A light came on over the first man’s head. He was in his early 30s with sandy-brown hair and soulful brown eyes. The audience cheered, and he gave them a nervous wave.
“Billy, let’s get right to tonight’s sizzling hot topic. You know the question on all of
America
’s minds.
Lauren Strayer, lesbian?
Is she or isn’t she?”
Once again the audience burst into applause, some shouting yes and some shouting no, a few going as far as to boo, giving her wild thumbs down.
Lauren’s jaw dropped. “Oh, my God!”
The phone rang and Devlyn snatched it up as the lights above Lauren’s former lovers, including ex-husband Judd, lit up the sound stage. “If this is anyone other than David, go away.”
“Are you watching—?” David heard a loud crash, and string of obscenities that would have made the Seventh Fleet collectively blush. “Never mind.”
Lauren flew out of bed, sending her computer clattering to the floor. She marched up to the television and poked her finger right into Man No. 3’s chest. “I never slept with you, you sorry son of a bitch!” she roared. “I wouldn’t even kiss you!”
Dev heard Beth shout from somewhere behind David, “Tell Lauren that if she slept with No. 3, I quit.”
Dev winced at the lurid shade of purple coloring Lauren’s face. “You guys had better get over here. And David?”
“Yeah?”
“Bring Valium.”
“For you or Lauren.”
“Yes.”
Twenty minutes later David, Beth and Dev were all on the President’s bed, watching the broadcast. Billy had just finished pronouncing — in a deep Southern accent and with a good dose of indignation — that if Lauren Strayer was a homo, then so was he.
Lauren paced the room like a caged beast, her hands a blur of agitated movement. The words: prom night, Budweiser, pickup truck, and cherry were still viciously whizzing around in her head.
She wasn’t close to her family. But she couldn’t help but think, Jesus H. Christ, Daddy is going to see this!
“Sweetheart, if you don't calm down something important is going to burst. It's not," Dev glanced helplessly at Beth and David, “that bad.”
“It is, Devlyn,” Lauren vowed in all seriousness. “It’s that bad.”
Beth eyed Billy speculatively. "That first guy is cute for a high school boyfriend. And he really seems to like you. At least he doesn’t look like he was on the chess team or anything.”
“Hey!” David glared at his wife. “I was on the chess team.”
Beth smiled placidly at David. “Yes, dear, you were.” She turned back to Lauren. “Where'd you park the pickup when you did it?”
Lauren sneered at her chief of staff, who was enjoying this way too much. "None of your God da—"
"Beth, behave," Dev growled as she got off the bed and caught up to Lauren.
She put a calming hand on her arm. "Relax." She wrinkled her nose. "Budweiser?"
Gray eyes narrowed. “My house didn’t have a wine cellar.”
“Next up is Carter Simpson,
Memphis
. How can you shed some light on the subject, Carter?”
Carter was beefy and tall and looked uncomfortable in his navy blue sport coat and tie. “Huh? I thought you paid me to come talk about sex.” He scratched his square jaw, and several women in the audience began to swoon. When he smiled, deep dimples dotted his ruddy cheeks.
Beth burst out laughing. "He's beautiful, Lauren. Too bad, the lights are on but nobody's home."
Dev looked at him with a discerning eye. "He's not so great," she said unconvincingly. “Did you really sleep with him?” Part of Dev hoped that all these men were fakes. Even Judd. That wasn’t realistic, of course. But if she was going to delude herself, why not go all the way?
“Ugh,” Lauren groaned and nodded miserably. She rubbed her face. Could this get any worse?
Dev glanced back at Carter and rolled her eyes. “So what if he’s good looking? It’s not like he’s… oh, I don’t know... the President!”
David and Beth laughed. Sometimes Dev was so touchy.
“He was really sweet, Devlyn,” Lauren scolded. “We just didn’t have anything in common except for—”
“Fantastic, tongue-wagging, sweat-sliding, hips grinding, sweet-mother-of-God-if-I-died now-I’d-die-happy, all-American sex!” Carter finished proudly. He looked a little overheated and had to wrestle loose the tie that circled his thick neck.
All the other men looked at Carter with wide eyes just as they cut to a commercial break.
Lauren shrugged one shoulder and admitted weakly, “I came out of my shell in college with Carter.”
"Wow," David mumbled from the bed as he reached over for a glass of water on the nightstand. After drinking it down, he pressed the glass to his forehead. "Sometimes the First Amendment just sucks. Can I sleep with you, Lauren?” he blurted, unable to resist.
Beth choked on her drink, then smacked David in the back of the head. Of course that didn’t stop her from asking, “Me too?” Which earned her a playful slap from her husband in return. “Ouch,” Beth laughed, rubbing her head.
“If I can’t, you can’t,” David insisted, leaning in and kissing his wife soundly. “Besides, I couldn’t stand the competition.”
“Me neither,” Beth agreed happily, kissing him back.
"All right, that's enough," Dev bit back a laugh, then masked the command with a smile, though it was clear she was serious. "Don’t make me separate you two troublemakers.”
“Killjoy,” David mumbled. “First we don’t get to see Lauren’s tattoo, now this.”
“Yeah,” Beth echoed solemnly. “What he said.”
Dev focused on Lauren, who was staring at the television images, still in shock. “Lauren, are you okay?"
Lauren stuck out her tongue at Beth and David, then addressed Devlyn. “No, I’m not okay,” she whined, praying Carter wouldn’t remember that time they did it under the bleachers at half time. “Can’t we assassinate them or something?”
“Your old boyfriends?” Dev looked surprised, then slightly pleased by the notion.
“No,” Lauren corrected with an arch look thrown in the general direction of Dev’s bed, “David and Beth.”
Dev sighed and opened her arms, an invitation for Lauren to take refuge. "’Fraid not. But don’t think I haven’t considered it."
Lauren was too agitated to stop moving, and a flash of hurt flickered across Dev’s face when her lover didn’t come over to the bed. The sight stopped Lauren’s pacing cold, and she walked over to the bed and took Dev’s hand and gently kissed her knuckles.
The commercial ended and Carter began talking again. At the words “tied up” Dev’s bedroom went absolutely silent.
Lauren whimpered. This actually rivaled her mother walking into her bedroom when she was 14 at the exact same moment that she’d finally gotten up the nerve to try masturbation for the first time. Only now the room was more crowded. Kill me now, God. Please.
Tied up. Well, well, well. Dev looked from the TV to Lauren and back again three times before squeaking, “Really?”
“Even then he worked at a hardware store part-time,” Lauren said, as if that explained everything.
Beth was now laughing so hard she was in danger of falling off the bed. “I’m gonna wet my pants,” she howled. “I know it.”
“At least we know what to get them for Christmas,” David said seriously. He looked at Beth and they both said, “duct tape,” at the same time before dissolving into twin fits of laughter.
Carter proclaimed Lauren as hetero as… Well, he couldn’t come up with an actual analogy. But he swore the sex was great and that while they were under the bleachers her eyes hadn’t roamed over to the cheerleaders even once.
Dev started to say something and then her mouth clicked shut and she took a seat in a chair. "Tied up?" She looked at David and Beth, who were finally starting to calm down. "I tell ya, Lauren, you may be too wild for my white bread tastes." She gave Lauren a very serious look. "Are we talking tape or rope or chains?"
Lauren was well aware that she was being tweaked. She tilted her chin upward with an indignant grunt and crossed her arms over her chest, petulantly refusing to answer.
"There's still more men to go," Beth reminded Dev helpfully. "Let's wait and see."
It was now Man No. 3's turn.
As soon as the camera panned sideways, Lauren crowed, "I did not sleep with him!” Beseeching eyes begged her friends to believe her. “He was a freshman when I was a senior for God’s sake. He helped me on a chemistry final and I went on one,” she held up her index finger, “single, pity date with him. That's it!"
"Did you pass the exam?" David snorted from the bed where he was reclining as though he owned the joint, his back against the headboard.
"Yes," Lauren snapped, as she mentally eviscerated the man on television. "You're in deep trouble, nerd boy," she shouted to the image. "I know people with guns and bombs, who aren’t afraid to use them."
Nerd boy, better known to some as Wendell Fleshman, spent most of his 15 minutes of fame bragging about his and Lauren’s torrid love affair.
Beth asked Lauren, "Did you ever get poked with that pocket protector while you were doing it? That could have been messy. Of course, he probably carried sanitary wipes around in his back pocket."
“Doesn’t everyone?” David said, winking at Beth.
Lauren ground her teeth together.
Gary Kramer thrust his microphone in Wendell’s face, "Did you ever once see a sign that Lauren was attracted to women?" He leaned closer to Wendell. "Anything. Anything at all that was a hint of what was to come? The public has a right to know."
Wendell thought for a moment and then nodded his head. "Yes. Yes, I did."
David, Beth, and Dev all leaned forward in anticipation.
Even Lauren took a step closer to the TV.
"One night after studying, we went out for a Coke."
Three sets of eyes swung towards Lauren.
The blonde woman nodded reluctantly. "It wasn't a date, though,” she corrected carefully. “My apartment didn't have air-conditioning and it was a million degrees outside. We were boiling and needed a break.”
Wendell let out a contemplative breath. "When we got to the convenience store, there was another girl there; she was in our chemistry class, too."
"Shirley," Wendell announced, with Lauren whispering the name right along with him as the past came rushing back to her.
"Shirley was 25 cents short for the Coke she wanted to buy and Lauren ran up to the counter and offered Shirley a quarter." Wendell paused, well aware that the studio audience was hanging on his every word. "And then they both smiled at each other.” He shrugged and adjusted his heavy-framed glasses. “And I knew."
"Knew what?" the host prompted breathlessly.
The camera zoomed in on Wendell. "Knew there was something there."
“That’s it?”
Gary
asked, doing his best to hide his disappointment. His show hadn’t paid all this money to hear about lingering smiles.
“That’s it.”
The audience groaned, let down by the pedestrian encounter. But Lauren blinked stupidly. "I can't believe it," she said quietly. "He's right."
Beth blinked at her friend. "He is?"
Lauren nodded. "I wasn't thinking about kissing her or anything romantic. The thought never entered… well, it never entered my conscious mind at least. But she was really interesting and pretty and had the greatest laugh. And I remember thinking that wouldn't it be wonderful if we ran into each other again sometime before school let out."
This time the pang of jealousy nailed Devlyn right in her heart. "And did you?" she finally got out, surprised that this would affect her so. She wasn’t a jealous person, but perhaps when it came to Lauren, all bets were off. "Run into each other?"
Lauren smiled wistfully, completely unaware of the look on her own face. "Nope. I graduated a month later. And I was already dating Judd by that time. Unlike Wendell, however, Judd sucked at chemistry."
The President sighed and murmured, "He sucked at a lot of things."
Judd looked as though he wanted to blend into the background. Billy, Carter, and Wendell all looked relaxed and happy. He couldn’t understand how they could be enjoying this.
Billy made a comment about Lauren’s talent for a particular sexual act, much to the dismay of the other men, and Dev’s face turned to stone. "I feel an audit coming on for you, big mouth. Hope you know a good tax lawyer."
Gary Kramer got his note cards mixed up and decided to wing it as he spoke to Judd. "Ah, the illustrious Mr. Strayer."
Everyone in the President's bedroom winced, including Lauren. Judd had always hated that with a passion.
"That's Radison," Judd ground out, his hands shaping into white-knuckled fists.
"Sorry,"
Gary
continued blithely. "You, more than anyone, would know the answer to our question. After all, you were married to the woman. Is Lauren truly a lesbian? Or is she simply using President Marlowe for the power and prestige?"