“Instead of Heckle?” Gina shook her head. “I could never tell them apart.”
“No, instead of Hyde.”
“I thought Hyde was the monster.”
“Take a close look at Jekyll sometime,” Tess said. “Especially if there’s money and a promotion involved.”
“Maybe you should give him another chance,” Gina said. “I mean, he’s really interested in you—” she stopped as Tess gave her a look of contempt “—well, at least part of the time, and last night must have been pretty spectacular or you wouldn’t care what he was, and you like his car, too.” Gina shrugged. “I’d go for it.”
Tess looked at her in disbelief. “Life is more than great sex and a nice car.”
“Well, yeah. But not a lot more.”
Tess glared at Gina in startled indignation, only to find her grinning at her. It was the first smile she’d seen on Gina since they’d come to Kentucky, so she smiled back, relieved that Gina was showing signs of recovering.
“You’re a nice woman, DaCosta,” Tess said, putting her arm around Gina. “But we have to work on your depth. You have none.”
“I’m practicing to be a yuppie.” Gina’s grin faded. “Not that I’ll ever be one.”
Tess frowned. “Listen, I meant it when I told you that the thing at dinner did not matter, but I’ve also got to tell you that lusting after Park Patterson is a bad idea.”
“I know,” Gina said. “Don’t worry about me. You got enough trouble of your own to handle.”
“This is true,” Tess said, and they both turned back to the house, sunk in gloom.
Lunch was not good.
The food, of course, was impeccable, since Henderson had been in charge of that part. But not even Henderson could have saved the conversation between Nick and Tess.
“Just tell me what I did wrong,” Nick said under his breath, trying to look unconcerned so no one would catch on they were fighting.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Tess said.
“If you don’t talk about it, I’ll probably do it again. Although I’m damned if I see what’s so bad about making love to you all night.”
“It wasn’t the night. It was the morning,” Tess said.
“We didn’t make love this morning.”
“Right,” Tess said. “Pass the salt.”
“If you want to make love, just say so. I’m not a mind reader.”
“I didn’t want to make love. Well, actually I did, but that’s not it.”
“Well, then what?”
“Troubles, Jamieson?” Welch called from the other end of the table.
“Not at all,” Nick called back, smiling. “Just enjoying another great meal, sir.”
“You are disgusting,” Tess said to Nick.
“What did I do?” Nick asked, but she turned away from him to talk to the man next to her.
TESS MANAGED TO KEEP the chill on through lunch and up to the reading, but then her curiosity got the better of her. In the living room, Henderson had set up rows of carved walnut chairs, their seats covered in navy-and-brown tapestry, so that the place looked like a lecture hall done by Architectural Digest. The chairs were filling up with people who had clout and prestige and really good tailors, leaving Tess to puzzle over why Welch had chosen these guests. They were so upscale, so obviously unlike him, yet he was gruffly pleased to see them there. The only thing she could come up with was that he was courting them so that they’d push his book, an unlikely motive for a literary icon.
“Does Welch need these people?” Tess asked Nick, forgetting that she was mad at him.
“Honey, everybody needs these people,” Nick said. “There are two senators and a governor here.”
Tess frowned. “I know that. What does that have to do with literature?”
“Nothing.” Nick frowned in thought, and Tess knew he was moving into analytical gear. “I think it’s about public relations. I think Welch wants to move beyond writing. I’ve been watching him all weekend, and I think he’s going after a political career. He was talking to Tricia Sigler about Decker at lunch today, and that’s a high-profile place, a lot of powerful parents send their kids there, and he’s been very tight with Bob O’Donnell all weekends—”
“Bob O’Donnell?”
“Republican party honcho here in Kentucky,” Nick said. “I think Welch sees himself as a right-wing standard-bearer. And you know, it’s not a dumb idea. It’s not a bad time for a neoconservative to make a move. There’s some backlash building up against the Democratic administration. And he’s still fairly young. Plenty of time to start a political career. A Senate seat would be a good move for him.” Nick relaxed back into his chair. “Which also takes care of the other mystery, now that I come to think of it. Park told me that Welch doesn’t like his father, Kent Patterson, and never has, so why is he wining and dining us?”
“Why?” Tess asked, totally confused.
“Because Kent has clout in the social circles that Welch needs if he wants to get elected,” Nick said promptly. “Kent knows people with money who would like Welch’s politics. Kent may be a lousy lawyer, but he knows how to network. So Welch invited Park and me down here to see if we have the brains to do some minimal law work for him. Then he can give us a contract to make the connection with Kent.” Nick shook his head in admiration. “You know, I’m starting to like Welch a lot better.”
“I’m starting to like him a lot less,” Tess said. “All this sucking up. What happened to the good old days when rich white men just bought their way into office?”
“Inflation,” Nick said. “Nobody’s that rich anymore.” He smiled at Tess. “You know, I owe you for this weekend. Welch really likes you, and that’s made points for me.” He patted Tess on the shoulder, and she made a disgusted face at him. “No, I really mean it. I watched the two of you at lunch. He likes the hard time you give him as much as you like giving it to him. I’d be jealous except I know you’re crazy about me.”
“That was last night, this is today,” Tess said, but he grinned at her confidently. She looked away just in time to see Welch come into the room for the reading.
He was imposing as he took his stand behind the massive walnut podium that Henderson had placed at one end of the room, and when he began to speak in general on the ravages that liberalism and feminism had wrought on the country, it was obvious that he was speaking to a mostly receptive audience. It was also obvious that Nick, as usual, was right on the money. Welch was prepping for a move into politics.
“I don’t like this,” Gina whispered to her.
“I know,” Tess whispered back. “I know.”
“If you listen to those people,” Welch was saying, “you’d think life was just a fairy tale where everybody is good and honest and things turn out happily ever after. But you know, I always had my doubts about those happily-ever-afters. Anne Sexton isn’t the only one who wondered about what happened when the chickens came home to roost.” He chuckled and then caught Tess’s eye. She stuck out her tongue at him, and he chuckled again, but this time there seemed to be a nervous edge to his laugh.
“So my book is about what happens after the happily-ever-after,” Welch said. “Which is why it’s called After the Ever After. The prologue is a fairy tale about a young woman who comes of age in the sixties. Her name is Cinderellen—” the audience tittered politely “—and she buys into happily-ever-after in a big way. This is the end of the tale.”
Then Welch began to read a scene in which his heroine stood up at the ball and made a speech defending the importance of the environment over big business, a speech that instantly won the heart of the prince, and Tess’s heart stopped. It wasn’t just the snide tone Welch used —a tone that made people in the audience first smile in sardonic amusement and then laugh in outright derision— it was the words, words that were so familiar to her that she recited them silently in unison with Welch as he read, finishing with: “And from then on Cinderellen and the prince looked for the good
in every day and tried to make sure they had a part in creating some of it.”
That got a big laugh, and Tess felt the room swoop around her as her whole body went hot with anger. He was telling the CinderTess story, Lanny’s story, and he was making people laugh at it. It was her story, and he was degrading it, degrading her and everything she believed in. She was so rigid with suppressed rage that Nick turned to see what was wrong.
“Tess?” he whispered.
She shook her head, trying to marshal her thoughts.
Welch then segued into Cinderellen’s story thirty years later. She was swamped with debts, dragged down by the poor people she was trying to help, unable to keep her small family business going because of environmental restrictions and saddled with a prince who had turned out to be a vapid do-gooding fool. As the audience nodded, enjoying the expected disasters that had befallen the naive heroine, Tess reminded herself to take deep breaths, to concentrate, to do anything to control the rising anger that swamped her because of what Welch was doing to her story.
To Lanny’s story.
“I’m going to kill him,” she whispered under her breath, which prompted Nick to shush her.
Welch finished the scene with Cinderellen’s emancipation speech: she was mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. Then Welch stopped reading to sketch in Cinderellen’s transformation. She streamlined her company by laying off workers and saved a bundle by not helping the poor, but that wasn’t enough. She went to the best plastic surgeon in the land and had him transform her back into the beauty she’d been at the ball. Then she set out to tell her story again. Only this time, she was going to do it right, using all her feminine wiles. The last scene he read was a comic seduction scene in which Cinderellen used her newly recovered beauty to seduce the head of the Environmental Protection Agency into exempting her company from environmental controls, manipulating him with a speech on the importance of business over the environment as she slithered first over his desk and then his body. As a piece of satire it was dead-on, a perfect parody of Cinderellen’s original speech. People were falling off their chairs laughing.
Tess was catatonic with rage.
“What’s wrong?” Nick leaned closer as people applauded at the end of the reading. “Are you all right?”
“No.” Tess turned to him. “We have to stop him. He can’t publish this book.”
“Tess,” Nick said warningly. “You are not going to interfere. It’s his book.”
“No, it’s not. He plagiarized.”
Nick closed his eyes. “No. Don’t tell me this.”
Tess shook her head. “He plagiarized. I know that story. It’s not his.”
“ALL RIGHT.” Nick shut the door to Welch’s study behind Tess and Park and Gina. “Explain this to me.”
Tess cast one blindly incurious look around the room, registering expensive paneling, Oriental carpets, a huge leather-and-brass sofa and soulless sets of leather-bound books on walnut bookcases with glass fronts. Money, she thought. It always comes back to money.
“Tess?” Nick prompted.
“He plagiarized,” she replied. “That prologue about Cinderellen? He stole it. Word for word, the whole thing. He stole it.”
“Why would anybody plagiarize that garbage?” Nick asked. “It was god-awful. The good stuff came later. I just hope the critics make it through the early garbage to get to the good stuff.”
“You’re not listening to me,” Tess said. “It’s never going to get to the critics. He plagiarized, and I’m going to stop him.”
“No!” Nick and Park said simultaneously, and Gina said softly, “Oh, no.” Then Nick pushed Tess down into the padded leather desk chair and sat down on the desk in front of her.
“That would not be a good idea,” he said.
“Why not?” Tess demanded.
Park snorted. “Because there’s a lot of money at stake here, that’s why not.”
Nick held up his hand. “Will you let me handle this?” he said to Park. “Please?” He turned back to Tess. “It’s like this. We’re guests in this man’s house, and now you want to accuse him of plagiarism. I know you’ll find this hard to understand, but it doesn’t seem appropriate under the circumstances.”
“The hell with appropriate,” Tess said. “This is a moral issue. No, it’s more than a moral issue. It’s my life he’s trashing. It’s everything Lanny ever gave me, and I’m going to confront him.”
“Confront me with it first,” Nick said.
“Do not let her talk you into this,” Park warned.
Tess appealed to Park. “Doesn’t the fact that he stole part of that book make any difference to you? You’re a lawyer. You’re supposed to uphold the law.”
“That’s the police,” Park said. “Don’t get us confused. We make a lot more money. And we’re going to keep on making a lot more money if you keep your mouth shut about plagiarism.”
“I don’t believe this,” Tess said. “You want him to get away with it.”
“Wait a minute,” Nick said. “We don’t even know what he’s getting away with. Explain.”
“Oh, great,” Park said.
Tess shot him a dirty look, then concentrated on Nick. “When I was about eight, we lived on a commune near Yellow Springs. Here in Ohio.”
“I know where Yellow Springs is,” Nick said. “Go on.”
“Bunch of hippies,” Park put in.
“It was a nice commune,” Tess flared. “Anyway, one day not too long after we got there, this guy showed up.” She bit her lip, the hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach growing as she remembered how special Lanny had been and how Welch had just raped his story. “He was really wonderful,” she said. “He was probably in his early twenties. A big husky guy.” She smiled. “I thought he was a mountain. Big and broad with long brown hair and a big brown beard. Big ears. Everything about him was bigger than life.”
“Great,” Nick said. “Get to the point.”
“His name was Lanny.”
“Is this important?” Park asked. “Because Gina and I are missing cocktails.”
“Shut up, Park,” Nick said.
“He told me that same story,” she said. “The prologue story. Word for word, it’s Lanny’s story.”
“And you remember it thirty years later?” Nick asked. “Come on.”
“He told it to me over and over again the whole summer,” Tess said. “Every time he told it, he added something, another task the heroine had to do, another problem she had to solve, and it got to be really long. When he left at the end of the summer, he wrote it all down for me, and Elise used to read parts of it to me every night for the two years we lived there. I know big chunks of it by heart.” She glared up at Nick. “And your great American author was reading that same story. I could recite parts of it with him. He stole that story.”
“Who’s Elise?” Nick asked, confused.
“My mother.”
“And she read you a story about this Ellen?” Park said. “I don’t believe it.”
“No. My story was about CinderTess.”
Park rolled his eyes.
“Lanny wrote that story for me,” Tess said to Nick, ignoring Park. “And Welch stole it, and I’m going to—”
“Are you sure, Tess?” Nick said. “This is serious.”
“I told you,” Tess said. “He wrote it for me. It was my story. And at the end Lanny always said, ‘And CinderTess and the prince always looked for the best in every day and made sure they had a part in creating some of it’” She stared up at Nick defiantly. “And that’s exactly how Welch ended that part he read to us.”
“Could be the same,” Nick said reluctantly. “So you’re saying that Welch is using parts of the same story.”
“No,” Tess said. “He’s using all of the same story. Word for word. And even worse, he’s making fun of it. He’s making my story sound stupid and...” She caught her breath and tried to slow herself down. “Look, the CinderTess story was important to me.
In fact, sometimes I think it had more impact on me than my parents did. I know Lanny did.” She stopped and looked at Nick, her jaw tight with determination. “I know it sounds childish to you, but basically Lanny taught me how to live my life with that story, and I’m not going to let some aging neoconservative with writer’s block turn it into an antifeminist tirade. I’m going to talk to Welch.”
“Wait a minute.” Nick folded his arms and stared down at her with disgust. “Let me get this straight. The reason you’re always rushing in to save the world is that this guy told you a fairy tale?”
“Didn’t you have any book when you were a kid that affected you like that?” Tess asked. “You know, like The Velveteen Rabbit? Love is what makes you real?”
“People should be more careful about what they read to their kids,” Park said. “Some of this stuff sounds dangerous.”
“Well, kids just don’t get caught up in the Wall Street Journal, Park,” Tess snapped. “They tend to be deeper than adults.” She turned back to Nick. “But the important thing is that he’s taken the story and turned it inside out. It’s as if he’d rewritten The Little Engine That Could so that it couldn’t.”
“I had that book,” Park said.
“I did, too,” Gina said.
Park smiled down at Gina. “That was a good one, wasn’t it?”
“Exactly!” Tess said before Gina could mention any other childhood favorites. She glared at Park. “Wouldn’t you be angry if somebody stole that book and made the train fail?”
Park looked startled. “Well, yes. But that’s not—”
“Well, that’s why I’m angry,” Tess said... “He didn’t just steal Lanny’s story, he made it sound... stupid. Foolish.”
“It was stupid,” Nick said.
“No, it wasn’t. Not if you were a little kid. It still isn’t if you have any values at all.”
“Oh, hell, don’t start,” Nick said. “Let me think about this.”
Park sat down beside him on the edge of the desk. “Don’t bother.” He turned to Tess. “This was a handwritten manuscript, right? Not published in any way?”
Strange Bedpersons Page 9
