The Agency

by Ally O'Brien

  I didn’t feel strong at all. I felt hollowed out. I felt like vultures were picking away at what was left of me. Even so, he was right. I should never have expected him to be more than he was. I had built him in my mind out of soft clay.

  “Please believe me, I had no idea what she was planning,” he went on when I was silent. “She didn’t tell me. I never thought she would be so … so vicious.”

  “Do you think that makes you innocent?”

  “No.”

  “If she had told you what she was going to do, would you have done anything different? If you knew she was going to destroy me, would you have cared? Would you have suddenly found some glimmer of decency in that selfish fucking heart of yours?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I’d like to think so.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself, Jack. The answer is no.”

  “Tess, it won’t mean anything to hear how sorry I am, but I want to say—”

  I cut him off. “Don’t bother. Don’t try to make yourself feel better. I only want to know one thing. Did Cosima tell you exactly what to put in your note, Jack? Was it her idea for you to tell me you loved me? That was the biggest lie of all, wasn’t it?”

  He didn’t answer. That was answer enough for me.

  “Make sure I never see you again, Jack,” I said.

  I slapped my phone shut. I pressed my hand against my chest because the air was coming in raggedly, as if my body were rejecting each breath. It takes a lot to wound me. I keep the walls around me pretty tall and thick. I use my little jokes to make believe I don’t care, but I do. My walls were rubble now, broken down, nothing but ruins. I cried again, and I hated myself for it. I hated giving them the satisfaction of beating me so completely.

  I don’t know how long I sat on the steps. An hour, maybe. The day went on, getting darker. Eventually, I got up and walked with no destination in mind, wandering through the square and along the path to St. James’s Park. Buckingham Palace was ahead of me, all formal and forbidding. I thought about stopping at the gate to tell Liz that this was her fault, hers and the prime minister of Tuvalu. If they hadn’t blocked traffic that fall day, I would never have gone into Hyde Park, would never have met Jack, would never have turned him into Darcy. The walls would still be barricaded around my heart.

  Oh, but who am I kidding? I always have someone else to blame. I’m where I am because of three people. Me, myself, and I.

  My phone rang. I took it out and checked the caller ID and saw it was a reporter from The Guardian. Good news travels fast, and bad news travels even faster. I thought about skipping the call, but it was time to face the music.

  “Hello, Gerald,” I said, putting on my cheery voice. The voice that says all is right with the world.

  He wasn’t fooled at all. “Tess Drake. Rumor is you just got the ax at Bardwright. Say it ain’t so.”

  I drew in my breath and prepared to fight. I wasn’t really ready for this, but life doesn’t wait until you’re ready. “Cosima can call it whatever she wants. I don’t care. The fact is, I’ve been planning to leave Bardwright for weeks. I’m opening my own agency.”

  “I can print that?”

  “Yes, you can print that. Print it in big bold letters. Today is the first official day of business for the Drake Media Agency.”

  He had the good manners not to laugh in my face. “Except I hear your client roster is a little thin, Tess. You lost everyone to Queen Cosima, didn’t you? Including the big fish, right? I understand that Dorothy Starkwell dumped you over that stupid photo. Bad call, wearing the fur coat.”

  I could have told him I was set up. I could have told him about my conspiracy theories. Hell, I could have dropped hints about Lowell and foul play and a disappearing actress named Jane who must have been paid cold hard cash. There was a juicy story in all of that. But I wasn’t playing the game. I was done with dancing to other people’s music.

  “Damn right,” I confessed. “That was stupid of me. You know me, Gerald—I’ve done stupid things and done them proudly. But that was my number one mistake, and I managed to do it in front of the whole world. All I can do is learn from it and move on.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I already told you, Gerald. I’m opening the agency. It starts today. Clients welcome.”

  “What about money? Don’t you need money for that kind of thing?”

  God, yes. But I didn’t say that.

  “If you worry about everything you don’t have before you do something, you’ll never do anything,” I told him.

  “Well, good luck, Tess,” Gerald said.

  “Thanks. I’ll need it.”

  I hung up. Fifteen seconds later, the phone rang again. It was The Sun this time. Five minutes later, The Independent. Then The Bookseller. The Daily Mail. The Mirror. I talked to all of them, and I told them the same thing. I was on my own and open for business. I’m sure no one swallowed my line. They would announce my downfall in the headlines tomorrow, but I didn’t care. I wanted to scream it to the world. Today, right now, Tess Drake is responsible for Tess Drake, and no one can do a thing to me if I don’t let them.

  Big words. Big talk. It covered up the reality that I was scared to death. Scared and alone.

  When I was sick of talking to reporters, I silenced my phone and sat down on a bench. I had been walking and talking for so long that I didn’t even know where I was, and when I looked around me, I realized I had marched all the way to Hyde Park. I was on a bench near the Serpentine. My ego must have drawn me here as a cruel joke, as a reminder of the day I had met Jack. It seemed like a lifetime ago, and it was. I had lived and died an entire lifetime since then. The question was whether, like a cat, I had a few more lives left in me.

  From the bench, I stared up into the sky. At that moment, just to add insult to injury, the clouds decided to open up and pee down rain. Everyone else had the good sense to get out of the downpour or put up an umbrella, but I sat there and let it soak me to the skin. My multicolored hair lay plastered on my face. My drippy makeup turned me into a clown.

  The people who walked by, huddled underneath their nylon bubbles, looked at me as if I were crazy. They were probably right. I guess you have to be crazy to be in this business at all. I guess you have to be crazy to have an affair and fall in love. All you can do is laugh when it bites you in the arse.

  So I laughed.

  Laughed and laughed and laughed until, when I finally stopped, I began crying again.

  It turns out Saleema was right after all. She told me I would wind up sitting in the rain, wondering how I fucked up my life so badly. And here I was. I could pretend for the newspapers, but, honestly, I didn’t know what I was going to do. We all think we’re invincible, and it sucks when life reminds us that we’re not. I thought about how I got from there to here and how things had gone so badly off course. I reflected on my life since that first morning, sitting on the bus and hearing that Lowell was dead, and I asked myself if I would be better off if I could punch rewind and go back to that moment and start over.

  If you could correct all your stupid mistakes, would you do it? Or are we the sum of everything we do wrong?

  My BlackBerry buzzed. Even when I silence my phone, Emma can reach me in an emergency by sending me a text message. Today, however, my definition of an emergency was pretty fluid. I ignored her message and sat there feeling sorry for myself.

  I thought about calling Saleema. Partly to tell her she was right, because I knew she’d appreciate the irony. Partly to ask her for a job or to suggest that the two of us do what we had dreamed of doing all along—set up shop across the pond, Drake and Azah, a transcontinental agency. Partly just to feel like, if I asked for help, someone would toss me a life ring and reel me in. I didn’t do it, of course. It was too soon. I had misjudged Saleema along with everyone else, and, once again, I had no one to blame but the wet girl on the bench.

  My BlackBerry buzzed again.

  Leave me alone, Emma.r />
  I took stock of my situation, which was a mistake, because I realized the state of my world was even more dire than it looked on the surface. I live hand-to-mouth like everyone else. A few bucks on the dole wasn’t going to pay my rent. What did Sally say? You can cherish your ideals for a while, but in the end, it’s all about money. Gerald said the same thing. What about money? I thought about Oliver, teetering on the brink of starvation from day to day, and wondered how he found the courage to wake up every morning. Of course, some days, he thought life wasn’t worth the trade-off for his misery. I never wanted to sink so low.

  I stared at the rain sheeting down across the Serpentine.

  I thought about calling Dorothy. Partly to grovel and ask for forgiveness. She might even say yes. Partly to yell at her that she could blame me for a few dead minks, but she was wrong to let my one mistake outweigh everything else I’ve done for her. Most of the good she’s been able to do in this world is because of me. Her audience. Her wealth. Thanks to me.

  And, by the way, I’ll wear any damn coat I want.

  But I didn’t call. It was over.

  I thought about calling Oliver. Or Guy. Or the clients who had sold me out. I didn’t call any of them. Not yet. I didn’t want pity or pep talks or excuses. All I wanted was to get back to basics. To do my job. It sounds crazy, but I’ve always believed that I was put on this earth as a go-between for the people who have something to say. I’m the woman who gives talented people their day in the sun. I can’t sing. I can’t dance. I can’t crunch numbers. I can’t even remember who I’m meeting for lunch on Friday. But I can make deals.

  Which I can do from the back table at Caffè Nero if I have to. Who needs money?

  Buzz, buzz, buzz.

  Oh, for God’s sake, Emma.

  I extracted my BlackBerry, and, sure enough, there was a text message waiting for me from Emma. Well, fourteen of them, actually. I didn’t need to open the messages, because I could see the lineup on the screen, and they all said the same thing.

  TURN ON YOUR DAMN PHONE.

  So I did.

  It occurred to me that if news of my demise had made the rounds of the media, it had made its way to my father at The Times. He wanted to talk to me. I really wasn’t in the mood for paternal sympathy, but if he wanted to call, so be it.

  I didn’t have to wait long. Two minutes later, my phone rang. Hello, Dad, it’s your failure of a daughter here. When I checked the caller ID, however, I didn’t recognize the number. I made a mental note of the newspapers that hadn’t checked in yet to dance on the grave of Tess Drake and wondered which one was calling now.

  “Drake Media Agency,” I answered the phone, like I was sitting in my corner office. “This is Tess Drake.”

  “Wow, the lady herself. You’re a tough person to reach.”

  I didn’t have a clue who this man was.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Busy day.”

  “Sure, okay. So how are you?”

  “I’m having the most miserable day of my godforsaken life, and I’m sitting here in the pouring rain like an idiot,” I said.

  Okay, no, I didn’t say that.

  “I’m just great,” I said, because that’s what you say when people ask.

  “Fantastic. Terrific. Listen, you were right.”

  “Of course, I was,” I said.

  He laughed. It was a breezy, attractive, familiar laugh. “Cool. I like you, Tess. I like your attitude. So what’s it going to take?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, the film rights. What are you looking for? Normally, I’d have Felicia get the conversation started, but it sounds like the two of you aren’t exactly the best of friends. That’s okay. I love her, but the woman can be a chore sometimes. So I thought I’d call you myself.”

  “Felicia?”

  “Felicia Castro. My agent.”

  I had a little stroke.

  “I’m sorry, who is this?”

  He laughed again. “It’s Tom.”

  “Tom?”

  “Right. Remember, we met in New York?”

  “Tom.”

  “You got it.”

  “Tom, could you hang on for just one second?”

  “Sure.”

  I squeezed the phone against my palm so there was no chance of anyone on the other end hearing anything at all, and then I shouted loud enough that I’m pretty sure they could hear me in Piccadilly Circus. “Holy shit!”

  I came back on the line, cool and calm. “So, Tom, you read Singularity.”

  “I did. It blew my mind.”

  “I knew it would. I was worried that Felicia snatched the book away from you.”

  “She did, but that just made me more curious. So do you have a number in mind for the film rights?”

  “I do,” I said.

  I was thinking about five hundred thousand dollars, but you always let the other guy go first.

  “Well, I was thinking an even million,” Tom said. “How does that sound?”

  “Pounds or dollars?”

  “Let’s say pounds.”

  “Let’s say one point five million,” I told him.

  He laughed again. “That guy in New York was right about you. You’ve got balls.”

  “One point five million pounds is a bargain, Tom. You’ll never regret it.”

  “Yeah, all right. I’ll make it work. I want to meet this Oliver Howard, you know.”

  “I think that can be arranged,” I said.

  “Can you be civil enough with Felicia to work out the rest of the details with her?”

  “I’m the soul of restraint.”

  “Yeah, I bet you are. Don’t worry, I’ll tell Felicia to retract the claws. I’m in London next month, so tell Oliver dinner’s on me. You come along, too, okay?”

  “It’s a date.”

  “See you later, Tess.”

  “Thanks, Tom.”

  And that was that.

  Some deals are done over coffee. Or wine. Or at a funeral. Some are done in the rain in Hyde Park. Anyway, I may have lost Dorothy and her pandas, but I still have one client. And one big deal. The Drake Media Agency wasn’t just a figment of my imagination.

  I wondered how Oliver was going to react to the idea that I was about to make him a millionaire. And that the publishers who had turned down Duopoly were about to open up their wallets and start begging me for the rights.

  Like I said, this is what I do.

  Okay, I know it’s just a start. I’ve climbed one rung back from the bottom, and I have a long way to go. Knowing me, there are probably a thousand new ways I can screw up my life tomorrow. Put me in a fur coat, and point me at the next disaster. But not today. Today, I have a new job and a new boss.

  Me.

  I called Emma. She could barely get the words out of her mouth.

  “Did he reach you? Did he reach you? Did he reach you?”

  “He did.”

  Emma screamed. A full-throated, high-pitched scream. “AAAAGGGHHHH!”

  “Listen,” I said, cutting her off. “What I said before still goes. You’re better off staying where you are. Okay? I’m telling you to stay put and not do anything stupid like me.”

  “Right.”

  “We’re clear about that, okay? Stay put.”

  “Right.”

  “Good. Because I can probably scrape together enough to pay you for three months, but it would be crazy to give up what you’ve got for an agent with practically no clients and a reputation for fondling breasts in public.”

  “I’m in.”

  “I said no.”

  “I’m in.”

  “You’re not listening to me, Emma.”

  “I’m in.”

  “Then get the hell out of that fucking place and come meet me at my office,” I told her.

  “Where is that?”

  “I’m on a bench in Hyde Park.”

  “It’s raining,” Emma protested.

  “Didn’t I tell you not to take this job? No
w come on, get over here.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  I hung up.

  Now I had a client, a deal, and an assistant.

  Good thing, too, because there’s a lot to do. My day’s just starting. I have to call Oliver. I have to get back on the phone with his original publisher and launch a reprint of Singularity. I’ve got to get them on the hook for a multibook follow-up deal, too. Six figures per book, minimum. I’ve got to write a press release and run it by Cruise and start feeding it to the entertainment media. I’ve got to nail down the details with Felicia and get the deal signed.

  Oh, and there’s a little debt I owe to Lowell. I have to call my Burberry-wearing, greasy chip–eating detective, Nicholas Hadley. Tell him to track down Jane Parmenter and stick one of his cotton swabs in her mouth. He just might find some interesting DNA if he can get past all that Botox.

  So sorry, I can’t sit around here talking to you. The agency is up and running. I’ve got to start knocking on doors and drumming up new clients. It’s not like there’s a slow day in this business.

  Now you know.

  This is my life.