Free Beg by C. D. Reiss

Tiffany
rankled. Not that I really had anything to go with the karats I would have made
him buy me, but failure wasn’t something I took lightly, especially if it meant
I’d been weak.
    The valet pulled up with his dark green Jaguar. “Can I drive you
to your car?” Jonathon asked.
    “I’m in the lot,” I said. “It’s fine.”
    He put his face close to mine, until I could feel his breath in
my ear. “If you don’t want to go home with me, I won’t hold you to it. We can
wait, or we can call it off.”
    “A bet’s a bet.”
    He brushed his nose on my cheek. “You sure? I can be demanding.”
    “So can I.”
    He stepped back and smiled. “Not tonight, you’re not.” He moved
onto the curb. “I’ll leave the gate open for you.” He got into the car and
drove off. I watched it head down LaBrea , swaggering
just like he did.
    When I went inside, Gabby had already called a cab. I could smell
a vodka tonic on her breath, but she seemed relatively sober.
    “Are you sure you’re going to be all right?” I said.
    “Monica, you want to go, so just go. I’m tired of being babied.”
    And that was that. I put her in a cab and walked to my car.
    My phone buzzed as I got into my little Honda. It was Vinny . Fucking Vinny .
    “Where are you?” I asked.
    “Vegas, baby.” He was somewhere loud and unruly, yelling into the
phone.
    “We’ve been looking for you. The band broke up.”
    “I can’t hear you. Listen, Sexybitch ,
you did a gig tonight at that shithole on Santa Monica?”
    “ Fron —”
    “Eugene Testarossa’s partner was there. Testarossa himself is coming the next time you go. So
you text me when you’re up next, and I’ll call him back and he’ll show up.
Bang! You’re in.”
    “ Vinny , I can’t—”
    “Text me, baby. Love you.”
    He cut the call.
    What an asshole. He goes to Vegas for how long and now he wants
his fifteen percent because I got my own gig? Oh no. That wasn’t going to work.
I texted him,
    — You’re fired —
    I was at my car when the phone dinged.
    — Fuck I am. You
signed a contract —
    — The band signed a
contract. The band didn’t play tonight. I played solo —
    There was a longer pause, and I sat in the driver’s seat waiting
to hear back, my night of subservience forgotten.
    — Good luck getting
WDE to take your call —
    I shut off my phone. I wanted to throw it, but I couldn’t afford
to replace it when I smashed it into a million pieces. He was right. No one at
WDE was going to take a call or email from me. They’d contacted Vinny . I wouldn’t get past the first round of assistants.
Their job was to filter out artists. I could sing Under My Skin a hundred more times and never get another
opportunity like this.
    I think I looked out the window for fifteen minutes, resigning
myself to the fact that I had a manager I hated and distrusted, and he was
going to take a chunk of money from me from now until I accepted my Grammy.
    I started the engine, but I had forgotten where I was going. Then
that weight between my legs came back. Shit. I had an evening of wild sex
planned with a rich womanizer who liked cute broke chicks. I was worrying about Vinny Landfillian . Fuck
him.   I hated Los Angeles.
    All money and connections.
    He can be a valuable friend .
    All I needed was a lawyer to unravel that contract, and I was
about to screw a guy who   must have
had a hundred sharky lawyers on speed dial. All I had to do was let him boss me
around all night. The pleasure would be all mine.
    I put the car in drive and headed east to Griffith Park.
    It was wrong. My mother didn’t raise me like that. She raised a
nice girl who cared about her body more than her career. I didn’t know who that
girl was or what she wanted out of life though. I knew who I was. And the only
thing I wanted more than Jonathan Drazen’s body was
an agent at WDE.

 
    ***

 
    The houses north of Los Feliz Boulevard
aren’t dream houses. A dream house in Los Angeles has four