“I knew I shouldn’t have warned that fucking asshole that this was coming,” Mindy said as she finished reading the article at 8:45 that morning. “Try to do something nice for someone and see where it fucking gets you.”
“I don’t understand,” Georgette said. “What is he hoping to accomplish by this?”
They were in Mindy’s office in her house in the hills. Georgette had driven up directly from the newsstand where she had picked up the copy of the special edition of the American Watcher she had known was going to be on sale this morning. It was even worse than she had been anticipating. The article was almost a complete fabrication of the situation; but it was a fabrication that was being endorsed by John Stapleton and Pauline Kingsley, thus giving it the strong illusion of legitimacy. And now there were reporters and photographers and videographers staked out at the main gate into Mindy’s property. They had never come here before, not even during Mindy’s nasty divorce from Scott Adams Winslow.
“He’s trying to make me look pathetic,” Mindy said. “And, unfortunately, it seems to have worked. This fucking rag is painting me as a slut, a bitch, and a crappy lay all in one stroke.” She shook her head. “And I’m not a crappy lay! I am fuckin’ premo in the sack! Everyone who has ever fucked me knows that!”
“Well ... you certainly have enough experience,” Georgette allowed.
“Hey, fuck you,” Mindy barked at her. “You’ve certainly gotten your share of dick by being my agent all these years, haven’t you? Not to mention the millions of dollars in your bank account.”
“Yes, that is true,” Georgette said. “My relationship with you has been beneficial, both financially and in dick.”
“Goddamn right,” Mindy said. “And to think, you wanted me to keep doing those wholesome good girl flicks after The Slow Lane finally met its merciful end. I would’ve long since faded into obscurity if I’d listened to you and would probably be doing late-night info-fucking-mercials for the thigh-master or some shit like that.”
“That is true, Mindy. You made the right call back then and I was wrong to try to talk you out of it. But let’s not bicker at each other. Let’s try to figure out what the game is here.”
“I told you,” she said. “He’s trying to humiliate me, to make me look like the bad guy so he looks like the good guy!”
“I understand that,” Georgette said. “What I don’t understand is what is the purpose? You seem confident that the baby is Greg’s.”
“It is Greg’s!” she shouted. “I didn’t let anyone else’s dick within five feet of me from the time I reported to Chicago for filming until he finally gave in and hosed me down. And I’m here to tell you, that was a miserable fucking six months! I haven’t gone that long without cock since I was fourteen years old!”
Georgette sighed. “We’ll be sure not to include that quote in our eventual reply to these allegations that you are a slut,” she said. “Anyway, my point is, does Oldfellow really disbelieve the baby is his? Is that why he is making these allegations?”
Mindy thought this over for a moment. “I ... I don’t know,” she said. “It’s possible, maybe even likely. Greg’s a Hollywood insider, and he’s friends with Jake Kingsley. He would know about my ... uh ... proclivity for sexual encounters.”
“He would also know about your proclivity for elaborate schemes as well,” Georgette pointed out.
“True,” Mindy agreed. “In any case, he’s going to be eating a big crate of crow when the DNA test shows that the baby really is his.”
“That’s six to eight months away,” Georgette said.
“No, it isn’t,” Mindy said. “I’m going to call up Dr. Ender and have her give me that amniocentesis next week. They can run the baby’s DNA from that.”
“Amniocentesis?” Georgette asked, horrified. “Mindy, you’re only thirty-four years old! And you’re in superb shape! There’s no reason for that procedure!”
“Sure there is,” she said. “I want to make sure the baby is okay, doesn’t have any genetic defects or anything. And ... as an added bonus, we can run a DNA paternity test.”
“But the risk of...”
“The risk is minimal,” Mindy said. “I’ve already looked into it. I wasn’t going to do it at first because of ... well ... what you just said, but now there’s a really good reason.”
“You would put your baby at risk just so you could show up Greg Oldfellow a little sooner than would happen naturally?”
“Stop being so dramatic,” Mindy told her. “Like I said, the risk is minimal.”
“But what happens if Greg declines to provide a genetic sample for comparison?” she asked. “Have you thought of that?”
“He wouldn’t dare,” she scoffed. “If I file a paternity suit against him, naming him as the father, the burden of proof is on him. If he declines to submit a sample for testing, it will be legally presumed that he is the father. Not only that, but refusal would be as good as admitting the child is his in the court of public opinion, which, in our business, is the highest fucking court in the land.”
“But what about our original story?” Georgette asked. “You know ... that you and Greg fell madly in love with each other during the filming of Us and Them and couldn’t keep your hands off of each other and that you got pregnant from the affair? It’s going to be kind of hard to pull that one off now, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Mindy said with a sigh. “He shot that story right out of the water when he planted this story in the Watcher. Once again, that’s what I get for being nice and letting him know what was about to go down.”
“Yes,” Georgette said, resisting the urge to roll her eyes, “it really doesn’t pay to be nice, does it?”
“You got that shit right,” Mindy agreed, completely missing the sarcasm. “Anyway, let’s talk about what we are going to say.”
“I can’t wait to hear it,” Georgette said, opening her notebook and taking out a pen.
Mindy Snow’s version of the events was published two days later in the Los Angeles Times under the byline of Bernadette Tapp, who Georgette called personally on the afternoon of the Watcher’s special edition release. This story was on the front page, above the fold, displacing headlines about the new president taking power in Haiti and the crash of a Dominican Airlines 757 jetliner into the Caribbean Sea.
“Yes, Mindy is pregnant,” Georgette was quoted as saying. “And yes, Greg Oldfellow is the father of the child. Mindy is quite certain of this as she had no sexual relations with anyone else between her breakup with Raphael Smith, her personal trainer, just before reporting for primary photography on Us and Them in April, and the sexual encounter which Greg, which took place in October. Mindy’s due date is July 16.”
The allegations that Mindy was a woman of loose virtue were addressed as well. “Her reputation among the gossipy Hollywood elite is much worse than the reality,” Georgette explained (with a straight face, even). “Sure, Mindy has had her share of lovers. That has all been well-documented by the entertainment media. But she is also quite monogamous when in a relationship and not prone to casual sex or one-night stands. She is also quite serious about her work and quite professional while on a set. The encounter with Greg Oldfellow came after months of the two of them working closely together and sharing a certain chemistry. And even then, it did not happen until filming was complete. As reported in the Watcher, the encounter was a one-time episode that took place during the premier tour after the film’s release, and after the two of them had more than a few alcoholic beverages in celebration.”