Love In the Air

by James Collins

  “Anyway, he asked me to pass along his gratitude to you for your help and for saving him from a big mistake. You’re very wise, he said. Isn’t that great?”

  Forget the barbiturates and all that. What Peter wanted to do now was to strangle several dozen small, defenseless mammals with his bare hands.

  Later that morning, Peter received a call from Gregg Thropp.

  “Russell,” he said, “get in here, pronto.”

  When Peter arrived, he saw that Thropp wore a wide grin. His eyes sparkled.

  “Hello, Champ,” he said gleefully. “Take a seat. I want you to listen to something.”

  Thropp picked up the phone and dialed an extension. “Good morning, Miss Ippolito,” Thropp said. “It’s Gregg Thropp returning Mr. Beeche’s call.”

  Thropp was put on hold.

  “Good morning, sir,” he said eventually. He listened.

  “Yes, sir, the market has given a good account of itself, although we may see some late-morning profit taking.”

  Peter could hear only one side of the conversation.

  “Yes, sir, that’s what your message said, you wanted to talk about the cereal box tops?”

  At this, Peter’s heart leapt into his throat.

  “No, sir, I’m afraid I don’t know anything about it.”

  Thropp listened for a few minutes, interposing “Good heavens!” and “Good Lord!” here and there. Finally he said, “Use cereal box tops to take over the world! Why, that’s madness!”

  Thropp listened, obviously trying to restrain himself from bursting out laughing.

  “Really, sir? Bullwinkle, sir? That is remarkable.”

  Now Arthur was talking again.

  “SPITS? Oh, yes—serial partnership interest toggles. Yes, sir, I am familiar with that idea. Oh! So that’s where the confusion came in, with cereal and serial. I see.”

  Serial. Cereal. Of course. Peter should have known it was something like that. Fortunately, at this point, he had no feelings.

  Evidently, Arthur had asked a question.

  “Well, sir, Peter had said he had a project he wanted to work on very badly with Mac McClernand. I asked him what it was, and he said he’d rather not tell me until they were further along. Well, you know better than anyone—it’s the policy you’ve set for the firm, after all—that we try to let our people be independent, to push the decision making as far down as we can. So when I saw how keen he was, I thought I should give him his head, so to speak. Now don’t quote me on this, but it was my impression that the basic idea was Peter’s.”

  Arthur asked another question.

  “I think Peter has always seen Mac as something of a mentor.”

  Peter could hear Arthur exclaim, “What?!”

  “Yes, sir,” Thropp said. “Peter seems to admire Mac very much.”

  Thropp listened briefly.

  “Peter? Oh, yes, I’m sure you and Seth liked him. He’s very bright, very capable. However …” Thropp paused. “I hate to be critical, but he does seem to have gotten off-track. There was a meeting, very poor preparation. Rich and Andrea can tell you about that. And now this business with Mac. I wouldn’t want to speak prematurely, sir, but, in all honesty, I wonder if with Peter we may not have a case of someone who is a bad fit.”

  “A bad fit!” Oh God! “A bad fit!” Peter knew what that meant: we got to fire this sucka’s ass.

  “Yes, sir. Of course, sir. I’ll do that, sir. Thank you, sir. Good-bye.”

  After hanging up, Thropp rocked in his chair and looked at Peter with a self-satisfied grin. He sighed with happiness. “You talked to Seth,” he said, “and Seth talked to Arthur, and Arthur was quite interested so he called Mac earlier this morning, and Mac explained it all to him.” Thropp chuckled. “Do you know what Arthur told me?”

  Peter didn’t respond.

  “He told me that there had been a story line in Rocky and Bullwinkle in which the world went on the box-tops standard and Bullwinkle became richer than anyone else on earth because he had collected so many.” Thropp chuckled quietly, shaking his head. “Why, God,” he said, “why can’t every day be like this?”

  The next few weeks were not easy ones for Peter. He had draining conversations with Charlotte, who wailed about how terribly she had hurt him and begged his forgiveness. Then, whenever he ran into him, Thropp would grin mischievously and say something like “Twisting slowly in the wind, Russell? Keep up the good work!” or “Christmas Eve, I’ve always thought that that was a good time to fire people.” Peter thought about going to Arthur and telling him the truth, but this was madness. At Beeche you didn’t complain about your boss to someone higher up, you didn’t act like such a baby, and going to Arthur himself to whine was unthinkable; in this case, Arthur would be especially offended if he thought that Peter was trying to take advantage of their new social connection. Anyway, Thropp would just contradict him and twirl his index finger around his ear if McClernand’s testimony was introduced. Meanwhile, Arthur kept whisking Holly off someplace. She corrected exams while cruising the Mediterranean on his yacht. And when she was back in New York, she and Arthur were together. And when Peter was with Holly, Arthur was there, too! Trying to keep him from brooding by himself, Holly asked Peter to come out with them a few times. This was excruciating for Peter, naturally, but Arthur was very kind: he treated Peter like some backward cousin for whom he had affection. Miss Harrison, who was also present, discussed the weather with him.

  Peter was absolutely determined to tell Holly everything, absolutely determined, and yet, well, time passed and he didn’t do it. In truth, he was simply scared. What did he have to go on, anyway, as far as Holly was concerned? A glance. A glance! He was going to declare his love for somebody on the basis of a glance? It was sure to be humiliating. Throw in Arthur Beeche and you had a real disaster. Oh, man, Arthur Beeche! Only the richest and most powerful man in the world, practically. Only the owner of a large proportion of all the most beautiful objects of human fashioning in existence. Only a nice and somehow endearing guy. What were Peter’s chances against him? And what would Arthur’s reaction be if he learned that Peter was trying to move in on his honey? People can be touchy about these things, and Arthur could probably arrange for Peter to spend the rest of his life jobless, homeless, and covered with sores. Also, Arthur was a large man. Well, no matter! Holly might say she didn’t care for him, Arthur might destroy him, he might gouge out Peter’s eyes. He was still going to forge ahead, fearlessly, just as soon as … as soon as, well, as soon as he got Holly alone and it was a good moment.

  On a snowy day about a month after Arthur Beeche’s dinner party, Peter received an unexpected phone call at the office. It was from Graham Edwards, Holly’s father. He was in town to visit Holly, and he wanted to talk with Peter about something; he was having dinner downtown with friends that evening, would it be convenient for them to get together afterward? Sure, Peter said, I’ll be here late. He thought if he could accomplish a couple of things before the axe fell, he might be able to save his neck, and he didn’t have anywhere he wanted to go other than the office anyway. At about ten o’clock, he got a call from the desk, and Graham came up.

  “Hello!”

  “Hi, Graham!” said Peter.

  Graham shook his hand with animation, grabbing Peter’s shoulder at the same time. “Great to see you, Peter, great to see you!”

  Tall and broad-shouldered, Graham was wearing a suede sport coat, a denim shirt open to the sternum, and cowboy boots. His long blond-and-white hair framed his features, which were a squarer, more robust version of Holly’s. Still handsome, Graham’s face showed no signs of sagging, no double chin, but it was weathered and lined, and, it appeared, of a permanently red complexion. There was a suggestion of defeat in his green eyes. He looked like an aging Viking, an aging Viking who had lost his nerve.

  “It’s great to see you, too. Are you here long?”

  “Just a couple of days. I’m spending Christmas with Alex and my granddaugh
ter, but I thought I could get a little visit in with Holly.” He paused. “I’m also here to meet this fellow that Holly has been seeing. We’re all having dinner.”

  “That’s great!” Peter said cheerily. “That’s great! Well!” He motioned to his desk. “So, well—if you’ll just give me a second, I’ll be right with you.” Peter sat in his desk chair and began clicking on his keyboard. “How are Alex and Clementine?”

  Graham had walked over to the window and was leaning against the wall with one hand as he looked out. Large white snowflakes drifted down, lit from below. “Oh, they’re great. Clemmie comes up with the most amazing things. The other day she said something was ‘most absurd.’ What kind of kid says ‘most absurd’?”

  “That’s funny,” Peter said, still tapping away.

  Graham stared out the window. “Fifty-eight stories,” he said. “You’re right in the middle of it, aren’t you? They always say that compared with people here, the people in Los Angeles are shallow and two-dimensional. Well, there is another dimension here. Up.”

  Peter had finished and turned to look at Graham and saw his ghostly reflection in the glass. Graham’s eyes were scanning the view through the window. Holly had once mentioned that her father would often be arrested by a scene—any scene, someone’s kitchen or a parking lot at twilight—and he would study it, his eyes darting to and fro. It seemed that he had never lost the habit.

  “You know, this place has always made me sort of nervous,” Graham said. “Look at all those windows. I always imagined it to be like a huge lab, with all these drawers containing people.” He tapped on the wall with his hand in time as he spoke-sung softly, “‘The great big city’s a wondrous toy, just made for a girl and boy …’” He laughed a little to himself and turned to Peter.

  “All done,” Peter said. “Please sit down.” Graham sat opposite him.

  “Well,” Peter said. “It’s great to see you.”

  Graham nodded and smiled. “It’s great to see you, too,” he said.

  “So! I … uh … urn. Well!”

  Graham bailed Peter out. “I guess that you have no idea what I’m doing here,” he said.

  Peter thought for a moment. “To borrow money?”

  Graham laughed. “Well, now that you mention it … But, no, actually. That’s not the reason.” He shifted in his seat. “Let me ask you something, Peter.”

  “Shoot.”

  “How are you doing?”

  “How am I doing?”

  “Yes. How are you doing?”

  “Oh,” Peter said. “I’m doing fine. Maybe you know what happened with my wife?”

  “Yes, Holly mentioned that.”

  “Well,” Peter said, “it’s all very difficult and all that, but actually—I don’t say this to everyone—but actually I’m not unhappy about it. I’m not just trying to pretend to be okay.”

  “It wasn’t true of me,” Graham said, “at least not the first time, but most men I know are ecstatic when their wives leave. They work overtime to try to get them to.”

  “Right,” Peter said. “So all things considered, I’m doing well.”

  “You like all this?” Graham asked, looking around the room. “You like the work?”

  “Yes,” said Peter. “I like it a lot. Sure there are one or two things that I could live without, but I like it a lot.”

  “There are billions and billions of dollars swirling through here, and you just put your pan down and scoop some of it up.”

  “It’s not quite that easy, but sure.”

  “What you really want to do isn’t to direct?”

  “No.”

  “And your family,” Graham asked, “they are well?”

  “Yes, everyone is fine, very well, thank you.”

  “Mm-hmmm.”

  Graham leaned back. He held his hands with the fingers spread apart and the fingertips touching. “So you’re fine,” he said.

  “Pretty much,” answered Peter.

  “Is there anything that you’d say was not going so well? That’s disturbing? That’s causing you any pain? I’m sorry if I’m getting too personal.”

  “Not at all,” Peter said brightly. “Let’s see. No, I can’t think of anything. I’m okay, really.”

  Graham nodded. Some his tresses fell forward, and he ran his hand through them, training them back. “Well, then, I guess there isn’t any truth to what it says in this letter I got. If there were, then I would think that you’d be pretty miserable right now.”

  “What letter is that?” Peter asked.

  Graham reached into his back pocket and pulled out a pale blue envelope. From this he extracted a letter of three or four sheets folded over. It was written in a skittering hand. “It’s from Julia Dyer.”

  “Julia?”

  “Yes.”

  “Charlotte’s—my wife’s—stepmother? Julia Montague?”

  “Yes. She signs it Dyer.”

  “But how do you—?”

  “We met at Jonathan’s funeral. We talked a little bit.”

  “Oh, right.”

  Graham took his half-glasses from his shirt pocket and put them on. He unfolded the letter and smoothed it out, making a crackling noise, and, with his lips pursed, began to read it silently. “You know,” he said, still studying the letter, “what she writes is really quite interesting.” He looked over his lenses at Peter. “It isn’t very long. Would you like me to read it to you?”

  Peter found that his knuckles had gone white as he gripped the arms of his desk chair.

  “Sure.”

  “Okay.” Graham did a lot of stage business adjusting his glasses and getting settled in his chair, making sure the pages were in order and lining them up, clearing his throat. “Okay, here we go:

  Dear Mr. Edwards,

  I am (for the time being, at least) the stepmother of Charlotte Russell, the bride at whose wedding Jonathan had his accident. You may remember me as the woman who was so upset at Jonathan’s funeral and whom you comforted. I remain very grateful to you for that.

  I remember vividly what you said that day about your daughter Holly. Your love for her came through strongly. I am writing you now about a matter that concerns her happiness in a very important way. What I have to say may sound strange, but I beg you to take it seriously and to take action. It is urgent.

  Gossip has reached me from New York that Holly has been seeing Arthur Beeche and that matters seem to be racing ahead. It sounds like what my grandmother would have called a “whirlwind romance.” However, I have reason to believe that Holly is in love with Peter Russell, Jonathan’s best friend and Charlotte’s soon-to-be-former husband, and that Peter is in love with Holly. I don’t have absolute proof of this—to be honest, I don’t even have any hard evidence, and I have to keep the sources of the evidence I do have secret—but in my heart I know it’s true. The problem is that neither of them knows about the other, and now with Arthur Beeche’s involvement, it looks as if there’s a chance that they never will.

  I am in no position to pursue this matter, but I couldn’t keep this knowledge to myself, so I am writing you. You probably doubt my sanity, and even if you believe me, I don’t know what you can or should do. But there is nothing worse in the movies than for the girl to end up with the wrong guy. You said yourself that there had to be a happy ending. Please, please do what you can to make sure that for Holly and Peter there is one.

  Yours truly,

  Julia Dyer

  “So there it is,” Graham said. “Oh, yeah, she added a P.S. Not really relevant: ‘By the way, I never got a chance to tell you what a fan I am. Even though it wasn’t my cup of tea, I thought Apostle’s Run was terrific, the sequence in the Chinese restaurant was amazing, and Forever and a Day is one of my favorite movies ever. I even thought Tamerlane was underrated!’”

  Graham whipped off his glasses. “Tamerlane! What a disaster. Everything went wrong, sandstorms, the whole bit. A huge cast and a huge crew and we were rewriting the script every night
. And those damn goats! Ten thousand of them. God, I loved making the battle scenes, but the whole thing ended up as a bloated mess and it didn’t make a dime. Someday, if I could get my hands on the footage and recut it—” He shuddered. “But I can’t let myself start thinking about that.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Graham had been watching Peter closely during this speech. “So anyway,” he said now, looking at Peter directly, “what do you think?”

  Burning with embarrassment, Peter blushed deeply. He was being confronted for the first time ever about Holly and the one doing the confronting was her father, of all people. Then, Julia’s letter baffled him. Julia could not possibly have discussed Holly and Peter with anyone but Charlotte and conceivably—dear God—Jonathan. But what could they know? Peter was certain that he had never betrayed the feelings that Julia ascribed to him, and he found it inconceivable, just about, that Holly had ever done so. The letter was bizarre, absurd, demented, a weird product of Julia’s distressed state and certainly not a document in which to place any confidence. Yet something must have prompted it, and it was accurate about him, and what it said about Holly was thrilling! Blushing and with his heart in tumult, Peter tried to restrain his emotions. He wanted to believe Julia, but he didn’t want to allow himself to believe her, and with Graham, of all people, his ego required that he play it cool.

  “It sounds pretty far-fetched,” he said as calmly as he could.

  Graham shrugged. He tapped the letter with his finger. “Maybe you’d like to take a look yourself,” he said

  “Sure.”

  Graham handed over the letter and continued to study Peter. Peter, meanwhile, looked at the letter intently, turning over the sheets, holding them up, hunching over them, and generally playing for as much time as he could. Julia’s linear, elongated writing looked like Arabic, but Peter managed to decipher the word “please.” Then, suddenly, it began to blur. A drop of water had fallen on it. Another one fell, and another. Peter now realized that his chin was trembling and that he was crying. The tears made jagged circles of ink that looked like bullet holes. Peter put his hand up to rest his forehead on it and to shield Graham from a view of what was happening. He wiped tears away with his other hand and then reached into his pocket and retrieved a handkerchief. He dried his eyes and blew his nose.