Flawless (52 page)

Scarlett looked pleadingly at Christian. “Are we done yet?”

Conscious that her face was flushed, her foundation running, and she had to get to a bathroom before this year’s host, Hugh Jackman, took the stage (some perverse God had decided to make her period arrive this morning, the one day in the entire year that she least wanted to have to worry about a leaky Tampax), she was desperate to call it a day.

“I need to find Jake and get to our seats.”

“All right,” said the cameraman grudgingly, handing her a much-needed chilled bottle of Evian. “You go have fun. Tamara’s here now; she can take over. By the way, if you’re looking for lover boy, he’s headed our way.”

Scarlett glanced up and caught her breath. She’d spent the last twenty minutes talking to some of the best-looking, most eligible men in the world, but none of them could hold a candle to Jake for pure, unadulterated sex appeal. Even in a tuxedo, with his thick, blond hair combed and his silk bow tie in place, there was something animal about him—a primal ball of pheromones, wrapped in an Armani jacket.

“Hey,” she beamed, kissing him on the mouth as soon as he reached her. “Sorry that took so long, but the boss here says I’m free to go. Have you been having fun?”

“Having fun?” Jake snapped. “You make me sound like a fucking nine-year-old at Chuck E. Cheese.”

“Sorry.” Scarlett looked baffled. “I didn’t mean…I wasn’t trying to be patronizing.”

She ought to be used to his mood swings by now. But she’d really thought that tonight would be OK, after he’d been so sweet and flirty in the car, complimenting her dress and everything.
Perhaps if she ignored his bad temper, he’d get over whatever it was and switch back into Good-Boyfriend mode.

“I think I did OK at the presenting,” she said, smiling at him nervously for approval. “Almost everybody they wanted gave me an interview. Jen Aniston was really sweet.”

Jake laughed mockingly. “
Jen
Aniston? What are you, best friends all of a sudden?”

“Why are you being so mean?” Despite herself, Scarlett found she was biting back tears. What the hell had she done wrong now?

“Sorry,” said Jake, who clearly wasn’t, “but have you heard yourself lately? I thought you despised the whole Hollywood scene?”

“Oh for heaven’s sake. You’re starting to sound like Magnus,” she said. “I don’t despise anyone. Except perhaps Brogan O’Donnell.” Jake rolled his eyes. “It’s true I’m not a sceney person, but this is work. And besides, it’s the Oscars. Aren’t I entitled to be a little excited?”

“You call this work?” said Jake. “Fawning over a bunch of actors like the coach of the Olympic ass-licking team? And here I was thinking you designed jewelry for a living.”

“That’s not fair.” Scarlett felt her disappointment harden into anger. “Why am I the enemy again, Jake? What happened?”

“Nothing happened,” he grunted.

What could he say? That he’d just woken up to the fact that while he’d been away comforting his brother and hanging out in Africa trying to be the good, noble man she wanted him to be, he’d turned into a Hollywood laughingstock. That women like Julia, women who’d once perceived him as an alpha male, a success story, now thought of him as a jumped-up gigolo? As Scarlett’s plaything, clinging on to her and Flawless’s success like a festering fucking toadstool on a damp tree.

“Tons of stars were wearing our stuff,” said Scarlett making one last, valiant effort to salvage their happy evening. “Rhianna
took the drop earrings in the end. Anna Kournikova wore the yin-yang pendant, and we even got Enrique in the topaz cuff links, which he was really cute about on camera. Nicole Richie went for the snake cuff.”

“
Your
stuff,” said Jake. He wasn’t even looking at her. “They were wearing your stuff, not mine.”

“Yes, but…”

“I’m just your lowly diamond dealer, remember?” He kicked the ground morosely. Suddenly Scarlett became aware that they were being watched—that perhaps the red carpet at the Oscars was not the best place for a lover’s tiff.

“I probably won’t even be that for much longer.”

“You know what? Fine,” snapped Scarlett. She was tired of pandering to his constant neediness. He wanted to push her away? He’d just succeeded. “If you don’t want to be here, why don’t you just piss off?” She turned on her heel. “Go on. Go home. Feel sorry for yourself. I’m past caring.”

Sweeping regally into the theater alone, her head held high, she steeled herself not to look back.

Jake, bitterly ashamed of himself, watched her go.

From behind she looked powerful and supremely confident, a pewter Amazon in that dress. As she disappeared into the throng, he felt smaller and more pathetic than he could ever remember. With a heart full of ashes and a mouth as dry as dust, he turned in the other direction and walked away.

Aunt Agnes was wrong.

She didn’t need him. Not in the least.

Had he followed her into the powder room sixty seconds later and seen Scarlett bent double over the wash basin, sobbing her heart out, he might have felt differently.

Cried out, she splashed cold water on her face, dabbed away the worst of the mascara smears with a paper towel, and looked in the mirror.

“That’s it,” she told her reflection, ignoring the sidelong glances from actresses perfecting their makeup beside her. “No more. It’s over.”

It was funny the way relationships ended. How some of them exploded in a ball of passionate fury and others, like with Magnus, faded away with a whimper. With Jake, it had been different again: a growing realization that, love or no love, they couldn’t live together. They were the classic opposites attracting. But Jake’s anger, his resentment, the whole professional jealousy thing that had gotten so utterly out of hand—it was no way to live, or to love.

She’d go home to Vado Drive tonight, alone. And tomorrow she’d drive over to Jake’s and clear her stuff out of his apartment.

She doubted there’d be any drama. Deep down, she knew, he felt the same way she did—that it simply wasn’t working. All the fights must have taken it out of him too. Besides, they had a good reason to keep things civil. Whatever he might say in the self-pitying heat of the moment, Scarlett
did
need Jake at Flawless. The diamonds he brought her were second to none. She couldn’t hope to find another supplier half as good, never mind one who understood promotion and branding in the jewelry business as well and instinctively as Jake did.

For all her bravado, secretly she shared Jake’s fears about Brogan. He might well set his sights on her again after this NPR business and try to damage Flawless. Judging by how effectively he’d eviscerated Solomon Stones, not to mention the lengths he’d gone to—burning down Bijoux—the last time she’d strayed onto his radar screen, it was not a threat to be taken lightly. And it wasn’t something she wanted to face alone. Professionally, she needed Jake more than ever—and for obvious reasons, he felt the same way. Maturity had never been his strong point. But she felt
confident that even
he
would see the need to maintain a viable working relationship. Who knew? Maybe, once the dust had settled and the broken hearts begun to heal, they might even salvage a friendship from this unholy mess.

The rest of the evening was torture, on so many levels. Scarlett was an Oscars virgin, and no one had warned her how interminably long the ceremony itself would be: hour after hour dragging by with nothing to do but think about Jake and how she’d lost him, staring into space throughout the wooden jokes, the forced laughter, the endless nominations for categories nobody but the friends and family of those involved gave a shit about: wardrobe coordination, sound editing, light engineering, the list went on and on. And on. It was like School Speech Day at St. Clements, except four times as long, with no pee breaks, the world’s most uncomfortable dress on, and a heart that was crumbling inside her chest like a stale Wensleydale cheese.

By two a.m., when she staggered up the porch steps of Nancy’s cottage, she felt as drained and spent as a sun-withered flower. Somehow she’d managed to keep a professional smile glued to her face at Elton John’s star-studded AIDS Foundation party and schmoozed everyone she was supposed to. But, boy, was it a blessed relief to be out of there at last!

The night was calm and clear when she got home, and she lingered on the porch for a while, sinking down onto the love seat and pulling off her agonizing stilettos at last. Too tired to think anymore, she rubbed the balls of her feet and stared up at the night sky, taking comfort in the blanket of stars twinkling above her in their agelessness. She imagined those same stars over Scotland, and London, Africa, and Siberia. What time was it in Yakutsk, she wondered? Were Brogan’s miners out there, gazing up at the heavens like she was right now, bracing themselves for another day’s grueling labor in his mines, hacking away at an open cast pit, the cancer in their lungs multiplying with every
breath? What right had she to be unhappy, compared to those men?

The ringing of the house phone brought her back to reality. In the silence of the night it sounded supernaturally loud, like an air-raid siren or a fire alarm. Jumping to her feet, she scrambled inside and picked up after five rings.

“Scarlett?”

The voice on the other end of the line was so choked with tears it took a second for her to register that it was Nancy.

“Yes, Nance, it’s me.” She tried her best to sound comforting. “What’s happened, darling? What’s the matter?”

A long intake of breath.

“Mom died. A couple of hours ago.”

“Oh, Nancy.” Scarlett winced. There was nothing to say, but unspoken sympathy hung in the two thousand miles of air between them.

“Can you come to New York?”

Scarlett didn’t hesitate.

“Of course. As soon as you want me.”

“Can you come tomorrow? I hate to ask, but Che Che and I broke up officially last night…” Tears broke the flow again. “I can’t face the thought of doing the funeral alone.”

Scarlett made quiet, shushing noises, like a mother calming her newborn. Of course she’d be there. She’d throw some things in a bag right now and catch the first plane out in the morning.

The morning. It was already the morning. She hadn’t slept, yet she felt like she was in the middle of some nightmarish dream.

“Just hold it together, Nance, OK?” she said, grateful for the chance to put thoughts of Jake aside entirely for a few hours. “I’m on my way.”

T
HE
C
ATHEDRAL OF
St. John the Divine, on the corner of Amsterdam and 112th Street, is the home of the American Episcopal Church and the largest neo-gothic edifice in the world.

Built in the 1880s at the height of the second great wave of immigration into New York City, its architects conceived it as a “house of prayer for all nations,” a bricks-and-mortar symbol of America’s status as the ultimate ethnic melting pot. Anyone visiting the church for the first time on the day of Lucy Lorriman’s funeral, however, would have seen precious little of this much-vaunted diversity.

Nancy’s mother’s funeral was old-school to its Ivy League core. Every face in the congregation was white, protestant, and Republican. The dress code was traditional, with mourners wearing black, not miscellaneous “dark colors.” Women covered their heads, carried prayer books, and kept jewelry and makeup to a minimum. Children stood rigid-backed and silent beside their parents, their scrubbed faces a picture of forced solemnity. The whole occasion reminded Scarlett of home and the stiff, joyless church services she’d been forced to attend in Buckie as a child. “Remember, young lady, you’re a Drummond Murray,” her
mother would warn her sternly before they went inside. “People will be watching you. Behave yourself.”

People were watching her now, too. Standing in the front row with the family, clasping Nancy’s hand, she felt the stares of the six-hundred-strong congregation burning into her back like blowtorches and developed an irrational terror that she might fart, or get the hiccups, or in some other way let the side down. Of course, immediately afterward she felt guilty for allowing her thoughts to turn to such frivolous things when Nancy’s mother’s coffin lay not ten feet in front of them, a gruesomely gleaming slab of polished wood on a solid gold plinth.