Laura sighed, shaking her head a little more. “Celia is not going to be happy about that,” she said. “Why is he telling her? Guilty conscience again?”
“No,” he said. “Well ... I mean I’m sure he has a guilty conscience, but that’s not why he’s telling her.”
“Then why?” she wanted to know. “When he did this before, he did not do her or himself any favors by telling her about it. I’m not an advocate for infidelity or anything, but in that case, he should have just kept his mouth shut.”
“I agree,” Jake said. “This situation is a bit different though.”
“How so?”
“The whole world is going to know about it in a week or so whether he tells her or not. He’s giving her forewarning that the shit is about to hit the fan.”
“Ohhhh,” Laura said knowingly. “The entertainment media knows about what happened?”
“Not yet,” he said, “but they will.”
“Who is going to tell them?”
“Mindy Snow,” he said.
“Mindy Snow?” she asked. “What does she have to do with this?”
“She’s the one he cheated with,” Jake said.
Her face took on an expression of horror. “He fucked Mindy Snow?”
“He did,” Jake said.
“That asshole!” Laura said, outraged. “Of all the women he could have fucked ... God in Heaven, Celia is never going to forgive him for that.”
“Nope,” Jake agreed. “I don’t think she will.”
“She’s going to kill him!”
“Yep,” Jake agreed. “I think that entirely possible.”
“When did all this happen?” she asked. “While they were filming the movie?”
“You mean ‘the film’ or ‘the project’,” Jake reminded her. “And no, that was not when it happened—according to Greg anyway. He says she made it clear while they were filming that she was his for the taking but he kept his self-control back then and didn’t take her up on the offer.”
“The premier,” Laura said. “When they flew back east! Celia kept saying that he was acting weird after he came back from that trip. That’s when he did it, right?”
“Right,” Jake said. “She got him drunk on the flight to Chicago and then even more drunk at the premier that night. She managed to get him to let her give him a blowjob in his hotel room after the premier. That’s what opened the door.”
“Opened the door?”
“Yeah. The next night she got him drunk again and offered to let him ... uh ... uh...”
“Let him what?”
“Uh ... she let him ... uh ... perform anal sex with her,” he said, lapsing into a semi-Nerdlyism. As far as he knew, his wife did not even know that anal sex was a thing. While she did enjoy having her little bunghole tongued out on occasion (Jake would only perform this act for her in the hot tub or immediately after she had taken a hot bath), she had never expressed an interest in having his penis up there and Jake had never asked her to give it a shot since he had had more than his share of this particular act back in his younger days and had long since determined it was not really all that pleasurable once you got over the novelty of doing it.
But Laura surprised him. “He fucked Mindy Snow up the ass?”
“Uh ... yes,” Jake said. “Eloquently put. Anyway, that opened the door a little more. After that, it was pretty easy to get him to go conventional fuck the next night.”
“Wow,” Laura said in angry amazement. “And then what? Have they been having an affair ever since?”
“No,” Jake said. “Again, this is according to Greg, but that was the only time he fucked her.”
“That was the only time?”
“That’s what the man says,” Jake said. “And, for what it’s worth, I believe him.”
“But ... but ... I don’t get it. Why is Mindy Snow telling the entertainment press about this now? What’s her game? Is she just doing it to destroy him?”
“No ... not exactly,” Jake said.
“Then why?”
“She’s pregnant,” Jake said.
Laura’s eyes got wide again. “Pregnant? And ... and ... it’s Greg’s baby?”
Jake nodded. “That’s what she says,” he told her.
“But he only did it with her that one time? How does she know it’s his? That crazy bitch fucks anything with a boner, doesn’t she?”
“Apparently not since she broke up with her trainer boyfriend a few weeks before reporting for filming duty in Chicago.”
“And Greg believes that?”
“She doesn’t really have any reason to lie about it,” Jake explained. “She knows that Greg will demand a DNA test when the baby is born, and he said she does not seem the least bit worried about what the results are going to be. You see ... this was not a spontaneous thing from Mindy’s perspective. This was all part of a carefully plotted plan.”
“What do you mean?”
And so, he explained about how Mindy wanted to have a baby fathered by Greg in particular and had engineered everything to accomplish this. He explained her reasoning for why she wanted Greg’s baby. Laura listened in disturbed awe at the depth of Mindy’s depravity and sociopathy.
“Jesus God,” she whispered, stunned, when the tale was told. “She is ... is ... beyond evil. She’s the antichrist.”
“I can’t disagree with that statement,” Jake said.
“And so ... just like that, she’s going to destroy his marriage and his reputation?”
“Just like that,” Jake said. “It’s what she does.”
Laura opened her mouth to say something else, but she never got it out. At that moment, the sound of angry yelling and Spanish profanity erupted in the suite next door, a bit muffled but with a few phrases coming clearly through. Jake heard the word ‘puta’ and ‘cabron’ coupled with tenses of the word ‘chinga’ repeated multiple times. And then there were several bangs against the wall, one of them hard enough to cause a painting on their side to come loose and crash to the ground.
They looked at this impassively for a moment.
“I think maybe he just told her,” Jake suggested.
Laura nodded. “You may be right,” she agreed.
There were a few more angry outbursts of Celia’s voice, half in Spanish (the profanity and bile), half in English (they could not really make out what she was saying in English). There were a few more thumps on the wall and, on one occasion, the sound of glass breaking accompanied the thump. They heard Greg’s voice every now and then, but it was lower, incomprehensible, and with a pleading, apologetic tone to it. Greg’s voice was usually what preceded the thumps and the outbursts. Finally, they clearly heard Celia loudly exclaim, “largate de aqui, cabron!” This was repeated several times, each louder than the previous, and then the sound of the front door opening and then slamming shut reached them. After that, they heard no more.
“I guess Greg left?” Laura asked.
“That’s my guess,” Jake agreed.
“I wonder if I should go check on her?”
Jake shook his head. “I wouldn’t advise that. Let her cool down a bit.”
She nodded. “I was kind of hoping you would say that.”
“I’ll go downstairs in a little bit and see if I can find Greg in the bar. I’m guessing that’s where he’ll be.”
“Probably.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes. Finally, Laura asked the question. “How long have you known about this?”
Jake looked her straight in the eyes and said, “He just told me about it the other day.”
She nodded, no sign of disbelief in her face.
Jake felt no guilt at his lie. Sometimes the truth simply could not be told, even within the bounds of a marriage.
Greg spent the night on the couch in Laura’s suite. Laura avoided him, mostly because she was angry with his betrayal of her best friend, but also because the thought of speaking to him under the circumstances was awkward. He booked a private flight back to Los Angeles the next morning and left for the airport before Laura even woke up. Jake, however, accompanied him downstairs to have a cup of coffee in the café and wait for the limousine.