Mr. Love: A Romantic Comedy

by Sally Mason

  “Dead serious,” he says, sinking down onto the couch.

  Bitsy sits again, her eyes wide.

  “I never thought you had it in you to write something so . . . passionate.”

  He shrugs, “Well, there you go. Dark horses and all that.”

  “It’s doing terribly well, isn’t it?”

  “Selling up a storm.”

  “Gordon, how wonderful for you.”

  “Us.”

  “Huh?”

  “Wonderful for us, Bitsy. Fret not, you will share in my good fortune.”

  “Just help a little with the expenses, Gordon. That’s all I expect.”

  “No Bitsy, I want you to have twenty-five percent of whatever Ivy makes.”

  She stares at him.

  “That’s wildly generous, Gordon. I could never accept that.”

  “You’ll be earning it, Bitsy, don’t worry.”

  “How?”

  He stands and paces the room, running a hand through his hair.

  This is it.

  The crunch.

  “You’ll understand that as a serious, literary author, I couldn’t be seen to be writing this kind of lesser fiction?”

  “But that’s why you so cleverly used an alias, surely?”

  “To access the print deal and to sell the movie rights I would need an agent, do you understand?”

  “Oh, I see. And they would have to know your real identity?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But surely they could be sworn to secrecy?”

  “In this on-line age, Bitsy, nothing is secure. No, if I sign on with an agent I will be exposed.”

  “It is a quandary.”

  “Good word. But I think I have a solution.”

  “What?”

  He breathes deeply and then says, “You’ll be Viola Usher.”

  She blinks at him.

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. You’ll sign on with an agent as the author of the book.”

  “Oh, I could never do that, Gordon. That would be dishonest.”

  “No, no. It would be dishonest if you were stealing the work and pretending it was your own. But I’m asking you to do it, Bitsy, so it won’t be dishonest at all.”

  “But there’ll be publicity, won’t there Gordon? I’m not the person for that.”

  “I’ll shield you from all of it, Bitsy. Don’t worry. I’ll be beside you every step of the way.”

  She looks past him, staring into space and he thinks he’s lost her when she speaks: “Twenty-five percent you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of all the profits?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are we talking in dollars? Thousands?”

  Gordon, slightly surprised at his militantly anti-materialistic sister asking this question, says, “Oh, more than that.”

  “Tens of thousands?”

  “More.”

  “Hundreds of thousands?”

  “Bitsy, with the print edition, the movie rights and the sale of the sequel, well, we’re talking millions.”

  His sister fixes him with an unusually direct stare and says, “Make it fifty percent and we’re on.”

  He gapes at her in astonishment.

  “You mean that?”

  “I do.”

  She sticks out a bony hand and takes his in a surprisingly strong grip.

  “Say hello to Viola Usher.”

  12

  Jane’s hands are a little sweaty on the wheel of the rental Honda as she drives across to Briar Lane, blind to the blaze of Fall color, the trees radiant in the afternoon light.

  Her phone rings and she sees it’s Jonas.

  Again.

  And again she sends him to voice mail, knowing this will drive him crazy.

  Jonas Blunt is a man who demands constant accessibility to his minions.

  But she will talk to him only when—and if—she sews this thing up.

  Jane parks behind a rusted old Volvo and walks up the pathway.

  The door opens before she can knock and Gordon shows her in.

  “Jane Cooper, my sister Bitsy Rushworth.”

  Jane steps into the living room and her heart sinks when she sees a small, dowdy woman with graying blonde hair standing up from a chair to greet her.

  Is it possible that this little country mouse wrote the sizzling, steamy, Ivy?

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Gordon Rushworth says.

  “You do?”

  “Something along the lines of: how can this drab little woman write something so, well, hot?”

  Taken aback Jane says, “No, no . . .”

  Gordon wags a hand.

  “Bitsy was married to an academic at an Ivy League college back in the nineties. She knows what she’s writing about, I can assure you.”

  Looking at this woman, Jane finds it hard to believe.

  What are you doing? she asks herself.

  Then thinks: Don’t look gift horses in the mouth.

  Even frumpy little ones.

  “I assume you’ll need some proof that I am, indeed, the author?” Bitsy Rushworth asks in a whispery voice.

  “Well, yes, I guess so.”

  “Follow me, please.”

  Bitsy leads her into a bedroom as spartan as a nun’s cell.

  The only color the spines of the books in the shelves beside the desk.

  A quick glance tells Jane that Bitsy’s library is a mixture of esoteric self-help and romance.

  A positive sign.

  An ancient desktop computer hums on the writing table and Bitsy jiggles the mouse.

  “That’s my working file for Ivy,” she says, opening the folder, shooting a glance at her brother who hovers in the doorway.

  Jane takes command of the mouse and clicks through the Ivy works-in-progress.

  That they’re authentic she has no doubt but when she peers up at Bitsy and sees the look she’s exchanging with her brother, Jane can’t quell the suspicion that she’s being duped.

  She’s certain that Gordon wrote the damned thing and he’s getting his sister to front for him.

  Jane’s about to declare her suspicions when her phone rings and, yet again, she sends Jonas to voice mail.

  She can imagine his mood: a meltdown of Chernobyl proportions.

  “Bitsy,” Jane says, “I can’t leave here without you signing an agreement with the Jonas Blunt Agency. I can’t run the risk of another agent poaching you.”

  There’s a glance between the siblings before Bitsy speaks.

  “Of course. I would be happy to sign.”

  “I have a standard contract in my briefcase in the living room.”

  They troop out and Jane removes the agency agreement from her case and hands it to Bitsy.

  “Gordon will take a look at it,” the woman says. “He’s going to act as my advisor.”

  I’ll bet he is, Jane thinks, but she smiles and shrugs and watches as Gordon Rushworth peruses the document.

  She has no doubt that he has downloaded similar documents before, all part of preparing for when his magnum opus reached the road to publication.

  “Seems boilerplate,” he says. “Go ahead, Bitsy.”

  He hands the document to his sister along with a pen.

  Then he holds up a hand and Bitsy pauses with the nib of the pen tantalizingly close to the dotted line on the contract.

  “There’s just one small matter,” Gordon says.

  “What’s that?” Jane asks.

  “Since I have been the, shall we say, matchmaker in this, I think a little reward is in order.”

  “A little quid pro quo?” Jane asks.

  He smirks.

  “Exactly.”

  “Let me hear it,” Jane says.

  “I think we can agree that any one of the big five New York publishers would be desperate to publish Ivy and its sequels?”

  “Oh yes. No doubt about that.”

  “Then it wouldn’t be a deal breaker if in return for getti
ng Ivy, they must agree to publish another book?”

  “And that book wouldn’t by any chance be Too Long the Night, would it?”

  “It would, yes.”

  “There’s no way I could guarantee something like that, Gordon.”

  “What a pity,” he says, reaching across to take the pen from his sister’s hand.

  Jane speaks as quickly as a horse race caller.

  “But my boss, Jonas Blunt, would have no problem swinging that. Take it as done.”

  “Excellent.”

  He hands the pen back and Bitsy Rushworth signs the document in her spidery scrawl.

  As Jane shakes Bitsy’s hand her phone rings and this time she doesn’t send Jonas to voice mail.

  She says, “Excuse me,” to the Rushworths and steps out of the front door into the bare little garden.

  “Jonas,” she says.

  “Why the hell haven’t you been answering your phone?”

  “It’s done.”

  “What’s done?”

  “I’ve just signed Viola Usher. She’s ours.”

  Jonas Blunt is not a man to be at a loss for words, but there is a delicious pause before he says, “You’re sure of this?”

  “One hundred percent.”

  Although she’s not.

  “Well, done Jane. Well done.”

  “Thank you.”

  “When you return to New York that corner office will be yours.”

  “What about Toby?” she asks, referring to the nasty little agent who, in Jonas’s frequent absences, likes to lord it over the agency.

  “Toby who?” Jonas says, then makes a kissy sound and rings off.

  Jane can’t resist a fist punch and blushes as crimson as the Fall leaves when she sees Gordon watching her from the doorway.

  “Jonas Blunt is a happy man?”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “Well, we’re all happy, aren’t we?” he says stepping aside for her to walk back into the house.

  She whispers in his ear, “I know what you’re doing, Gordon. I just hope that you do.”

  13

  As soon as Jane Cooper takes her briefcase containing the signed contract and leaves the house, Gordon dashes for the bathroom, fearing that the stress of the last day has made him physically ill.

  But once he splashes his face at the sink, he feels somewhat restored.

  He looks at his reflection in the mirror (he has to duck, the looking-glass is positioned for his much shorter sister) and is astonished to see that none of the distress is visible on his face.

  In fact, Gordon looks better than he has in months and can’t contain a feeling of elation at what he has pulled off.

  Not only has he accessed even more money for his unacknowledged bastard child, Ivy, but (more significantly) is now assured of seeing Too Long the Night in print.

  “Nicely done, Gordo, I always knew you had it in you.”

  He turns and sees Suzie Baldwin blowing him a kiss as she disappears through the closed door.

  Gordon dries his face, combs his hair and straightens his collar.

  Opening the bathroom door, he says, “Bitsy, what do you say to a little celebratory dinner down at Grace’s?”

  There is no reply.

  “Bitsy?”

  His sister is not in the living room or kitchen.

  He sticks a head into her bedroom and sees she’s not there either.

  Crossing to the living room window, Gordon pulls back the drapes and looks out into the night. The streetlight shines on empty road where the Volvo was parked.

  His sister, very uncharacteristically, has left without saying a word.

  14

  Bitsy Rushworth, foot flat to the floor of her Volvo as she speeds through the night, feels—quite literally—not herself.

  Which is not to say that she feels bad, exactly.

  This feeling of dislocation, of watching some new, braver, Bitsy from a slight distance is not altogether unpleasant and her usual reticence and nervousness seem to have drained away and been replaced with a sense of purpose.

  A sense that, at last, she has found a way to give her life meaning.

  To be truly useful.

  Is this the evolution that Daniel Quant had spoken of?

  The evolution he assured her would come if she followed the path of mindfulness and self-awareness?

  “By far the most creative thing you’ll ever do is create your new self,” he’d said to her during a one-on-one session on a hot afternoon last summer, the buttery sunlight washing the room, making him glow as he stood over her, tanned and lithe in his white T-shirt and linen pants, his feet bare.

  She couldn’t help but notice that his toes were shapely and neatly clipped.

  Somehow she found this reassuring.

  Not to mention attractive.

  She’d been about to speak when he held up one of his broad, workman’s hands, and said, “Do I hear a when?”

  “Yes,” she said, blushing. “Am I being impatient?”

  “An all-too-human quirk, Bitsy. Just believe that transformation will come and let it happen.” He rested a hand on her shoulder, and she swore she could feel that an electrical charge course through her. “Don't try to steer the river.”

  Driving her Volvo over the cattle grid and past the Quant Foundation sign, she feels like she has flung herself into a surging river, letting it take her where it will.

  Bitsy stops the car outside Daniel Quant’s house, a beacon of light in the darkness, and feels a flash of her old uncertainty.

  Then she pushes this away and stands up out of the car, walking toward the house.

  A dog barks somewhere far away and she hears a lilting piano melody wafting through the night.

  As she nears the front entrance a man appears in the doorway.

  Thinking it’s Daniel her heart leaps, but as she draws closer she sees Carlos, one of his young assistants.

  “Hi,” Carlos says.

  “I’m Bitsy Rushworth,” she says.

  “Of course, Bitsy. What’s up?”

  “I need to see Daniel,” she says.

  Before he can answer an intimidatingly tall, very beautiful girl whose name she can’t recollect, drapes an arm over Carlos’s shoulder and stares down at Bitsy.

  “Daniel’s contemplating. He is not to be disturbed.”

  Old Bitsy would have fled to her car, but the newer, bolder version, says, “This is important. It’s about the financial future of the Foundation.”

  “Is it now?” the girl says with just the hint of a sneer.

  “Why don’t you get Bitsy a drink, Una, and I’ll see if Daniel is up to an audience?”

  Una shrugs and flounces off, folding herself onto a couch.

  Carlos, who is clearly her boyfriend—they make an absurdly gorgeous couple—bounds up the wooden staircase, his bare feet drumming lightly.

  Una offers no drink.

  Nor does she invite Bitsy to take a seat.

  Bitsy doesn’t mind, she feels too excited to sit, so she wanders the room, looking at the paintings and artifacts, an eclectic mix of Eastern and Western: Buddhas and Ganeshes rub shoulders with colorful abstracts and primitive Africana.

  Her practiced eye approves of what she sees.

  Daniel Quant has good taste.

  Carlos returns and says, “Daniel’s waiting, Bitsy. Go on up.”

  Bitsy mounts the stairs leading to the dimly lit upper level, the piano piece getting louder.

  Then the music ends, abruptly and a voice says, “Bitsy?”

  She sees Daniel standing at the top of the stairs, barefoot, dressed in a T-shirt and fisherman’s pants.

  “Daniel, I’m sorry to come here unannounced.”

  “Oh, but I’ve been waiting for you, Bitsy.”

  “You have?”

  Was this some clairvoyant, precognitive thing he was laying claim to?

  He laughs his deep, melodious, laugh.

  “Yes, I’ve been waiting for you for months.
And you’ve arrived. The new, improved, much-better-Bitsy.” He laughs again. “I’m not wrong, am I?”

  “No,” she says, “something has happened.”

  “Something has a way of doing that,” he says and seats himself on a pile of cushions beneath a lamp in the corner of a big, bare room.

  He gestures for her to join him and she hunkers down, a little stiffly.

  He smiles and watches her, his face serene.

  “Daniel . . .”

  “Bitsy.”

  “I hope you don’t think this is very forward of me, but I think I may be able to access the funds the Foundation needs. If they’re still needed, of course?”

  “Very much so, yes. A bloody boatload!” He laughs.

  “Well, I think my ship has come in.”

  It’s only when he chuckles again that she realizes what she has said, and joins in the laughter.

  “I’m going to be the recipient of a vast amount of money very soon.”

  “Really?” he says.

  “And I would like to give it all to you. To the Foundation.”

  “That’s very generous,” he says.

  “Over the next year a sum of at least a million dollars should be available.”

  “That’s wonderful.”

  “I’ll be able to give you the first installment within weeks.”

  “Fantastic.”

  “Do you want to know where the money is coming from?”

  “Not unless you want to tell me.”

  She hesitates and he says, “I’m sensing a conflict, Bitsy. Is there anything you want to discuss?”

  So, in the belief that her secrets are safe with this charming and enlightened man, she ends up telling him about the book Gordon wrote.

  And about her agreeing to pretend to be Viola Usher.

  “Am I doing a bad thing, Daniel? Lying like this?”

  He shrugs.

  “I’m not here to judge you. And neither am I a priest ready with glib promises of forgiveness in exchange for a few Hail Marys. You have made a choice.”

  “Yes, I have. Why do I feel so deceitful?”

  “Do you really think you’re being deceitful?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Okay, consider this,” he says, leaning toward her. “When we shell out our hard-earned bucks for a movie we do so in the knowledge that we’re going to be lied to, that some Hollywood actors are going to pretend to be people that exist only the mind of a screenwriter somewhere. We are happily complicit in this deception and call it entertainment. Do you see where I’m going here?”