Mr. Love: A Romantic Comedy (6 page)

13

As soon as Jane Cooper takes her briefcase containing the signed contract and leaves the house, Gordon dashes for the bathroom, fearing that the stress of the last day has made him physically ill.

But once he splashes his face at the sink, he feels somewhat restored.

He looks at his reflection in the mirror (he has to duck, the
looking-glass is positioned for his much shorter sister) and is astonished to see that none of the distress is visible on his face.

In fact, Gordon looks better than he has in months and can’t contain a feeling of elation at what he has pulled off.

Not only has he accessed even more money for his unacknowledged bastard child,
Ivy
, but (more significantly) is now assured of seeing
Too Long the Night
in print.

“
Nicely done, Gordo, I always knew you had it in you.”

He turns and
sees Suzie Baldwin blowing him a kiss as she disappears through the closed door.

Gordon dries his face, combs his hair and straightens his collar.

Opening the bathroom door, he says, “Bitsy, what do you say to a little celebratory dinner down at Grace’s?”

There is no reply.

“Bitsy?”

His sister is not in the living room or kitchen.

He sticks a head into her bedroom and sees she’s not there either.

Crossing to the living room window, Gordon pulls back the drapes and looks out into the night. The streetlight shines on empty road where the Volvo was parked.

His sister, very uncharacteristically, has left without saying a word.

14

Bitsy Rushworth, foot flat to the floor of her Volvo as she s
peeds through the night, feels—quite literally—not herself.

Which is not to say that she feels
bad
, exactly.

This feeling of dislocation, of watching some new, braver,
Bitsy from a slight distance is not altogether unpleasant and her usual reticence and nervousness seem to have drained away and been replaced with a sense of purpose.

A sense that, at last, she has found a way to give her life meaning.

To be truly useful.

Is this the evolution that Daniel Quant ha
d spoken of?

The evolution he assured her would come if she followed the path of mindfulness and self-awareness?

“By far the most creative thing you’ll ever do is create your new self,” he’d said to her during a one-on-one session on a hot afternoon last summer, the buttery sunlight washing the room, making him glow as he stood over her, tanned and lithe in his white T-shirt and linen pants, his feet bare.

She couldn’t help but notice that his toes were shapely and neatly clipped.

Somehow she found this reassuring.

Not to mention attractive.

She’d been about to speak when he held up one of his broad, workman’s hands, and said, “Do I hear a
when
?”

“Yes,” she said, blushing. “Am I being impatient?”

“An all-too-human quirk, Bitsy. Just believe that transformation will come and let it happen.” He rested a hand on her shoulder, and she swore she could feel that an electrical charge course through her. “Don't try to steer the river.”

Driving her Volvo over the cattle grid and past the Quant Foundation sign, she feels like she has flung herself into a surging river, letting it take her where it will.

Bitsy stops the car outside Daniel Quant’s house, a beacon of light in the darkness, and feels a flash of her old uncertainty.

Then she pushes this away and stands up out of the car, walking toward the house.

A dog barks somewhere far away and she hears a lilting piano melody wafting through the night.

As she nears the front
entrance a man appears in the doorway.

Thinking it’s Daniel her heart leaps, but as she draws closer she sees Carlos, one of his young assistants.

“Hi,” Carlos says.

“I’m Bitsy Rushworth,” she says.

“Of course, Bitsy. What’s up?”

“I need to see Daniel,” she says.

Before he can answer an intimidatingly tall, very beautiful girl whose name she can’t recollect, drapes an arm over Carlos’s shoulder and stares down at Bitsy.

“Daniel’s contemplating. He is not to be disturbed.”

Old Bitsy would have fled to her car, but the newer, bolder version, says, “This is important. It’s about the financial future of the Foundation.”

“Is it now?” the girl says with just the hint of a sneer.

“Why don’t you get Bitsy a drink, Una, and I’ll see if Daniel is up to an audience?”

Una
shrugs and flounces off, folding herself onto a couch.

Carlos, who is clearly her boyfriend—they make an absurdly gorgeous couple—bounds up the wooden staircase, his bare feet
drumming lightly.

Una
offers no drink.

Nor does she invite Bitsy to take a seat.

Bitsy doesn’t mind, she feels too excited to sit, so she wanders the room, looking at the paintings and artifacts, an eclectic mix of Eastern and Western: Buddhas and Ganeshes rub shoulders with colorful abstracts and primitive Africana.

Her practiced eye approves of what she sees.

Daniel Quant has good taste.

Carlos returns and says, “Daniel’s waiting, Bitsy. Go on up.”

Bitsy mounts the stairs leading to the dimly lit upper level, the piano piece getting louder.

Then the music ends, abruptly and a voice says, “Bitsy?”

She sees Daniel standing at the top of the stairs, barefoot, dressed in a T-shirt and fisherman’s pants.

“Daniel, I’m sorry to come here unannounced.”

“Oh, but I’ve been waiting for you, Bitsy.”

“You have?”

Was this some clairvoyant, precognitive thing he was laying claim to?

He laughs his deep, melodious, laugh.

“Yes, I’ve been waiting for you for months. And you’ve arrived. The new, improved, much-better-Bitsy.” He laughs again. “I’m not wrong, am I?”

“No,” she says, “something has happened.”

“Something has a way of doing that,” he says and seats himself on a pile of cushions beneath a lamp in the corner of a big, bare room.

He gestures for her to join him and she hunkers down, a little stiffly. 

He smiles and watches her, his face serene.

“Daniel . . .”

“Bitsy.”

“I hope you don’t think this is very forward of me, but I think I may be able to access the funds the Foundation needs. If they’re still needed, of course?”

“Very much so, yes. A bloody boatload!” He laughs.

“Well, I think my ship has come in.”

It’s only when he chuckles again that she realizes what she has said, and joins in the laughter.

“I’m going to be the recipient of a vast amount of money very soon.”

“Really?” he says.

“And I would like to give it all to you. To the Foundation.”

“That’s very generous,” he says.

“Over the next year a sum of at least a million dollars should be available.”

“That’s wonderful.”

“I’ll be able to give you the first installment within weeks.”

“Fantastic.”

“Do you want to know where the money is coming from?”

“Not unless you want to tell me.”

She hesitates and he says, “I’m sensing
a conflict, Bitsy. Is there anything you want to discuss?”

So, in the belief that her secrets are safe with this charming and enlightened man, she ends up telling him about the book Gordon wrote.

And about her agreeing to pretend to be Viola Usher.

“Am I doing a bad thing, Daniel? Lying like this?”

He shrugs.

“I’m not here to judge you. And neither am I a priest ready with glib promises of forgiveness in exchange for a few Hail Marys. You have made a choice.”

“Yes, I have. Why do I feel so deceitful?”

“Do you really think you’re being deceitful?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay, consider this,” he says, leaning toward her. “When we shell out our hard-earned bucks for a movie we do so in the knowledge that we’re going to be lied to, that some
Hollywood actors are going to pretend to be people that exist only the mind of a screenwriter somewhere. We are happily complicit in this deception and call it entertainment. Do you see where I’m going here?”

“Not exactly.”

“Okay, we’re lied to, but we’re still given a tangible product: the movie. So the transaction isn’t fraudulent, is it, although it is predicated on a series of falsehoods?”

“I suppose not.”

“In the case of this book there is also a deception. Viola Usher does not exist. But the book does. Therefore the readers, although they are buying the novel from somebody who is not real, still get a book that is. No blame no foul.”

“True. But I’m saying
that
I
wrote the book.”

“If your brother were to acknowledge authorship of the book would it change the transaction? Would the reader
s not still get a book in exchange for their money?”

“Yes. I mean, no. I think . . .”

He laughs.

“It’s all about masks, Bitsy. Some are sinister, dark, like those of an executioner or a bank robber. Others are harmless, even delightful, like those worn to a masked ball. The mask you have chosen to wear falls into the latter category. Your pretence, I would say, is nothing more than a little harmless froth.”

“You’ve made me feel a lot better.”

“I did nothing. I merely held up a mirror.”

“Well . . .”

He stands and waits as she battles to her feet.

Then he clasps her hands in his.

God how she longs to fold into his arms, breathe in the musky maleness of him.

“I’m very grateful to you, Bitsy. This is a marvelous gesture.”

“The Foundation has changed my life.”

“No, you have changed your life. All we provided was a safe space.”

He leads her toward the stairs.

“I sense you’re about to get booted out of your comfort zone, Bitsy. Just remember: in the midst of all the movement and chaos that is to come, keep stillness within you.”

He raises a hand in
farewell and then turns and disappears into the shadows.

Bitsy floats rather than walks down the stairs and even the scornful look
from Una, curled up on the sofa with Carlos, can’t dampen the wild soaring of her heart.

15

It’s after 2
A.M. when Jane stops the rental car outside her apartment building and drags herself into the lobby toward the elevator.

Once she got Bitsy Rushworth’s signature on the contract Jane
had fired up the Honda and headed straight back to Manhattan, the long drive and her lonely apartment more appealing than another night of bedbugs in East Devon’s Sugar Maple Inn.

The girl who stares back at her from the mirror of the elevator as the doors
start to slide closed looks drawn and gaunt, her black hair a greasy helmet, and is that a zit she sees incubating in the corner of her mouth?

Jane
leans in close to the mirror, grimacing, trying to get a better look at the pimple when the doors shudder open again and Tom Bennett bolts in.

If Jane thinks she looks rough, Tommy boy looks as if he was dragged down Broadway tied to the rear of a car.

He’s wearing a hoodie and a soiled T-shirt over jeans and sneakers.

And he smells
of sweat and something sour and chemical.

“What the hell are you doing here, Tom?”
Jane asks, lunging for the elevator buttons.

He blocks her and crowds her against the back of the cabin as the doors close and the elevator rises.

“Get away from me,” she shouts.

He raises his hands.

“I just need to talk to you, Janey.”

“No. Stop this elevator and let me out.”

“I’ve been waiting since yesterday, down in the street. Where the hell were you?”

She has her phone out.

“I’m dialing 911.”

He wrenches the phone from her hand.

“Tom! Jesus!”

He fends her off and thumbs the phone, opening her photo gallery.

As she watches Tommy deletes the pictures she took of him and his little freak show.

“How do you know I didn’t already transfer those to my iPad?” she says as he finishes and throws the phone at her.

“Because you’re too dumb to do that, remember? It was always:
Tommy, how do I do this?
Tommy, how do I do that?
”

His voice an ugly parody of hers.

Staring at this terrifying stranger she wonders how he gobbled up nice, even-tempered Tom Bennett.

The elevator pings as it reaches her floor.

Jane sprints out expecting Tom to follow her.

But he stays in the elevator and gives her the finger.

“Have a nice life, you boring little bitch.”

The doors close and Jane finds herself shaking and crying as she fumbles with the locks and finally gets herself into her apartment.

The place has never seemed so empty.

She heads for the kitchen, dumps her shoulder bag on the counter and washes her face in the sink, drying herself on a kitchen towel.

The bedroom and its en suite bathroom are a no-fly zone right now.

Jane opens the fridge and finds a bottle of Heineken.

She uncaps it and as she takes a slug she’s a kid for a moment, sitting on the porch on a summer night with her father, a small town sportswriter, listening to hissing old vinyl recordings of Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor and George Carlin, her father allowing her a sip of his favorite beer, the two of them laughing like drains.

She’s almost tempted to call him, her old dad, and cry on his shoulder.

But his heart isn’t good these days and she’ll just freak him out, so she resists the impulse.

These are wounds she’ll have to lick alone.

Jane thinks of Tom and realizes how lucky she was to make that impulsive decision to fly home and surprise him on his birthday.

If she hadn’t she would have married him.

She shudders at the thought of what her life would have become.

Jane chugs back the last of the beer and feels a little of her moxy returning.

She takes her iPad from her bag and powers it up, opening her photo gallery.

And there they are, those disgusting pictures, some impulse getting her to transfer them from her phone while she sat in Starbucks yesterday morning.

See Tom
, she says aloud.

I can do it.

Sucker.

Before
Jane can talk herself out of it, she creates an anonymous Yahoo email account, finds the addresses of Batton, Barstow and Klinch (the triumvirate of gods who rule over her ex-fiancés law firm) and attaches four of the juiciest pictures of Tom Bennett at his play date.

Jane hesitates for just a moment before she hits
send.

“How
’bout them apples, Tommy?” she says out loud, channeling her dear old dad again.

Then she is suddenly exhausted, literally too tired to undress.

Jane falls face down on the couch and just as sleep claims her she thinks of Gordon Rushworth camping in his sister’s living room and she feels an unexpected (and unwanted) sense of kinship.