“I guess you’re nowhere near letting this go?” Luci asked, knowing the answer.
I looked at Sara’s picture and shook my head.
“Listen, Jon, I know you love Sara, but sometimes things don’t work out because other better things are on the horizon. You understand?”
I stared at him, completely unwilling to consider any future that was not a mirror image of my past, even though I knew there was truth in his words.
“OK, fine. But so I don’t have to worry about you, would you answer your damn cell phone when I call? Izzy’s worried about you, too. She asks about you at least three times a day.”
“Sorry about that. I’ve been avoiding the phone. I’d rather not take a chance on answering.”
“San Francisco? The Nickels?”
I nodded glumly.
Luci took in the information silently. After a moment, he asked, “How’s the writing coming along?”
I pointed to the computer screen sitting on the plastic outdoor chair I’d been using as my writing table while seated cross-legged yoga style on the floor. The screen was empty.
“That doesn’t look promising.”
I smiled for the first time in a long time. “I agree.”
Eyeing the pizza boxes, Luci said, “Pizza is dead food. You need to eat something healthy. The pizza will only keep you depressed.” He motioned to the picnic basket on the floor. “Izzy figured you could use some home-cooked food. There’s pesto pasta in here, a spinach salad with tofu, and a chocolate on chocolate cake. You need it more than I thought.”
With sincerity, I said, “Tell Izzy thanks.”
“You need anything?”
I stared at the floor. “No, I’ll be okay. Thanks for coming over.”
“Call if you do.”
“I will.”
Luci stepped into the hallway, closing the door, the light in the room leaving with him. I glanced back at my computer screen, realizing I hadn’t done any decent work since before August. By that time, I had finished all my interviews and research for “The Coffee Shop Lovers,” the novella for Scott Michaels and Anna Jensen, my November wedding couple. In August, I had been working on the first draft of their story while attempting to complete a final draft of “The Internet Love Affair” for Candy Nickels and Edward Bronfman, due mid-August for an end-of-August wedding.
In the eight years I’d been doing this, I’d never missed a wedding deadline, but by the beginning of August I was in danger of doing just that. I’d written several drafts for Candy and Edward, but they seemed flat and uninteresting, not remotely representative of my normal product. I had ambitiously intended to finish all my projects by the end of August so I could spend the final four months of the year working on my forever-unfinished first novel, a labor of love I’d started just before entering college and was still trying to complete. The biggest obstacle for reaching this goal was the overwhelmingly negative impact my degraded relationship with Sara had on my writing. By August, everything I wrote had a dark slant to it, not a characteristic conducive to love stories. How was I supposed to write love stories for other people while my own romantic world was falling apart? The due date for “The Internet Love Affair” came and went and I was nowhere near having a finished product for them. If I had given them what I had at the time, they would have asked for their money back. But the problem was not just my personal crisis of love interfering with my ability to write. The couple themselves also posed a problem for me. If I had liked Candy, or Edward, the whole situation might have turned out differently. Maybe I would have been inspired in some way to get the story done. But as fate would have it, I didn’t like either one of them. They were self-involved, spoiled, shallow, and boring. Third-generation wealthy, their trust funds provided what the grandparents, and then parents, had worked hard for. They enjoyed all the money without the benefit of having to put in any of the hard labor. Candy said the words “me” and “I” more than any client I’d ever interviewed. Edward was just an arrogant prick. With my relationship drama in full swing, I didn’t have a chance in hell of finishing their story.
Several days before the wedding, Candy’s father, the current attorney general of California, called with veiled legal threats about missing deadlines and financial repercussions and the like. I hate bullies, and I hate being bullied even more. I decided I liked the father even less than the daughter. Looking back, I should have returned their money immediately after hanging up the phone and begged personal mental illness. I should have asked for more time, though Candy’s father had made it clear that was not an option. So I just sent them what I had, which was definitely a mistake. The phone calls started coming the day before the wedding, and they have not let up since. Now, anytime my PDA buzzed, if I didn’t recognize the number, I didn’t answer it. The messages they left were disturbing enough. I didn’t need to hear them live. Nickels Sr., Edward, Candy, and even her younger brother Nick Jr. were all calling. In a strange twist, Nick Jr.’s messages were more vicious than the others. I hoped eventually they would tire of harassing me, but they were relentless. After two months, moving into November, the calls were still coming.
When I first stumbled onto the idea of writing short Hollywood-framed love stories for couples about to become newlyweds, I never imagined one day I’d be ceaselessly harassed and threatened by my clients. Over the years, one of the side benefits of the job had been honing my skills of perception while interviewing the couple and their family and friends. I often discovered closely guarded secrets kept by one, or both, of the newlyweds-to-be that, if revealed, would shatter the delicate bonds of trust needed to keep the couple’s happiness intact. Generally, my clients wanted me to write what they wanted to believe to be their history together, not actually what was their history together. Over time, one of the harder parts of my job was realizing early on what each half of the couple actually wanted to be written, and not written. Regardless of my clients’ wishes, however, I considered it my job to know fact from fiction. Finding out about the petty fights, the side flings no one knew about, the breakups that happened before they finally settled in, the ubiquitous ex was the ground neither member of the couple wanted to cover or discuss, but which family and friends were more than happy to gossip about ad nauseam. Usually, the happy, positive, loving information came from the couple, while the juicy, racy information was provided from those close to the couple. Once I had the truth, I would then write the story I knew the couple wanted their friends and family to read, and often it was not the complete truth.
But writing anything other than the complete truth for Candy and Edward became next to impossible. I grew to hate the assignment far more than any project I’d ever taken on, wanting nothing more than to be done with them. As August wound down, I was on a crash course for failure, but I was so wrapped up in my own romantic demise I was unable to see the bigger picture.
I looked down at my computer, opening up the Nickels folder, clicking on the final draft I had sent to them. I began to read, stopping myself only moments into it, realizing I had been incredibly foolish—and mean—for turning over to them a story that had no filter. I’d given them a truthful, unedited version of who they were or, at least, how others saw them to be, and it was not a pretty picture. During my interviews with friends of the couple, I heard more negative gossip than I’d heard on any previous job. Many of Candy’s friends seemed like sycophants who cared more about Candy’s wealth than her friendship. Edward’s buddies had derogatory nicknames for his bride I’d never heard friends of the groom use before. Now, over two months later, my decision to hand over their story was still haunting me. I remembered the first conversation I had with Nickels Sr. after I’d sent off my final draft FedEx to Candy. Not even a day had passed from the moment I sent the final draft when I realized what I had done, so I decided to send the fifty percent deposit back as well. I knew I didn’t deserve to get paid for what I’d written. Nicke
ls Sr. was the first to call. I unsuspectingly answered my PDA. He started talking before I’d even said hello.
“I don’t care that you sent the money back, Fixx. Candy has been crying nonstop ever since she got that piece of shit you call a love story. Candy means the world to me. If she’s unhappy, I’m unhappy. I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure everybody knows you’re a complete fraud! Then I’m going to destroy your life.”
In a foolish, futile attempt at gaining some lenience, I tried to explain to him that I was having trouble with my own love life, but he cut me off.
“They’ve called off the wedding, did you know that, you little maggot?”
I reacted to that information with silence.
“I hold you one hundred percent responsible for this, you piece of shit. I knew I never should have hired you. My damn wife thought your romance novella would be such a great gift. Edward’s the one who cancelled the wedding, so I’m going to take care of him first, then I’m coming after you. I’m going to make sure you never write another story for anyone ever again.”
Feeling weak in the knees, I tried to protest. “But Mr. Nickels, you can’t pin that all on me. Maybe in the long run, this is all for the best. If Candy and Edward are having second thoughts—”
“Watch your back, Jon Fixx. I’m coming.” Then he hung up.
Looking back on that conversation, I remember thinking it couldn’t get any worse. Between my problems with Sara and my problems with the attorney general of California, how could my life become any more complicated or depressing? Then it did. Soon after Nickels made it clear to me he was going to ruin my professional and personal life, that’s when Tony Vespucci came calling.
2 Early September – Los Angeles
With Vespucci, as with the Nickels family, it was my writing that got me into trouble. Not because it was so bad but because I’d written something good. Very good. My best in fact. Given my current state of mind at the beginning of September, though, I was in no position to take on a new client. But I met with Tony Vespucci for two reasons: 1) He said Cranston Jefferson—by far my most favorite client ever—had given him my name; and 2) Tony Vespucci was a New York Mafia boss. This was a man I couldn’t turn down. He was also a man I didn’t want to work for. Bit of a conundrum for me, if you will. On the phone he was cryptic in his request, only that he’d like to offer me a writing job. He mentioned that he’d read what I wrote for Cranston and Judith and was impressed enough to want to meet me in person.
How he was acquainted with Cranston Jefferson I couldn’t imagine, but acquainted he was on an intimate scale, and so he was given access to the love story I’d written for the Jefferson’s on their sixtieth wedding anniversary: “The Socialite and the Veteran.” Their story was the stuff of legends. Judith was a New York socialite from one of the few wealthy East Coast families that was not financially ruined by the Great Depression. Cranston was a war veteran. They had met in France at the tail end of the war, during the Battle of the Bulge and the Allies’ final push across Germany. Cranston sustained a leg injury bad enough to take him back to the hospital on the French side of the border and into the care of a beautiful young nurse named Judith. He was in the hospital for only two weeks, but that was all he needed to fall in love. And he fell hard, as men will when they are all of nineteen, saving their country and risking life and limb each and every day. Then, as quickly as he’d come from the front, the Army saw fit to ship him back there. All Cranston actually knew about Judith was her name and she hailed from Manhattan. So when the war was over, he went to find her.
To both illustrate what I do and show you what Vespucci read, here’s an excerpt from their story:
. . . and the greatest war in modern history came to an end. Finally, after a long delay, Cranston was sent stateside in December 1946. The trip home seemed prolonged and drawn out. After spending the last two years and three months on European soil, he wanted to be back in the United States, plant his feet on native ground, and feel home again. His need to get back as quickly as possible stemmed more from the incredibly strong feelings bound up in his chest than from his desire to see his country, though. He’d fallen in love exactly two years earlier, and not a day passed in his remaining tour when he didn’t imagine the beautiful nurse who had tended to him when he’d been in the hospital. After being sent back to the front without even so much as a goodbye, he vowed that as soon as he arrived in the United States, he would search for this woman to the ends of the earth and would put his heart in her hands.
Then, it was up to Fate.
His ship came to rest at the docks in New York Harbor. He debarked, ignoring the crowds all around him, a singular line of thought directing him toward Manhattan. He’d never been to New York before. He stared up at the tall buildings and the close proximity of the bricks and mortar, giving him a feeling of bearing down. This was nothing like his hometown of Atlanta. In uniform, he took a taxi to the heart of Manhattan, straight to the high-rise apartment building in which the Steele family occupied the penthouse. During his long conversations into the night with Nurse Steele, she’d mentioned more than once where her parents lived and where she’d grown up, so Cranston had little trouble finding the place. He stepped out of the taxi, his chin tilted upward as he stared toward the sky to the very top of the building. “Was she there?” he wondered. His heart was racing. Standing before the entryway, the doorman eyed him curiously.
“You say you’re here to see Miss Judith?” he responded when Cranston made his intentions clear.
Cranston nodded.
Uneasy, the doorman let Cranston pass through the gilded double doors into the lobby, following him with his eyes from his vantage point outside. Our soldier strode straight for the front desk, his head held high, sure of himself as he met the first line of defense of the upper crust. But Persistence is Love’s Partner-in-Crime, and Cranston had spent many nights nearly freezing to death on German soil dreaming about this day. He would not be deterred. The haughty look of the man sitting behind the desk created the first nick of doubt in Cranston’s otherwise iron will.
“I’m here to call on Miss Judith Steele.”
The attendant didn’t attempt to hide the disdain on his face upon hearing the question. “What is your business with Miss Steele?”
Cranston did his best to stay calm, keep his face neutral, polite. “That’s between me and her.”
The attendant didn’t like that answer, and his face showed it. “I’m not sure if she’s home.”
An unmistakable bottled fury appeared in Cranston’s eyes. The attendant retreated into his seat. Cranston seemed to grow in height as he spoke. “I just spent the last two years killing Krauts. I’ve seen the worst of humankind. I will not be turned away by you or anyone else. If you don’t call her down here, I’ll be going up that elevator over your dead body.” Cranston placed his large hands on the counter before the attendant, leaning in for emphasis. “Call.”
Clearly frightened, so much so he didn’t even try to hide it, the attendant quickly glanced side to side, confirming the fact that he was very much alone in the lobby. Without hesitating, he picked up the phone and called the Steele residence, informing the person on the other end that Miss Judith had a gentleman caller. Once the attendant hung up the phone, Cranston stepped back from the desk, standing very still in the center of the lobby facing the elevator doors. Minutes went by. From outside, the doorman looked over his shoulder every few seconds, interested in what the soldier was up to.
The whoosh and crank of the elevator alighting filled the room. Without a moment’s hesitation, Judith stepped into the lobby, as beautiful as the night is long, ringlets of black hair cascading off her shoulders, princess white skin, her curves highlighted by the black strapless evening gown she wore. She took one step, then stopped, stunned by the man she saw before her. She was clearly expecting someone else. She could not hide the shock on her face; it
was written in bold. Fate was unfolding right in front of her, but she was frozen, unable to move.
They stared at each other, twenty feet of lobby between them. The energy in the air was palpable. Cranston, too, could not move. He couldn’t get his muscles to work. He’d dreamed about this moment for so long, imagined the scenario over and over in his head, and now that it was happening he could barely believe it was real. He didn’t know what to do. The woman standing before him was stunning, so beautiful, in fact, that for the first time in his journey homeward doubt crept into his heart. Did he deserve her? Was he worthy of her love and attention? Had Pride overridden Judgment? He was a war veteran with no financial prospects to speak of, at least not anything he could put on paper, and no formal education to fall back on other than his own life experiences. He definitely didn’t have the family pedigree to qualify him as an acceptable suitor to Judith’s father, Mr. Henry Thomas Steele. Up to this point, though, Cranston had not given any thought or weight to any of these things. Standing only steps from the woman he had dreamed about every night for two years, Cranston didn’t know what to do. She wasn’t moving either. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? He couldn’t read her face. Whenever he’d imagined this moment, he thought he’d know exactly what to do, but he had not prepared for the impact of Judith’s brilliance. He’d known she was beautiful in a nurse’s uniform, her hair pinned up in a bonnet without the benefits of beauty products, and for those fourteen glorious days in the winter of 1944 that was how she appeared. But now, in an evening gown, she appeared untouchable, so gorgeous that Cranston nearly turned on his heel and ran out the door because there was no way on God’s green earth that this magnificent woman would ever grant him even one day, let alone a lifetime. He couldn’t breathe. He felt suffocated.
The attendant behind the desk stared, completely forgetting the manners required by his position. The man in military uniform standing in the lobby, who only moments before seemed so sure of himself, seemed hesitant, even scared. The attendant glanced at Miss Judith. She didn’t look happy. From beyond the lobby doors, the doorman had turned away from the street, watching the scene unfolding inside, fascinated by what he was witnessing. He could not see the face of the man who’d entered so confidently, but he could see Miss Judith across the lobby. And she looked serious, almost stern. What was she going to do?
Jon Fixx Page 3