Temptation (36 page)

‘The beard has gotten a big shaggy.’

‘Ditto the hair. I mean, I’ve heard of the “going back to nature” look. But “going back to the bookshop”?’

I laughed. ‘Well, you look wonderful.’

‘I’m not saying you look bad, David. Just . . . I don’t know . . . you haven’t simply changed; you’ve
transformed
. Like one of those kids’ toys . . . ’

‘Where, with a few fast adjustments, GI Joe turns into a dinosaur?’

‘Exactly.’

‘That’s the new
me
,’ I said. ‘A dinosaur.’

Now it was her turn to laugh. ‘And one with a bookshop to boot,’ she said, glancing around the stacks and the assorted displays, running one hand along the polished wood shelves. ‘I’m impressed. It’s charming. And bookish.’

‘Well, the fact that it’s not in a strip mall and doesn’t have a Starbucks makes it something of a nineteenth-century curiosity these days.’

‘How on earth did you find it?’

‘That’s a bit of a story.’

‘Well, I’m going to expect you to tell me all over lunch.’

‘Don’t worry. I will.’

‘I was surprised when you e-mailed me. I thought . . . ’

‘What?’

‘Oh, I don’t know . . . that you’d written me off as a fool after that night . . . ’

‘It was the best sort of foolishness . . . ’

‘You mean that?’

‘Sure.’

‘Good. Because . . . ’ A nervous shrug. ‘. . . because I felt pretty damn foolish afterwards.’

‘Join the club,’ I said.

‘So,’ she said, changing the subject quickly, ‘where am I taking you for lunch?’

‘I thought we’d go down to the cottage I’m staying in . . . ’

‘You’re renting a place up here?’

‘It actually belongs to one of my agent’s clients. Willard Stevens.’

‘The screenwriter?’

‘That’s right.’

She looked at me quizzically, trying to piece this little fragment together. ‘So when you found this town and this bookshop, you also found a place to live that just happened to belong to Willard Stevens . . . who also just happens to be represented by your agent?’

‘That’s right. Well, shall we . . . ?’

I spent a few minutes closing the bookshop down, explaining to Martha that, in honor of her appearance in Meredith, I’d decided to take the afternoon off.

‘I’m touched,’ she said, ‘but I don’t want you to lose any business on my behalf.’

‘Don’t worry about it. Wednesday’s a slow day. Anyway, Les wasn’t bothered about me . . . ’

‘Who’s Les?’ she asked, interrupting.

‘Les is the owner of the bookshop.’

Now she really looked confused. ‘But I thought you said you were the owner?’

‘I never said that. I just said . . . ’

‘I know. “That’s a bit of a story.”’

Martha’s car was parked outside: a big black shiny Range Rover.

‘Shall we take my monster?’ she asked.

‘We’ll jump into mine,’ I said, motioning towards my geriatric VW Golf. Once again, she did a little double-take at the
life-in-the-slow-lane
style of the vehicle, but said nothing.

We climbed inside. As always, the starter motor was acting faulty (one of the many little bugs I had discovered since buying the heap). But it finally fired on the fourth try.

‘Quite a car,’ she said as we pulled away from the kerb.

‘It gets me from A to B,’ I said.

‘And I suppose it all goes with the ageing undergraduate look you’re trying to foster.’

I said nothing. I simply shrugged.

We reached the cottage in five minutes. She was smitten with the ocean view. She was smitten with the cottage’s designer simplicity; its white-on-white color scheme; its overstuffed armchairs and bookshelves.

‘I can see why you’re happy here,’ she said. ‘It’s the ultimate writer’s hideaway. Where do you work, by the way?’

‘At the bookshop.’

‘Very funny. I’m talking about the “real work”.’

‘You mean, “writing”?’

‘David, don’t tell me that ponytail of yours has dragged down your cognitive powers. You do happen to be a writer . . . ’

‘No. I
was
a writer.’

‘Don’t refer to your career in the past tense.’

‘Why not? It’s the truth.’

‘But the thing is: Philip is about to film your script . . . with an amazing cast and guaranteed world-wide distribution by Columbia. Like I said on the phone yesterday . . . as soon as word gets around that it was your screenplay, you’ll be flooded with offers. Because Hollywood loves nothing more than a great comeback. Before you can say “seven figures”, you’ll be slaving over a laptop.’

‘No, I won’t.’

‘How can you know that?’

‘I sold my laptop.’

‘You did what?’

‘I sold my computer. Hocked it actually – at a pawn shop in Santa Barbara.’

‘David: this is a joke, right?’

‘No, it’s the truth. I knew I’d never be writing again for a living. And I also needed the extra bucks . . . ’

‘All right,
all right
 . . . ’ she said, her voice suddenly agitated. ‘What are you playing at, David?’

‘I’m playing at nothing.’

‘Then why all the stuff about working in a bookshop?’

‘Because I do work in a bookshop – for $280 a week.’

‘There you go again, talking crap. $280 a week? David, Philip paid you $2.5 million for the script.’

‘No, he didn’t.’

‘He told me . . . ’

‘He lied.’

‘I don’t believe you . . . ’

I walked over to the desk. I picked up the file containing all the xeroxed documents that Alison’s PI assembled, as well as the original 1997 first draft copy of
We Three Grunts
. I handed her the lot.

‘You want evidence? Here’s all the evidence you need.’

And then I took her through the entire story. Her eyes grew wide as I talked. I showed her all the documentation from SATWA – and explained how the registration of all my unproduced work had vanished, only to then be suddenly listed under the name of Philip Fleck. I went through McCall’s bank accounts and pointed out his large monthly retainer from Lubitsch Holdings.

‘Does your husband have a thing for Ernst Lubistch’s movies?’

‘Well, he owns a print of all his films.’

‘Bingo.’

I explained how I lost my investment portfolio, courtesy
of Bobby Barra – and how I had reason to believe that my broker was acting under Fleck’s instructions to hurt me financially.

‘The one thing I can’t figure out is this: whether he decided to do this because he somehow found out about us . . . ’

‘But what’s to find out?’ she said. ‘I mean what we did was pretty Junior High. Anyway, around that time, Philip hadn’t touched me for months . . . ’

‘Well, if it wasn’t that, maybe . . . I don’t know . . . maybe he was envious of my little success . . . ’

‘Philip’s envious of anyone with real creative talent. Because he has absolutely none himself. But, knowing him as damn well as I do, he could have decided to do this for a dozen different reasons . . . all cryptic and hard to fathom to everyone but himself. Then again, he might just have done this for the sake of doing this. Because he
can
do this.’

She stood up, pacing the cottage, shaking her head.

‘I’m so . . . I can’t imagine how he . . . he plays the mind-fuck games all the . . . the whole thing . . . it’s so fucking, unbelievably
Philip
.’

‘Well, you know him better than I do.’

‘I am so sorry.’

‘Me too. Which is why I need your help.’

‘You’ve got it.’

‘But what I’m going to propose might be . . . well . . . kind of risky.’

‘Let me worry about that. So go on – what do you want me to do?’

‘Confront your husband with hard evidence that he
has stolen my scripts, and paid McCall to annihilate my career.’

‘And I suppose you want me to wear a wire when I play this
J’accuse
scene?’ she asked.

‘One of those little pocket micro-recorders will do. I just need one single admission from him that he was behind all this. Once it’s on tape, my agent – and her lawyers – will have the leverage they need. And when he realizes that we have him confessing to the script theft and the McCall set-up, I’m certain he’ll want to deal with us . . . especially when he understands just what kind of publicity this will generate for him. He does have a little phobia about negative publicity, doesn’t he?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘All I want is my reputation put back together again. I don’t really care about the money . . . ’

‘
Care
about the money. Because money is the one language that Philip ultimately understands. There is a problem, however.’

‘He’ll deny everything?’

‘That’s right. But . . . ’

‘What?’

‘If I provoke him enough, he just might blurt out the admission you’re after.’

‘You don’t sound hopeful.’

‘I know the man all too well. Still, it’s worth a shot.’

‘Thank you.’

She scooped up all the documents. ‘I’m going to need all this evidence,’ she said.

‘It’s yours.’

‘Now would you drive me back to my car, please?’

She said nothing during the few minutes we headed back to the bookshop. I glanced at her once. She was holding the file tightly to her chest, looking completely preoccupied and silently furious. When we pulled up out front, she simply leaned over and gave me a peck on the cheek. And said, ‘You’ll be hearing from me.’

Then she climbed out of my car, got into her own vehicle and drove off. As I returned to the cottage, I thought: that was exactly the reaction I was hoping for.

But days went by without even a word from her. Alison, however, was in regular contact, wondering how I had deployed that batch of xeroxed evidence. I lied and said that I was still perusing it, still trying to figure out a way that we could use it against him.

‘You are such a shitty fibster,’ she said.

‘Think what you like, Alison.’

‘I just hope you’re being smart for a change.’

‘I’m working on it. Meanwhile, do you or your legal eagle have any further thoughts on how we might be able to sue the asshole for Literary Theft in the First Degree?’

‘We’ve looked at every aspect, and . . . no, nothing. The guy’s got every angle covered.’

‘We’ll see about that.’

By the time an entire week had passed without contact from Martha, I too started to wonder if he
did
have every angle covered . . . to the point where she couldn’t get a single confessional word out of him. And I found myself fighting off a wave of despondency. Because three weeks from now, an alimony payment would be due – and there was no way I’d be able to even meet half of it. Which meant that Lucy would probably retaliate by attempting to end my phone
access with Caitlin. As I also wouldn’t be in a position to afford Walter Dickerson’s services in court (or elsewhere), she’d legally steamroller me in a nanosecond. Then there was the matter of Willard Stevens. He’d called me personally from London a few days ago for a quick
getting-to-know-you
hello, and to ask if all was fine in the cottage, and to inform me that he’d probably be returning to the States within two months, so . . .

But how would I find anything to rent in Meredith on $280 a week? Hell, the cheapest unit around town was around eight hundred a month . . . which meant that, once I dealt with the roof over my head, I’d end up with eighty bucks a week to pay for everything . . . from gas to electricity to food. In other words, Mission Preposterous.

By the time I’d played out this catastrophic scenario, I was homeless on Wiltshire Boulevard, sprawled on the sidewalk, with a hand-painted sign which read:
They Used to Return My Calls
.

And then, finally, Martha phoned. It was Friday night . . . a full ten days after I’d seen her. She called the shop around six pm. Her tone was succinct, businesslike.

‘Sorry I haven’t been in touch,’ she said. ‘I’ve been away.’

‘Do you have any news?’

‘When are your days off?’

‘Monday and Tuesday.’

‘Can you keep Monday completely free?’

‘Sure.’

‘Fine. I’ll pick you up at the cottage around two.’

And she hung up before I could ask her anything.

I wanted to ring her straight back and demand to know what was going on. But I knew that, at best, that would
be counter-productive. So I could do nothing except count the hours until Monday.

She showed up on time, parking her Range Rover right by my front door. Once again, she looked bewitching: a short red skirt, a tight black halter, the same jean jacket as last week, the same broken horn-rimmed glasses, and an old-style cameo around her neck. Isobel Archer meets Downtown Hip. I came out to greet her. She favored me with a big smile – a smile that made me wonder if she had good news for me. When she gave me a light kiss on the lips – squeezing my arm simultaneously – I thought:
this is promising . . . and just a little confusing.

‘Hello there,’ she said.

‘And hello to you. Do I detect an air of good humor?’

‘You never know. Is that what you’re planning to wear today?’

I was dressed in a pair of old Levis, a tee shirt, and a zip-up grey sweatshirt.

‘As I didn’t know what we were planning to do today . . . ’

‘Can I put a proposition to you?’

‘I’m all ears.’

‘I want you to let me take charge of everything today.’

‘By which you mean . . . ?’

‘By which I mean, I want you to agree that you won’t question a single thing I do . . . and at the same time, you’ll do everything I ask of you.’

‘Everything?’

‘Yes,’ she said with a grin. ‘
Everything
. But don’t worry: nothing I suggest will be illegal. Or dangerous.’

‘Well, that’s a relief . . . ’

‘So: do we have a deal?’

She proffered her hand. I took it.

‘I guess so . . . as long as you don’t want me to bury a body.’

‘That would be far too banal,’ she said. ‘Come on, let’s get you out of those slacker clothes.’

She walked past me into the cottage, and straight into the bedroom. Then she opened my closet and rifled through my clothes. Eventually, she pulled out a pair of black jeans, a white tee shirt, a lightweight leather jacket and a pair of black Converse hi-tops.