The Agency

by Ally O'Brien

  “Impossible. These people were ready to join me. They told me so.”

  “Well, they may have said that to spare your feelings. I understand. But clients are creatures of self-interest. You know that as well as I do. Who wants to worry about whether their next publishing contract will be renewed? Who wants to worry about being blackballed? Not that I would suggest anything of the kind, but if people get it in their heads, they may get a little scared of the consequences. And fifteen percent is a lot to pay an agent, too. Ten percent is so much more attractive. You’d be amazed, Tess, at how many clients will sell you out for five percent.”

  Unfortunately, I knew she was right.

  I should have expected it. These people weren’t my friends. They owed me nothing. I had gone out on a limb, and they had sawed it off behind me. Not that I could really blame them. They could go with me and take a chance or pick the safe route with Cosima and save five percent. Easy choice.

  It’s not personal. It’s just business.

  I was so stunned to see the parade of letters laid out before me that I didn’t notice at first that one name was missing.

  Dorothy Starkwell.

  I reviewed them all again, one by one, to be sure I hadn’t missed it. I thought maybe Cosima was holding the letter back, waiting until I asked, so that she could hammer the final nail in my coffin. But her folder was empty. My heart took off again; I let out the loud breath I had been holding. I knew Dorothy. She would never sell me out. In the end, I had kept the one client who really mattered. As long as I had her as my flagship for the agency, then I could start from nothing and build my roster all over again. Cosima probably didn’t realize that David Milton wasn’t hanging over our heads anymore. Dorothy and I were free to do a deal with Guy that would give me what every agent needed more than anything.

  Time and money.

  I smiled in triumph. “I don’t see Dorothy’s name here.”

  Cosima leaned back in her chair, and I experienced the briefest moment of panic, expecting her to withdraw a letter from inside the top drawer of her desk. Instead, I relaxed as I realized she had no more aces to play. She shrugged, as if it were a matter of no importance, but that was all pretense. She had lost the client she wanted most, and she knew it.

  “I’m not concerned about Dorothy,” Cosima said.

  This time I was the one laughing. “Oh, please. Dorothy is the crown jewel. It must drive you crazy that she’s a woman of principle and you can’t buy her like all the others. She’s not for sale. Dorothy would never walk out on me.”

  “Maybe so, but you’ve always been your own worst enemy, Tess.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean that you’re reckless. Foolish. Headstrong. That’s why you’re so easy to defeat.”

  I ignored her, because I knew she was right. “Did you try to get Dorothy and fail? Did she tell you she was sticking with me? I’m sure that was a terrible blow to your ego.”

  “I haven’t been in contact with Dorothy at all. However, if she does choose to retain you as her agent, don’t think for a moment that I’m a fool. I know perfectly well that you’ve already negotiated an eight-figure contract with Guy, and you’ve done so as an employee of this agency. So her next three books will stay here at Bardwright. You’re not going to make a dime off that deal.”

  “There’s no deal,” I insisted. “Talk to Guy. Say it slowly with me, Cosima. There’s no deal.”

  “So you say.”

  “That’s right.”

  I stood up. I wanted nothing more than to be away from her, away from Marty and Bardwright and all the clients who had betrayed me. I was ready to start over. Me and Dorothy.

  “Don’t forget your key, Tess.”

  I dug in my pocket for my office key and tossed it on her desk with a clang. Cosima got a little smirk as she palmed it. “I wouldn’t be discouraged if I were you,” she told me. “You see, I gave you a little gift. As I was taking away all your clients, you’ll be pleased to know that I didn’t bother contacting Oliver Howard. You’re free to keep him.”

  I didn’t say a word. I walked away and slammed the door. I could hear her laughing at me as I left.

  37

  EMMA MET ME in the hallway. Her eyes were big saucers of confusion and concern. “There’s someone in your office. A security guard.”

  “I know.”

  “What’s going on?”

  I lowered my voice, although I’m not sure why I bothered. “Cosima sacked me.”

  Emma’s big eyes got even bigger. “She did what? Are you kidding?”

  I shook my head.

  “Oh my God, Tess. This is crazy.”

  I threw open my office door. Everyone watched me in shocked silence, and I figured that Marty had made sure they all knew the score. Tess Drake was on her way out. Humiliated. Beaten. I ripped down the poster of Jane Parmenter and me and crumpled the paper in my hands. Inside the office, a security guard stared at me nervously. He was a kid, no more than twenty-four.

  “Get the hell out of here,” I said.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, but it’s my job to stay.”

  “I said, get out.”

  “Ma’am, please don’t make this difficult.”

  I might have cut him some slack if it weren’t for the “ma’am” thing. I’m getting tired of that.

  “You can give me five fucking minutes to myself, all right? You can watch me through the window if you want to make sure I don’t put any Post-it Notes or paper clips in my purse.”

  He frowned and slid past me. I gestured Emma into my office and closed the door.

  “It gets worse,” I told her. “All our clients are basically gone. All except Dorothy.”

  “No way—that can’t be true.”

  “They sold me out, the bastards. Oh, hell, it’s not their fault. Cosima made sure they knew I was about to be hung out to dry in this business. She doesn’t play anything but hardball.”

  “Do you think she knows about Jack? Is that what this is about?”

  “I don’t know. I hope not, for Jack’s sake.”

  “So what does this mean?”

  I shrugged. “Thank God for Dorothy, that’s what it means. I have to call her right away.”

  “I am so sorry, Tess. I don’t know what to say.”

  I could see a flicker of doubt in Emma’s eyes. She was thinking of her own self-interest. Everybody does. It’s the way of the world. If I had no clients, could I run a business? If I had no money, how could I pay her? She wanted to go with me, but there was a voice in her head telling her not to be stupid.

  I decided to make it easy on her.

  “Listen, Emma, Cosima’s beef is with me, not you. She’s not going to hold a grudge. If I were in your shoes, I’d stay right here. Hook up with another agent. If things go the way I want, then you’ll be my first call to bring you over to my shop.”

  Emma shook her head fiercely. “I’m with you, Tess. You know I am.”

  I put my hands on her shoulders. “That’s sweet, and I love you for your loyalty, darling. But you need to think about you. Okay?”

  Emma nodded. She teared up and wiped her eyes. “Okay.”

  “Give me a minute, all right? I want to be alone with all this.”

  “I understand.”

  Emma slipped out the door quietly. I studied the office in which I had spent the last ten years and from which I was about to be banished. In truth, I had little to pack. There wasn’t much of me in this place. Just files. Books. Things that were easily left behind and forgotten. Most of them were from clients who were no longer mine.

  When you’ve been knifed in the back, it’s hard to smile and say it feels good while the blood squirts out of you. Even so, I told myself I wasn’t going to cry about it again. Better to fight back. Better to get pissed as hell. Except I didn’t even have it in me to get mad. I barely felt anything at all. I stood there, shell-shocked, trying to count my blessings.

  I realized it was a s
hort list.

  Dorothy. Darcy. Sally. And Oliver, of course, but Oliver and I weren’t going to get rich off each other. My father. I needed to call him but not yet. Not until I was done and gone and home and drunk.

  Ten years, and that’s the sum of my labors. I wasn’t doing cartwheels of self-congratulation. I had spent the last few days imagining that I was in one place, only to discover that I was somewhere else altogether. Lowell, God rest his soul, was probably up there, or down there, laughing at my dilemma.

  That was also the moment life decided to pile it on. When you are sliding downhill, you build up momentum. I felt like the Bode Miller of bad news.

  Emma knocked softly and poked her head inside. “I just thought you should know, I found out what’s going on around here.”

  “Going on?”

  “The press conference.”

  I had forgotten all about it, but I didn’t figure that the press conference had anything to do with me. There wasn’t much news value in my getting the sack. Well, that’s not true—the tabloids would eat it up. But Cosima would be content to put that gossip out the back door, not call in reporters to announce my demise. She wasn’t going to make me a martyr.

  “Cosima is announcing an expansion,” Emma said.

  “Of what?”

  “The agency. Bardwright is opening a branch office in New York.”

  “Ah, so that’s the big secret. Well, she’s wanted to do that for a while. Now that Lowell is gone, Cosima can go ahead and conquer the world.”

  I said it without much interest or care. Now that I was out the door, it didn’t affect me for better or worse. Cosima could open Bardwright offices in LA, Paris, and Sydney, and it wasn’t going to change my situation.

  Then I got an uneasy feeling, because we were talking about New York. Dorothy was in New York.

  I thought about Bardwright crossing the pond to the United States and how Cosima would love to follow up that announcement with a big client and a big, splashy deal.

  I thought about her looking so unfazed that the one client of mine who really made a difference at Bardwright was the one who had slipped through her fingers.

  I thought myself into a panic.

  “Get in here and close the door,” I told Emma. “Help me get Dorothy on the phone.”

  “It’s still early in New York.”

  “I don’t care, just get her. Right now.”

  We retreated behind my desk, and Emma punched the buttons on my phone. I told myself I was acting crazy for nothing. This was Dorothy. Other clients may not know the meaning of loyalty, but Dorothy wouldn’t throw me over for five percent. She’d be offended at the very thought of it. Dorothy had said it herself. I’d have to kill someone before she went with another agent.

  Even so, I wanted to hear her voice. I wanted to tell her about David Milton. I needed some good news and reassurance.

  The phone rang in New York. Emma had the call on speakerphone.

  Dorothy picked it up on the first ring. I couldn’t remember another time when she had done that. It was almost like she was sitting by the phone, waiting for me to call. That was my first clue that I was schussing past the next flag on the way to the bottom of the mountain, an avalanche racing behind me.

  “Dorothy, it’s Tess,” I said.

  I waited for the onslaught. The torrent of Dorothy babble, filling the first ten minutes of our conversation with pleasant inanities. The latest stories about the kinkajou. The digestive problems of her poodles. Everything that meant nothing about anything, which was how Dorothy’s scattered but wonderful mind worked.

  Instead, there was silence. Complete silence. She didn’t say a word. I thought I had lost the call.

  “Dorothy, hello? Are you there?”

  “Yes, I’m here, Tess.”

  She sounded strange. Bereft. Upset. Unlike Dorothy. My stomach began to make revolutions like the London Eye.

  “Are you all right? You don’t sound like yourself.”

  “I didn’t sleep a wink. I’ve been sitting here all night. I’m so upset.”

  I remembered that she had every reason to be upset. David Milton and his manuscript were still weighing on her mind.

  “Well, I can make you feel better, darling, because I have fabulous news. The best. David Milton is a total fraud, and I can prove it. You don’t have to worry about it for another minute.” I explained my brainstorm about Filippa and Liudmila and waited for her relief and gratitude to burst through the phone.

  I was seriously disappointed.

  “That’s nice,” she said.

  Nice?

  “Dorothy, do you understand what this means? You’re completely in the clear. The allegations, the threat of a lawsuit, they’re gone.”

  Dorothy sighed long and hard. “Yes, I’m pleased, of course, but I knew all along there was nothing behind this. You sound so surprised. It makes me wonder if you doubted me.”

  Doubted her? Maybe a little.

  “No, no, that’s not it at all,” I insisted. “But now we can move forward without any legal obstacles. I can sit down with Guy and work out the final terms on your next deal.”

  There was another stretch of silence.

  “Yes, well, about that.”

  I waited. Dorothy didn’t say anything more. Emma, standing above me, turned ghostly white.

  “Are you there?” I asked. “Dorothy, what’s wrong?”

  Her voice, when it came, was pained, as if the kinkajou were gnawing on some delicate part of her body. “Tess, you know how hard this is for me.”

  “What?”

  “You know I love you.”

  “Of course, I do. What is it?” I was having trouble breathing.

  “I would never have imagined myself saying this, Tess, never in a million years, but I’ve decided we have to part ways.”

  Emma gasped and slapped both hands over her mouth.

  I didn’t reply. I opened the bottom drawer of my desk, where I kept an emergency pack of cigarettes. It was the pack I had left there, unopened, for the five years I had been smoke free. I removed it, along with the lighter next to it, and unwrapped the plastic around the box. With a slap, I popped a fag from the pack and took it between my shaking fingers.

  Fuck being a nonsmoker. Fuck my lungs. Fuck the indoor smoking ban. I lit up and took the sweetest drag of my entire life and blew out a cloud of smoke.

  I stared down at the speakerphone.

  “Did you talk to Cosima?” I asked with a pretend calm. “Is that what this is about?”

  “No, I didn’t, but I have to tell you, I have already made other arrangements.”

  “Other arrangements? Are you serious? You’ve talked to another agent?”

  “Yes, I have.”

  I inhaled smoke and closed my eyes. “And that’s it? Without talking to me? Without discussing whatever is wrong? I can’t believe this, Dorothy. I can’t believe you would do this to me.”

  I heard sniffling through the phone. Dorothy was crying. “I know, Tess, but after what you did.”

  “What I did? What on earth did I do? Who have you been talking to? I can’t believe you would listen to lies about me and walk away from our relationship without even giving me a chance to set the record straight.”

  “There’s nothing to set straight, Tess,” Dorothy told me, in a quavering voice so defiant that she sounded like a stranger. “I saw it. I saw that disgusting, horrible photograph. That was all I needed to see.”

  “Photograph? What are you talking about?” Then I saw the crumpled poster in the middle of my office floor. “Oh, for God’s sake, do you mean the picture with me and that actress? Dorothy, her dress slipped. I was trying to help her fix it. It’s not like I’m some kind of pervert who goes around molesting women. I can’t believe this is what has you upset.”

  “It’s not that.”

  I squeezed the cigarette so hard that some of the tobacco squirted onto the desk. “Then what the hell is it?”

  “I saw tha
t grotesque, revolting thing. Don’t try to deny it, Tess. Don’t try to make excuses. You know perfectly well it’s the one thing in this world that I could never, ever forgive. I don’t care who it is, or how much I love them, I could never accept it.”

  “Dorothy, what are you talking about?”

  “You were wearing a fur coat, Tess! Fur! You!”

  The breath left my chest in a rush.

  “Oh, no. Oh, my God. Dorothy, look. Please listen.”

  “Don’t say a word. Do you have any idea what it did to me to see you with those dead animal skins draped all over your body? Did you give a thought to the creatures that died? I could never be associated with anyone who would allow innocent animals to suffer in that way. Never. And you, Tess! Knowing how I feel, how could you! How could you hurt me like that!”

  “Dorothy, I am so sorry. I didn’t think. It was a hideous mistake.”

  “I’m sorry, Tess, I can’t talk about this anymore. I’m just devastated.”

  “Give me a chance to tell you what happened.”

  “No, I won’t. I can’t. Tess, this is a part of my life where there are no second chances. You of all people should know that.”

  And I did. She was right. I knew it. I had said as much to Cosima. Dorothy was a woman of principle, and I had trampled her principles the moment I slid my arms inside that coat. I had lost her, and I had no one to blame but myself.

  38

  “OH, TESS,” EMMA MURMURED when I hung up the phone.

  I shook my head and kept smoking, like the prisoner facing the firing squad who knows what’s about to happen. I didn’t want sympathy. I just wanted it to be over.

  “Maybe she’ll change her mind,” Emma said.

  “No, she won’t.”

  I knew Dorothy. She wasn’t going to change her mind. Not about this. I had crossed the one line with Dorothy that you never could cross. I may as well have taken a pistol and shot the damn minks myself. I wanted to call Julien Macdonald and ask if he’d never heard of polyester.