The Agency (6 page)

Which is to say, we were always one little mistake away from watching our friendship dissolve into a bitter feud.

As it turned out, the mistake was mine. I admit it. I fucked up. I did a terrible thing.

You’ll recall that I inherited my mother’s tendency of paying way too much attention to a certain part of my body. Look it up in the dictionary, and you’ll see it described as being “homologous” to the penis. I love that word, “homologous.” I’ve never seen it anywhere else. When I think homologous, I think clitoris. It wants what it wants, when it wants it.

About five years ago, I visited Saleema’s office, which is on the sixth floor of the Flatiron Building, that wonderful triangular landmark in Manhattan. I was in the city doing the rounds of publishers, and from there, I had a West Coast swing planned to LA. Saleema was in the midst of a crisis, because
People
magazine had just released a scathing review of a memoir by one of her clients
that had her at full boil. Me, I’m just glad that
People
still finds room for book reviews at all, in between their shirtless photos of Matthew McConaughey. Anyway, our dinner plans were shot to hell. Saleema said she could make it up to me, however, and she introduced me to another agent in her office, a blond god from Florida, former basketball player for something called the Gators, eyes so blue they were like a swimming pool in which you wanted to strip off your clothes and skinny-dip.

Homologous, definitely homologous.

Saleema called him a friend. That was all. A friend. She gave me no hint of any relationship whatsoever between them. His name was Evan.

Evan asked where I wanted to have dinner, and I think I surprised him when I said the Carnegie Deli. When I get horny, I get hungry. That night, I wanted a hot corned beef sandwich six inches tall and a slice of cheesecake so thick you could rub it all over your body and still have some left for the next day. We ate like animals. We laughed. We talked about British politics. We went to a club. We danced. Okay, look, we all know where this is going. Evan proved to be as long as he was tall, and I spent most of the night under him, on top of him, and holding on to the porcelain edge of the bathroom sink. OMG.

The next day, I couldn’t wait to tell Saleema. She couldn’t wait to tell me something, either. Fortunately, I let her go first.

She and Evan were engaged. Surprise!

And what did I think of him, anyway?

Some surprises leave you almost speechless.

Well, I said, with my stretched-out insides still aching gloriously, I think he’s just as DDG as you, and I’m sure the two of you will be very happy. Congratulations. Smile. Look to God and whisper, “Oh, shit.” You certainly do
not
tell your best friend that her fiancé failed to mention your engagement and spent the night rocking your world in more positions than you had previously tried in your life.

Evan, Saleema, and I had lunch at Pastis that day, and I shot him daggers across the table whenever Saleema wasn’t looking. He
was enjoying my discomfort, and I think he knew that I was still turned on by him, regardless of the fact that he was now forbidden fruit. I left town wanting to tell Saleema that her fiancé was a cheating bastard, but it was hard to make that message stick when the bastard was cheating with me.

Now for my big mistake. That was still to come.

Two months later, Evan called me in London. He was in the city and wanted to see me. Saleema wasn’t with him. I should have slammed down the phone, but I finally had a chance to slap his face and use every word in my dictionary of expletives. I could make him grovel. I could savage him. I could get my sweet revenge.

So I met him at a pub in Bloomsbury.

Okay, look, we all know where this is going. Again.

I screamed at him. I slapped his face. Then I spent most of the night on top of him, under him, and braced against the wall of the lift in my apartment building. Thank God the thing is old and slow. The lift, I mean.

Like I said, I don’t have the greatest track record of good decisions when it comes to sex.

The next morning, I felt guilty and sick as I let the hot water of the shower pour over my head. I swore to myself I would never see him again. My resolve lasted until he joined me in the shower. But that, I promised myself, was absolutely the last time. I don’t claim to understand the power he had over me, but certain men can make you forget everything else in the world. Including your friends.

Not surprisingly, I wasn’t the only tunnel into which Evan was driving his stretch limo. Saleema found out about his numerous affairs and broke off the engagement. She cried to me about it on the phone. I felt like shit. I could have confessed then and there that I was one of his conquests, but I knew that would be the end of our relationship, and I didn’t think it would make her feel any better to know that her fiancé
and
her best friend had both betrayed her together. You can say I was just trying to cover my arse, and maybe that’s true.

I didn’t count on Evan being cruel and vicious.

He sent her a break-up box with the things she had left in his
apartment, but he included a little bonus. It was a beautifully carved miniature wooden tiger from Calcutta. Saleema had bought it as a present for me on her last trip to India and had given it to me in London. I had kept it in my apartment. I didn’t even notice that Evan had nicked it. Needless to say, Saleema got the message loud and clear.

So did I.

I don’t blame her for what she said to me. She was right. I deserved it. You can’t apologize and make something like that go away. I tried for months to make things right between us, but eventually I realized that for the first time in my life I had made a blood enemy. All the emotions between us had to go somewhere, and Saleema let them flow into hatred. Me, I don’t hate her. I feel nothing but regret. But I learned the stakes a year later when one of my best American clients dumped me and signed on with Saleema. My client was a recently divorced woman whose husband had cheated on her. Saleema made sure my client knew exactly what I had done with Evan.

Two other clients followed that year. I really think Saleema would steal all of them if she could. However, it’s been a couple of years since anyone else has bolted to Robinson Foote, and I keep hoping that the fire of her vengeance has cooled a bit. Maybe she has other battles to fight. Maybe screwing me until I plead for mercy is lower on her list now.

Maybe her dinner with Guy has nothing to do with me at all.

Maybe.

I WAS NOT FEELING
particularly horny or carefree when I reached my father’s apartment in Mayfair. I checked voice mail and had the usual blizzard of messages, but none of them related to Guy or Dorothy. That made me feel a little better. The fact is, if Saleema had visions of using Guy to steal Dorothy away from me, she was going to have to stand in line. Loyalty goes a long way with Dorothy, and she is as committed to her relationship with me as she is to her editorial partnership with Guy. I really think I would have to commit murder before Dorothy looked for another agent; and even if she did, her first stop would undoubtedly be with Cosima and the team at Bardwright, or my friend Sally Harlingford, who have all been very good to her. I just don’t see Dorothy agreeing to bolt to a new agent and a new agency at the same time.

Still, if that is Saleema’s plan, let her dream.

I was early, so I got the flat ready for Darcy. I put on Nina Simone. I lit fragrant candles. I moved the champagne that Emma had ordered to an ice bucket in the living room. My nerves were
still jangled, so I opened the bottle and poured myself a glass. Something about the bubbles soothes me. I undid another button on my shirt. I touched my skin with a damp fingertip.

Okay, I was a little horny. And getting more so as the clock neared eleven. Darcy makes me very homologous. Even so, I was nervous about seeing him tonight. Saleema felt like a ghost, reminding me of past mistakes. You’d think I would have learned my lesson with Evan and become exceptionally cautious about dating men with outside commitments. You’d be wrong.

Darcy is married.

It’s a long story.

I can tell you all the reasons why his marriage is hollow and why we are so good together, and you can tell me why none of those things matter. You’re probably right, but I don’t care. It’s not like I can blame this one on fate or say it was an accident. After all, I didn’t know Evan was engaged to Saleema when I slept with him. Not the first time, anyway. With Darcy, however, I marched into sin with my eyes wide open. Yes, yes, and my legs, too. That goes without saying. I knew what I was doing, and the little voice inside that said I was a fool was drowned out by the other voice that screamed, “Yes! Harder! Right there! Oh, God!”

I sipped my champagne. I stared out the windows of the flat, which had a view over the nearby roofs toward Green Park. I have this fantasy of being invited to dinner at Buck House someday, and when I meet Liz, after I curtsy, I ask her to do her Helen Mirren impression for me. The fact that I have a fantasy like this tells me that I am not the kind of person who will ever be invited to dinner with the queen.

Actually, I blame Liz for my affair. Eighteen months ago, I was on my usual 14 bus around midday, expecting it to sail past Hyde Park Corner and continue toward Piccadilly Circus, where I have a brisk ten-minute walk to my office near Trafalgar Square. That day, however, HRH was hosting a diplomatic luncheon at the palace, and it was my bad luck to arrive at the Corner just as a line of flag-waving limousines began to parade down Park Lane. Apparently,
the risk of assassination of the prime ministers of Abkhazia and Tuvalu is sufficient to shut down London buses. I could have dashed into the Tube easily enough, but as it happens, it was a stunning late fall day, warm and sunny, with color in all the trees, and I was right across the street from Hyde Park. I decided the office could wait. Fifteen minutes later, I was seated on a bench by the Serpentine, licking up a soft-serve ice cream cone with a Cadbury Flake, watching the lovers in their pedal boats, and indulging one of my guilty pleasures, namely the latest jet-setting, bodice-ripping, caviar-eating novel by Jilly Cooper.

And that was where I met Darcy.

I knew who he was, of course, and he knew who I was. We had exchanged pleasantries at parties. A little smiling. A little flirting. Nothing more than that. We had never really talked. I don’t know why it was different this time, except that it was one of those rare days when London feels like paradise, and he was walking his little seven-year-old Westie, and I love Westies. I could have spent hours rubbing his tummy.

I mean the dog.

We sat on the bench in Hyde Park and talked. And talked. And talked. I forgot all about the office. His dog nuzzled in the grass. The sun got lower. It got cooler, and he took off his anorak and let me drape it over my shoulders. I felt like I was sixteen. I’m not sure exactly when we both realized that we had crossed the line from strangers into friends, or when we admitted to ourselves that we had already skated past the next line where friends begin to look at each other as lovers. Sometimes an attraction is so obvious that you don’t need to talk about it. It’s just there.

I really didn’t expect anything to happen. This was one chance meeting, a little memory for me to tuck away, a nothing romance with a “what if” or maybe an “if only” question at the end of it. We both knew, without saying, that we would be fools to acknowledge the reality of what was going on between us. After all, you might fall in love with a house, but if it belongs to someone else and has a great big security fence to keep out trespassers,
you’d probably think twice about looking for a way to get inside, right? So the easy thing to do was walk away. Smile. Pretend.

Except one of the things we talked about was Chihuly glass. Don’t ask me how or why. He told me about the Chihuly ceiling in the lobby at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. I told him about the frieze in the Rainbow Room in Rockefeller Center. We both loved the olive-and-turquoise chandelier at the Victoria and Albert. And it just so happened that a Chihuly exhibit was back at the Tate Modern, and I was planning to take a jaunt across the Millennium Bridge to go there on Friday evening, and would he like to see it with me?

Completely innocent.

Except we both knew it wasn’t.

As we stood at the balcony on the second floor of the Tate and stared at this glowing orange sun made up of squiggling snakes of glass, we just naturally held hands. As we paused on the arch of the bridge two hours later, with a mist dampening our hair and the fuzzy lights of the city twisting along the banks of the Thames, we just naturally kissed. It was Friday. My father was in Somerset. The Mayfair flat, sitting empty, just naturally beckoned us, and by morning, we were contemplating the wreckage we were making of our lives and telling ourselves that we had to stop.

That was a year and a half ago. We haven’t stopped.

When I heard the drumroll of his fingertips on the door, my heart took off like a racehorse. I scared myself with my emotions, but I was powerless to stop them. The difference between a crush when you are sixteen and a crush when you are thirty-six is merely that you have more gray hairs and fewer inhibitions. As I ran to the door, I may as well have been a teenager fantasizing about Robbie Williams.