The Agency (36 page)

I COULDN’T STAND
to be there anymore. Not for another minute. Not for another second. I flew past the security guard in the hallway, who shouted after me. I ignored the stares of the agents and assistants at their desks and bolted for the rear stairwell that led out of the building. This was the end. I had no intention of setting foot inside the Bardwright Agency again.

On the ground floor, I crashed through the alley door and wandered into the London streets, blind with rage and humiliation. Black cabs blared their horns at me. The day was dark and threatening, and a smoggy, stinky haze filled the air. In a fog of depression, I followed Charing Cross into Trafalgar Square, where I collapsed on the steps of the National Gallery and buried my face in my hands. There were hardly any tourists wandering in the square that afternoon. Just me and the hundreds of pigeons and the awful clouds.

Darcy.

I knew I hadn’t made a mistake. There was no other way to piece together the puzzle of what had happened. Darcy had sent
me the coat as bait. He had lured me to the Hilton, and Jane Parmenter had waited for me there in front of ten thousand cameras. I had played right into all their hands.

Worst of all, the son of a bitch had let me make love to him one last time. It would have been better to leave me with an empty hotel room and a note that read, “The joke’s on you.”

Part of me never wanted to talk to him again, but I had to hear him admit it to me. I had to hear the words from his own mouth. If he stabbed my love in the heart, maybe it would finally die. I took out my cell phone and punched in his number. I wondered if he would duck the call, knowing it was me, knowing that I knew the truth. But he answered.

“Hello, Tess,” Jack said.

God, that voice. I hated myself that it still twisted my insides.

He didn’t pretend. He wanted me to hear his regret, how sorry he was. As if that changed anything. As if it mattered to me that he felt bad.

“You bastard,” I spat into the phone. “You goddamned bastard. How could you let them do that to me? How could you be part of it?”

“Tess,” he began, but I wasn’t finished with him. Not by a long shot.

“Did you think I was kidding? Do you think I say that to every man I fall into bed with? I loved you, Jack. I never let myself be vulnerable with anyone, and I did it with you. I laid it all on the line. And what did you do? You played me. You lied to me. You let me think you gave a damn about me.”

“I did. I do. I wasn’t lying, Tess.”

“Oh, go fuck yourself, Jack. Don’t tell me you didn’t know. Don’t pretend you weren’t a pawn. Cosima told you exactly what to do, and you did it.”

“Please let me explain.”

“Explain what? How you let me make a fool of myself? Did you and Cosima have a good laugh about that?”

“God, Tessie, it wasn’t like that at all. You make it sound like I had a choice. Cosima knew. I don’t know how she found out, but
she knew all about us. She confronted me last week and gave me an ultimatum. If I didn’t help her, I would have lost everything.”

“You had a choice, Jack. You always did. You could have left her.”

I heard him breathing. He struggled for something to say, some way to protect himself. I realized for the first time that he was a coward. I had been in love with a fantasy, something out of
Pride and Prejudice
. There was no Darcy. There was just Jack, a slave with golden handcuffs, whose tailored suits and expensive cologne were more important to him than me.

Admit it, Jack, I wanted to say. Admit I was nothing to you.

“I wish I was as strong as you are, Tess,” he said in a quiet voice. “But I’m not. I don’t have it in me to start over. I made a devil’s choice with my life a long time ago. You knew that. I told you from the beginning.”

I didn’t feel strong at all. I felt hollowed out. I felt like vultures were picking away at what was left of me. Even so, he was right. I should never have expected him to be more than he was. I had built him in my mind out of soft clay.

“Please believe me, I had no idea what she was planning,” he went on when I was silent. “She didn’t tell me. I never thought she would be so … so vicious.”

“Do you think that makes you innocent?”

“No.”

“If she had told you what she was going to do, would you have done anything different? If you knew she was going to destroy me, would you have cared? Would you have suddenly found some glimmer of decency in that selfish fucking heart of yours?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’d like to think so.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Jack. The answer is no.”

“Tess, it won’t mean anything to hear how sorry I am, but I want to say—”

I cut him off. “Don’t bother. Don’t try to make yourself feel better. I only want to know one thing. Did Cosima tell you exactly what to put in your note, Jack? Was it her idea for you to tell me you loved me? That was the biggest lie of all, wasn’t it?”

He didn’t answer. That was answer enough for me.

“Make sure I never see you again, Jack,” I said.

I slapped my phone shut. I pressed my hand against my chest because the air was coming in raggedly, as if my body were rejecting each breath. It takes a lot to wound me. I keep the walls around me pretty tall and thick. I use my little jokes to make believe I don’t care, but I do. My walls were rubble now, broken down, nothing but ruins. I cried again, and I hated myself for it. I hated giving them the satisfaction of beating me so completely.

I don’t know how long I sat on the steps. An hour, maybe. The day went on, getting darker. Eventually, I got up and walked with no destination in mind, wandering through the square and along the path to St. James’s Park. Buckingham Palace was ahead of me, all formal and forbidding. I thought about stopping at the gate to tell Liz that this was her fault, hers and the prime minister of Tuvalu. If they hadn’t blocked traffic that fall day, I would never have gone into Hyde Park, would never have met Jack, would never have turned him into Darcy. The walls would still be barricaded around my heart.

Oh, but who am I kidding? I always have someone else to blame. I’m where I am because of three people. Me, myself, and I.

My phone rang. I took it out and checked the caller ID and saw it was a reporter from
The Guardian
. Good news travels fast, and bad news travels even faster. I thought about skipping the call, but it was time to face the music.

“Hello, Gerald,” I said, putting on my cheery voice. The voice that says all is right with the world.

He wasn’t fooled at all. “Tess Drake. Rumor is you just got the ax at Bardwright. Say it ain’t so.”

I drew in my breath and prepared to fight. I wasn’t really ready for this, but life doesn’t wait until you’re ready. “Cosima can call it whatever she wants. I don’t care. The fact is, I’ve been planning to leave Bardwright for weeks. I’m opening my own agency.”

“I can print that?”

“Yes, you can print that. Print it in big bold letters. Today is the first official day of business for the Drake Media Agency.”

He had the good manners not to laugh in my face. “Except I hear your client roster is a little thin, Tess. You lost everyone to Queen Cosima, didn’t you? Including the big fish, right? I understand that Dorothy Starkwell dumped you over that stupid photo. Bad call, wearing the fur coat.”

I could have told him I was set up. I could have told him about my conspiracy theories. Hell, I could have dropped hints about Lowell and foul play and a disappearing actress named Jane who must have been paid cold hard cash. There was a juicy story in all of that. But I wasn’t playing the game. I was done with dancing to other people’s music.

“Damn right,” I confessed. “That was stupid of me. You know me, Gerald—I’ve done stupid things and done them proudly. But that was my number one mistake, and I managed to do it in front of the whole world. All I can do is learn from it and move on.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I already told you, Gerald. I’m opening the agency. It starts today. Clients welcome.”

“What about money? Don’t you need money for that kind of thing?”

God, yes. But I didn’t say that.

“If you worry about everything you don’t have before you do something, you’ll never do anything,” I told him.

“Well, good luck, Tess,” Gerald said.

“Thanks. I’ll need it.”

I hung up. Fifteen seconds later, the phone rang again. It was
The Sun
this time. Five minutes later,
The Independent
. Then
The Bookseller
.
The Daily Mail
. The
Mirror
. I talked to all of them, and I told them the same thing. I was on my own and open for business. I’m sure no one swallowed my line. They would announce my downfall in the headlines tomorrow, but I didn’t care. I wanted to scream it to the world. Today, right now, Tess Drake is responsible for Tess Drake, and no one can do a thing to me if I don’t let them.

Big words. Big talk. It covered up the reality that I was scared to death. Scared and alone.

When I was sick of talking to reporters, I silenced my phone and sat down on a bench. I had been walking and talking for so long that I didn’t even know where I was, and when I looked around me, I realized I had marched all the way to Hyde Park. I was on a bench near the Serpentine. My ego must have drawn me here as a cruel joke, as a reminder of the day I had met Jack. It seemed like a lifetime ago, and it was. I had lived and died an entire lifetime since then. The question was whether, like a cat, I had a few more lives left in me.

From the bench, I stared up into the sky. At that moment, just to add insult to injury, the clouds decided to open up and pee down rain. Everyone else had the good sense to get out of the downpour or put up an umbrella, but I sat there and let it soak me to the skin. My multicolored hair lay plastered on my face. My drippy makeup turned me into a clown.

The people who walked by, huddled underneath their nylon bubbles, looked at me as if I were crazy. They were probably right. I guess you have to be crazy to be in this business at all. I guess you have to be crazy to have an affair and fall in love. All you can do is laugh when it bites you in the arse.

So I laughed.

Laughed and laughed and laughed until, when I finally stopped, I began crying again.

It turns out Saleema was right after all. She told me I would wind up sitting in the rain, wondering how I fucked up my life so badly. And here I was. I could pretend for the newspapers, but, honestly, I didn’t know what I was going to do. We all think we’re invincible, and it sucks when life reminds us that we’re not. I thought about how I got from there to here and how things had gone so badly off course. I reflected on my life since that first morning, sitting on the bus and hearing that Lowell was dead, and I asked myself if I would be better off if I could punch rewind and go back to that moment and start over.

If you could correct all your stupid mistakes, would you do it? Or are we the sum of everything we do wrong?

My BlackBerry buzzed. Even when I silence my phone, Emma
can reach me in an emergency by sending me a text message. Today, however, my definition of an emergency was pretty fluid. I ignored her message and sat there feeling sorry for myself.

I thought about calling Saleema. Partly to tell her she was right, because I knew she’d appreciate the irony. Partly to ask her for a job or to suggest that the two of us do what we had dreamed of doing all along—set up shop across the pond, Drake and Azah, a transcontinental agency. Partly just to feel like, if I asked for help, someone would toss me a life ring and reel me in. I didn’t do it, of course. It was too soon. I had misjudged Saleema along with everyone else, and, once again, I had no one to blame but the wet girl on the bench.

My BlackBerry buzzed again.

Leave me alone, Emma.

I took stock of my situation, which was a mistake, because I realized the state of my world was even more dire than it looked on the surface. I live hand-to-mouth like everyone else. A few bucks on the dole wasn’t going to pay my rent. What did Sally say? You can cherish your ideals for a while, but in the end, it’s all about money. Gerald said the same thing. What about money? I thought about Oliver, teetering on the brink of starvation from day to day, and wondered how he found the courage to wake up every morning. Of course, some days, he thought life wasn’t worth the trade-off for his misery. I never wanted to sink so low.

I stared at the rain sheeting down across the Serpentine.

I thought about calling Dorothy. Partly to grovel and ask for forgiveness. She might even say yes. Partly to yell at her that she could blame me for a few dead minks, but she was wrong to let my one mistake outweigh everything else I’ve done for her. Most of the good she’s been able to do in this world is because of me. Her audience. Her wealth. Thanks to me.

And, by the way, I’ll wear any damn coat I want.

But I didn’t call. It was over.

I thought about calling Oliver. Or Guy. Or the clients who had sold me out. I didn’t call any of them. Not yet. I didn’t want pity or pep talks or excuses. All I wanted was to get back to basics. To do
my job. It sounds crazy, but I’ve always believed that I was put on this earth as a go-between for the people who have something to say. I’m the woman who gives talented people their day in the sun. I can’t sing. I can’t dance. I can’t crunch numbers. I can’t even remember who I’m meeting for lunch on Friday. But I can make deals.

Which I can do from the back table at Caffè Nero if I have to. Who needs money?

Buzz, buzz, buzz.

Oh, for God’s sake, Emma.

I extracted my BlackBerry, and, sure enough, there was a text message waiting for me from Emma. Well, fourteen of them, actually. I didn’t need to open the messages, because I could see the lineup on the screen, and they all said the same thing.

TURN ON YOUR DAMN PHONE.

So I did.

It occurred to me that if news of my demise had made the rounds of the media, it had made its way to my father at
The Times
. He wanted to talk to me. I really wasn’t in the mood for paternal sympathy, but if he wanted to call, so be it.