Page 2 of The Dirty Version

Several swanky piano bars gilded the nightlife between West Palm and South Beach, yet everyone in town for the Sweetwater Film Festival seemed to be tippling at this one.

Tash hurried through its velvet entrance, noting a disproportionate amount of paunchy entertainment executives beside slender stalks of actress-model cosmetic surgery.

Beneath a brass-domed ceiling, jazz standards soft-trumpeted the room.

Tash slid through the crowd, searching for Janelle. She lifted the long hem of the high-neck, backless, deep-chocolate dress she’d chosen, wishing it were Kevlar instead of silk jersey. She’d tried to camouflage her nerves with winged eyeliner and glittering shadow, but she doubted that it worked.

At last, she located her best friend’s jaw-length, jet-black corkscrew hair.

Tash searched the space beside Janelle for Denise but came up empty.

Janelle’s habit of attracting bar strays, however, seemed very much in place.

She giggled delightedly with someone on her right side as Tash wedged in on her left.

Tash seized the opportunity to finish Janelle’s cocktail, swallowing notes of oak and amber and black cherry, waiting for the burn of whiskey to calm her internal alarm.

“Janelle.” A giant ice cube clanked against Tash’s front teeth. “Please tell me Denise is coming. Please tell me it’s the usual situation and she’s just running a few minutes late.”

Janelle swung a relaxed grin around, swiping for her emptied glass.

The move betrayed how long she’d already been at the bar.

“She’s stuck at work.” Perhaps noticing Tash’s agitation, Janelle added: “But she’s doing her best to get here.

I promise.” She straightened slightly. “Babe. Calm down. There’s no need to freak out. ”

Tash channeled her yoga breathing. “I’m not freaking out.”

“Right. Because it’s just a dinner. The guy probably just wants to schmooze.”

Tash should have guessed it—Janelle was already drunk. These days, she had her hands full with her children, with her promotion to department chair, with her ambitious law-firm wife. Janelle never got a night out. Clearly, she’d been making the most of this one.

Because “the guy” definitely did not just want to schmooze. “The guy” was not even just a guy. He was a powerful movie director, and he wanted Tash to sell out the soul of her story.

He wanted to “taste that army with our eyes, Natasha.”

A matter of hours ago, Janelle had read that message, too.

“Hey.” Janelle visibly attempted to sober. “Listen. You’re here to focus on the big picture, not on one creep. Let’s concentrate on what’s productive.” Impressively, she summoned her scholarly gravitas: “Just keep the book’s overarching ideas at the front of your mind.”

“Right.” Tash took a deep breath.

Satisfied, Janelle signaled for another round. “And if some on-screen sex gets those ideas to a bigger audience”—she fell back into her booze-softened gleam—“then let’s consider the merits of lubing up.”

Tash grimaced at her in open disagreement. “Let’s not.”

Janelle waved it away. “For now, let me observe you.” She made a grand show of inspecting Tash from every angle.

“You’ve cleaned up nicely. Strong throat, boldly exposed spine.

” She tapped her glossy lips with a single, polished finger.

“A defiant show of confidence. Sleek fit, without the salaciousness of overt breast.”

Tash accepted this analysis. She bowed in her stilettos. “Thank you. It’s hard to find something that says ‘Fuck you, you fucking motherfucker’ on such short notice.”

“And yet you nailed it.” Janelle’s praise happened to be gospel—as the author of a doctorate treatise on the Gender Semiotics of Female Costume and Armor, her taste in clothing was rarely ever wrong.

A husky chuckle issued from Janelle’s other side—the friend she’d been making before Tash arrived seemed to have overheard Janelle’s scrutiny.

Tash peeked around and spied a man with hair like morning sex—rich brown, tousled, cut short above the ears—and ocean-blue eyes framed by tortoiseshell glasses.

He wore a T-shirt and a tailored canvas jacket.

Tattooed script peeked from his collarbone, illegible from where Tash made an inventory of all his handsome, hipster details.

And then slapped herself out of it—other people were temporarily irrelevant, unless they were Denise.

But Janelle had also darted a gaze in his direction. She looked at her watch and back to Tash, alight with an idea. “Twenty minutes before dinner. Let’s distract you.”

Tash caught on too late—Janelle had already swished a wrist, grabbing the stranger’s attention as he closed out his bar tab.

“This is Caleb.” Janelle said it too loudly. “He’s in town for the film festival. He works in translation.” She stepped back to better triangulate an introduction. “This is Tash.” She swished the other wrist. “She loves subtitles. She has extremely highbrow taste.”

Caleb laughed, sliding the paid billfold to the waitress ogling him from behind the bar. “Really?”

Tash shot Janelle daggers, unsettled and now annoyed, in no mood to be dazzled by grinning mischief. “No.” She shifted to stare at the bar’s entrance, at the burgundy curtain over the door. She willed Denise to spring forth.

Undaunted, absorbing Tash’s irritation blithely, Janelle tried for another pass: “And, Caleb, which Sweetwater Film Festival highlights will you be taking in while you’re in the fine bake of our beaches?”

In her periphery, Tash saw the athletic angles of his body lean in and engage.

“Well, since you ask...” He settled in to play along, the calligraphy on his collarbone disappearing behind his jacket collar. “I’m pretty focused on Vaudeville Striptease . Have you heard of it? It’s a documentary about burlesque.”

Tash couldn’t help herself. She all but snorted. She kept her face turned toward the door.

“Janelle? Did your friend just snort at me?”

Tash sensed his gestures.

Janelle sighed into her drink. “No. She would never do that. She’s unfailingly polite.”

Janelle was overserved. Tash blotted it out, doubling her doorway vigil, craning her neck, making another sweep of the crowd. She checked her phone again, just in case Denise had sent up a flare.

“And highbrow, as you mentioned.” Janelle’s bar stray continued to talk. He must have believed himself quite clever. “Except she seems to have rolled her eyes at the mention of a documentary, which is often considered the most highbrow form of film.”

Tash lost her patience—it had already been a long, terrible day.

She abandoned her manners, spinning to give the cutesy banter what it wanted.

“I rolled my eyes because a documentary about burlesque sounds like a cheap excuse to look at boobs. It’s like actresses who win awards for playing prostitutes, or ‘important dramas’ that hinge on depictions of graphic rape.

You call it ‘art’ to make it seem legitimate and to give yourself a pretext to sit and watch. ”

Saying this filled Tash with a fire. She’d have to cool down for the Braverman dinner, but in the meantime, it felt fantastic to lash out.

It felt fantastic to say what her film agent wanted her to smother, fantastic to be able to sparklingly condescend: “It isn’t art and it isn’t highbrow. It’s exploitation.”

Those blue eyes blinked at where she’d driven the conversation off a cliff. “Are you serious?” He’d hardened, no longer friendly. “Do you even know anything about the film?”

“Do I need to?” How convenient, Tash had found a handsome outlet for her rage, an ideal stand-in for her Tinseltown frustrations.

“Wait, let me guess—the documentary is about how it’s super empowering for women to take their clothes off.

It’s about reclaiming our sexuality, right?

” Her contempt shimmered. “Mansplain that bullshit again, please . The world definitely needs it in pretentious black and white.”

The stranger held Tash’s glare for syrup seconds, long enough for Tash to think translation should not have been his area of film. He had an actor’s jaw—squarely clenched, nicely stubbled, obviously offended. He had the rugged build for executing his own stunts.

He smiled tightly at Tash, shaking his head in disbelief, turning away, which made her zing with satisfaction and back down not an inch.

Even after he stalked off, and even after Janelle rounded on her.

“What was that? I could have hooked you up!” Janelle’s memories of single life were sometimes as distorted as her irrational desire to revisit them through Tash.

“That guy could have been your human Valium!” She waved a swizzle stick at Tash in exasperation.

“Instead, you cockblocked yourself by incorrectly monologuing a passage from my thesis!”

Tash lifted her chin, emphatically not sorry. “That wasn’t from your thesis—it was from my diary.” She grinned. “And that was like human Valium. I feel amazing.”

Although she knew it would fade—telling off a random guy wouldn’t save The Colony ’s adaptation, and it would get her nowhere with Ram Braverman.

She fished around in Janelle’s purse. “Call your wife again. I can’t go in there without my secret weapon.”

Janelle pointed after her bar stray. “Based on that, I think you can.” But she took the phone anyway and pressed a button. She touched the rim of her glass to Tash’s forehead in reproachful affection. “Cheers. You do just fine on your own.”

* * *

Tash would have preferred Ram Braverman to look like a cartoon scoundrel. If he was going to strong-arm her beloved novel into bawdiness, a greasy comb-over should have awaited, or beady features, or a beer gut. Could the universe not throw her a bone?