Flawless (47 page)

Jake clung to the hope that perhaps after the Oscars things would improve. Scarlett would have more time for him, and the almost constant fights and misunderstandings might stop.
He certainly hoped so, especially if the alternative was joining Danny at the Heartbreak Hotel.

“I’ll tell you what we’ll do for now,” he said, wrenching his mind back to Danny and their immediate problems. “You sell me an option on your share of Solomon Stones.”

“An option?”

“Yeah, you know. The right to buy you out. It means you can’t sell to anyone else for the next six months.”

“I know what an option
is
,” said Danny. “I’m just wondering why on earth you’d wanna do that. No one else is gonna buy me out. It’s pointless.”

“No, it’s not,” said Jake firmly. “It’ll give you some cash now, which you need. It’ll save me being saddled with some weirdo partner I don’t want. And it’ll give you a bit of breathing space to come to your senses and change your mind.”

“I’m not going to change my mind,” said Danny.

“Course you will,” Jake grinned. “Just as soon as you discover what the rest of us already know.”

“Add what’s that?” asked Danny.

“That you’re completely crap at everything else,” said Jake cheerfully. “In the meantime, give me the names of your lily-livered, defecting customers—I only want the sexy ones, obviously—and I’ll stick around for a few days, see if I can’t tempt them back into the old Solomon Stones fold.”

Danny laughed.

“It won’t do any good,” he said. “But you’re welcome to try. Of course, Scarlett won’t be pleased if she catches you at it.”

“Scarlett’s never pleased, no matter what I do,” said Jake with feeling. “Besides, I’m not planning on doing the dirty on her. Just switching on a bit of the old Meyer charm, that’s all.”

“And what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her, right?” said Danny.

“Exactly,” said Jake. “Exactly.”

The next morning, Scarlett lay sprawled on an outdoor massage table at Shutters beside Nancy, losing herself in the delicious sensation of the two-handed Hawaiian massage and listening to the soft lapping of the waves against the shore. It was the first time she’d felt relaxed in…actually, she couldn’t even remember the last time she’d felt relaxed, not properly. If only Nancy were here under happier circumstances, today’s spa minibreak would have been utterly perfect.

“When I left the house yesterday, she was out cold,” Nancy was saying. She’d vowed not to talk about her mom today—to allow herself a few hours of mental release—but in the event she found it impossible not to. There was nothing else in her head. “She looks so peaceful on the morphine. I kind of want to get some myself.”

“Get some for me while you’re at it,” said Scarlett drowsily. “Although actually, this massage is almost as good. How’re you feeling?”

“Good,” said Nancy, unconvincingly. Try as she might, she couldn’t let go, not even under the expert fingers of the Shutters masseurs. “Fine. It’s awful the way your mind works though. As I got in the cab to JFK, part of me was thinking, what if she doesn’t wake up? Or what if she wakes up just one more time, sees I’m not there, and then, you know, that’s it? By the time I get back on Monday she’s gone, and I never got to say good-bye?”

Her voice began to falter. Reaching out a bare arm, Scarlett touched her gently on the shoulder.

“The doctor said she was stable,” she said reassuringly. “I’m sure it won’t happen like that. But you know what, even if it did, your mom knows how much you love her. You’ve had a lifetime to prove that to her. She wouldn’t have wanted you to miss the Paramount meeting. You’ve worked for this for years.”

“Yeah, well,” Nancy laughed wryly. “She might not have wanted me to miss it. But I know someone who did.”

Che Che, who was already secretly hurt by Nancy’s refusal to let him help during her mom’s illness, was furious about her latest project. A treatment she’d written years ago, a black comedy about an African refugee moving to a New York housing project, had been optioned by Paramount Studios, which was about to move it into the development phase. In an almost unheard-of vote of confidence in Nancy as a writer, they’d floated the idea of having her work on the project full time as a “creative advisor,” alongside their own in-house screenwriters. Not only would this mean big bucks if the movie ever saw the light of day, but it would earn her a much-coveted “cocreator” credit—an incredible accomplishment for a writer like herself with zero studio experience.

Unfortunately, Che Che had got a bee in his bonnet about the story from day one.

“It’s patronizing. It’s stereotypical. It’s crass,” he railed at her on the phone when she’d called from New York to break the good news.

“Well, duh, of course it is,” she joked. “It’s a Hollywood movie. I never said it was gonna be
Doctor Zhivago
.”

“I’m serious,” thundered Che Che. “It’s utterly disrespectful, to me and to everyone else who suffered like my family and I did.”

“Jesus, lighten up, would you?” said Nancy, crossly. After a long, grueling day keeping vigil at her mother’s deathbed, she could do without a moral lecture from her boyfriend. “It’s a comedy.”

“Oh yeah, hilarious,” seethed Che Che. “And why exactly are African refugees considered funny? Because we’re black?”

“
Whaaaat
?” said Nancy. “What on earth does that have to do with anything?”

“I don’t see Paramount making a whole bunch of comedies about the Holocaust, do you? Ben Stiller in
Gas the Parents
? That ain’t gonna get optioned any time soon.”

On one level, of course, she could see he had a point. But he of all people should know she was no racist. And besides, the script wasn’t disrespectful. It was warm and funny, and having a big studio bite at it was the single best thing ever to have happened in her career. She couldn’t understand why he was being such a jerk about it.

“If you loved me, you’d be happy for me,” she heard herself saying, fighting back the tears in her father’s study.

“If you loved
me
, you’d tell Paramount you’ve changed your mind and throw the damn thing in the trash where it belongs,” snapped Che Che. At which point Nancy hung up on him. They hadn’t spoken since.

“He’ll come round,” said Scarlett, who had heard about the argument from both Che Che and Nancy. Though firmly on Nancy’s side, she didn’t want to alienate Che Che completely. Thanks to him NPR had reinstated her interview on next month’s playlist, and she very much hoped his interest in Trade Fair would morph into a long-term commitment. Not only was he respected as an artist and an activist across the US—she’d had no idea his profile was so high in artsy, intellectual circles—but he was a tough guy for the likes of Brogan and the cartels to discredit. For one thing, he wasn’t in the business, so couldn’t be accused of having any ax to grind, unlike her. For another, he was a direct eyewitness to atrocities paid for with diamond dollars and an articulate spokesman for the African oppressed. And for a third thing, as un-PC as it might be to say it, he was black. No one wanted to be the first white man to cast aspersions on the black survivor’s integrity.

Not that any of that excused him being such a dick to Nancy. But at the end of the day that was their shit to work out. If it was meant to be, they’d find their way back to one another eventually.

“I could care less if he comes around or not,” lied Nancy, turning over on her massage table so the masseurs could focus on her feet and head. The sky above her was so blue it looked like it
had been ripped out of the pages of a travel magazine. “Anyway, I screwed things up so badly yesterday, he’ll probably get his wish. They’re bound to drop the whole idea now.”

Having flown back to LA specifically for the meeting, she’d ended up breaking down in tears in front of an entire panel of studio execs and had to take a full ten minutes out of the room to compose herself. The combined stress of her mom’s illness, her dad’s unspoken but omnipresent unhappiness, and Che Che’s complete lack of understanding proved too much for her, and at the first remotely challenging question, she’d folded like a pack of cards.

“Michael Landry must be shitting himself,” she said bitterly, remembering the look of shocked surprise on the head of new project development’s face when she’d fled the room in tears. “He’s probably biking the script over to Aaron Sorkin as we speak.”

“I’m sure he’s not,” said Scarlett kindly. “They said they wanted to see you again, right? Once you’re back in LA for good?”

“Once my mom dies, you mean?” said Nancy. “Yeah, they did say that. And of course I’m gonna be in a
way
better emotional state then.”

“Sorry,” said Scarlett. “I didn’t mean to put my foot in it.”

“No, no. I’m sorry,” said Nancy, wincing as one masseur ground his knuckle into a sore spot on her neck. “I shouldn’t be so caustic. You’re the one person keeping me sane right now. I appreciate it, more than you know. By the way, do you know that guy?”

Scarlett turned over, willing herself out of her relaxation-induced coma.

“Which guy?” she mumbled. “Where?”

“There,” said Nancy, sitting up and pointing at a pale-skinned man on the beach patio in front of them, who suddenly seemed intent on his coffee and newspaper. “He’s been staring at you for the last minute. Really staring.”

“Has he?”

Aware he was being pointed at, the man got up, dropped a bill on the table, and scurried away, disappearing into the main lobby of the hotel. In the brief instant before he disappeared from view, Scarlett shivered, as if a ghost had walked across her grave.

“I don’t know him,” she said. “At least…I may have seen his face before somewhere. I can’t be sure.”

Memories of London and being hounded by Brogan’s paid shadows flooded back to her, accompanied by sound bites of Cameron’s moaning over Christmas:
This is serious, Scarlett. They’re out to get me
, and Jake’s never-ending warnings to her about “meddling in Russia,” as he put it.

“It’s probably nothing,” she said, trying not to give in to paranoia. The NPR program still hadn’t aired. Which meant as far as Brogan was concerned, Trade Fair was still dead in the water. It couldn’t be him.

“Maybe Jake’s paid a PI to follow you. Make sure you aren’t up to no good while he’s out of town,” joked Nancy. “He’s always struck me as the jealous type.”

“Now that I
very
much doubt,” said Scarlett, a tinge of sadness creeping into her voice as she sank back onto the table. “If he’s thinking about me at all right now, I’d be surprised. You know what the last thing he said was, before he got on the plane?”

“What?” asked Nancy.

“Maybe a break will do us both good.”

“Ouch.” Nancy winced. “Trouble in paradise?”

“Don’t sound so hopeful,” teased Scarlett.

“Seriously,” said Nancy. “Is something wrong? You can tell me, really. I promise I won’t judge. Or say ‘I told you so’ more than twice.”

Deciding to throw caution to the wind—she had nothing to lose at this point, and she’d missed Nancy’s sisterly counsel these last few weeks more than she could have imagined—Scarlett decided to tell her everything: the whole drama with Rachel, the
never-ending rumors about other girls, and the constant sniping over Trade Fair and her work commitments that neither of them seemed able to stop.

“I think he resents my success,” she blurted, at the end of a long, tortured monologue about their problems.

“Probably.” Nancy shrugged. “But you know, you always knew he was a macho guy. The fact he needs to make his own money and have his own business be a success shouldn’t come as a surprise to you.”

“It doesn’t,” said Scarlett, somewhat taken aback by Nancy’s unexpected support for Jake. “But he’s so inconsistent. One minute he’s telling me not to antagonize Brogan because it might impact Flawless—as if the store and our profits are all he cares about—but when I do something to
help
the business, like hooking another sponsor for the Oscars, he acts all ‘so what?’ about it. Almost like I’m showing off or something. I can’t win.”

She could feel her earlier, euphoric calm evaporating, replaced by a familiar feeling of stress creeping into her chest and shoulder muscles.

“And then there’s the girls,” she added wearily.

“All right, so let’s look at everything piece by piece,” said Nancy. “Do you think he’s cheating on you?”

Scarlett paused. “Not
technically
cheating, no. Not yet. But—”

“But nothing,” said Nancy. “The man’s a natural-born flirt. If you’re not gonna let him look, you might as well chop off his
cojones
right now and put ’em in a jar on your mantel.”

“Thanks for that,” said Scarlett sarcastically. “That’s a lovely image.”

“OK, so second thing. This radio interview you wanna do about the Russian miners.”

Scarlett looked at her grudgingly, waiting for her to explain why Jake’s unsupportive behavior on that score was suddenly OK too. Since when had Nancy become the president of the Jake Meyer fan club?

“He has three beefs with that, as I understand it. He’s scared Brogan O’Donnell might hurt you. He’s scared he might hurt the business. And he resents the fact that you spend more time at work and with Che Che than with him.”