Satan's Sisters Read online

  At least that’s how she felt the first few months. Until she started catching feelings. Until she found herself tossing in her bed at night, trying to use her hand or any toy she could find to simulate the way he made her feel. Until she found that she couldn’t stop thinking about him every waking hour. So then she became what she had always despised, what she had always vowed never to be: the jealous mistress praying that her man would leave his wife for her. She became irrational and unstable, and the combination led her to make a fateful decision. She stopped taking her birth control pills so that Josh could get her pregnant. Though she was forty-two, apparently she was still quite fertile because her gambit worked right away. Within two months, Callie was knocked up, carrying Josh’s baby. But she knew that her having Josh’s baby would not be a good career move at all. So she made up a story about going to a sperm bank for an anonymous donor. It was done in the city all the time by scores of hardworking single women; everyone at The Lunch Club was totally supportive of her decision. Even Josh. He told her that perhaps they should take a few steps back and give each other some “space.” Callie was not happy, but she felt like she was trapped—she had lied to him, so now she was stuck with the lie.

  The pregnancy was brutal for Callie—her emotions were already in shambles, so the added doses of hormones flooding her system turned her into a neurotic, unpredictable mess, the pregnant woman everyone tried to avoid. When the ladies of The Lunch Club saw Callie coming, everyone quickly came up with reasons why they had to flee. Maxine ordered everyone on the staff never to leave her alone with Callie because, as Maxine said, “I’d probably go to jail for a long time if I choked the shit out of that crazy bitch.”

  After Megan came—wonderful, delightful, entertaining little Megan—and Callie’s Coke-bottle curves returned, Josh forgot about all the “space” he was supposed to be giving her. Soon she was back in his bed and they were right back to their passionate ways, now with the added complications of single momhood—no more sleepovers at Josh’s apartment, no more all-night sex sessions. Callie had always planned that the sperm donor cover story would suffice for the public, but she desperately wanted to tell Josh the truth. After three years, the truth was eating her up. One night she floated a “fantasy”—wouldn’t it be wonderful if Megan were really his?—during one of their lovemaking sessions and he went totally ballistic. He told her he didn’t want any more kids, that his family was complete. It was a painful statement for Callie to hear.

  So now Callie was biding her time, keeping up the sperm donor lie and holding out hope that Josh would come around, that the idyllic Connecticut life would one day be hers and he would dump that plain, ordinary little woman from Nebraska. That would have been enough stress for Callie to endure, but she now had a new worry, one that scared her to death. During one of her crazy spells while she was pregnant, she made the fatal error of telling the whole story to Missy Adams, who was her best friend at the time. Missy had listened, commiserated, and never judged . . . she was the consummate good friend, and Missy was the only other person in the world who knew that little Megan, supposedly fathered by the anonymous sperm donor, was really Josh’s daughter and that Callie had been lying to Josh and everyone else about Megan’s parentage. And to make matters worse, why did Callie so thoroughly dis Missy when she left the show? She never returned her calls and even cosigned statements the show made to the press that unfairly denigrated Missy’s work and contribution to the show. Of all the people in the world to write a tell-all about The Lunch Club, it had to be Missy Adams?! Callie was still partially in shock. She needed to know what Josh was thinking, what he planned to do about Missy’s book. Callie needed him. Missy could ruin her—and deep down Callie knew she deserved everything that was coming her way.

  She circled back upstairs, to Josh’s office. The door was still closed; he was still inside with Shelly. Callie thought she heard a sound coming from behind the door. She looked over at his secretary to see if she’d also noticed, but the secretary was pretending not to be aware of Callie’s stalkerlike presence. She heard the noise again. Was that a moan?

  IN FACT, THAT WAS a moan coming from inside Josh’s office. But what Josh was doing with Shelly was not what Callie would ever have imagined. Josh and Shelly were watching an episode of the old sitcom Three’s Company, getting many good laughs from the antics of the hilarious John Ritter. This had become a ritual between them in recent months, a way that Shelly had cleverly deployed to do some bonding with Josh.

  “My God, that guy is so damn funny!” Josh said. “I can’t believe you found this episode. It was like, I think, my favorite when I was a little kid.” He paused and his voice got a little softer. “I think this might have been the episode that made me want to work in television.”

  Shelly glanced over at him, momentarily touched. Once again, she was surprised by how much she actually liked Josh. He had turned out to be a very different person than she originally thought he’d be.

  “When was it that you knew you wanted to work in television?” he asked her.

  Shelly thought for a second. Should she give him the real answer or the magazine-interview answer? Her actual feelings or the quote she would pass along to Lizette to go in her bio? She saw that he was watching her, waiting. For some reason, Shelly felt less guarded with Josh, like she could be real with him.

  “Well, when I was younger, my goal was to be the first black female CEO of a Fortune 500 company,” she said. “That was still my goal when I was at Harvard Business School. But right after I got my MBA, while I was doing the whole bond-trader thing down on Wall Street, as you know, I got ‘discovered.’” She used her fingers to make air quotes and laughed. “So all of a sudden, and it really did feel like it happened overnight, I was walking the runways of Paris and Milan and draped in diamonds and Versace on the pages of Vogue and Elle. It was crazy and—I ain’t gonna lie—it was a whole lot of fun. At one point, I was living in Paris, sleeping with some of the sexiest guys I’ve ever seen, hitting every party within a twenty-mile radius. Like a modern fairy tale. It was not at all what I had planned for my life, you know? But I learned to just roll with it. I think after Harvard, so many crazy things started flying at me. TV was just one of them. It seemed like fun, like a chance to make some serious dough by just talking shit with a bunch of fun, crazy women. What’s not to like about that? But once I got here, and got the TV bug, now I can’t imagine doing anything else.”

  Josh nodded. He could tell that what she gave him was the truth, not some varnished bull meant to impress him. They both looked back at the screen in time to see Suzanne Somers do something silly in a ridiculously low-cut tank top.

  “Damn, Chrissy was all about the boobs, huh?” Shelly said, laughing. She reached down with both hands and lifted her own impressive (and surgically enhanced) pair. “I’m not mad at her!”

  Josh laughed at Shelly’s antics. He was especially enjoying his time with her because he knew that the other ladies on the show, particularly Maxine, were probably in such a state right now from Heather Hope’s appearance that their heads were about to explode. That was precisely why he was spending this time with Shelly, to escape the craziness, to give himself some breathing room. He wanted to be as far from that stew of estrogen-fueled lunacy as possible. While he was a bit concerned about Missy’s book and what effect it might have on his show, he didn’t think he had anything to worry about. He didn’t think his little liaisons with women on the staff were worthy fodder for anybody’s tell-all memoir. He had never had any blowups with Missy Adams and, he could thank the Lord, had never tried to get in her pants, mainly scared off by her whole sweet, conservative, Southern-gal persona. Though he knew Shelly was filled with unbridled ambition, he thought she was probably the sanest member of the cast, with the possible exception of Dara. He hadn’t really gotten to know Dara that well—probably because he knew she preferred the females. No point in wasting his time there. Shelly was smart and funny as hell. And while he was attract
ed to her in the same way that he was attracted to anything with a pretty smile and a vagina, Josh found that he was actually comfortable around Shelly. She put him at ease and made him laugh. As opposed to practically every other person in the building, Shelly actually relieved his stress, rather than added to it. For him, it was a welcome and lovely surprise.

  As for Shelly, she could manage to be a bit more relaxed about Missy’s book than the rest of them because, frankly, she didn’t think she had anything to hide. After she replaced Heather Hope on the couch, she had overlapped for a couple of years with Missy, who was replaced by Dara. While Shelly never appreciated Missy’s ultraconservative politics and suspected that there was something fake about her whole Georgia peach act, she and Missy had never had any personal clashes off the set. They usually went head-to-head on matters of politics and social issues, but once the cameras stopped rolling it was all smiles and air kisses between them. Besides, Shelly’s modeling years had been so out of control and legendary that there was really nothing that Missy could write about her that would be shocking to anybody. She had been such a well-known wild girl that she was virtually scandal-proof. So bring it, Miss Missy, Shelly thought. It’ll only enhance my rep and bring me more Benjamins.

  Shelly smelled opportunity in the air with the Missy tell-all. If that book came along and shook things up on the couch, it might be a great chance for her to step out in front. Shelly didn’t believe in stepping on people to get ahead . . . but as her mother would say, she “sure as hell would step over them” if they were in her way.

  Josh and Shelly didn’t exactly stumble upon their relationship by accident, but things had turned out differently than Shelly expected. Besides Maxine, Josh was the person who had the most power to raise her stock on the show. But instead of using her looks to lure Josh, which she concluded was too obvious and short-sighted, she had decided to become his friend. She invited his secretary, a pretty young black woman, out to a couple of “girlfriend” lunches at a fancy midtown restaurant, instantly pretending to be her best friend. Shelly had cleverly pulled as many usable facts as she could from the secretary. One of the most usable was Josh’s obsession with seventies sitcoms, like Three’s Company, Happy Days, and Mork & Mindy. Shelly was too young to have watched them herself, but armed with this info she set out on a mission. She scoured the shelves of video stores around her Upper West Side neighborhood and she visited sites all over the Internet, trying to find episodes of the old sitcoms for her and Josh to watch together. She managed to put together quite a stockpile. At first Josh was understandably suspicious and confused, wondering how easily Shelly thought he might be influenced. She would pop into his office after a show, bearing a few discs. They’d put in a DVD and crack themselves up. While they watched, they talked about their families, their childhoods, their ambitions. Shelly found that she was actually starting to enjoy the time she spent with Josh, and Josh let down his guard around her. But despite the new relationship, Shelly hadn’t lost sight of her original purpose in befriending him. When she had him where she wanted him, heavily dependent on their friendship, she would start leaning on him to have her officially announced as the main host of The Lunch Club, the one who carried the show during Maxine’s frequent absences to interview God knows who God knows where. That was her next goal. After that, she had her sights set on becoming the next Heather Hope.

  AS SHE SAT HUNCHED over her desk, Lizette still had Maxine’s words ringing in her ear. “I need for you to find out what’s in that damn book.” It might as well be above her desk now in flashing neon. And she could still picture that crazed look in Maxine’s eyes, the look that warned Lizette that her future in television would be imperiled if she failed to produce Missy’s book. She had a feeling that this day would haunt her for a long time. She had been calling sources all over the city for hours and had come up empty. Nada. Mostly, people were asking her all the questions, trying to get info on the behind-the-scenes fallout. Their questions were not helping her at all with her task. The failure was causing an acidic pit to form in her belly, spreading dread through her limbs.

  Just in time, a bit of good news came by way of Lizette’s cell phone. It was a call from Channing. Her gorgeous, darling Channing, always a bright spot in her life.

  “What the hell is going on over there?” Channing said. “There are stories all over the Internet about the show today. How are you holding up?”

  “Channing! All hell has broken loose over here! Heather Hope came on the show to say that Missy Adams has written this juicy tell-all, and now Maxine has put me in charge of finding out what’s in the book before its publication. It almost sounded like a threat, like my job could be in jeopardy if I come up empty!”

  “Damn, that’s horrible, Lizette. How does she expect you to work that miracle? That book is probably better guarded than the president right now. I’m really sorry she’s putting you through this.”

  “Thanks. I just don’t know what to do right now.”

  “Well, I’ll start making some calls too. I have a few publishing-industry sources that I can try leaning on. But babe, if the book is as explosive as you seem to think, it’s going to be wrapped up in nondisclosure agreements so tightly . . . a gnat’s ass couldn’t get through it.”

  “Channing, I’ve already found that out, but whatever you can do would be great! Thank you!” Channing Cary was one of the top freelance writers in the country, so Lizette was pleased that she would have his skills on her team. With all the magazine profiles he had done on Hollywood and music superstars over the years, he was bound to come across information that could prove useful to her.

  “No problem. Anything for you, sweetheart.” He paused for an instant. “I also have something else that might cheer you up a bit.”

  “Oh, really? And what would that be?” Lizette felt her heart skip a few beats.

  “Well, I’ve made reservations for us at the Union Square Cafe for Friday night. I have something important I want to share with you.”

  Now Lizette’s heartbeat did triple time. The Union Square Cafe wasn’t cheap. Not the kind of fare that a freelancer’s salary usually brought, even one as successful as Channing. This must be something serious. Lizette didn’t even want to let her mind go there, but she couldn’t help it. Perhaps this was when Channing was going to propose to her. She tried to remember his exact words. Did he say “something important to ask you” or “something important to share with you”? She wished that the conversation had a rewind button like her DVR box.

  “You can’t give me any hints what this is about, huh?” she asked playfully.

  “Sorry, darling. You’re gonna have to wait!”

  At that precise moment, the Missy Adams book was suddenly far from her mind. At thirty, Lizette wasn’t getting any younger. She was tired of everybody she knew asking her if she thought Channing would ever propose. She had started telling them all that they needed to direct their inquiries to Channing, not her. But perhaps her boyfriend was now about to make her a fiancée. No more premarital sex! That made Lizette smile. An aunt of hers had asked her last Christmas if she and her “fella” were having premarital sex. Lizette had been tempted to answer “as often as possible,” but she had held her tongue. Aunt Ruth didn’t deserve any rudeness from her niece—“the only niece who’s still not married,” she liked to remind Lizette. Wow, this might turn out to be the best week of her life. But just that thought, of the joy that this week might bring, brought her back to Missy and Maxine with a thud.

  “How are the rest of the women on the staff reacting?” Channing asked.

  “Huh?” Lizette wasn’t sure if she heard him correctly.

  “I said how are the rest of the ladies on the show, the other cohosts besides Maxine Robinson, reacting to that book?”

  Lizette thought the question was a little odd. Channing had never expressed any interest in the ladies of The Lunch Club. But maybe this was his awkward way of making her feel like he was interested in her work. Sh
e had once complained to him, when he was immersed in some mammoth profile for the New Yorker on Martin Scorsese, that he didn’t care enough about her job. Apparently that complaint had hit its mark.

  “Oh, well, I think they’re a bit flustered. I haven’t really had a chance to speak to any of them because once the show is over they usually all run out of here like the building is on fire. But from the way they reacted on the couch and the looks on their faces, I don’t think they were happy. Missy was on the show for a long time. I’m sure she knows a lot of dirt. And the way Maxine treated her at the end was kinda brutal.”

  Channing didn’t answer right away. “Max is pretty ruthless, huh?” he said.

  Lizette laughed. “Well, if you actually did ever call her ‘Max’ to her face, then you’d find out exactly how ruthless she is. She hates that name! I once saw an intern call her that and I think the boy is probably still in therapy. She said, ‘Do I look like a Max to you, young man? I’m going to need for you to stay as far away from me as possible until you learn my name!’” Lizette had tightened her throat and tried to do her best Maxine Robinson impersonation. The key was to put a little bass in your voice and pretend you were a principal talking to a misbehaving second grader.