Flawless (50 page)

“I’m sorry,” said Jake.

“Don’t be,” said Aunt Agnes, dabbing daintily at her mouth with a napkin. “He was ghastly. Had the most appalling bad breath.”

“Right,” chuckled Jake. “So now that you’re young, free, and single, will you stay in Africa?” Refilling her wineglass—they’d
moved from single malt whisky straight to a bottle of super-Tuscan, which Aunt Agnes was polishing off at an impressive rate.

“Of course.” She looked puzzled. “Whyever not?”

“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “Don’t you miss home?”

“Home? You mean Drumfernly?” she laughed. “Good God no. Scotland’s terribly dreary, you know. It never really felt like home to me, even as a child. My brother Hugo, Scarlett’s father, is a nice enough old stick.” Jake smiled inwardly at this description of a brother ten years her junior. “But I’d rather shoot myself than live his life, walled up in that freezing castle like Rapunzel, never going farther than Aberdeen for entertainment. People think Scarlett grew up in a fairy tale, but I can assure you she didn’t. Living on that estate, it’s immolation.”

“Right,” said Jake, who didn’t know what immolation was but assumed it was something negative.

“As for that mother of hers.” Aunt Agnes shook her head. “Horrific, small minded…”

She shared a few caustically funny anecdotes about Caroline that left Jake in no doubt of their mutual enmity.

“Cameron’s just like her, a whining, wheedling little social climber. Honestly, it’s a miracle that Scarlett’s turned out as wonderfully as she has.”

Obviously this was Jake’s cue to say some nice things about Scarlett. Instead he sat morosely, pushing his beef around the plate like a guard prodding a reluctant prisoner. The silence seemed to last for an age, but Aunt Agnes knew better than to break it. At last her patience was rewarded.

“I do love her, you know,” said Jake quietly. “It’s just, everything’s so…fucked. At the moment.”

“Fucked?” Aunt Agnes raised an eyebrow.

“Sorry.” Jake blushed. “’Scuse my French. I meant difficult. Things are difficult with Scarlett and me.”

“In what way?”

He told her, as briefly and politely as he could, about the arguing over everything from Flawless to Trade Fair. He touched on Scarlett’s jealousy about his supposed “other women.” Finally, he mentioned Brogan O’Donnell and his malevolent influence on both their lives.

“He destroyed Scarlett’s last business in London—he could have killed her in that fire—but she refuses to drop this bollocks about his Siberian miners and their stupid health care.”

“Is it ‘bollocks,’ as you put it?” asked Aunt Agnes gently. “I read the latest Trade Fair newsletter; Scarlett e-mails these things to me. It sounded as though the man had behaved very shabbily.”

“He has,” admitted Jake. “So all right, no, it’s not exactly bollocks.”

“And presumably you’ve always known that Scarlett feels passionately about these things?”

“Yes,” he conceded, grudgingly. “Yes, I have. But…it’s more complicated than that.”

Aunt Agnes gave him a look as if to say, “Really?” but said nothing. Eventually Jake elaborated.

“He’s dangerous,” he said. “Maybe subconsciously Scarlett thinks that because he’s got cancer he won’t be bothered to hit back at her this time. But I’m telling you, he will. He’s vengeful, vengeful to the fucking bone. He’s already broken up my brother’s relationship with the only woman he’s ever really loved.”

Aunt Agnes, who’d heard the Danny and Diana saga from Scarlett and read about it in the gossip columns, thought privately that there were worse crimes in life than trying to win back one’s own wife but decided not to share this insight with Jake.

“I’ve warned Scarlett until I’m blue in the face that she’s putting her life, not to mention her business—our business—at risk over this. I mean, why can’t she stick to Africa? It’s not as if there isn’t enough injustice there to keep her busy. All the mine owners there are crooked as hell.”

“So what is it that upsets you exactly?” asked Aunt Agnes, seeing straight to the heart of the matter. “The fact that Scarlett might be endangering herself? Or the fact that she chooses not to take your advice?”

Jake closed his eyes and rubbed his temples hard, as if searching for the answer in the deepest recesses of his mind. “God, I dunno,” he sighed. “Both, I suppose. It does piss me off that she doesn’t need me. She’s so fucking independent.”

“You know, young man, you really
must
make more of an effort with your language,” chided Aunt Agnes.

“Sorry,” said Jake again. “But at the same time, I love her, you know? I don’t want to wake up one morning and get a call from Cedar Sinai telling me Scar’s in the ICU with a Russian bullet lodged in her skull.”

“Indeed not.” Aunt Agnes shivered.

“And I don’t want Flawless to go under either. Scarlett acts like I’ve no say in the matter, but I’m a partner in that store. Brogan could put us out of business like
that
if he wanted to.” He clicked his fingers for emphasis. “He’s already decimated my and Danny’s business. Wiped us out on the East Coast like a couple of fucking…like a couple of bugs,” he corrected himself.

“I see,” said Aunt Agnes, nodding quietly to herself.

She hadn’t known what to expect of Jake. Hugo and Caroline both spoke of him in the most disparaging terms, but then they’d always been crashing snobs; quite apart from which she knew from Scarlett that neither of them had in fact met the man, which she couldn’t help but feel detracted somewhat fatally from their credibility as witnesses. Scarlett’s evidence—that Jake was simultaneously the most wonderful and the most infuriating man on the face of the earth—was also not to be trusted. The girl was plainly head over heels in love and couldn’t be expected to know her own mind, let alone anyone else’s. When Jake had called tonight, she’d seized the unexpected opportunity to size him up for herself.

Overall, she liked what she saw. He was blunt and, it seemed to her, honest, despite having what was clearly a well-earned reputation as a bit of a Lothario. More importantly, he seemed to be genuinely in love with Scarlett. Agnes was excessively fond of her niece and, unlike her brother and sister-in-law, viewed deep, passionate love as a prerequisite for a happy marriage. Jake could give her that, even if right now it was all he could give her, with his business on the ropes. That in itself need not be a problem. Agnes was a wealthy woman with no children of her own. She’d be quite prepared to help out financially, should Scarlett and her husband ever need it. Besides, Jake was obviously rampantly ambitious, not to mention a natural salesman. Men like that had a habit of bouncing back from adversity, in her experience. They also had a habit of clinging pathetically to their macho pride. For such a smart boy, Jake seemed to be doing a first-class job of screwing up his relationship. Had she been forty years younger she’d have reached across the table and throttled him until he saw sense. As it was, she decided to treat him to a few choice words of elderly aunt advice.

“You’re a fool, Mr. Meyer. A first-class fool,” she said bluntly.

Jake looked thoroughly miserable but didn’t contradict this assessment.

“The truth is, Aunt Agnes, I’m not really cut out for relationships. I’m not the man Scarlett needs, and she’s started to figure that out for herself.”

“Nonsense.” The old woman put her knife and fork together and pushed her plate away crossly. “Everyone’s cut out for relationships. Relationships are life, for heavens’ sake. What else is there?”

Jake shrugged. “Random shagging?”

“Unsatisfying,” said Aunt Agnes firmly, “as you well know.”

In her certainty, she reminded him of an older Doctor Katenge. Both were strong women, moral forces to be reckoned with. Scarlett had a streak of that in her, but she also had
a vulnerability that her aunt entirely lacked. Agnes Headington was about as vulnerable as a prop forward on steroids.

“So what do you suggest?” he asked meekly. “I can’t force Scarlett to listen to me.”

“Exactly,” said Aunt Agnes, “so stop trying. Brogan O’Donnell is a thoroughly unpleasant little man. I’m proud my niece has the courage to stand up to him, and so should you be. You want to control her behavior because that’s what you’re used to doing with women—”

“Hold on,” said Jake defensively. “You don’t know that.”

“And because you feel threatened by Scarlett’s success.”

“I’m not
threatened
!” said Jake indignantly, and entirely unconvincingly.

“Stop focusing on Scarlett’s behavior and change your own,” said Aunt Agnes. “If your brother’s side of the business has suffered because of this Brogan chap, work doubly hard on the West Coast market. You clearly hate the fact that you’re being ‘carried’ by Flawless, as you put it. So pull your finger out and start turning your own business around.”

“Yes, well, I’d love to, but I’m afraid it’s not that easy,” said Jake petulantly. He was starting to feel cross himself now.

“Nothing worth achieving ever is,” said Aunt Agnes, “and that goes for romance as well as your career. Now, listen.” She clapped her hands imperiously to get his attention, which seemed to be focused somewhere in the region of his shoelaces. “What you do from here is up to you.”

“Thanks very much,” he said wryly.

“But I think it would be best if you ‘forgot’ to tell Scarlett about this evening, our meeting like this.”

“Why?” Jake quipped. “You think she might be jealous?”

“Don’t be cheeky,” snapped Aunt Agnes. Once again Jake found himself blushing like a naughty little boy. “It’s you I’m thinking of, young man, not myself. Scarlett loves me dearly,
but she wouldn’t appreciate my meddling in her affairs any more than she appreciates it from you.”

“Ah, but you still do it, don’t you?” said Jake, thrilled to have found a break in the old bat’s logic at last. “You meddle because you love her. Like me.”

Aunt Agnes smiled, her earlier good humor apparently completely restored.

“My dear boy, I’m nothing like you. The secret of a good meddler is not to get caught. Now.” Fixing her glasses more firmly in place, she scanned the room for their waiter. “I suggest you get the bill. It’s getting late.”

“You suggest
I
get the bill,” muttered Jake under his breath. “Un-fucking-believable!” But the truth was he was more than happy to pay. Despite her rudeness, or perhaps because of it, he liked her a lot. This evening, on many levels, had been a learning experience, and education rarely came cheap.

Driving home along Beverly twenty minutes later beneath a perfect full moon, he thought over Aunt Agnes’s advice and contemplated calling Scarlett then and there, to apologize for his childishness before. But realizing he was drunk and would almost certainly fuck it up, he thought better of it and decided to wait until morning. She wasn’t going anywhere after all, at least, not tonight.

Tomorrow he’d make a fresh start.

A
T AROUND NINE
in the morning on Oscars day, the strip of Hollywood Boulevard extending a quarter of a mile on either side of the Dolby Theatre was closed to the public. By nine thirty, trucks full of metal crash barriers were being unloaded onto the sidewalk by overweight black men with sunglasses and earpieces. Roll after roll of red carpet was laid along the sidewalk next to the three hundred feet of road set aside for the stars’ limos, and a separate area was fenced off for the press.

No Angelino with a modicum of sense tried to get to, through, or around Hollywood Boulevard on Oscars night unless they happened to be one of the favored few attending the ceremony. And even the favored few had been known to feel less than favored when, with less than a half hour to go until doors closed, they found themselves stuck in a line of limos as long as the Great Wall of China, with everybody beeping at everybody else and nobody moving so much as millimeter farther toward the “drop zone.”

This year, Jake and Scarlett fell into the latter category.

“This is just complete bollocks,” said Jake, for the third time in as many minutes. “It’s worse than last year. They have twelve months to prepare, and this clusterfuck is the best they can do?”

“How much further to the theater?” asked Scarlett, looking anxiously at her watch, a rose-gold-and-diamond evening piece she’d designed herself. “Could we get out and walk, do you think?”

“I could,” said Jake, glancing across at her sky-high heels and skintight, gunmetal-gray dress, a vintage Hérve Léger. “But you won’t go far in that getup. Not unless I give you a fireman’s lift.”

He smiled, and Scarlett smiled back, relieved at this tiny flicker of camaraderie between them. Things had been desperately tense since he’d gotten back from New York. Jake had apologized after that awful first night, when she’d been stuck in that stupid dinner with the E! people—the exec producer turned out to be a lecherous old goat with permanently open, wet lips like Gordon Brown, and had spent the entire evening trying to goose her—and the next day they’d had truly fabulous makeup sex. But the thawing of relations proved to be short-lived. Two days ago, the NPR program on the O’Donnell miners in Yakutia finally aired, and all Jake’s good resolutions seemed to evaporate.