Chapter Six
Melissa spent the evening until the wee hours compulsively channel surfing. It was totally unlike her, but it was also the second night in a row she had found herself doing so. She studiously avoided Channel Twenty-Seven because she knew this was where she would find Fame TV and the LiveWildCelbs program. She almost never watched TV and certainly never trash TV but tonight again she felt compelled. Somehow it was linked in her mind with her seemingly illicit date tomorrow, should she choose to go.
Every hour that passed would make it more difficult to refuse.
If refusing was what she even wanted to do.
She checked the channel she was watching. Twenty-Six. One down from Fame TV. Although she didn't want to admit it, even turning the set on was already a confession of interest in the man of her very, very questionable dreams.
Her finger hovered over the remote.
I don't need it. I do not need this. She told herself. I do not need him. I do not need to have sex with him.
She gulped. Sex with him. The very thought. She liked her dry lips and thought about the open bottle of wine in the refrigerator from the night before.
No way. Never again.
She put the remote down but continued staring at the screen. It was a wildlife documentary in which a python was trying to ingest a crocodile while sinking down into a pool of mud. The snake would drown before it got to finish its meal.
If it let the croc go it might still have a chance of survival.
She watched the last of the animal's tail go under before picking up her phone and then hesitated some more. Jason Demovic had given her his personal number and told her to be careful about what she did with it. If she was going to turn him down all she had to was text him. Simplest thing in the world.
She chose a number from her short list of personal contacts and after a short pause she hit dial and put the phone to her ear. When the line picked up she was still staring at the TV screen as though in a trance.
"Hi Suzy. It's me. Your big sister." She whispered the words. "I think I'm having… I think I'm having a nervous breakdown."
"Who is this? Melissa is that you?"
"It's me Suzy. It's really me."
"Oh my God. Melissa, what is it big sis? Tell me what's going on."
Where to start?
Melissa tried to think back but there seemed to be too much going on at once and all she could call forth seemed to be a tangled mass of confusion.
"I think I've met someone." She said in a dazed voice.
"Uh… okay." This was new territory for Suzy. Her big sister didn’t ask for help. Ever. Period. And as for relationships? They were a no go area for discussion. She put her hand over the phone and turned to her friend Bella who she was sitting on the hospital bed next to her watching TV.
"Bella, can you give me a moment please?"
Bella looked confused.
"I need some privacy. It's Melissa."
Bella was genuinely surprised. She was Suzy's best friend and like the third sister of the Price family--there was never any question of secrets between them.
"I don't think Melissa is doing so good." Suzy explained.
"Oh, of course. I'm sorry. I need a little fresh air anyway." This was a first as well. Melissa was the rock in Bella's adopted family. If she wasn't doing well then it must be serious. She grabbed her jacket and left her friend alone in the ward.
Suzy took her hand off the phone and put it back to her ear.
"I'm sorry Melissa. So, uh, tell me all about the… the new guy. This sounds like good news to me or am I misunderstanding you somehow?"
Her sister was right. It sounded like good news, but what part of her relationship with Jason Demovic was actually good?
"It's complicated." She said in a shaky voice.
"Okaaay. So let's take this nice and slow. What exactly is the complication?"
"Complications Suzy. Plural. Messy would be a good word too."
Suzy was struggling. She had never been in this role with her sister. It was always the other way around. She needed to get onto more familiar territory if she was going to be of any help at all.
"Okay, so let's start with something simple. What does he look like? Is he hot?"
"Hot? You could say that." Melissa said with a wry laugh.
"Alright." Suzy said, feeling a little relief already. "What does he look like?"
"He's tall, dark, gorgeous, athletic. Sexy doesn't even come close to describing it. Hot as all hell would be closer."
Suzy's jaw was hanging open. Her older sister didn't see men. She hardly noticed them unless they were on her analysts couch waiting for her to psychoanalyze them.
"Melissa… is this really my big sister talking?"
"It's me alright. I think. Maybe it's a new me. A new version, but not a better one."
"Well I don’t know about you, but I'm liking this new version. Go on, tell me more about this guy. Don’t hold back on the details."
"It's like he's messing with my head in way that's infuriating, baffling, scary even, but it's totally turning me on."
"Wow."
"His eyes are deep brown and have this crazy intensity I can’t describe but when he looks directly at me he has this deadly serious look, as though… as though…"
"Spit it out Mel, as though what?"
"As though fucking me is the only thing on his mind and that it's going to blow my mind when he does."
"Jesus." Pause. "Christ."
"But then suddenly he smiles and you can believe he's just this easygoing guy who you can kick back and have fun with."
"Am I allowed meet him?" Suzy asked, with awe in her voice.
"He's also rich."
"Shut. Up."
"Extremely rich."
"I thought you didn't care about a guy's money."
"I don't. I'm just telling you that he's rich because he is."
Suzy gulped. She had nothing to say. Her imagination was running wild but didn't have much further to go than what she had already heard. The guy was a fantasy from a movie or a romance novel, but not an actual human being.
"After that it gets complicated." Melissa continued. "He won't tell me what his problem is although he's hinted it has something to do with relationships."
"Stop right there."
"I just hope I can help him."
"I said stop. Please, please, please tell me this is not one of your clients."
"What difference would that make?" Melissa was stung by the accusation from her kid sister. It seemed everybody was pointing the moral finger at her these days. "Aren't you the one always telling me I need to cut loose every once in a while? Break some rules?"
"Yes, but not those rules. Break some other rules. Have sex in an elevator with a stranger. Go drinking in the afternoon with some guy you met at the drugstore, do something, but don’t, for the love of Jesus, sleep with another client."
"Another? Suzy, God damn it, not you too? I never slept with any client. Can’t you just get that straight?"
"But you have that case coming up--"
"I never slept with anyone. There was nothing sexual. Nothing."
"Okay, okay of course not. I'm sorry I brought it up. Let's get back on track her. Tell me about this guy. This one sounds pretty sexual to me."
"He's not a client."
"Well thank God for that at least. So he has a problem with relationships. That doesn't sound too bad, you're a psychotherapist after all so maybe you can help him while you, you know, while you guys are jumping each others' bones."
"He came to me as a client but I refused to take him on and then…"
Melissa paused.
"What? Stop... stop stopping! Just tell me already."
"He kissed me."
"Wow. Where?"
"The lips--"
"I mean 'where' as in what place? We’re you guys on a date or something? Did you go for coffee?"
"This is where it begins to get complicated."
"Don’t say it was in your office."
"It was in my office."
"This isn’t good. That's thin ice right there. Even I know that. Did anyone see?"
"No. I don’t think so. Maybe just Sandy."
"Sandy? He's the biggest blabber mouth in New York City!"
"I can trust him. He's not the one I'm worried about."
"Who are you worried about?"
"It's David. He sent this guy to me and now he's forbidding me not only to see him as a client but to see him at all."
"What right does he have to do that?"
"No right but he's, God it's not like him at all, he's been weird this last couple of days. He's threatening me that if I Jason again--"
"Jason. Nice name. I could do a Jason."
"He's threatening to withdraw his support from me in my ethics committee hearing."
"Which is when?"
"Next week. Tuesday. But I don't care."
"No. Stop right there Melissa. You do care. You put your whole life into this, getting the best grades you could to get scholarships to Harvard and Stanford. You struggled and fought to get to where you are today. You are so nearly there. Another few months and your client base will build up. This whole ethics thing will be forgotten. So don't you dare tell me you are going to throw all this away for some guy that you just met a few weeks ago."
"I met him two days ago."
Suzy began screaming into the phone.
"I'm coming out there. Don't do anything, don't go anywhere--"
"Calm down Suzy. If you don't calm down I'm hanging up. You're in hospital for God's sake."
"These damn kidneys! God damn it, as soon as I'm done here I'm coming over, even if it kills me."
"If you come over here, I'm leaving the house and you will only waste your time."
"Melissa, please--you're scaring me. This isn't like you. What's really going on?"
"Promise me you will stay put?"
"Yes, yes, I'll stay here, but we need to talk this through."
"That's why I called you. You're the only person I can trust."
The words went deep. Suzy had to bite her lip. She was determined to help her big sister even if it meant she had to grow up by ten years in the next ten minutes.
"You can't afford to get so agitated Suzy, it's not good for you."
"I know it Melissa, I know. So please don't do this to me. You're the single most important person I have in the whole world. Please don't throw your whole life away."
"But that's exactly it Suzy. Maybe that’s what I've been doing for years. I'm not so sure I'm even cut out to be a psychoanalyst. I'm not sure I'm even that kind of person anymore."
"But you so are."
"You don’t know me Suzy." The words were painful to say. "I had to grow up so fast when mom went… I wasn't always like this; so damn uptight, so anal, so fucking logical and reasonable about everything. I used to have fun too, you know."
Tears were beginning to well up inside her. Suzy didn't know what to say. All this was a revelation to her and as yet it still made no sense.
"Please Melissa. I don't know what you're going through, or what you went through after mom, but just… please, if you won't do it for yourself then do it for me. Stop seeing this guy. Please."
"I'm spending the whole day with him tomorrow."
"Oh my God, no." Suzy's voice was despairing. "What if David finds out? Melissa.. please don’t do it."
"He told me not to worry about that."
"Who did? This guy Jason? Of course he said that, he just wants to get into your pants. He'll say anything."
"He told me he could handle the ethics committee."
"He's a liar Melissa. He just wants to bone you. How could he possible 'handle' them?"
"He's a billionaire."
"A millionaire?"
"No. Not a millionaire. A billionaire. A multi-billionaire."
Suzy sat up in her hospital bed. She was feeling cold from the dialysis machine but the conversation with her notoriously uptight and buttoned down older sister had transfixed her.
"What's his name?"
"Jason Demovic."
"The Jason Demovic?"
"I guess so. Unless there are two billionaires with that name."
"Are you kidding me? That guy is like Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Ryan Reynolds all rolled into one but with Bill Gates' bank account. I'm watching him on TV right now."
Melissa sat up straight as well.
"You are?"
"Sure. And he's on the cover of Hey There Magazine surrounded by gorgeous women getting into a limousine."
Melissa couldn't hold herself back now; she switched to Channel 27 but Chauncey Tales was falling over herself trying to provoke some drunken Z-lister into making an ass of herself.
"I don't see him."
"You watch TV now?" Suzy was incredulous. "What channel are you on?"
"The Fame TV Network."
"You watch the Fame TV Network now? Did you like, get a blow to the head that altered your personality or something?"
"Just tell me what damn channel he's on before I miss it."
"He's on CNN."
Melissa fumbled to get there and then shushed her sister to hear the story. It was Jason alright, the man who had left her shaking in her office under the force of his electrifying stolen kiss.
She turned the volume up. He was surrounded by women again, but nothing like the bimbos he had been with the night before. The line-up of demographically diverse females looked more like a world music festival than a Fame TV scoop. He was standing a little to the left of a stage in a line of women wearing colorful traditional dress from all over the world. An elderly woman was front and centre addressing the audience in heavily accented English but with incredible dignity and education. The CNN subtext said it was an address to the United Nations.
Melissa gasped. "That's Fernanda Salazar."
"Who?"
"Fernanda Salazar. She's one of the greatest living visual artists of Latin America, if not the entire world."
"You mean the old woman with the Spanish accent?"
"No. I mean the incredibly dignified lady and internationally renowned artist with the august presence who is right now addressing the United Nations assembly."
"Trust you to recognize the obscure old painter and not even know who the sexiest man on the planet is."
"What are they doing there?"
"It's a women's rights thing. Don't you know anything? Demovic has been on a charity spending spree for months. Apparently he'll soon overtake the Gates' Foundation for total net contributions to charity and he's only been going at it for less than a year. The guy is like a saint as well as a sex God and one of his big things is women's rights. They say it has something to do with how his Dad treated his mom. I'm telling you now, the woman who reels this one in is the luckiest gal in the freaking universe."
Melissa turned up the sound. Fernanda was inviting Jason to say a few words on behalf of the indigenous women's foundation of which she was the founder and of which he was now, apparently, the principal benefactor. Jason looked uncharacteristically humble. It was like she was looking at a different man. He stepped up to the podium and Ms. Salazar stood next to him like a proud mother next her son.
He took a deep breath, looked at some notes and then pushed them aside. When he looked up again he was transformed and the full power of his intense gaze peered out into the living rooms and into the news rooms of the world.
"I don't deserve this applause." He said. "All I've done is write a check so that these brave women can begin to change our world from the ground up. If you, the powers that be, are going to give your applause to anyone it should be to them."
A thunderous applause rang out from around the hall.
"But this applause will sound hollow if the plight of women and girls around the world and I mean in every country in the world, is not addressed by people like you. This little girl," He took the hand of a tiny eight year old African girl next to him and held it up, "Kisima is her name--she walks over ten miles every day to get to a school that has no electricity, no running water and most of the time no books to read or pens to write with. And she's one of the lucky ones because her parents allow her to go to school along with her two brothers. Now can any of you people sitting here in your seats of power and privilege, say that you worked as hard as this to get to where you are today?"
His stern gaze circled the assembly.
"If you can say that, then I salute you and I ask you, can you say that you work even half as hard as this little girl does every day to make the world a better place?"
There was an awkward, stony silence in the chamber. Heads of state averted their gaze and avoided the scrutiny of the world's cameras.
Jason continued.
"I know I can't say that. And I work very hard for what I have. Now I've only got a few minutes to speak to you important people, so I won't waste time. It's up to you. Save your applause. Change the world. Do it now. Make it so that every child, every little girl and boy can go to school without fear of prejudice and don't you dare lift up your heads with pride until that day has come."
He picked the child up into his arms and whispered something into her ear. She nodded and then they turned to the microphone together.
"Listen." He said intensely. "Listen to the voice of someone much more important than me or than any of you being paid to sit here in this room."
The silence was electrifying. Jason had already used up his time but no-one dared approach the pair who had locked the attention of the world.
When the tiny girl finally spoke the confidence resounding in her innocent voice was a shock to the world leaders and to everybody watching.
"Help me to go to school." She said in her polite, childish and heart-melting African English. "And help all the children of the world go to school. We want books, not bombs."
They stood for several more tense and emotionally charged seconds until they were ushered away from the stand. It was an awkward moment for the world dignitaries. If they applauded were they ignoring the message? If they didn't were they saying they disagreed? And the little girl? Who could not applaud that voice of powerful innocence?
The girl was shaking with nerves in the billionaire's strong arms but he was smiling that incredible smile that could win any woman over whether she was eight years old or eighty. It was obvious that she adored him as she buried her head in his broad shoulder and then shuddered with laughter as he gently tickled her in the ribs on the way down the steps.
A sputter of hand claps broke out as they walked away and then gradually built to a crescendo of enthusiastic applause. Several heads of state were obviously moved to tears.
Melissa and Suzy were both frozen in stunned silence.
The next story rolled around on CNN; Finnbar the ferret who thinks he's an iPhone.
Melissa lowered the volume and allowed her breathing to settle itself. She hadn't even noticed the tears streaming down out of her own eyes.
"Is that the guy you're spending the day with tomorrow?" Her sister's voice was filled with awe.
"Yes." She croaked. "What the hell should I do? It's still not too late to cancel. Should I call him now?"
"Melissa Price…" her sister said in a low, intense voice, "don't you dare touch that phone."
********************
Jason put the little girl safely down into the back of the limousine and carefully strapped her into the booster seat he had provided for her. On one side of the limo were her mother and father beaming with pride; on the other was Beth Lindsay, Channel Five reporter of recent upskirt fame. The ambitious young news woman sat in floods of tears. She had watched the whole speech on the small flat screen TV in the limo's entertainment center and now she was looking at the little girl next to her and feeling the presence of the man who had carried her down the steps of the United Nations assembly in his powerful, protecting arms.
"You were awesome." She whispered to the little girl who was already distracted by the tall buildings of mid-town Manhattan outside the limousine window.
"Thank you miss." She said. "Why are you crying?"
Beth began to bawl. The girl's parents looked uncomfortable and confused. Jason put his arm around her.
"It's okay Beth. If you feel so strongly about it then maybe you can get us something on the Channel Five news to help promote the cause."
"Are you kidding me?" She said blowing her nose into a handkerchief discretely slipped to her by Jason. "They'd kill to get you guys on there for an interview."
Jason smiled and looked into her eyes. "It's all yours if you want it."
Beth was speechless. She knew what a huge favor this was. Jason was saving her after the panty-gate incident. Her boss wouldn't be able to touch her if she brought these people in fresh after their address to the United Nations. She didn't know too much about art but she sure as hell knew who Fernanda Salazar was. The woman was in line for the Nobel Peace Prize for God's sake.
"We're headed to the Empire State Beth. Kisima has never been so we've got the observation deck reserved just for her and her parents. I'd love to invite you along but there's a security clearance thing."
"That's okay." She snuffled. "I've had the most amazing day of my life Jason. Thank you. Thank you for everything."
"If your boss gives you any more trouble, just let me know."
She puckered up and went for his lips but he diverted expertly so that the kiss landed on his cheek. The car pulled over and Jason helped her out. Another car and driver were waiting for her.
"Take her anywhere she needs to go." He said. "Stay with her until she gets home."
Beth got into the car and gave Jason a pleading look before the door closed.
"Is this it?" She said.
Jason stared at her for a moment then walked over to the car and leaning on the open window came in close to her. He looked around for any signs of Chauncey Tales or Fame TV. They were alone.
"We'll be seeing each other very soon Beth."
"Really?"
"Make the interview happen. Kisima and a billion other children around the world need all the help they can get. And I'm sorry about what happened the other night. Those are the risks of being seen with me these days, but like I promised you then, I will make it all okay. A promise is a promise. You don't need to worry about your job or your reputation. I guarantee it."
"Jason--"
He stood up quickly, still smiling, and nodded for the driver to go. He had fulfilled his promise to Beth but that was it as far as he was concerned. He had no interest in her other than a feeling of responsibility for her having been in the wrong place at the wrong time and getting caught up in his stupid, messy world. She didn't deserve to have her career ruined for that.
He turned around and saw Kisima's tiny beaming face in the doorway of his Limo.
"Jason sir, Jason sir. Are we really going to that big tall building over there?" She pointed to the illuminated top floors of the Empire State peeking out among the other skyscrapers of Manhattan.
"We sure are Kisima, all the way to the very tippy top! But we have to hurry, because we have another plane to catch tonight."
"Another plane Mr. Jason? Yesssss!" She squealed with delight.