Best Enemies

by Jane Heller

  She shook her head. “You make it sound like you were the only one who benefited from the friendship. She must have benefited, too; otherwise, she wouldn’t have kept you around.”

  “Oh, she benefited all right. I finally understand that after three years of therapy. I was her handmaiden, her acolyte, her trusty sidekick. I gave her my class notes and ran errands for her and took care of her dogs, whatever she needed, and in exchange she let me be her best pal. But mostly, she kept me around because I was zero competition. This will come as a shock to you, Connie, but I wasn’t the incredible babe that I am now.”

  We both smiled. I am not a babe now, incredible or otherwise, but I’m not a horror show, either. I grew into my looks, blossomed as I moved through adolescence into adulthood. At age thirty, the nose I used to think was as big as my fist is now well proportioned to the rest of my face, which is rather attractive in an understated, nonthreatening sort of way. I have large brown eyes and lustrous brown hair and a tight little body, thanks to my workouts at the gym. You wouldn’t spot me in a crowd and go, “Oh my God! Put this woman on the cover of Vogue immediately!” But if you studied me closely, you’d probably think, She’s really pretty. That’s what Stuart told me the night we met at a party—that I was “really pretty.” Little did I know that, within months, Tara’s beauty would trump my prettiness and that not only would the guy I wanted want her instead but that she would want him, too. That’s the part that gnawed at me—the fact that she could have seduced just about any man on the planet and yet she had to spread her mile-long legs for mine.

  “What made Tara’s treachery all the more painful,” I told Connie, “was that I thought I’d finally found an honest guy for a change, a guy who would restore my faith in mankind. Talk about an oxymoron.”

  “Talk about a moron, period.”

  Actually, Stuart wasn’t a moron. He was smart, well read, up-to-date on current events, eager to take the reins of his family’s business. In fact, it was his stability—his maturity—that had won me over. He’d seemed so different from the other guys I’d dated—the ones who couldn’t commit or couldn’t get a job or couldn’t get it up. Yeah, I’d had my share of losers before I met him. According to Marianne, I kept picking men who weren’t relationship material because I suffered from low self-esteem. Ironic, huh? Thanks to Stuart, my self-esteem dipped so low, it practically flatlined.

  “You must have been really traumatized when he turned out to be a rat,” said Connie, echoing my thoughts.

  “I was, because I just didn’t see it coming, didn’t see Tara coming. By the time he and I had gotten engaged, she wasn’t a huge part of my life anymore. She had become sort of princessy and shallow, not that she was ever particularly deep, but at least she used to be fun. When I asked her to be my maid of honor and take part in my wedding, it was mostly because we’d known each other for so many years. She’d been my best friend and my oldest friend, and I thought introducing her to Stuart and including her in our special day was the right thing to do.”

  “The right thing to do would have been to keep her slutty ass out of your damn business.”

  “Yeah, well hindsight is twenty-twenty,” I remarked, then cringed. I hate that expression. It’s right up there with “six of one, half a dozen of the other.” Tara’s favorite was “the whole enchilada,” and I was such a twit, I used to think she was worldly and hip for saying it.

  “I’d love to continue to trash the bitch,” said Connie, “but I’ve got an editorial meeting in five minutes. Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I’ve got to work the phones. I’m trying to get the news magazines to do a feature on Georgette Peterson. Her new novel is brilliant, but she’s not a household name.”

  “If anyone can make the media pay attention, it’s you, Amy. They should fire Betsy and make you marketing director.”

  “I don’t want her job. I just want her to let me do mine.”

  Forty-year-old Betsy Kirby was my boss at Lowry and Trammell, overseeing the publicity, promotion, and advertising departments. A seasoned veteran of the business, having worked at three other publishing houses, Betsy had a reputation as a taskmaster, and it was well deserved. She’d sit on you, badger you, hound you until you accomplished whatever impossible goal she’d set for you, and then, once you accomplished it, she’d take the credit. So frustrating. What’s more, her social skills were suspect at best. She was relentlessly chilly, distant, remote—under no circumstances could you and she have a girlie conversation involving men or makeup or menstrual cramps—and we all wondered if she behaved differently with her husband, or if she was the ice queen with him, too. There was no way to tell, since she was so closemouthed about her marriage. All we knew about it was that her husband was Armenian and that he traveled a lot and that the two of them rarely saw each other. We assumed, given the data available, that they never had sex, which was why Connie had dubbed Betsy “Celebetsy.” Did I want her job? Yeah. But I wasn’t ready to admit it.

  “Now, do you promise you’ll calm down about this Tara thing?” Connie said as she gathered her notes together in preparation for her meeting.

  “I’ll try, although I’m still sort of amazed at what I said to her. I don’t know where I got the nerve.”

  “Hey, you saved face by telling her you’re getting married in six months. It felt right at the time, didn’t it?”

  “You bet it did.”

  “Good. Now you can forget about it, which should be easy, since the chances of you two laying eyes on each other again are slim to none.”

  I nodded, thanked her for the reality check.

  Our lunch break over, I went back to my office and Connie went off to her editorial meeting. A couple of hours later, I was on the phone, in the middle of my pitch to the book editor at Newsweek, when Connie walked in with an odd expression on her face. I couldn’t tell if she was sick or sad, or both. She sank down into one of the two chairs opposite mine and waited for me to finish up my call. When I did, I said, “What is it? You look as if you just lost your best friend.”

  She shook her head and pointed at me. “Not mine. Yours. But you didn’t lose her. That’s the problem.”

  “Connie, what are you talking about?”

  “The evil Tara, the one you’ll never see again. You’re gonna see her again all right. Again and again and again.”

  “Don’t even joke about that.”

  “No joke. It came up in the meeting,” she said.

  “What came up?” What was coming up at that moment was my lunch. The conversation was suddenly making me queasy.

  “Your old pal has sold us a book—some ridiculous ‘How to have a fabulous life’ book—and you’ll be overseeing the publicity for it.”

  I stared at Connie, forcing myself to process this hot news bulletin of hers, forcing myself to absorb the fact that L and T would be publishing a book by the person I resented most in the entire world. I couldn’t believe it. Could not believe it. Why hadn’t Tara told—

  I stopped, remembering our exchange in more detail. She had told me. Or, rather, she’d been about to tell me. Yes, when we met on the street and I mentioned where I worked, she said, “You work at Lowry and Trammell? That’s an amazing coincidence, because—” And then she muzzled herself. Oh God, so it was true.

  “In other words, you’ll be seeing her again, Amy, like it or not,” Connie was saying. “Well, not just seeing her. Taking her to dinner. Brainstorming over the phone. Figuring out how to make her look good to the media. That’s gotta be your idea of hell, right?”

  Now I felt genuinely ill. I was nauseous, light-headed, tight in the chest, numb in the hands and feet. For a second, I wondered if I might be having a heart attack. But I wasn’t. I was having an anxiety attack at the very thought—well, at all the very thoughts. The thought of Tara writing a book instead of being content with her dinky radio show and her vulgar mansion and her lowlife of a husband. The thought of her selling this so-called book to a reputable publisher li
ke Lowry and Trammell and making more money than I did. The thought of having to interact with her on a regular basis or else risk losing my job. The thought of calling the book editor at Newsweek and pitching him on a feature about her.

  “And then there’s your supposed fiancé and your supposed engagement and your supposed wedding in six months,” Connie reminded me, as if I didn’t have enough to worry about. “You’ll have to deal with all that, now that she’s back in the picture.” She rose from her chair, blinked at me with her raccoon eyes. “It’s lucky you’re creative, Amy. That’s all I can say. Most people wouldn’t have a clue what to do in a situation like this, but you’re a publicist. You’re good at putting out fires. It’spartofwhatyoudoright?”

  “What?”

  “I said, It’s part of what you do, right?”

  “Right.” Yeah, I felt ill, really ill, and getting worse by the minute.

  3

  I went to see Celebetsy. Since she not only sat in on the editorial meetings but also had a say in the marketing viability of each book we acquired, I figured she might be able to tell me more about Tara’s, specifically: why we bought it, how much we paid for it, when we were publishing it, and—here was the crucial question—whether there would be a publicity budget for it or whether it was one of those books we’d drop in our schedule and ignore, allowing me to pretend it didn’t exist.

  She was on the phone when I entered her corner office, which wasn’t lavishly decorated, considering that she was a corporate vice president, and lacked even a hint of its occupant’s private life. There were no framed photographs of her husband, no knickknacks or souvenirs indicating their trips or hobbies, not even a potted plant or two. There were only shelves of books—our books—and they were stacked randomly, haphazardly, not organized or displayed, as if Betsy had only just arrived at L and T and hadn’t had time to unpack, when, in fact, she’d been my boss for over two years.

  “I hope I’m not interrupting,” I said after she hung up.

  “What do you want?” she said, as opposed to “No, of course you’re not interrupting, Amy. Come right in.” She wasn’t the boss from hell, exactly. She was just missing the gene that enables people to treat one another with civility. As for her physical appearance, she was attractive, although her look was as brittle as her personality. She was model-thin, with the cheekbones to match. Her stick-straight, chin-length brown hair had a blunt, severe cut. And her complexion was pale, excessively powdered, the only color coming from her lips, which were a slash of ruby red. And speaking of her mouth, she had a great smile—one of those wide grins that can really light up a face—but she hardly ever used it, except when she was sucking up to an important author.

  “I wanted to ask you about a manuscript we bought,” I said, forging ahead in spite of the usual big chill. “Connie Martino told me it’s a self-help book by”—I tried not to choke on that accursed name—”Tara Messer.”

  “Wrong. The book isn’t self-help. It’s lifestyle. If you’re going to rely on hearsay, at least get your categories straight, would you?”

  See what I mean? “Sorry. A lifestyle book by Tara Messer. Is there anything you can tell me about it?”

  “Julie acquired it.” Julie Farrell was our editor in chief. “She thinks the author will be the next Martha Stewart, minus the baggage.”

  Tara had so much baggage, she needed a U-Haul to schlepp it around. “But we’re not talking about actual Martha Stewarty domestic subjects, are we?” I couldn’t picture my old pal serving up advice on cooking or gardening or raising chickens to produce genetically engineered powder blue eggs. She barely knew how to make ice cubes.

  “Not really. The book is more about how women can create a beautiful environment by living beautifully. Inside.”

  “Inside what?”

  “Inside. You know, in our hearts and minds and souls. Apparently, Tara Messer leads this perfect life, and in the book she explains how she does it.”

  I knew how Tara did it, and it had nothing to do with having a soul. It had to do with being born into a rich family and by having people, especially your best friend, be your doormat and by marrying the best friend’s fiancé, whose family was even richer than your own. “So, did Julie shell out a nice advance?”

  “More than nice. Mid-six figures.”

  I might have actually groaned here, such was the pain I felt.

  “The author hosts a radio show that’s very possibly going into syndication,” said Betsy. “Julie’s hoping her audience will follow her to bookstores once she breaks out.”

  Tara never broke out. Nope, not a single zit all through high school. And wouldn’t you know her stupid little radio show was about to lead her to even greater glory? That was so Tara right there.

  “You’ll be the point person on this one, Amy, because we’re going to do big publicity—national TV, a multicity tour, feature stories in newspapers and women’s magazines. I expect you to do it all.”

  What I felt like doing at that moment was rolling over and dying. It seemed a viable alternative to being forced to work with Tara, to being forced to promote Tara, but I quickly reminded myself that dying was a rather extreme method of avoidance. I also considered quitting my job on the spot, but I ruled that out as being both impulsive and reckless. No, I decided, I would discreetly look for and get another job in publicity, with a rival publishing house, and then leave L and T before Tara’s book came out. If we had only just acquired it, it would probably be a year before it found its way into the schedule, and I’d be long gone by then.

  “The other piece of news about the book,” said Betsy, “is that the author has delivered a really clean manuscript and we’re crashing it out early instead of waiting the usual eternity for it to make it through the pipeline.”

  So much for my escape plan. “What’s the rush? It’s not as if we’re talking about a headline maker here.”

  “Colman House has a similar book on their list, and we want to get ours out first. We’re planning to publish in six months.”

  “Six months?” I’d told Tara I was getting married in six months. Now, I’d not only have to deal with her right away, I’d have to find a fiancé right away. Maybe dying wasn’t as extreme as I thought.

  Betsy went on to discuss the technicalities involved in publishing Tara’s tome ahead of schedule, while I was stuck in panic mode.

  “Amy?” she said, snapping her fingers in front of my face. “What’s the matter with you? I’m talking to you and you’re not paying attention.”

  Damn right I wasn’t paying attention. At that particular moment, I was trying to formulate the excuse I would use to bail out of having to work on the book, but I couldn’t come up with one. Why didn’t I simply admit to Betsy that I’d known Tara for years, that she and I were barely on speaking terms, and that it would be impossible for me to sing her praises to the media? Because the last publicity director who went that route got her ass fired. According to Connie, my predecessor, a woman named Francine, tried to opt out of working on a cookbook by a famous French chef. “I’m a vegan,” Francine told Betsy. “I refuse to promote any food that has a face.” Betsy’s response? “You’re a publicist. You don’t have to eat it. You just have to sell it. But since you can’t, I’ll find someone who can.”

  So I couldn’t take a hard line if I wanted to keep my job. Instead, I tried this milder approach: “To be honest, Betsy, I’m not a big fan of the whole ‘Life would be better if only I took more bubble baths’ genre.”

  Her lip curled. “Then you’d better become one, or get your paycheck someplace else.”

  “Right. I only meant—”

  “Hear this loud and clear: Tara Messer has written a book that has the potential to sell a shitload of copies. So I don’t want you delegating it to someone in your department. I don’t want you farming it out to a freelancer. I don’t want you turning up your nose at it because it’s not going to win a Pulitzer. I want you to get the author as much publicity as humanly p
ossible. In other words, Amy, you’ve got a choice: Either join the unemployed or go out there and give this your best shot.”

  My best shot? That settled it. I would shoot myself. No, of course, I wasn’t going to commit suicide. I wasn’t going to call Marianne, my old shrink, and make an emergency appointment with her, either, although I contemplated it. Ultimately, it seemed that running back to her reeked of failure—hers and mine. I didn’t want to be one of those patients who spends years in therapy analyzing and exposing and expressing but then winds up being too dense to put any of it to use. And I didn’t want her to be one of those therapists who spends years in training at the Ackerman Institute in New York or the Menninger Clinic in Kansas, or wherever therapists go to become therapists, only to have the patient regress. Besides, I already knew what she’d say if I went back and sat on her cracked leather sofa: “Concentrate on your own life, Amy, not on what Tara has or doesn’t have. Let go of the past. Stay centered.”

  So I vowed to solve my Tara Problem myself. As I saw it, there were essentially two parts to the problem. There was the professional issue, where I would have to work alongside her on the book, and there was the personal issue, where I would have to deal with my lie about being engaged. Regarding the professional issue, I decided that with courage and determination and a decent supply of Xanax, I could get through the publicity campaign for the book. Regarding the personal issue, I decided that by pretending I’d never told Tara I was engaged and hoping she’d forgotten all about it, I could get away with having said it in the first place.

  To attack the professional issue, I asked Julie Farrell’s assistant on Friday for a copy of Tara’s manuscript, which was bundled in a large envelope, together with a press kit on Tara herself. I took the package home and read its contents over the weekend.

  She’s still the girl who won Best Looking in high school, I mused as I examined an eight-by-ten glossy of thirty-year-old Tara.

  I was in bed that Saturday morning, propped up against a couple of pillows, a mug of coffee on my night table, the manuscript pages fanned out across the sheets.