Don't Tell Eve (3 page)

[site name donttell]/thedolls/exhibit-e

The woman sat at the table in her back garden and lit the last of her cigarettes. While staring at the wasps’ nest that had formed under the eave of the toolshed, she reflected. Smoking helped this process. Everyone she knew assumed politics involved politicians, not offices. If her husband had been around, he would have known what to do; although he probably wouldn’t have done it. What perplexed her was not what had happened, but how. Why.

In the distance her doorbell rang. Its distinctive sound of applause – not her idea – was not one she could ignore. There were too many stories circulating around the district of houses being broken into during the day and she didn’t want to appear as yet another statistic in the city’s police crime files.

By the time she reached the door the caller had disappeared, leaving behind a medium-sized, ordinary-looking box. She poked it with her shoe before picking it up.

It was oddly light.

The opening process, which was delayed while the woman nipped out to buy a new packet of cigarettes, revealed a very unusual object. She recognised it, of course, and appreciated more than most people its colours: her favourite football team wore black and yellow.

In an ideal world Jess wouldn’t have been attending yet another book launch, and she certainly wouldn’t have been taking Zoë. But this time both the book and its author were irrelevant. The evening was all about Eve. Jess needed to see her – not speak to her, but see her. She also wanted Zoë to do a bit of Eve-watching because, against her better judgement, she had involved Zoë in her current project. Internationally successful fashion designer, championship flirt, world-class gossip, in that tiny amount of time she called spare, Zoë was Jess’s closest friend.

As soon as they walked in it was obvious that someone had made a mistake with the location in what Jess recognised as a typical Papyrus way. The decor of the bar was Russian-inspired to tie in with the Cold War theme of the book to be launched. This was good. The decoration was in the spirit of Czarist Russia, rather than the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. This was bad. The author, as everyone knew, was a fastidious kind of man who’d notice – and comment.

His publicist, the one who had chosen the place, appeared not to have been alerted. She had a drink in one hand and was smiling at herself in one of the many gilt-edged mirrors.
Her unnaturally straight teeth gave off a distracting Tinsel-town glow.

Jess approached her. ‘Love this place. What made you choose it?’

‘Well, I came here one night with some guy and I really loved the ambience.’ She waved at the ruby flock wallpaper, the sumptuous velvet curtains, the faux antique gilt furniture. ‘I remembered it when we were thinking about somewhere for this do – you know, we needed somewhere Russian. But, God, when did all these people get here? I should go.’

‘Right.’ Jess nodded and watched as the girl pulled herself away from her reflection and wafted off, air-kissing indiscriminately as she advanced through the crowd.

‘Lucky he didn’t take her to SubZero, or we’d be in parkas and surrounded by ice right now. “Siberia, you know, it’s Russian …”’ Jess mimicked the publicist with alarming accuracy.

‘Ugh.’ Zoë shuddered. ‘Parkas. Please don’t. They make me the size of a HOUSE. No, the size of an aircraft hangar. No, bigger. What’s that palace in St Petersburg? You know, Catherine the Great’s place? She was a nympho, you know, complete nypho, seem to remember some outrageous story about a goat, no, a donkey – or was it a horse?’

‘Hermitage and horse and successful smear campaign.’

Zoë wasn’t entirely unreliable, thought Jess. She could always be relied on to bring the conversation back to sex.

In the distance Jess’s colleague Ilona, sporting her new lingerie, to the knowledge of just one person in the room, arrived with the guest of honour. He was Papyrus’s most significant author, not in terms of sales – that was still Alex – but in terms of prestige. Ilona’s carefully shaped eyebrows rose as
she glanced around quickly, but presumably deciding it was far too late to do anything about the venue, she whispered into the author’s ear something sweet enough to make him leer, before steering him towards an overflowing drinks tray.

The author was a recent acquisition of Ilona’s. The industry rumour was that his defection from Zest & Co., Papyrus’s main competitor, had resulted in their fiction publisher collapsing in a company bathroom, to be found by a work-experience student, who was pleased that her time at university had prepared her so well for life in the real world. Upon sobering up, the publisher had issued a decree stating that the author’s name was never to be spoken in her presence again. However, as the author had ten books with them, this wasn’t really workable, so it was quickly amended. He was now simply known ‘the Traitor’. It wasn’t surprising that the publisher was upset, because while not perhaps as daring as his early work, or stylistically as challenging, the author’s new work was by far his most commercial yet.

Ilona was gambling on it being not only commercial but that rare beast, a book loved by the critics, the public and the judges who chose the prize-winners. She’d paid a lot for the Traitor.

Eve didn’t mention this detail in what was her first launch speech, a speech she leaped into with her trademark gusto, managing to give an excellent impression of a person convinced of the book’s power, stature and longevity. In fact, the words were Hilary’s, as Eve didn’t read – not books, anyway. She was up to date with all the local glossy magazines and tabloids, however, as she liked to keep an eye on the competition – not other publishing houses but other celebrities: Eve saw herself as a celebrity, which wasn’t so far from the truth. She’d now lunged in front of enough photographers at enough events and worn enough unforgettable clothes and made enough pithy, bitchy, loud remarks to have earned a
place on the country’s small social circuit. And Hilary had a clippings folder to prove it.

As soon as Eve had finished her superlative-laden speech, she knocked back three vodka shots.

‘You know,’ said Zoë, watching her, ‘she really is impressive. I mean, besides that gutsy show with the voddies, just look at what she’s wearing – brave, brave, brave. I reckon she’s got a stylist hidden away. You just wouldn’t wear that unless someone told you it was a good idea, you know, image-wise.’

Jess knew of old to be careful when talking to Zoë. ‘Well, I know she has an interior decorator and an art consultant, so a stylist is possible, but I just can’t imagine any professional suggesting that she should wear that.’

‘Hmm, maybe you’re right. That whole yellow base with black horizontal stripes thing she’s got going does shout giant bumble bee.’

‘Maybe wasp is more the look she’s going for?’

‘Yeah, maybe.’ Zoë squinted at Eve. It would have helped to have been wearing her glasses, but as far as she was concerned they didn’t do a girl any favours. Whatever they said in Europe, in her book frames did not equal fashion, although she did put them on to drive or watch movies.

Jess, on the other hand, liked the layer of protection they gave. She also liked being able to see.

‘That would make sense, psychologically – if what you say about her is true,’ said Zoë.

‘Of course it’s true, why would I make it up?’

‘I don’t know, but then I have no idea why you do a whole lotta things. Jack, for instance. No sane woman would kick him out of bed, and yet I hear that’s what you’ve done.’

‘Bloody hell. Not officially. Officially, we’re still in bed until Alex recovers from his hissy fit and comes home and writes his bloody book.’

‘How does Jack feel about that?’

‘Fine. I’ve told him that if he wants to jump into bed with someone else I’m not going to stop him, he just has to be discreet.’

‘Sounds like it might make the bed a bit crowded.’

‘Very droll. But let’s focus on the reason you’re here. Can you see Eve’s feet?’

‘If I didn’t know better I’d think you were developing a foot fetish. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – hey, suck my big toe and I’m yours – but no, I can’t see them. Can’t we get a bit closer?’

‘Just not so close that we have to speak to her.’

Settling into a suitable vantage point a couple of metres away from Eve, in addition to being able to study her, they found they were able to listen to her drawling insincerely to the significant author’s agent, who, if the way he kept taking baby steps backwards was any indication, wasn’t enjoying the experience.

‘What I really love is the energy of creative people – that’s why I got into this business,’ Eve was saying.

The agent was a man used to intimidating people – in fact he was a man who took pleasure in intimidating people. Bullish and brutish, he didn’t read but demolished books. Eve was doing well to make him squirm. But he wasn’t simply squirming. Like everyone else, he was confused about her. He couldn’t work out why someone so seemingly ditzy should be sent halfway around the world to run a place like Papyrus. He’d heard a number of theories – the most popular being that someone wanted her out of the way, which made sense as she was neither qualified nor did she appear to want to be there. But the agent couldn’t believe it was possible to
be quite so gauche and ignorant – which meant it had to be an act designed to make people underestimate her.

Whatever it was, he didn’t trust her and he hadn’t supported his author’s move to Papyrus. Instead he’d done all he could to get the author not to move. However, the author had listened, he’d nodded and he’d then told the agent he didn’t give a fuck what he thought. It was only later that the agent heard about the author’s affair with Ilona. This was probably about the same time as most people heard, and from the same person. There was a reason Phil was such a popular lunch date and the agent regretted not having spoken to him sooner, as he’d have used completely different arguments and wouldn’t be in the position he was now in: specifically, leaning back with Eve unsteadily hovering over him.

‘I’ve always felt the same way. To me it’s not about the money,’ said the agent with a straight face, in his booming, gravelly voice.

‘Of course it’s about the money, it’s always about the money, vanity just makes us pretend otherwise,’ whispered Jess to Zoë.

Unaware that someone was doubting his own sincerity, the agent continued. ‘Though I always do my best for my authors – don’t make any mistake about that – for me it’s about the power of good, imaginative writing. As for tonight, I have no doubt this is his most powerful, provocative work yet.’ He continued for approximately ever about how the author had captured the Zeitgeist, the atmosphere of insecurity, mistrust and sense of impending doom.

‘Just like work,’ said Jess to Zoë.

Eve, his target, was assessing those assembled. For a reason not immediately apparent to the onlookers, she was watching David, who was standing in a corner slightly away from everyone else, uncomfortable in yet another ill-advised black poloneck jumper. When he moved forwards, the reason for
Eve’s interest in that particular corner of the room became clear.

‘Oh. My. God. Just look at that – cheekbones, eyes, body … Surely he’s at the wrong party?’ Zoë fanned herself.

She was referring to her long-running joke about the geekiness of people who worked with books. The first time Zoë had made the joke was about ten years earlier. She and Jess had been at a charity event for a book to raise funds for health scares involving native animals – koalas with chlamydia had generated the most interest, certainly in the media. That day Jess had agreed Zoë was pretty close to the mark. Comfortable shoes, flannelette shirts, baggy stone-washed jeans and unwashed hair: the overriding effect wasn’t high fashion. But that was then. They were now at an inappropriate inner-city bar, David was doing a tolerable impression of a chubby Beat poet and his boss was dressed as a stinging insect.

‘Nope, then he wouldn’t be talking to David. The man’s pathologically shy. Put it this way, meeting new authors is one of the aspects of the job he hates most, even if he’s passionate about their writing.’

‘So who is young Cheekbones then?’

‘I’m not sure, but we could easily find out.’

Unfortunately, as they edged towards David and Cheekbones, Eve did the same, only she didn’t edge. In a surprisingly swift and effective move, she kissed the agent – encountering actual flesh – mentioned doing lunch, and was gone before he’d finished his sentence, let alone his lecture.