She picked up the case and looked at it carefully. Inside of it were little round pills, most white, some pink, each in a little round holder marked with a day of the week. Today was Monday and the pill for Monday, which she was supposed to take in the morning, was still sitting in its holder. So was the pill for Sunday and the pill for Saturday.
Jesus fucking Christ, she thought, lapsing into a Jake-ism in her head. I haven’t taken one in three days now! What the hell is the matter with me? I’m I that stressed out that I forgot something so goddamn basic?
She hurriedly took Monday’s pill out of its case and put it in her mouth. She swallowed it with a drink of water taken directly from the tap.
How many days can you miss before it becomes an issue? she wondered uneasily. Surely not only two and a half days, right?
She simply did not know.
It’ll probably be okay, she finally concluded. I’ll just have to make sure not to miss any more.
Laura met Pauline at ten o’clock the next morning and they quickly signed an agreement of representation that Pauline had drawn up. It was a straightforward document, one page in length, and written in laymen’s terms instead of legalese. This was a characteristic of a Pauline Kingsley Esquire document.
“All right then,” Pauline told her latest client. “Let’s go over your statement and then I’ll give those fucks a call and hit ‘em with it.”
“Sounds good,” Laura said.
It didn’t take them long to come up with the statement. Like Pauline’s documents, her statements were succinct and to the point and very short.
“‘Laura Best denies any and all allegations of a romantic relationship of any kind with Dr. David Boulder DDS. She was a patient of his for several years and their relationship was never, at any point, anything other than a doctor-patient one. Nor did Laura Best ever attempt to pursue any kind of romantic relationship with Dr. Dave Boulder DDS and she vehemently denies any accusation that she was stalking him or engaging in anything other than standard doctor-patient behavior during the course of their professional relationship,’” Pauline recited when the statement was on her computer screen for printing.
“I like it,” Laura said. “Thank you so much for doing this for me.”
“Anything for my clients,” Pauline said with a smile. “Now then, for the fun part. What did you say was the name of that snatch that met you in the parking lot yesterday?”
“Uh ... Stock-something,” she said. “I’m sorry, I can’t remember exactly, I was so flustered. Maybe I should’ve taken her card after all.”
“No need to fret,” Pauline said. “I know exactly who you’re talking about. Annie Stockland is your bitch. She’s high in the celebrity news section. I’ve dealt with her before.”
“You have?”
“Oh yes,” Pauline said. “She’s the one who harassed us the most back during the contract negotiation that never really happened. She’s a prying bitch all right.”
“You know how to get hold of her then?”
“Child’s play,” Pauline said, opening up a file of phone numbers and contacts on her computer.
While she was digging through it, looking for the proper number, Laura said, “Uh ... Pauline, you take birth control pills, don’t you?”
Pauline looked up at her. “I used to,” she said.
“Used to?”
“Obie has had a vasectomy,” she said. “I guess he figured three kids was enough. He’s got OB3, of course, and Sarah, and his latest little one, Kenny, all from different mothers I might add.”
“Wow,” she said. “I didn’t know he had that many kids.”
“He’s actually a very supportive father,” she said. “He sees them as much as he can and he’s not chintzy with the child support either. Pays considerably more than he’s legally required to just to keep the exes happy and cooperative. I’ve met them all—the kids, not the exes. They’re a good bunch.”
“Interesting,” Laura said.
“Anyway, what about birth control?” Pauline asked. “Some reason you’re enquiring about it?”
“No ... not really,” she said, losing her nerve. “I was just wondering about some of the side effects.”
“I remember when I first started taking them, my boobs got sore and I retained some fluid, but after a month or so, that went away. Never had any problems with them after that. Are you experiencing side effects?”
“Well ... I’ve been a little irritable lately,” she said. “I was wondering if that might be a side effect.”
Pauline shrugged. “I suppose it could be, but you’ve been taking them for how long?”
“About three and a half years now,” she said.
“Don’t you think it more likely that recent events in your life might be responsible for that irritability? After all, you’ve earned the right to be a bit peeved at the world.”
Laura nodded. “Yeah, that’s probably it.”
They spoke no more of birth control. Pauline found the number she was looking for and, after being on hold for only five minutes, was soon talking to Annie Stockland. She identified her as Laura’s manager and issued the statement, word for word. She refused to answer any questions beyond that.
“Well, that’s done,” Pauline said after hanging up. “What do you say we go out and grab ourselves a little drinky-poo?”
“At ten-thirty in the morning?” Laura asked.
Pauline smiled. “That’s why they make bloody Marys, right?”
Laura found her logic to be sound.
A week later, Matt Tisdale sat in the back of the limousine as it drove from his house to the National Records Building in Hollywood. In an envelope beside him was the demo tape that contained nine new songs that he and his band had put together and recorded for submission. Though the recording quality was shit—only Nerdly could make a demo tape sound good with that crappy equipment they provided—Matt thought the suits on the top floors were going to be pleased. Especially when he told them that he was going to embrace the engineering of them instead of fighting it.
“This next album is going to fucking sell,” he vowed to himself as they crawled along in the late morning traffic.
He put out the cigarette he was smoking and then immediately lit another. He sipped from a cup of strong black coffee, which was a poor substitute for his morning cocaine blast but would not impair him during a meeting. He then picked up the copy of the American Watcher he’d had the driver pick up at a news stand.
LAURA BEST INVOLVED WITH HER MARRIED DENTIST? read the headline on the front page. YOU MAKE THE CALL! Below the headline was a photo of the bitch that Kingsley was fucking these days. She was a redhead with a cute face—the kind of face a man liked to nut on—but her tits were kind of small (he had seen the nude photos of her a few weeks before and had some of his people looking into whether or not he could score some uncensored copies). Still, she had a decent enough body and she could certainly blow a horn with the best of them. He could see the appeal of her. The second photo was a shot of some old motherfucker with a balding head wearing a pair of green scrubs. He looked like the epitome of nerdiness, nerdier than Nerdly, if that were possible. How someone like that could’ve possibly tapped into the saxophone bitch was way beyond him. Maybe he has a big fuckin’ schlong, Matt thought.