Jezebel's Ladder (24 page)

Friday was cast-removal day for Jez and Benny. They went
into Ward Seven where Doctors Weiss and Poldark cut them free simultaneously.
Their friends threw them a huge party in the office cafeteria to celebrate the
impending launch as well as their new freedom. Guards and significant others
attended. They’d even hired a DJ.

During a brief roast of the two
leaders, they showed a very young and dorky Benny Hollis’s screen test.

Then, they played the newest
Jezebel video compiled by their opponents. It was spliced footage of her
shopping for clothes in Paris, trying on nearly thirty pairs of shoes. She
piled boxes into the arms of her incredibly hairy driver until he couldn’t see
over them. The soundtrack was from the musical
Earth Girls Are Easy
, a
wicked satirical song called “‘Cause I’m a Blonde.” Benny fell out of his chair
laughing when they caught her talking on one phone while texting on another,
and then tripping over a curb. The video made her look stereotypical, shallow,
and moronic.

Jez slugged him in the arm,
protesting, “That’s not funny!”

The refrain showed Jez taking Nena
convertible shopping, with both of them bopping to the stereo system.

Jez covered her face. “Oh my God,
that was the test drive where the cop pulled us over!”

At the end, they had an actual
audio snippet of Jez talking. She turned to Nena and said, “Remember, with the
right shoes, you can go anywhere.”

Benny had tears in his eyes from
holding in the guffaws.

“Say it,” she dared him.

Daniel said it for him, “That’s
going to be the next graduation speech at the Imelda Marcos finishing school!”

Trina stepped in, fuming. “In Paris, she was buying things for every one of us. Jez took me car shopping to cheer me up
because Dirt Bag was mean to me that day for something Octavia did. Jez tripped
on the day of the funeral because she’d had no sleep and was wearing two casts.
She was distracted trying to help someone pay for a necessary surgery. I think
this video shows what a good friend she’s been to all of us. And making fun of
her shoes is just cruel when she couldn’t wear them for over a month.” She
glared at the crowd until everyone apologized, including Daniel.

Jez hugged her. “Thank you,
sweetie. You had your first fight and used the first person. I’m so proud of
you.”

Trina excused herself, pushing
Daniel’s wheelchair toward the door. “We’re going to have make-up sex now.
We’re told it’s invigorating.”

“And she’s gone,” Jez lamented.

Benny wrapped an arm around her
waist. “I’m sorry. I was laughing because I was so embarrassed by my clip.
Millions of people have seen my flops, but I’ve never seen a bad photo of you.
Even when the Fossils make fun of you, every guy watching wants to be with you
and every girl is jealous.”

She blushed at the compliment. “As
your penance, you owe me three dances.”

Benny bribed the DJ to play three
slow dances in a row. He got to show off his ballroom skills and finish with a
dip. Afterward, he drove Jez home. When they arrived, Tan’s car was
suspiciously missing. Jez’s stomach did flip-flops as Benny helped her up the
step into the house.

She approached the subject
delicately, as he put on soft music in the living room. “Benny, other than
dinner and AA meetings, we haven’t seen much of each other the past couple of
weeks.”

He patted the sofa. “We’re together
now. Come here.” His smile was irresistible.

She dropped to the leather surface.
It was softer than an old bomber jacket. His arm slipped slyly around her. It
was like high school. Every action screamed, “My best move.”

She had grown so accustomed to
their non-threatening time together that this felt awkward.

“People have been making a lot of
assumptions about us since we met,” Benny rumbled. “Now that we’re alone,
there’s something I’ve been wanting to show you for a long time.”

As he leaned back and reached for
his pocket, she hopped to her feet. “No, not like this. I’ve wanted it, hell,
dreamt about it for weeks, but I need to shower. Worse, I need to exercise. I
don’t want your first view of my ass to be this wreck. I need at least another
week to whip it into lingerie shape. And my feet… you can’t see my feet until I
get new shoes. Even then, we might have to turn the lights out first.”

His head was spinning, but that was
its natural state around this woman. “Whoa, breathe. I have no idea where that
UFO-like, non-ballistic turn went.”

“This is about sex. I want our
first time to be perfect, and this isn’t it. You’ve had beauty-pageant sex
before, Coppertone-tan, bikini-model sex, and from what I’ve heard, freaky,
circus sex. Okay, I’ve done the last one too, but I need time to get ready
because I don’t want to disappoint you.”

He shook his head. “This is like
watching MTV,
Newlywed Game
, and Cirque de Soleil at the same time.”

She frowned. “I’ve actually done
that with Triniel. What are you trying to say?”

“Sit down and turn off the
Ping-Pong ball in the tornado. You’re a menace to low-flying planes. Please
listen to me for one minute without predicting or reacting.”

Mildly hurt by his generalization,
she sat.

He sighed and began again. “People
have just assumed we were getting married for over a month now. And I’ve never
asked. That’s bothered me.”

She opened her mouth, but he held
up a finger. “I still have fifty-four seconds, and then you can take the rest
of the night.”

Jez mimed locking her lips and
throwing away the key. Then she gave him her ‘this better be worth it’ glare.

He said, “My dad’s been prodding me
to say this for weeks. I still can’t get used to the fact that you talk to my
dad and friends more than I do.”

Then he opened the ring box. “I
wanted to be the one to ask you the right way.” Benny got down on his knee and
said, “Jezebel Johnson, would you do me the incredible honor of…”

She tackled him, pinning him to the
plush carpet. Her mouth prevented the rest of his proposal from getting out.
When they came up for air several minutes later, he said, “I e-mailed the whole
speech to your phone before I started. I knew you’d never let me finish.”

“I never said a word,” she giggled.
“That was the rule.”

She turned on the phone to see if
he really had sent her the proposal. She skipped the call summary email with
PJ’s name.

****

Though they had never discussed the
prospect, the couple agreed it should be a small wedding, on a weekend, and
closed to the press. Tan would obviously be best man, and Claudette the matron
of honor.

Jez summarized, “That just leaves
where and when.” They both took out their phones to compare schedules.

Benny avoided answering. “The woman
usually has the most say in these things.”

“My old friends are in Vegas.
There’s a hotel there I’d love to honeymoon in.”

“Then that’s where,” he conceded.

“I don’t have any family; however,
your mom will probably have a lot of opinions. I think you should decide when.”

He winced at the mention of the M
word. “Mom said the sooner the better because ‘Her eggs aren’t getting any
younger.’ I’ll call her and see when she can fly in. The damn engagement party
is going to be the toughest part to plan. Her newest husband is in Congress and
everything has to fit around fund-raisers and primaries.”

Jez laid a hand on his chest. “You’re
allowed to say no to your mother.”

Benny concentrated on his phone and
whispered, “I think the broken arms would be easier to live with.”

Jez called Claudette with the good
news. She opened with light conversation to disguise her excitement. “Hi, did
anything interesting happen after the party?”

“You know, it’s eight o’clock on a
Friday and I have nothing better to do than check my social networking. Damn
you for getting me hooked on this stuff,” the starlet scolded. “I checked your
YouTube statistics. You were the flavor of the month. It’s dying down now, but
Skank got over three hundred thousand hits.”

“That puts me on par with the
singing hamster,” Jez snickered. “Well, I wanted to tell you before someone
else tweets it to the world.”

As Benny told his mother the good
news, Claudette overheard. Her voice went up an octave. “Did I just hear the
word
engagement
?”

“Yes. All we have decided now is
Vegas. Can I count on you to stand up for me?”

Benny was arguing with his mother. “I
don’t want to talk to the Republicans. I barely have enough time at home as it
is.”

Claudette said, “Of course, silly.
Just take all the photos from my left side.”

“The surgeon was an artist, and you’ve
been putting cream on that scar for weeks. It’s barely noticeable.”

Her friend sighed. “The camera can
tell, hon’. I’m going to run down the hall and tell Trina.”

Benny admitted, “Yes, anyone could
do a lot of good compared to the monkey they put in last term, but why me?”

Jez warned her friend, “Don’t go
past the yellow tape I put down on the hall carpet. Text her first. She checks
it pretty often when they take their hydration breaks. I’m a screamer, but
Trina is a
broadcaster
, about forty feet.” Benny stopped talking. “Remember
that female guard? She stood outside their door while they were going at it.
You know those triple orgasms that leave you relaxed and stupid-happy for a
week? Yeah, eyes rolled back in the head, can’t use your tongue because you
just washed it. Trina went for five; the poor guard passed out. No permanent
damage. We had to ship her to London because she would make whipped-puppy
noises every time she saw Daniel. Doggy style, that’s funny. Hold on.”

She covered the receiver. Benny had
dropped his phone on the floor and was staring at her. “Babe, why did you hang
up on your mother so quickly?” He didn’t respond. Looking at the rise in his
sweatpants, she could guess why. “I’ve gotta go,” she said smugly, before
closing her own phone.

Smiling broadly, Jez announced, “Mr.
Hollis, you’re turned on. You
like
dirty talk.” She had finally found a
chink in the white knight’s armor.

He nodded.

She purred, “I wish you had told me
sooner. We could’ve been having hot phone-sex this whole time.”

“But we’re sharing the same house,”
he squeaked, like a boy whose voice was changing.

“You’re missing the point. The rule
is I can’t touch you, but I could try to push you over the edge by stirring
your imagination. Mmm. I think I might have that shower after all. I’m feeling
dirty, but my legs are so weak; I need you to stand behind me and hold me up.”

Benny was sweating. “This is
dangerous.”

“You’re right; you need to build up
your arm muscles before we can have shower sex. I don’t want you out of commission
again after I just got you back. I’ll take a bath—a long, hot bath with lots of
bubbles to make me slippery.”

His breathing was getting ragged. “What’s
going on? A couple minutes ago, you wanted nothing to do with sex.”

She shook her head. “I told you I
needed a bath first. No girl wants some boy pawing her when she isn’t prepared.
But knowing that the man I love, my fiancé, gets so turned on by the sound of
my voice that he drops his phone,” Jez growled. “That gets me ready. You know
that hotel I told you about? I like it because of the enormous hot tub.”

She eased off the sofa and onto the
floor, doing the splits in a fluid motion. Past discussions about the
contortions she could perform for her escape tricks ran through his mind.
Benny’s hand was actually shaking. “That’s a great move.”

She shook her head slowly. “Not my
best one. These hot tubs have handles on the side. I grab one set with my
hands.” She put her arms behind her head and squeezed the leather cushion. “And
the other set with my feet,” she said as she placed her ankles against the sofa
arms on opposite sides. When her skirt slid back, he started hyperventilating.

“You should try it,” she said as he
stared at her taut, dancer’s legs and lingered on the inch of fabric separating
them. “Slide into the hot water. Let it wrap around you, and the motion of the
bubbles will wash away five years of stress.”

His face was numb. “We can still
make it tonight.”

“All night, or just a little
post-engagement quickie?” she asked.

“No, to Vegas. You said I get to
pick when. I choose tonight.” His breathing couldn’t get much more ragged
without her calling an ambulance.

All teasing gone from her voice,
she stood up in front of him. “Babe, I wasn’t pushing; I just wanted to help
you enjoy the weekend. Are you sure?”

He nodded quickly and left the
room. “I’m going to pack. Don’t touch me or say anything to me until I cool
down.”

She hit redial. “He doesn’t want to
wait. We’re hitting Vegas tonight. He has the worst cast of MSB I’ve ever seen,
but he only wants authorized treatment providers. He turned down a visit from
the naughty night nurse.”

Claudette hooted with laughter for
several seconds. “We can take my plane. I was going to the Tribeca film
festival, but family is more important.”

“I have everything else I’ll need
in my ready bag, but I don’t have a dress!” Jez remembered.

“I’ll handle that. You just pick
out some nice lingerie, and make sure it tears easily.”

****

They went with a minimal flight
crew and only two guards. Jez reserved four of the best suites, an entire floor
of the hotel. When they checked in, the girl behind the desk recognized her. “Miss
Johnson, to what do we owe this pleasure?”

With all the famous people in their
party, Jez was dumbfounded. She explained to her friends, “I used to work here.
Maybe one of my colleagues recognized the name—it’s kind of unusual.” To the
clerk, she said, “Um… I’m getting married tonight.”