Chapter 10B: Exposures

Jake was actually quite concerned that Mindy would do just as he'd suggested and call an end to the relationship in the name of imagery. He knew, based on phone calls the two of them had shared, that Georgette was pressuring her to stay as far away from Jake as possible and to start repairing the damage the photos had inflicted.

"She's trying to set me up with Joseph Clark," Mindy told him during one such conversation. "Can you believe that?"

"Joseph Clark?" Jake asked, lying in bed in his underwear and smoking a cigarette, the phone pushed to his ear. "Are you serious?"

Joseph Clark was the young, fair-haired lead singer of a musical group called The Marchers — a group that performed Christian tunes. They were one of the most popular of the genre, which meant that their last album had sold almost two hundred thousand copies, and had been nominated for a Grammy the previous year in the "Best Gospel Performance" category.

"I'm dead serious," she said. "She even had the arrangements half made. She got in touch with Clark's agent and suggested we be seen together in public. She had this whole campaign mapped out where we would be America's sweethearts. There would be shots of us sitting in ice cream stores together or going to movies or where I would attend his concerts and clap for him. We'd release press statement saying that we were both virgins and were committed to remaining so until we were married. She was even suggesting we tour high schools and lecture kids on abstinence."

"Do you even know Joseph Clark?" he asked.

"Never met him in my life," she said. "From what I hear though, he's very fond of the young Christian girls who attend his concerts. Extremely fond, if you know what I mean. There have been quite a few abortions paid for by Savior Music two months after The Marchers did a concert."

In the end, however, Mindy had done what Jake had hoped she would do and had told Georgette to go pound sand. There would be no contrived romance with Joseph Clark. She would keep seeing Jake as long as she wished and she would not give in to pressure to discontinue the relationship. Georgette had threatened to quit being her agent, which was of course a bluff that Mindy called, and had eventually extracted from her the same promise Jake had given to Crow — the promise of discretion.

The first time they were able to get together after the release of the photos was the following Sunday. Jake ordered a limo driver to take him to one of his favorite lunch spots. Halfway there he suddenly commanded the driver to stop. He stepped out and walked away, disappearing down a downtown Los Angeles street, cutting through an alley, and stepping into Mindy's Mercedes. They went directly to her place, ate a quick and satisfying lunch prepared by Marcella, and then rode the horses up to Mindy's secret place in the mountains. There they fell into each other's arms and were soon lustfully screwing atop the checkered blanket, Mindy shouting out her profane encouragements the entire time.

After Jake emptied himself into her body they lay twined together for a few moments, enjoying the closeness of their sweaty bodies. When their breathing returned to normal Mindy squirmed out from beneath and walked over to the horses — who had watched their naked, noisy antics impassively — and reached into a compartment on her saddle. When she returned to the blanket Jake saw she had a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Jake's eyes widened in surprise as she put one in her mouth and sparked up.

"You smoke?" he asked.

She smiled guiltily. "Yes," she said. "I have for years. I've been avoiding it when I'm around you — you know? The image thing? — but the one after sex is just so divine. I couldn't hold off any more."

Jake shook his head in bemused amazement.

"What?" she asked. "Did I finally manage to spoil your vision of me?"

"Not at all. It's just that all this time I've been not smoking around you because I thought you didn't approve of it. I've been dying for a smoke for hours."

They laughed together. She gave Jake one of her cigarettes and they lay back on the blanket, smoking and staring up at the sky.

Later, after riding back to her house, she revealed another of her vices by mixing them up a pitcher of vodka martinis. They were very strong and not much to Jake's liking but Mindy downed them like they were water. Soon she was drunk, giggly, and very affectionate. They retired to the bedroom where she became profane and extremely nasty — nastier than her usual level of bedroom nastiness.

While engaging her in the classic rear-entry position on the floor at the foot of the bed — and breathing heavily from her demands to do it faster and harder — she suddenly reached back and spread her own butt cheeks as widely as physically possible.

"Put it up my ass!" she yelled.

"Are you sure?" Jake asked doubtfully. Her anal opening looked awfully small.

"Fuck yeah I'm sure," she told him. "Get it in there!"

And so, ever the obedient soul, Jake pulled himself out of her dripping pussy and put the head of his cock against her puckered anus. He pushed slowly, intending to work himself inside over a few minutes, but Mindy was having none of this.

"Cram it in there!" she ordered. "Rape that fucking ass!"

He did as she asked, finding at once that she wasn't nearly as tight here as he thought she'd be. She moaned blissfully at the intrusion and immediately began telling him to fuck harder.

"Oh yeah," she cried as he pistoned in and out. "Now hold me down by the neck — Yeah... like that! Pull my fuckin hair... harder... harder! Oh yeah... fuck yeah!"

Late the next morning Jake was once again tired, scratched up, sore, abraded, and quite satiated. Instead of dropping him off around the corner, Mindy pulled right into the circular drop-off in front of his building.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" he asked her, already seeing the astonished faces of the doorman and two of the minor league celebrities as they stared at them from the lobby.

"Well, they already know we're seeing each other, don't they?"

"True," he said. "But what about that discretion we promised?"

She leaned over and kissed him firmly on the mouth. "I'm being discrete by not sticking my tongue down your throat," she told him.

"I see."

"Call me tonight?"

"You bet."

And he did. They talked for more than an hour and made plans for the following Sunday. Mindy suggested that since it was already known by the various National Records spies that inhabited the building that they were seeing each other there would be no harm in her visiting him in his condo. She was dying — she said — to try one of the exotic dinners his manservant was known for. Jake was forced to agree with this logic and extended a formal invitation.

Crow was not terribly happy about it when he found out (and Jake didn't even bother asking how he'd found out — the information had come to him less than twelve hours after Jake had told Manny he would be having Mindy for dinner on Sunday).

"This is your idea of being discrete?" Crow asked after calling Jake up to his office. "You invite her into your very building, where anyone and everyone can see that she's going up to your condo? How long do you think it will be until one of those local newscasters that lives in that place starts to think they're real reporters and feeds that to the news desk?"

Jake, knowing that there was little Crow was willing or able to do about it, simply shrugged off his concerns and told him to mind his own business. And, of course, Crow was right. When Mindy entered the Esnob Pinchazo building on Sunday afternoon she found herself waiting at the elevator with none other than Steve O'Riley, the flamboyant local weatherman. O'Riley pretended to make small talk with her for a moment and then, just as the elevator arrived, flat out asked her if she was here to visit Jake Kingsley.

"Whatever would make you think that?" she replied.

This confused O'Riley for a moment. "Uh... well... because it's been reported that you two are seeing each other and he lives in this building."

"Does he?" she asked innocently. "I didn't know that."

"You didn't?"

"No. Isn't that a fantastic coincidence? I'm here to see one of my girlfriends though."

"Oh," he said, disappointed. "I see."

O'Riley pushed the button for his floor. Mindy pushed the button for number twenty-four.

O'Riley chewed his lip for a moment. "Your friend lives on the twenty-fourth floor?" he asked.

She nodded. "Yep. She sure does."

"That's Jake Kingsley's floor as well."

"Is it?" she said. "That's another amazing coincidence, isn't it?"

When the doors opened at number nine O'Riley stepped reluctantly out. He cast one last glance at Mindy Snow, who was smiling her friendly smile at him.

"Bye now," she told him. "And if you see Jake around tell him I said hi, okay?"

"Okay," O'Riley said, his head spinning. He walked slowly down the hall and had put his key in the door when it occurred to him that maybe it really wasn't just a fantastic coincidence. Could it be that Mindy Snow really was up there with Jake Kingsley?

When he got inside he made a phone call to the television station. The news director agreed with his logic. Within an hour a news crew, packing a telephoto video recorder, was discretely staking out the lobby.

Meanwhile Jake was having another of his illusions of Mindy's innocence shattered. She had just been introduced to Manny and had just given her drink order to him (a double Vodka martini). As Manny went off to the bar to construct it, she turned to Jake and asked. "You got any pot? I really want to get stoned."

He did. They smoked several hits out of his bong and then retired to Jake's bedroom for a long, luxuriant session of sex, during which Mindy presented her bare ass to him and ordered him to spank her.

"Harder!" she said at his first feeble swats. "Leave some fucking marks on me, goddammit!"

He left some marks and produced a few shocked looks from Manny when they finally emerged from the bedroom. The sharp cracks of his hand hitting her flesh had been clearly audible to him as he'd fussed over his shrimp soup and Parisian chicken.

They ate Manny's meal, drank some more alcohol, smoked some more weed, and then engaged in a two hour sex session in Jake's bedroom. Mindy slipped out the door just before eleven that night, leaving a snoring Jake naked beneath the covers. Reeking of sexual musk she found Manny watching television in the main living room. She kissed his cheek, thanked him for a wonderful meal, and let herself out the door. Down in the lobby the news crew spotted her the moment she emerged from the elevator. They filmed her as she walked across the lobby to the valet and while she waited for her Mercedes to be brought around. The moment it was parked in front of the door she stepped outside, they fell upon her like vampires.

"Mindy," the heavily made-up female reporter shouted, stepping forward and shoving her microphone in Mindy's face. "Do you have a minute?"

"No," she said, taking her keys from the valet and slipping him a ten-dollar bill.

"I understand you've been up on the twenty-fourth floor for the past eight hours. Was it Jake Kingsley you were visiting?"

"No comment," she said, pushing her way around the woman and getting into her car.

"But Mindy," the reporter persisted. "In light of the recent pictures of you and Jake Kingsley together, it could hardly be a coincidence that you just happened to be in the same building where he lives for eight hours, could it?"

"No comment," she repeated, closing her door and locking it.

The cameraman stepped close and zoomed on her through the window as she put the car in drive and pulled away. He continued to film the vehicle until it disappeared from sight around the next corner.

The next morning Jake, who had no idea that any of this had transpired, came limping out the front door to get into his limousine for the trip to the recording studio. A large group of reporters, paparazzi, photographers, and news cameramen swarmed him, blocking his access.

"What the fuck?" Jake muttered, blinded by the flashbulbs, his ears ringing from a hundred shouted questions. His confusion was understandable. Though the press hounded him endlessly wherever he went, this was the first time he'd actually encountered them outside of his building. They either hadn't known where he lived before, or they had been observing some unwritten rule about not disturbing celebrities at their house — he knew not which. But whichever, they were certainly bothering him now. He strained to listen to what they were shouting.

"Was Mindy here last night?"

"What were you two doing up there all night?"

"Are you going to acknowledge a romantic relationship with Mindy?"

"Were the two of you intimate?"

Jake sighed, keeping his expression as neutral as possible. "No comment, no comment," he said as he pushed his way through the crowd and dove into the back of the limo. They continued to shout questions at him as the car pulled away. And when he arrived at the National Records building, there was a similar throng waiting there as well.

Crow was infuriated. "Why the hell don't you just take out a goddamn ad in the LA Times and announce that you're banging Mindy Snow? The whole fucking world knows about it now anyway!"

Jake refused to feel apologetic towards Crow or anyone else at National Records. He did touch bases with Mindy and with Shaver, both of whom advised that the best thing to do was to deny everything and to hide behind a wall of "no comment". When contacted later that day Shaver and Georgette both stated for the record — with straight faces no less — that Mindy and Jake had not been together last night, that Mindy had merely been visiting another, unnamed friend, who coincidentally lived in the same building.

The story, the film of Mindy in Jake's building, and the pathetic, unbelievable denials, were played throughout the day on nearly every channel in the United States. Newspaper entertainment sections printed the story the following day. The following week several entertainment magazines had full-length articles about the growing rumors of a Kingsley/Snow relationship. The amount of reporters and paparazzi stalking the two of them doubled.

A month went by and things settled down a bit. There was still endless speculation and rumors printed in a variety of magazines or touted on a variety of entertainment shows, but nothing new added to the fever. Jake and the rest of the band were locked into the grueling routine of recording and Mindy had several public relations jaunts she had to undergo in addition to two readings for upcoming film roles.

"They turned me down for the part in Focus On The Dream," Mindy told Jake during one of the few phone conversations they managed. Focus was a teen oriented film about a girl's softball team and their struggle for respect and recognition in an early seventies college known for its football team. It was just the sort of cutesy feel-good movie that exploited the Mindy Snow image to the maximum. The lead role had in fact been written with the specific intent that Mindy would play it. She had been told beforehand that the reading was nothing more than a formality. Apparently, however, that had not been the case.

"What happened?" Jake asked. "Was it because of... you know... you and me?"

"Yeah," she said. "It was. The producer told me that with the recent controversy that has cropped up between me and 'that lowlife musician', they had decided to go with Jessica Coriander instead."

Jake felt horrible about this. He had cost her a part that would have paid eight million dollars. "I'm so sorry," he told her. "This is exactly what Georgette told you would happen. And she was right."

"Don't worry about it," she said. "It's not your fault."

"Maybe we should think about... uh... not seeing each other anymore," he suggested. "I don't want to..."

"Don't you like me anymore, Jake?" she asked, her voice quivering.

"Yes," he said. "I like you very much. I love spending time with you, but I'm hurting your career."

"Let me worry about my career," she said. "That was just another wholesome little girl part anyway. Fuck them if they're afraid my personal life will detract from it."

"But, Mindy..."

"There will be other parts for me," she said. "Trust me. Now when can we see each other again? I'm having a severe case of Jake-withdrawal."

That turned out to be the following Sunday. She gave him cryptic instructions to have a limousine drop him off at an intersection in Beverly Hills at ten o'clock in the morning. He followed the directions and found himself standing in front of a high-end Chevrolet dealership. Mindy's car was not parked out front as he was expecting. While he puzzling over this, Mindy came walking out from within the showroom wearing a red spaghetti strap top and a pair of white shorts. She ran up to him and gave him a big hug, kissing him repeatedly on the mouth.

"Mindy," he hissed at her. "We're in public. There are people watching us."

"Fuck 'em," she said. "They all know we're together anyway, don't they? Is there any point in pretending?"

This threw him for a bit of a loop. "Are you saying we should go public?"

"No," she said, "but I'm tired of sneaking around like a teenager trying to hide something from her parents. Let's just get together when we want, do what we want, and say nothing to the vultures. Let them draw their own conclusions."

"Its not too hard to draw one when we're kissing in front of a car dealership."

She smiled her sexy smile — the one she usually only displayed during foreplay. "Like I said, fuck 'em. They can make of it what they will." And with that, she kissed him soundly, sticking her tongue in his mouth this time.

He was a bit breathless when she released him, and more than a little aroused. But he was curious as well. "What are we doing here?" he asked. "Where's your car?"

"It's at home," she said. "I had a limo drop me here."

"How come?"

"Because it's becoming quite the pain in the ass to pick you up from your condo," she said. "And as I told you before, I'm an old-fashioned girl. I like my man to pick me up for a date at my place, in his own car."

"But I don't have a car," he said, although that wasn't strictly true. His battered old 1976 Datsun sub-compact was still in a storage facility outside Hollywood, rotting along with all of his other pre-fame belongings. But its battery was undoubtedly dead and corroded beyond repair, it's engine gummed up with disuse. Nor was it currently registered or insured. Even if it were running, however, he certainly wouldn't use it to transport Mindy around in.

"I know you don't," Mindy said. "And that's what we're going to fix today."

"Excuse me?" he asked. She wasn't suggesting what he thought she was suggesting, was she?

She was. "Didn't you tell me once that you always wanted a Corvette? Well they got a butt-load of them here. The eighty-fours are out now. That's the new re-vamped model, you know. I was just looking at them. They're bad-ass."

"Mindy, I can't afford a Corvette," he said. "I can't even afford a used beater car."

"But I can," she said. "Come on. Let's go get you one."

"Wait a minute," he said. "You're saying you want to buy me a Corvette?"

"You got it," she said. "What color do you want?"

He was shaking his head. "Nope, sorry," he told her. "I mean, I appreciate the offer and all, but there's no way I'm going to let you buy me a car."

She seemed undaunted by his refusal. "Why not?"

"Well... because... I just can't," he said. "A Corvette runs more than twenty grand. That's way too expensive of a gift."

"Jake," she said, "I'm a multi-millionaire, remember? You hooked up with a rich bitch who likes to spend. Twenty grand is pocket change to me. Now come on. I won't take no for an answer. We are leaving here in your new Corvette or we're not leaving here at all."

She wore him down. In truth, it didn't take too much. The moment he laid his eyes on the new Corvette, his resolve started crumbling. When the sales manager — who was the only person Mindy would deal with — took him out for a test drive, his resolve disintegrated to dust. He picked out a metallic blue model with all the bells and whistles. The out-the-door price turned out to be $24,688. Mindy called her accountant and had him wire the money directly to the car dealership's account.