Randall #03 - Sherwood Ltd.

by Anne R. Allen

  “Dear Miss Randall,” he wrote. “It is I who must apologize—for terrifying you that night in San Francisco. May I plead that I was too dazzled by your beauty to think properly? Or offer the excuse of jet lag? Or nicotine-deprivation? Nowhere to smoke in that bloody town, which is why I was reduced to lurking in alleys with wild beasts.”

  Okay, he was charming. Maybe too charming. But at least he wasn’t angry. The message went on. “I admit to giving you a quick Google. Are you the Camilla Randall who wrote the “Manners Doctor” books? Any interest in re-releasing them?” He went on to say that Sherwood Ltd. was launching a new mainstream imprint. He’d bought Dominion Books “in hopes the backlist of pervy tomes might support an independent publishing company that can take risks with new writers.” He was also reprinting nonfiction titles that could generate steady sales. “Your Wedding Rx might work nicely,” he said.

  I tried to calm myself. There had to be a catch.

  “If you have other work available (whips and chains optional) I’d love to have a look. My best to you and the San Francisco wildlife. Cheers, Peter.”

  Reminding myself to breathe, I hit “reply” and attached the file of Good Manners for Bad Times. Then I took myself out to dinner. Maybe my luck-wheel had turned.

  Plant’s luck seemed to have improved, too—at least with Silas. When I tiptoed back to the apartment, I could hear them softly snoring from my bed-nook. I stretched out on the couch and slept better than I had in ages.

  In the morning, cozy bacon-and-eggy aromas told me that Silas was still on premises. Toasting bagels was as close as Plant got to the culinary arts.

  Big, bearded Silas looked gigantic in Plant’s tiny kitchen as he hovered by the stove. Plant looked up from his sunny-side eggs and gave me a goofy grin. Silas’s hello was warm. “You’re just in time for breakfast. How do you want your eggs?”

  “Silas drove up yesterday,” Plant winked at Silas. “He says it’s because he wanted to make an offer on Felix’s bookstore, but I think he just wanted my body.”

  Silas gave Plant a quick kiss. “It’s true. But I’ve had my eye on that location for years. I have a store in the East Bay, but I need a downtown outlet.” Plant didn’t even flinch at the mention of the Berkeley store. Things seemed to be all patched up.

  But as Silas scrambled eggs for me, Plant looked pained. “Camilla darling, Silas needs time to work things out with the bank. He’d, uh, hoped to stay through this week. ”

  I poured coffee and tried to look cheerful. “Great. It will be fun. I’m perfectly happy on the couch.”

  I was dying to tell him the good news about my book, but unspoken tension choked the air. The Manners Doctor would have advised a quick move to a hotel. But The Manners Doctor had never been broke and unemployable. After gobbling the eggs, I pretended to be eager for a walk, and rushed outside to give the lovers their space.

  My mind on Peter Sherwood, I decided to check for his titles at Felix’s store. The Dominion erotica was shelved in a dark corner, amidst the leather fetish outfits and fur-lined handcuffs, which I supposed Silas would soon replace with Jane Austen note cards, library-lion bookends, and the other upscale decorator items that kept his business in the black in spite of the e-book revolution.

  Not that the Dominion covers were offensive. The drawings of buxom women in wisps of black underwear were no worse than Victoria’s Secret ads.

  Back in the small mainstream fiction area, a book titled Robin Hood: The Call of Sherwood caught my eye: the green-clad archer blowing on a sheep’s horn looked rather like Peter—thin and spiky-haired. I bought it and retreated to a café to read tales of England’s “courteous outlaw” and his merry men.

  When I ventured back to the apartment, Plant was mixing cocktails and singing along with Sondheim’s Into the Woods while Silas created magic in the kitchen.

  “We have a treat tonight, darling.” Plant handed me a Negroni with a tangerine twist. “Silas is cooking venison tenderloin in a port reduction sauce.”

  I relaxed. Venison and woodsy music seemed serendipitous after a day of Robin Hood stories. Everything was delicious.

  But after dinner, Silas gave me an odd smile and pulled an envelope from his pocket. “I have something for you, Camilla. I hope you’ll understand…”

  It was a ticket to New York. One way. For the day after tomorrow.

  Silas said with a strained grin that the date could be changed. “Or change the destination.” His voice was too loud. “If you want to take in the sights of Boston, Cancun—even Paris—let my travel agent know and I’ll pay the difference. I don’t want you to feel put out. But our plans have changed…” He squeezed Plant’s hand.

  Plant looked away, avoiding my eyes.

  I armored myself with a Manners Doctor smile and escaped, murmuring about checking on line for flights. My hands shook as I watched my computer boot up, wondering if one could make reservations at a homeless shelter.

  My inbox held a message from psherwood. I opened it, hardly able to breathe.

  “We love Good Manners and we’d like to make an offer,” psherwood wrote.

  An offer. Not much of an advance, but I’d be in print again. He went on, in a pottering English way, about a vast factory in Lincolnshire that he and his partner had recently bought, where employees had “set up house” in various nooks and crannies after moving from their former location in Nottingham.

  “…and we can offer your very own cranny. We’d like to launch ASAP and send you on a bit of a tour to promote your UK debut. If you come soon, you can meet our other American author, Gordon Trask, who has been visiting us...”

  Gordon Trask. Vietnam fighter pilot turned best-selling author. I had no idea he was still alive. He’d been nominated for a Pulitzer, as I remembered—decades ago.

  England. I’d been invited to England. Flying back to New York, penniless, would be utter defeat, but moving to Swynsby-on-Trent, Lincolnshire, UK, to hobnob with publishing rebels and literary greats…that would be a glorious adventure.

  Chapter 7—Robin Hood Airport

  The efficient travel agent almost made up for Silas’s callousness. She got me on a flight from San Francisco to London, with a connecting flight to the charmingly named Robin Hood Airport in the East Midlands. I had been to England often, usually for Wimbledon or a theater week with Mother, but I’d never been north of Oxford. I was excited about seeing another part of the country.

  Even though I was squished between two student travelers who listened to thumpy music that bled through their headphones, I got through the flight to London okay, thanks to a couple of Valentina’s tablets. No one recognized me, and I relaxed into my comfortable nobody-ness. I even slept a little—dreaming of Robin Hood, merry men and feasting under the greenwood tree.

  I’d Googled Swynsby-on-Trent, which wasn’t far from the real Sherwood Forest, on the border of Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire. It looked like a storybook English town, with a medieval market center featuring a half-timbered manor house where Richard III once stayed. An English major’s fantasy come true.

  I hadn’t found much online about Peter Sherwood or his company, but that was probably because the enterprise was so new. Silas said they were planning to take musty old Dominion, Ltd. into the e-book market in a big way. Their website didn’t mention their new mainstream books—just the whips and chains stuff, but Peter said that was new, too. I did find a picture of him with some blonde at a London club, plus a mention of his Frankfurt Book Fair partying in the blog of Miss Daisy Frost. He was obviously a man-about-town.

  I got through Customs in a tranquilized fog, and the connecting flight to Robin Hood airport took less time than a taxi ride through Midtown at rush hour.

  The noisy crowd retrieving bags around me mostly wore the straw hats and inappropriate clothing of tourists arriving home from warmer climes. I almost felt out of place in my Burberry raincoat. I searched the crowd, but as my fellow passengers dispersed, I saw nobody who looked remotely like my a
lley-person. I hoped I’d recognize him without his coyote-and-corpse entourage.

  The memory of that night made me shudder. But I was already here and couldn’t afford the luxury of paranoia.

  I decided to go to the restroom to change out of my musty traveling clothes. I put on an all-British ensemble: an Alexander McQueen babydoll dress in anthracite wool, and a pair of Stella McCartney boots I hadn’t been able to sell because of a bent buckle.

  But when I emerged, my anxiety returned. The waiting room was nearly deserted except for a black man with wild dreadlocks—dyed an improbable tomato red. He gave me an odd grin.

  I went to the information desk to ask if anyone had left a message for me.

  “Lookin’ fe Pe’ah Sha’wood?” said the scarlet-dreaded man, his northern accent barely understandable. He extended his hand. “I’m Liam, Miss Randall,” he said. “Your driver.” He made an elaborate, silly bow and grinned even wider as he picked up my bags and led me out into the damp, gloomy dusk of the parking lot.

  He stopped at a battered Mini Cooper.

  “Company limo,” he said with an ironic laugh as he stowed my bags in a trunk otherwise occupied by empty beer bottles and stacks of smutty books. It smelled of stale beer and cigarettes and unwashed socks. If I’d had the money to turn around and book a flight back to New York at that moment, I would have done it in a heartbeat.

  “Hop in the car,” Liam said, his dreadlocks glowing a bloody red in the parking lot light.

  I stood beside the car door, frozen. He wasn’t even going to open the door for me. I had just flown half way around the world to live with a gang of low-life pornographers. And I had no choice but to do whatever he told me.

  Chapter 8—Fairy Tale Villages and Mutant Zombies

  Liam stood behind me, beside the car, looking puzzled.

  “You fancy doing the driving? I don’t mind, but I thought you’d be knackered after your flight.”

  Of course, the English drove on the other side of the road. I should have remembered. I’d been about to climb into the driver’s seat.

  “I always drive because I’m the only one what’s got a valid driving license,” he said. “But your American license is good here…”

  “I’m just—confused. Sorry.”

  We switched sides, and he did open the door for me after all, with rather an elegant flourish. But as I sat down, I remembered I didn’t actually have a valid American license. It had been up for renewal when I was in the middle of the mess with the foreclosure. I hadn’t owned a car since I’d moved to Manhattan after the divorce, so it hadn’t been an issue. I looked in my wallet. There it was—along with the picture of Jonathan I somehow hadn’t been able to part with—my New York driver’s license, expiration date: last November.

  Liam didn’t offer conversation—or any further information on the “rough evening.” He turned on the car radio and listened with intensity to a sports event, occasionally exploding with anger, or cheering when somebody made a wicket or whatever. I was burning with questions on everything from the whereabouts of Mr. Sherwood to what accommodations to expect, but Liam told me nothing. All I could figure out from the loud radio was that we were listening to something soccerish played by teams from Leeds and Manchester.

  We passed through misty fairy-tale villages with cobbled streets and half-timbered pubs, but they didn’t do much to allay my fears.

  At one point, Liam got a call on his cell. His face went tense.

  “She’s here,” he said. “All sorted.”

  But when he clicked off, he turned the radio even louder, which did not make me feel “sorted” in any way.

  I told myself I shouldn’t have expected Peter Sherwood to meet me in person. He had more important authors to entertain, like Gordon Trask.

  Liam slowed in front of a large, featureless red-brick building surrounded by an iron fence. He drove the Mini through an open gate and down a driveway scattered with bottles, wrappers, and drifting plastic bags—not exactly the quaint spot I had pictured.

  He parked next to an ancient van and put an arm around my shoulders, his tone secretive.

  “We’ve got a bit of a dodgy situation inside. If anyone asks, you don’t know Peter Sherwood. You’re with me. Look after yourself and stay out of the way.”

  He got out and opened the car door for me.

  I wanted to scream, maybe jump behind the wheel and drive back to the airport—anything but step out into the rainy night. I started to ask the obvious questions, but Liam silenced me with a shake of his head.

  “Don’t say owt to nark this bloke. He’s a right loon.” Although his speech was incomprehensible, Liam’s body language made it clear something was very wrong inside.

  I hesitated a moment longer, but the rain, heavier now, was soaking his hair and shoulders. I stepped out of the car and ran with him to the back of the building. He unlocked a door and gestured me into the darkness.

  It felt like one of those dumb-teenager scream movies—and this was the scene where they went into the crypt to be eaten by mutant zombies. But I’d thrown in my lot with these people, and I was going to have to go inside, zombies or no zombies.

  Liam led me along creaky wooden floors and down a brick-walled hallway that led to a cavernous room with barred windows. Large machines formed menacing silhouettes against oily yellow light from the street lamps outside. Men’s voices rumbled from behind double doors. Somebody let out a yell.

  Liam draped his damp arm over my shoulder and shouted in the direction of the double doors.

  “Just Liam and me girlfriend here.”

  He took me into a smoke-filled cafeteria, lit by a couple of elderly fluorescent light fixtures that buzzed and sputtered on the grimy ceiling. A group of scruffy men sat on greasy couches and assorted plastic chairs, mesmerized by a snowy television that broadcasted the soccer game that had been playing on the car radio. The men barely looked up as we entered.

  “Here she is, mates, me girlfriend, um, er… Camilla.”

  This interested no one but a bald, gray-bearded man who straddled a chair in the center of the room. Square and muscular, with a patch over one eye, the man held in one hand a nearly empty bottle of Jack Daniels, and in the other—a chef’s knife.

  A very big knife.

  Chapter 9—Welcome to Sherwood

  The man with the eye patch turned and stared at Liam and me, scrutinizing me like an item for sale.

  “Camilla?” His voice was larded with scorn. “We’ve got ourselves a bleeding duchess, have we?” He took a swig of the whiskey. “Where the fuck is Peter, Rasta-boy? I’m done waiting. And tell him his whiskey is witch’s piss.” He jumped up and came at us, waving the knife. I couldn’t tell if he was waving his weapon so near Liam’s throat out of homicidal menace or drunken stupidity. No one showed much fear, so I assumed he was simply drunk.

  I wondered where Peter was. His absence was now bordering on rudeness.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I had no idea if this was how these people entertained themselves, but the knife was simply too much. “I’m terribly jet lagged and that’s making me nervous. Would you mind putting it away?”

  The man gave a roar and aimed the knife at me. His powerful forearm, adorned with a tattooed anchor, looked as if it could do serious damage, with or without sharp, pointy kitchen implements. I tried to divert the blade from the vicinity of my throat with a finger against the blunt side of the blade, but that made him angrier.

  “Your duchess thinks this is funny, Rasta-boy.”

  He felt the sleeve of my coat with the back of his finger, then gave me a one-eyed stare that froze my blood.

  “Not a bad Burberry knock-off,” he said. “And those McCartney boots look almost genuine. You get them off Peter?” He turned back to Liam. “Rasta-boy, you couldn’t pull a posh bird like this. She’s Peter’s tart, ain’t she?” He felt my coat again. “I hope that twatface didn’t tell you this is the real thing?”

  I couldn’t have spoken, e
ven if I’d had a response to give this madman. My knees had turned to custard. I held onto Liam, whose face was a mask of stony calm, although every muscle of the arm that circled my shoulders had gone tense.

  “How much time left?” Liam said to the television watchers, whose faces showed similar indifference to the armed and dangerous fashion policeman.

  “They’re going to chuck it any minute,” said one, lighting a cigarette. The others said nothing, only glancing for a moment from the television that transfixed them. Apparently nothing could pry them from their game, even a homicidal maniac.

  The man moved his knife back toward Liam.

  “They’ve all been getting mysterious calls on their mobiles. You lads are up to something.”

  The TV watchers yelled. A man in a paint-spattered hoodie threw a beer can at the television.

  “Bollocks!” he shouted. “Bleeding, bollocksy wankers!”

  Eye-patch man gulped whiskey.

  “You’d better be a Leeds supporter, Duchess, or these barbarians will tear you limb from limb.”

  I tried to smile, feeling as if I’d been dropped into a wild animal cage at an alien zoo. Those Merry Men of Sherwood stories were terribly romantic, but the reality of unwashed, uncivilized men was not.

  “Sorry, I don’t know anything about Leeds—or Manchester United either. I don’t follow soccer, I’m afraid.”

  “What did you say?” said a small, dark man with a jutting jaw and eyebrows like wayward caterpillars. His voice held as much menace as the eye patch man’s.

  They all turned to glare at me. Soccer. I’d called it soccer. Not good.

  “I mean football. I don’t know much about Leeds or Manchester United, um, Man U, I guess it’s called…”

  No, I must have said that wrong, too. The glares got darker.

  “You’ve got the pronunciation wrong there,” said the dark little man, who was rolling his own cigarette from what appeared to be a communal tobacco pouch. “Around here, you don’t say ‘Man U.’ It’s pronounced ‘scum’.”