sunday and his mother on Tuesday. Talk
about pressure.”

This got a smile of sympathy. “You’ll
do fine.”

“His dad was a teddy bear, and his
friends have been very supportive. I wouldn’t have pulled through this last
week without help from Claudette. I came from a trailer park and sometimes
people don’t see past that label.”

“Claudette who?”

“Fortune, my boss’s ex. She’d be
here, but she’s getting reconstructive surgery on her face today—necessity, not
vanity. Don’t say anything about that. Claudette’s very sensitive about the
scar that rapist gave her,” Jez pulled back from the private details just in
time and changed topics awkwardly. “She’s been helping me adjust to the
religion thing.”

This impressed her interviewer. “So
what do you think of it so far?”

Jez said, “The core values are
essential. Parts are absolute poetry. Ruth could be a story from today.”