Hardly Knew Her

“That’s not bad,” Bryon said, pausing to write a quick note to himself. “Look, this is the deal. I pay you by the act. You don’t want to do it, you don’t have to. I’m always scouting new talent. Maybe I’ll find an Alzheimer’s patient, who won’t be able to remember from one day to the next what she did, much less try to hold me up for a raise. You old bitches are a dime a dozen.”

It was the “old bitches” part that hurt.

WHEN MONA’S SECOND HUSBAND’S FORTUNE had proved to be largely smoke and mirrors, she had learned to be more careful about picking her subsequent husbands. That was in the pre-Internet days, when determining a person’s personal fortune was much more labor-intensive. She was pleased to find out from a helpful librarian how easy it was now to compile what was once known as a Dun and Bradstreet on someone, how to track down the silent partner in Bryon White’s LLC.

Within a day, she was having lunch with Bernard Weinman, a dignified gentleman about her own age. He hadn’t wanted to meet with her, but as Mona detailed sweetly what she knew about Bernie’s legitimate business interests-more information gleaned with the assistance of the nice young librarian-and his large contributions to a local synagogue, he decided they could meet after all. He chose a quiet French restaurant in Bethesda, and when he ordered white wine with lunch, Mona followed suit.

“I have a lot of investments,” he said. “I’m not hands-on.”

“Still, I can’t imagine you want someone indiscreet working for you.”

“Indiscreet?”

“How do you think I tracked you down? Bryon talks. A lot.”

Bernie Weinman bent over his onion soup, spilling a little on his tie. But it was a lovely tie, expensive and well made. For this lunch meeting, he wore a black suit and crisp white shirt with large gold cuff links.

“Bryon’s very good at…what he does. His mail-order business is so steady it’s almost like an a

“Well, he did. All I did was make some suggestions about how to”-Mona groped for the odd business terms she had heard on television-“how to grow your business, and he got very short with me, said you had no interest in doing things differently. And when I asked if I might speak to you, he got very angry, threatened to expose me. If he would blackmail me, a middle-class widow with no real money, imagine what he might do to you.”

“Bryon knows me well enough not to try that,” Bernie Weinman said. After a morning at the Olney branch of the Montgomery County Public Library, Mona knew him pretty well, too. She knew the rumors that had surrounded the early part of his career, the alleged but never proven ties to the numbers ru

“Does Bryon know you so well that he wouldn’t risk keeping two sets of books?”

“What?”

“I know what I get paid. I know how cheaply the product is made and produced, and I know how many units are moved. He’s cheating you.”

“He wouldn’t.”

“He would-and brag about it, too. He said you were a stupid old man who was no longer on top of his game.”

“He said that?”

“He said much worse.”

“Tell me.”

“I c-c-can’t,” Mona whispered, looking shyly into her salade niçoise as if she had not made four adult films under the moniker “Sexy Sadie.”

“Paraphrase.”

“He said…he said there was no film in the world that could, um, incite you. That you were…starchless.”

“That little SOB.”

“He laughs at you, behind your back. He practically brags about how he’s ripping you off. I’ve put myself in harm’s way, just talking to you, but I couldn’t let this go on.”

“I’ll straighten him out-”

“No! Because he’ll know it was me and he’ll-he’s threatened me, Bernie.” This first use of his name was a calculated choice. “He says no one will miss me and I suppose he’s right.”

“You don’t have any children?”

“Just stepchildren, and I’m afraid they’re not very kind to me. It was hard for them, their father remarrying, even though he had been a widower for years.” Divorced for two years, and Mona had been the central reason, but the kids wouldn’t have liked her under any circumstances. “No, no one would miss me. Except my fans.”

She let the subject go then, directing the conversation to Bernie and his accomplishments, the legitimate ones. She asked questions whose answers she knew perfectly well, touched his arm when he decided they needed another bottle of wine, and, although she drank only one glass to his every two, declared herself unfit to drive home. She was going to take a taxi, but Bernie insisted on driving her, and accompanying her to the condo door, to make sure she was fine, and then into her bedroom, where he further assessed her fineness. He was okay, not at all starchless, somewhere between a sturdy baguette and a loaf of Wonder bread. She’d had worse. True, he felt odd, after the series of hard-bodied young men that Bryon had hired for her. But this, at least, did not fall under the category of fetish. He was seventy-three and she was sixty-eight-passing-for-sixty-one. This was normal. This was love.

Bryon White was never seen again. He simply disappeared, and there was no one who mourned him or even really noticed. And while Bernie Weinman was happily married, he had strong opinions about how his new mistress should spend her time. Mona took over the business but had to retire from performing, at least officially, although she sometimes auditioned the young men, just to be sure. Give Bryon credit, Mona thought, now that she had to scout the coffee shops and grocery stores, recruiting the new talent. It was harder than it looked and Bryon’s instincts had been unerring, especially when it came to Mona. She really was a wonderful actress.

ONE TRUE LOVE

His face didn’t register at first. Probably hers didn’t either. It wasn’t a face-oriented business, strange to say. In the early days, on the streets, she had made a point of studying the men’s faces as a means of protection. Not because she thought she’d ever be downtown, picking someone out of a lineup. Quite the opposite. If she wasn’t careful, if she didn’t size them up beforehand, she’d be on a gurney in the morgue and no one would give a shit. Certainly not Val, although he’d be pissed in principle at being deprived of anything he considered his property. And while Brad thought he loved her, dead was dead. Who needed postmortem devotion?

So she had learned to look closely at her potential customers. Sometimes just the act of that intense scrutiny was enough to fluster a man and he moved on, which was the paradoxical proof that he was okay. Others stared back, welcoming her gaze, inviting it. That kind really creeped her out. You wanted nervous, but not too nervous; any trace of self-loathing was a big tip. In the end, she had probably walked away from more harmless ones than not, guys whose problems were nothing more than a losing card in the great genetics lottery-dry lips, a dead eye, or that bad skin that always seemed to signal villainy, perhaps because of all the acne-pitted bad guys in bad movies. Goes to show what filmmakers knew; Val’s face couldn’t be smoother. Still, she never regretted her vigilance, although she had paid for it in the short run, taking the beatings that were her due when she didn’t meet Val’s quotas. But she was alive and no one raised a hand to her anymore, not unless they paid handsomely for that privilege. She had come a long way.