Alexandra Waring (34 page)

On Monday Night, May 30
Meet Some of the Nicest People in America

the headline said. And then on the left-hand page, below it, there was a close-up of Alexandra, underneath which it said:

9
P.M
. DBS NEWS AMERICA TONIGHT WITH
ALEXANDRA WARING

The Coast-to-Coast Chronicle of America’s Day

Under that were entries, each with a small head shot:

And then, on the opposite page, there were six pictures of Jessica, standing out in a studio audience, taken about ten seconds apart. She looked terrific, and her pose and expression in each were dramatic, but the expressions on the faces in the audience were a scream—ranging from adoration to horror.

10
P.M
. THE JESSICA WRIGHT SHOW
The Terror of Tucson Comes to National TV

This week:

And then, along the bottom of both pages, it said:

*THE DBS TELEVISION NETWORK*
A Darenbrook Communications Company
9-11
PM
, Monday through Friday, WST, SUPER TV-8

It was a fabulous ad—only it had to have cost about a hundred thousand more dollars than they had allocated for the
Times
today, and Cassy couldn’t believe that Derek could have canceled so many other ads to run this
one
—and without even checking with her. Good God, this one ad alone represented a fifth of their total newspaper budget!

When she arrived at West End, she went charging into Derek’s office, only to have him yell, “Cassy, what the hell is going on?” And then Cassy looked at all the newspapers around Derek’s office, and her eyes grew larger and her stomach sank further as she walked to first one paper and then another, seeing the same double-page spread ad
…
the New York
Daily News
, the New York
Post, Newsday
, the Boston
Globe
, the Baltimore
Sun
, the Philadelphia
Inquirer
, the Washington
Post
, the Chicago
Sun-Times
, the Detroit
Free Press
, the Cleveland
Plain Dealer
, the Miami
Herald…

“Great!” Derek said later, slamming the phone down in her office. “They don’t know where our account executive is—and this kid says he’s not sure whose ads these are!”

“Papers west of the Mississippi are starting to come in,” Chi Chi announced, bringing in another pile.

A flurry of phone calls were made (“Dear God, I can’t believe this,” Cassy said at one point, holding her hands over her eyes, dropping down into her own lap, “we’re over budget by a million already.” She dropped her hands, looking to the ceiling. “God, we don’t have a million, don’t you understand?”), a flurry of phone calls were returned, and at nine-thirty Cassy received confirmation in her office that all of the Friday DBS ads had been canceled at one agency and a whole other set—
this
set—had been ordered for DBS at another, the bill for which came to
one million nine hundred and seventy-six thousand dollars and fifty-eight cents.

The order had been placed, approved and verified for DBS billing by none other than Jackson Darenbrook.

“You’ve wiped out our entire advertising and promotion budget!” Cassy said, flying into his office. “Do you understand what that means? It means we have nothing,
nothing
left for anything after today!”

“And good morning to you, Mrs. Cochran,” Jackson said, addressing her reflection in the mirror of his closet door. He was dressed in blue jeans, sneakers and a sweat shirt that had Jiminy Cricket on it, and he was, at the moment, adjusting a New York Mets cap to a jauntier angle on his head.

“God damn it, Jackson!” Cassy said, swatting the door with the copy of the Dallas
Morning News
in her hand.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” Jackson said, giving his cap a final tug, “such language from such a lovely lady on such a lovely day.”

The tears came up before she knew what hit her. She was so tired there was no chance of stopping them. And so she threw the
Morning News
on the floor, covered her face, slumped against the door-banging it into the wall—and moaned, “Why are you doing this to me? Why?”

Jackson’s head whipped around and he was bounding across the office in an instant. He reached Cassy just as Ethel poked her head around the doorway to see what was going on. “It’s okay,” Jackson said, waving her away, pulling Cassy in by the arm and closing the door.

“It’s not okay,” Cassy said into her hands. “You’re killing me. Honest to God, you are killing me.” And then she felt Jackson’s arms slide around her, pulling her close, one hand directing her head to his shoulder.

“They were a present,” he murmured. “They were for you, for all of you. For working so hard.”

“God damn right we’ve worked hard,” she sobbed, thinking how nice his sweat shirt smelled and wondering if it was fabric softener. “Having to build the stupid network in the first place—keeping you from driving Alexandra crazy. You stick me with a talk show, tell me I have to keep double books—I don’t even know—”

“I know, I know,” he said, holding her “And I promise I’ll make it up to you. Reward you for all you’ve done.”

“I don’t want a reward,” Cassy said, crying. “I want you to stop driving me crazy.”

He laughed then, a deep, warm, gentle laugh, holding her tighter.

“Jack!” Langley said, bursting in through the door from his office. In his hand was a copy of the New York
Times
. “Derek said—”

Silence.

Cassy was thinking about how nice it would be to go to sleep right here. And then she thought maybe she should be worrying about what Langley was thinking. She imagined it must look pretty funny to him to see her standing here with her face buried in Jiminy Cricket, and to see that Jackson, who he knew drove her crazy, was holding her in his arms.

“What did you do to her?” Langley finally said, angry, hurling his newspaper down.

“Pushed her past the breaking point,” Jackson said, rocking her.

“Not a chance, buster,” Cassy said into Jiminy Cricket, laughing.

Jackson released her, his hands sliding up to rest on her shoulders. “I didn’t mean to upset you. No,” he then said, smiling, “I did mean to upset you. I wanted you to be angry and then be surprised. I’m sorry. I really only meant to give you a big present.”

Cassy smiled, backing away. “It’s okay,” she said, wiping one eye with the back of her hand. “I’m just tired, that’s all.” She looked up at him. He was staring at her with a very peculiar expression. And then she realized that she was staring too, caught by his eyes.

“What the hell is going on?” Langley demanded.

“What?” Jackson said, startled. He looked at Langley and then back to Cassy, pulling a bandanna out of his back pocket and offering it to her.

“What is going on?” Langley repeated.

Cassy accepted the bandanna and dabbed at her eyes, turning to Langley. “I was a little upset about the ads,” she said.

“Yeah, well,” Langley said, bending to snag the
Times
up from the floor, “some of us are more than a little upset. Some of us are furious because some of us are worrying about meeting the payroll as it is.” He looked at Jackson. “Do you know how much these cost?”

“Yes,” Jackson said, striding back across the office to the closet, “one million nine hundred seventy-six thousand dollars and fifty-eight cents. Don’t worry, Lang,” he said, bending to retrieve a large brown paper bag from the bottom of the closet, “they’re a present—for Alexandra, Jessica, Cassy, you, everybody.” He tossed the bag down on the carpet and a little cloud of dust came out from inside it. “From me.”

“Yeah, right,” Langley snapped. “Paid with whose money?”

Cassy did not like the sound of this. And apparently Jackson didn’t either, because he slammed the closet door so hard the mirror crashed and shattered inside. “Ethel!” Jackson bellowed. In a moment the door opened and she appeared. “Bring in my checkbook, please, and show Mr. Shithead Peterson here the entry for the last check I wrote and the balance left in that account. In my
personal
account,” he added, giving Langley the finger. Then he turned around and opened the closet door again, moved some pieces of broken mirror around with his foot, and then squatted down, moved some pieces of glass with his hands, and then stood up again, holding a basket of what looked like—if Cassy wasn’t mistaken—gardening trowels.

Ethel came back in and went to Langley, offering him a look into a leather-bound book. Langley traced something with his finger and then looked over at Jackson. “Not a wise thing, considering your situation,” he said.

“Ten to one it’s the best investment I ever made,” Jackson said. He picked up the brown paper bag and moved toward the door. “Come on, you guys,” he said to them, “I want an hour of your time this morning.” He turned around in the doorway, waiting for them, basket in one hand, bag in the other, Mets cap jaunty, and Jiminy Cricket smiling. To Ethel, “If anybody comes looking for them, either come out to the square or they wait. Okay?”

“Okay,” Ethel said, smiling, looking at her watch. “Y’all better get a move on. Not the kind of crowd you can keep waiting for long.”

Cassy and Langley looked at each other and then followed Jackson out and down the stairs to the day-care center, where Jackson picked up four three-year-olds, one two-and-a-half-year-old and one teacher, Miss Thomas, and led them outside into the square. It was one of those freakishly warm May days, feeling more like late June, and the morning sun was quite bright as well as hot. Behind the wall of fir trees they could hear cars going by on the highway, but they could also hear the birds—the chickadees, sparrows, robins, starlings and cardinals that were perching in the firs, swooping the skies, and hopping, singing and flitting in the trees and shrubs of the square.

Jackson led them to the center of the square, where the walkways met and where someone had recently turned over the soil of an empty flower bed. Jackson put down his bag and basket and helped Miss Thomas spread out two large blankets on the ground, which the children were directed to sit on, while Miss Thomas, Cassy and Langley were directed to a nearby bench. And then Jackson began to lecture on—on what, Cassy wasn’t exactly sure. Cherokee roses? Cherokee roses in New York City? No, no—he was talking about how he had loved helping his mother tend her Cherokee roses when he was a boy. And now he was talking about begonias, how they were going to plant some today. Tuberous begonias. Right. And then while Jackson was going on and on about begonias and England and Ireland—and while the children, growing restless, started to squirm—Alexandra came walking out into the square.

Her smile grew wider with her every step. And then, when she was just a few yards away, she suddenly threw herself forward, bending to the ground, and then flung herself upright, reaching for the sky. And then she stretched, a long, languid stretch toward the sun, and then, smiling at Cassy, she relaxed, dropping her arms.

Apparently she was very glad to be outdoors.

Alexandra gave Jackson a little wave, slipped off her shoes, walked, in her stocking feet, around the back of the bench to squat down behind Cassy and Langley. “This is wonderful,” she said, smiling, lightly resting one hand on Cassy’s shoulder and one on Langley’s. “Almost as wonderful as the ads. They are unbelievable. I don’t know how you did it, but thank you.” She kissed Cassy on the cheek.

“I didn’t do it,” Cassy said out of the corner of her mouth, watching Jackson. “They were a present from Jackson—to all of us.”

“God makes the flowers grow,” Jackson was explaining to his audience.

“Eeek-ya-yi-grrr-yoyoyoy-ha-ha,” his younger audience was saying, now crawling all over each other on the blankets.

“Jiminy Cricket says to listen to Uncle Jack,” Jackson told them, pointing to Mr. Cricket on his sweat shirt.

“Jiji-jaaahhh-eech-eech,” his younger audience said, not paying the slightest bit of attention to him.

“Shhh-children,” Miss Thomas said, laughing.

“Aaah!” a child said as another stood on her hand.

“Aha! A volunteer,” Jackson said, scooping up the offended child in his arms.

While Jackson got down on his hands and knees to show “Patsy” how to plant a begonia tuber, Alexandra told Cassy and Langley that, according to the latest edition of the
World Crier
, she was now three-timing Jackson.

“That you’re what?” Cassy said, turning around to look at her.

Alexandra smiled. “That I’m three-timing him. They bribed one of the doormen, apparently, for a record of who visits my apartment, and so now they say I’m three-timing Jackson with Gordon and Mr. Graham.”

“Mr. Graham!” Cassy said.

“Naaahhh!” Patsy cried, not liking Uncle Jack’s gardening lesson a “ bit, smacking him on the ear so he would leave her alone and prompting Miss Thomas to rush to his assistance.

“Come, sit,” Cassy said to Alexandra, patting the seat beside her.