Duel With the Devil, Chapter 20 of The Greatest Liar

“Great form. And you swim well too.”

“Lots of lessons in mom and dad’s pool. Yours is much nicer, though.”

“Guess what, we made the news after all. You never told me I was following in the footsteps of two giants of Euro football: You got DP-d on camera by Ronaldo and Marco?”

“My first paparazzi moment. It didn’t work out well.”

I got out, dried off and checked my phone. Phil had texted.

“Expect a service of subpoena momentarily.”

“Thad, unfortunately, those two crazy guys were not my most legendary lovers.”

“You got Beckham?”

“I wish. No, JC pimped me to his most important client: the asshole who’s in trouble for paying hush money to porn star right before an election. Guess who’s going to be a witness.”

“No shit. That’s really one for the books, but I’m gonna sue that bitch Maria.”

“Thad, you’re the celeb, she’s a nobody, and anyone at Cafe Milano could have taken a pic and sold it to the paparazzi. They connected the dots, and now we both get to bask in the glare of tabloid fame.”

Thad’s cell phone chimed.

“We got police at the door. Maybe it was that red light you ran.”

“I’m afraid it’s much worse.”

I put on a robe, Thad opened the door, and a cop handed me a sheaf of papers while his back up team eyed us warily, hands near their weapons.”

“Alexandra Rios, you’re served.”

Thad closed the door and alarmed the gates.

“Shit, I thought we were going to have a BLM Moment.”

I flipped through the pages. I was summoned to Manhattan to testify, ordered to produce bank records and communications about my NDA’s, and invited to a Zoom interview with the prosecutors.

I texted Phil that I’d been served. Thad and I sat on his front porch.

“Every time I see LAPD, I wonder, has my time come?”

“Black and trans have the same problem. In MAG-America, our lives don’t matter as much as the lives of CIS people, white people.”

Thad pointed toward one of his camera monitors. JC was sweating and florid from being dragged by his uphill toward Thad’s house. I met him on the sidewalk in the midday sun, while Thad videoed our reunion from behind his wrought iron fence.