More Muffia (The Muffia Book 2) Page 10

  Scanning the vast floor one last time for movement, I walked a little closer. I wasn’t sure what I was really looking for. Maybe a receipt that said, “One compromising photo of Quinn Cunningham, $500?” No. But Lauren’s semi-offer of help, provided George agreed, might not pan out, and the girls had convinced me that doing something was better than waiting around. Even though I’d made up my mind that I was both ready to accept the situation and adapt to whatever change was coming, I wasn’t about to let that fair-haired Moldovan transplant get away with her plan without a fight.

  There didn’t seem to be anything obviously amiss on her desk; certainly no receipt. I pulled on a drawer—locked. Then another—also locked. I pulled the chair out and suddenly heard a door close somewhere on the floor. Damn it!

  I scooted back to my desk just as Sameer turned the corner. “Do you have to call a faraway place as well?” he asked. For a split second, I thought he might find it odd I was there so early...might even suspect something.

  Recovering quickly, I said, “Preparing to, yes.” I really hated to lie, but I figured it was best not to tell the truth, for Sameer’s own protection. “Singapore.”

  He wagged his head. “Tiger is going to be a spokesperson for Scottish whisky, but there is a bidding war transpiring. Orkney wants him for Bruichladdich and Islay for Bunnahabhain.”

  “Better you than me. He should get both just because his agent can pronounce them. All I’ve got is Sarah Michelle Gellar for a new vacuum cleaner.”

  “Good luck.” He glanced at his watch. “We will see who gets the Tiger.”

  He skittered away and with him, so went the day’s attempt to probe Titania’s desk. Obviously, I’d have to try again.

  The rest of the workday passed uneventfully. Titania was back to her aloof self, and Jamie once again brought me into her office to ask if I’d made any progress, to which, of course, I replied, “No.” Lauren hadn’t called, so whatever she had in mind to get me out of my predicament remained a mystery. Vicki and I connected about online dating—I’d posted my profile, she’d done nothing— and finally, it was evening, and I headed for dance class for the first time since my return from Japan and injuring my ankle. It was still a little sore, but within fifteen minutes, K-Love had me searching for, finding, and releasing my inner goddess. The lights in Studio A were turned down low, and up went the rhythmic sounds of Paloma Faith, Four Tet, and Rage Against the Machine. It was perfect; I needed to rage.

  K-Love is a thirtyish multi-hyphenate with a million followers on Instagram, and she gets an instant 200 likes for any pic she posts with a pole dancer in it. She’s a beautiful soul and talent, and like so many in L.A., hasn’t gotten her due. The warm-up she leads us through might seem to the uninitiated to be a glorified masturbation session, and maybe it is a little. She tells us to run our hands over our spandex-clad bodies, allowing our fingers to really feel what they touch and encourage our bodies to respond—ha! Like I need any help. My take is, when you have no one lovin’ on you, lovin’ yourself becomes even more critical, but any actual masturbation, removal of spandex, would need to wait until we got to our respective homes. Tonight, however, sex was the last thing on my mind. In fact, freeing my mind of anything except freeing my mind was the only thing on my mind. When I walked into S-Factor so twisted and tense, K-Love had come over to the mat to unwind me. It didn’t take too long, though, before I was back into it—the music, the candles, the deep breathing of all of us together in the room, the inner release. Soon I was just being and moving and expressing myself for nobody but me. Like a lot of people, I just needed a little encouragement—more so now that I’ve entered my second half. Gone are the days—I hoped not forever—when cutting free seemed easy.

  As I held onto the pole, I allowed my body to slowly unshackle itself from all the constraints life had put on it, most of which were self-imposed and which I considered—in large part, wrongly—to be necessary to succeed in the world. I tried to push away the thoughts of why doing so had become so much harder. Why, since I hit 40, did it seem like I have more and more excuses to close myself off? I didn’t want to be thinking about this now. Doing so was incongruous with the lithe bodies moving around me and the driving, pounding music.

  They say we have to release or we’ll explode. So there I was, leg around the pole, head stretched back, hair flowing, wondering if my lifestyle was causing me harm, and OMG I started to cry. Everything I was going through hit me at the same time—Picturegate, Steven, Titania, online dating profiles, the no-go with Viggo—I hadn’t even picked a book. All of it broadsided me like I’d been hit with a—well, like I’d been hit with a pole. I clung to it and sobbed.

  Whatever comes up in class for any of us is fine with K-Love. No one judges. We’re there to release ourselves through the dance; that’s her mantra. Granted, it doesn’t usually mean somebody is clinging to a pole and crying, but she’s okay with that when it happens, too. The mere act of release did the trick. The dam broke and I flowed free.

  Pretty soon I became aware of a familiar, sensual, teasing guitar lick coming through the speakers, and I felt like a ton of crap had been lifted off me. “Baby, take off your dress—yes, yes...” It was Joe Cocker, of course; You Can Leave Your Hat On, one of my all-time favorites. Yes, indeed. You find your joy where you can.

  CHAPTER 10

  Sometimes, though, you have to make your own joy. Re-energized after pole dancing, I dodged another call from Steven, and when I got home, I was ready to take the next step toward online dating success. This meant sitting down with a glass of Sauvignon Blanc and logging onto NowLove to see if anyone appealing had responded to my profile. I’d posted it at lunchtime, after a bit of suggested tweaking from Vicki, changing the “About Me” portion to read: “I can cook a couple of dishes really well,” instead of what I had—the truer, but more off-putting: “I hate to cook.” She claimed there was plenty of time to tell a guy I didn’t like to cook after he’d fallen in love with me.

  Typing in my password, I reminded myself it didn’t need to be love at first page view, but if I was patient, gave the process time, and resolved to be a little less picky, I’d find the right man.

  Deep breath, hit return and… Wow, was I shocked to see100 “matches” in my inbox, along with men “winking”, sending me “flowers,” or otherwise selecting me as their “favorite.” Plus 30 messages! Sheesh, this was going to take awhile. I sipped my wine and told myself to stay positive. After all, I had a choice in this game—far better than a lot of women on the planet.

  Scanning the long list of men who were lonely or horny or, most likely, both, I waited for a name to jump out at me. I envisioned my perfect man in a house or office somewhere, scanning down the long list of women—lonely, horny, most likely both—hoping for a name to jump out at him. I opened the first message and knew right away I needed some sort of screening mechanism.

  “What’s with their handles?” I asked Vicki ten minutes later. “Do they really think Beachbum2453 is going to nail more babes than Beachbum2452?”

  She snorted. “Why would a guy think a woman’s going to be attracted to somebody called Beach Bum in the first place?” There was the sound of ice clinking in a glass.

  “Seems like a minor groundswell; there are at least 2,453 of them. That’s a lot of Twitter followers anyway.”

  “They should be so lucky. Hit delete,” she said.

  I tapped the delete key. Bye-bye Beach Bum. That was one way to cull the herd.

  The ice clinked again, followed by the sound of a glass touching down on a table. Was Vicki drinking alone? Not that her doing so should shock me; I was drinking alone.

  “What are you drinking over there?” I asked as my computer generated an unfamiliar ding sound.

  “Just water. The doctors still advise not to drink anything stronger than ginger ale, which makes it tough for someone who pre-cancer only drank coffee and alcohol. I try to pretend it’s a vodka martini with a twist.”

  “The pow
er of positive thinking writ large.”

  “I like your handle,” she said. “ ‘’Miss-underscore-Quinn.’ It says exactly who you are and the underscore, you know, underscores and gives it some personality.”

  “What did you choose for yours?”

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  “Come on, we’re supposed to be doing this together.” I sensed hesitation but hoped I was wrong. “How’s your profile coming?”

  “I’m getting there. So do you see anyone interesting among the available offerings?” She was definitely stalling.

  “Interesting is a good word; anything more than interesting...I don’t know. And as far as who’s available, it’s kind of hard to tell.” I was well aware that some of these guys were not, in fact, available. Negotiating which ones were was part of the minefield a woman had to contend with on her way to capture the flag. Some men were married, “in a relationship,” or otherwise unavailable. It was safe to say that what every guy streaming by on my computer screen was doing was exploring other options. Any woman proceeding did so at her peril.

  I paused the stream. “Here’s a guy who calls himself Letstalkaboatsex. Get that? Instead of ‘about’ it says ‘a boat.’ Do you think he has trouble spelling or just wants someone to go sailing with?”

  Vicki snorted again. “Or have boat sex?”

  “I’d get sea sick.”

  “Either way, give that guy a wide berth.”

  “Ha. I don’t know anything about boats. Fresno’s land locked.” I hit delete again. How easy it was to dismiss people when they’re not right in front of you.

  “Did you know Paige met Richard online,” said Vicki.

  I did not know that. “I thought they were set up.”

  “It was a setup, all right, provided by Plenty of Fish. They met online, and they set up the first date.”

  Not that Paige and Richard’s relationship was any sort of testament to the success of online dating, in my opinion. “What’s happening with them now? I can’t keep track.”

  “She’s too embarrassed to talk about it, but I think this month they’re engaged.” Paige and Richard’s engagement had been on again-off again for three years, and during that period, their status had vacillated several times between the two states, with the only variant being whether they were living in the same house.

  “Have you talked to her? She’s been uncharacteristically quiet, don’t you think?”

  “I haven’t,” said Vicki.

  “I’ll call her tomorrow. I should have called already, but with everything going on… I’m beginning to think Jelicka might be right about her having plastic surgery.”

  “So, any other possibilities?” Vicki asked, getting back to the manhunt.

  I sighed. “I made the mistake of responding to a guy who had a bunch of visible tattoos—and I’m sure there were plenty of others you couldn’t see—who wrote saying he wanted to, ‘Put me on the back of his Harley and ride me—double entendre probably not intended—around this wacky world as the wind played in my hair’—something like that. I felt like I had to respond because there’s no way he read my profile. It clearly says, ‘If your means of transportation is a motorcycle, or your free time is spent on your bike, please do not contact me!’ ”

  “They don’t read, Quinn,” she said. I heard the ice clink again and the glass hit the table. “Ugh, I really need something stronger than water.”

  “If this is upsetting, I don’t have to trouble you with it. It is kind of depressing that these guys can’t even read a woman’s profile.”

  “Maybe they don’t read because what we have to say is irrelevant in their all-important quest of getting into our panties.”

  “That sounds like male-bashing, Vick. Are you male-bashing?”

  “I love men; I’m just not sure I like them all the time, you know?”

  “I absolutely do.” Exactly.

  “Hey, speaking of reading, have you picked a book yet?”

  It kept slipping my mind for obvious reasons. “I’m narrowing it down.” This was mostly true. I’d eliminated any book over 350 pages from consideration, which only left about seven hundred million choices.

  “I need a good book to get lost in.”

  “After we hang up,” I promised. “Top of my list.”

  “We need a rule that the new hostess has to pick a book within two days of the last meeting.”

  “Okay, I’ll pick a book. Now help me with these guys.”

  As I watched the name of a new suitor hit my inbox, I realized the now-familiar ding was NowLove sending me another candidate’s wink, flower, or message.

  “Anyway,” I said, “I felt compelled to tell tattoo guy—Highwaytolove he calls himself—that he couldn’t possibly have read my profile or he would have known, you know? But he ignores that, too, and writes back asking me what I’m afraid of. What I’m afraid of?”

  “Couldn’t admit he didn’t read,” said Vicki. “If he hadn’t written to you, I’d wonder if he even knew how.”

  “So I make something up about an ex dying in a motorcycle wreck and how I couldn’t handle it happening again.”

  “And, of course, that was a challenge he just had to respond to.”

  “Mmm-hmm—to tell me the best way to handle my heartache was to get back on the bike. He wanted to ‘free me from my sorrow.’ ”

  “How kind.”

  “Sitting on a motorcycle behind someone I barely know, trusting that person to guide a six-hundred-pound piece of metal through other pieces of metal weighing anywhere from two thousand to twenty thousand pounds? Not my idea of a good time.”

  “Not to mention, in L.A. it’s suicide,” said Vicki. “Is that it? There’s gotta be somebody interesting.”

  “Lots of trawlers—guys like SideshowBob who go for the low-hanging fruit—too lazy to read a profile or write a personal message, they click, ‘Wink’ or, ‘Tell GoodtimeSally you want to meet her.’ So GoodtimeSally gets a wink—whatever the hell that is. But in reality, SideshowBob is winking at every woman on the freakin’ website. He’s just lazy and doesn’t want to expend any emotional or intellectual energy. And if he can’t even do that, what hope is there he’s going to do his own laundry?”

  “Out with the winkers.” Vicki sighed. “Why are we doing this again?”

  I knew my reasons, some of which were crap, but I said, “Because we want to prove Rachel’s wrong about her fairy tale?”

  “Oooh...that’s going to be hard. I liked that fairy tale and I read on HuffPo that ‘Single is the new Black.’ Supposedly, single people like us are going to define the mainstream trends of tomorrow.”

  “Vicki, we’re doing this together! You promised.”

  “I’m sorry, Quinny. I know the goods are out there, but the goods are odd, and finding someone who isn’t requires that level of commitment we were talking about before. I realize I don’t have it.”

  “Oh, come on. If I can squeeze it in while trying to clear my name and keep my job, you can, too.”

  “And you know,” she said in a quieter voice, “it’s only been four years since Ricky and I split.”

  Here we go... Vicki and Ricky had been married for close to twenty years before getting divorced. Apropos Rachel’s fairy tale, maybe after such a long time, Vicki was enjoying her freedom and didn’t want to give it up—whereas a woman like me who’d never been married felt like she was missing something. Whatever the reason, it still sounded like an excuse.

  “I’m just into a lot of stuff right now,” she continued. “I want to do my art for and make movies. And don’t forget, I’m mentoring Solange, so I don’t really have the time.”

  “All right.” I certainly wasn’t going to argue about it.

  “I’ll still be your sounding board. Any time. How’s this? You can be my inspiration. If you find true love, I’ll try it.”

  “I wish you’d reconsider,” I said. “Life is so short. You know that better than most of us.”

  I de
cided not to mention that one of the main reasons we were doing this together was so we could vet guys for each other—something we could only do if she was on the same site with me.

  “I’ll think about it, I promise.” She paused. Something else seemed to be on her mind and I waited her out. “The other thing is, I do really want to do something with all the footage I’ve been getting. It could be my last chance.” Ah, now I got it. Stupid I hadn’t figured it out.

  “It is not your last chance; stop it. Your cancer’s gone; that’s what you told us. These last few follow-up appointments—there’s nothing there, right?”

  “Right,” she said in a very small voice.

  “Look, I know you’re worried, and I’m sure that’s completely normal, but gosh, Vicki, statistically you’ve already beaten the odds. Yes, it could come back, but there’s also a very good chance it won’t. You’ll have lots of chances to make movies—though, I have to say, you could probably find more interesting subject matter—not that the Muffs aren’t endlessly fascinating to us.”

  “You’re sweet, Quinny, but I guess the overall point is, right now a guy would just get in my way.”

  There had to be more to this, but I didn’t want to push it. Of course she was trying to protect herself—and some mythical man she might fall for—from heartbreak in the event her cancer did come back. But that might never happen. I could get cancer; it runs in my family for Godssake. And either of us could be in a car accident. The reality is, any of us, at any point, could be caught in a situation where we’re injured or killed, irrevocably destroying or simply changing our lives. At least for myself, I’d figured out that this plain fact, made more and more real with each passing day, was no longer a reason to postpone the rest of my life, even if it was difficult, and even if it hurt.

  “You’ll know when it’s the right time,” I said. “And hopefully by then, I’ll be able to help you.”

  She let out a long breath. “Okay, let’s review... Narrow down the candidates by deleting the winkers, anyone who’s a beach bum, anyone who rides a motorcycle or has too many tattoos, and anyone who obviously hasn’t read your profile. And just delete any email from a guy who doesn’t post his picture because he’s probably married, and you’ve already done that.” Nice of her to remind me. And with that we hung up.