Best Enemies

by Jane Heller

  I smiled sweetly as I shook Tony’s hand, and as I did, I had to admit that there was something movie starish about him. He certainly had the bad-boy looks of a Sean Penn—wavy dark hair, bushy dark eyebrows that hung over piercingly blue eyes, a slightly crooked nose, a pouty, thin-lipped mouth, and a boxer’s body, muscular but compact—and he was the right age for a brooding leading man: mid-thirties. If only he didn’t have such a chip on his shoulder, I thought. His books were a lot of fun, with their cast of entertaining rascals, as well as their lovable hero, Joe West, a burned-out cop, and his feisty yet devoted wife, Lucy. Well, maybe Connie was right and there was more to him than I realized.

  “So, what’s the hurry today, Amy Sherman, queen of flacks?” he said with a smirk, tiny lines crinkling around those blue eyes. “Is there a publicity emergency going on somewhere? Do you need an author for an appearance at a Tupperware party? Or are we talking about a bigger, more prestigious booking—like a segment on the Home Shopping Network?”

  On second thought, Tony Stiles didn’t have a chip on his shoulder. He had a bug up his ass. But as I stood there close to him, so close that I could see glints of red in the strands of hair that curled around his ears, I found myself wondering if he ever dropped the wise-guy routine and, if so, what it would be like to be around him when he did. He was never without a girlfriend, rumor had it, so he had to be capable of at least some tenderness. Just none I’d ever witnessed.

  “Actually, Tony, I’m about to pitch you to the Food Network,” I said on my way out the door, my voice as perky as a publicist’s should be. “They’re doing a segment on what to do with beef that’s extremely tough and hard to swallow. I think you’d be perfect.”

  8

  “Have you pitched Simply Beautiful to the network morning shows yet?” asked Betsy, standing over me. As I felt her minty breath on the back of my neck (she was always popping Tic Tacs), I wondered why she bothered to have an office. She spent most of her time in mine.

  “I’ve made preliminary calls,” I said. “There’s been interest, but no commitments. It’s too early.”

  “It’s never too early,” she said. “You’re supposed to create a buzz.”

  Buzz off. “We’re not publishing the book for six months.”

  “Five and a half,” she said. “Look, I want Tara Messer on national television, because that’s what’s going to bump up sales. I don’t care what you have to do to make it happen. Just make sure it does. Got it?”

  As she strutted into the hall, I wondered why she wasn’t on Zoloft or something. Surely there was medication for people who caused other people to be depressed.

  “Is it safe to come in?” asked Scott, peeking his head in the door. It was six o’clock, time to pack up and go home. I was drained from attempting to befriend my single male colleagues and was itching to climb into bed and pull the covers over my head.

  “Sure,” I said wearily. “What’s up?”

  “Hot bulletin,” he said with the self-satisfied look he always assumed whenever he was about to spread potentially malicious gossip. “Betsy had lunch with the publicity director at Hartley and Hitchcock yesterday.”

  “Oh my God. Where’d you hear that?”

  “From an assistant over there. I hate to sound paranoid, but do you think she wants to replace us?”

  “It’s possible. Or maybe she’s just keeping her options open, in case I let a memo go out with a typo in it.”

  “She’s such a diva. Just know that I’m your loyal servant. If I hear anything else, I won’t tell anyone but you.”

  I smiled. “Thanks. I appreciate that.”

  I was about to turn off the lights, when my phone rang. Scott picked it up, then put the caller on hold.

  “Guess who?” he said.

  “I’m too tired to guess.”

  “It’s Tara Firma.”

  I cringed. “What does she want this time?”

  “She didn’t say, but for two people who didn’t speak to each other for four years, you and she are pretty chummy now.”

  “She’s pretty chummy. I’m just trying to stay on Betsy’s good side. Well, on her less bad side, I mean.”

  “At the risk of sticking my two cents in, maybe Tara’s really sorry for what she did to you. Maybe she’s reaching out, hoping you’ll forgive her and be her best friend again.”

  “Maybe she is sorry, but we won’t be best friends again, because her definition of friendship is different from mine. Mine is that people do things for each other. Tara’s is that people do things for her; more specifically, that I do things for her.”

  “We’re awfully cynical, aren’t we?”

  “We are, but we might as well see what’s on her mind.”

  I picked up the phone. “Hi, Tara. How are you?” Dumb question. She was always great.

  “I’m great,” she said. “I hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time.”

  “Actually, I was just heading out.”

  “Oh. Then I’ll make it quick. I was calling for two reasons. The first is, I was checking to see if you’d talked to your fiancé about coming here for dinner.”

  “Not yet,” I said, “but soon, I promise.” Obviously, she wasn’t going to give up on her dream of a fun-filled foursome, which made me feel even more pressure to produce the fiancé than I’d already felt. “What’s the other reason you called?”

  “Well, I was looking ahead to the weekend and realized that Stuart and I are both out of books. The weather’s supposed to be fabulous, so we’ll probably sit by the pool and be lazy. Which means we’ll be up for some page-turners. Since you’re in publishing, I thought maybe you could pop a couple of hot reads in the mail to us. By next day FedEx, if possible.”

  I was right. Her definition of friendship was me doing things for her. Nothing had changed. She had always treated me like her personal publicist, and now L and T was paying me to be her personal publicist. Boy, was I dying to tell her to shove it—not to mention go out and buy some damn books, since she and Stuart weren’t exactly hurting for cash—but I kept my cool. The truth is, sending out freebies was a courtesy we extended frequently to our authors. “What sort of ‘hot reads’ are you interested in, Tara?” I asked with a sigh.

  “I’d love to read the Georgette Peterson novel you just published.”

  “No problem. I’ve got a few review copies here in my office.”

  “Wonderful. Now let’s see what Stuart wants to read. Hang on.” She put her hand over the mouthpiece, but I could still hear her call out to him. “Stuart, honey? What do you feel like reading this weekend? I’ve got Amy on the phone, and she said she’ll overnight us a couple of their books.” I felt my muscles tighten as I pictured Stuart—my Stuart, who was now her Stuart—puttering around their Tudor mansion. Perhaps he was leaning up against their granite kitchen counter, sipping a tall glass of iced tea into which Cook had deposited a sprig of mint. Or perhaps he was in the cathedral-ceilinged living room, lighting one of Tara’s favorite scented candles and gazing out at the water through their custom-made double-height windows. Or perhaps he was just sitting in a chair in their master bedroom, letting his toenails dry. In Simply Beautiful, Tara maintained that giving your man a pedicure is a surefire way to promote intimacy. “What did you say, hon? I can’t hear you over the music.” Or perhaps he was playing the violin. In the chapter devoted to her simply beautiful life with Stuart, she mentioned that he’d taken up the instrument recently and enjoyed serenading her when he got home from work. “Oh, sweetie, what a good idea. I’ll ask Amy if she’s got any.” Tara came back on the phone. “Stuart says you guys publish Tony Stiles.”

  I rolled my eyes, reminded of my literal run-in with Tony only an hour earlier. “We did publish his last three books,” I said, wishing we hadn’t. “He doesn’t have a new one coming out for almost a year, though, so I’ll have to send you something else.”

  “Too bad. We’re both passionate about him and his Joe West series. Stuart thinks he’s the best
mystery writer around, and I…” She paused before lowering her voice to a “just between us girls” little whisper. “Well, I’m absolutely in love with him. He’s so sexy, with those blue eyes of his and that mean old growl of a voice. When his last mystery came out, he did a signing at our local bookstore and—I swear to God, Amy—I had all I could do not to rush over and throw myself at him.”

  I blinked a lot as she said this. Given my own experience with the notoriously difficult Tony (bookstore signings were the only publicity he did without giving me an argument, because they were relatively low-key affairs and allowed him to interact directly with readers and didn’t require him to “shovel the shit on television,” as he so delicately put it), I was amused by Tara’s ardor for him.

  “It is so amazing that you get to work with Tony Stiles,” she went on, as if this discovery were on a par with, say, the fact that the earth is round. “You are the luckiest woman alive and I am sooo envious of you.”

  Wait, wait, wait. Just hold on a second, I thought, my mind doing cartwheels suddenly. Tara is envious of me? Because I know Tony? Because she wants to jump Tony’s bones? Because Stuart thinks he’s the best mystery writer around?

  Well, this was all very interesting and quite a surprise, and as Tara continued to speak breathlessly about Tony’s suspenseful plots and his endearing characters and his self-effacing charm (apparently, she’d seen the Today show interview where he’d answered Katie Couric exclusively in monosyllables, and she’d interpreted his monstrous attitude as shyness), I wondered, Is Tony Stiles the key to my payback scheme? If Tara is envious of me because I work with Tony, won’t she be even more envious of me because I sleep with Tony? Because I love Tony and Tony loves me? Because I’m engaged to Tony and planning to marry him in six months (sorry, five and a half months)? And how about that cad Stuart? Won’t he be unbelievably impressed (and maybe a little peeved) that I’ve found someone to marry who is even more successful than he is? Won’t that whip up his competitive juices?

  Okay, so Tony wasn’t the most likely man to do this sort of a favor for me, given that he was such a purist and probably had a general policy against pretending to be someone he wasn’t. But he was single and an L and T author and we did work together whenever he had a new book published, so it wouldn’t be that big a stretch to tell Tara that our professional association required us to keep our relationship a secret. Yes indeed, he was the ideal guy for the job, our mutual antipathy notwithstanding.

  The next morning, I bounded into Connie’s office to share my brainstorm and to get her reaction to it. Just as I walked in, she was applying her lipstick—the shade of black-brown I call “dog lips” because it is, in fact, the color of dog lips. Connie was such a good sport, she didn’t even mind that I went “Wuff wuff” at her whenever she put it on.

  “It turns out that Stuart is a fan of Tony Stiles and—this is the best part—Tara has an enormous crush on him. So I was thinking, What if I convinced him to be my fiancé for the night of her dinner?”

  “Who?”

  “Tony Stiles.”

  Connie laughed so hard that one of the teased and sprayed hairs on her head actually moved. “Why in the world would he do that?” She laughed some more.

  “Well, he’s single, the last I heard.”

  “Very single. He dates a lot of women but never gets involved. He’s a total commitment phobe, and I doubt he’ll ever get married.”

  “Who cares? All I want him to do is pretend to be engaged to me for a few hours.”

  “I’ll say it again: Why in the world would he do that? He hates you.”

  “He actually told you that?”

  “Not in so many words, but it’s kind of obvious, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but maybe he just hates what I stand for, hates the image of me as a corruptor of authors, a person who forces them to be sellouts, someone who represents the corporate mentality, whatever. Never mind that all my evil deeds have helped him get to number one on the New York Times bestseller list.”

  “Sowhaddayousuggesting?”

  “What?”

  “I said, What are you suggesting? That you present yourself to him in a whole new light so he’ll like you better?”

  “Exactly. Oh Connie, he really would be the perfect guy for this. You should have heard the way Tara squealed when she said his name. She’d absolutely die if I walked into her house with him as the man who popped the question. It would be the first time in the history of our relationship that she’d envy me. I’d have the upper hand for once. I wouldn’t feel like the poor stepsister. It would be such sweet revenge for me, after the way she hurt me, after the way she betrayed me. Can’t you see how much I need to do this one tiny thing?”

  “Well, yeah, sure. But, as I said, Tony’s not wild about you.”

  “I’m going to change that. I’m going to get him to like me—just enough so that he’ll agree to play my fiancé.”

  “How?”

  “By showing him how much we have in common.”

  “Do you two have anything in common?”

  “Not at the moment. But we will if you’d just feed me a few personal details about him, his likes and dislikes, his habits, his passions—the little particulars that’ll help me bond with him.”

  Connie looked skeptical. “I tell you the ‘little particulars’ and all of a sudden you’ll be his soul mate?”

  “Look, I know Tony’s one of your most important authors and you’re very protective of him. But wouldn’t you be happier if the two of us got along? If we became pals instead of barking at each other all the time?”

  “No question. But I don’t like the idea of you exploiting him.”

  “I wouldn’t be exploiting him at all. I’d be asking him to do me a favor. Besides, he’s a big boy. He can take care of himself. And maybe with all the dating he does, he’d actually relish the idea of having a female buddy, someone who’s not the least bit interested in him romantically.”

  She sighed. “If you’re asking for my permission to try to seduce Tony—”

  “Not seduce, Connie. Befriend. That’s all, I swear.”

  “Okay, if you’re asking my permission to try to befriend Tony, be my guest. But if you do anything—and I mean anything—to provoke him into leaving this publishing company, I’ll break your legs.”

  “I understand, Connie. I do. I’ll quit my job before I let him move to another house. But in the meantime, how about giving me those choice little morsels of information I mentioned, the background stuff that’ll help put me in his good graces?”

  She thought for a minute, then provided me with a few tidbits: Tony adored hockey, especially the New York Rangers; he was very knowledgeable about wine; he was a collector of sports cars, new and vintage; and he suffered from chronic neck pain due to all the hours he spent at the computer. And speaking of his work, he was obsessive when it came to researching his novels, doing whatever it took to develop his characters and make them seem authentic. And, despite his cocky attitude, he was hypersensitive to negative reviews.

  No, Connie’s intelligence report on Tony wasn’t the stuff of CIA files, but it was a place to start.

  9

  Once back in my office, I called Tony. I knew he never picked up his phone while he was writing, so I left a message on his answering machine and hoped for a response by the end of the day. At five o’clock, Scott waltzed in with good news.

  “It’s our favorite author on the line,” he said with an eye roll. “And I don’t mean Tara the Terrible. I mean Tony the Terrible, as in Tony Stiles.”

  “Oh,” I said eagerly. “Thanks, Scott.”

  He gave me a look. “What’s this? We’re happy to hear from him all of a sudden? Talk about a diva!”

  “You think everybody’s a diva,” I said. “Now, let me have my conversation with him, okay?”

  “Go ahead.” He continued to stand there, arms crossed against his chest.

  “Alone, Scott. I don’t mean to throw you out,
but I have business to discuss with Tony, and I can’t do it if you launch into one of your imitations of him and crack me up.” Scott was a wicked mimic. He did impressions of all of our authors, but his Tony Stiles impression was the best. He’d narrow his eyes and arrange his mouth into a smirk and say something wonderfully acerbic having to do with the burdens of money and fame.

  “As you wish,” he said, flashing me that very face as he closed the door on his way out.

  I took a deep breath, got serious, and picked up the phone. “Tony?” I said sweetly. “It’s Amy Sherman. How are you?”

  “You just saw me yesterday. How did I look?” God, he was a chore. “I assume you’re calling to apologize.”

  “You think I’m the one who should—” Okay, stop right there, I coached myself. This is not about what a pain in the ass Tony Stiles is. This is about what a kick in the ass it’ll be when Tara thinks he’s your fiancé. “Yes, that’s exactly why I’m calling, Tony—to apologize. I wasn’t watching where I was going when I backed out of Connie’s office, and I’m really sorry. You once told me you have neck problems from all the hours you spend at the computer, so I hope our collision didn’t make them worse.”

  “I don’t remember telling you about my neck problems,” he said. “Or if I did, I don’t remember noticing that you gave a crap.”

  “Of course I give a crap.” That didn’t come out right. “What I mean is that I care.”

  “Come on, Amy. I’m just ‘product’ as far as you’re concerned. As long as I turn out a book every year and show up for my interviews with a smiley face on and make as much money for your company as Grisham makes for his, you wouldn’t care if my head exploded.”

  “That’s not true,” I said with as much earnestness as I could muster. “You’re a person, not a product, and you’re important to this company, not because of the money you make for us, but because you’re a member of the L and T family.” Okay, so I was laying it on pretty thick, but people in corporate America really say things like that. “What’s more, I’ve got a herniated disk in my neck, so you’re talking to someone who understands neck problems.”