Out beyond us strobe lights blinked and microphones squealed. “Despite how you feel about severance or compensation for me, if it comes to separation for my team, no one knows better than you what a small world fragrance is. I expect financial generosity and sterling recommendations for them. It would be foolish not to agree.”
“Foolish I am not,” he said over screaming fans tripling the decibel level.
“No, you’re not. I trust you to do the right thing by them and by me. No threats; no rants. I swear resigning never crossed my mind until your explanations these past fifteen minutes convinced me. You’ve crossed the line and invaded every aspect of my professional and personal life. I’ve known you as a man of your word but you’ve destroyed my trust.”
For the first time since that blustery spring interview he looked vulnerable. “Bollocks. Emma, give yourself and Mayfair twenty-four hours.”
I shook his hand. “All right, fair enough. But Julian, You do not want me speaking to your directors tomorrow.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Willpower propelled me out of the corporate box and along the winding hallways of Madison Square Garden. I fought tears and muttered obscenities as the concert burst into action. Electric guitar mania from the front band became the soundtrack of our ending credits.
I exited through the main doors and side stepped two girls breaking up their homemade posters, dead ringers for Genevieve and me in middle school. “No tickets?” I asked.
“As if,” the younger one said.
“We were jerks to think they’d go in the front doors.”
“They would have if it hadn’t been so crazy out here. I happen to know the boys love their fans.”
“You know them?”
“I do. George, Jasper and Tommy are English. Cian’s Welsh and Ennis, Irish.”
“Oh my gosh. Sweet.”
I took off my credential lanyard and slung it over the older girl, then rummaged through my satchel for my tickets. “No way, no way!” she screamed.
“This is a scam,” her sister added.
“No scam and the longer we talk, the more you’ll miss.” I walked them inside. “Jennifer Rocket. Remember the name. She’s the organiser at your seats. Tell her Emma will explain.”
“What if somebody stops us? This can’t be for real.”
“Cross my heart. Totally, totally for real.” I placed the tickets in her small hand and pressed both girls toward the thundering music and screaming. “Get going!”
After my short text to Jennifer with promise of voicemail details, I hustled into the blazing lights of Pennsylvania Plaza, pausing this time to call my husband. “Ethan! You’ve got to call me. Julian’s set you up. Me, too. Total Manipulation. I need you. I need to explain this craziness in person. Call me!”
I hit Herald Square and my Memory Mile: Macy’s, Lord and Taylor, Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman… What the fuck have I done rattled through my head all the way to the Waldorf. What the fuck had Julian been doing?
Within twenty minutes of reaching the hotel, I’d handed my board meeting file plus speaking notes to the concierge for immediate delivery to Julian’s suite. Whether Alistair intercepted didn’t phase me. As I emptied my Royal Suite closet, Thomas called. “Jennifer updated me as I finished the preconcert shoot,” he said, “You are one hell of a tough cookie.”
“Repeat that in a week when this sinks in. Julian and I stared each other down. He only mentioned surveillance of his old board room and infiltrating Ciao!Beauty to keep tabs on Carmine. Rifling his files stays between you and me. Even if he knows, it creates the perfect impasse. Either way, tomorrow please show up for your board members shoot as if you expect me.”
“As if you know zip. I’ve put you in enough jeopardy already.” I thanked him with racing heart and closed throat. Next I left Jennifer voicemail details, the promise to talk over the weekend, and to expect me first thing Monday morning to clean out my office and address the team. Sometime after ten I checked out of the Waldorf and into my apartment, snapping on lamps as if it could brighten the dark places in my head. When that didn’t work I shot Ethan another call.
It rang twice. “What the fuck, Emma, give it a rest. Ethan forgot his phone.”
“Darby?” I stared at my Nokia before putting it back at my ear. “Where is he? What are you doing out here?”
“I’m not out there; Ethan’s here, staying with me but I’ve been at work. Barely seen him. Him and Maxine went to dinner after the wake.”
“What wake?”
“The wake before the graveside thing for his old man.”
“Darby!”
“He said no way you’d make it.”
I dressed for the funeral as Julian would be speaking to his board members, arranged for my doorman to return of my first edition Jane Austen, and left for LaGuardia.
Three hours LGA to STL plus car rental and drive put me in Brucknerfield Saturday afternoon, unavoidably delayed for the graveside thing. Not by much but I hadn’t been included, plus I was sporting the charcoal Chanel dress Ethan called my ‘Jackie O plus sexy’ outfit. I drove past Gerty’s on Thirty, cold sweats pulsating like their ever-blinking Vacancy sign, thinking back to Ethan leaving for Australia with me, his pregnant obligation convinced we could survive.
A fashionably late grand entrance was not appropriate for the town butcher’s small, graveside funeral. A mile beyond the motel I veered into the BHS parking lot. Girls in BHS tracksuits rumbled off in their yellow bus. I got out of the car like the ghost of my high school self-sprinting the cinder track. That Old Rugged Cross drifted from under the funeral awning where a robed figure, no doubt Maxine, lead Ethan and his siblings. I climbed the bleachers up to seat twenty-four. Did his view of the football field yank him back to hard scrabble kids in desperate need of each other? My reverie evaporated as the most familiar figure I know jogged out of the landscaping and across the football field in the Hugo Boss suit I’d bought for the opera. At the edge of the cinder track he looked up; eyes shaded. I sat still, heart hammering. as he climbed the metal risers. “Well if it isn’t Mrs. Robinson, You’re in my seat.” I slid into twenty-three.
“You had five boyfriends, a concert and board meeting—”
“I have a husband and marriage.” I looked over his shoulder. “The service isn’t over.”
“I left. Maxine asked for a remembrance from both sets of us kids.” He opened a piece of paper against the breeze. “All I could think of was Dad cramming us older three in with his new three in his decrepit, converted bread truck to take us for ice cream and singing Old Country Church at the top of his lungs. I had to that far back to find something decent to say.” He looked at the funeral awning. “He and I made peace this week. Wherever he is, I hope it’s with his friends in the old country church, but me digging around for kind words? Bullshit. I did what Maxine asked and I sat with everyone acting like they care. Hardly a one’s ever been part of my life.”
He crumpled the paper. “All these years whenever the bottom drops out? I never told you but I think, ‘There’s always Brucknerfield.’ Always Brucknerfield? There’s nothing here but emptiness. Maxine called me forward to speak but I stood up and caught sight of you climbing the bleachers. You’re here just like the first time I saw you.”
“We don’t need reminders of beaten down childhoods. We were right to get out. You’ve got nothing here. But you have me.”
“Do I? You’ve built one hell of a Beautyland career. I’m proud of you but the invisible husband in that shadow, chasing his half-assed dream’s not an easy place to be.”
