I check into the Claremont and order up a steak and French fries and a bottle of red wine, which I have no problem consuming while watching a series of those bizarre talk shows on MSNBC. Around midnight, half in the bag, I call Spencer. “You have messed up my life," I tell him.
For once it seems he has the good sense to keep his mouth shut.
"If you had just told me about some woman," I complained, "you didn't have to tell me who, just that there was someone—"
"I can't talk right now," he says. "Can I call you later?"
"No, you can't talk to me later—you talk to me now." I have a thought. "Don't tell me Verity's there. Your girlfriend. Or do you have another girlfriend I should know about?" I look at the clock. "Who the hell's at your apartment at midnight?"
"Well if it's midnight here," he says calmly, "then it's only nine out there on the West Coast. So, let's say around ten, your time? Good? Okay, great. Call me then." And he hangs up.
I am still sitting here with the receiver to my ear. I was calling him so that he would talk his way into coming over here and then say nice things to me and hold me and tell me he loves me and make up. It was not part of the plan for him to have someone there, someone he has to convince he's receiving a call from the West Coast.
Screw him, I think, snuggling down into the bed. I'm not waiting an hour. I fall asleep with the talking heads on TV still arguing.
41
I sleep in. Then I breakfast in bed while reading the Times and the Wall Street Journal and watching CNN. I tell the housekeeper I do not need maid service today. I am trying to steel myself for this phone call.
Chi Chi's warm greeting makes me feel awful. Cassy's bright hello makes me feel even worse.
"So how goes it?" she says, sounding happy. "Verity sent over some copies of the photographs they want to run. I can't believe it. At first I wondered who that woman was, and then I realized it was me. And you know what, Sally? I like them. I don't know what's happened to me, but I like them. Really, I do. Maybe this whole experience is doing something good to my head."
I want to die before doing what I have to do.
"You and I need to meet one more time," I say.
"Sure. Do you want to come in tomorrow?"
"I think maybe we should meet outside the office," I say.
She pauses, no doubt picking up something in my voice. "If you prefer, you can meet me at seven tomorrow morning for a walk in the park, how would that be?"
"That would be fine."
She hesitates for a fraction of a second. "Has something happened, Sally? Is there anything I can do?" she asks. And then I realize she's wondering if I'm all right.
"You're very kind," I say quietly. "But there's nothing, thank you. In any event, I look forward to seeing you tomorrow." And as I say those last words, I feel, literally, a pang in my heart.
Dear God, I've got to think this through.
"Sally," Buddy says, coming onto the phone.
"Hi." I have worked out in the hotel gym for an hour and have showered and am sitting here in a robe, my hair dripping wet.
"Where are you?"
"New York." I give him the number of the hotel.
"Who else knows you're there?"
"No one."
"Really?"
"Really."
"Good." I have a feeling he's reading something or making notes. "I found Pete," he says. "He was in the back of the storeroom on the second floor of the library."
"Doing what?"
"Hiding. But he's not talking. We swept the house but haven't found anything. No fingerprints, nothing. I asked him what he thought someone might want in his house and he looked at me like I was crazy. Then I asked him if he had any idea who might have broken in, and he said—"
"The Masons," I fill in, yawning.
"Exactly." He sighs. "Though, given what we're running tests on," he says, referring to the hunk of concrete, "I'm beginning to wonder if he's right."
I have the membership list with me. I suppose I could stare hopelessly at it again for a while. "Buddy, thank you. And let me know."
"Sure will."
I have gone back to the bed to lie down. I feel so tired. Not sleepy, but weary.
I remember once, in my senior year of high school, I had been running nonstop for months. I had, at the last minute, been doing sports and student council stuff while working a job at the mall in an effort to improve my scholarship chances. And then one night, a rare night I actually had off, I remember going up to my room and suddenly feeling as I do right now. Tired, overwhelmed—the goal simply impossible to reach if I stopped to think about it.
Only now I don't know what my goal is. I don't really know where I want to live, what kind of reporting I want to do or who I want to love.
So much of my life since Daddy died has felt surreal. Like my little family, my mother and brother and me, how we would act like we were a family, and not like the band of survivors we were, desperately missing Daddy but pretending we didn't hear each other secretly crying. I once even heard Rob, when he was nine, after he lost the game for his Little League team. I heard him crying in the potting shed, asking Daddy why he had to mess everything up.
I wonder how my uncertainty is related to the fact Mother has found someone I can plainly see wishes to take care of her. And, in all probability, will. With no Mother to worry about, what noble purpose do I have? Exposing some nice lady's love affair, a desperate emotional measure to save her sanity?
And how about my cheating on Doug?
And having an affair with a man who's having an affair with the married woman who's paying me to sandbag aforementioned nice lady?
Surely there is an easier way to live.
There is one thing I want to know for sure, though. I will find out what happened to Daddy. And perhaps finding that out will take away the element of choice in my life, the element I seem to have so much difficulty in handling.
I roll over to pick up the phone. I call Spencer's office and I ask if I can be squeezed in to see him this afternoon. In his office. After checking, his assistant comes back to quickly say yes, whenever I can get there.
The offices of Bennett, Fitzallen & Coe are located on Park Avenue and Fifty-Sixth Street. I stop at the security desk in the lobby and am given a name tag that reads BFC. I am then directed to the bank of elevators that will take me to Spencer's floor. When I get off, I find a simple but appealing reception area of bookshelves and books, and that inevitable little table with a phone on it that I am to use to call somebody somewhere to say that I'm here.
It's not necessary, however, because coming around the comer in his tailored pants and white shirt, sleeves rolled up, is Spencer. He takes me in his arms and hugs me and refuses to let me go. "Thank you," he sighs.
When, over his shoulder, I see an attractive woman come striding around the same comer, toting a large leather briefcase, I say, "Spencer," in warning, and he backs away, looking over his shoulder. "Oh, hi, Kate," he says as the woman smiles politely and pushes the elevator button as if she has not seen anything.
"Hi," she says.
"Kate, I'd like you to meet the woman I hope I can talk into marrying me someday," he says, pulling me forward, "Sally Harrington.”
"Hi," the woman says, stepping forward to firmly shake my hand. "I'm Kate Weston."
"Our publisher," Spencer says, "my boss."
The elevator arrives but the publisher waves the occupants on. Clearly she's interested in whoever I am and where on earth I've appeared from. According to Spencer, they are good friends, have worked long, long hours together and have traveled many miles to sales conferences and conventions.
"So should I be congratulating you?"
I finally find my voice. "I met Spencer less than three weeks ago."
"Oh, my!" she exclaims softly, eyebrows rising at Spencer. "After all this time, you just met her and...?”
He nods. "She appeared," he says, "like a miracle." H
e takes my hand and looks at me, while saying to Kate, "She's very angry with me right now and rightfully so. I dragged her into my life before she had any idea how screwed up it is."
"You mean how complicated it is, Spencer," Kate Weston stresses, patting his back before hitting the elevator button again. "If you're going to change your life, you have to start by changing your language, which will change your thinking and your behavior, right?'" She grins at me. "We're working on a self-help book that has some catchy stuff in it."
Then her expression grows more serious. "All I can tell you, Sally, is that I've known Spencer for ten years, and have worked with him for three. And he's right, his life has been pretty screwed up. But he is a wonderful friend and a gifted editor, and I'd hate to see him get pistol-whipped in some alley by some glorified thug who buys cosmetic companies to improve his social life."
This time she gets on the elevator when it arrives.
"Thank you," I say. "And it was very nice to meet you."
"I hope I see you again soon," she says, and the doors close.
I turn to Spencer, astonished. "She knows about Verity?"
He nods. "Yeah."
I consider this. Then I take his hand. "I want to meet some of your colleagues. That's why I came. I need to meet people who know you."
It is clear that Spencer is well liked. We stop in offices and in alcoves all over the floor, meeting everyone from a senior editor to an art director to a man in a closet who is in charge of supplies. The latter likes me because he's handicapping his bets in the back pages of the New York Post and I know how to do this because Mr. Quimby has taught me. We talk ponies a bit and I invite him to come up to Connecticut sometime to go to Mohegan Sun or Foxwoods.
There is an editorial assistant, a young Korean woman Spencer shares with Kate Weston, whose windowless office looks like a receiving station for a paper-recycling center. She has the exhausted look that we all did at the beginning of our careers that comes from the hours and the stress and the cramming, to say nothing of bad coffee and bad office air recirculating for the fifty millionth time.
"It's very nice to meet you. You're the reporter, aren't you? The one writing for Expectations?"
I am very surprised. "Yes."
She smiles broadly. "Spencer talked about you. He says you're very good."
I look at Spencer "Oh."
"We have all your clippings," she continues, pointing to a file cabinet. "To be honest, I haven't read them all, but certainly Spencer has."
"I see," I say. "You have a file on me?" I ask him as soon as we're outside her office.
"I just wondered what your writing was like."
"What tear sheets do you have?"
"Everything from the Herald-American. I had to pay some bitchy lady in the newspaper's library for them. She kept saying, 'If you want her to write a book, why don't you just get them from her?' So then I started talking dinero and she started faxing them through."
"Why didn't you just ask me?"
"Because you're busy," he says. "Besides, maybe I just wanted to read them without you knowing."
"Huh," I say as we continue down the hall, wondering what he would have done if he hadn't liked my work.
We arrive in Spencer's office and I love it. It's not overly large, but has a nice wall of windows. The best are the bookshelves, which are loaded with books and sketches of jackets and pictures with authors and all kinds of little toys and paperweights and memorabilia. It is chaotic but wonderful; all booky and fun and nice.
I'm beginning to look at him the way I did when I first met him. And then I notice something. "Have you lost weight?"
"Hmm," he acknowledges, picking up the phone. "About ten pounds or so, I think I always do when I'm worried sick." He directs me to a chair. "I just have to return a few calls and then we can go."
"Where?"
"Anywhere," he says. "So we can talk."
While he's chatting on the phone, I wander out to where his assistant is sitting. Her name is Madeline and she went to Bowdoin College. That is all I know about her. "So how long have you worked here?"
She looks up from her computer where she has been working on a letter. "For Spencer, or Bennett, Fitzallen & Coe?"
"Both," I say, admiring the pictures on her desk
"For Spencer, a little over a year. For the company, I'm coming up on two. I joined the training program after I graduated from—"
"Bowdoin," I say, leaning closer to look at a picture of a dog.
"How did you know that?" she exclaims, pleased, as people always are when I give the reporter-like impression that I've been researching them.
"Spencer mentioned it. Who is that?"
"That's my dog, Sharky," she says proudly. "He lives with my parents, though, in Pennsylvania. I can't bring him to the city."
"But you can see him at your parents' house."
"Oh, yeah. He goes nuts when I come home."
I smile. "I bet your parents do, too."
She laughs. "How did you know?"
I don't, but she seems so pleasant and Spencer says she's so good, that, of course, her parents love her. I don't think she's messing around with aspiring actors who work as bartenders like I did when I was her age.
"I hope he treats you well," I say, glancing at the office.
"Spencer? Are you kidding? He's wonderful. I mean," she says, dropping her voice in a whisper, "the workload's a nightmare in this office—some of his authors are absolute fruitcakes, too—but Spencer is so sweet. He's always doing things for me. He gave me a gift certificate to a bed-and-breakfast in Maine, where his parents are. And I went up for a long weekend with my boyfriend and Spencer's father let us use a sailboat for free all weekend."
"That is very nice."
"He did it because we have this hiring freeze here, and nobody's getting raises." She sighs. "Certainly not editorial."
That was very nice, to give his secretary a little vacation. But, of course, it also makes me wonder what he's given Verity.
We leave the offices at a little after five and walk a few blocks up Park Avenue. New York is humming; the streets are streaming with people and cars heading downtown toward Grand Central Station, uptown toward the more residential districts, and simultaneously east and west across Fifty-Seventh Street. I am fascinated by the concept that at 5:00 p.m. any given elevator in Manhattan will disperse its occupants to three states.
We walk up to Sixty-Third Street and turn into the Park Avenue Cafe. It is a lovely restaurant that is new to me. It's one of Spencer's favorites. We are shown to a small table for two near the bar and each order a glass of wine.
After we have settled, commented on the decor and have sipped our wine for a while, he looks at me and murmurs, "Thank you."
I sip my wine as if I have not heard.
"I'm so glad you saw the office. It's where I spend more than half my time."
"I liked Kate very much."
He grins. "Yeah, I knew you would. You guys are a little alike."
"She seemed very surprised by my appearance, and by what you told her."
He laughs, grimacing slightly. "Yeah, I'm going to catch hell for not telling her about you before. Usually she knows all the sordid details." He panics. "Not that there's anything sordid about us! I mean before, about other people. You know."
"Why didn't you tell her?"
"Well, for one, I knew she'd yell at me because she knows about the situation with Verity."
"And what is that situation now, by the way?" I ask, reaching for my glass.
"I'll get to that in a second," he promises. "Anyway, I didn't tell Kate because I was so happy, it was so fast and new, I really just didn't feel like sharing it. Sharing it without you. You know? Because that's all I've wanted, to be with you. I didn't want any outside distractions."
I know exactly what he means. Well, we may be immature, but at least we are immature in the same way. Of course, that's the way Doug and I have been
, according to Mother. "We barely know each other."
He shakes his head. "Not true. We just don't know each other very well."
"I'll say," I sigh, taking a sip. I've drunk more alcohol in the last three weeks than I have in a year.
"Which is why it is so important," Spencer says, "to meet people who've known me a long time." He leans forward. "And why you should let me come to Castleford to meet people who have known you a long time. Like your mother. Like your friends."
"I'll let you meet Crazy Pete," I offer.
"It's why we need to spend time together," Spencer continues, "to do things together, maybe travel a little, do some sports or something— Can we go sailing, for example? We can go up to City Island, if you want, or the Sound or the ocean or a lake. Or do you like to water-ski? Swim? Fish? Canoe? Play tennis? Bridge? Pinochle?"
"Tell me what Kate Weston thinks of Verity," I say.
The hopeful expression on Spencer's face vanishes. "She sort of hates her, I think."
I am surprised. "Really? Why?"
"Well... " He sighs. "Her infidelity, for one."
"Her infidelity with you," I clarify.
"With me," he confirms. "Particularly because of Corbie Junior." He lowers his voice. "Kate and her husband have been having trouble getting pregnant, so I think she's particularly hypersensitive on the topic of motherhood."
"What does Kate's husband do?"
"Actually, he's an editor, an executive editor like me, at one of the Random House companies. They worked together at Bennett, Fitzallen & Coe for years, and then they fell in love. There was a very unsuccessful takeover going on at the time, so after they got married they bagged publishing and moved to Los Angeles to do some TV production for a while. They did very well, financially—they were heading up a production company for Lydia Southland—but they hated the business, and so when Bennett, Fitzallen & Coe got sold again and the new owners cleaned house and started hiring, they called Kate and offered her the publisher's job, and they came back. To New York, and to our industry."
"Who hired you?"
"Kate. I was at Simon & Schuster then."
"I remember," I murmur. I smile slightly. "She'd be a very interesting person for me to talk to then."
Exposé: First of the Sally Harrington Mysteries (The Alexandra Chronicles Book 5) Page 32
