Chapter 36

One day went by without any word from Kayla regarding Jess’s offer. Then a second. On the third day, Jess called her but got no answer. We could have sat around and speculated about what it all meant, but we didn’t. We took action. Jess texted her. She called Kim and Ginger to see if they had heard from her – they hadn’t. But within a couple hours? Kayla texted back.

“Can we meet?” she asked.

“Yes,” Jess replied. “Daydream office. You name the time. I’m free all day.”

We all waited nervously for the reply. This was a high-stakes drama. But, I reminded myself, the outcome didn’t truly matter. I wanted it to work out – I wanted it for Jess because I knew it was important to her, and I loved her. We all did. But Daydream was so new, I felt like Jess could get over it quickly. Plus, we had made a huge breakthrough emotionally regarding everything that was going on. We were working toward a better place.

“1 p.m.?” Kayla wrote back.

“See you then,” Jess said, looked up, and told us the news.

“Shit,” Rita said, looking at her watch. It was already 11:30. “I need to get ready if we’re going to do this.”

“I still don’t get how you’re sure she’s going to bring Manny,” I said.

“She’ll bring Manny,” Jess said.

“It’s the last play,” Rita said. “He hates the deal. Obviously. But I know Manny and men like him. He’ll think he can force his way around it. He’ll try to bully his way through to the end. It’s his defining characteristic, even if he can be a lot of fun. And he’ll really think he can push Jess around.”

“And that’s why you’re going to make sure he never gets the chance,” Kat said.

“Precisely,” Rita said.

“I won’t protest anymore,” I said. “But please, please be careful. This could go sideways.”

Rita stood up and smiled at me. Her flat midriff showed above her tennis skirt and below her short athletic shirt. She looked at me with shining, confident eyes.

“Don’t forget, my love,” Rita said, “I have one key advantage. He doesn’t know what’s coming. He’ll never know what’s hit him.”

About an hour later, Jess and Rita were ready to go. Jess kept it casual, with her typical beautiful summer day summer dress. It was green with daisies on it but went down nearly to her knee and tied around her neck – a much more conservative look than she usually employed. Rita, on the other hand, wore a short, fluted skirt that looked as if you could just reach up under it without even ruffling the fabric. She wore a tight button-down blouse a size too small, which gaped lewdly at her cleavage. Her makeup was heavier than usual. She wore red lipstick. This was a wholly different version of Rita. And it was intentional.

“Wish us luck!” Jess said with a smile and a wave.

I could tell she had a mixture of confidence and nerves coursing through her. I smiled back at her and gave her a nod of encouragement. Rita brushed past me, and I took her hand briefly.

“Be careful,” I said again. “Please.”

“I will,” Rita said.

We walked them to the car and watched them until they disappeared down the driveway. It became a waiting game, and so we waited. It was hellish. And possibly the longest two hours of my life. I couldn’t eat anything, so Kat, Katie, and I drank some rosé by the pool and took an edible – in a nod to Katie’s dislike of smoking. We tried making small talk, but mostly we just rehashed the Daydream issues and hoped it would go well. It was agonizing, but the weed buzz kicking in helped, as did the mild buzz from the wine.

And then we heard the front door open and close, and bolted upright from our lounge chairs at the pool. We hurried toward the French doors leading to the patio, only to be met by Jess and Rita. They were poker-faced, with the only unusual aspect being that Rita was holding a smoldering joint. It was a moment burned into my brain forever, although it couldn’t have lasted more than a second or two before they both broke into massive smiles.

Rita took a huge drag from the joint and raised her eyebrows at me while she held the smoke.

“My turn,” Jess said, taking the joint from Rita’s hand. “No fair that I was driving.”

She took a pull and let the plume of smoke out quickly, while Rita still held hers.

“We’re dying!” Kat exclaimed.

“Tell us what happened!” Katie implored.

“Success,” Rita said with a cocky, pleased smile as she exhaled the weed smoke. “Total success.”

“This girl,” Jess said, giving the joint back to Rita and framing her with arms like a game show presenter, “is the fucking queen of cunning. I am indebted to her forever!”

“So?” I said, dying to know what it meant.

“Manny is out of the picture,” Rita said, taking another hit. “God, sorry, but it was so intense, I really just needed to smoke out and relax from the adrenaline. I thought I might pass out after it was all over.”

“Kayla is on board,” Jess said. “I’ve got her at fifteen-percent as of today. And Manny will not be a problem.”

“How?” Kat said. “I want every detail.”

“Does this call for a celebration?” I said. “Champagne?”

“Yes, definitely,” Jess said, stubbing out the spent joint.

I took a bit of liberty by assuming this would be a major celebration and pulled out a rare magnum of Cristal Rosé. By the time Jess and Rita had finished filling us in on the details of that afternoon, the bottle didn’t even seem quite special enough to mark the occasion.

Jess’s part of the equation was pretty easy. Kayla had gotten the full-court-press from Manny about turning down her offer. He couldn’t stand the thought of being frozen out, but even more so having perceived control out of his hands. But Jess sweetened her initial equity stake, bumping it from ten percent to fifteen. She added a fifth year on the contract, with a substantial buyout. And, within an hour or so, Kayla had signed on the dotted line.

“It’s an offer I can’t refuse,” she had told Jess. “Damn the consequences.”

Jess had expressed some concerns about those consequences. She knew they involved Manny, and as Kayala tentatively opened up to her, it became immediately clear she was mostly worried about his temper. And defying him. In the end, Jess explained, Kayla’s intimations only made her more convinced that keeping her in the Daydream fold was the right thing to do and that getting Manny out was the only safe course.

At the same time, Kayla’s revelations had made Jess terrified about what was happening outside her office at the Daydream house. That’s where Rita, who had waited in the car until she saw Kayla and Manny arrive, had “accidentally” stopped by to see if Jess wanted to have a late lunch. Rita, of course, bumped into Manny. And it was showtime.

Rita told us the narrative slowly, allowing it to unfold and the drama to build. It was also clear to me that she needed to be deliberate in her retelling because her nerves were still shaky from the adrenaline. She made a point to steady herself by clasping my hand with her free one, while holding her Champagne glass in the other.

When she walked into the Daydream office, Manny was sitting by himself on the sofa in the living room, which essentially served as a waiting room and entertainment area. There was a large TV on the wall, which usually played the company’s productions on a loop.

“I stepped inside, and Manny was there watching his scene with Ginger,” Rita explained. “He had four lines of coke cut up on the conference table, but I could tell he was coked up. He was sitting there, fidgeting, rubbing his nose, loving seeing himself on the screen.

“When I walked in, my heels hit the wood floor, and he looked up right away. You should have seen the grin on this motherfucker’s face,” she continued. “I knew right then that I had a shot to pull this off. He was fucked up and drinking his own Kool-Aid.”

“God, girl, you are killing me!” Kat said.

“Okay, okay,” Rita said, her hand gripping mine tighter. “I’ll get to it.”

“It’s good,” Jess said with emphasis.

“When I saw Manny like that, king of his fucking couch, something changed in me,” Rita said. “I just, I don’t know. It’s like I became someone else. I knew exactly what I had to do, and it was as if, god, I don’t know how to describe it. Like I morphed into the thing I needed to become to accomplish the task.”

“You are so fucking stoned,” Katie said, and everyone laughed.

I shot her a look, and she smiled at me. Katie was finally getting truly comfortable. We were becoming a stronger core.

“Well, I need it! But it’s not like I’m fucked up!” Rita protested light-heartedly. “Where was I? Right, okay, So I assessed the situation right away and just undid a couple buttons on my top. I’m so embarrassed, guys. I’ve never done anything like this.”

“You did it for a good cause,” I reminded her.

Rita sat upright, set her glass on the coffee table, and smoothed out her skirt. She had regained her composure and started to move through the story quickly but in gripping detail.

When they had arrived at the office, Jess had done some furniture rearranging. She pushed back and to the side the armchairs adjacent to the couch, making conversation too awkward to sit there. So Rita greeted Manny, who didn’t bother to stand up, and sat down next to him.

“Look at that,” Manny said. “She loves it. She loves it when I spit in her mouth. She can’t get enough. Especially when I slap her.”

He bent down and snorted two more lines of coke, barely registering that Rita sat there.

“I’m not looking at her,” Rita said.

“Oh?” Manny said, finally glancing over at her.

“Your dick looks even bigger on screen,” Rita said.

Manny shifted in his seat and didn’t make any attempt to conceal that he was adjusting his cock.

“I remember you,” he said. “Very pretty. Big tits.”

Rita shifted, tucking one leg under herself and turning toward him.

“I love my tits, I can’t lie,” she said.

“You want some?” Manny said, gesturing to the blow.

“Oh, gosh, thank you,” Rita said, making a point to lock her eyes on his. “But I was just hoping to get Jess out of here soon.”

“She won’t be long,” Manny said cockily.

What Manny hadn’t known at that point was that Jess and Kayla were deep into negotiations on finalizing the deal. The final couple issues – including term and a little more equity – were the only sticking points. But Jess knew she had to keep Kayla occupied until Rita gave the signal.

That’s when Rita began her flattery offensive. She peppered Manny with questions about the business – all of them she knew the answer to. She complimented his performance. She asked him about Ginger and, when the TV rolled into Manny’s scene with Kim, asked him about her. This was a pure ego stroke. It was on purpose. And Manny finally started to take the bait.