West 57

by B. N. Freeman

  “Superb. Best book I’ve read in a very long time.”

  “Are you going to offer on it?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  Garrett looked at me, and his eyes were sad. “I don’t want to make promises to a new author that I can’t keep.”

  I felt as if he’d slapped me. “I’m sorry.”

  “It isn’t your fault, Julie. You didn’t cause any of this.”

  “I know there are rumors about West 57 being sold. I should have told you days ago. I didn’t want you hearing about this from anyone but me.”

  Garrett put a hand on my shoulder. I could feel the warmth of his skin through my blouse. “I don’t need to hear rumors to know what’s going on. It’s obvious we’re in trouble. You met with the bankers, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Is the situation as dire as you thought?”

  “Worse.”

  “So what does that mean?”

  “It means my options are basically shut down the house or sell it to keep the brand alive.”

  “Do you have an interested buyer?”

  “You know I do.”

  “Gernestier.”

  He said it like the giant ants were coming over the hill in Them. Run for your lives, everyone.

  “Yes, Gernestier is willing to invest millions,” I said. “It would be a whole new start for West 57 instead of liquidation.”

  “I realize that.”

  “If Sonny were alive, he would have faced the same choice,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “What do you think he would have done?”

  “I wish I could tell you, Julie, but I have no idea.”

  “You’re just being kind. You think Sonny would have let West 57 go under before putting it in the hands of Gernestier. You think that’s what I should do, too.”

  “No, I’m not saying that at all,” Garrett told me. “Sonny and I rarely talked about money. We talked about books. He wasn’t a savvy business person like you, and I’m not sure he ever faced the tough decisions. He ran the place through the force of his personality.”

  “I don’t have that luxury.”

  “No, you don’t, but that’s not a bad thing. You have strategic vision that he never did, and he knew it. That’s why he worked so hard to get you here. Not a month went by when he didn’t tell me how much he wished you would join West 57. He asked me countless times to persuade you.”

  “You never said a word to me about it,” I said.

  “Of course not. I told him I wouldn’t try to talk you into it.”

  “Why not?” Part of me wished he had. Years ago. When we still had a chance to turn things around.

  “Because you are the most independent woman I’ve ever known, and I would never dream of trying to change that.”

  Oh, damn. Why did he have to say things like that?

  “I’m struggling, Garrett,” I admitted. “I really don’t know what to do.”

  “I wish I had a magic solution, but I don’t.”

  “I could use Sonny’s advice. I’m angry at him for not being here. I’m angry at him for dying. I need him.”

  “Maybe that’s why you keep seeing him.”

  “Maybe.”

  I wondered if that was true. To me, Sonny was West 57, and West 57 was Sonny. I couldn’t separate the two. That was why everything involving King Royal and Irving Wolfe was so disturbing. I was beginning to feel as if I didn’t know my father at all. Until I understood who he really was, until I understood what he’d done, he would keep haunting me.

  Of course, I could be nuts, too. We can’t rule it out.

  “Did you know Irving Wolfe was one of the original investors in West 57?” I asked Garrett.

  “No, I didn’t. Are you sure about that?”

  “Someone told me, but I don’t know whether to believe it or not.”

  Garrett took a long time to reply. “It doesn’t really change anything, does it? West 57 opened up years before Wolfe began his Ponzi scheme. He would have been legit in those days. It wasn’t dirty money.”

  “Yes, but it means Sonny and Wolfe had a relationship.”

  “So?”

  “So it makes everything involving King’s book feel wrong. Like Sonny was using the book to cover something up.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Garrett kissed the top of my head again, like he’d done in the morning. I liked it. I wished he did it more. I wished he’d kissed his way down to my lips. “You’re making too much of this, Julie.”

  “Am I?”

  “Yes. Captain Absolute is a book like any other book. It’s not going to help you come to terms with the death of your father. It’s not going to help you decide what to do about West 57.”

  “You’re right,” I said, but he wasn’t right. Not this time. I needed to know the truth.

  I stood up from the floor.

  “Tell me something,” I said to Garrett, even though I didn’t want to hear the answer.

  “What?”

  “If I decide to let Gernestier take over West 57, what will you do?”

  He didn’t hesitate for even a millisecond. “I’ll leave.”

  I stood there in shock, thinking: That wasn’t painful at all. It was easy, like having surgery without anesthesia. Cut me up some more, Doctor. Remove a few more organs. Start with the heart. I tried to make a joke of it, and it came out lame. “Gee, could you get back to me a little faster? You always think things to death, Garrett.”

  “I haven’t thought about much of anything else lately, Julie. The fact is, I can’t work for a corporate machine.”

  “So it’s better for me to shut down the house?”

  “I’m not saying that at all. I’m just telling you the truth, because you asked me. When Gernestier takes over, I’m gone.”

  I noticed that he said “when,” not “if,” as if it were a done deal.

  Maybe it was.

  “Helmut asked me to stay on,” I told him. “I’d still be in charge of the house. A three-year contract. I’d insist on the same for you. Does that make a difference?”

  I hoped he’d say yes. I hoped everything in his demeanor would change. Yes, of course, I’d stay. That makes all the difference in the world, Julie. It would be the two of us together, leading West 57 to new glory.

  “No,” he said.

  I felt a twinge of anger, as if he’d rejected me personally. “Just like that?”

  “I’m sorry. Look, Julie, you know there’s nothing I’d like more than to keep things the way they are now, but that’s not going to happen. When Gernestier takes over, Gernestier is in charge. Not you. Helmut and his bean counters will run the show and no one else. You know that.”

  I did know that.

  “So what will you do?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure. NYU has been after me for a couple of years about starting a new literary press. Maybe now’s the time.”

  “You’d starve.”

  “Starve? No. Get rich? No. But that’s not the point. I’m not getting rich now. They’d give me complete editorial control. I’d be able to build my own list.”

  “It sounds like a dream. Why haven’t you already done it?”

  “Because I already have a job,” he said.

  I heard what I wanted to hear, which was unfair. With Sonny, he had a job. With me, he’s out the door.

  “Well, don’t let me stand in your way,” I told him.

  Did that sound bitter? Okay, maybe a little. I could have apologized, but instead, I left his office without saying anything more. I may even have stamped my feet a little. How mature of me. There were lots of things I could have told him. Lots of thoughts in my head. They all would have made the situation worse.

  You’re naïve. We all work for corporate machines sooner or later.

  Don’t be a fool. Small presses are dying.

  If you loved me, you’d stay.

  The last
one was the hardest. It led me to one inescapable conclusion. Garrett didn’t love me. Of course not. It was silly to think that way. He’d never given me any reason to believe he did. He’d never walked through any of the doors I’d opened for him. To him, we were friends, and that was all.

  There was one other conclusion I didn’t like.

  Maybe I loved him.

  Maybe the thought of working at West 57 without Garrett sounded intolerably lonely. Maybe this city of millions of people had no one in it for me, no one to keep me here. That was the reality. I’d been a fool not to see it. I stood in the hallway, trembling with some odd combination of rage and despair, and I realized I felt a warm breeze blowing over my body like a caress on my skin.

  It was the ocean. It was the west coast. It was calling me.

  No, really, it was the vent from the copy machine, but you know what I mean. I was beginning to get my head around a truly terrifying realization about my future.

  It was possible, just possible, that my mother was right.

  17

  That evening, I met Bree at the CCN studio in the Time Warner building, where Pierce Gorgon was planning to do his Wolverine impression by digging his claws into King Royal. Bree was on the phone when I arrived. As usual. I suspect the day is coming when cell phones will be surgically implanted in our heads, and I’m sure Bree will be among the first to sign up for the procedure.

  When she finally hung up, she air-kissed me – mmwha, mmwha – and began primping her multi-colored hair in the reflection of the trophy case where CCN keeps their Emmy awards.

  “That was your mother,” she informed me as she twiddled her highlights.

  “Thanks for not putting me on the phone this time,” I said.

  “Well, she was getting on a plane, so we had to cut it short.”

  This wasn’t a surprise to me. Mother is always at the airport, coming and going, going and coming. I didn’t ask where she was headed. (Note to self: Do not make that mistake again.)

  “It’s a disaster,” Bree went on. “I’m distraught.”

  “Why?”

  “Kate’s out.”

  “Winslet? Why?”

  “Oh, you know how it goes, darling. Timing is everything in Hollywood. Kate loves the script, but she’s locked in to back-to-back contracts for at least the next ten months. Cherie doesn’t believe we should wait.”

  She didn’t ask for my casting suggestions, but selflessly, I volunteered.

  “I was thinking, with the right makeup, Jack Black could probably handle the role.”

  Yes, that was unusually mean of me, but my best insults kept glancing off Bree without impact, so I was forced to dig deep.

  “You are funny, darling, but I’m truly upset about this.”

  “I get it. I’m sorry. Who’s your backup?”

  “None! Cherie’s not worried, but I want it to be just right, you know?”

  “I know.”

  “By the way, she asked about you and Thad. She knows you’re having dinner with him tomorrow.”

  “Of course, she does. My mother knows everything.” Then I said: “Here comes our boy.”

  King Royal was being led out of makeup to the set. Bree was right. He cleaned up well. He wore an expensive suit, tie perfectly knotted, every crease impeccable. His curly hair had been washed, set, and sprayed. His face was even pinker than usual. He nodded at me with the noblesse oblige of an emperor.

  “Julie Chavan,” he said.

  I wonder if he thinks that’s my first name. JulieChavan. Which would make me JulieChavan Chavan.

  “Hello, King,” I said. “No singing and no limericks tonight, okay?”

  And for God’s sake, don’t talk about your robust manhood.

  “Never fear, I will do the Captain proud,” he said.

  They escorted him to the interview table and gave him a bottle of water. He sat with the straightest back of anyone I had ever seen. The cameramen started testing. The sound engineers did sound checks. Bree and I stood off by ourselves, well away from the action.

  “You realize this is going to be a disaster,” I said to Bree.

  “Oh, yes, complete and utter, darling.”

  “So why are we doing it?”

  “Because the media loves train wrecks, you know that. King will say outrageous things, and the newspapers will talk about him saying outrageous things, and the tweeters will re-tweet his outrageous things, and the bloggers will be outraged about him saying outrageous things. And tomorrow everyone in America will start buying the book because it’s so outrageous.”

  She was right, of course. Morally questionable, but right.

  I had other things on my mind. “I saw one of your authors today at West 57,” I said.

  “Brian Freeman?” she guessed. “He’s tasty, don’t you think? The deep ones are very sexy. His books are great, too.”

  “He told me that Sonny approached him directly about doing the ghost work on Captain Absolute. Is that true? You didn’t know?”

  Bree didn’t flinch. She was watching the CCN crew flit around King like house flies. “Yes, that was very naughty of Sonny. Tsk tsk. I had words with him, getting between me and my client. Mind you, the author figures he’s saving twenty percent commission, so what does he care?”

  I’d been hoping Brian was wrong. I’d been hoping that Bree gave Sonny the green light to talk to him directly. I’d been hoping the entire Captain Absolute project, from the moment Irving Wolfe took a leap off that boat, had been cooked up by Bree with dollar signs in her eyes. I wanted to think that Bree had been the one who was pushing King Royal onto the world, because I didn’t like the alternative.

  The alternative was Sonny.

  “When Sonny told me about the deal with King, he made it sound like you were the mastermind,” I said.

  Bree was surprised. “Me? Oh, hardly, darling.”

  “King’s your client.”

  “Now, yes, but not then. Sonny sent King to me.”

  “King had no agent?”

  “He was an unsullied virgin,” she said.

  “Then how did he find his way to Sonny?”

  “I have no idea. I assume he sniffed around about a book deal, and someone gave him Sonny’s name. King was a babe in the woods. He had no clue about publishing or marketing. Sonny had him in his pocket, but he knew King needed an agent who was savvy about overseas rights and publicity. Me, I nearly had an orgasm when Sonny called. Cash cows don’t usually moo their way into my lap without competition. I was so thrilled I cut my percentage in half on the U.S. deal, because King and Sonny had already agreed on a number. I just needed to handle the details of the contract. Easy peasey.”

  “I figured you were planning an auction,” I said, “and Sonny made an offer to preempt it.”

  “That would have been rather ungracious of me, wouldn’t it?” Bree laughed wickedly. “Not that I wouldn’t have scrapped the deal in a heartbeat and started all over if I thought I could get more money, but four million was already twice what I could reasonably expect. I decided it made no sense to be greedy.”

  “Why did Sonny agree to pay so much? Particularly if King was naïve about the business.”

  She shrugged. “This was Sonny. You know how he was, darling. If he got excited about a project, he threw money at it. I wasn’t going to sit him down and tell him to lower his offer, now was I?”

  Sonny lied.

  He lied to me.

  Months ago, he’d told me he was publishing Captain Absolute. Even then, I wondered about the numbers. I wondered why he was taking on a project that was so outside the norm for West 57. He said it was Bree who got him to see the light. Bree who painted the book as the hot spring title for every list. Bree who jacked up the price by dangling an auction in front of him.

  He could have gotten the book for less. Millions less. Sonny, what did you do? And why?

  Bree read my face and misinterpreted my reaction. “Oh, Lord, darling, did I speak out of turn? I have no idea w
hy Sonny didn’t send King to you, not me. All I can figure is that he thought the family connection would raise eyebrows. Conflict of interest, that sort of thing.”

  She was right. Sonny knew the deal would raise eyebrows.

  Mine.

  I suddenly felt a hand on my shoulder, squeezing me like a ripe avocado. Another hand appeared around Bree’s shoulder. A face dipped between us with all the cheery confidence of the sun lifting over the horizon.

  “Ladies,” Pierce Gorgon announced, oozing his British élan at us. “How are we both tonight?”

  “Why, Pierce, you charmer, how long has it been?” Bree cooed sweetly, as if it were a surprise to see him here, on the set of his own show. “Years and years, isn’t it, darling? Remember our little tete-a-tete in the Docklands when you kept swearing at me? I think that was the last time.”

  “I remember you were trying to fuck me over on an exclusive story, Bree Cox,” Pierce told her with a smile.

  I’m sorry. I could have covered that one with a “freak,” but no one would have believed me.

  “Oh, but darling, you were just a lowly publisher then,” Bree went on. “And now look at you, a big American television star! On CCN! It must be so exciting to have five or six hundred people tuning in to watch you each and every night.”

  I didn’t think it was such a great idea to insult Pierce before the interview with King, but Pierce and Bree obviously had history together. I wasn’t going to get between them.

  “It must be hard on you, Bree, knowing my life is so much better than yours,” he told her brightly. “More money, more fame, a better sex life. You must go to sleep every night hoping you die and are reincarnated as me.”

  “I’m sure your viewers hope that, too, darling.”

  I was about to duck before the two of them came to blows, but instead, Pierce kissed Bree squarely on the lips. With tongue. “My God, you are hot as ever,” he announced.

  “You, too, darling, sizzling and breathless,” she laughed.

  “Julie, you’re a vision,” Pierce told me. “So sorry about your father.”

  “Thank you.”

  He rubbed his hands together gleefully. “Ladies, I’d like to stay and talk more about how talented and wonderful I am, but I have to go carve up your client like a Christmas goose.”