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A/N: Total disclaimer on this one! This is entirely fiction and I know nothing of any celebrity whatsoever!! I have nothing so don’t sue me, and I repeat this is only fiction!
Chapter 73: Danny IX—The land of Nuts and Fruits—Cheesecake and Tommy
"Hells Bells this is good!" Chloe moaned through another mouthful of strawberry cheesecake. "Are you sure you boys don’t want anymore of this cause I’m liable to finish it!" She ran her finger along the topping and licked some of it off.
Danny shook his head. "Girl, I think you just polished off half of it by yourself!"
Chloe smiled and swallowed. "Well, it’s good! Just cause you two pansies are so scared about your weight that you only have half a slice doesn’t mean I should waste any of it. I don’t get to eat good cheesecake like this a lot, you know? Why should I let it waste!"
Tangers smiled. "Well, I’m glad you like the room service."
"Hell yeah!" Chloe barked. "I ain’t gonna fit in my pants tomarra but shit I’ll lose it later I s’pose."
Danny smiled at her and then looked back at his hand of cards. "Uh, my turn?" he asked.
"Yup," both Tangers and Chloe said.
"Jinx," Chloe whispered.
Danny laughed when Alex looked helplessly at him and he said. "You guys are worse than six year olds! Not again. Alex Tanguay!"
Tangers sighed and Chloe said along with him, "Thanks Noter."
"Jinx!" Chloe yelled.
Tangers moaned and Danny laughed again. "Alex Tanguay!" he barked.
Tangers sighed and glared at Chloe who just made a kissy face at him back. It made Danny a little depressed to see how happy she was with the cheesecake and goofing off with Alex. She was still after all, a kid at heart, and she should be somewhere else, sleeping, going to school. He shook the thought out of his head; after all, she seemed like a resilient enough girl. "Alright," he said looking at the sex pictures on his card. "Tangers got a Missionary Position?" It was hard to read the numbers and symbols on the cards so the trio had just taken to calling the pictures depicted on the face.
"Nope," Tangers said, and this time he didn’t blush. "Go Erect!"
Chloe giggled. "Hey this would work better if we did the other stuff on the directions, cause Danny ain’t going erect."
"Nope," Danny said as he began pulling cards off the deck until he found the proper card.
"My turn!" Chloe said. "Ummm....OK. Danny, do you have a Menage a Trois?"
"Yup," Danny said, handing it over.
"I’m gonna win!" Chloe sang. "Tangers, I know you got a Blow Job, hand it over!"
"Damn!" Tangers snapped and he handed Chloe the Blow Job card, crossing his arms over his chest as Chloe jumped off the bed and did a victory hop. Danny giggled, these French Canadians never liked losing.
"Woo!" Chloe hooted as she cut herself another piece of cheesecake. "Now what?"
Danny looked at Tangers and shrugged. "Beats me," he said.
A slow smile spread on the girl’s pale face and she leaned forward on the bed. "You boys sure you don’t wanna do nothin fun? I ain’t gonna bite or nothin."
Before Danny could reply the door swung open to the room and a laughing trio of Peter, Dru and a hooker fell in. Danny jumped up to his feet in surprise. "The hell!" he exclaimed.
"Sorry guys!" Drury giggled, Danny could already see the liqour swimming in his brain. "Blakie kicked us out of the other room... too crowded! We’re taking this one."
"Aw hell!" Danny snapped.
"Unless ya wanna watch," Peter muttered with a goofy grin.
"Oooooh," Chloe said. "Not these boys hon, they good boys."
"With you?" the other hooker said. "Yeah right Babydoll."
Danny sighed as the trio began pawing at each other the way confused, horny inebriates do. Did they even remember who was in here? "Come on," he said. "We’ll find something else to do."
He grabbed Chloe’s strawberry sticky hand and led her out of the room with Tangers trotting at their side.
"Great," Tangers said. "We didn’t even bring the cards, now what do we do?"
"What time is it?" Danny asked looking at his watch. "After midnight... hey Chloe is there anything to do around here after midnight?"
Chloe frowned. "This is LA!" she said. "Of course there’s stuff to do, ‘pends on what you wanna do is all."
"Well, come on," Danny said. "Things should clear up around here in a couple hours and we’ll find something to do in that time."
He began down the hallway with the other two following him, he wasn’t sure at all what they would do, but he knew he could think of something. As they turned the corner they saw a heavy set, blond woman leaning against the wall and sobbing. She slid to the carpet, curling up in a sitting position.
"Oh Gawd," Chloe said. "Melinda, are you OK hon?"
The girl scurried to Melinda’s side and knelt on the carpet next to her, draping her twiggy arm over her shoulders. Danny briefly made eye contact with Alex and he could see the same pale worry that he was feeling in his gut. "What happened?" Tangers asked, bending over to the girls.
Melinda only cried harder and leaned on Chloe, trembling. "I wasn’t... I couldn’t do anything..." she sobbed. "I wasn’t ready..."
"Awww," Chloe said, hugging her. She looked up at Danny with suddenly sad, and adult eyes. "This is her first night," Chloe said. "It’s tough on the new girls."
"I’m sorry," Melinda gasped pulling back from Chloe and rubbing the tears off her face. "I got so scared... I mean..." she hiccuped. "He wouldn’t let me go, and he was... it was like being suffocated... I thought he was gonna..." she started sobbing again and she hid her face in her hands.
"Did he hit you?" Chloe asked, narrowing her eyes. "They ain’t s’posed to hit us, that costs more."
"No," Melinda choked. "No he didn’t hit me... I just got scared... and it was just his eyes and the way he looked at me... I felt like he was gonna do something worse... He kept talking in French and.... he had these scratches on him and... and this bite wound... I didn’t how he could have got that unless..."
Danny looked quickly at Tangers who had reddened but Alex didn’t look back at him.
"Dammit you’re all bruised up!" Chloe snapped holding out Melinda’s arm and looking at the circles starting to form on her, "And your neck too! Did he strangle you?"
Danny then noticed the bruising on her throat and he almost turned and stormed into that room. How could someone do something like that? How could someone sane do that?
"No..." Melinda said vacantly. "I don’t think so."
"Oooh," Chloe sighed and she hugged Melinda to her again. "You boys go on an’ do whatever," she said looking at Danny. "I’m gonna stay here with Lindy, take her somewhere quiet. She’s had a scare. It’s always tough for the new girls..."
Chloe closed her eyes and put her chin on the top of Melinda’s head as she hugged her. "Always tough the first night...."
"And how long have you been doing this?" Danny suddenly asked her. "You have to be new too?"
Chloe laughed mirthlessly. "Honey, I been doin’ this for five years. Ain’t nothin I haven’t seen yet."
Danny felt his mouth drop open, he didn’t know how old she really was, and now he didn’t want to know. This was gonna give him nightmares he knew it.
"Is there some way we can help?" Tangers asked in a quiet voice.
"No," Chloe said, shaking her head. "We got each other, like any uh you boys on a team, we got each other. We ain’t askin for pity."
Danny took one last, long look at the girls as Tangers tugged on his arm, pulling him down the hallway. "Come on," Alex said. "Let them have their privacy, they never get that, you know?"
Danny closed his eyes, and followed Tangers blindly for a few steps. The image of them was burned in his brain, and so was the image of Patrick’s angry eyes. Those bruises on Melinda’s arm were identical to ones Michele had on her. The connection there was undeniable, and he knew he couldn’t be a silent witness for much longer.
They were silent as they stood in the elevator; it was a pregnant silence. Danny knew that Tangers was thinking about this and wasn’t saying a thing. He knew they were waiting for someone to say something, so Danny spoke first. "Alex, those bruises..."
"I don’t want to hear it!" Alex snapped.
"I mean," Danny persisted. "Patrick must have..."
"I said shut-up!" Tangers cried. "He’s not like that! I know him I lived in his house! Now stop it! How do we know it wasn’t Footer? He hasn’t got it up in months, how do we know he didn’t freak out?"
"But..."
"And we shouldn’t be talking about it!" Tanger exclaimed. "You know we’re not allowed."
Danny nodded his head when he saw the distressed look in Tangers’ eyes. He knew he wouldn’t be getting anywhere with him at this point. "OK," he said. "Let’s forget it."
And forgotten it was soon enough as the elevator stopped at the lobby and before they could step out, they were met with a gorgeous, familiar looking couple. Oh my God! was all Danny could think and judging from Tangers’ expression he was thinking the same thing.
"Hey," the man said smiling with a brilliant, white smile. "I know you boys, you’re Avalanche boys. Woo, hey how’s Blake doing?"
"You...you know who we are?" Tangers stuttered. "But you’re Tom Cruise!"
"Tom is a hockey fanatic," the gorgeous woman said with a flick of her skinny hand. "He watch this hockey all the time, no time for anything else."
"Bl..Blakie’s doing fine," Danny said quietly.
"That was amazing," Tom said, still grinning and holding Penelope’s hand as he stepped into the elevator. "I mean, I thought you guys were toast I even made a bet and everything!"
"How much you lose?" Tangers asked that awed tone still in his voice.
The elevator door closed and Danny didn’t even think of holding it still or stepping out.
Tom laughed. "Yeah, I lost ten thousand dollars. I thought it was a done deal."
Danny laughed. "To whom?"
"To me," Penelope Cruz said with a girlish smile. "Tom says, he is done with, and I say he a big man why cannot he win big game? Seems simple enough eh? Big man, big game."
Tom shook his head, "She knows nothing about hockey and she strips me of ten thousand dollars on a guess."
"Not a guess!" Penelope snapped. "Is common sense! Is obvious to see!"
"I can see that," Tangers said. "Ladies have all the intuition."
"Si!" Penelope said, squeezing Tangers’ arm causing his face to redden to the eartips. "I like you!"
Danny leaned forward and looked at Tangers, raising his eyebrows. Alex was flirting wasn’t he? Tangers met his glance briefly and smiled.
"So what are you boys doing out?" Tom said, looking straight at Danny. "Shouldn’t you be in bed?"
Danny couldn’t answer for a moment. He knew he was straight and everything, but he couldn’t help noticing how blue his eyes were and how perfect his face was. How old was he? Forty? He looked so smooth! Dammit this was Tom Cruise!! This couldn’t be real.
"Eh," Penelope said, turning the corners of her voluptuous lips down and making a face that wasn’t unlike Mimi’s when she was being flippant, "Is the hookers, si? Can’t sleep because of the putas."
Tom laughed loudly, that patented Tom Cruise laugh. "You kill me!"
"How could you know about the hookers?" Tangers asked curiously.
Penelope smiled dazzlingly at Alex and she pointed at her nose. "I smell them as soon as we get in the lobby. Smell like cigarettes and cheap sex."
The elevator stopped at the fifteenth floor and the doors whooshed open. "That’s our floor," Tom said stepping halfway out. "Come on in for a drink?"
Danny looked at Tangers, "Uh," he said. "That’s real nice of you but... we really don’t wanna..."
"Oh come on!" Penelope cried grabbing Tangers’ arm and dragging him out of the elevator. "You will break my heart if you don’t!"
Danny stepped out of the elevator as well and he looked back at Tom. "Really?" he asked.
Tom nodded. "Yeah, I’d love to get to know you fellas, maybe talk a little hockey, get a little gossip." Cruise winked and then led the way to their penthouse room.
Penelope giggled and wrapped her arm around Alex, causing him to redden all over and she walked with him behind Tom. Danny frowned and stood where he was for just a moment. Shouldn’t Tom be jealous of the way Penelope seemed to be hanging on Tangers? Or was that just how Spanish women were and he accepted that?
Danny shook his head. "I read way too much into things sometimes," he muttered to himself.
And with that, he sighed and followed them down the hallway.
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