The Jewels of Tessa Kent (41 page)

“What if he doesn’t fall for that line of sickening bullshit?”

“Oh, Aaron, you’ve been around me so long you take me for granted,” Tessa sighed. “I tell you that if he’s any kind of man he’ll want to meet me, and if he’s gay he’ll want to meet me, and if he’s an alien he’ll definitely want to meet me and take me back to his planet for breeding purposes, good luck to him.”

“Yeah, Aaron, she’s Tessa Kent, remember?” Fiona weighed in, wishing, as usual, that Aaron could be less
pessimistic. Didn’t he realize how lucky he was to have kept Tessa’s loyalty? Every last nominee for an Oscar performance last year had been a CAA client, and Ovitz would grab Tessa in a Beverly Hills microsecond if he got the chance.

“I’ll give it my best shot,” Aaron said, repressing a groan.

Two weeks later Tessa waited in a unreconstructed neighborhood bar far uptown on the West Side near Columbia for Dr. Elliott S. Conway, who was, at this point, a half hour late. He’d declined to come downtown to have a drink at the Carlyle Bar, or in her suite, because, as he put it, he had severe limitations on his time. He could at least have the courtesy to be prompt, Tessa fumed, tired of pretending to be engrossed in a copy of
The Life of Lady Cassandra Lennox
while avoiding making any eye contact in a bar jammed with men who were staring openly at her.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in a bar by herself, Tessa thought. Had she ever done so? Hadn’t she, all her life, met strangers or friends on her own territory or in protected, privileged spaces, rather than this kind of down-at-the-heels, seedy hangout, which reeked of a hundred years of beer? As she’d left the shelter of her limo, parked discreetly around the corner, she’d twisted her wedding ring so that the huge green diamond lay on the palm of her hand, an automatic action whenever she walked on the streets of any city.

She’d prepared herself for this meeting as carefully as possible. She’d had a burgundy suit designed which, without being in any way a costume, possessed a subliminal Victorian influence in its silhouette: a tightly laced waist, a full skirt, a wide-lapeled jacket that outlined her breasts and opened, at her throat, on a blouse of precious white lace. Around her neck she wore a dog collar of small pearls that clasped at the front with a
cameo; delicate cameo earrings hung from her ears; and her dark hair was brushed into a highly modified version of a Victorian hairstyle, up off her neck and into a careful array of curls. She’d stopped well short of looking over-the-top, Tessa was certain as she left her hotel, but she hadn’t reckoned on the uniform of blue jeans and baseball jackets that the local barflies wore.

She realized too late that she looked as if she’d wandered in from a costume party, but there was nothing she could do about it now. After all, what would Dr. Conway expect Tessa Kent to wear? she asked herself. Anything at all from her ordinary wardrobe would have looked equally out of place in this joint full of bums. But she’d shown her hand by wearing something evocative, no matter how cleverly, of the Victorian era. She should have worn the most cutting edge outfit she owned, something futuristic by one of the new Japanese designers. Bloody hell! If she didn’t get to play Cassandra Lennox she’d never forgive herself!

Calm down, Tessa told herself. A man who habitually drank in a sinister gin mill like this wouldn’t even notice clothes, wouldn’t have the subtlety to realize that her eagerness to buy the rights to his book was emblazoned on her back. And what difference would it make if he did? He had to know she was eager anyway, or else what would she be doing waiting alone in a rough part of town for a rude, self-important, pompous professor of history?

“Let me see the book,” a man said, sitting down next to her, wearing a bulky leather jacket and corduroy trousers. As Tessa yelped in surprise, he took it away from her and laid it flat on the bar table, open to the halfway point. Then he flipped through the following chapters, quickly opening the book to certain pages, until he came to the end.

“Either you’ve really read it or somebody else has,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m Sam Conway, which was it? You or somebody else?”

“Me, of course,” Tessa answered, bewildered. “What were you doing to it?”

“Checking. You can tell if a book really has been read. You open it in the middle and if it falls flat, the back’s been cracked. Then you look for the signatures, folds of printed paper stacked on top of each other and glued to the backing, each one the same length, and you can see if they’ve been skipped or not.”

He was young and burly, a huge man, and he didn’t fit her expectations of a dour, arrogant, ancient Herr Doktor Professor with his long, tough, battered nose; the quirky, humorous light in his eyes; his capable big hands; and his badly cut, untidy thatch of curly blond hair, shades lighter than his heavy eyebrows. He looked like a longshoreman. He looked as if he needed to be on a horse, or on a small boat in a stiff breeze, Tessa thought, as she studied him.

“Why would I be here if I hadn’t read the book?” Tessa asked.

“Someone could have read it for you and given you coverage, that’s what they call a reader’s report.”

Tessa laughed. She’d known what coverage was since she was sixteen. “Aren’t you going to give me a pop quiz? Cassie has no secrets from me that she didn’t keep from you, Professor. And how come it’s Sam and not Elliott?”

“Elliott’s not my style. Samuel’s my middle name. How come you call her Cassie?”

“That’s my own private name for her,” Tessa answered. “Lady Cassandra Lennox seemed too long after the first twenty pages. I hope you don’t mind.”

“I think of her as Cassie too. A pisser, wasn’t she?”

“A first-class pisser.”

“What are you drinking? Oh, by the way, sorry I’m late, a student tried to talk me into a passing grade and it took a long time to say no, and explain exactly why.”

“Why didn’t you say yes and get here on time?”

“Can’t do that,” he said, shocked. “Where are your morals? So what’ll it be?”

“Vodka straight up,” Tessa ordered, hoping that the alcohol might sterilize the bar glass, that notorious conveyor of germs.

“Jim, two Stolis straight up, very cold, bring the lady a straw.”

“How—?”

“I read minds.” He grinned at her, with a flash of whimsical complicity Tessa was not accustomed to inspire in strangers. “You don’t exactly look at ease. This place may be humble but they do use a dishwasher. Still, you’ll be happier with a straw.”

“Well, I admit, I didn’t feel comfortable before you showed up,” Tessa said, opting for the charmingly frank approach. “I’ve just realized that I’ve never been in a bar alone in my life, much less one where a mob of guys are staring straight at me. Most people are too cool to do that, they just give a peek out of the corners of their eyes, the instant celebrity once-over that says they’re not impressed.”

“That, I guess, would be out in Hollywood and in your better neighborhoods, like the Carlyle.”

“Exactly.”

“But by showing up here, you just made me at least four hundred bucks.”

“What?”

“I said I’d bring Tessa Kent in for a drink and everybody bet me five bucks apiece I couldn’t do it. That’s why they’re all checking you out, making absolutely sure I’m not pulling a fast one, as if a Tessa Kent look-alike could possibly exist. I guess they want their money’s worth.”

“My God, how
old
are you!” Tessa exclaimed.

“Thirty-eight.”

“And still playing fraternity house tricks?”

“Why not?”

“But you’re a full professor, you have a doctorate in some deeply meaningful subspecies of Victorian history, you’ve written a great, great book, aren’t you too old to—”

“Soul of a teenager. That’s what my wife said.” He shook his head ruefully at the memory.

“Wife?”

“Ex-wife. I couldn’t get rid of the soul.”

“How many wives?”

“Only one, long gone. I was much worse in my twenties.”

“Children?”

“Nope. You?”

“No one.” Her fingers fluttered all complications away. “Fancy free.”

“Soul of a teenager?”

“I grew up fast, at fourteen. I never had time for one.”

“That’s too bad,” Sam Conway said seriously. “You missed something wonderful. But it’s never too late. Hang around me, you’ll see, it’s catching.”

“I’d like to hang around you,” Tessa said, taking the plunge resolutely. “I’d like to play Cassie.”

“Well of course you would. That’s why you’re doing a most wonderfully subtle impression of that ravishing creature in her prime. But I don’t want to sell the rights to the book.”

“Sam, look, you may be immune to money but don’t you realize how many people will be exposed to the story of Lady Cassandra Lennox if a film’s made? You’re not being fair to her.”

“Book’s hit the top of the
Times
nonfiction list right now,” he said with a hastily smothered look of satisfaction, “and my publisher says it should stay at number one for another six weeks minimum, according to his calculations and the reorders. Even a couple of months, until the next big book comes along.”

“Which means about three, maybe four hundred thousand copies will be sold in hard cover, maximum, because most people don’t buy books they can’t read in bed in comfort, and say two, two and a half million plus in paperback over the years, although, again, thousand-page paperbacks are a hard sell, because they’re too
heavy to carry around. Oh, and college bookstores. Make it three million copies all together, plus foreign rights, and that’s way on the high side,” Tessa snapped, remembering all of Fiona’s publishing lore. “And I’m being generous and it will take years.”

“That’s a lot of books from where I sit. I can’t even begin to imagine three million people.”

“A movie, on the other hand,” Tessa continued, with every ounce of fire she could command, “would make Cassie a household word, all over the world, with millions and millions of people seeing the film when it’s released two years from now at a time when they’ve practically stopped buying the book. That means a major return trip to the paperback bestseller lists. Then, every time the movie is run or rerun on television, more multiples of millions of people will watch it. And a percentage of them will go right out and buy the book and read it for the first time. Why do you think
Gone with the Wind
is still in print?”

“
Gone with the Wind
is the perfect illustration of what I don’t like,” Sam said, turning so that he could look at her closely. Intensity darkened his dark blue, eyes. Jesus, Tessa thought, the man filled the room! He was off the wall, yes, but what presence he possessed! She could imagine him lecturing to a mesmerized classroom, she couldn’t look away from the open neck of his work shirt where the springy blond hair—stop it Tessa! You want something, this is business! She made herself listen intently.

“Now,
Gone with the Wind
, there was a book full of history, slanted toward the Southern point of view, I grant you, but still history, crammed with vivid research, and what did they end up with? A movie about Vivien Leigh’s costumes and four people with fucked-up love lives. The script included five percent or less of the book. The Civil War was treated as a plot device, just enough to hold the romantic narrative together.”

“But there’s no war in your book,” Tessa retorted
passionately. “It’s not a true historical tome, it’s the story of one real woman’s amazing life, she’s front and center the whole time. She is the narrative, the spine of the story, the Civil War, Scarlett, Rhett, Ashley, and even poor Melanie all rolled into one. Every page lives and breathes Cassandra Lennox. You wrote biography like a novel and now you’re thinking like a historian.”

“And you’re talking like an agent.”

“I am not!” Tessa glared at him in fury.

“Just kidding, take it back, wanted to see what you’d say,” he said, stumbling over his words at her rage. “You’re talking like an actress who’s fallen in love with a part, aren’t you?”

She sat in sullen silence.

“Well, aren’t you?” he persisted. “Yes or no?”

“True,” she snapped. “Did any of the others talk to you like me?”

“No, it’s all been agent-to-agent talk, I haven’t gotten into it at all. I just keep saying no.”

“Shouldn’t you be less rigidly academic, more flexible and most of all more thoughtful about the future of your work,” she prodded him.

“I played football to get through college, never had much of an academic attitude till I discovered history. Shouldn’t you be more show biz, more snotty, more Hollywood?” His grin told her that he wasn’t to be influenced easily.

“Do you see Susan Sarandon as Cassie?” Tessa demanded. Maybe a change of pace, even if she had to mention a rival for the rights, would at least make him think about the possibility of a film, and nudge him off his prejudices.

“Nope, too much of a wholesome American redhead, too mature for the early scenes.”

“Michelle Pfeiffer?”

“Too fragile. Essentially tragic. Cassie had more blood and guts.”

“Glenn Close?”

“Too tall, beautiful in her own austere way, but she doesn’t drip sex and Cassie did. Now Meryl Streep—”

“Streep?” Tessa stopped just short of screeching.

“Just kidding.”

“I hope you’re having fun,” she said coldly.

“I am,” he said, looking pleased with himself. “Another drink?”

“It must be ego-gratifying to have every major star in Hollywood wanting to play Cassie,” Tessa said, tapping her empty glass. This wasn’t going to work, the man was some kind of tin-pot despot, more interested in protecting his precious rights than giving Cassandra Lennox to the world. She might as well have another drink.

“Not particularly,” Sam Conway replied slowly, suddenly sounding uncharacteristically bashful. “What is ego-gratifying is that you, Tessa Kent, want to play Cassie. I kept seeing you as I researched and wrote the book. I know this sounds totally corny, but you’ve always been my favorite movie star. I cried at
Little Women
, disgracing myself completely with my high-school buddies, not at Beth but as Jo—you broke my heart, you were so beautiful … almost as beautiful as you are now. And
Gemini Summer
was the only sex-ed class I ever needed. I wouldn’t sell my book because I was saving it for you. But I wanted to see if you’d read it.
I wanted you to come to me
. My adolescent soul again, and my adolescent crush on you, and I guess, shit!, my adolescent insecurity.”