The Idea of Him

by Holly Peterson

  “I got it handled,” Caitlin confirmed.

  I was surprised I hadn’t seen Jackie yet. “Great. You can also deal with the last-minute stragglers.” I started to stuff my screening file in a purse that was already overloaded, adding, “I’ve got a bull’s-eye on my chest saying, ‘Come to me with your petty problems, I’ll fix them.’ And that’s just pissing me off the more I do it. Part of the problem is, I’m awful good at fixing petty issues and they know it. Thrilled my writing degree has paid off in the form of babysitting billionaires.”

  I watched as an entire theater of eyes bounced back and forth from Max Rowland to Murray Hillsinger as if they were at a tennis match—everyone trying to figure out if Max was going to take over Luxor and if Murray’s PR spinning would save him.

  Ten feet to my right, my husband was holding court like he was Scarlett O’Hara at the barbecue. Caitlin listened intently inches away from him, which of course annoyed me more than slightly. “So we’re doing a huge cover piece on Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds,” Wade told his fawning audience, as unaware of his obsolescence as he was. “And they actually tell me they are trying to be the next Brangelina and they want me to come have dinner with them to show them some famine projects that might help . . .”

  I needed intravenous Klonopin at this point, as Camilla Rowland was now fuming and running toward me with a major bee up her ass.

  “I don’t want Max sitting on the side aisles,” she growled at me. “Especially given what he’s been through. You know damn well he deserves better, Allie.”

  “He’s got a nice seat, Camilla, one on the aisle where he can get in and out easily if he—” I said, restraining myself from saying something worse.

  Camilla sharpened her gaze. “Nice doesn’t cut it. Are you calling us nobodies, Allie? After all we’ve done for your husband?”

  I met her eyes and suddenly saw an unexpected opportunity. Exactly what had she and Max done for Wade? Had Wade insider-invested in Luxor before the stock rose? Maybe I could verify Jackie’s warnings on my own. “Of course not, Camilla. Let me get Caitlin to fix this. You’re absolutely right, you’re absolutely right, your reserved seat isn’t the right reserved seat.”

  “Caitlin,” I called out, annoyed at her shrill laughter directed in my not-so-funny husband’s direction. “Will you please just put signs on two seats in the center section for Camilla and Max and mark them Rowland?”

  I was about to let Camilla know the good news—we found your seats!—when I spied Jackie Malone standing at the side entrance of the theater looking like a ghost. She curled her index finger, beckoning me over. I managed to work my way through the crowd and up the aisle with more purpose than a blitzing linebacker.

  “What the hell, Jackie?” I whispered. “What happened?”

  “Everything’s blowing up right in front of your eyes, and you can’t even see it. I’m telling you, I have put the pieces together now and the completed puzzle is lying before you.” The normally calm Jackie looked a little crazed as she pulled me farther behind the curtain. Her neck tendons were popping out in a long, clear, stressed-out line.

  “Okay, here’s the deal: I will trust you and tell you the whole damn story now and you do your part and start to believe me and keep looking for that flash drive.”

  “I may do that. I may, but this I understand only. Now the Luxor price is up so high, Max is screwed and can’t afford it.”

  “You really believe that’s what’s happening? None of the dots we talked about are connecting for you? Look how high the stock is now on this news that Max Rowland might take over the company. Can you see there’s a scenario where this could be good news for him?” she asked. “Do you understand your boss is fully capable of lying to you and putting you out front to make false claims for him? Did he tell you to tell the reporters that it wasn’t supposed to leak?”

  “Yes, he did, Jackie, but he didn’t want it to leak, right?”

  Jackie exhaled and pulled her hair back tightly from her forehead before letting it fall in a fragrant wave. “Okay, I’m going to inch out on a limb and connect the dots for you so you understand I’m onto something. This is all a ruse. Let me make this very clear to you:

  One: Murray is pretending to be upset that a potential takeover of Luxor got leaked.

  Two: Murray is pretending Max will not be able to buy it with the price suddenly so high.

  Three: Murray is asking you to tell that to the press to make sure his story is out.

  And most important, four: Max Rowland wants the Luxor stock to go up because he already owns a ton of it through an unnamed entity in Liechtenstein.

  “They have boosted the price through trumped-up media rumors of him taking it over. Now the stock he secretly bought a few weeks ago has doubled on just the news of the rumor. Think, Allie: media rumors. Who do you know very well who is a big media guy?”

  “Is Wade investing in this deal and not telling me?” I asked.

  “No! For a smart woman, you can be so blind! He’s in control of the media rumors. Can’t you see that’s his gift? Swirling up gossip and rumors that make investors react? And react in a way that certain individuals could benefit from if they were betting on the stock going up? Wade gets it online in those brokerage news services and persuades Delsie to put it on CNBB that someone who looks and acts a lot like Max Rowland is about to orchestrate a takeover of Luxor. He gets a reporter to tell another reporter. Guess what? The stock climbs sky high because investors think that’s good news for the future of Luxor. That’s all Wade has to do,” she concluded coldly. “Watch everything, think about the power of information and the mechanics of the media and how they can be used to manipulate stock prices.”

  “It’s not insider trading then?”

  “Well, ask the SEC that, but it’s manipulation of rumors to make stocks move. Easy to do when you’ve got a media Oz like Wade swirling the dial. He’s sold out more fully than you could ever know.”

  I did not want to believe my husband started out in journalism to get the bad guys and somehow became one of them in the process. “It wasn’t Meter that published the news,” I said plaintively. “It was Delsie at CNBB.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” she answered. “And you think Delsie and Wade aren’t close? You’re telling me you never noticed her throwing her sherbet-colored scarves around the Tudor Room and winking at him?”

  “He bought that for her?”

  “He didn’t buy it for her, but he is creating situations where she can buy stuff like that on her own is all I’m going to say.”

  “You sure?”

  “I think they all made a ton of money tonight. I’m pretty sure of that.”

  “Allie!” Camilla Rowland roared up to me again—a lioness protecting her ailing Max—followed by a festival assistant whose headset was flying behind her. Jackie squeezed my arm and then effortlessly slipped behind a decorative drape next to the door, avoiding Camilla.

  “Don’t think I don’t understand what you had your girl do,” Camilla said. “Those were fake reserved seats.” Camilla was now on the verge of real tears. “And why is a tacky newswoman who sluts around army tanks given a reserved seat that is better than ours?”

  I punted. “I think Murray wanted Delsie to cover the event up close—that’s how the press likes to work.”

  “Is it because Max is a convicted felon? Is that it? Bad enough he was living in prison with real criminals for nine months at Allenwood but now that he’s out, he can’t be treated normally? You have to snub him too and give him B-list seats? Well, he’s out of the tax evasion business. So he had his banker set up a little account for us all in Liechtenstein. It’s just to get a little privacy. Ever since the Swiss got rid of bank secrecy . . . as if it wasn’t enough they bankrolled Hitler’s machine!” She snorted and then moved so close to me that I could smell the spearmint Altoids on her breath. “And now your Wade is protected too.”

  Jackie poked my hip from behind the curtain, and
I straightened my back, coughing a little signal back to her. Camilla wasn’t done. She whispered, “If you don’t think he’s given Wade a cut overseas on certain matters that all of us have benefited from . . .”

  I had to get more out of her, but didn’t have the slightest clue how. “But what happened with the accounts overseas is all okay, right? I mean, you know it better than me, in the sense that . . .” She ignored my lead.

  “Whoa, darlin’. Stop. I don’t want to cause trouble. Allie’s a good girl; she’s just doin’ her job,” said Max, who’d finally caught up to his wife. “We are gonna have to move on. One day at a—”

  “Camilla, darling.” Wade swooped in and gave her a double air kiss. “Of course a society belle like you needs . . .” He could charm anyone out of any situation, and my confused and hurt angst abated a little watching him make her anger melt away. I was forever attracted to this side of him: the cheerful side, the smooth side, the side that would pull us all out of the daily doldrums that life sucked us into.

  He said in an aside to me, “I’m going to make everything up to you. I’m sorry I’ve been so distracted. I love you. I love the kids. I love what we have. Don’t forget that. I’ve just got to work on getting you to remember that. And I will.” His sudden directness and honesty surprised me. The more I watched him with Camilla, the more I saw Camilla succumb to his velvet touch, and the more my heart ached.

  Jackie’s snakeskin shoes were visible behind the velvet curtain. Wade had his back to her, not knowing she was inches from him, but perhaps catching a whiff of her signature spicy perfume. I wondered for a moment if I should pull the curtain back just to confront them both and see Wade squirm. I could see Jackie inching along the wall and then toward the exit.

  “You look stunning, Max, my old man,” Wade insisted. “I knew you’d get out better than you were before. Good to see you out and about at a big event. You look strong and rested, ready to take over the world again.”

  I heard the exit door slam shut. Jackie had managed to slip away.

  “Let me work on this one.” Wade grabbed Mr. and Mrs. Max Rowland, locking elbows with one on either side, and sat between them in perfectly good seats two rows from the front. Of course, that magnanimous gesture wasn’t only to save me; perhaps he was also kissing the ass of someone who might well have a sizable chunk of our retirement money.

  I ran outside the theater after the woman who had the answers for how I got here, why I got here, and how I’d get out of that very unsettled place called “here.” As I watched Jackie run away, I noticed a black SUV roll down the street after her, maintaining a careful, one-hundred-foot distance. I tried to catch up with her to no avail; I could hear only the sound of running heels clacking on the pavement bricks against the balmy spring nighttime air.

  19

  Focused and Frustrated

  “I can’t believe you’re not going to your own party.” Caitlin plowed into our office in the building adjacent to the gallery with a tray of Starbucks. “Here, this should keep you solid for the next few hours, one caramel Frappuccino for your fat ass and one triple espresso macchiato for your veins.”

  I looked up from the white leather desk chair, where I’d sat for the past two hours, having left the theater as soon as the screening began. I hoped to pull together as much of Murray’s panel demands as possible before turning to my own screenplay work, both of which were due at noon the next day—a marathon night lay ahead of me. My glass desk was piled with markers and festival plans. I had to get my work done and shut out the real possibility that my boss, my husband, and a parking lot mogul were trying to manipulate the stock market together.

  Everything Jackie said made more and more sense—Max and Murray secretly buy stocks in some foreign name, they have Wade Crawford the media maestro pass out rumors like hot hors d’oeuvres to unsuspecting journalist friends that something is possibly happening with a company that would make its stock go up, and then stock they already own does indeed go up. They then sell instantly for a profit while the rumors have new investors jumping in.

  Even if the rumor were false, their stock would still go up in time for them to sell. I wasn’t even sure if it was illegal for Wade to lie to the press to get them to spread an untrue rumor; it just smacked of horrible ethics and cheating. I hated to have to believe Jackie, but it wasn’t the kind of thing someone would just invent as a story.

  “Allie! I’m talking to you, and I’m handing you a hot drink that’s about to spill; snap out of it.”

  “Thanks, Caitlin. Every inch of my body appreciates it.”

  She placed a white paper bag on my desk. “And some lemon squares for your thighs.”

  The phone rang and I picked it up, wondering who on earth would call me at the office so late. I heard only a hang-up and made a mental note that I’d heard a few clicks like this in the past few days from a private number. If this ever happened again, I’d start to wonder about that SUV I’d just seen.

  “That’s strange. No one on the line.” I took a quick, scalding sip, trying to decide if I was being paranoid or prudent. “How was daycare for the grown-up toddlers after the film started?”

  As she picked her own coffee out of the cardboard holder, Caitlin answered, “Well, everyone was so busy gawking at Murray and then at Max with his potential Luxor move that the room was just crazed with electricity. Don’t think one person actually watched the film.”

  “That sounds like fun.”

  “It was a nightmare! Completely overshadowed the importance of the film.” Caitlin pulled up my guest chair and tried to look me in the eye. “What is going on with you, Allie? Everything okay with you and Wade? You and Murray?”

  She shifted next to the desk and started reorganizing piles of information on the shiny white floor. Task barely begun, she sat back. “You know, the whole Tribeca loft decor in this room is off. I remember at the beginning when we moved in here it was all clean lines and chic and spare. One glass desk. One bouquet of red flowers. Nothing on the desk except a pristine metal penholder and a metal Apple computer. Now it looks like something from those reality shows on people who hoard.”

  “Just leave it and go to your after party for the documentary. Try to get the press interested in the film, and not the surrounding business gossip, okay? It’s a possible award winner, damnit. Get the press concentrating back on the Sudan, rather than how Max is only getting richer after prison.”

  “We have so many people there working the press already, I don’t mind staying here,” she responded.

  “This is all stuff I need to do myself. Go.”

  “You mean it?” Caitlin practically jumped to her feet. “Seriously, I should stay. What can I do to help now?”

  The phone rang and she picked it up. “Hello?” She laughed a little and then handed me the receiver with a stern look, like she suddenly despised the caller. “It’s Wade. For you.”

  I put my hand over the receiver. “I thought you hated Wade. Stop laughing at his jokes. Go back to the party and be young and have fun.”

  “You sure?”

  “Just go already!” I threw a pencil at her as she slid out the door, and then I turned to the phone. “Looks like I’m not coming home until very very late. Can you relieve Stacey when you’re done with the party?”

  “What time was she expecting you?” Wade asked.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know, Wade. What time was she expecting you?”

  “How come you’re so pissy?” he said.

  “Like you don’t know?”

  A long beat of silence passed while he considered his answer. “What should I know, Allie?”

  Oh God. Where could I start? I swiveled my chair around to look out the floor-to-ceiling industrial windows of our big loft office. A tugboat was yanking a barge of garbage down the eerily dark Hudson River.

  I shook my head. “Well, I have a lot of work, Wade. I have to prepare a presentation on our panels for next week’s screenings and somehow in between
find the time to write a good beginning of a screenplay by tomorrow to e-mail to the class. Remember when we met, I was hoping to actually write fiction and make a living from it? Not write fictional press releases for assholes and criminals.”

  “I know you’re working hard.” Wade was trying to be patient, but I could sense the tension in his jaw through the phone lines.

  “But do you know what I am working on?” I asked, stalling. I couldn’t play this game anymore. I could barely focus on any work without wondering who actually was the person I’d married. Then I steeled myself. “Tell me, Wade, for real. Are you screwing someone else right now, tonight even?”

  “Oh, please. I don’t even know where you’re coming from.”

  “You’re not cheating on me right now with some young thing?”

  “Allie. Listen to yourself.”

  “Yes or no? Simple question. Deserves a simple answer, Wade.”

  “I’m not with a young thing.”

  “Are you with a woman?”

  “Right this minute?”

  I exhaled. “I’m not an idiot.”

  Finally he said softly. “I was and it’s over, but I wasn’t sure if you knew.”

  I waited a long time. I felt relieved and horrified and kicked in the stomach all at once. Part of me felt better because it was somehow comforting to have confirmation of what I knew to be true. The tension of not being 100 percent sure felt worse than the pain of knowing. At least in that moment. “Well, I did fucking know, Wade!” I yelled into the receiver. “And I already asked you in our bedroom and you had the nerve to deny it. It’s actually easier if you just tell me the goddamn truth! Yes, do that, even if you know it hurts just as much as last time.”

  “I didn’t do anything to hurt you, Allie. I’m just . . . living my life. It has nothing to do with . . .”

  There was a very long pause on the line.

  I then stated clearly, “Well, did you consider that it would hurt me, and that you promised you wouldn’t ever again do it? I mean, we have a family and I know you love that family. But it’s like you’re totally psychotic and have a whole other life that you are quote, unquote living. I don’t understand how you can do this again.”