Vengeance

“Sorry about that,” I told Marcella as I hit

the end button on my cell phone. “I still have to be Wicket after all of this, and during it, I guess.”

“You’re so talented, so beautiful. Did you ever think that you’d be so successful?”

I giggled. “Are you fucking serious? No, I never thought that any of this would happen—not when I was a child. I recognize that none of the good things in my life would have happened if I had not been through everything in the beginning. I am a living testament to the ideology that where there is no pain, there is no gain.”

“Some people believe that pain is weakness leaving the body.”

I let that sink in and nodded, taking a sip out of the double hit of cognac that Marcella had poured for me. “That makes a lot of sense. In some ways, my pain did make me stronger, and it put Hannah and Daddy into my life. I definitely can handle most normal problems better than the average person. My career is stressful, but I rarely feel any stress from it at all. When shit goes awry, I concentrate on resolutions instead of flipping out.”

“Then that proves you can do the same thing when it comes to your personal life.”

“Not so!” I said without hesitation. “Let me just keep it real.” I swirled the ice cubes around in the glass. “Now that I have some liquid support. I’m not referring to you, but it’s funny how everyone considers honesty a virtue, yet nobody wants to hear the truth.”

“I want to hear the truth: your truth.”

“I’m a sadist. I get off on inflicting pain on other people. To be more specific, I have these two pets.” I looked in Marcella’s eyes. They showed no signs of disgust, or even shock, so I added, “Their names are Glaze and Piece of Shit.”

I could see that she had to suppress a laugh. “I’m assuming Piece of Shit is a man.”

“You got it. When I was trying to come up with a name for him, that was the most derogatory one that came to mind.”

“Well, it definitely sticks with you. And who is Piece of Shit?”

“Doesn’t matter, and there’s no reason for you to need to know that. He’s insignificant in my life. When I call, he comes . . . and then he comes again. We satisfy each other’s need and then I fly him home coach. Same thing with Glaze. I don’t beat their asses once or week, or some shit like that. That would draw too much attention. Everything’s discreet.”

Marcella glanced toward the porch, where my bodyguards were chilling with a pitcher of her lemonade and some glass jars to drink it out of. She’d even thrown in some chicken bacon ranch wraps for them.

“What about them? Do they know about Piece of Shit and, what was it, Glaze?”

“They know that I have a couple who I’m friends with who sometimes meets up with me in different cities to hang out. Since I have so few actual friends, it makes sense. They believe Glaze, who’s a woman by the way . . .”

“I figured as much.”

“They think she’s a friend of mine from back in the day, that we used to take dance lessons together when I first started singing as a teen. She has the looks and the body for it.”

“That’s a good cover story.”

“Marcella, I’m a beast when it comes to making shit up. Some people actually believe that Daddy adopted me after my parents were killed at Jonestown.”

“Wow, that’s over the top!”

“My life is over the top, but money talks and bullshit walks, and that’s the backstory that Daddy and I came up with together. There were a lot of people, especially kids, who went unidentified, and that’s rare in a mass-death situation. We couldn’t say they died in a plane crash. Some nosy-ass reporter would’ve tried to confirm that by now. Same thing with a car accident.

“Anyway, KAD is under the impression that she’s my friend and that Piece of Shit is her husband. They don’t ask any questions, and I get them rooms under Natia, which means “hidden” in Samoan, and Eric Dotson. They ride in the limo with me to some concerts and I make KAD ride separately, so my friends and I can have some privacy.”

“And you beat them?”

“Among other things. I also make them fuck each other in front of me. It gets me off, watching them do whatever I instruct them to do.”

“Just seeing them makes you climax, or do you masturbate?”

“Damn right I masturbate. I’m a master of that, and I do it nearly every day.” I paused and wondered if I should tell her about the things I did with my bodyguards. I decided against it. I was revealing enough for her to get the point. “I’ve tried to have intercourse with a few men throughout my life, but things always fell apart when the shit got real.”

“The thought of having sex reminds you of the rape?”

“The thought of having sex reminds me of the one time that I was too weak to protect myself, the first time that I was betrayed by friends I believed I could trust, and the last time I will ever allow a man to physically hurt me.”