Riverside Park (14 page)

WHEN JASON CLOSED
the office door behind him Celia said, “You don't have to lock it.” His expression, when he turned around, was not a happy one.

“Here's the iPod,” she said quietly, putting the box down on the desk. He made no move to get it. “It was very generous of you, Jason, but I thought I explained before—”

“I told you, I didn't
buy
it. Somebody gave it to me and I already have one.” And then more forcefully, “I
wanted
to give it to you. What's wrong with that? It didn't cost me anything. It's not like a Christmas present or anything.”

“Jason,” she said, crossing her arms and sitting down on the low filing cabinet. In the next moment she remembered their history with this cabinet and moved behind Mark's desk to sit. When she looked up she could plainly see Jason was thinking the same thing. “I was wrong to do what I did with you.”

He gave her a look of disbelief. “Why? I can handle it.”

“You more than handled it,” she told him and Jason's face
instantly brightened. “It's time for you to have a real relationship. You know, have a girlfriend.” He was starting to scowl. “Look, Jason, I don't want to be emotionally involved with anyone right now. And I think you do. So you should get a girlfriend.”

“I'm not emotionally involved with you,” he said.

“But we've become friends, and that
is
an emotional attachment,” she said. “And I don't do, you know, the other—” she gestured weakly “—with a friend. I just want us to be friends.”

He hesitated. “You acted like you liked it.”

She felt her face burn. “Yeah. But—” What was she supposed to say now? Why didn't he just leave? Go away? And why was his erection getting bigger? “Anyway, take the iPod. You can give it to someone for Christmas.”

“I'm not going to give you anything anymore,” he said. “So why can't we just—” He shrugged. “You know.”

“I can't do that anymore, Jason. It was wrong.”

“Why is it wrong?” he asked, stepping forward. “You don't have a boyfriend and I don't have a girlfriend.”

She heard a belt buckle and looked up in alarm. Jason had undone his belt and was pulling down his zipper.

“What the hell are you doing?” she nearly yelled.

“I know you still want to do it,” he said, moving around the desk.

“Stop it,” she said, looking away.

“I know you do,” he said, pulling himself out of his pants.

“What if someone comes in and sees you like that?” she demanded.

“I locked the door.” He reached for her hand. “Come on.”

She yanked her hand away from him and violently pushed her chair back. “I'm not kidding, Jason, stop it. Zip up your pants and stop being an asshole.”

After a moment he turned his back to her, zipped up his pants and did up his belt.

“I know it's confusing,” she said miserably, looking down at the floor. “That I was doing it and now I don't want to do it. And I know you don't get it but I get it now. I'm too old for you and I shouldn't have done it.”

He turned around and she saw that he was crying. Crying!

“I love you,” he said. “I'm sorry but I do.”

“Oh, Jason—”

“I know what I said before but I do care. I'm in love with you, Celia.”

She didn't say anything because she didn't know what to say. She didn't want to make it any worse for him.

He wiped his eyes with his sleeve, sniffed and then looked at her again. “You don't—?”

She shook her head. “I'm sorry. No.”

He stumbled over to the door.

“Jason, your iPod—”

He turned around to swipe it off the desk. Then he unlocked the door, hesitated and turned to look at her. “I'm never coming back here. Ever.” He threw the door open with a crash and left.

“I'LL CALL HER
as soon as I get off with you,” Howard lied to Gretchen while he walked through the cars stalled on Fifth Avenue. He had no intention of talking to Amanda until he had some idea of how he was going to meet the next hurdle of this financial mess. Then he would be calmer and would call her. And after he successfully made it over this hurdle he would, he swore, sit down with Amanda and tell her everything.

His visit to the bank had badly shaken him. The personal banker who had been so nice while extending him large credit lines was no longer very nice. He told Howard he had to pay a big hunk of money by December twentieth or there was going to be tremendous trouble. When Howard explained there was a cash-flow problem that would soon work itself out, the personal banker said that's good, so Howard could pay something today out of the agency account at the bank, which currently had over three hundred thousand dollars in it.
Howard explained this was not his money, but money that belonged to his clients, and the personal banker sat back in his chair and said the account had the name of Hillings & Stewart on it, did it not? That it was his company, was it not? Howard quietly explained that if the personal banker touched a penny in that account he would see his personal ass in prison on charges of extortion and racketeering.

No, the meeting hadn't gone so well. Still, Howard had gotten an extension until the middle of January. Now he needed to get the Hillingses to examine the agency books before then.

He'd been walking the streets for hours now, trying to clear his head and get some sort of plan of action together. With the extension he should be able to scrape together the agency Christmas bonuses. His employees also expected to be paid for the week between Christmas and New Year's when the office would be closed. He had his family gifts to buy and the endless envelopes for their households' workers to fill with cash.

He entered the front door of The Pierre Hotel and headed for the bar. It took a minute for his eyes to adjust to the lighting but he spotted Kate Weston sitting around one of the low tables in an overstuffed chair. There was a glass of white wine and a glass of water in front of her. Kate had just been promoted from editor in chief to publisher of Bennett, Fitzallen & Coe. He kissed her hello, congratulated her again, and then apologized for being late. She told him he was not late, but in fact early, and Howard ordered the same as she was drinking, a glass of Chardonnay and a glass of ice water.

“Aren't the lights something?” Kate asked him once he was settled.

“What lights?” he complained, pushing his glasses higher and looking around. “I never can see a damn thing in here.”

She laughed. “I meant the Christmas lights, Howard. On Fifth Avenue.” She leaned forward. “Hello, Howard, are you there?”

He gave her a sheepish smile. She was an old friend. “Yeah, I'm here.”

She leaned a little closer. “I'm sorry I didn't like the novel you sent me. I hope you're not upset with me about it.”

“Of course not,” he said, picking some nuts out of the dish and popping them into his mouth. “Why would I be upset when I was counting on you to offer me three hundred and save me the time and trouble of having to go out to everybody with it?”

“It's not that it was badly written,” she said.

“So you said.” He washed the nuts down with the water.

“I'm sorry, Howard, but I just
hated
it. I didn't like the narrator and I hated reading it.”

Howard looked at her and then burst out laughing. He had to. What else could he do? “Thank you for such a highly detailed editorial review.”

She was laughing, too. “I just don't know what it was about her writing, but I had Mark read a few pages, too—”

She was married to Mark Fiducia, a prominent editor at another house.

“And I'm afraid it didn't go over very well with him, either.”

“There is a school of thought, you know,” Howard said, “that says your feelings of revulsion might indicate the presence of brilliant artistic talent.”

“Well, as long as she works her artistic talent somewhere else—”

They both cracked up again. He assumed Kate was as tired as he was. Everybody in publishing was tired all the time because nobody ever had a chance to read anything until night, which only kept the anxiety of everything everybody had left to do pricking the edge of any sleep they managed to get.

When Howard had quit his job as an editor he had imagined that running his own agency would mean more control over his time and workload. In a sense that had been true—so long as he wasn't very successful. As soon as his first book hit the bestseller list (which had been right away since it had been one of Gertrude Bristol's), the insanity had begun. And the thing was, if worked sucked now, he only had himself to blame, whereas in the old days at Gardiner & Grayson he had always had a slew of scapegoats to blame for wreaking havoc in his life.

Today was one of those days Howard hated his boss and wanted to quit.

“So let me tell you why I really wanted to see you,” Kate told him. “I'm desperate for a big book to sell at the London Book Fair. You represent Georgiana Hamilton-Ayres, don't

you?”

Georgiana Hamilton-Ayres was one of the most popular actresses in the world. Her mother had been a huge Hollywood sex symbol and her father was some kind of Scottish peer. Georgiana's childhood had been well-documented in the press since she was the object of a custody battle that lasted for years and involved all the best elements a drama could offer: beauty, wealth, power and sex, acts of implied depravity and acts of Parliament, glamorous Beverly Hills mansions and romantic Highland castles.

Georgiana grew up to be somewhat of a blond blue-eyed bombshell like her mother, except with a degree of class and acting ability her mother had never possessed. She was very successful as a movie actress early on and when she got married the general opinion was that Georgiana Hamilton-Ayres was showing amazing resiliency from her deeply troubled upbringing. Her mother was institutionalized because of the ravages
of drug and alcohol abuse, and her father was a famous eccentric whose estate now depended upon the kindness of his daughter to exist.

There had been some sort of scandal about Georgiana having an affair with a woman while shooting a movie and then her marriage blew up. It was unclear for a while what she was doing or who she was sleeping with. Then, out of the blue, she was linked with Alexandra Waring, the DBS News anchorwoman, and while the women readily acknowledged they were “best friends,” it seemed pretty clear they were lovers. That relationship seemed to be over now and Georgiana Hamilton-Ayres was supposed to be running around with a cameraman or something.

“Vaguely,” Howard said. “She wrote a storybook when she was seven years old that we still handle—”

“Which is still in print.”

He nodded. “Yes. So if you wanted to count that, then, yes—” He shrugged. “I suppose you can say I represent Georgiana Hamilton-Ayres.”

“But you know her. Right?”

He nodded. “Oh, yeah.”

“Because I want her to write her autobiography,” Kate said. “And I want you to convince her to do it and then sell it to me. There'd be a few stipulations in the contract about what she has to talk about in it—”

“Like what?”

“Her relationship with Alexandra Waring—”

“Oh, is that all,” he said sarcastically, reaching for his glass of wine.

“What it was like being shuttled between her father's castle in Scotland and her mother's home in Hollywood, her mother's movie sets and then, you know, just about her life since she's
been on her own. The movies, the costars, what she's learned about herself and life—”

“And she would want to write this
why?
” he asked skeptically.

“She told Spencer Hawes she was interested in doing it.”

Howard considered this. If anyone would know something like this it would be Spencer, who was married to a powerful tastemaker in the form of a glossy magazine publisher. “But I thought Spencer was leaving you guys.”

“He is. He and Verity have this deal to start up a new magazine in L.A.
New Yorker
gone Hollywood, or something. That's why he was talking to Georgiana about it and then brought the idea to me. Spencer gets exclusive first serial rights to the book and uses her as the cover for their premiere issue.”

“And how did I get to be so lucky as to be brought in on this?”

“Georgiana's changing agents, to Johnny Kohrbach's new group, which doesn't have a literary division. And Spencer and I both think you'd work very well with her.”

“I'm flattered, thank you. And tell him thank you.”

“Just get us what we want, Howard,” she laughed.

Howard sipped his wine, thinking. His eyes moved back to Kate. “So she really is interested in doing this? Airing her dirty laundry?”

“It doesn't have to be
dirty
laundry,” Kate said, “we just want her to address the fact that the laundry exists.”

Howard could feel the excitement building in him. “I can't imagine her family's going to be pleased about such a project.”

“Her mother's wet-brained and the earl's off his rocker and you know it will all be in done good taste. I mean look at the woman. She does whatever she wants and her fans only love her more.”

They raced on in their discussion and both made notes (although the lighting had been designed to discourage overt signs of business being conducted in this genteel atmosphere). Kate was talking a million on signing which would mean a one-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar commission right off the bat. It would be enough to break the logjam if he could just hold on that long. Of course he had to talk Georgiana into wanting him to represent her but it sounded as though Kate and Spencer Hawes had already done a lot of that work for him.

They left The Pierre and walked up to 72nd Street. “You're so lucky you got out when you did,” Kate said. “I'm already beginning to feel like the Moses of book publishing and I'm telling you, these tablets are getting heavy.”

He laughed.

“I'm serious. After Spencer leaves I'm wondering who I'm going to have left to talk to. For whatever faults he might have, Spencer's pretty good on the inherent challenges of making enough money to satisfy the owners and still publish books that you're proud of.”

“So where does Georgiana Hamilton-Ayres' autobiography fall?” he asked her.

“Hopefully somewhere in the middle.”

They walked on awhile, each in their own thoughts. “Do you ever think about coming back on this side, Howard?”

He stopped walking. “Are you kidding? You come to me about a three-and-a-half-million-dollar deal and then in the next breath ask me if I'd like to slash my income and be bullied and kicked around by a bunch of foreign owners?”

She sighed. “What's wrong with me, do you suppose, Howard, that I can't seem to leave it? Do something like you're doing?”

They started walking again. “Who's to say you won't be doing what I'm doing some day? In fact,” he added, looking
at her, “maybe that is something you and I should talk about down the road. You coming in with me.”

“Oh, don't tempt me!” she cried.

He pressed his shoulder slightly into hers. “I'm serious, Kate. Just keep it in mind. Between you and me, I'm looking to expand. To bring in one or two agents as partners. You know you'd be fabulous.” By the time he put Kate in a cab Howard was in better spirits. Even if Kate Weston never left Bennett, Fitzallen & Coe, it was nice to know she thought highly of him.

Though the night was cold Howard walked across Central Park toward home to think about things. If Georgiana were to write the book Kate wanted, it occurred to me him that DBS might not be too happy about it. He wondered if it might prove to be a little awkward with the Darenbrooks when he saw them. When he was on Central Park West he cut over to 89th Street to stop in for a quick cheeseburger at Captain Cook's. As he approached the door to the bar, Jason DiSantos came barreling out, nearly crashing into him. “Sorry,” Jason muttered, swerving away.

“Jason?”

The teenager turned around. He was obviously upset, but didn't say a word; he only stood there, breathing heavily.

“You need a coat, Jason,” Howard finally said.

“I'm okay,” Jason said and hurried off into the night.

Howard stuffed his gloves in his coat and hung it up. He slid onto a stool at the bar, plucked the small menu out of the holder and looked up to see that ESPN was on.

“Hey,” Celia said, coming over.

“Hi. I owe you an apology,” he said as he looked over the menu.

“For what?”

He looked up. “For my behavior on Thanksgiving. I was in a very strange frame of mind and shouldn't have done what I did.”