“What up, bro?” she asked when she recognized his voice.
“What up, Paulie?” he returned. “You busy?”
“Just having a pre-dinner scotch on the rocks with Obie.”
“Say hi to him for me,” Jake said. “Listen, we’ve got a little situation with Laura and the Watcher.”
“Another one?”
“Another one,” he confirmed. “This time it’s something she’s going to have to submit an official response to. We were hoping you could help her out with that.”
“Absolutely,” she said without hesitation. “Tell me what’s going on.”
He told her the tale. She listened to it without interruption, including his best-case solution to the problem.
“Hmm,” she said. “Just when you thought you’d seen how sleazy that rag can be, when you start to think you’d seen the worst they can do, they come along and pull some even sleazier shit like this. They really have no shame.”
“They really don’t,” Jake agreed. “Am I making the right call here? Having her officially deny involvement?”
“I really don’t see any other choice,” she said. “We can’t threaten them with libel since the story is actually true, so a denial is about the best damage control she can offer. Is she sure there is no tangible evidence of the affair floating around?”
“She seems pretty sure about that.”
“I hope so. Because if she issues a stern denial and those fucks come up with some pictures or some shit like that later on, any credibility she retains will be gone forever.”
“Understood,” Jake said. “Will you make the statement for her?”
“I will,” Pauline said. “There’s just one thing. I need to be on record as her manager if I’m going to do this. It will carry official weight that way.”
“Her manager?”
“That’s right. In truth, I was going to bring this up to her the next time I talked to her anyway. She’s gotten to be big enough now that she really needs a manager. I can probably put out some feelers and get her a better gig than playing on-hold music in that shithole studio, and I can speak for her to the media as her official representation.”
“Uh ... let me put her on the line,” Jake said. “I can’t make a decision like that for her.”
He handed the phone to Laura, who had been hovering right next to him, listening intently to his side of the conversation. “She needs to speak to you about representing you as your manager.”
“My manager?”
“She says you need one now,” Jake told her. “That it’ll carry more weight if she speaks for you as your manager.”
“Won’t I have to pay her for that?”
Jake held out the phone to her again. “That’s for you and her to discuss,” he said. “Talk to her.”
Laura took the phone and put it to her ear. “Hi, Paulie,” she said softly.
“Sounds like a real shit show you’ve got going on, hon,” Pauline said. “Why don’t we talk about what to do here?”
They talked. In the end, Laura agreed to sign on with Pauline as her manager at the standard rate of twenty percent—with a clause that Pauline insisted upon.
“That’s only twenty percent of any gigs that I personally get for you,” she clarified. “The gig you have going now and anything that is offered to you because of the work you’ve done on your own, you still pull in all the money yourself. Fair?”
“Very fair,” Laura agreed.
“All right then,” Pauline said. “What time are they expecting you at the studio tomorrow?”
“Nine o’clock.”
“Any chance you could take the day off?”
She thought about this for a moment and then shrugged. “I’ve never taken any sick time yet,” she said. “I’m sure if I call out, they’ll find something else to work on for the day.”
“Do it then,” Pauline told her. “Meet me at the KVA Studios office at ten o’clock in the morning and we’ll draw up an agreement. Once that’s done, I’ll make a little phone call to our friends at the Watcher and issue your statement.”
“Thank you, Pauline,” she said, smiling for the first time in days. “I really appreciate this.”
“I’m happy to do it,” Pauline said. “Besides, I’m pretty confident that you and I are going to make us some money with this partnership.”
They ended the phone call and Laura put the phone back in the receiver.
“It sounds like you worked it out,” Jake said.
“We did. I’m going to call in sick for tomorrow and meet Pauline at ten at the studio. We’re going to draw up an agreement and then she’s going to give my statement to that reporter.”
“Very nice. I told you she’d do it.”
“You did. And you were right.”
Jake put his arm around her and pulled her close. “I’m so sorry about all this, Laura,” he told her. “I wish it didn’t have to be this way, but, well ... this is what dating me is like. This is the bad that goes along with the good.”
“It’s not exactly a walk in the park,” she agreed, snuggling into him a little, enjoying the feel of his arm around her.
“I would love to tell you that this kind of scrutiny will end at some point, but it probably won’t. As long as you are involved with me, there is going to be paparazzi photographers and media reporters following you around and popping up everywhere. They are going to print horrible things about you, about us, and there isn’t going to be anything we’re able to do about it. It’s part of the package that is me, unfortunately. It’s the life I chose to live, does that make sense?”
“It does,” she said softly.
“You, however, did not choose this life, not initially anyway. You do have to choose now, though. If the bad outweighs the good of the relationship, well ... there’s only one way to fix that.”
“What are you saying, Jake?” she asked.
“I’m saying I love you,” he told her. “I love you very much and I love what we have together. But ... well ... if it’s too much for you to handle, if that bad is outweighing the good ... I’ll understand if you make the decision not to keep going.”
“Are you saying ... that ... that we should break up?” she asked.
“That is not what I’m saying at all,” he said. “I’m just letting you know that I understand how hard this part of this life is on you and that ... if it’s too much and you want to go ... I won’t stand in your way. I’ll be sad and my heart will be broken, I’ll mourn you terribly, I’ll probably write a song or two about the experience, but I’ll understand.”
She was shaking her head. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily,” she told him. “After all, I’ve got all of my clothes over here. And if I left, I’d have to make my own dinners, clean up my own bedroom, wash my own clothes. Fuck that shit.”
He smiled and leaned down to give her a long kiss on the lips. “All right then,” he said when the kiss broke. “I guess I’ll have to keep you around a bit longer.”
“I guess you will,” she said, caressing his cheek with her fingers.
“And speaking of dinner,” Jake said. “It’ll be ready in twenty minutes.”
She looked up at the clock. It was twenty minutes to six. You could literally set your watch by Elsa’s dinnertime. “So it will be,” she said. “I’m going to go upstairs and take a quick shower and change my clothes.”
“Sounds good, hon,” he told her, kissing her again. “Why don’t you put something on that has ... you know ... easy access, if you know what I mean?”
She gave an impish grin. “I know what you mean,” she said.
She went upstairs to their bedroom, walking through it to the master bathroom. There, she turned on the shower and then removed her studio clothes, bra, and underwear (after first checking to make sure the blinds were completely closed—they weren’t going to get any more pictures of her in the nude) and tossing them in the hamper for Elsa to collect in the morning.
She then walked to the sink and turned the tap on to cold so she could brush her teeth. Her pink toothbrush was in a holder right next to Jake’s blue one. She pulled it out and then opened the medicine cabinet to take out the tube of toothpaste stored there (one on the many sure ways to incur the Wrath of Elsa was to leave a tube of toothpaste sitting on the sink counter—she and Jake were both well-trained in putting it away). As she reached for the half empty tube of Colgate her eyes happened on a small, circular case that sat two shelves above. The moment she saw it, a brief flood of adrenaline surged through her.