by Alina Adams
"Coop," Tess prompted, "didn't Pan refuse to let Idan work with Lian?"
"Oh. Yes, right." He nodded. "Mrs. Reilly wanted Idan to choreograph Lian's programs this year, but Pan walked right up to her, I remember, and she said, 'Amanda, that would not be a very good idea. And you and I both know why.' Mrs. Reilly seemed scared. She never mentioned it again."
Which could mean absolutely anything.
Including the obvious fact that Bex needed to have a little chat with Mrs. Pandora Westby Ben-Golan.
After assuring Tess and Coop that she would get back to them to talk further about their "packaging" of Coop's newfound paternity for air, Bex intended to take the hotel elevator up to her room, dump the research binder, change from thermal rink clothes into more appropriate L.A.-in-winter clothes, and without so much as a deep breath or a real meal, head out again for more research-type fun. She got as far as the hotel lobby, this time wearing blue jeans, sneakers, and a short-sleeved, bright yellow blouse that, Bex realized, made her look like a nuclear-assisted lemon drop, but nevertheless provided indescribable cheer at the end of an exhausting day, when she spotted Craig Hunt. He was sitting in the overstuffed, olive chair closest to the revolving doors, his tailbone uncomfortably sunk below thigh level, making him look like a tipped-over letter Z. He was watching the doors go round and round while sporting an expression equal parts fascination, boredom, and disgust that anyone could be so bored that they might actually find the activity fascinating. In any case, he appeared unnaturally delighted to see Bex.
He called her name loudly enough to make a few other hotel patrons turn around in surprise. He enthusiastically waved her over.
"Hi..." she said cautiously, finding it weird to be meeting Craig in this practically civilian capacity. Every time in the past that they'd run into each other — whether the encounters ended up friendly or not — Bex had been working on a story about Jeremy or, like earlier that morning at the rink, still working. So even when Craig was railing at her for destroying his family, it was professional. Now, even though she was technically on her way to do more work, it had nothing to do with Craig. And suddenly she didn't know what to say to him. Not to mention that she felt alien dressed like a regular person. It was almost as if, out of her parka, gloves, and hat, Craig were seeing her naked.
"Why didn't anyone tell me?" Craig asked.
Oh, God. Did Gil call him, too? What had he promised on her behalf this time?
“Tell you what?"
"How boring Nationals was!"
"Uhm, Craig? The competition hasn't started yet."
"I'm not talking about the competition. I'm talking about the hours between eight and eleven p.m., when skaters with a five a.m. practice time tomorrow are sleeping, leaving their chaperone and father — who does not, as a rule, go to bed while the sun is still out — to wander the hotel halls looking for something to do."
"Oh," Bex said. "That."
"Is it always like this?"
"Pretty much."
"I mean, it's bad enough that the only folks I know here are Jeremy, who's sound asleep; Toni Wright, who is a lovely, lovely-woman and a terrific coach, but also over sixty and maybe not up to or interested in hanging out with me; and several other parents from the rink back home, whose notion of a scintillating conversation is how the new Code of Points will affect their child's chances to make the World Team."
"Not your cup of tea?"
"There isn't enough in China."
Bex nodded, sympathetic, but at a loss about what Craig wanted her to do about it, when he answered her unspoken question.
"I know you, Bex," he said. "Want to join me for a drink?"
She blinked in surprise. Was Craig Hunt asking her out?
Misinterpreting her hesitation, Craig backtracked, "Uhm, you are old enough to drink, aren't you?"
She nodded fervently. "Three years over, as a matter of fact."
That seemed to set his mind at ease. "How about it, then?"
She really needed to speak to Pandora, and Idan, too, if Bex expected to have copy ready for Francis and Diana by the next day.
She said, "Sure."
The hotel bar in the heat of Nationals is always an interesting animal. Unlike at the World Championships, where even drunken louts can sound charming while railing in a delightful and incomprehensible foreign tongue, Nationals is a homegrown affair. There are actually more American journalists in attendance than at the Worlds (few newspapers have the budget to send a reporter overseas in a non-Olympic year). But at Nationals, the bar is crowded with representatives of everything from Sports Illustrated, The Los Angeles Times, and the Boston Globe to each contender's hometown paper. And 97 percent of them (not all, Bex had to admit) have one thing in common. They are "real sports reporters." And "real sports reporters" think figure skating is for sissies.
That's why, year after year, "real sports reporters" file stories that only focus on the Ladies' event and inevitably begin with a joke about Zambonis, proceed to mock the costumes ("She looks like she escaped from a whorehouse after being mauled by a lion!"), and wrap up by explaining how the results are fixed from the beginning, that the audience clapped louder for the girl who came in seventh so obviously she deserved to win, and finally, if they have time, list the top three finishers in the Men's, Pairs, and Dance events. The "real sports reporters" were easily identified as the ones who stayed late in the hotel bar because no way were they getting up early to watch practices the next morning. They were also easily identified as the ones yakking at the tops of their lungs about where they could have been right now, if only their lousy editor weren't out to get them.
In contrast, the other group of Nationals hotel-bar regulars rarely spoke above a whisper. Though they, in actuality, did have to get up early and attend practice the next morning, they also knew that a big part of their job took place off the ice. These were the coaches. And they were in the bar to talk up their students. To anyone who would listen.
Those lucky enough to possess an actual medal contender sidled up to the mostly indifferent press corps to wax poetic about how their protégée was the next big thing. They figured if it was printed and televised and repeated enough, judges would get the message and mark accordingly. Those with students more likely to end up in the bottom half of the standings saved their powers of persuasion for the few judges who also happened to be in the bar. It wasn't that they told them how to vote, exactly. No one could do that. What they did was more along the lines of planting subliminal suggestions, such as, "A well-done spiral really should be worth as much as a spin," or vice versa, depending on their skater's particular expertise. They also, should the subject come up — and somehow it always did — pointed out, "You know, I was watching the Hunt boy's quad this morning. And it's the darndest thing, really, but when you look closely, you realize it's not a quadruple Toe at all! It's just a triple Axel taking off backward. He cheats the first half a revolution on the ice; oh, and he cheats the landing, too."
Bex and Craig, on their way to a booth, he with a Scotch in his hand, she with a Tequila Sunrise, managed to overhear that exact exchange. The speaker was Lucian Pryce, a coach Bex recognized as attending this Nationals with a boy who spun like a piece of film loose in a projector, emoted like a silent-film star, but couldn't jump more than three revolutions if his life — or National ranking — depended on it.
It was the judge who spotted Craig first. Lucian followed his gaze and realized that the father of the skater he'd just maligned was standing a foot away. And Craig was several inches taller than Lucian. And about two decades younger.
A normal person might have felt somewhat threatened under the circumstances. The judge certainly looked terrified at the possibility of fisticuffs breaking out. Lucian, on the other hand, stared back defiantly, as if daring Craig to say or do anything in reply. He cocked his head to one side and raised a palm in a gesture of, "Give it your best shot."
Craig, for his part, turned around slowly and, most polit
ely, handed his drink to Bex. He pushed one sweater sleeve up past the elbow, then the other.
Bex wished any of the reporters who so regularly smirked their way through a column about what a sissy sport skating was, would turn around and check out the off-ice pissing contest. She wasn't sure if Craig were going to deck Lucian or blow him off.
As it turned out, he did neither. Craig simply smiled sympathetically. And then he told Lucian, "Don't worry, Mr. Pryce. Jeremy may have twice your boy's jumps, but he's also half his age. At this rate, I figure your kid should catch up with mine... never?"
At that, he retrieved his drink from Bex, waved cheerily, and kept walking.
Dazed, Lucian stared at Craig's retreating back in stunned silence. The judge stared at Craig's retreating back in stunned silence. Bex stared at Craig's retreating back in stunned silence — until she remembered that they were supposedly together, and trotted off to join him.
He was already sitting at their booth, sipping his Scotch, when Bex caught up. He was staring straight ahead, seemingly lost in thought, making Bex, all of a sudden, feel as if she were interrupting. She'd been intending to just plop down across from him, but now that felt weirdly intrusive. Craig didn't even appear to realize that she was there, and Bex wondered how she should make her presence known, short of waving a hand in front of his face, or loudly clearing her throat several times.
She was still flipping mental coins to decide which option made her look less pathetic when Craig snapped out of the reverie he'd been in, noticed Bex standing there awkwardly, and stared at her, puzzled as to why she wasn't taking a seat.
So Bex took a seat. And she told him, "Smooth smack-down."
"You mean Lucian?"
"I don't think he's used to being talked to like that."
"Lucian does prefer to be the one verbally assaulting, of that we're all aware."
Bex felt like an idiot. Here she was, 24/7's head and/or only researcher, and she'd totally missed the subtext of the altercation. It wasn't all about Jeremy. Fifteen years ago, Lucian Pryce had been the coach who allowed Craig's future wife, Rachel Rose, to be abused by her Pairs partner, Robby Sharpton. A relationship that, after over a decade of lies and deception, culminated with Rachel's murder the previous fall.
She said, "I forgot you and Lucian met before."
Craig raised his glass to his lips and paused to clarify, "I wouldn't say we exactly met. Rachel didn't like me coming to the rink when she was practicing, so most of our relationship is hearsay. But I saw the effects of Lucian's tutelage on Rachel. And hell, on Robby, too. You'd think, knowing I was married to Rachel, Lucian wouldn't have the balls to actually pick up a phone and offer to train Jeremy. And yet he did."
"Lucian offered to coach Jeremy? When?"
"About a month ago. He was at our rink, supposedly to consult with Toni about something — they used to be Pairs partners, can you believe it? Two of the most different people on the planet…”
Wright & Pryce
“…. Anyway, he watched Jeremy practice, and that evening he called me. Said he'd been thinking about it, and even though he was severely busy, had all the students he could handle, future champions each and every one, he was willing to allow me to beg him to take on Jeremy. When I said no, thank you, Toni had gotten Jeremy this far and we were committed to her, plus, well, there's that whole thing where he's the Antichrist — "
Bex had to gulp the sip in her mouth to demand, "You actually said that to him?"
"Maybe I said Antichrist, maybe I said the devil himself, but yes, that was the sentiment I attempted to convey."
"How did he respond?"
"He told me I was a fool. That Toni Wright had never trained a champion and that she never would. She was a loser — a lovely thing to say about a woman he earlier publicly claimed was his oldest and dearest friend. And that if I stayed with her, I would be a loser, too."
"And you said?"
"That if Robby Sharpton was his shining example of a winner, I'd pass."
Bex said, "You're a brave man. Lucian can destroy Jeremy politically."
"Better than some other way." Craig shrugged, finished his drink, and signaled the wandering waiter to bring him another one. "I didn't, of course, tell Jeremy about any of this. I can get pretty brave with geriatrics over the phone. My kid, on the other hand... I don't relish hearing from Jeremy how I ruined his potential career before it even got started. So let's just keep the details of me pissing off one of the most influential men in skating between the two of us for now. Deal?"
Bex said, "You're a good dad."
"I've tried to be. Best anyone can do, really. Just try."
"It's funny," Bex mused. "You always hear about dead-beat dads and paternity suits and Peter Pan guys who won't take responsibility. But then there are men like you. And this thing with Allison Adler's baby. Rather than denying they were even in town at the time, we've got two men fighting for the right to be declared Omri's father. They both can't be right, but they're both dying to be."
"Ego," Craig suggested. “That whole call-of-the- wild/caveman compulsion to reproduce yourself. It makes some guys absolutely crazy."
"Not you," Bex pointed out. "You raised — you're still raising — another man's child. A man you hated, to boot."
"Primordial ooze hardwiring on the fritz, I guess." Craig accepted his refill.
"Everything about Allison's murder, it somehow comes down to fatherhood." Bex finally articulated what had been nagging her ever since she dove into the mystery. "Not just Idan and Coop both claiming to be Omri's dad, but even Allison's dad, Ralph Adler, he's her stepfather, and some people think he was way too involved in her life for a non-biological parent. It's like, everywhere you turn, you hit a paternity puzzle. Craig" — Bex figured she had an expert in front of her, might as well pick his brain — "you must have some insight on this. What would make a man claim someone else's child as his own?"
It was an intensely personal question, and Bex knew that she should have been sorry for asking it the minute the words were out of her mouth. Except that she wasn't sorry. Because, even if it hadn't been connected with Allison Adler's murder, Bex still would have wanted to know the answer. Because of what it would tell her about Craig.
The question, of course, was: Would he want to tell her? Especially considering that Bex was more or less a total stranger. And had been indirectly responsible for the murder of his wife. Because, other than that, they were cool.
Bex figured Craig would need a moment to think about his answer. God knows she'd needed more than a moment to think about the question, and that was after she'd already asked it.
"In my case, it was because I was in love with Rachel."
Or maybe he would just blurt it out as soon as she inquired.
It really could go either way.
"That's it?" Bex asked.
"That's it." He shrugged. "She wanted us to raise Jeremy. So I went along."
"And you didn't care that you weren't Jeremy's biological father?”
"Not really."
"So could that mean that in Omri's case, one of the guys could know that he's not the biological father and could still be fighting for him, anyway?"
"Bex" — Craig leaned forward conspiratorially — "I genuinely have no idea."
"Why would they do that?"
"Still drawing a blank."
"Because they were in love with Allie?"
"And that would have to be my strike three."
"You're not helping here, Craig."
"I invited you out for a drink, Bex, not a game of Clue."
He was absolutely right. But unfortunately, at the moment Bex happened to be paddling in the middle of the latter. And she realized that try as she might, there would be no kicking back and enjoying the former — much as she may have wanted to — until she was able to tell Gil and the Howarths and the perennially voyeuristic viewing public that it was Colonel Mustard in the costume room with a shiny, sharpened sequin and be able to
prove it. Not just to 24/7's Legal Department's satisfaction, but to her own as well.
She looked at Craig, who was leaning back in their booth, one thumb rubbing the mist off his drink, the other tapping it playfully against the glass's rim. He was smiling at her in a manner more relaxed and welcoming than Bex had ever seen him before. He had admitted to inviting her out for a drink, which was not truly the same as a real date. But it was most certainly an arrow wiggle into the friendly and/or nonprofessional portion of the "Where do we stand?” pie chart. Bex took all of these developments in.
And she asked Craig, "Could I have a rain check?”
CHAPTER TEN
Bex did not, as a rule, leave the immediate area during a competition. There was usually no need to. All the information she was required to collect was available either at the rink or at the competitors' official hotel, often a short walk from the rink. Sometimes a feature producer might take a skater off-site to videotape them strolling through some local, easily recognizable landmark (plug in the Eiffel Tower, St. Basil's Cathedral, the Great Wall of China, or a canal, Venetian or Dutch) to prove to the viewers at home that see, we are, too, on location; this all isn't being phoned in from a studio back in the States.
But as a mere researcher, even though she was the one who generated the list of potentially photogenic sites, Bex did not get to actually join the excursions. Her route was arena, hotel, production truck. Rinse. Repeat. Regret.
Which was why, when confronted with getting into her rental car and driving out to Idan and Pandora Westby Ben-Golan's presumed mansion in Beverly Hills, Bex felt at a disadvantage. For one thing, this was Los Angeles, where all of the streets followed logical patterns, until they didn't. What kind of a city, Bex wondered, would have Sunset and Hollywood running parallel to each other for miles and miles, only to suddenly make them become perpendicular? It wasn't normal.
