Standing On Top

Chapter 16c

Buying land, even in one's own country, was not simply a matter of walking into a real estate office, writing a check, signing a few documents, and then walking back out again with ownership papers in hand. When such a purchase was being made in a foreign country, things became even more complex. Though to Jill, Jake seemed to be acting on foolish impulse, in reality he planned to proceed very carefully.

The first things Jake wanted done were to make sure of all the legalities involved in developing the land once it was purchased. He wanted to know that the power company would string electricity to him, that he would be allowed to dig wells and install a septic system. Most of all, he wanted to be sure that there really were no restrictions on the building of an actual house on the property, that Williams wasn't trying to rook him into buying a big chunk of environmentally protected land where building was forbidden. He wanted a survey done of the land itself so he would know its exact boundaries and its exact terrain features. He then wanted geologists and insurance specialists to look over the property to assess how vulnerable it was to landslides or flooding.

Assuming all of this checked out favorably, Jake would go forth with the purchase of the property and then move onto step two of the project: the actual design and construction of the house. Jake knew that word would soon pass throughout the South Island and particularly in the Christchurch area, that a famous rock musician had bought a huge chunk of hillside property and was planning to build a mansion there (although he wasn't really going for mansion at all, a nice three to four thousand square foot single-level would do nicely). Some people would be thrilled about this, others, perhaps even the majority, would be resentful. Jake hoped to mitigate this resentment to some degree by using nothing but locals for skilled and unskilled labor. He wanted a Christchurch architecture firm to design the house and Christchurch construction workers to build it. He wanted Christchurch electricians and Christchurch plumbers and Christchurch well diggers and Christchurch septic installers. All of the building materials that could feasibly be purchased from Christchurch sources, would be purchased from them. And, of course, since that was part of the plan, someone had to look into the reliability and reputation off all of these Christchurch designers and builders and material supply networks.

There was very much to be done and Jake only had three days before he needed to start back to Los Angeles. Three days was not even enough time to get the first phases of the land purchase rolling. For that reason, Jill would be left behind to act as his agent in all manners related to the property acquisition. She wasn't terribly thrilled about this — Jill was very much a home-town girl who disliked even traveling to Los Angeles once a quarter to meet with Jake and Pauline — but Jake was making it well worth her while to stay for six or seven weeks in the southern hemisphere during the winter. He was putting her up in the best hotel in Christchurch, giving her unlimited use of a luxury rental car, paying for all of her meals, and paying her a thousand dollars a week above her normal salary.

"You'll keep me updated on your progress?" Jake asked her (again!) as she dropped him off at the Christchurch airport on Wednesday morning.

"I'll call you weekly," she promised. "Even more if something warrants it."

"That's my twin," Jake said with a smile. He gave her a hug and then picked up his bags and headed for check-in.

He flew back to Auckland and then waited in the first class lounge for two hours until his next flight was called. Because of the vagaries of the air travel system in this part of the world, Jake had been unable to secure a non-stop flight back to Los Angeles for this particular day. The next non-stop from Auckland to LAX was not scheduled to depart until Sunday night, which would have gotten him home mid-afternoon on Monday, jet-lagged, burned-out, and six hours late for rehearsal. The only flights available mid-week went first to Nadi, Fiji and required a three-hour layover before getting on another ten and a half hour flight to LAX, making for a seventeen hour trip — assuming no delays. For this reason, Jake had decided to break up the return flight a little. He had booked a suite at a resort in Nadi so he could stay overnight and then fly direct to LAX in the morning.

His plane landed in Nadi at 1:30 PM, local time. Jake left the airport and jumped in a taxi. The driver was a dark-skinned Fijian wearing shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. His English was heavily accented but understandable.

"Where to, my friend?" he asked.

"Sheraton Fiji Resort," Jake told him. "Do you take American money?"

"American, French, Australian, I take it all," he said.

"Very good," Jake said, sitting back in the back seat and taking in the scenery as they left the airport. Jake would have thought that this was the off-season for a tropical resort — it was mid-August after all — but the streets were very crowded with tourists as they slowly made their way through the city. He asked the driver about this.

"Off season for Americans and Europeans maybe," the driver told him. "On season for Australians and New Zealanders and South Americans. Remember, when it summer in America, it winter in Australia."

Jake felt like slapping his own forehead in stupidity. Hadn't he just come from rainy Christchurch less than seven hours ago? "I guess you have a point there," he said, wiping some sweat from his forehead. He was still dressed in those winter clothes, in fact.

"Are you movie actor?" the driver asked him. "You look like someone I seen on the television."

"Nope," Jake said. "I'm not an actor. I've heard people say I look like Jake Kingsley though."

"Jake who?"

"Kingsley," Jake said with a smile. "He's an American rock singer. I honestly don't think I resemble him at all, but I get that a lot."

"Never heard of him," the driver said. "Are you sure you're not actor? Are you part of the movie they're filming on Malolo?"

"I'm quite sure," Jake said. "I don't even know what Malolo is."

"Island not far from here," the driver said. "Big Hollywood film studio has been here for past month filming movie picture there. Many of the actors and film people are staying at the Sheraton. Some very famous, they say."

Jake shook his head. "It's the first I've heard of it," he said. "I was on a business trip to Christchurch. I'm just staying overnight and catching a plane to Los Angeles in the morning."

"Ahh, I see," the driver said with a nod, as if he'd just been told the secret of the universe.

The Sheraton Resort was actually located on a small island separate from the city of Nadi. They drove across a long causeway and then down an access road that paralleled a stretch of sparkling beach crowded with tourists. The resort itself was spread out over several hundred acres directly on the beach. The driver pulled them into the entryway. Jake paid him the three dollars he asked for and added a ten for a tip. By the time he was done with this task, a bellhop had appeared to collect his luggage for him.

Jake's suite was as opulent and luxurious as he was accustomed to. It featured a view of the beach and the city of Nadi beyond it. He opened the doors to the balcony and spent a few minutes looking out at the scenery, his eyes drawn again and again to the many scantily clad female bodies playing in the surf or lying on beach loungers, some rubbing lotion on their skin. He realized that he was extremely horny. He hadn't had sexual contact with Helen in almost three weeks now, hadn't even whacked off in more than three days. How long would it take to go down to that beach and find some anonymous Australian tourist girl who would consent to a little action with Jake Kingsley? Maybe twenty minutes? Maybe less?

He shook these thoughts off, remembering how just such an encounter had caused the end of his relationship with Rachel the waitress. Maybe if he just got drunk instead? That had always been his catch-all solution for any of life's problems, hadn't it? And he was in the tropics on a beautiful tropical day after spending four days in the rainy squalor of New Zealand's winter. Shouldn't he enjoy the sun a little?

He thought so. Since he'd slept for two hours on the plane to Nadi, he felt almost refreshed. He opened his luggage and pulled out a bathing suit. He quickly stripped off his winter clothes and donned the suit. He put on his sunglasses and his favorite baseball cap, grabbed a towel from the suite's bathroom, and then headed downstairs.

He found a section of the beach that was relatively empty (meaning that the nearest group of people were only twenty feet away) and parked himself in a lounge chair. He put up a beach umbrella to guard himself from the worst of the sun's glare and then found a Fijian waiter who was willing to keep his rum and coke glass full at all times. He sat there, staring out at the water some of the time and staring at bikini-clad women most of the time. He smoked his cigarettes and sipped his drinks and before an hour had gone by he was pleasantly buzzed, working his way toward full-blown drunkenness.

Of course his presence on the beach did not go unnoticed for long. Soon, the tourists began to drift over to him, mostly women between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five, most Australian or New Zealanders. He chatted with them amicably, signed autographs for them, and even signed a breast or two. He was offered sex no less than ten times — sometimes with innuendo, sometimes explicitly — and though he would have dearly loved to have taken most of these women up on their offers, he held his ground and politely declined each time.

It was near six o'clock, as the sun was slowly sinking toward the western horizon, as he was just about to call it a day and head upstairs for some room service dinner and a few bottles of wine to cap off the day, that another woman approached him. She was dressed in a slinky white bikini that showed off an impressive body and an even more impressive set of breasts. It was a body that looked familiar to him in some way — intimately familiar. He noted a large — obscenely large — wedding ring on the woman's left ring finger. He looked up at her face and saw an oversized pair of dark sunglasses covering the woman's eyes and a large sunhat covering her hair. Though the disguise was enough to conceal her identity from the casual fan, it was not enough to conceal it from a man who had once kissed every square inch of that body, who had once ejaculated onto those perfect breasts.

"Mindy Snow," Jake said softly as he stared into her eyes. "Jesus fucking Christ!"

"Hi, Jake," Mindy said. "I heard some people talking about how you were here on the beach and I just had to come see for myself."

Jake sat up a little, still trying to convince himself that this was some sort of dream he'd fallen into. He hadn't seen Mindy Snow in person since the day she'd come to his apartment before he left for the Thrill Of Doing Business tour back in 1984 — more than five years ago. He hadn't talked to her since the day she called him in his hotel room out on that tour to let him know she was going to be discussing their relationship with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. That had been when she'd implied that Jake's abuse of her during their relationship had prepared her for her upcoming roll in Handle With Caution, a film about escaping from an abusive husband.

Mindy had starred or co-starred in seven films since then and was now one of America's most sought-after actresses. She had been nominated for five different Academy Awards — three for Best Actress and two for Best Supporting Actress — although she had yet to win one. Right after she had stopped dating Jake, she had started seeing and eventually became engaged to John Carlisle — a handsome character actor who was a favorite of producers making teen-oriented action/adventure flicks. They had broken up a few months after the engagement was announced and later that same year Mindy had married Jed Forthright — another action/adventure character actor — less than two months after meeting him. That marriage lasted for about eleven months before ending in the tried and true "irreconcilable differences". These days, if Jake had been following his Hollywood gossip correctly, she was about eighteen months into marriage number two — to Scott Adams Winslow, who was one of top five movie directors in Hollywood.

"What are you doing here, Mindy?" Jake asked, still reeling from the sight of her, from the idea of running into her in Fiji, which was about as far away from anything else in the world as you could possibly get.

"Making a film," she said simply. "We're working on a project called The Coming of the Dawn. A big chunk of the film takes place in a tropical jungle so we're shooting the scenes out on Malolo. They're shooting some scenes today that I'm not in, so I decided to hang out on the beach and soak up some sun."

"Ahhh," Jake said, remembering his cabbie mentioning that some Hollywood people were shooting a movie. He hadn't mentioned that Mindy Snow was one of the stars.

"What are you doing here?" she asked. "You can't imagine how surprised I was when I started hearing Jake Kingsley was on the beach. I thought they were mistaken, that some long-haired loser who resembled you was trying to score some action in your name. I was actually coming over here to out you if that was what was happening."

"Nope," Jake said, "it's really me."

"So what gives?" she asked. "Last I heard, you and the rest of the guys were putting together your next album."

Jake was surprised, and a little disconcerted to hear that she knew what was going on in his life. "I was taking care of some business in New Zealand," he told her. "There weren't any direct flights back so I decided to stop here for a day instead of waiting in the airport for three hours for my connection."

"So you're leaving tomorrow?"

"Yep," he confirmed. "I'm on the ten o'clock to LAX."

"Oh, I envy you," she said, smiling whimsically. "This place is nice but I've been here for four weeks now. I long for civilization."

"I'll give LA my regards for you," he promised.

She stared at him for a moment. Finally, she said, "Well?"

"Well what?"

"Aren't you going to invite me to sit down? Buy me a drink? Catch up on old times?"

"I wouldn't want people to think I was abusing you or anything," he said sourly.

She seemed to take this as a joke. "Oh you," she said, slapping playfully at his shoulder. "That's all water under the bridge, isn't it?" She walked over and pulled an empty lounger from a section of them a few yards away. After setting it up next to Jake's, she lay down on it and signaled for the nearest waiter.

"Yes, Ma'am?" he enquired.

"Bring me one of those tropical hurricanes please," she said. "And put it on Mr. Kingsley's tab."

"Yes, Ma'am," he agreed. "And another drink for you, Mr. Kingsley?"

Jake sighed. "Why the hell not?" he said.

"Right away, sir," the waiter said. He disappeared.

"Thanks, Jake," Mindy said. "You always were a good sport."

"Even when other people weren't," he said.

"Exactly," she said, picking up his pack of cigarettes. "Can I have one of these?"

"Help yourself," Jake told her. She took one out and put it in her mouth. Jake did not offer to light it for her. Finally she picked up the lighter and did it herself.

"So where's your girlfriend?" Mindy asked. "You're still dating that pilot girl, aren't you?"

"I am," Jake said. "She couldn't make it on this trip."

"I know how it is," Mindy said. "Scotty's off in Florida shooting a film too. We haven't seen each other in a month or so now."

"That's too bad," Jake said.

She simply shrugged. "The life we choose, huh? Remember how we used to say that when we were together?"

"Yeah, I remember. I still say it on occasion."

"I'm sure you do," she said. "It must be hard dating someone not in the business. I can't even imagine how you could make it work."

"It is trying at times," Jake admitted. "Especially when some psycho fan tries to kill her."

"I know," Mindy said. "That was horrible. It made me sick to my stomach when I heard about it. I mean, I've had a couple of obsessed fans in my time — I have six different restraining orders out against various people — but nothing like that. Did she really have... you know... a blowtorch with her when they arrested her? Or was that something the tabloid people made up?"

"She really did," Jake said. "Handcuffs, a set of knives, a gun, and a blowtorch. Fortunately she'd been kind enough to send a few threatening letters to me before she made her move and I was able to get an alarm and security system installed in Helen's house. It was that security system that saved her life. The motion detectors out front caught her and the cops were able to get there before Helen got home from work."

"God, that's just frightening," Mindy said. "Why is she still living in her own house? You guys have been dating now for what... a year or so?"

"We're coming up on year this month," Jake said.

"That whole thing in Omaha was when it started?" Mindy said with a giggle. "When those assholes broke into her room and stole shit out of her purse. Was that her first exposure to the power of the press?"

"Yeah," Jake said. "She wasn't too happy about that. Neither was her dad."

"Was that the first time you nailed her?" Mindy asked.

"Jesus, Mindy," Jake said, shaking his head. "I see you're as blunt as always."

"It's the only way to be, Jake," she told him. "So give it up. Was that the first time? The student seduces the teacher in a mid-west hotel suite after a dinner of smoked oysters and five hundred dollar wine? I bet you couldn't wait to get your hands on those boobies of hers. From the pictures I've seen in the tabs, she's got a mondo fucking rack."

Jake was still trying to hold on to his old resentment of Mindy — she had, after all, used him for purposes of her own and then cast him aside when she was done — but it was getting harder with each sentence that she said. He had always enjoyed Mindy's bluntness, her zest for life, the unbridled personality she possessed when she wasn't performing an act for someone. "Yeah," he told her. "That was the first time, although it wasn't me seducing her, it was her seducing me."

"Oh really?" Mindy said, rubbing her legs together gently. "Do tell the story."

Jake shrugged. "Not much to tell. She had made a few passes at me before that but I'd brushed her off. I didn't want to get involved with my flight instructor for one thing, and I was really hesitant to get involved with someone... you know... not in this lifestyle. I'd tried that before and it hadn't worked out very well."

"That would be the waitress you dated for a few months," Mindy said. "The one who broke up with you after you fucked that little redheaded girl in Mexico."

Once again Jake was a little disconcerted about how much she knew about his personal life. "What are doing, keeping a journal on me?"

"I've always liked you, Jake," she said. "Our time together is something I treasure greatly, even if it couldn't work out. Does it bother you that I keep tabs on you?"

"I'm not sure," he said truthfully. It did bother him a little, but on the other hand, it was also kind of flattering.

"Anyway," she said excitedly. "Let's hear about the seduction."

"As I said, there's not much to hear. The trip started out innocent enough, at least from my point of view. We were going to Omaha to pick up my new plane but I wasn't allowed to fly without an instructor onboard yet. She was my instructor. I booked us two suites in Omaha, but she didn't stay in hers. She found my weakness and exploited it." He looked into her eyes. "Some of you women are really good at that."

"Yes we are, aren't we?" Mindy said, a secret smile on her lips.

The waiter suddenly appeared, their drinks on his tray. He handed them out and Jake signed the slip, charging them to his hotel room. He added a generous tip. They took a few sips and stared out at the ocean, which was starting to fade with the coming twilight.

"So what was your business in New Zealand?" Mindy asked.

Jake told her of how he had fallen in love with the small, isolated country on their international tour and how he had just put into motion the purchase of twenty acres of hillside property overlooking the harbor. His story carried them through two drinks and three cigarettes. Mindy listened with rapt attention.

By the time he was done it was rapidly approaching full darkness. The beach was emptying of tourists and the waiters were preparing to start cleaning up their stations.

"Yes, I accept," Mindy suddenly said.

"What do you accept?" Jake asked.

"Your invitation to buy me dinner in the hotel restaurant."

"I don't recall asking you that," Jake said.

"I beat you to the punch," she said. "I know you weren't going to just let me go back to my room all alone and eat room service again."

Jake sensed something like danger here. He sensed it, but he'd had enough to drink to disregard the little warning bells that were going off in his brain. Now that she mentioned it, dinner with Mindy seemed a fine idea. They had been having a nice conversation and he was leaving early the next morning. Who knew when they would see each other again? And besides, she was married, wasn't she? She had what appeared to be a four or five karat diamond ring on her finger to prove it. Would it hurt anything to buy her dinner and talk a little more?

He thought not.

"Okay then," he told her. "Let me go get showered and dressed and I'll meet you there in forty-five minutes."

"It's a date," she said happily. She sat on the edge of her lounger and smiled, leaning forward and giving him a brief kiss on the cheek. Her lips were soft, gentle, and he remembered what they felt like in moments of passion. He shuddered a little at their touch, felt a brief surge of blood go rushing into his nether regions.

"Right," he said softly. "A date."

Jake dressed in slacks and a button-up short sleeved shirt. He began to have second thoughts about the wisdom of being seen in public with Mindy Snow, a well-documented ex-girlfriend, one, in fact, in which there were pictures floating around of the two of them naked on a boat. But he did have to eat tonight, didn't he? He poured himself a double shot of Johnny Walker Black from his suite's mini-bar and drank it down. The doubts disappeared within minutes. He put his key in his pocket and headed downstairs.

He found Mindy waiting for him just outside the restaurant entrance. She was dressed in a tropical one-piece dress that showed a considerable amount of cleavage and fell to just above her knees. She looked beautiful in it, very sexy, very alluring.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Jake asked her as a maitre d led them to a booth near the back of the room. "What about paparazzi?"

"There are no paparazzi here," Mindy told him. "That's one of the benefits of this place. It's too isolated for them."

"Okay," Jake said slowly. "But what about the guests? Won't they..."

"No," she said with a smile. "They won't. Trust me on this, Jake. I'm a happily married woman and I wouldn't dare put my reputation at risk. The press will never know that we're eating dinner together tonight. Not here."

He decided to trust her. After all, she had much more to lose if the press reported on them being together.

The cuisine was not the best Jake had ever had, but it wasn't bad either. He ate a New York steak smothered with sautéed mushrooms and a baked potato. Mindy ate some sort of broiled chicken dish with a side salad. They both drank a lot of wine, four bottles in fact, two Cabernets to go with Jake's beef and two Chardonnays to go with Mindy's chicken. By the time they finished their desert and polished off a glass of cognac apiece, both of them were quite squiffed.

Conversation during dinner had been quite respectable and above-board. They talked of the old times they'd shared, sticking with the happier memories and avoiding the points of conflict. They talked of their lives since the break-up, Jake telling her the tale of their contract re-negotiation (as the end of the contract loomed closer and closer he felt less bound by the secrecy agreement contained within it) and how he had invested and spent his new-found wealth. Mindy told of fighting and struggling to get the roles she wanted, of the roles she'd turned down, especially the one she regretted the most.

"I was offered the lead in The Accused," she said bitterly, "but I turned it down because I didn't want to do another fucking abuse movie." She shook her head angrily. "And look what happened. That bitch Jody Foster got a fuckin' Oscar for it. I'm a better actress than she is!"

Finally, the last of the plates were cleared away and Jake signed the check (it was well over two hundred and fifty dollars when converted to American, thanks mostly to the wine). They stood and walked together out of the restaurant and back to the lobby of the hotel, which was sparsely populated at this time of the evening. Jake pushed the call button for the elevator.

"Are you on the top?" Jake asked Mindy, figuring that she was probably in a suite, which were located on the upper floors.

She giggled. "Sometimes I am, and sometimes I'm not."

Jake chuckled with her. "Don't I know that well," he said.

"Yes," she answered as the doors opened. "I'm in 1524."

"No shit," he said, allowing her to step inside. "I'm in 1531, just a few doors down."

"What are the odds?" she said as he followed her in.

The doors closed. They were alone in the elevator. It started to rise.

"Jake?" Mindy said.

"What?"

"I want you to come back to my room with me."

He looked at her, seeing her supple lips, her bulging cleavage, the look of wanting in her eyes. Yes, there was danger here after all. His instincts had been correct.

"I don't think that's a good idea, Mindy," he said.

"I do," she said, stepping closer to him. "I want you to fuck me. I want you to fuck me like you used to fuck me."

He was shaking his head but he didn't step back, didn't push her away. "You're married, Mindy," he said, perhaps a little weakly.

"I'm married to a guy who's rich, who fits my career, but who's halfway around the world at the moment. He also has a dick that's only four inches long and generally fires off within a minute or so of touching my pussy."

Jake licked his lips nervously. "Uh... I'm sorry to hear that, but..."

"He knows I find other outlets when he's not around," Mindy said, taking another step closer to him. "He does the same. He's probably banging some eighteen year old actress right now. So don't worry about my vows of fidelity."

"Mindy, really," Jake said, "I'm flattered, but..."

She reached out and took his right hand in hers. "I've had a lot of sex since we broke up, Jake," she told him, pulling his hand closer. He did not resist. "A lot of sex. But I've never had sex like you used to give it to me. There was a lot wrong with our relationship. I'll be the first to admit that. But you are, without a doubt, the best lover I've ever been with. The very best, Jake. And I want you now."

"Mindy," he squeaked, his resolve battered, his penis already hardening in his pants. She was standing right in front of him. Mindy Snow. The best lover he had ever experienced. And she was offering herself to him, demanding that he take her. But there was Helen to think about, wasn't there? He was involved with someone!

Mindy pulled his hand forward again, until it was just beneath the hem of her dress. She pushed his knuckles against the bare skin just above her knee. It was warm and soft and oh so smooth.

"I'm wet for you, Jake," she whispered, tugging his hand upward now. "My pussy is dripping at the thought of you sliding your cock into me."

"Mindy... Jesus," he groaned, still without the willpower to stop her.

She pulled his hand under her dress and into her crotch, spreading her legs a little to give him access. Soon, he felt his fingertips touching her slippery vaginal lips. As promised, they were very wet, very hot. And they were also very smooth.

"You feel that, Jake?" Mindy whispered. "I'm still shaved smooth as a baby's butt."

He felt it. He couldn't help himself. His fingers slid up and down her slit a few times, gathering that wetness.

"Remember when I had Carmella shave me for you?" Mindy asked, her lips now touching his ear, her tongue reaching out and licking at the lobe. "Do you remember that?"

"I remember," Jake croaked, his index finger now sliding into her body to the first knuckle. God, she was still tight, as tight as a teenager.

"I've never let it grow back since," she said. "And I never shave it myself. Not even once. I always have a girl shave it for me. And I always have her finger me until I come when she's done."

Jake actually shuddered. He plunged his finger all the way inside of her and then added a second. Their lips came together, their tongues reaching out and attacking one another. Her arms went around his back and he began to plunge his fingers in and out of her, feeling her wetness dripping down his wrist. She humped back against him enthusiasm.

"Oh yessss, Jake," she moaned into his mouth. "Oh fuck yes! You want me, don't you?"

"Yes," he moaned back, breaking the kiss and attacking her neck, licking her flesh, biting it.

"And you're gonna take me to my room and fuck me all night, aren't you?" she asked.

"Yes," he said, "I'm gonna fuck you all night!"

The elevator came to a stop. The doors opened. They went to Mindy's room and they fucked all night.