Page 11 of The Dirty Version

“You won’t win.” Janelle smirked smugly from behind her fortress of cream-rimmed Blow Jobs, beside Caleb’s rolled-up shirtsleeves, the two of them chummy as ever, picking up where they’d left off—just before Tash’s verbal assault.

Caleb sniffed the Mockingbird’s beigey liquid kindly, raising his shot to Mr. Radley’s perch on the messy bar, where his boned hands had been cupped into a makeshift tip jar. “Is there a connection between Harper Lee and the corpse you’ve got there?”

Tash watched Denise taste her tequila and mime gagging. “None at all. Some freshman lit classes are sharper than others.” Glancing back at the skeleton. “Maybe I should stop teaching To Kill a Mockingbird around Halloween.”

Janelle reached helpfully for her wife’s tequila, tossing it back in a sleek blur. “Were you a good student, Caleb? Did you study film?” She wasted no time shining her full spotlight on their guest of honor.

It made Tash twinge with vague annoyance. Either because she couldn’t stay and listen to his answer or because Janelle seemed to have forgotten Caleb Rafferty was conspiring with the other side. Tash needed to remind her they’d be wise to stay wary.

Meanwhile, Caleb embraced her questioning. He got comfortable, heel tapping to honky-tonk surf tunes. “I was okay—nothing stellar. I didn’t finish college, though. I only did three semesters at UCLA.”

Tash paused where she’d been about to return to her duties, her tray of empties suspended in midair.

She hadn’t expected Caleb to be this kind of kindred spirit.

“School not for you?” She’d aimed at teasing, but it came out weird and petty.

Then weird and suggestive: “Or have you always just preferred a more hands-on approach?”

She regretted her words immediately, realizing Caleb did not know she was a higher education dropout, too. The strained, somewhat apologetic, close-lipped smile he returned to her was painful. He pushed his glasses up, a large tank watch’s brown leather strap double-wrapped around his wrist.

“My stepmother was diagnosed with late-stage brain cancer when I was a sophomore.” In fairness, he seemed to want to pull the stinger out of Tash’s giant gaffe. “She had big plans—places she wanted to see still. I left school to travel with her.”

Tash wished to be engulfed by a tornado of floor sawdust. She willed a country line dance to flash-mob, or back-bar bottles to suddenly explode. Anything to distract from this moment. “I’m an idiot.” She looked at him directly. “I’m so sorry.”

He smiled wistfully. “It’s okay. I like talking about her—Viv was amazing. She’d just retired when she got sick. We hit the road hard to cram in everything on her bucket list.” He shrugged. “Afterwards, I decided to start working. Something about her death made me need the real world.”

When Tash could look again, Janelle and Denise each had sympathetic hands on his arms; Janelle might have actually been squeezing his bicep.

“Seriously.” He said it to all three of them, but pointedly to Tash. “Please don’t feel bad. Viv went out on her own terms. She would not want beautiful women sitting in a bar and crying for her.”

Tash wavered between wanting to join the cuddle and wanting to tase herself.

“Tell us more about her.” Janelle did not release him. “You said stepmom, but it sounds like you were close.”

Caleb hesitated. He traced the condensation beading on the copper side of his Moscow Mule.

“We were.” He almost flinched as he said it, curacao-blue eyes right on Tash: “She owned a burlesque club in Los Angeles. There’s a documentary about it opening at the film festival.

That’s why I came, actually—I was here before I knew Braverman would be pairing me with Tash. ”

Tash immediately began to replay the awful things she’d said to Caleb at the piano bar when he’d mentioned the documentary.

“Bullshit” was what she’d called his stepmother’s life work, or at least the film about it.

Forget tasing herself—Tash wanted to disappear into a bucket of Ray’s shitty tequila and forget she’d been so cruel.

“Her name was Vivienne Palmer.” Caleb unfastened the top button of his linen shirt, pulling the collar aside.

“Her club was called Calypso.” Pointing to his ink.

“My dad was her set builder, that’s how they met.

I kind of grew up backstage.” And then, not arguing it, just offering a piece of information, he added: “In certain circles, Viv’s considered a pioneer. ”

Denise gasped. “Holy shit! I’ve been there. Caleb, that place is super famous.”

Janelle glanced sideways at her wife’s reaction. “Really? I’ve never heard of it.”

“It isn’t super famous.” Caleb dismissed it to Janelle while winking at Denise. “Just mildly famous. At least it was, back in the day.”

“Back in the day, there was a crazy lineup of guest stars—I remember.” Still awestruck, Denise filled in the blanks.

She tucked one side of her blond bob behind an ear, grinning at Janelle.

“It was extremely sexy. We used to go in law school—way before I met you.” She turned back to Caleb. “You must have a million stories.”

He demurred, pretending not to recall. Throwing Denise a single teaser: “I did meet Sharon Stone once, in the dressing rooms when I was nine.”

“Stop it!” Denise gasped again.

Caleb’s nod was solemn. “She helped me make flash cards for a third-grade spelling test.”

“That’s insane.” Denise’s lawyerly reserve had left the building. “I want to be reincarnated as your childhood.”

Caleb laughed in earnest. “It’s not what you think—imagine growing up basically feral, in a theater that doubled as a boarding house, with fifteen older sisters. I had no privacy, and there was never any breakfast because everyone except for me was nocturnal.”

“Fifteen hot older sisters.” Denise verged on embarrassing herself.

“Just sisters.” Caleb, all smiling chivalry. “No, but really—the community around Viv was special. A chosen family.” His expression offered Tash a handful of puzzle pieces to set down. “A bunch of us are here for the documentary. Tash met one of them the other day.”

Tash frowned, doing the fuzzy math. He had to be talking about Astrid, but she was twenty-five, tops—too young to have danced at Calypso. “Astrid Dalton worked for your stepmom?”

Caleb’s grin was wide now. “No! She’s Viv’s goddaughter. Her mom was one of Viv’s protégées. You couldn’t tell? She’s like my little sister.”

Tash remembered possessive clinging, a bandeau bikini, and a girl who probably didn’t want a “sibling” label on Caleb’s family tree.

“I watch out for her as much as I can.” He smiled. “Like on your show now.”

“I love that!” Janelle joined Denise in the fawning. She raised her Blow Job to the magnificence of Caleb. “Here’s to big brothers.”

Caleb raised his Moscow Mule, looking at Tash, returning Janelle’s hug.

* * *

In former years, out of respect for the pedagogy, Tash would have taken a full course load of cocktails at Manta Ray’s.

But she’d stopped drinking the moment she realized she’d impugned the legacy of Caleb’s stepmom.

She released him to Denise and Janelle’s thrall and adulation, retreating to sling tequila behind the bar beside Boo Radley, scolding herself for behaving like an awkward jerk.

“That explains a lot, don’t you think?” Janelle paused to slurrily discuss it on a trip back from the bathroom.

It was late; she and Denise would have to get home to their sitter soon.

“About why he’s so easy to get along with.

Raised in a den of women.” Janelle fanned herself swooningly to underscore it. “At the center of a coven.”

“He can still be an agent of the patriarchy.” Tash muttered it begrudgingly, her best friend’s gushing a bit much.

Janelle tilted, considering the possibility. “True. But Natasha—he really does not seem like a dickhead.” Taking Tash’s chin between her fingers: “I think you got lucky. The studio could have sent you a total goon.”

And truly, nothing about Caleb was goon-like.

Tash observed him, beyond the jukebox and the throng of adjuncts, sitting on a barstool beside Denise.

He had his ear close to hear what she said over the music.

He took a moment to think about it, and when he replied, Denise threw her head back in total uproar, her typically zipped-up persona thoroughly shed.

Verbs and adjectives, mood and action; if he was her assignment, Tash would write Caleb as strapping when he washed up on her beach.

He’d have lost his glasses in the shipwreck, there’d be wet sand matted on his cheek, there’d be castaway beard growth shading his strong jaw.

His clothes would be in tatters, his salted skin a color that would burn badly.

Tash would probably have to lie down right there and smother him with her hair and with her body, for sun protection; there’d be no time to drag him into a sacred shade.

The sea would lap around their tangled bodies; his eyes would open to their deep kiss.

In real life, his eyes blinked at her across Manta Ray’s Seaside Tavern, dragging Tash back to her muggy sawdust reality.

He must have wondered why she was staring. She watched him stand up, bidding an indulgent good night to Janelle and Denise. He shouldered through the bar then, the closing distance to Tash practically glowing with heat.

His forearms folded next to Boo Radley as Tash wiped spilled tequila with a rag.

Caleb flattened the paltry crumple of dollar bills in the dressed-up skeleton’s spindly clutches, folding the stack neatly, passing it to Tash. He leaned in over the last-call yelping. “Want some help getting this guy back in your car?”

Tash fumbled in his nearness. She felt Noab’s predicament fully—drawn to a creature the legends promised tasted like poison, while most of what she sensed of him was sweet. She held Boo Radley’s thrift-store-pants-clad thigh like an anchor.

“No, thanks—he belongs to Ray now.” Tash was relieved to discuss something other than her recent slagging off of Caleb’s stepmom.

“Who hopefully will understand his fears and treat him with dignity, as Scout did—marking her progression from a child who was afraid of imaginary monsters to an adult who could recognize the real, everyday terror of existing in the world.”

Caleb gave her an impressed look. “Wow. Is that what happens? I don’t really remember.”

Tash grabbed her bag and ducked under the service flap of the bar. “Freshman Lit 101: ‘Heroes and Villains’—take my class, and you’ll find out.”

They found Ray smoking a joint with Engineering in the parking lot, bemoaning yet another Women’s Studies’ sweep.

Tash waved goodbye as she and Caleb trailed from the building, the moon hazy on the roadhouse brine, Tash wondering about the protocol—if she should apologize again, if Caleb needed a ride back to his hotel.

Their footsteps crunched loudly, and she realized Caleb had not once mentioned The Colony ’s open-item workload.

“Do you want a lift?” At her car, Tash spun to face him—in time to see Caleb’s eyes jerk up abruptly, from where they might have been checking her out.

He blinded both of them with his phone screen. “Calling a taxi. See you tomorrow? The conference room at my hotel at ten a.m.?”

“Let’s do it at my office.” Tash surprised herself with this impulse. “I have a writing studio off campus. It’s quiet, with lots of natural light.”

And just like Noab, she’d invited a man into a sacred chamber.

Befuddled by her whim, Tash opened her car door and slid behind the steering wheel.

Perhaps she’d felt moved to extend a niceness—the parking lot glimmer recalled the angry piano bar moonlight, and she still felt awful about maligning Caleb’s stepmother’s documentary.

“Great. Text me the address.” But the cusp of something more appeared to gnaw at him. Caleb’s palm hung on her car’s frame. He kept the door ajar. He bent at the knees to meet her blink. “Tash.” Low and close and dangerous. “Tonight was fun.”

In the leather driver’s seat, she stopped trying to jam the key in the ignition. “It was.” She stopped breathing. The inches between them stopped pretending to not want to ignite.

They’d been combustible from the beginning. Tash could see it all now—together they’d be fiery and wrong. Once they ripped each other’s clothes off, they’d never be productive; the sex would be too good. Plus, artistically speaking, they were mortal enemies.

Still, she braced for a surrender. She tipped toward him—a terrible idea. Terrible, and probably worth it.

Like rescuing a castaway.

Like discovering a hunger for him in a secluded Grove.

Caleb gazed at her meaningfully. “But we really need to buckle down now. Crafting a novel is on your own time—but screen stuff is intense. There’s an entire multimillion-dollar production budget hinging on our progress.

It’s serious.” He shifted in his squat. “I hate to be a taskmaster—but no more cocktail competitions until we finish. All right?”

Headlights swung into the parking lot.

Caleb stood, ending a thing that hadn’t started. He checked the taxi’s license plate. He thumped twice on Tash’s hood.

He ambled off with a backlit wave, and she just sat there, gripping her steering wheel, hating the foolish creature he left behind.