“It was?” Julie asked. “It always seemed like they were such a happy couple.”
“That was them showing the media what they wanted them to see,” Laura told her. “In truth ... well ... let’s just say that Greg has a little problem.”
“A little problem?” Julie asked. “What do you mean?”
“It means that he has trouble keeping Little Greg in his pants,” Jake said.
“Ohhhh,” she said. “You mean he’s been cheating on her?”
Laura nodded. “Pretty regularly, especially over the past few years. Celia pretended not to notice—you know how women can be sometimes—but after that makeup girl in Alaska when he was filming the helicopter movie, Celia started losing the ability look the other way.”
“Makeup girl in Alaska?” Julie asked. Jake could almost see her fingers itching to take some notes.
“Yeah,” Laura said. “They had a pretty hot and heavy affair up there during the filming. One of the cast told Celia about it. He promised to never do it again, but ... I really think that was the beginning of the end. Their marriage really hasn’t been the same since.”
“Do you know her name?” Julie blurted.
Jake and Laura both looked at her pointedly. She wasn’t a particularly good troll, it seemed. “Uh ... no,” Jake said. “What difference does that make?”
Julie seemed to realize she’d gone a little far. “Oh ... it really doesn’t,” she said dismissively. “I was just curious.”
“Of course,” Laura said slowly.
“Anyway,” Jake went on, as if there had been no interruption, “Greg did not keep his promise. He’s been slipping Little Greg into a many a valley. He’s just a little more discrete about it these days.”
“He tells you about these women?” she asked.
Jake shrugged. “A lot of them he does,” he said. “We’re buds. We play golf together. We hang out pretty regularly. He’s always bragging about some little piece he managed to nail. I don’t approve of this behavior, of course.”
“Of course not,” Julie said. “But ... well ... you never told Celia about his affairs?”
Jake shook his head. “Not my place to do that,” he said. “There’s a such thing as the bro code, you know.”
“Wow,” she whispered. She turned to Laura. “What about you? Did you know this was going on?”
“I suspected it,” she said. “I’m sure Celia did too, for that matter, but Jake didn’t tell me about what Greg was telling him. That whole bro code thing.”
“I knew he’d get caught eventually,” Jake said. “And, of course, that’s exactly what just happened.”
“What do you mean?” Julie asked.
Jake looked around, as if checking the location of potential eavesdroppers. “Well ... if I tell you, you have to promise to keep this to yourself.”
“I will,” she promised, the eagerness in her eyes impossible to conceal.
“Okay,” Jake said, as if deciding she was trustworthy. “It’s like this. You know who his costar in his last movie is, right?”
“Mindy Snow?” Julie asked. “What does she have to do with this?”
“Are you sure you should be telling her this, hon?” Laura asked softly.
Jake simply shrugged. “It’s going to be public knowledge soon anyway.”
“True,” Laura agreed.
“What’s going to be public knowledge?” Julie asked greedily. “What does Mindy Snow have to do with this? She used to be your girlfriend back in the day, didn’t she?”
“Yeah, a long time ago,” Jake said with a wave of dismissal. “That’s why I warned Greg to stay away from her. He didn’t listen.”
“Are you saying that Greg Oldfellow and Mindy Snow ... that they were ... that they are...”
“Were,” Jake said. “And only one time, according to Greg anyway. I believe him. Mindy is one of those women that are easy on the eyes but difficult to be around. She’s kind of a bitch, truth be told. And very manipulative as well. Anyway, she was trying to get Greg to bone her while they were filming in Chicago, but he didn’t want anything to do with her back then. After he and Celia separated though ... well ... they went to the premier in Chicago together and got drunk and she started coming onto him again ... so ... well ... he’s Greg. He probably hadn’t been laid in a day or two, so he did it.”
“He had sex with Mindy Snow in Chicago?”
“That’s what the man says,” Jake told her. “And he said she was terrible in the sack too. Mostly just laid there. That’s how I know he’s telling the truth. Remember, I used to sleep with her too and he described Mindy-sex to the T.”
“Wow,” Julie whispered again. “This is incredible. How did he get caught? Did one of the other staff rat him out?”
“No,” Jake said. “This is the really juicy part.”
“Juicier than what you’ve already told me?”
“By far,” Jake said. “You see, the way he got caught is that Mindy is now claiming that she’s pregnant with Greg’s baby.”
“Get out of town!” she barked, shocked.
“I plan to, tomorrow morning,” Jake said, taking another sip.
“No ... I mean, I mean ... you’re kidding!”
“I’m not kidding,” Jake said. “Mindy claims she’s knocked up and that it’s Greg’s baby from that one little game of hide the salami in Chicago. Greg thinks she’s trying to play him, of course.”
“He does?”
“Well ... sure,” Jake said. “So do I. I mean, Mindy gets around. She really gets around. Word among the Hollywood crowd is that she’ll bone anyone who can get his dick hard. I’ve even heard she’s been known to play with girls on occasion.”
“Really?” she asked, nearly drooling in excitement now.
“That’s what I hear,” Jake said. “And besides, Greg says he used a condom when he boned her, and that Mindy told him she was on the pill. If she’s pregnant at all, it’s likely not Greg’s.”
“This is incredible,” Julie said, in awe. “Is this why Celia filed for divorce?”
“It is,” Laura said, picking up the thread. “You see, when Greg heard from Mindy that she was pregnant and that she was going to say that it was his baby, he decided he’d better tell Celia about it. Even though it’s probably not true, it is theoretically possible, and there’s really no way he can deny that he had sex with Mindy in Chicago. Too many people saw them together that night for him to credibly deny it. So ... well ... he came clean.”
“So to speak,” Jake said.
“Right,” Laura said, having to fight a giggle. “He told Celia the other night and they both decided the best thing to do was to immediately file for divorce and make things official. That’s what happened. Celia flew back to LA, filed, and then flew back to the tour. The show must go on.”
“Wow,” Julie said. “That is one of the most fascinating stories I’ve ever heard.”
Jake simply shrugged. “It’s Hollywood,” he told her.
Julie Brigg felt as if she had just won the lottery. In the five years she had been working as an investigative reporter for the American Watcher, she had never developed information as earth-shatteringly juicy as what Jake Kingsley and his wife had just laid on her. It was incredible! Astounding! And they had just blurted the whole thing out to her without even much prompting! They must have been pretty drunk, she figured. And they obviously were not very bright. The thought that they might have been deliberately feeding disinformation to her did not occur to her, not even for a fleeting moment.
She went back to her fifth-floor hotel room (where there was no boyfriend waiting for her) and immediately went to work. She took out the portable tape recorder that had been in her purse for the entire conversation and rewound it to the beginning, praying that it had been able to pick up everything that had been said. Of course, the Watcher could never release that tape, as it was obtained under false pretenses and there were certain legalities about collecting information in this manner, but she could quote from it and use the material from it. It would simply be cited as “an anonymous source within Celia Valdez’s touring staff”.