by Sally Mason
She turns to one of the minions who circle her like moths.
“Let Honey Boo Boo ride in another car, okay? I’m feeling like really spiritual today and I don’t want her messing with my aura.”
And with that the power couple slide into an SUV the size of an armored car, leaving Jane to rattle after them in a tiny rental driven by a kid with acne and a nerve jangling post-nasal drip.
Showbiz.
44
Gordon spends the day hiding.
Hiding from the madness in the town, a madness that he has instigated with his absurd little book.
Hiding from his sister—afraid that she’ll somehow divine that he and Jane slept together and feel betrayed.
But mostly hiding from himself and his feelings.
Not since Suzie Baldwin died more than twenty years ago has he felt things so keenly.
He can’t get Jane Cooper out of his mind and he finds himself wandering the Fall fields as lovesick as a teenager.
Most unbecoming in a man in early middle-age.
He sits down on a rock, shrugging off his jacket, looking down at the little town beneath him.
The church.
The fire station.
His sister’s house.
Even from up here he can hear the tinny bray of one of the tour guides.
What have you wrought, Gordon?
Written chick-lit.
Perpetuated a lie.
And fallen in love.
He leaps to his feet, eager to escape that realization.
For it’s true.
He is in love.
In love with Jane Cooper.
And as he hurries down the hill, suddenly desperate to see her again, he’s sure he hears Suzie’s voice saying, “You go, Gordy. You go!”
45
Bitsy is no longer nervous.
In fact, she feels very little now.
A numbness has settled over her that leaves her detached and anesthetized.
When she hears the rumble of a caravan of vehicles coming to a halt outside her house she walks calmly to the front door and opens it.
Jane Cooper is on her porch.
“Bitsy, hi. How are you holding up?”
“Oh, just fine, Jane.”
She looks over the agent’s shoulder at the outlandish couple stepping down from a huge black car.
“That must be them?”
“Yes,” Jane says. “We’ve just spent a weird couple of hours wandering through East Devon. Raynebeau seems to think that the town is a set built especially for her no matter how Yul tries to convince her otherwise.”
“Well, let everybody come in. I guess we’ll be shooting in the living room?”
Bitsy watches as a man with a video camera walks backward, videoing Raynebeau Jones as she totters down the little pathway, as ungainly as a foal on her preposterous heels.
Bitsy is blindsided by a flashback of another too-tall, too-beautiful woman, rising naked from a pond.
Then she pushes this away and lets the numbness cover her again like a blanket.
46
When Gordon gets to Bitsy’s house and sees the clot of vehicles and bevy of harried flunkies he’s tempted to carry on walking down the road and get a drink at the dingy little bar near the highway that’s frequented by local blue-collar workers, the only place in East Devon safe from the Ivy pilgrims.
But before he can escape he spies Jane on the porch looking straight at him, and—feeling like a hapless teenager—he goes over to her.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi, Gordon.”
“How are you?”
“I’m good,” she says. Then she laughs. “This is awkward, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I feel like I’m about to invite you to the prom.”
“Well, the answer would have been yes.”
“Really?” he says.
“Cross my heart.”
He steps in close.
“Any chance of you staying over for the night?”
“I’d love to. Flying back to New York in a chopper with those two”—she jerks her head in the direction of a freakish duo standing in Bitsy’s living room—“is something I would do anything to avoid.”
“Anything?” he asks.
“Anything,” she says.
For a crazy moment he’s about to kiss her, right there on his sister’s porch, in full view of the film crew, when a voice booms out from inside.
The very powerful voice of Yul Egorov, at odds with his tiny body.
“Okay, we’re gonna shoot now, so non-essentials get your butts outta here.”
As minions file out Jane takes Gordon’s hand and leads him inside.
“Is this your way of telling me I’m essential?” he asks.
“Mnnnn, keep up those tricks of last night and you’ll rapidly become that.”
Gordon, floating along on a silly little cloud, follows Jane into his sister’s living room.
Bitsy, looking remarkably composed, sits on a chair staring into space.
When Gordon waves at her, she merely nods.
Raynebeau Jones and Yul Egorov take the couch facing Bitsy and two cameras record the action.
“Okay, roll cameras,” Egorov says, looking into the lens of the camera that is trained on him and the star. “Okay, we just gonna rap a little with the author of Ivy, the book that we’re gonna be adapting into a mega blockbuster, starring my lady here, Raynebeau Jones.”
Bitsy holds up a hand.
“There’s just something I’d like to say before we go any further.”
Egorov is not a man used to being interrupted.
“Yeah, what?”
“I never wrote Ivy.”
Gordon tells himself that Bitsy is just falling back on the same shtick she used in New York.
The “my alter-ego just took over” business.
“That right?” Egorov says.
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
“Then who the hell wrote the piece of crap?”
Bitsy points at Gordon, who tries vainly to disappear behind a light stand.
“He did. My brother Gordon Rushworth wrote it.”
Gordon stares across at Jane whose face is as horrified as he imagines his must be, then he can’t see her because a blinding light is panned onto him and he can just make out both cameras swiveling his way, pointing at him like the guns of a firing squad.
Gordon clears his throat, shakes his head and then he bumps crew and gear from his path as he sprints out the front door and down the street, ignoring the yells that follow him.
He jumps a fence and hurtles across a field and doesn’t stop running until he’s left the town far behind.
47
Jane lies in her bed listening to the rumble of early morning traffic. She hasn’t slept, has lain in a state of terror since she got back by train late last night.
Things had moved very quickly after Bitsy unleashed her bombshell and Gordon had bolted like a frightened kid.
Yul Egorov screamed, “Bookgirl!” and Jane was grilled by the poisonous shrimp—what she imagined being been interrogated by the KGB must have been like.
Jane, stuttering and stumbling, swore that she had known nothing of all this.
“We can fix it,” she said. “I’m sure this can all work out.”
“I’m gonna break you, Bookgirl. You and your pantywaist boss. You know what my time is worth? And Raynebeau’s? We’re talking millions here. Millions. I want dollars and I want justice! And I want blood!”
The little man grabbed the hand of his towering concubine and they left, trailing nervously whispering minions in their wake, leaving Jane alone with Bitsy Rushworth.
“Bitsy,” Jane said, “what have you done?”
“I’m sorry, Jane,” Bitsy said. “I couldn’t keep up the pretence any longer.”
“Wow,” Jane said. “This is a total disaster.”
“At least the truth is out.”
“The truth! God, who cares abou
t the damned truth? My career is down the toilet!”
Jane realized she was alone in the room.
Then Bitsy clattered back, wheeling a suitcase.
“I’m afraid I must leave now, Jane. I have to get to Raleigh to fly to Detroit where I’m catching a flight to Costa Rica.”
“Costa Rica?”
“Yes, I’m going on a one month silent retreat in the jungle.”
“Hell, what a pity you didn’t go silent just a few hours earlier.”
Bitsy shrugged.
“I’m sorry Jane, but there it is.”
Bitsy left and Jane sank down onto the couch listening to her own rapid heartbeat and Yul and Raynebeau’s helicopter roaring overhead on its way to Manhattan.
Without her.
By the time Jane got to the Brattleboro train station Yul Egorov and Raynebeau Jones had sent a video feed of Bitsy’s statement to all the entertainment channels and blogs across the country and the response was immediate and deafening.
As she was about to board the train her phone rang.
Jonas Blunt.
She didn’t have the courage to answer it.
A few seconds later a light blinked telling her she had a text message.
With shaking hands she opened it: My office tomorrow. 8:00 A.M.
The train journey took forever and a question looped itself through her mind: why did you fall in with Gordon’s plans?
You knew.
You knew all along.
And as hard as she tried to persuade herself that Gordon hadn’t actually said in as many words that he’d written Ivy, Jane knew she’d let greed and ambition cause her to be party to an unforgivable lie.
On the train she’d tried to call Gordon.
Why she wasn’t sure.
Was she calling him as an irate agent or as a lover?
Unsurprisingly he didn’t answer his phone and by the time she arrived in Manhattan all she wanted was to sleep and lose herself in a few hours of unconsciousness.
Which she’d been unable to do.
Jane gets up and showers and dresses in funereal black, which seems fitting.
She gets a cab to Midtown.
As she enters the lobby of the building she has worked in for five years, she knows very well this will be the last time she’ll comes here, ever.
She expects no mercy from Jonas Blunt.
What she doesn’t expect though, as she walks through the deserted reception area, knocks on his office door and pushes it open, is to see Tom Bennett sitting in a chair facing Jonas, sipping from a Starbucks foam cup, looking all crisp and Brooks Brothers.
Tom sets his cup down and gives her his famous boyish grin.
“Jane,” he says. “Nice to see you, circumstances notwithstanding.”
“What the hell’s he doing here?” she asks her boss.
“He’s my legal counsel,” Jonas says, his voice arctic.
“But the cops were after him on a drugs charge?”
Tommy’s grin broadens.
“All just a misunderstanding, Janey. The commissioner wrote me a personal letter of apology and a couple of detectives are back pounding the beat.”
Jonas points to a vacant chair.
“Sit, Jane. We’re here to discuss Ivy, not Tom.”
She sits.
“How much did you know?” Jonas asks.
“I had some initial suspicions but Gordon Rushworth denied them and was adamant that his sister wrote the book.”
“And you never thought to share those suspicions with me?”
“They seemed groundless.”
He tugs at his lower lip.
“I see. You’re aware, of course, of the fallout resulting from Bitsy Rushworth’s revelations?”
“I imagine the publishers are unhappy.”
“You could say that,” Jonas says quietly.
Then he rises and bellows: “They’re also busy suing my ass!”
She has never heard him use profanity and never seen him anything other than unflappable.
“I’m sorry, Jonas.”
He settles down in his chair and works hard to calm his breathing.
“Oh, you will be. You will be.”
“I take full responsibility.”
“Words, Jane. Words. You’re a minion. A flunky. A nobody. This is where the buck makes it final stop.”
He hammers a fist down on his desk top.
“I have already sunk a vast amount of money into the movie development and it’s doubtful whether I will see any of it again. Coupled with legal fees, you could say that I’m ruined.”
He holds up a hand.
“Please, please don’t speak. You’ve ruined me and now I’ll ruin you. Tom will dot the i’s and cross the t’s.”
Jonas stands and walks to the door.
“I never want to see you again, is that clear?’
“Yes.”
“Should we, as unlikely as that is, run into one another in the street, or—God forbid—socially we will behave as strangers. Understood?’
“Yes.”
And with that he’s gone, his designer aftershave not quite disguising the sourness of his sweat.
Tommy shrugs.
“Well, what can I say, Janey? You’ve well and truly screwed the little poochie.”
“Stop gloating and lay it out for me, Tom.”
He taps a sheaf of documents that lie on the desk.
“Your employment with the Blunt Agency is terminated immediately. You are to clear your desk and leave the premises.”
She expected nothing less.
“Okay.”
“And you’re aware, of course, that your contract has a bullet-proof non-compete clause? For five years you are legally forbidden to seek employment in the publishing industry, no matter what the capacity.”
She stares at him.
“You’re not serious?”
“Oh, but I am, Janey.” He taps the paperwork. “It’s right here in the small-print. Small print you perhaps neglected to read in your unseemly haste to start scaling the ladder of success?”
He smirks.
“Anyway, I think it’s a mere formality. After what you’ve done Jonas is going to make pee-pee in the well. No publisher will touch you.”
She stands.
“Is that all?”
“Not quite. There’s something else you should know.”
“What?”
“You’re the most dreary, libido-numbing drudge I’ve ever had the misfortune to have sex with.”
She gapes at him.
“Really? You’re telling me this now?”
“Well, I’ll probably never see you again.”
“Then why did you want to marry me, Tom?”
“You ticked the right boxes. You looked innocuously pretty on my arm when I went to dinner with the partners. You were unthreatening and would have given me cute babies, which would have been a career-booster. I was prepared to snooze my way through a marriage with my little Stepford Wifey and find my sports elsewhere.”
Before she can stop herself Jane grabs Tom’s attaché case from the floor and swings it at his head.
It connects with a satisfying smack and she sees blood sprouting from his nose.
She turns on her heel and leaves the office, heading for the elevators.
There’s nothing she wants to take with her anyway.
When the elevator reaches the lobby and the doors slide open, Jane is confronted by her assistant—make that ex-assistant—Belinda.
“You bitch,” Belinda says.
“I beg your pardon?” Jane says.
“Jonas just called and told me to come in and get my things. Because of you I’ve lost my job.”
“I’m sorry, Belinda,” Jane says, but the woman bumps past her to get into the elevator.
The last Jane sees of her, as the doors close, is a painted middle finger raised in a salute.
“Hell,” Jane says to herself, “can this day get any worse?”
And when her mother sobs and says, “Oh, Janey,” her day gets way, way worse.
48
When the skyline of Manhattan rears up through the windshield of Gordon’s rental car, he realizes that the last hundred miles (and most of Connecticut) have passed in a daze.
“You shouldn’t be driving, Gordon,” he says out loud.
Another sign that he’s unraveling.
Gordon sneaks a glance at himself in the rearview and the man staring back at him looks as if he spent the night sleeping in a field.
Which he did.
After he’d run himself to the point of exhaustion Gordon fell to the ground in a wheat field.
The last thing he remembered before sleep claimed him were the rays of the dying sun painting the sky mauve.
It was dawn when he awoke.
He was filthy, unshaven and his clothes were a mess.
He searched his pockets and found that he’d lost his cell phone during his mad cross-country sprint. But his wallet containing his credit cards was still in the pocket of his pants.
He had no idea where he was, but let the distant rumble of traffic guide him toward a highway.
He emerged from the field near a gas station, found a payphone and called Bitsy’s house.
No reply.
He’d never bothered to memorize her cell number so for a moment he was at a loss as to what he should do.
Try to find out where he was and then hitch a ride back to East Devon?
Then he saw a young woman in a skirt and blazer unlocking the door to the car rental office adjacent to the gas station and he went into the men’s room and did his best to make himself look presentable.
Washed his face and smoothed his hair down with a wet palm.
Pulled his jacket and shirt as straight as he could and dusted off as much of the grime.
There was a shoe buffer in the corner and Gordon fed in a coin and let it add some shine to his brogans.
Putting a little swagger into his walk he tried his best to breeze into the rental office.
“Good morning,” he said.
The young woman was tidying the counter.
“Good morning, sir.”
