by Jane Heller
“Good. Then let’s get back to you. Before Bruno came over, you were about to tell me what happened to your best friend.”
“Right. But now that I think about it, it’s really not that great a story.”
“Why not let me be the judge?”
“No, really, Tony. I’d rather talk about this meal. It was delicious.” What else was I going to talk about now that the very reason for the dinner had evaporated?
“Glad you enjoyed it. Any dessert?”
“Thanks, but I’m done.” That’s how I felt—done. I could no longer ask Tony what I’d come there to ask him, which meant that I didn’t have a fiancé to drag up to Tara’s. I was out of options, out of luck. Yeah, I was done. Cooked. Burned.
After he released my hand and paid the check, he told me how much fun he was having and how he didn’t want the evening to end. To illustrate the point, he invited me back to his place for coffee. “I could put you in a taxi now, or I could put you in a taxi later,” he teased.
Well, I was not about to have actual sex with Tony Stiles, as I’ve indicated, nor would I roll around on his bed fully clothed or make out with him on his sofa or even stare adoringly at him over coffee. Why bother? Yes, I found him much more attractive than I used to—we’ve established that, okay?—but why get involved? He was adverse to commitment as well as adverse to liars, so what good was he to me, and vice versa?
“I’m a little tired tonight, so I think I’ll take that taxi now,” I said, trying to seem apologetic.
“But we’ll see each other again soon?” he said, looking as if he really had changed his mind about me, as if his image of me as a woman with a hidden agenda had been replaced by his image of me as someone with whom he did indeed have chemistry and was compatible.
“Of course we will,” I said.
“How about next Friday night?”
Boy, he wasn’t kidding about wanting to spend more time with me. But, to reiterate, there was no reason for us to get together again. No purpose whatsoever. We had no future as a couple. Zippo.
“Amy, do you want to go out Friday night?” he repeated.
“Sure,” I said.
13
On Monday morning, Celebetsy planted herself in my office and grilled me.
“I want an update on the Simply Beautiful campaign,” she said in response to my question about whether she’d had a nice weekend.
“I’ve written the release, and I’m about to finish up the other materials for the press kit,” I said. “Since we aren’t doing galleys, I’m sending everything out with bound manuscripts.”
“Just make sure there’s national TV coverage as well as reviews, or I’ll be very disappointed,” she threatened for what was probably the tenth time. “Have you called the Today show again?”
“No, but I will,” I said.
“And the other shows?”
“I’ll call them, too.”
“You do realize that we have to keep the author happy—or, more specifically, you have to keep the author happy—so she’ll sell us her next book.”
I nearly blew breakfast. “Her next book?”
“Of course. If this one sells, we want to sign her for another one. I think we’ve got a franchise here if you don’t screw it up.”
“I have no intention of screwing it up.” Well, I had a fantasy of screwing it up—a really great fantasy, where Tara would be homeless and Betsy would be jobless and I would be living it up in Bora Bora.
“I know you met with her at her house recently, but have you made up your media list yet?”
I had already given her my media list and she had already approved it. “My mailing list is all set,” I said. “First, I’ll be sending materials to magazine editors with long lead times. We’ll wait for finished books to send to radio and—”
“Get the author to help you with the radio stuff,” she ordered, interrupting me. “She has her own show, so she must know a lot of people in that industry.”
“I know a lot of people in that industry, Betsy. I talk to them every day.” Did she think I sat at my desk meditating?
“Even so, I want you to call the author and get her advice. She might have friends we should target. She might have enemies we should avoid, too.”
Yeah, you’re looking at one, I thought as she strutted out of my office without so much as a backward glance. Such a cool customer, that Celebetsy. How did her husband put up with her? That’s what we all wondered after each encounter with her. She had zero warmth, except when she needed to ingratiate herself with someone she perceived to be important, and could be downright nasty on occasion. Do people like her even realize how mean they are?
I was contemplating all this when Scott stuck his head in to say that Tara was on the phone.
“Does she have us on speed dial or what?” he said, referring to the fact that she had been bombarding us with calls.
“It’s okay,” I replied. “I was about to call her anyway. Betsy threatened to whip me if I didn’t.”
“Betsy.” He sucked in his cheeks and pouted—his dead-on imitation of her. “Just remember, I’m on your side no matter what.”
I thanked him, then picked up the phone. “Hi, Tara. Did you get the books I sent you?”
“Yes, and they really came in handy.”
“Why?”
“Stuart and I ended up flying to Bermuda for the weekend instead of staying home, and they were perfect for airplane reading.”
For the next several minutes, I was forced to listen to her crow about how Lasher’s Meats & Eats had a corporate jet, as well as a client with a compound in Bermuda, and how the two of them flew to the island and spent two and a half fantastic days there.
“It makes all the difference when you don’t have to go commercial,” she said. “I’m getting to the point where I can’t even deal with first class.”
Wait until your book tour, I thought, picturing Princess Tara having to fly to twenty cities in twenty days—in coach.
“So how was your weekend, Amy?” she asked when she had finished her travelogue.
“Fantastic,” I said, throwing her simply beautiful word back in her face, then changing the subject before she could ask me any personal questions.
We went over my mailing list of magazine editors, chatted about the press release I’d written, discussed other aspects of the publicity campaign. I was almost off the hook, when she said, “Now, we really have to set a date for our dinner, so I can finally meet that elusive man of yours.”
Damn. “I can’t set a date yet,” I said. “My fiancé’s busy, as I’ve explained.”
“Stuart’s busy, too, but he makes time to eat, Amy.”
“Right, but my fiancé travels a lot.”
“He’s around often enough for you two to plan your wedding. Why can’t you bring him to dinner when he’s in town?”
Okay, okay. You’re wondering why I didn’t just tell Tara to forget it, to leave me alone about it, to take her invitation and shove it. You’re thinking, Gee, Amy, you’re not a teenager anymore. You’re a grown-up person with a grownup job and a grown-up life, so why can’t you stand up to your former best friend? Why do you regress whenever she’s in the picture?
My answer is this: I couldn’t help it. Not only was there the specter of Celebetsy and her edict to “keep the author happy” but the old pull Tara had over me was still in place, too. If you’ve never had a friend who’s better at everything than you are, if you’ve never had a friend who coasts along while you struggle, if you’ve never had a friend who stole your guy right out from under your nose, then you probably won’t understand why I kept wimping out. It’s sad, I know, but Tara still had the ability to make me feel reduced, inferior, her subordinate. Of course, I’d made matters worse when I’d blurted out my big stupid lie.
“Tara, let me ask you something,” I said. “Why is this dinner so important to you? If you and I hadn’t run into each other on the street that day, we wouldn’t even be in each ot
her’s lives. Our friendship was over at that point.”
“Temporarily. I always knew we’d make peace.”
“Yes, we have a relationship now, because of your book, and it’s going along nicely, don’t you think? So why not leave well enough alone and table the idea of meeting my fiancé?”
Silence.
“Tara?”
More silence, then gradually heavier breathing, followed by the sound of tears making their way down Tara’s nose and throat. One sniff, then two, then several sniffs in a row. She was crying, just the way she’d cried after I walked in on her and Stuart, just the way she’d been crying when I met her on the playground in elementary school. Connie was right: She was a baby.
“I can’t ‘table it’ because I care about you, Amy.” Snort, sniff.
“That’s lovely, Tara, but—”
“I want to show you that I’m here for you during your prewedding period. I want to be the maid of honor—figuratively speaking—that I failed to be when you were engaged to Stuart.”
Ah, so that was it. She was intent on proving that she was capable of being in the presence of one of my fiancés without sleeping with him?
“I appreciate the sentiment, Tara. I do. But why don’t you and I continue to rebuild our friendship slowly, without anybody else’s involvement? No husbands and no fiancés. Just us.”
“Without Stuart’s involvement, you mean. You still care about him, is that it?”
“No, this is not about Stuart.” Why did she keep saying that? “Look, let’s just work together on your book and see what develops between us. My fiancé really is busy, so for the foreseeable future, you and I can—”
“Maybe there is no fiancé,” she said, having stopped crying as abruptly as she’d started.
“Excuse me?”
“Well, Amy, I’m just beginning to wonder if he actually exists, since you’re so tight-lipped about him. You’ve never even mentioned his name, for example.”
Great. So now she suspected that I was scamming her? How humiliating was that?
“You never asked me his name,” I said, stalling, hyperventilating, wishing I’d never opened my mouth that day on the street.
“Okay. Then what is it?”
“What’s what?”
“His name, Amy.”
Oh God. Now what? She had me up against the proverbial wall.
“Tara,” I said, trying to sound distracted, “could I put you on hold for a second? Apparently, one of our authors has dropped by with some sort of a crisis.”
“One of your authors? It wouldn’t be Tony Stiles, would it?” She sounded seriously excited by the mere thought. “I’ll die if you tell me he’s right outside your office.”
There it was again: the envy flowing in my direction for a change. And all because of Tony. Dear, sweet, “I hate liars” Tony.
“I’ll only be a minute or two,” I said hurriedly, then pushed the hold button before she could protest.
As I sat there staring at the phone, feeling hopelessly cornered, an idea descended on me. Not a sane idea, granted, but an idea that would not only appease Tara but impress her, an idea that would get her off my case about the engagement thing and let her know that I was no longer her poor pathetic handmaiden.
“Hi again. Sorry,” I said when I came back on the line. “Crisis averted.”
“Did it have to do with Tony Stiles after all?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “But since you mentioned Tony, I might as well tell you the truth about him.”
“Oooh, goodie. I love gossip. Is he going out with a famous actress or something?”
“No. He’s going out with me.”
She laughed. Laughed! “You?”
“Me. We’re getting married, Tara. He’s my fiancé, the one who’s so busy.”
She gasped. She sputtered. She said she couldn’t believe it. She demanded to know why I hadn’t told her before.
“It’s a secret because of the L and T connection,” I said, “and because Tony’s in the public eye. He’s dead set against any publicity leaks about us. He’s adamant about keeping his private life private.”
“I still can’t get over this.”
“Yes, it’s wonderful, isn’t it? But back to what I was saying…No one—and I mean no one—knows about us. I’m only telling you because…well, because we used to be such close friends.”
“Oh my God,” she said. “You and Tony Stiles.”
“Right. But it’s a secret,” I repeated.
“And you told me because of our friendship,” she said. “I’m so, so touched by that.”
“Touched but discreet, got it?”
“Absolutely. You can trust me, really. You two will come for dinner, and neither Stuart nor I will breathe a word to a living soul.”
“Not even to him.”
“To Stuart?”
“No, to Tony.”
“I don’t understand.”
This was the sticky part, the part that made me feel even more sheepish than I already felt. I was going to make Tara swear not to mention my impending nuptials in front of Tony, so that he wouldn’t know that I’d brought him to dinner under false pretenses, wouldn’t know that I’d trotted him out, put him on display, done the very thing he despised. Well, come on, he’d left me no choice, not after his speech about the woman who’d asked him to participate in her lie and then gotten herself dumped. Besides, my deception would only last one night—maybe three hours, max.
“You can’t let Tony find out I told you that we’re getting married, Tara. As I said, he’s extremely touchy about people knowing the details of his personal life, and he’d be very upset if he thought I’d filled you in. So we’ll come for dinner under one condition.”
“That I don’t let on that I know.”
“Exactly. Not a single syllable about our engagement.”
“I hear you. Now, pull out your calendar,” she said excitedly.
I pretended to flip through the pages of my supposedly booked-solid social calendar. “What luck. We have an opening this coming Friday,” I said, since I actually had plans with Tony for that night.
“Then Friday it is,” she said. “Oh, won’t this be fun? It’ll be just like old times, double-dating the way we used to.”
It’ll be nothing like old times, I thought, not nearly as guilt-ridden as I should have been.
14
Tony called midweek to confirm our date for Friday night, at which point I told him there had been a slight change in plans.
“I hope you don’t mind,” I said, “but I accepted a dinner invitation for both of us.”
“Oh, please no,” he groaned. “Not one of those unbearable L and T command performances.”
“Not exactly. One of our authors, Tara Messer, who also happens to be a woman I grew up with, invited me for dinner on Friday night. L and T is publishing her book in a few months, and Betsy Kirby—you know, our marketing director?—has been insisting that I give her the royal treatment. Anyhow, when Tara invited me for dinner, I told her I had a date, and she said, ‘Bring him along.’ So will you go with me, Tony? I promise we won’t stay long.”
He grumbled about how he’d been hoping to take me to a movie, but after surprisingly little begging on my part, he said he’d go.
“Thanks, Tony,” I said, more than a little relieved, as well as flattered by how quickly he’d agreed, how keen he seemed to keep our date at any cost. “It won’t be so bad. Tara and her husband live in Mamaroneck, on Long Island Sound. If nothing else, you’ll enjoy the setting.”
“My idea of a ‘setting’ is the two of us alone somewhere, not making small talk with a couple of strangers.”
Yeah, he was keen all right, as if he’d done a complete 180 about me. Or maybe he was just between girlfriends and I was his conquest du jour. “We’ll be alone at some point. We’ll drive up to Westchester and be back in the city before you know it. Zip zip.”
“Zip zip, huh?”
“Y
es. You’ll see. I’ll earn brownie points with the author—and get Betsy off my case—and then we’ll leave. It’ll be painless.”
I avoided Connie that whole week. Every time she’d ask me how my attempts to befriend Tony were coming along, I’d say fine and dash off to some supposedly pressing business. I couldn’t tell her I was tricking him, that I was taking him to Tara’s as my fiancé without bothering to ask his permission. She’d flip out on me. Besides, there was no reason to upset her. It was just one dopey dinner—a few hours of chitchat and then I’d be home free. Tara would be put in her place, and Tony would never know he’d been duped. End of story.
“Wow. You look incredible,” he said when he picked me up Friday night.
“Do I?” I said, pleased by his reaction, although I hadn’t spent hours getting dressed so that he would think I looked incredible. It was Tara I needed to look incredible for. And yes, that was twisted, but while women may dress to turn a guy on, it’s other women we dress to impress, particularly women we can’t stand. Go figure.
For this particular occasion, my goal was to project the image of an extremely successful career woman who had also managed to snare a handsome, wealthy, highly sought-after celebrity bachelor author as my fiancé—a woman who was radiantly happy because she had it all, in other words. Since a cold front was forecast to move through the tristate area during the evening, bringing heavy rain and wind along with it, I’d chosen a black gabardine pantsuit, a creamy caramel-colored silk blouse, and black leather boots, plus floating sea pearls on a champagne-gold chain around my neck. My hair had gone a little wild, given the humidity, but all in all, I felt good about what I saw in the mirror and was psyched to show myself—well, myself with Tony—off.
He helped me into the passenger seat of the Ferrari, which was so low to the ground I figured I’d need a forklift to get me out of it, and away we went. Tony, by the way, looked pretty incredible himself in his black slacks and charcoal gray sweater. Not that I was affected by his appearance one way or the other, except from a purely detached perspective. (Okay, I was affected by his appearance—he looked utterly hot, and part of me was sorry he and I were never going to be a real couple.) It was Tara who would fawn over him, while I would just stand back and watch.
