Chore Whore Read online

  I put the gun down and rush up the stairs. Running down the hallway and bursting into his office, I scare Tree. She covers her naked chest with one hand and tries to shove the credit card and money down into the cushion of the leather chair.

  I must be a fright, huffing and puffing, madder than hell, holding out my hand to indicate she’d better hand over what she’s in the process of stealing. She picks up the phone receiver she dropped.

  “I’m gonna have to call you later.”

  She hangs up without ever taking her eyes off me.

  I stare down this little hussy, sitting here in Jock’s office, ripping him off while he’s in the shower washing off last night’s sex. Between the two of them, I’m vacillating about which one is worse. It doesn’t matter. I have a kid to feed, clothe and put through college. Who is Jock going to question if his money goes missing? The help. The thought of Concepcion or me getting blamed for this slut’s thievery makes me fume.

  “You better get your ‘ho ass’ out of this house.”

  Tree’s eyes widen. “Excuse me? Who are you?”

  “I’m Jock’s assistant.”

  I’m also a mom and Jock is one of my relatively helpless “kids,” led around by a brain not firmly attached in his head, but all too often tethered in southern regions.

  “Now, without a fuss, missy, give me what you just shoved under the cushion, get your clothes on, and get out of here.”

  She looks at me incredulously.

  “I don’t have any way to get home. Jock picked me up. Jock has to take me home,” she states with her lower lip starting to tremble.

  “You can call your mama and have her pick you up at Sunfax Arco down on Sunset and Fairfax. Get it done and get walking before Jock gets out of the shower.”

  Tree suddenly looks genuinely frightened. She throws the cash and credit card down and rushes past me. I wait in the hallway, feeling triumphant and, might I say, a bit cocky.

  Tree rushes from Jock’s bedroom wearing hip-huggers and a tight pink T-shirt over her bare breasts. With a nail file in one hand and her purse in the other, she brushes past me and bolts out the front door. Watching from the office monitor as she hurries down the front brick steps, I see her fumble with the permission-to-exit buttons, then leave.

  A small trickle of wetness runs down my arm where Tree pushed by, and blood stains my sweater. That witch stabbed me! Counting the years it’s been since my last tetanus shot, I go back downstairs to finish the job I was summoned to do. I watch the monitor as Jock goes room to room looking for Tree. When he enters the office, he grumbles as he sees the money and credit card on the floor.

  “What the hell?”

  He picks them up, then heads for the phone. I punch the button to the intercom to release it, turn the monitor back around and am suddenly plunged back into peaceful silence. But only for a moment. I hear crackling, then Jock’s voice over an intercom speaker.

  “Corki, what happened up here?”

  “I kicked her out,” I say unabashedly, without any of the emotion I felt two minutes earlier.

  “You did what? Come up here!”

  I set down the guns and climb the stairs. Jock stands in the doorway, arms folded, with only a towel wrapped around his waist. I pray his towel doesn’t fall off.

  “Expound!”

  I don’t bother with stammering or nervousness.

  “I was downstairs doing the cleaning when I looked up and saw Tree walking into your office. She started going through your desk and I saw her take your money, so I went upstairs and told her to leave. That’s it. And if you don’t believe me, rewind the tapes and you can see for yourself.”

  Jock doesn’t say a word, but continues staring at me, arms still folded. I keep thinking his towel’s going to unravel and the situation is going to be about fifteen times more uncomfortable than it is right now.

  “So, I’m going back downstairs to finish what I came here to do,” I say.

  I turn around and head back down the stairs. Before I turn the corner at the bottom, Jock’s emotions explode.

  “Next time, mind your own fucking business.”

  You’re welcome.

  I finish my job, gather my things and walk to the front door. Hanging on the doorknob is Miss Tree’s teddy with a note stuffed in it telling me to throw it in the garbage can outside.

  I slowly drive down the hill from Jock’s house and make sure to pass by Sunfax Arco. Like an obedient child, Tree waits by the phone, looking angry. Still reeling from my good fortune of catching her in the act, I pull into the parking lot and roll down the window.

  “Did you get someone to pick you up?”

  She flips me the bird. I guess that means yes.

  I pull Lucy’s blinding-yellow Ferrari 360 Modena out of the garage and back it up the narrow driveway toward the automated gate. The gate slides open and I go backward, up the hill and out blindly onto a relatively busy street. I don’t like driving her car for this precise reason—it’s impossible to see whether a car is coming around the bend.

  Lucy’s neighbors across the street will not allow her to put a fisheye mirror on their property—one that would allow her to see if a car is coming. I think they want her Ferrari smashed to smithereens. To see someone driving a car worth the price of a three-bedroom home in West Hollywood galls some people. I just don’t want to be the person behind the wheel on the day the smashing occurs.

  This car is so unlike Lucy. Unfortunately, the end of the lease on her Mercedes coincided with the start of her relationship with an Italian director who had a penchant for fast cars and faster women. Lucy pleased him by leasing the car in which he envisioned her. The relationship broke up in one month. The lease, however, won’t expire for another two years.

  After dropping the Modena off to Giovanni at the Italian Stallion service department, I go through my wallet for taxi fare. I’m frighteningly low on petty cash. I won’t even be able to pay the taxi driver to get back to Lucy’s. Ever since I was robbed in broad daylight a number of years back, I try not to carry too much money on me unless it’s absolutely necessary. I lock most of my clients’ petty cash in my safe-deposit box to access as needed.

  The taxi pulls up and I get into the backseat.

  “The City National Bank on Doheny and Sunset, please.”

  I barely get my seatbelt on before Mustafa, the taxi driver, burns rubber and shoots down La Cienega.

  My phone rings.

  “Corki, tell me I’m not fucking amazing!”

  “Who is this?” I demand.

  “It’s Esther, you idiot.”

  “Oh! Okay, you’re amazing,” I lie.

  “Tuesday morning at eight-thirty your son, Eden and Star will all start at Envision Prep. You don’t need an interview. You don’t have to pay one red cent. You just need to go there beforehand and fill out all the paperwork. No more crackheads pandering to the kids outside school. Your son will receive the best education private school offers,” she states proudly.

  “Well, Esther, this is amazing!”

  “No, not ‘this,’ I am amazing,” she demands.

  “Pardon me, you are amazing. Thank you.”

  “Glad you acknowledged just how fantastic I am. And you’re welcome. Call Shelly and her sister and arrange a time to go take care of the paperwork. Do it this week because Envision is closed next Monday for a teacher-training day. Bye.”

  Mustafa’s driving is getting me sick to my stomach. He rushes toward the stop signs and then abruptly crunches down on the brake pedal at the last second. The sound of metal on metal doesn’t deter him whatsoever. I can’t let go of the door handle to put my cell phone away. Ten minutes later, we pull up into the driveway at City National and I exit the cab, thankful to be alive. I instruct him to wait for me even though I’m not looking forward to his extreme maneuvering in the hills leading up to Lucy’s home.

  I wait in line for an authorized teller to sign the appropriate papers, then let me into the vault. We use her
key along with mine to open my safe-deposit box.

  Just as my teller leaves the vault, another teller escorts in a young blond couple with cameras hung around their necks. A strange clicking sound emits from the vault’s doorway and the teller hurries out, closing a metal gate behind her, then shoving closed the foot-thick steel vault door behind her. The air suddenly fills with a bizarre, electrical burning smell. The wretched odor overcomes me and I start coughing violently. My throat burns from the acrid, pungent, gaseous smell, and my nose starts dripping blood down my face.

  I pull my sweater up over my face and search my purse for my hankie. Tears are pouring out of my eyes and my nose is bleeding heavily. Choking on the gas, I huddle in a far corner, as far away from the door as I can get, cradling my safe-deposit box. Through my tears and burning eyes, I look over at the couple and can barely make out their shapes, seemingly bathed in purple, crouched in the far corner. I try to speak but can’t without coughing so hard my lungs feel ready to explode. I wonder what Mustafa is going to charge me for making him wait.

  What seems like forever passes, and the vault door is unlocked. The bolts slide back, the door opens and a German shepherd police dog, in a bulletproof vest, bursts in, barking and snarling. His vicious stance holds me and the other couple at bay, as if we’re in any position to take him on.

  Four members of the Beverly Hills Police Department enter, shouting orders, guns drawn. The police drag the couple off the floor, handcuff them and drag them out of the vault. One officer looks at me, radios an ambulance, then approaches and kneels down next to me. Even though my eyes are blurry, I can see that he happens to be a very fine-looking man.

  Why is it when you look like you’ve been beaten up, someone appears who looks like a knight in shining armor?

  “Ma’am, can you get up with my help?” he asks, gently.

  “Yeah, I think so,” I cough.

  I struggle to stand up and find myself a little woozy and unbalanced. He walks me to the vault door and I promptly throw up.

  “Ma’am, there’s an ambulance right outside. Come this way with me.”

  I feel too sick to be as embarrassed as I should be. The ambulance attendant helps me take off my sweater and seats me in the back of the ambulance. He’s a gentle man with a warm glow to his olive skin.

  “My name’s Angelo. What’s yours?”

  “Cornelia, but I go by Corki,” I cough.

  “Okay, Corki, I’m going to be putting plugs in your nose to stop the bleeding. Are you hurt anywhere else?”

  I shake my head.

  “What about this on your arm?” he asks as he pulls up my shirtsleeve.

  “Oh yeah,” I whisper, “someone stabbed me with a nail file earlier today.”

  Angelo raises his eyebrows. “Must be your lucky day. How long has it been since your last tetanus shot?”

  “I was afraid you were going to ask that. I’m not sure, but it’s been a long time. Eight, nine years.”

  “Close enough for me. You need one every ten years,” he says as he inserts two plugs that look curiously like a couple of slender tampons up my nostrils. He then puts drops in my eyes and gives me a tetanus shot. With the tampon nose plugs and strings draping down tickling my upper lip, my shining knight comes back to take my account of the incident for the police report. I have no hopes of flirting with this man when I’m sitting here looking like a five-year-old who got into her mama’s medicine chest.

  Mustafa is long gone.

  “Tell me more, Mom. Did the robbers have guns?”

  Blaise sits in the hallway outside the bathroom, pressing for more details. He has visions of Wild West robberies complete with horses, covered wagons and Indians with bows and arrows.

  I can only whisper. My windpipe burns and every breath stings like it will be my last. I try to turn over in my bubble bath, but can barely move. I whisper hoarsely to Blaise the story that was told to me.

  “A young couple in their twenties robbed a bank in Arizona and were given a pack of money filled with purple dye. That’s what tellers are supposed to do when they’re robbed. If everything goes well, the dye pack explodes when triggered by the bank’s detection system. But it didn’t. The robbers got away, and thought they’d be smart and come to Los Angeles and put it in a safe-deposit box to use at their discretion. Only problem was that my bank’s detection system did work and it exploded, flooding the whole place with tear gas. Unfortunately, I got caught in the bank vault with the robbers.”

  “But did they have guns?” Blaise asks.

  “No guns. It wasn’t that exciting. The police kept calling it a freak accident.”

  “Wow! I can’t wait to tell my friends about this,” he continues. “It’s so cool.”

  “Cool, huh?” I squeak.

  “Yeah, really cool!”

  I tuck Blaise into bed, then fall into bed myself. For once, I don’t bother with the answering machine. All night I wheeze, suck in burning air, cough violently, spit up phlegm that tastes like tear gas, and cry. I slurp teaspoons full of cough medicine with codeine that sedates me for short intervals, but my coughing continues, unabated.

  At seven-thirty the next morning, Shelly picks up Blaise and takes him to school with the girls. They leave, chatting happily about Envision Prep, bank robberies and Mama Corki’s bravery, as if I took down the robbers myself.

  I sit down at my desk to make a series of painful phone calls. Some people take my whispering voice as that of a crank caller. Half of them hang up and I need to redial and try again. The other half say I sound as if I’ve been smoking three packs a day since I turned ten.

  I schedule a slew of doctor’s appointments and cancel other appointments I had set for today and tomorrow. Finally, I brave listening to my phone messages.

  Call number one is from Veronique.

  “Corki, it’s Veronique. I’m back in town. I hope your Christmas and New Year’s Eve were good. Let’s meet at Joan’s on Third. Love to you and Blaise.” Beep.

  Call number two.

  “Corki, Jock Straupman.”

  He sounds cold and distant, still angry.

  “I’m leaving for Paris tomorrow night. I’m going to need enough vitamins for six months. I don’t want to have to go through the fiasco we went through last time I was in Spain. While I’m gone, I’ll need for you to take care of the cars, have the piano tuned right before I come home and at some point change the felt on the pool table, maybe an aqua color this time. Use your judgment. Have the pool heater turned down, or actually off, and cancel the florist. Most importantly, I want to have my room painted red. I left the colors for the walls and bookcases in the office. I’ve moved some stuff, but I want you to move the remaining six boxes down to the range and leave them there until I come back. I spoke with the painters and they’ll be starting early in February. Please take care of all this as soon as you can. Call Squid and he’ll give you an address where you can send my mail. I think twice a month should be sufficient. Thank you.”

  The next call is from Lucy, sounding higher than a balloon filled with helium.

  “Sweetheart, hello! We haven’t spoken since the party. Where were you? It was fabulous. I personally think you missed one of my best yet. Everyone loved the favors. Listen, we popped over to Maui for the week and should be home day after tomorrow. I need you to do me a couple of favors.”

  Her Southern accent is full and lively.

  “I want you to go and get a bunch of CDs. In fact, I’m going to be totally anal-retentive and just fax you a list from the hotel. Love you, bye.”

  I look behind the desk and see four pages curled up on the floor. The list consists of forty-three compact discs, mostly country-and-western: Buck Owens, Johnny Cash, Dwight Yoakum, ZZ Top, Elvis, John Prine and Duane Diamond. She wants them to be opened and mixed in with everything else in her CD case in order to give the appearance that she gave a shit about Buck Owens’s music before she met Tommy Ray. I wonder if she’ll want me to get a set of bull’s horns
for the front of the Ferrari.

  She also instructs me to rid the house of “ANYTHING and EVERYTHING pre-1940s” and “ANYTHING and EVERYTHING that looks too classy.” I am to pack the antique silverware and put it in my garage. Put the rococo-style table that is in the foyer in the garage as well. Wrap it in blankets. And for God’s sake hide the old English china her grandmother gave her. Use my judgment and clear the house of anything sentimental from old boyfriends or from men who happen to be friends or, come to think of it, anything from any man unless it is from her own father. In addition, she wants me to collect all her old diaries, love letters, former wedding rings and personal mementos from past movies, love interests and co-stars. All these items should be packed in boxes and stored at my apartment. “And by the way, as soon as we get home we’re going to be looking into buying a house together. Be happy for us.”

  I think about the limited space in my place and the equally limited space in Lucy’s brain. What on earth is this woman thinking? My garage seems to be a favorite spot for movie stars to hide all their belongings that they don’t want their new mates to discover. I have no room to even park my car, let alone another six or seven boxes filled with Lucy’s love-life paraphernalia. The last remaining room in my garage was taken up by the four-hundred-pound gun cabinet that Esther insisted leave their home when she married Liam. Liam swore that after the L.A. riots, he was not going to be caught defenseless. He bought a heavy metal pump shotgun and a .357 Magnum—now sitting in my garage. Liam bought the cabinet because someday he said he’d sign up to take lessons on how to the shoot the darn things and until that day, the arsenal must be safely tucked away behind lock and key. That was years ago and Liam has never found the time to learn. I, however, have enough guns and ammo in my quiet little home to fight a small revolution.

  The last call is from Officer Gregory Holt from the Beverly Hills Police Department, stating that I should call the department if I want to press charges against the couple foiled in the bank incident.