Chapter Twenty-Three #4
“You’re nobody’s clown,” Lorenzo said. “That door was open, so you walked through. And you mastered it young, good for you. But I hid you under that sack and fed the public those lies about who you really are—and I’m still doing it.
” His voice cracked. “I can’t make the world better than it is, but I can damn well introduce you around town and make sure people see the real Mazelle.
Maybe the time is coming when they’ll see who you are.
Who knows? Maybe it’s finally time for Reaper. ”
Tears spilled from Mazelle’s eyes. She’d heard her deepest yearning spoken aloud, released into the air by the only person she knew with the influence to make it real. Maybe Lorenzo could cast a spell for her too.
“What happened to your back, sweetheart?” he said like a father. “You said it’s sore.”
“I landed wrong yesterday.” A whisper was all she could coax from her throat.
His shoes were silent in the plush carpet as he walked to stand behind her. He didn’t leave enough room between them for her to turn around.
“I know a good chiropractor,” he said, “but let me take a look. Where’d you hit it?”
Before Mazelle could answer, or even think, she felt a practiced tug on her dress’s zipper.
Gooseflesh rippled across her skin from the cool air once her shoulder blades were free.
He nudged aside her parting dress with the indifference of a doctor until her skin was bare to her hip bones.
Mazelle raised her arms to cover her chest as the dress fell away, but Jerry was preoccupied behind her, his fingertip traveling with purpose down her spine.
“Let me know where it hurts,” he said, pressing gently. His breath skated across her skin.
His fingertip left a trail of fire down her back, but it wasn’t pain. Mazelle squirmed, wanting to pull away, but her body felt calcified with Jerry Lorenzo standing behind her. His presence felt giant, dwarfing her.
Lorenzo’s fingertip reached the small of her back, the spot that nagged her. Pain broke through the spell of his finger’s touch. “There,” she said because of the twinge, but more out of worry that his finger would continue its slide downward.
But it didn’t. Lorenzo lowered himself to knead her lower spine with two strong thumbs, expertly massaging her sore spot.
His touch hurt, but on the other side of the pain, her lower back’s tightness was melting.
He was a surprisingly skilled masseuse. Maybe it was another of the skills he had picked up in his life before the film business, she told herself.
Lorenzo pressed his full palm between her shoulder blades. “Lean over a little,” he said matter-of-factly. “So I can see.”
She imagined him in a white coat and spectacles, so as he gently guided her, she folded herself awkwardly across the chair.
But Mazelle’s heart thudded as if it were slogging through mud.
This felt very wrong. What would Mother say?
If Richard could see her now, he would slap her harder than he had when she complained about leaving her premiere—
“Mr. Lorenzo…” Mazelle’s voice was only a memory of speech.
A great white light seemed to flash, lifting her up high to stare down at herself below.
Lorenzo was no longer massaging her back; his hands glided lower.
He ruffled her dress, lifting it, and pulled aside her panties to bury his face in her bare skin’s folds.
When his tongue lapped at her while his fingers explored, she gasped and clung tightly to the arms of the chair so her trembling knees would not crumple her to the floor like the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz.
Mazelle was paralyzed with a sensation beyond shock.
She had been a virgin when she married Richard, so all she knew of sex was what she had learned from her husband—and he reserved his kisses for her lips.
Lorenzo drew unexpected sensations that curled her fingers and toes at the same time she was repelled.
How could she feel so soiled while her body betrayed her with excited tremors and spasms?
Mazelle watched her body’s war with itself from where she floated near the ceiling, split in two.
Two firm knocks sounded at the door. Loud.
“Jerry?” Sharpe’s voice called. He turned the doorknob.
Mazelle let out a mortified gasp, but Lorenzo patted her shoulder as he quickly zipped up her dress.
“Relax,” he said in her ear. “It’s locked.
” She smelled her body on his breath. While Mazelle rushed to straighten her clothes, she tried to look as if the room weren’t spinning. Lorenzo opened his office door.
“Why’d it take so long to wrap today?” Lorenzo asked.
Sharpe ignored him. He stood in the doorway but did not come inside, his eyes only on her. Mazelle’s neck failed her, her chin bobbing to her chest. She could not look at him. He knows. She was sure of it.
“It’s late for Mazelle to be here,” Sharpe said. “I’m giving her a lift home.”
Like a grand host, Lorenzo stepped aside to clear a path to his door. He snatched up Mazelle’s fur wrap from where he’d hung it on his coatrack. “Sure thing,” he said. “Mazelle probably thinks that’s swell. How about it, Mazelle? Can Sharpe give you a lift?”
Mazelle nodded rather than trusting her voice.
She longed to be away from everyone, but she wanted to go home even more.
It would take time to call for her new driver.
She wished she could blink her eyes and be soaking in her claw-foot bathtub.
She stood near Lorenzo long enough for him to arrange her wrap on her shoulders, but she held her breath so she would not smell herself on him.
Or his shampoo, the scent tickling her nostrils.
Every inch of her body was aware of how close Lorenzo stood behind her, brushing against her ever so much.
“Have a good night, kids,” Lorenzo said.
He winked at her before he closed his door.
As Sharpe pulled his black Oldsmobile out of the gate, he looked angrier than she had ever seen him, lips pursed hard. Mazelle stared down at the child-sized baseball glove and ball in the floor well by her feet. The night felt fragile enough to be a bad dream.
Sharpe lit a cigarette with his car lighter. “I never thought I’d have to give you this spiel too. Geez, he’s known you since…” He cut himself off with a smoky sigh. “From now on, if Jerry wants to meet you in his office, I go with you.”
Mazelle’s face burned. She felt so exposed that she would have opened her car door to climb out if he weren’t already speeding down Mulholland, driving too fast in his anger.
The only thing that felt worse than letting Lorenzo touch her was Sharpe treating her like she was a ward.
Or a whore who couldn’t be trusted alone with a man.
Would he say something to Millie when he got home?
The idea of Millie hearing rumors about her and Lorenzo was unbearable.
“Stop treating me like a kid. My meetings are my business, so butt the hell out.”
“Sorry, I’m not butting out,” Sharpe said with rare firmness. “Millie heard all about what’s going on in that office, girls crying on her shoulder. But you? One of our kids? I should have socked him in the goddamn nose.”
Only then did Mazelle notice the damp tears Sharpe must have seen on her face. She brushed them away, horrified. Even as a child, she had never wanted Sharpe to see her cry.
A long, terrible moment hung between them.
If she opened her mouth, she might wail.
She couldn’t explain what had just happened in Lorenzo’s office, even to herself.
And knowing about the other girls made it worse, not better.
She hadn’t been a happy wife when she left for work that morning, but she’d been a faithful one, at least. Thank goodness Richard was still in Philly for another week.
He might see it in her face no matter how much time passed.
Mazelle willed her throat to clamp back the sob fighting to be free.
How had she allowed this to happen? Why hadn’t she pushed Lorenzo away?
“Don’t say anything to Millie,” Mazelle whispered. “Please.”
“Are you kidding? She’d come shoot the sonofabitch.”
Her father would shoot him too. Or Brother. Or Richard would shoot her.
Sharpe sighed again and turned on his radio, a mercy. Suspense was on, an episode called “The Cross-Eyed Bear” about a woman who applied for a mysterious, dangerous job. “Get out of it while you can,” another woman warned her, as if she were speaking to Mazelle directly through the car’s speakers.
She and Sharpe didn’t speak for the rest of the drive.