When the Stars Come Out (32 page)

mood as she left David’s office, it would have been “enthused.”

The second word would have been “petrified.”

She knew that old fuddy-duddy David Carlyle didn’t care too

much for her, and she really didn’t care. Whatever doubts he had

about her ability—so notable on his pudgy little face as he sat in judgment of her from behind the desk inherited from Daddy—

were his own business. Lindsay knew that she was competent, and

she had a healthy respect for her own abilities and creativity.

But, she wondered, why would the contemptuous editor entrust

her with such a high-profile PR campaign? Was there a trap door

here somewhere?

Yes, he had warned her about Kitty Randolph, but Lindsay dis-

missed that as the women-hating blather so typical of the gays.

Maybe Kitty
was
a bitch; if so, she had met her match in
this
publicist, and that was that.

So it was a great assignment . . . unless David Carlyle was setting her up to fail. As she walked determinedly south on Sixth Avenue,

she decided that she would not let herself fail. The Quinn Scott

public relations blitz would be so thorough, so professional, that even that woman-hating homo David Carlyle would have to be impressed. Without another thought, she banished the word “petrified”

from her brain and proceeded on, barreling through the crowds on

the sidewalk.

After all, she had work to do. A lot of work. Which meant that

she had no time to be nice to the people sharing her sidewalk.

Yes, she would show David Carlyle. By the time his book was re-

leased, Quinn Scott would be even more famous than he was forty

years earlier. And everyone would know that Lindsay Flynn had

done that for him.

Waiting impatiently for a light to change, she thought again about her flippant comment about booking him on
Oprah
. Well, why not?

Her audience was the right demographic—mature enough and lib-

W H E N T H E S T A R S C O M E O U T

213

eral enough to accept and embrace Quinn’s homosexuality—and the

ratings were still through the roof, after all these years. Better yet, one of Lindsay’s dear friends—she couldn’t quite remember his

name, but she was sure they considered each other dear friends—

worked there, and if she could find his card back at the office, she would give him a call.

Enthused
. Yes, she was enthused. This was the big one, and she was going to ride it all the way to the end of her career.

Three days later, even as
When the Stars Come Out
was rolling off the presses, a cell phone rang on a sun-filled patio in Bel-Air,

California. The phone’s owner, a tan, rather featureless man in his late forties, wearing white shorts and a white polo shirt, looked at it as it chirped, briefly considering if the call made it worth putting down his joint. Looking closer, he saw a 212 area code in the caller ID display, which meant it was a call from New York, which meant it was probably worth taking. It could be his broker, after all, and brokers took precedence in the volatile stock market of recent weeks.

He snuffed the joint out and, exhaling, answered on the fourth

ring, a split second before the caller would have been sent to voice mail.

“This is Dean.”

It wasn’t his broker. But he was glad he took the call anyway.

After signing off, he walked briskly into the house. He made a

beeline directly for the sunroom, where he knew she would be sit-

ting, reading some dreadful script that she had convinced herself

would make mountains of money.

“Yes?” she said, looking up at him over the rims of the reading

glasses perched halfway down her nose. He thought she looked

much younger than her seventy years, but, then again, that was one of the reasons he liked to get high when she was headquartered at

home.

“Interesting news,” he said. “Guess who’s trying to get booked

on
Oprah
?”

“I don’t have time for this, Dean,” she said, returning her atten-

tion to the script.

“Quinn.”

She looked up again, confused. “Q. J.? I don’t understand . . .”

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R o b B y r n e s

He shook his head. “Not Q. J.
Quinn
. Your ex-husband.”

Kitty Randolph stood and made her five-foot-one frame stretch

until she looked eight feet tall.

“How do you know this?”

He smiled. “Because
your
production company pays out lots of nice little annual stipends to a lot of people in the industry, precisely so we don’t get blindsided by things like this. And in this case, our guy at
Oprah
got the call.”

“Why?” she demanded, fire in her aqua eyes. “Why would Quinn

want to go on
Oprah
?”

Dean shrugged. “You know the rumors, Kitty. That auto-

biography . . .”

“I thought we stopped that.”

“The lawyers threatened. It didn’t work.” Over the seventeen

years of their May-December marriage, he had learned how to con-

vey absolutely nothing in his voice when she was riled. It was safer that way. “But this one, well . . .”

“It was supposed to go away!” She knocked the script off the

table. “His biography was supposed to have gone away!”

“I guess he didn’t get the message.”

“We told them we’d sue, didn’t we?” Dean nodded. “So why are

they doing this? Do they think I was bluffing?”

“You were,” he said, sticking his neck out by telling the truth.

She shot him a contemptuous glare. “Don’t talk to me like that,

Dean Henry.”

“Sorry, Kitty.”

She began pacing across the oriental rug. “You should call the

lawyers back,” she said. “And then . . . I want his balls.”

Dean rolled his eyes, a gesture he only dared because her back

was to him. Still, she seemed to sense it, and turned to face him.

“Did you say something?”

“No, dear.” He paused, then added, “But the lawyers, well . . .

you realize that they don’t think they can win, don’t you?”

“I don’t care. I want them to sue.”

“It’s more publicity for Quinn.”

“It’s
defamation
!” she screamed. “He is trying to
defame
me!”

“We don’t know that.”

“Good Lord, Dean, use your goddamn head! He’s going to write

that he’s gay! What else could he have to write about!”

W H E N T H E S T A R S C O M E O U T

215

“Uh . . . well, that’s true.”

“Exactly.”

“No, I mean it’s true that he’s gay. So how is that defamatory to

you?”

She tilted her head and spoke slowly, as if trying to explain a

complex concept to a child. “It’s defamatory because he’s going to say that I married a gay man. Which makes me look stupid. And

naïve. And . . . and it’s defamatory because he’s going to make the world think that the same dick that was inside Kitty Randolph was

also inside men’s asses! Goddamn it, Dean, what are you not under-

standing here?!” With that, she kicked the script, which slid inelegantly across the rug and onto the marble floor.

Dean closed his eyes, hoping to remove Kitty’s peculiar mental

image from his head.

“Kitty,” he continued, eyes still closed. “If Quinn’s memoirs are

factual, the lawyers say there’s nothing they can do. They tried to threaten his publisher, and that didn’t work. Following through

isn’t going to do anything except give him more publicity, which is the last thing you want.”

“You’re all pathetic,” she said, brushing past him as she made

her way to the circular staircase just outside the sunroom’s French doors. “You, the lawyers, all of you:
pathetic
!”

His voice betraying frustration, Dean called after her as she

began to mount the stairs.

“What do you want us to do, Kitty?”

“Never mind,” she said, disappearing from his sight around the

curve of the staircase. “If the most expensive team of lawyers in

California can’t make this go away, I’ll take this to a higher level.”

“Meaning?”

He saw her head peer over the railing, seventeen feet above him.

“
Meaning
that I’m going to take care of this myself.”

When she was gone, Dean frowned. Then he walked back out to

the patio, because it was suddenly the perfect time to get high.

Six days later, New Yorkers were celebrating a rare, temperate

Tuesday in early August. With the atmosphere free of oppressive

heat and humidity, David Carlyle decided to walk to work, and, as

he did, he realized he was in one of his best moods ever.

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R o b B y r n e s

Although he had worked at PMC for more years than he cared

to admit, David had never seen a new release rolled out with such

heightened security. The only description that the publisher’s fall catalog had given was “an explosive memoir and instant bestseller”

scheduled for a September 2006 release, and the company had

even taken pains not to send out advance review copies. When

Quinn Scott’s biography hit the shelves, few in the industry would have more than a couple of day’s notice.

Ideally, he would have liked to have had months to promote it.

But Kitty Randolph’s lawyers had at least succeeded in tightening

the PMC veil of silence.
When the Stars Come Out
was strictly embar-goed, and all players—even, to the best of his knowledge, the loath-some Lindsay Flynn—were doing an extraordinary job of keeping

their mouths shut.

As David strolled casually down Sixth Avenue, late for an ap-

pointment and not really caring, he would certainly have been a bit more concerned had he known that, in addition to
Oprah
, Lindsay had already gotten a jump on her PR efforts by reaching out to virtually every television show that featured guests, including a UFO-oriented late-night cable access show. She was proud of her

industriousness; he would have been less pleased.

But his good mood held all the way until he reached the revolv-

ing doors and entered the building housing Palmer/Midkiff/ Carlyle, at which point he remembered that his first appointment—with

Noah Abraham, for which he was already late—would be pleasant

enough, but it would be followed by what could only be described

as pure hell. And then he wondered why he didn’t just retire.

When the elevator doors opened, David strode purposefully

down the aisle separating row upon row of cubicles, en route to his private office tucked at the far end of the suite of offices. At the end of the aisle, he saw Noah waiting for his 10:00 appointment. It was 10:15.

“I apologize for the delay,” David said, motioning Noah in to his

office. As they sat, the editor began fussing absentmindedly with

stacks of paperwork on his desk, moving sheets from pile to pile,

then back again, with no real purpose except to convey general

busyness. “And I also apologize in advance that our meeting will

have to be cut short. Trust me, I am not looking forward to that.

But one of my authors is in town, and she’s going to be in a very

W H E N T H E S T A R S C O M E O U T

217

bad mood. As usual. I’m afraid my Tuesday morning will be spent

getting kicked in the teeth.”

“Your metaphors are so colorful.”

David arched an eyebrow. “Metaphor? Oh, how I wish.” He

reshuffled the papers again and said, “Now, what’s on your mind?

How are you and Quinn feeling about the book?”

“Quinn’s, well . . . He’s been getting . . . funny.”

David didn’t like the sound of that. “Funny?”

“I talked to Lindsay Flynn on the phone—”

“Oh good. She talked to you.”

“Yeah. Anyway, she said something about a book tour?”

David tried to remember if he had promised Quinn a book

tour. He didn’t think he had, and if Lindsay had taken the initia-

tive, well . . . she shouldn’t have done that.

“I have to admit,” he confessed, “that I don’t recall.”

“She said something about twelve cities?”

Twelve cities? Oh, no, David would have remembered
that
.

“Uh, I think Lindsay is getting ahead of herself,” David said. “I

may be able to work a few things out, but PMC doesn’t normally

send authors on tour.”

Noah bit his lip. “Oh.”

“Is there a problem?”

“Well . . .” Noah took a deep breath. “First, let me say that he’s been very pleased with all the support you’ve given him.”

David glanced at his watch, and, sounding more abrupt than he

meant to, said, “Get to the point.”

“He sort of has his heart set on a book tour.”

David sighed. “I’ll see what I can do. Maybe New York-Philly-

Boston.”

“Um . . .” Noah knew this was going to be awkward, but he also

knew if he didn’t raise the issue now, it would probably come back to haunt him in the future. “Actually, he was sort of hoping to get more than twelve cities.”

David laughed at the absurdity. It was one thing to take Lindsay’s ridiculous promises seriously, and quite another to want to build

on them.

“This is the same man who a year ago wanted nothing to do with

a biography?” Noah nodded. “Good Lord. I swear, half the time I

think writers have bigger egos than actors.”

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R o b B y r n e s

“And he’s both.”

“Indeed.” David paused for a moment, thinking over the latest

development. “So why the sea change in his attitude?”

“Now that he’s dictated his life, refreshed his memory . . . well, he thinks he has a story to tell.”

“He does,” David agreed. “And it’s a story available to everyone