“Leon, it’s funny because Aidan and I hardly ever went for dinner, just the two of us. We had takeout at home, or went out with you and Dana, or Rachel and Luke, or whoever. And we’d already been for a fancy romantic dinner, two nights before, because it was Valentine’s night, remember?”
“Okay.”
“And looking back, something had upset him. He’d had a call on his cell—he said it was work, but I don’t think it was because he was very subdued after it, like he’d had the stuffing knocked out of him.”
“Work stuff can do that to a guy.”
“I don’t know, Leon, it seemed bigger than that, and he stayed subdued and sort of…distant. I mean, he tried his best, especially on Valentine’s night, but those things are so cheesy and stilted anyway…Anyway, the next thing is he’d booked a table at Tamarind, and I said I didn’t understand why we were going out for dinner again so soon, but he said please, so I said okay.”
“Jeez, I wish Dana was more like you.”
“I’m not. I wasn’t usually like that, but I remember thinking that if it was important to him that we go out to talk—because obviously we weren’t just going for the food”—I stopped Leon before he got going—“no matter how nice it is—then I would do it.”
“But you never got there.”
“No. And I sort of forgot about it. I mean, not really. Not always. But…there was too much other stuff going on. Leon, you were his best friend. Did Aidan love me?”
“He would have taken a bullet for you.” Stricken silence. “Sorry, wrong thing to say. He was crazy about you. Me and Dana, we knew him and Janie together, but you and him were different. The real thing.”
“Okay, here comes the tough question. Are you ready?”
Fearful nod.
“At the time that he died, was Aidan cheating on me?”
Leon looked appalled. “No way!”
“But how do you know? Would he have told you?”
“Absolutely. He had that guilt thing, always felt the need to confess.”
Now, that was true. He’d probably have confessed to me, never mind Leon.
“And I’d have guessed it anyhow,” Leon said. “We were tight, you know. He was my best buddy.” His voice broke. “The best buddy a guy could have.”
Automatically, I reached into my bag and passed him a tissue.
Leon spread the tissue over his face and choked into it while I asked myself if I believed him. Yes, I decided. I believed him. So what was going on?
But when I got back to the office, there was a series of frantic messages from Kevin on my voice mail, the last one saying, “I’m coming to see you in New York tomorrow morning. I can’t get there before then. Anna, this is big stuff. If anyone calls you, any woman you don’t know, don’t talk to her, Anna, don’t talk to her until I get there.”
Oh my God. My knees were trembly and I sank onto my chair. Leon was wrong and I’d been right. This was what I’d been waiting for.
I felt sick. But calm. It was out of my hands now.
I could have rung Kevin and found out everything, but I didn’t want to. I knew anyway. And I needed a little longer to remember my life with Aidan the way I’d thought it had been.
81
Anna. Anna!” I was brought back to the present by Franklin. Looking at me oddly.
“Ariella’s office, right now.”
“O-kay.” I trailed along slowly. I didn’t give a shite.
“Close the door,” Ariella said.
“O-kay.”
I sat down without Ariella telling me to. She flashed another of those “what the fuck?” looks at Franklin, who was standing behind me.
Go on then, sack me. Get on with it.
“Yeah.” Ariella cleared her throat. “Anna, we have some news for you.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
Another perplexed exchange.
“Devereaux is going with our pitch.”
“Hey, that’s just great,” I said superperkily. “Wendell’s or mine?”
“Yours.”
“But you want to fire me. So fire me.”
“We can’t fire you. They loved you. The head guy, Leonard Daly, thought you were, I quote, ‘a great kid, very courageous’ and a natural to do a whispering campaign. He said you had believability.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Why? You’re not quitting!”
I thought about it. “Not if you don’t want me to. Do you?”
Go on, say it.
“No.”
“No what?”
“No, we don’t want you to quit.”
“Ten grand more, two assistants, and charcoal suits. Take it or leave it.”
Ariella swallowed. “Okay to the money, okay to the assistants, but I can’t green-light charcoal suits. Formula Twelve is Brazilian, we need carnival colors.”
“Charcoal suits or I’m gone.”
“Orange.”
“Charcoal.”
“Orange.”
“Charcoal.”
“Okay, charcoal.”
It was an interesting lesson in power. The only time you truly have it is when you genuinely don’t care whether you have it or not.
“Right,” I said. “I’m giving myself the rest of the day off.”
It was only when I got home that I remembed about Helen. In her last e-mail her situation had sounded a little hairy but I hadn’t really taken it in at the time.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Are you okay?
What’s happening?
A short time later, I got a reply.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Denooming!
Back at my office a note had been shoved under door. It said, “Do you want to know who sent the nudie pictures of Detta and Racey? Do you want to know what’s really going on?” ’Course bloody well did!
It said to show up tonight, 10 P.M., at address on docks. Looked it up on map: it was a warehouse. Was prepared to bet was a deserted warehouse. Why can’t denooming ever take place in nice comfortable bar?