So 5 Minutes Ago (18 page)

“Got it,” I say, giving him a wave. “Seriously. Go.”

Troy releases the doors, they glide shut, and I brace myself for the onslaught to come. Of course it’s not personal. It never is.

“So what do you think he meant by that? ‘It wasn’t personal’?” Steven leans in the doorway of my office, nursing a latte.

“I don’t know,” I say, staring distractedly at my computer screen. I’m back in the office trying to craft the release in time for the afternoon’s deadlines. “Maybe he was apologizing for being such a dick.”

“About what, exactly? Embarrassing you in public? Acting like it never happened? Or hitting you up for cash?”

“How about all of it?”

“Oh, you don’t believe that.”

“I don’t know,” I say, looking up irritably.

“Okay,”
Steven says, raising his hands. “I was just trying to help. You’re usually the suspicious one.”

“Well, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt this time.”

“Okay,”
Steven says again, turning to leave. “I’ll give you both the benefit of the doubt. Let me know when you’re ready to send that out and I’ll get the carrier pigeons saddled up.”

When Steven leaves, I lean back in my chair and reknot my hair with a pencil. He’s not wrong about my irritation levels. Ever since my conversation with G at the Viper Room, I’ve been avoiding Steven. Or avoiding talking to him. I called him on my cell when I was leaving the club that night but only got his machine. When he reached me the next afternoon, I had already decided to try and forget the whole thing. I told Steven I saw G. That he loved my gift—
our
gift—and that he’s no less creepy off-duty than he is at the office. But I didn’t mention his doomsday scenario for the agency and Suzanne leaving, nor his suggestions on how I could avoid the coming conflagration with special displays of loyalty.

Now, every time I see Steven I feel guilty. I’ve never not told him anything. Well, not anything to do with the agency. But denial can be a good thing. Preserves your energies. Keeps you from getting worked up about stuff that will probably never happen. Or at least happen later. But it tends to make you a little bitchy with certain people. People who can read you better than you can read yourself. People you respect. Luckily, other than Steven and Rachel, there aren’t too many of them around. Besides, I still think I could have misunderstood G. I mean, it was very dark and very loud and he was pretty drunk. I know there’s a recession, but it is technically possible that no one will get laid off, that Suzanne will stay on, and that I will never be called on to display any further proof of my loyalty than showing up here every day, which, depending on the day, can seem like punishment enough.

I re-anchor my ponytail and check the time. Less than a hour to get this out. I turn back to the computer and reread what I’ve written. Like I don’t have enough lies to tell as it is.

I spend the rest of the day getting out the release, answering e-mails and calls. Normally, Steven and I would head down to Tom Bergin’s and catch the returns over a beer. But Steven has a racquetball game—“It’s so retro it’s even hipper than bowling now,” he says—and although he offers to cancel, I beg off.

“You know, I’m wiped from the courtroom,” I say. “I’ll just catch the news here and then head home.”

“Well, if you want it, the Dewar’s is in my desk. Third drawer on the right.”

“First you’re channeling Ryan O’Neal in
Love Story,
and now you’re Hildy Johnson?”

“Oh, thank God,” Steven says, coming over and giving me a hug. “For a minute there, we thought the little girl was a goner.”

“Hey,” I say, giving him a halfhearted hug back. “You know how much I love it when you quote from
The Wizard of Oz.
”

When Steven leaves, I head down the hall to the kitchen and grab a fresh water out of the refrigerator. Frankly, scotch and water doesn’t sound all that bad. I root around and find some leftover cookies, sent from someone somewhere for something. Okay, drink and dinner. I’m just heading down the hall back to my office, to catch up on the trades until the nightly Hollywood shows come on at seven, when I hear a door open behind me.

“Alex, do you have a minute?”

Suzanne.

I turn around slowly. At least it’s not G.

“Of course,” I say. “I’m just waiting for the news. To see how Troy’s trial goes down.”

I’ve only been in Suzanne’s new office once and it’s even bigger than I remember. A spacious corner suite with a sofa and armchairs in plush sage green chenille, two windows, and a fabulous view up Wilshire. There’s one orchid on her desk and another on the coffee table. A girl could get used to this.

“You know, I still can’t get over how much nicer our offices are here,” I say, staring out the window to see how far east I can see. If I can actually see Barneys.

Suzanne looks startled. Or maybe she’s just distracted. “Oh yes,” she says, looking around like it’s the first time she’s seen her office. “It is much bigger here.”

She shuts the door and asks me to sit—God, a sofa in your office is so great—and then tells me that what she’s about to tell me is confidential. Just between us and can she count on that confidentiality? Oh God. First G and now her?

“Uhm, sure, but I can’t imagine what you have to tell me really requires confid—”

She cuts me off with a wave and plunges in.

So much for denial. It’s exactly like G’s speech, with a few more details. Times are tough. Recession in the industry. Foreign financing is drying up. Production deals are not being renewed. Clients have less work. Publicists have less work. “I’ve already spoken to Doug about this and he feels—we both feel—that the fairest thing will be to offer small buyouts, compensatory packages, to those agents who choose to take them,” she says.

So it is true. There will be layoffs. I brace myself. “So you’re suggesting I resign? Take the buyout?”

Suzanne looks startled. “Oh, no, you’re misreading me.”

“Then what are you saying?”

She holds up a hand and continues. Once the buyouts are accepted, the remaining staff will be assessed. If there are still too many publicists to support the client base, then actual layoffs will begin.

“So you
are
telling me to take the buyout?”

“No,” she says, shaking her head. “I’m only telling you what will happen agency-wide. I am also telling you that I hope you do not take the buyout because you will probably not be one of the ones laid off. Not at your age and salary level.”

Okay, this is officially strange. First G tells me I will definitely be let go unless I demonstrate my loyalty. Now Suzanne is telling me exactly the opposite. Frankly, G’s scenario makes the most sense. I’m not one of his handpicked Biggies, I’m the most recent DWP hire, and I nearly landed on probation for mishandling Troy. There’s no way they would keep me on before the others. Something is definitely up. I need to tread carefully.

“Okay,” I say slowly. “That’s good to hear although I’m not sure I understand why.”

But Suzanne moves on. “Yes, but there’s a whole other part to this,” she says, dropping her voice. “And this is where I really need you to keep this to yourself.” She looks at me expectantly.

Cross my heart and hope to die.

“The fact is that I may not stay on.”

Shit.
So G is right. The agency is heading for a complete overhaul. I mean, she’s pretentious in her white suits and Southern accent that comes and goes depending on her audience, but Suzanne is old school, which means she’s not totally without principles. More important, she’s the heart of DWP. Without her and Stan in New York, we’ll be left without any of the agency’s original partners. Even with Charles heading up New York, BIG-DWP will essentially belong to G.

“Why would
you
leave? Are you retiring?” I say, trying to keep my voice level. Stay calm. Stay cool. Maybe she’s just selling her third of the agency to G and getting the hell out of Dodge.

Suzanne shakes her head and leans back. “It’s complicated and it might not even happen. I mean, I will retire one day, but it’s probably not a surprise to you that I had hoped this merger with BIG would bolster the agency. That we could grow faster together and that we could, within a year or two, be acquired by another larger company, and then I would retire. I mean, I’d like to think that DWP didn’t completely miss the big PR wave, when the rest of the world discovered that celebrity can sell more than just movies and that Hollywood publicists have the keys to the kingdom.”

I’m stunned by this conversation, this level of intimacy. As long as I’ve been at DWP, the agency has been run largely by the same rules my parents kept when I was growing up: When in doubt, don’t talk about it. Especially if it’s unpleasant. Now, I’m sitting here with Dr. Phil. “I’m sure you’re right,” I say, still choosing my words carefully. “This recession can’t last forever. The agency will grow and someone will want to buy us.”

Suzanne shakes her head. “I don’t know. Sometimes I think Stan and I had our heads in the sand. That we underestimated the whole ‘youthquake’ and we didn’t make the changes we needed to make when we should have. I mean, we should have hired you—and half a dozen more like you—ten years ago. We should have gone after younger clients—all those kids on the WB and MTV that you can never keep straight or even care to. But I really thought we could remain a white-shoe firm. Handling Old Hollywood. Now, I think I was wrong. I mean, we should have been signing people like Courtney Love.”

“Oh, forget Courtney Love. Besides, you’re making the right changes,” I say, jumping into full cheerleader mode. Or maybe it’s just denial in a uniform. “I’m here and Charles is coming on and we’re getting younger clients and BIG is certainly a youthful agency and it should still work out like you planned.”

She looks at me like I have the brains of a cheerleader. “Look, whatever pressure you feel to keep your clients, to add to your client base, is not dissimilar to what I feel,” she says. “What we all feel. And we’ve had some high-profile defections, as you know. The agency has suffered and I take responsibility because most of those who have left were my clients.”

“Clients always come and go,” I say, still in cheerleader mode.

“Well, let’s just say it’s awkward at this juncture. With the merger. And in this economy. First Carla and now the Phoenix. Technically she’s fired us, but it’s not finalized and with her new MTV show coming up, it’s potentially a huge, embarrassing loss.”

I’m beginning to catch on. “How huge?”

“Let’s just say, if we can’t retain her, then there is a very good chance that I will leave the agency as well.”

“But why? You
own
half this agency.”

She sighs. It’s too complicated to explain, as most things with lawyers are, but it’s how the merger was done. How it was written. “G and I each have contractual obligations to the agency, to the maintenance of the agency, to its
value,
and if either one of us does not fulfill those obligations, then—”

“Then what?”

“Then bad things happen.”

“You might leave.”

“I would have to leave.”

This is crazy. She either has the stupidest lawyer in town or she was so desperate to get in bed with BIG that she agreed to those terms. It’s always been difficult if not impossible to put a value on a PR agency. It’s why no one bothered with them until recently. What were you actually buying? The publicists or their clients? And everyone knows clients come and go. It’s why publicists are essentially independent contractors. It’s all too fluid. But that’s how it works. Or has until now.

“You’re right,” I say, holding up my hands. “I don’t get it, but I get what you’re saying. But why are you telling me?”

It’s fairly simple, as she spells it out. Nothing I don’t do every day of the week. She’s asking me because she trusts me. Because the client trusts me. And because I’m young.

“Do you know what it’s like to feel old?” she says, getting up and moving to the window, where she stares down at Wilshire in the dusk. “Do you know what it’s like to feel like you no longer matter? That you don’t count?”

Every day of the week.

I almost get away clean. Key in the ignition, car in reverse, eyes on the rearview mirror so I don’t run over any Biggies no matter how much I’d like to, when I’m startled by a knock on my driver’s-side window. I turn, expecting to see one of the valets with instructions not to use the west exit or something.
Fuck.
G. Smiling and waving his finger at me to roll down my window.

“Heading home?” he says when I get the window down.

“Uhm, yeah, actually,” I say, looking up at him. Except for Steven, I’ve never spoken to anyone from the agency down here. Bad enough dealing with everyone in the office.

“Well, don’t let me stop you.”

“Okay, I won’t,” I say, eyeing him because this is more than a little strange and maybe even scary running into him like this, right after my meeting with Suzanne.

“I just wanted to say one thing.”

“You followed me into the garage to tell me something?”

“I wouldn’t say ‘followed,’ ” he says. “I would say our paths crossed. Fortuitously.”

I don’t say anything. This is way too much of a coincidence to be remotely fortuitous. Creepy, yes; fortuitous, no way.

G smiles, puts his hands on the car door, and leans toward me. “It occurred to me after our conversation at the club last week that I left out a crucial piece of information.”

“Oh?” I say blandly.

“Yes, some additional information that should help you come to your decision.”

“My decision?” As I recall, G basically laid out the coming pogrom—the slaughter of DWP agents with the implication that those who manage to survive will be compensated. Like the finalists on
American Idol.
If there was something to decide, I missed it.

“Well, see,” he says, nodding. “There actually is a decision to be made. So I’m glad I can clarify that now.”

The Audi isn’t all that roomy to begin with and it’s getting more crowded in here by the minute. I shift in my seat, pulling back a bit from the window.