Ms. Taken Identity (34 page)

I’m aware that someone is speaking to me, and it could be coming from off camera, or right next to me, but I don’t turn, don’t
say a word, don’t make eye contact with anyone. I yank off my mic, slip off my stool, and head for the nearest exit.

Katharine and I had made plans to spend the rest of the day in the city, hitting Battery Park and Tribeca and the Village,
maybe toast our
Catwalk Mama
with a dinner at a place called Evviva. I revise those plans, slightly. I go to the airport and get a return ticket to St.
Louis. I’d like to get a flight that’s leaving in ten minutes, but the best they can do is 2:20, which means I have a few
hours to kill. I buy a Yankees cap and a pair of sunglasses, just in case anyone has seen the show and might recognize me
as the guy who was talking crazy on
Regis
. Paranoid, maybe, since there are thirty million faces in the airport, and all of them more interesting than mine, but I’m
not taking any chances. I buy a
People
and bury myself in that, and there’s no mention of the story—yet. Eventually I give Katharine a call.

Of course she picks up, and of course she’s been waiting to hear from me. She informs me that I was right to assume our plans
for the afternoon were scrapped: it would’ve been a paparazzi feeding frenzy, the two of us strolling glibly around the city,
like nothing was wrong, stoking the idea that it was all a contrived publicity stunt. And she actually agrees that I’m not
being paranoid with my hat and glasses, since there is a ton of buzz about what happened. Oh, and she’s pissed.

“Do you realize what you did, Mitch? You made Susannah and me look like goddamned fools. Like we don’t even know what’s going
on right under our noses. And we don’t. I don’t even know who the hell wrote the book I’m out there hawking. Do you have any
idea how humiliating that is?”

“I’m sorry, Katharine.”

“You’re damned right you’re sorry. And you’ll be even sorrier when Sheldon gets hold of you. He chewed my ass out up and down.
And I had to take it. Because I’m the one who vouched for you and this project. And now it’s all blown up in my face, and
his face, and Susannah’s face, and we look like chumps. He’s got a good mind to drop that contract with you, Mitch. He could
sue you, for misrepresentation, falsifying information, whatever he wants, get all his money back and then some, probably
all the money you’ll ever make in your life, and your kids’ money, and their kids’ money. How’s that sound to you? Scare you
a little?”

“Yeah. A whole lot.”

“Good.” She pauses, then gives something that sounds like a laugh. “He won’t, of course. You just made him triple the money
he could’ve ever hoped to make off this. Going on national TV, duping the queen of chick-lit, apologizing to her, pouring
your heart out to your ex-fiancée. They won’t be able to keep that thing on the shelves. But that’s not the point. The point
is, you deceived a lot of people. You can’t just go around lying to people like that, Mitch.”

“Believe me. I get it.” I think it’s clear from my tone she knows I do, and in matters that have nothing to do with
Catwalk Mama
.

For a long time we don’t say anything. Then she lets out a sigh. It’s almost like the tide has changed and we’re in friendlier
waters now.

“I know it’s a tough market, Mitch. I understand your frustration, being closed off to a world you want to be part of. I can
see why you did it. And I’ll be honest with you: if I’d known from the start a guy had written it, I don’t know if I would’ve
been as interested. How’s that for irony? When I thought Bradley was a woman, I loved it. A fellow sister writing about fashion
and dating and relationships and fretting over all the things we fret over, and it sounded so funny, so sharp and self-deprecating.
Now that I know a man wrote it, I’m not sure how I feel. A guy writing a book like this is a harder sell. Susannah and I would’ve
had to work our asses off, and I’m not sure we would’ve been willing to do that.”

“I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t work my ass off for me.”

She doesn’t say anything for a while, and I wonder if she’s regretting that she did any of this and why didn’t she come to
that conclusion a long time ago.

“Mitch, I’d love to be able to hold all this against you. It’s hard, when you say things like that.”

I’m tempted to tell her I know a woman who can help her out with that.

“And in New York. Bradley. That was Marie?”

“Yeah. It made her sick to do it.”

“I can see why.”

She tells me this will probably play out in public for a while, that the tabloids and
Inside Edition
s will be all over it. I should just give the truth about everything, because that’s what she plans to do, and that way our
stories are straight and we look like we have nothing to hide, that it was what it was. She also lets me know that she may
need me for some appearances and signings, now that Bradley’s identity is out in the open. I tell her that’s fine.

“One more thing, Mitch.” She lowers her voice like she wants to keep whatever this is in private. “During your interview,
you said you did something stupid to Marie that caused her to let you go. Did it have anything to do with your last visit
to Chicago?”

I’m silent.

“I’m sorry, Mitch.”

“You didn’t do anything. It was my choice. I did it.”

“Still, I’m sorry for the way it turned out.”

Yeah, so am I. “Thanks.”

She tells me to try to stay loose, that this will all work out, and she’ll be in touch with me in the next few days.

“Oh, and about your book…” She pauses, like she needs to make sure that she’s
absolutely
certain she wants to say what she’s about to say, given everything that’s happened. “It
is
a great story. Bradley or not. Just so you know.”

And that, if you can believe it, is one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me.

I make one more call before I turn my phone off for good. This one to set up a reunion when I get back to St. Louis.

The sun’s been down for about half an hour now, and the course is empty. It’s one of those clear nights, no moon, no clouds,
and we’ll be able to see a million stars before too long. We’re sitting on the fringe on the eighteenth green, in the warm
grass. He has a beer, I have a beer, and neither one of us has our shoes on.

“So how’s it going, running a course?” he asks.

“Good, so far. Something new to learn every day. Such as, did you know grass reproduces itself sexually and asexually?”

He looks back at his hand, supporting him in the grass, like maybe he’s got his fingers in something they don’t need to be
in. “No. That’s one thing I can honestly say I didn’t know. But thanks.”

“Kip told me. The guy knows everything about this place.”

Some geese are floating out on the water, Shep and Bo keeping a careful eye on them to make sure that’s where they stay, in
the water. It’s the deal they’ve worked out: keep your feathered asses in the pond, and off the greens and fairways, and we’ll
let you be. Because even they know that while golfers love getting birdies and eagles on the course, they do not love getting
a goose. Or stepping in what a goose leaves behind.

“So what’s Kelly like?” Bradley asks.

“Cute. Very very cute. And tiny.”

“And Regis?”

“Funny. Very very funny. And tiny.”

“I wish I would’ve seen it. I mean all of it, live. Not just the clips I caught on the news.”

“Don’t worry. You saw the best parts. Or the worst. Take your pick.”

He scratches the sole of his right foot with the toes of his left.

“People been calling, I guess?”

“Nonstop. I don’t even answer anymore. There’s nothing more to tell them. Check your TiVo or YouTube. I pretty much said everything
I wanted to.”

Down by the shed, a kid named Aidan is splashing off the last of the carts for the evening. He stops to talk to Brandi, the
counter girl in the pro shop, who just got off. Aidan has a thing for Brandi, Brandi has a thing for Aidan, but they’re sixteen,
so they haven’t quite gotten around to letting each other know, though everyone else does. It’s sweet. My guess is they’ll
figure it out soon, probably by the end of the month.

“So what’s the plan from here?” Bradley asks.

I shrug. “For the time being, run the course. Katharine may need me for some appearances, god help us all. I’ll finish my
dissertation in the fall. No teaching, though. And that’s pretty much it.”

“And what about your writing? Plans for another book?”

I shake my head. “No, not for a while. Eventually I’ll open a notebook, get started on something. But what, I don’t know.
Maybe a mystery. Historical fiction. Something about vampires.”

“But not chick-lit?”

“Nah, I don’t think so. I feel like I’m tapped out with that. Like if I did another, I’d be cheating on my
Catwalk Mama
.”

“Go out on top, then. Like Ted Williams. Hit a home run and retire.”

“Right. Though without the being-cryogenically-frozen-after-I-die part.”

“I don’t blame you there.”

A rabbit slips out from behind a shrub near the sixteenth tee, just across from us. Shep sees it first and tears off, Bo on
his heels. I don’t think they’re much interested in the rabbit itself—they see them all the time and don’t bother with them—but
it gives them an excuse to get up and stretch their legs, since they have far more energy than Bradley or I.

Bradley takes a long pull on his beer.

“I talked to Marie before I came out here,” he says. He gives me a close look, but his eyes aren’t hard or flinty anymore.
They’re the eyes of my best friend. “She saw the whole thing this morning, Mitch. Every word of it. She liked what she heard.”
He reaches into his pocket. “She wanted me to give you this.”

He hands me a piece of paper with some numbers on it.

“What is it?”

“Her work hours this week.” He tries to keep a lid on his smile, but it’s not working. “She said your hair looked a little
long, and she’d like to help you out. If you’ll take her out for dinner.”

“
Oh?
Is that the deal, then?” I’m trying to be funny, cool, composed, but inside I’m eight and it’s Christmas morning and I just
hit the jackpot with Santa.

“Me, I don’t know hair,” Bradley says. “It looks fine to me. But she’s the expert. All I know is the best man gets included
in a lot of photos, and I don’t want your sloppy hair messing up any of the wedding shots. Got it?”

“Yeah,” I say, tipping my bottle of beer his way, “I got it.”

Over by the shed, Brandi has her sleeves rolled up and is helping Aidan with the last cart. They’re both a little wet, but
I think it’s because they’ve been tossing the sponge at each other, and laughing. Which means I was wrong: maybe it won’t
take till the end of the month for them to figure out how much they like each other. And who knows: maybe good things will
be happening for the rest of us a lot sooner than I could’ve expected.

I didn’t want to write this book. I was working on another project, not having much luck with agents, but I wanted to keep
my head there. In
literature
. My wife said I should change gears and write something fun and upbeat, like chick-lit. Nope. Sorry. Not my genre. Chick-lit
is written by…
chicks
. But we writers are always looking for plot ideas (warning: be careful what you say around a writer; it could turn into a
book), and my wife’s comments got the wheels churning. How about a guy who has no business writing a chick-lit novel deciding
to write a chick-lit novel? Hmm. Why doesn’t he want to write it? What would drive him to do it? And what would the outcome
be? I couldn’t believe my luck (and my wife’s brilliance) and decided to give the novel a shot. Boy, am I glad.

I’m a big fan of pop culture and sports and literature and love, and writing a book like this let me bring all those elements
together. (My first story, written in the fifth grade, had none: just a monster whose weakness was salt (!), and lots of dead
bodies.) I had a great time spending the past few months with Marie and Rosie and Katharine and Molly, getting to know their
worlds, paging through glam magazines, watching movies like
The Devil Wears Prada
and
Notting Hill
(after which I, uh, watched every movie with Al Pacino to, you know, balance things out). Spending time with Mitch wasn’t
so bad either, when he wasn’t being a snob. But I think he worked it out in the end. In fact, I’m envious: he got to meet
Regis Philbin, and spends all day on a golf course. We should all be so lucky.

Till the day I can say the same, I live in St. Louis with my best friend Robin, who’s also my wife. You can check out what
I’m up to at danbegley.com. Or let me know what you’re up to by e-mailing me at [email protected]. Thanks for reading!