“Your Michelangelo carving. What does he have to do with me?”
“Well ... it seems that he ... oh ... that he didn’t take the breakup very well. Can you imagine? I paid his rent for three months at a very high-end condo just outside of Hollywood, and I gave him ten grand to live on, and that came with the understanding that he would keep his mouth shut about personal details.”
Greg looked into the mirror before him, using it to take in Mindy’s reflection on the other side of the room. Her eyes would not meet his. Both Bradley and Julie impassively continued to work, behaving as they weren’t hearing a single thing being said. “What are we talking about here, Mindy?” he asked her.
“I got a call from Georgette this morning,” she said. Georgette was her long-time agent and manager who had been with her since the days she was a teenager on The Slow Lane. “She tells me that reporters from Entertainment Reports contacted her to see if I wanted to give a statement to them for the record.”
“Why would you want to do that?” Greg asked. ER, as it was called, was perhaps the most malicious and cruel of the gossip media that hounded celebrities.
She sighed. “It seems that Raphael has recorded a tell-all interview with them that will air on the show’s Friday night broadcast. It’s a tell-all about what it was like to live with Mindy Snow, including why we broke up.”
“I see,” Greg said. “That is unfortunate, of course. One never wishes to be a point of discussion on that smear show. I still do not see what this has to do with me.”
“Well ... Raphael apparently told them that the reason he and I broke up was because I’ve ... I’ve always had a crush on you and that I’ve been trying for years to get close to you and now that I’ve landed a starring role opposite of you ... well ... I kicked him to the curb so I could ... you know ... go for it with you.”
Greg blinked slowly. He took a deep breath and then let it out. Meanwhile, Julie and Bradley kept right on powdering and puffing as if nothing was happening. “Why,” Greg finally asked, “would he say something like that? It’s not true, is it?”
“No, not really,” Mindy said.
“Not really? What does that mean?”
“He’s distorting something I said to him,” she said. “I bet those assholes at ER are paying him twenty or thirty grand for this shit and feeding his lines to him.”
“You are undoubtedly correct,” Greg said. “But what did you say to him that started this?”
“He’s not just talking about me having a crush on you,” Mindy said. “He’s talking about our sex life, about how I treated him at home, about some of the shit I used to say to him. All of it is a gross exaggeration at best, an out and out misrepresentation at worst.”
“I have no doubt about that either,” Greg said. “But my wife is probably going to be contacted about this as well, wouldn’t you think?”
“I’d be amazed if they hadn’t already done it,” Mindy said.
“I would like to be able to present some facts to Celia when I talk to her. Please tell me just what it is that you said to this Rafael creature that prompted him to say you broke up with him because of me.”
Mindy sighed again. “Well ... I did tell him a few times that I thought you were attractive. You are attractive, Greg, and I was just pointing out a fact.”
“And ... from that he comes up with you broke up with him because of me?”
“Well ... that and the fact that I jumped on this role when I found out you were going to be the star of the project. He did ask me about that once, why I suddenly became interested in the part once you were cast. The same thing you asked me.”
“And what did you tell him?”
“Nothing!” she said. “I just said that I had always wanted to work with you and the opportunity had come to do it. He seemed like he accepted that at the time. We went on with our lives for weeks after that and everything was just like normal.”
“But then you broke up with him,” Greg said.
“Well ... yeah,” she said. “I wasn’t going to drag his dumb ass across the country with me while I worked on the project. His time had come. He knew when we first hooked up that it was a limited-term relationship. Or, at least he should have known that. He couldn’t possibly have thought that I was going to marry a fucking personal trainer who can’t think his way out of a paper bag, right?”
“I’ve never met the man,” Greg said. “Therefore, I cannot speculate on what he may or may not have thought, but he does sound like a man you would not want to ask to do physics equations for you, correct?”
“Uh ... correct,” she said.
“In any case, that is neither here nor there. I trust you are planning to refute his accusation that you broke up with him because of a crush on me?”
“Georgette issued a brief statement to the ER reporter denying that particular accusation as well as most of the others.”
“Then I guess that is all there is to be done,” Greg said. “I’ll instruct Johnny to refuse comment on the issue completely other than to report that you and I hardly knew each other at all until being cast together and that we enjoy a strictly professional relationship now. I’ll suggest to Celia that she instruct Pauline Kingsley to make no comment on the matter either.”
Mindy nodded. “That sounds good, Greg. Exactly what I would have suggested.” She finally met his eyes in the mirror. “I’m sorry about all this.”
Greg shrugged. “Things happen,” he said. “As Jake always says, it’s part of the life we choose.”
“I suppose,” she said humbly.
Silence returned to the makeup room, broken only when Lewis came in to get into his wardrobe for the day. As a dark-skinned, short-haired man, Lewis did not need the layers of skin-darkening makeup or the tussling of his locks. Mindy and Greg greeted him warmly and they talked of the upcoming scenes for a few minutes before Lewis disappeared into the wardrobe area to get dressed.
Once he was gone, Greg took another glance at Mindy in the mirror. Her eyes were once again cast downward as Julie worked on her neck area. To facilitate this, her robe had been pulled down a bit and he could see the tops of her breasts. They were very appetizing to look at.
Did she really say she had a crush on me? he wondered. The idea did not seem ridiculous in the least. Nor was it really that offensive.
If fact, he was actually a bit flattered that it might be true.
It was the next morning, in the rehearsal studio in Santa Clarita, that Jake heard about the upcoming ER report. It was Celia who delivered the news to him as they sat down for the tuning of their instruments prior to the soundcheck. She did not just come out and say what was wrong with her, but Jake could tell something was bothering her because she was using more Spanish phrases than normal.
“What’s the deal, C?” Jake finally asked her. He was sitting next to Natalie (who had decided to join them for the production of the next CDs after Mark promised he would remain committed to her) and holding his black Les Paul in his hands. It was his day today and they were going to start by working on one of his hard-driving tunes.
“What’s the deal with what?” she asked shortly. She held her white Stratocaster in her hands as the tune required her to play distorted chords as backup.
“Oh, come on,” Jake chided. “I’ve known you long enough to know when something’s put a bug up your ass.”
“A bug up my ass?” she asked. “That’s rather crude, Jake.”
“Perhaps,” he allowed. “So, what kind of bug is it? Give it up.”
She sighed. “It’s that fucking puta!” she blurted.
“What fucking puta?” he asked.
“You never did tell me what that word means,” said Natalie as she tweaked her tuning knob a quarter turn.