Let Me Whisper in Your Ear (9 page)

Tuesday, December 28

F
RANCHESKA SKIMMED THROUGH
the glossy pages of the
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous Cookbook,
settling on Ivana Trump's recipe for beef goulash. She had prepared it before and Leonard loved it.

She slid the emerald ring off her index finger, and the pearl-and-diamond one off her right ring finger, and placed both of Leonard's lavish gifts on the ledge above the sink so that she could prepare dinner unencumbered.

After expertly cutting the cubes of beef and dusting them with flour and paprika, Francheska sautéed them in butter and oil, adding minced onions and crushed garlic. She added the water and marjoram the recipe called for and slid the casserole dish into the oven to bake. A bottle of red wine sat already opened, breathing on the kitchen counter.

Carefully, she set the table for two. A creamy linen tablecloth and napkins. The Villeroy & Boch dinner plates and the Christofle crystal wineglasses she had purchased at Bloomingdale's. The two Tiffany sterling place settings that she had charged to the American Express Card that Leonard had given her. At five hundred dollars a pop, Francheska had known that Leonard wasn't too happy with that, but that had been early on in the relationship, when he accepted anything she bought, so eager was he to keep her happy.

Before he had started taking her for granted.

Francheska loved beautiful things. She scanned the apartment living room and was satisfied with the way it looked. She had pored over issues of
Architectural Digest
and
Town and Country
long and hard, educating herself in the ways the wealthy decorated.

She had instructed the painters to cover the walls in egg-yolk-yellow paint with a dramatic lacquer finish. She had ordered rich coral draperies to match the damask-covered camelback sofa. The armchairs that flanked the fireplace were upholstered in a Scalamandré paisley fabric that picked up the colors in the sofa and rug. Elegantly framed English prints graced the walls. A large Chinese-Chippendale-style gilded mirror hung over the fireplace, reflecting the light from a dozen candles perched in sterling holders that were grouped on the mantelpiece.

Yes, she had made a beautiful place for their trysts. And, for a while, that had been enough.

But where was she going? Though she denied it to Laura in their myriad conversations about her affair with Leonard, Francheska was not content with being the “other woman.” It was not how she had been raised. If her parents knew that she was being kept by a married man, it would kill them, and God knew they had already had a tough enough time of it.

She loved her parents and their good and decent ways. And yet, she had wanted to escape them. She didn't want to repeat their lives of hard work that got them nowhere. Francheska had realized early on that her looks were her ticket out of a world where one lived from paycheck to paycheck.

She had still been living with her aunt since her parents had moved to Puerto Rico, working on a painfully sporadic modeling career, when she met Laura at the World Gym near Lincoln Center. As they got to know one another, panting through aerobics classes, Francheska learned that Laura had just moved into a small Manhattan apartment at a good address, but was having to budget carefully to come up with the ridiculous New York City rent each month. Francheska seized the opportunity to get away from home and asked Laura if she would consider a roommate.

They had had a lot of fun together in that apartment, but Francheska's modeling assignments were not dependable enough. Some months, Laura had to advance Francheska's portion of the rent. When Leonard Costello came along, Francheska was ready to be taken care of.

Glancing at her watch, Francheska realized that Leonard should be arriving in about a half hour. She went in to take a shower and dress.

She dropped her clothes on the bathroom floor and, twisting up her long dark hair and clipping it to the top of her head, she stepped into the tub. The sliding glass shower door was covered with steam as Francheska let the hot spray douse her sleek body.

She had to talk to Leonard. Maybe he did care enough about her to leave his wife—though, in her heart, she was afraid she knew already what his answer would be. But she felt compelled to bring things to a head. If she had no real future with Leonard, painful though it may be, it was time to move on.

She was practicing in her mind what she would say when the shower door slid open. Leonard stood naked before her. And, God help her, she was excited by the sight of him.

Afterward, as Francheska dried his well-exercised body with a thick towel, she told him that she had his favorite dinner waiting.

Leonard looked uncomfortable.

“Don't tell me.” Francheska pulled away from him.

“I'm sorry, Francie, but I can't stay. Anne has something planned with the kids tonight. I thought I could get out of it, but I can't.”

Biting the corner of her lip, she answered him with silence. Pulling a robe from the hook on the back of the bathroom door and covering herself, she stormed into the bedroom. Leonard followed behind her and began to dress quickly.

“Do you have any idea how this makes me feel, Leonard? Do you even care how this makes me feel?” Francheska exploded. She could dissolve into tears if she let herself, but she wouldn't. Not now. There would be the whole lonely night in front of her to do that.

“Come on, Francheska. I've had a long day and I don't need to get into this crap now.” He was strapping on his Rolex.

“Great. That's just great.” She stalked out of the bedroom, pulling the tie of her bathrobe tight around her waist. She was taking the goulash from the oven when Leonard, now fully dressed, came up behind her and began to nuzzle her neck.

“I'm sorry, Francie. I'll make it up to you, I promise.”

“Um-hmm.” She wouldn't look at him.

Leonard tried to change the subject. “Hey, you'll never guess who is lying at Mt. Olympia on life support.”

22

“W
HY DON'T YOU
get in a cab and come over here right now?” Laura urged her distraught friend. “Sleep over. It will be just like the old days.”

They had been on the telephone for the better part of an hour now, going over and over the same old thing. Francheska's humiliation tonight was just the latest episode in the ongoing saga. She had to get rid of that guy. She knew it. But she could never bring herself to do it.

Laura hated to hear her friend's alternating sobbing and angered anguish. And, though she hated to admit it to herself, Laura was losing patience with Francheska. No matter how much she tried to encourage Francheska and reassure her that she would be better off out of this relationship no matter what she had to give up, Francheska didn't budge. While Laura hoped that Leonard's actions tonight might be the final nail in the coffin of the affair, she sensed that Francheska still held out hope. Big mistake.

Laura tried to put herself in her friend's shoes. How would Francheska support herself once she lost the Dr. Costello meal ticket? She had given up modeling in the years she had been with Leonard. But she had purchased a computer and taken a few business courses at Fordham during her empty afternoons. Maybe she could get some sort of job and finish her degree at night. Francheska was bright enough. Other people did it; so could she. But she had to want it. No amount of encouraging pep talks from Laura, helpful though they were, could make Francheska do it. Francheska had to want it herself.

Francheska sniffled on the other end of the phone line. “Thanks, Laura. But I'm just too tired to come over. I'm just going to wash my face and go to bed.”

“You're sure?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“All right, then. I'll call you tomorrow.” Laura was about to hang up.

“Hey, so that the night won't be a total waste, I did get something out of Leonard's visit,” Francheska remembered.

“And that would be what?” Laura asked.

“That tennis player? The one who won Wimbledon and the U.S. Open last year…?” Francheska's voice trailed off as she tried to pull the name from her tired brain.

Laura prompted her with the name.

“Yeah, that's the one. Well, Leonard told me he's on life-support machines at Mt. Olympia. Drug overdose. His parents are flying in tonight to pull the plug.”

23

Wednesday, December 29

T
HE FIRST THING
Laura did when she arrived at her desk the next morning was call the tape library and order some video of last summer's U.S. Open. With two days before the Yearender was to air, she knew right where she could use the pictures of the strapping, healthy tennis player in her video montage. So confident was she of Francheska's information that Laura went ahead and edited the video into her piece well before the Associated Press wire service issued a bulletin on the athlete's death.

As she exited the editing room, Mike Schultz was waiting for her.

“Laura, I've got an obit for you to do.”

“I've got the tapes right here,” Laura responded.

Mike looked surprised as he looked at the videotapes labeled with the tennis star's name that Laura held in her hands.

“How did you know that?” he asked in wonder, shaking his head.

“I have my sources,” Laura said with a shrug as she headed toward her desk to write her obituary script.

24

W
HEN
G
WYNETH HUNG
up the phone after her conversation with her agent, her heart was pounding. She sank gratefully into the tufted slipper chair that sat in front of her dressing table and smiled slyly at her reflection in the mirror.

It was done! The
I
s were dotted and the
T
s were crossed in the contract, and CBS had given her everything she had wanted, and then some, to lure her over to their team.

Now came the even better part. She got to tell Joel.

Gwyneth wanted to do it herself, and right away, before he had a chance to hear it through the immediate and superactive broadcasting grapevine. She didn't want him to have time to think or couch his response to her news. The fun would be in getting his raw reaction, catching him completely off guard. She wished she could tell him in person and see Joel's face as he heard the news, but she didn't dare wait even the time it would take to catch a cab over to the Broadcast Center. Someone from CBS could call him to gloat before she got there.

She glanced at the crystal timepiece on the bedside table. Six o'clock. He'd still be there, waiting to watch the
Evening Headlines.
Gwyneth's manicured fingers plucked nervously at the chair's velvet piping as she waited for Joel to pickup his private line.

“Yes?” Joel's voice was clipped and she could hear him exhaling a drag of his cigarette.

“It's me, Joel.”

“Gwyneth, baby!” His voice changed to his best purr as he instantly recognized her voice. “How are you, kiddo? All set for your party?”

“Sure. Everything should be wonderful, Joel, but I'm not so sure you'll want to come after you hear what I have to tell you.”

“Tell me what?” he asked cautiously.

“I'm leaving
Hourglass,
Joel. Leaving KEY and going over to CBS. The contract is all set.”

She listened quietly, smirking at her reflection in the beveled glass of the mirror as Joel let loose with the expletives she had anticipated. It felt good to anger him, to hurt him, to pay him back for the hurt that he had caused her.

A marriage between them probably would have been a disaster. Gwyneth knew that. But as much as she always declared that she was not the marrying kind, she had been deeply wounded that Joel had never, in all the time that they had carried on their affair, suggested that he would leave Kitzi and make an honest woman of his star. If he had, Gwyneth wasn't even sure what she would have answered. But it didn't matter. He should have asked. And, over the years, Joel's omission had festered within her.

Now, as she listened to him yelling into the telephone and pictured the rage in his reddened face, Gwyneth felt smug satisfaction in rejecting him.

“Goddamn it, Gwyneth, you owe me more than this!” Joel demanded.

“I don't owe you anything, Joel,” Gwyneth answered determinedly. “You owe
me.
I'm the reason for your success, and the success of
Hourglass.
We both know that.”

“No! We don't both know that!” Joel sputtered. “I've made you the star that you've become, and don't you ever forget it! If it weren't for me, you'd be nowhere. You and your kind are a dime a dozen, baby. Don't kid yourself, Gwyneth, you'll be easily replaced. And, I might add, by a younger, fresher, prettier version.”

Gwyneth rose to Joel's bait. She screamed into the phone, calling him every foul name she could think of. “You can go to hell!” she hissed as she went to slam down the receiver.

“I'll see you there,” answered the executive producer. “I'll see you there.”

25

New Year's Eve

L
AURA WAS EAGER
to get to the Broadcast Center on New Year's Eve morning. All the hard work was done. Now she would have the pleasure of watching her Yearender air on the KEY Television Network.

She tucked a starched white cotton shirt into her favorite pair of jeans and pulled a loose-fitting dark green sweater over her head. No need to dress up today. Only a skeleton staff would be working. Almost all the executives were on holiday vacation, available on beeper if any big news story broke. Those who reported to the Broadcast Center today were the worker bees.

She hoped this would be the last time that she would be responsible for the Yearender. If things went the way she planned, this time next year, she'd be producing for
Hourglass.