Ms. Taken Identity (18 page)

He drops me off at the Drake, and it’s still early enough that I have some time to kill before dinner, so I cross Lakeshore
Drive and take a stroll and watch the volleyball players and joggers and sailboats. I call Marie and tell her I made it in
fine, and I wish she were here, or I were there, but we’ll be seeing each other soon enough.

I get back to my room about six thirty and realize I’ve worked up a bit of a sweat, which I now regret since I’ll be slipping
back into the same moist khakis and oxford shirt after my shower. Oh well. At least
I’ll
be clean. I get the shower going and I’m getting ready to step in when I hear a knock on the door.

“Front desk.”

I throw on my plush hotel robe and open the door. It’s one of the bellhops.

“Good evening, Mr. Samuel.” He’s holding a garment bag and a shoebox. “May I come in, sir?”

“Uh, sure.”

He carefully lays the bag on my bed, the box on the floor.

“Compliments of Ms. Longwell. Good evening.” He touches his cap and is gone, and I’m too stunned to realize I should’ve given
him a tip.

I peel the wrapper off the garment bag. It’s a navy pinstripe blazer with matching pants, a belt, and a powder blue shirt.
Inside the box is a pair of black loafers. There’s a note pinned to the lapel of the jacket:
Brent said you traveled light. We thought these might be your size, and look great on you. See you at seven thirty. K
.

Well son of a bitch: I
am
being wined and dined.

I shower and slip into my new duds, which fit perfectly, and style my hair the way Rosie did in the salon, best as I can.
I think it works, because after the front desk calls and says Ms. Longwell is here for me, I pass a couple women in the lobby
who give me a second look. I toss them a smile, like
ho hum
, just another day for me at the Drake in my Ralph Lauren Black Label pinstripe suit and Cole Haan loafers, but it doesn’t
feel that way inside.

Outside, in the early evening light, I look for the Cherokee from this afternoon, or a limo, or Brent, but see nothing of
that sort. Only a vintage Jaguar convertible with the top down and Demi Moore leaning against the hood. Demi gives me a wave.

“Mitch!”

The first thing I notice is her legs. Tanned and slender and toned, and about six feet long. At least that’s how they look
in her dress, which is black and clingy and short. Her hair is down and straight and thick, and her sunglasses on top hold
some of it back. She gives me a hug and I smell her perfume: womanly, sexy, expensive.

“Let’s have a look at you,” she says, holding me at arm’s length. It’s obvious she likes what she sees. “Brent has a wonderful
eye for sizes, doesn’t he?”

“He does,” I agree, though I’m not sure I like the fact that Brent checked me out enough to get my size. But I should, since
it all fits so well. “And you look… wow. Fantastic.”

“Merci beaucoup.”
She throws a little shoulder turn into the pose, model-like, which accentuates her, um, assets. I try not to stare, at either
of them. “Shall we?” she asks.

We shall.

It’s my first time in a Jag, and I’ll tell you straight off it’s no Malibu sedan. Not that we set any land speed records,
because we don’t: what we do is cruise along the lake, the wind in our hair, and it’s a beautiful evening, the sun going down,
and a ton of people are out, staring at us at stoplights, and what they’re thinking, I’m sure, is, “Hey, it’s Demi and Ashton,”
but I’d be flattering myself if I thought I looked half that good, so it’s more like, “Hey, it’s Demi and Ashton’s cousin
Shlomo.” But I still feel pretty good about myself, if you want to know the truth.

We eventually get to a restaurant called Jimmy’s and you can see it’s a nice place from the lighting and all the woodwork
and the jazz trio. Katharine is from the area, still has family here and lives here most of the year, and this is one of her
favorite places to eat. The maître d’ leads us to our table, and other patrons stare at us, as people did outside, whispering,
nudging each other, but now it feels intrusive. It’s one thing to do it when we’re in the car, out in the open, on public
streets; but we’re here for dinner, so come on, people, give us a break. One woman a couple tables over actually pulls out
a cell phone and I think she’s going to call someone, but she snaps a picture. She’s lucky I don’t go over there and break
the damn thing.

“Do you ever get tired of that?” I ask. “People more or less pawing you with their eyes wherever you go?”

She smiles as if I’ve said something terribly amusing, which I don’t think I have. “No. I don’t.”

“Really? Never?”

“Really.
Never
.”

She can tell I’m having a tough time believing that, because she gives me another smile, this one sympathetic. “Let me explain
something, Mitch. Do you have any idea who I was before I was this?” and here she makes a mock grandiose gesture to refer
to herself.

It’s a dangerous question (a thousand times more dangerous than “Does this make my ass look big?”) because if I base it on
how she looks today, then subtract fifteen or so years to get her back before it all started, I’m tempted to say something
like “the highest-priced call girl in town,” which, I believe, isn’t the kind of thing a woman wants to hear. So I take the
easy way out.

“I don’t know. Fashion consultant for
Elle
?”

She just laughs. “No, not quite. I was a secretary for an insurance agent. The woman you’d call to give the make and model
and year of your new car, and I’d quote you rates, depending on your age and zip code and what kind of deductible you wanted.
Or maybe it was a boat or trailer or motorcycle. I did those too. I sat in front of a computer screen all day and took smoke
breaks and was thirty pounds overweight.
That
was Katharine Longwell.”

I’ve seen those before-and-after diet ads in magazines. She could
definitely
do one, if she still has the before pictures. Not that she needs to, with the writing career and all.

“Those were desperate days, Mitch. I wanted to kill myself. Not that I was actually suicidal, but I just wanted to put an
end to that type of life.
This
is what I’d been so excited to get to when I was a kid and couldn’t wait to grow up? So I started to write. I created a character
just like me, a woman who was overweight, stuck in a dead-end career, with a history of bad relationships and no good prospects
on the horizon. But then I gave her what
I
wanted: a fairy godmother, an escape, a way to change her life. She wins a contest to go to the Academy Awards with a celebrity
date. Can I tell you it was Pierce Brosnan, even though I called him Brock? Anyway, she finds the willpower to lose the weight,
become more assertive and self-possessed, so that by the time she gets to the Oscars and meets Brock, and he’s a dud, she
has become fabulous, star quality herself, inside and out, and her life takes off from there.”

The story she’s talking about is
Leading Lady
, her first novel. And bestseller. And movie. As if you didn’t know.

“Let me tell you, Mitch, I had a great time turning the ugly duckling into a princess. And it was easy to do, because it was
all in my head, and anything can happen there. But then one day I realized that it didn’t have to be just in my head. I was
alive, I still had dreams, and I could change
my
life,
if I wanted
. So I quit my job, did some freelance writing, started eating better and going to the gym and smiling more. And maybe I wasn’t
having tantric sex with my twenty-two-year-old hunky personal trainer or tying the hands of A-list actors to the bedposts,
like my heroine, but at least I was getting second glances, having guys want my number, getting an article published here
or there,
liking
myself. So that by the time I finished writing my book, I was looking people in the eye and taking chances and believing
in myself. I’d created a different me, one that my ten-year-old self would be proud of, a woman who was strong and sexy and
confident. I’d already won. And then the novel got published and flew off the shelves, and the rest, as they say, is history.”

Here, she gives a delicious smile.

“Has some of it gone to my head? You bet it has. I love my clothes, my cars, my spa retreats, my ski trips to Tahoe, the fact
that I can see a handsome young man in a coffee shop and flirt with him and fly him up to dinner on a day’s notice because
from the moment I laid eyes on him, I knew exactly the suit he’d look good in. And you do look good, Mitch.” Here, Katharine
Longwell—shopper, spa-hopper, and slope-dropper—gives me a smoldering gaze. “But beyond indulging my whims whenever and however
I please, it’s also given me the power to take on causes, adopt pet projects, like helping out Bradley with her writing. And
I
love
doing that. Because in my heart of hearts, Mitch, despite the red carpets and Elton John Oscar parties and magazine cover
shoots, that’s what I am, too: a writer. And my greatest pride still comes from knowing that I’m able to lay a good story
down on the page.”

“Not according to critics.” It’s out before I can stop it. “I mean, that’s what my cousin says. And she hates them for it.”

“Ah, the critics. Well, with all due respect, when it comes to the critics, I made a decision a long time ago not to be a
Keats.”

“Pardon?”

“John Keats. English poet. Familiar with him?”

“Yeah. A little.”

“‘Ode on a Grecian Urn.’ ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci.’ Sublime. Anyway, the critics hated his first book of poetry, he never
got over it, and eventually it killed him.”

“Uh, didn’t he also have TB?”

“Sure he did. But the reviews crushed his spirit, took away his will to fight it. That’s what I believe. In any case, I promised
myself I wouldn’t be one of those writers who lived and died by what the critics said. Great, if they loved me. But given
the choice, I’d rather have my readers love me.”

“But isn’t that just pandering, appealing to the lowest common denominator?”

“Why? Just because the books sell lots of copies and people are entertained?”

“Yeah, basically. I mean, it shouldn’t really matter how much people are entertained, or how many people read it. A novel
should be art.”

“And it is, sometimes. It’s called literature. Artists do it, like Woolf and Faulkner and Flaubert. The rest of us are a different
breed. We’re storytellers. We’re the ones who gather people around the campfire and spin yarns. Except we do it on the page.”

I cross my arms.

“You don’t think that’s good enough, do you? That there’s value in just weaving a good story and being entertaining?”

“No” is what I want to say, but I’m at risk of digging myself, and my cousin, into a bigger hole and blowing my cover, so
I just sort of shrug.

She gives me a smile. “Let me ask you something, Mitch. You’ve heard of the Arabian Nights, right? Aladdin, Ali Baba, Sinbad
the Sailor…”

I nod.

“Do you know who tells those stories?”

“Scheherazade.”

“Good. And do you know why?”

I honestly can’t remember. So I just shake my head.

“King Shahriyar’s first wife cheats on him, so in revenge, enlightened soul that he is, he takes a new bride each day and
executes her after the wedding night. Scheherazade is his latest, and she knows what’s coming, so on her wedding night she
tells the king a story, but she leaves it incomplete, promising to finish the next night. The king is so enthralled by the
tale, he puts off killing her for one night, to hear the end. And the next night she does the same, and the next, and the
next, until all her tales are told, and he’s been so captivated by the thousand and one nights of her stories, Ali Baba and
all the rest, that he permanently abandons his plan to kill her, or any other women. Armed only with her wiles and a collection
of entertaining stories, she saves her own life, and the life of every other woman in the kingdom.”

It sounds familiar now that she’s saying it, so I’ll assume she’s not making it up.

“Mitch, you’re a smart guy and you can probably see it yourself. But I think there’s a moral there.” She leans forward in
her chair and I catch a whiff of her perfume, which still smells great. “Even those stories that
merely
entertain us have the power to touch us and delight us, and that goes a long way toward making us more human.”

I’m sure I could rebut her if I wanted, come up with something from Goethe or Stendhal or Henry James that has nothing to
do with stories as entertainment. But right now I don’t feel much like trying. Sitting in my new clothes, listening to piano
jazz, smelling Katharine’s perfume, watching our waiter serve us our bottle of Bordeaux, I think I’d rather just kick back
and enjoy my dinner.

Later, we drive back to her brownstone to “talk about the book.” What this means, I assume, is that she’ll grab some champagne
and slip into a swimsuit the size of a shoestring and shuttle us out to her
Bachelor
-style hot tub for some one-on-one time (“Time to earn your flight up here, big boy”), so I already have my excuse: I’m allergic
to champagne. And swimsuits. And water. But instead of stripping down to our skivvies and “talking about the book,” we actually
sit on the sofa in her living room and
talk about the book
. There are some minor changes she’d make—jazz up some names, tone down a drunken St. Tropez orgy, give the husband a redeeming
quality or two (since why would Courtney go back to him, even temporarily, before she winds up with the other guy?)—but overall,
Bradley is on the right track, her instincts are good, she’s got a firm grasp of the genre, the writing is strong and funny.
In other words, Katharine likes it a lot. So much, in fact, that though it’s only a hundred pages, if Bradley keeps up as
she’s going right now,
Catwalk Mama
could find its way into print.

I nearly fall off the sofa. “You mean… as in published?”

She nods. “Of course, I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up too early. This isn’t the easiest business to break into, and
even with all my connections, it’s not like I can just wave a wand and get it published for her. But I think it has the chance
to be something special. If the rest stays this clever, sexy, and good-hearted, I’d be happy to pass it along to my agent,
throw a little weight around, see if I can’t get something rolling.”