“Aren’t you going to say anything?” she asked, once the silence became too deafening to bear.
“Like what?” Finally, wearily, Danny picked up the remote and switched off the TV. “If you want to go back to him, go. I’m not gonna stop you.”
Diana’s eyes brimmed with tears. “You don’t love me anymore, do you?”
“Jesus Christ!” Jumping to his feet, Danny threw his empty whiskey glass on the floor, shattering it into thousands of shards of crystal. “You’re the one creeping around with your ex behind my back! You’re the one who’s been lying through her teeth about the divorce since fucking Christmas. I don’t love you? Look in the fucking mirror, Di.”
“You’ve been miserable ever since I told you I was pregnant!” she shouted back at him. In a weird sort of way it was a relief to be fighting openly at last.
“It was a shock,” admitted Danny. “It may have escaped your notice, but we’re barely scraping by as a couple. How are we supposed to afford this baby? Have you ever thought about that?”
“Don’t be so ridiculous,” said Diana. “People have babies all over the world, people with nothing. All you seem to care about is money, money, money.”
“Oh really? As opposed to your magnanimous ex?” Danny’s eyes widened. “Brogan’s giving it all away to charity, is he? Converted on the road to the radiology unit?”
“Shut up!” shouted Diana. “At least he wants this baby! It isn’t even his, but he wants it more than you do.”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them. Danny’s face darkened, and a muscle in his jaw began to twitch.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“It’s fine.” Walking past her toward the door, he slipped on his bomber jacket. All the energy, all the spirit had gone from his voice. It was like he’d given up.
“Where are you going?” asked Diana, panicked.
“Out.”
“But you can’t. Danny, you can’t just run away. We have to talk about this.”
He looked back with a sad half smile.
“There’s nothing left to say, is there? I tried, Di, I really did. But I can’t do this on my own. I just…I can’t.”
Diana waited until the apartment door had swung closed behind him and the last thud of his footsteps had faded away. Then she walked numbly into the bedroom, pulled her suitcase out of the battered old wardrobe, and started to pack.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THREE WEEKS LATER, Jake sat opposite Danny in a corner booth at Cohen’s Deli in the East Village, warming his chilled hands over a cup of steaming chicken broth.
“I don’t know how you stand this cold,” he complained, shaking his head as the door of the restaurant opened briefly, allowing a flurry of snow and biting wind to blast toward their table. “New York in February makes London feel like St. bloody Tropez.”
Danny shrugged. “You get used to it.”
Since Diana had moved out, he’d barely had the energy to get out of bed in the mornings, never mind respond to Jake’s brotherly banter. She’d returned not to Brogan—not yet, anyway—but to her parents’ house in East Hampton, where Danny had seen her once, the day of her twenty-week ultrasound scan. How excruciating that had been, standing beside her like a spare part, staring at the grainy monitor. Although the technician claimed that the blobs represented a healthy growing fetus, Danny could make out nothing but a series of gray blobs. But the truth was he hadn’t come to see the baby. It was Diana who haunted his dreams, whose face filled his waking moments, a daily, hourly vision of regret. He’d come hoping to talk to her, to try to make things right. But of course, once he got there, he had no idea where to begin. Her elderly parents, understandably frosty toward him, had refused to leave the two of them alone for a second until they left for the hospital. But even there, he’d somehow managed to let three whole hours slip through his fingers like sand, feigning a polite indifference that he was very far from feeling, too frightened even to hold Diana’s hand.
Only Jake understood how hard her defection had hit him, and that was more through twintuition than any direct communication on Danny’s part. He’d flown to New York ostensibly to discuss restructuring the business—Danny seemed intent on getting out of Solomon Stones, much against Jake’s wishes—but the truth was he was worried about his brother.
For Danny’s sake, he was glad he’d come, but leaving LA had been a wrench. After the misunderstanding with Rachel, he’d been treading on eggshells with Scarlett, trying to win back her already fragile trust. It wasn’t easy. Women in LA loved to gossip, especially the bored, rich, nothing-better-to-do-with-their-lives girls who shopped at Flawless. Scarlett was forever being told that Jake had been seen with such and such a woman—invariably clients—and that the pair of them had looked “very friendly.” He did his best to put her mind at rest. But he was also starting to resent being forced to defend himself on a daily basis. What did she want from him, blood? Didn’t she understand that he had to make a living? And that this was how his living was made?
It didn’t help that with the Oscars days away, Trade Fair was now right back at the front of her agenda and Scarlett was working like a dog, which meant they had less time together than ever. Honestly, Jake could strangle that fucker Che Che. Why couldn’t he just have written a check like any normal person and been done with it instead of stirring her up about those bloody Russian miners again? This of course meant more time for the malicious gossips to poison the well and sow doubt in her mind with their innuendos and shit-stirring. It was all highly taxing.
Obviously his love-life woes were nothing compared to poor Danny’s. But he couldn’t help thinking that this was supposed to be the “honeymoon period” of his and Scarlett’s relationship. So far their first two months as a couple had been rockier than Grand fucking Canyon.
“So,” said Danny, desultorily prodding his matzo ball with a fork. “About dissolving the partnership…”
Jake held up a hand to interrupt him.
“Look, we agreed. No rash decisions.”
“I’d hardly call it rash,” said Danny. “You’ve been carrying me for over a year now. And things are gonna get worse before they get better. It’s me Brogan’s after. As long as I’m part of Solomon Stones, he’ll be on our backs.”
“But he knows…you and Diana?” Jake tried to choose his words carefully.
“That we’re separated? I’m sure he does. Those two are thick as thieves these days,” said Danny, unable to conceal the bitterness in his voice. “It doesn’t matter, though. As far as he’s concerned, I stole Diana from him, and he’s never gonna forgive me for that. If I pull out of the business, you and Scarlett might just have a chance.”
“But that’s crazy,” protested Jake. “The guy’s got cancer. He won’t have the energy to pursue some personal vendetta.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” said Danny. “Look at the way he hounded Scarlett, the lengths he went to.”
“That was different,” said Jake.
“Yeah,” agreed Danny. “This is worse. He hates me far, far more than he ever hated Scarlett. And he’s so powerful now, he doesn’t need to waste his energy. He has a legion of minions to do his dirty work for him. Have you seen OMC’s latest press release?”
“The Sgaarstadt mine, you mean? Yeah, I saw it,” Jake nodded grimly.
Since the New Year, some sick God seemed to have been pouring Miracle-Gro on O’Donnell Mining Corp’s profits. Already the fastest-growing business in the sector globally, and by far the most profitable player in Russia, at this rate it wouldn’t be long before the unthinkable happened and Brogan emerged as a viable competitor to the once-invincible Cuypers. The only question was whether he would beat his illness and live long enough to enjoy such a triumph.
“Forget Brogan for a minute,” said Jake, still unwilling to cut Danny loose. “You’ve spent half your life building this business.”
Danny shrugged again. �
�I don’t care,” he said bleakly. “I want out. I want to start again.”
“Start again doing what?” asked Jake. “What are you going to do? Open a fucking garden center? Diamonds is what we do, bruv. It’s who we are.”
“It’s not who I am,” said Danny. “Not anymore.”
“Well, what about the baby then?” asked Jake, clutching at straws. “Don’t you want to leave something for your son?”
“My son.” Danny repeated the words softly, as if puzzled by their meaning. They had decided not to find out the gender, but Jake was nonetheless convinced it was a boy.
“Yes, your son,” said Jake. “Diana might have slung her hook, but that baby’s still yours.”
“Brogan wants her back, you know,” said Danny, staring into space. “Her and the baby. He wants them to raise it together.”
“And you’re gonna let that happen, are you?” Jake could feel his temper rising. Heartbreak was all very well, but Danny had to snap out of this life-sapping apathy and fast if he wanted to protect his child. “You’re gonna let that maniac, that rapist, bring up your kid?”
“It’s not up to me, is it?” said Danny, his voice breaking with emotion. “Diana and I never married. She holds all the cards here. She can do what she wants, and I can’t stop her.”
“All right.” Reaching across the table, Jake put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s all right, mate. We’ll think of something.”
He knew what it was like to feel powerless when it came to the woman you loved. He’d been begging Scarlett for weeks to drop this NPR thing about Brogan’s Russian miners, but she was having none of it. Half the KGB old guard worked for O’Donnell these days, and those guys brought new meaning to the word “ruthless.”
Since meeting Dr. Katenge and becoming involved with the Freetown orphans, he’d become much more sympathetic to Trade Fair and what Scarlett was trying to achieve—although he was too stubborn to admit this change of heart and had yet to mention the trip either to her or to Danny. But he hated the idea of her putting herself in harm’s way and hated even more his inability to prevent it.
For her part, Scarlett longed for his support with Trade Fair, for encouragement, a pat on the back. Dismissing his fears about her safety as melodramatic and ridiculous, and his concern for the business as selfish, she felt let down by his reticence.
“You’re being a total coward,” she’d chastised him a few days ago, before he came out here to see Danny. “Brogan turns up the heat half a notch, and you want me to drop the whole thing and run for the hills. And for what? So you and I can keep our nice little earner going in Beverly Hills, and I can have more nights free for dinner and sex?”
“Well, what’s so wrong with dinner and sex?” Jake had replied angrily. “You put yourself out enough to keep the home fires burning with Magnus, flying off to bleeding Seattle left, right, and center. I’m five minutes down the road. Why am I always last on your list?”
Scarlett saw his negativity about reviving Trade Fair as another betrayal. What she couldn’t see was how little she was supporting him. How her constant, nagging doubts about his commitment, and her devotion to her work and her cause, were pushing him further away with every passing day.
Jake clung to the hope that perhaps after the Oscars things would improve. Scarlett would have more time for him, and the almost constant fights and misunderstandings might stop. He certainly hoped so, especially if the alternative was joining Danny at the Heartbreak Hotel.
“I’ll tell you what we’ll do for now,” he said, wrenching his mind back to Danny and their immediate problems. “You sell me an option on your share of Solomon Stones.”
“An option?”
“Yeah, you know. The right to buy you out. It means you can’t sell to anyone else for the next six months.”
“I know what an option is,” said Danny. “I’m just wondering why on earth you’d wanna do that. No one else is gonna buy me out. It’s pointless.”
“No, it’s not,” said Jake firmly. “It’ll give you some cash now, which you need. It’ll save me being saddled with some weirdo partner I don’t want. And it’ll give you a bit of breathing space to come to your senses and change your mind.”
“I’m not going to change my mind,” said Danny.
“Course you will,” Jake grinned. “Just as soon as you discover what the rest of us already know.”
“Add what’s that?” asked Danny.
“That you’re completely crap at everything else,” said Jake cheerfully. “In the meantime, give me the names of your lily-livered, defecting customers—I only want the sexy ones, obviously—and I’ll stick around for a few days, see if I can’t tempt them back into the old Solomon Stones fold.”
Danny laughed.
“It won’t do any good,” he said. “But you’re welcome to try. Of course, Scarlett won’t be pleased if she catches you at it.”
“Scarlett’s never pleased, no matter what I do,” said Jake with feeling. “Besides, I’m not planning on doing the dirty on her. Just switching on a bit of the old Meyer charm, that’s all.”
“And what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her, right?” said Danny.
“Exactly,” said Jake. “Exactly.”
The next morning, Scarlett lay sprawled on an outdoor massage table at Shutters beside Nancy, losing herself in the delicious sensation of the two-handed Hawaiian massage and listening to the soft lapping of the waves against the shore. It was the first time she’d felt relaxed in…actually, she couldn’t even remember the last time she’d felt relaxed, not properly. If only Nancy were here under happier circumstances, today’s spa minibreak would have been utterly perfect.
“When I left the house yesterday, she was out cold,” Nancy was saying. She’d vowed not to talk about her mom today—to allow herself a few hours of mental release—but in the event she found it impossible not to. There was nothing else in her head. “She looks so peaceful on the morphine. I kind of want to get some myself.”
“Get some for me while you’re at it,” said Scarlett drowsily. “Although actually, this massage is almost as good. How’re you feeling?”
“Good,” said Nancy, unconvincingly. Try as she might, she couldn’t let go, not even under the expert fingers of the Shutters masseurs. “Fine. It’s awful the way your mind works though. As I got in the cab to JFK, part of me was thinking, what if she doesn’t wake up? Or what if she wakes up just one more time, sees I’m not there, and then, you know, that’s it? By the time I get back on Monday she’s gone, and I never got to say good-bye?”
Her voice began to falter. Reaching out a bare arm, Scarlett touched her gently on the shoulder.
“The doctor said she was stable,” she said reassuringly. “I’m sure it won’t happen like that. But you know what, even if it did, your mom knows how much you love her. You’ve had a lifetime to prove that to her. She wouldn’t have wanted you to miss the Paramount meeting. You’ve worked for this for years.”
“Yeah, well,” Nancy laughed wryly. “She might not have wanted me to miss it. But I know someone who did.”
Che Che, who was already secretly hurt by Nancy’s refusal to let him help during her mom’s illness, was furious about her latest project. A treatment she’d written years ago, a black comedy about an African refugee moving to a New York housing project, had been optioned by Paramount Studios, which was about to move it into the development phase. In an almost unheard-of vote of confidence in Nancy as a writer, they’d floated the idea of having her work on the project full time as a “creative advisor,” alongside their own in-house screenwriters. Not only would this mean big bucks if the movie ever saw the light of day, but it would earn her a much-coveted “cocreator” credit—an incredible accomplishment for a writer like herself with zero studio experience.
Unfortunately, Che Che had got a bee in his bonnet about the story from day one.
“It’s patronizing. It’s stereotypical. It’s crass,” he railed at her on the phone when she’
d called from New York to break the good news.
“Well, duh, of course it is,” she joked. “It’s a Hollywood movie. I never said it was gonna be Doctor Zhivago.”
“I’m serious,” thundered Che Che. “It’s utterly disrespectful, to me and to everyone else who suffered like my family and I did.”
“Jesus, lighten up, would you?” said Nancy, crossly. After a long, grueling day keeping vigil at her mother’s deathbed, she could do without a moral lecture from her boyfriend. “It’s a comedy.”
“Oh yeah, hilarious,” seethed Che Che. “And why exactly are African refugees considered funny? Because we’re black?”
“Whaaaat?” said Nancy. “What on earth does that have to do with anything?”
“I don’t see Paramount making a whole bunch of comedies about the Holocaust, do you? Ben Stiller in Gas the Parents? That ain’t gonna get optioned any time soon.”
On one level, of course, she could see he had a point. But he of all people should know she was no racist. And besides, the script wasn’t disrespectful. It was warm and funny, and having a big studio bite at it was the single best thing ever to have happened in her career. She couldn’t understand why he was being such a jerk about it.
“If you loved me, you’d be happy for me,” she heard herself saying, fighting back the tears in her father’s study.
“If you loved me, you’d tell Paramount you’ve changed your mind and throw the damn thing in the trash where it belongs,” snapped Che Che. At which point Nancy hung up on him. They hadn’t spoken since.
“He’ll come round,” said Scarlett, who had heard about the argument from both Che Che and Nancy. Though firmly on Nancy’s side, she didn’t want to alienate Che Che completely. Thanks to him NPR had reinstated her interview on next month’s playlist, and she very much hoped his interest in Trade Fair would morph into a long-term commitment. Not only was he respected as an artist and an activist across the US—she’d had no idea his profile was so high in artsy, intellectual circles—but he was a tough guy for the likes of Brogan and the cartels to discredit. For one thing, he wasn’t in the business, so couldn’t be accused of having any ax to grind, unlike her. For another, he was a direct eyewitness to atrocities paid for with diamond dollars and an articulate spokesman for the African oppressed. And for a third thing, as un-PC as it might be to say it, he was black. No one wanted to be the first white man to cast aspersions on the black survivor’s integrity.
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