This Life: A Novel

by Maryann Reid

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  June 12

  New York, New York

  Her day got off to a rotten start when she arrived at the NBC studio to find the security guards and the producers of The Takeover waiting for her. “We need to have a serious talk, Blake,” said Vanessa. “Let’s go to my office.”

  Blake exchanged glances with Antonio, but followed Vanessa to the office she’d claimed for the duration of The Takeover filming. Waiting in her office was a police officer, who stood when they entered the room. Vanessa seated herself behind her desk, Blake and Jerome sat in chairs across from her, and Antonio and the security guards and the police officer remained standing.

  The police officer looked at Blake. “Are you Ms. Blake Bertrand?”

  Shit, am I about to be arrested? What’s going on here? “Yes, I am.”

  “Ms. Bertrand, it is my duty as an officer of the law to serve you with this restraining order. You are ordered to keep at all times a minimum distance of three hundred feet from Lang Bertrand, except for any exemptions granted on a case-by-case basis by issuing Judge Harrell. In the case of any granted exemptions, police officers must be on the premises for the duration of such time as you are within a proximity normally banned by court order.” The officer handed Blake a sheet of paper with the official court letterhead at the top and the judge’s signature and seal at the bottom. “I must ask you to leave these premises, pursuant to the restraining order against you. Have a good day, ma’am.”

  “Wait! This has got to be a mistake.” Blake got to her feet and faced the policeman. “I work here. I’m hosting a reality show.”

  “Judge Harrell is aware of that, ma’am. But as he said, nobody is above the law. Witnesses say you went to the Reebok sports club while Lang Bertrand was there, and you ordered someone in your employ to attack him and his friends.” The policeman shrugged. “It’s only a temporary restraining order, Ms. Bertrand. There’s a hearing scheduled. You can tell your side of the story then—”

  “Can I see the judge today?”

  “You can go to the courthouse and request to speak with him, but you’d better hurry. He usually leaves early on Fridays.”

  “Officer, can you wait just a minute or two?” Vanessa pleaded.

  “Sure, I suppose so.” The policeman leaned against the shut door. Making sure I don’t run and try to hide somewhere in the studio to attack Lang. The surreal understanding sank in with Blake.

  “I hope you can understand, Blake, that if this isn’t resolved quickly, it’s going to cost NBC dearly in lost time and money. We’d have to start over with a new host, and you’d be considered in breach of your contract with us,” Vanessa advised Blake.

  “Give the contestants that I was supposed to mentor today my cell phone number, and tell them I’ll meet with them over the weekend to coach them,” Blake said. “I’m on my way to talk to this judge now, and I expect to be granted an exemption before Wednesday’s decision filming.”

  “We’ll send a crew to you this weekend.”

  “That works.” Blake looked to the policeman. “Okay, Officer, I’m ready to go.”

  #

  Judge Harrell agreed to issue an exemption to the temporary restraining order against Blake, but he warned her that it would not be processed and her copy delivered until sometime Monday. Blake yearned to work out her frustrations at the sports club, but she didn’t dare risk encountering Lang there. She returned to her apartment in such a foul mood that Antonio actually muttered to Suki, when the martial artist opened the apartment door, “Watch out, she’s had a bitch of a day and—”

  “And the day has made me a bitch,” Blake finished for him, her voice half a growl, and stalked into her bedroom. She put some jazz on the turntable and ran a hot bubble bath for herself, but it didn’t help. When she tromped into the kitchen and took out the Jack Daniel’s and Coca-Cola, Suki laid a restraining hand on Blake’s arm.

  Blake threw a punch Suki had taught her, and Suki blocked her with ease and faked a punch of her own. The block that Blake threw up was clumsy and left her off-balance, and a second later she lay facedown on the kitchen floor with Suki holding her still.

  “We could work out safer in a park, Boss.”

  Hysterical laughter and sobs mingled inside Blake and came pouring out of her mouth, waking Matt and bringing Antonio running from the living room. Suki released her hold on Blake and sat back on her heels, waiting for Blake to regain her composure. Meanwhile, Suki told her colleagues, “She’ll be all right. Boss just needs to break something or wear herself out trying. I’ll handle it.”

  “I love women, especially my Miranda,” Blake heard Matt murmur to Antonio, “but sometimes I think they’re all crazy.”

  “Our whole species is crazy. Men and women just do ‘crazy’ different from each other,” Antonio muttered in reply. If they said anything else about the incident, they were out of Blake’s hearing range.

  “Get changed, Boss,” said Suki, when Blake finally quieted. “While you do that, I’m going to find a good park close by, and we’re going to go there, and you’re going to try to beat the shit out of me.”

  “Not possible,” Blake whispered.

  “You might get lucky. I may trip on something.” Suki gave Blake’s shoulder a friendly slap, then helped her stand at the same time that she got back on her own feet. It was another of Suki’s eerie fluid movements that Blake wondered if she gained from years of martial arts.

  Blake changed into one of her glossy, expensive designer jumpsuits and sandals. Suki held a carry-all bag as she tucked her phone into her pocket. “Taxi is on the way,” said Suki, and they went to the elevator to ride down to meet their cab.

  When the driver asked where they wanted to go, Suki sat up and said, “Battery Park.”

  “There are a couple of parks closer to the apartment,” Blake told the bodyguard.

  “I’ve never been to New York before, and Battery Park is someplace I’ve heard of all my life. Let’s go there.” Suki actually looked excited by the idea.

  Blake found herself smiling a little. “Okay. Battery Park it is.”

  The driver pulled into traffic and carried them to the famous collection of cycling, hiking, and skating paths and open areas for throwing Frisbees or playing tag football, among other activities. It was a fine early summer afternoon, and the beginning of a weekend. Battery Park was filled with people enjoying the outdoors.

  Suki opened her carry-all bag and said, “Here. Put these on.”

  Blake flinched as Suki handed her the pair of high heels she usually kept on her bedside table. “What are you doing with those?”

  “Forcing you to wear them…unless you can keep me from laying hands on you.” And with that Suki aimed a sweeping kick at Blake’s knees and their battle was begun.

  They attacked and blocked and evaded until the sun was sinking in the west. Both women were dripping sweat and breathing hard when Suki called, “Time’s up.” Blake was left gasping while Suki only breathed faster and deeper than usual. Even though Blake knew Suki must have taken it easy on her, she was deliriously proud that the black belt never got a good grip on her.

  “Good work.” Suki put the high heels back in her bag. “You keep that up, Boss, and in another ten years you might be able to kick my ass.” Her blank-faced delivery made Blake laugh, and Suki chuckled along with her.

  “I needed this. Thanks, Suki.”

  “I’m serious. Keep this up.” Suki leveled a solemn gaze at Blake. “Someday you’re going to decide you don’t need bodyguards anymore. You can defend yourself then, if you’ve taught your body how.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  #

  Brett stood to hug and kiss Sherry when she walked into the Indian restaurant. This was their third consecutive night of meeting for dinner, and he hoped it would be their third consecutive night of going to her hotel room after. She was a demon in bed, and he couldn’t get enough of her. His little buddy stood to greet her, t
oo, as they hugged, and she giggled when she felt his eagerness.

  “This place has always had fantastic curry,” he advised her as they sat down.

  “I look forward to trying it.” Sherry took out a paper fan and waved it to cool her bosom. Brett was only too glad to have his attention directed to her generous breasts, and she knew it and winked over the fan at him. “Before we order, though, someone I know is here, and I’d really like you to meet him.”

  “For you, I’d meet Satan.” Brett grinned and started to stand again. “Which table is he at?”

  “This one,” said a man who’d been sitting in the booth next to theirs all along. “I’m not Satan, but you know someone who thinks I am.”

  Brett turned and found himself face-to-face with the infamous Lang Bertrand. He threw a disgusted glance at Sherry. “You really want to introduce me to this creep?”

  “He’s not a creep, Brett. There are two sides to every story,” said Sherry, leaning closer and patting Brett’s tush in a way that made his best friend jump for joy. “Isn’t that something you’ve learned the hard way? You told me how you were framed at—”

  “That’s different,” Brett snapped. “I don’t hit women, but this son of a bitch does.”

  “Oh, Brett Skeet. You have so much to learn.” Lang shook his head. “Some women enjoy a good beating.”

  Brett blinked, thought fast, said, “I can’t see Blake Bertrand as one of those women.”

  “I tell you what, young man. Have a seat, and I’ll do all the talking for a few minutes. Then you think about what I’ve said, and maybe you’ll decide we can do some business together.”

  He’d never imagined himself listening to what a known wife-beater had to say. But tonight he listened—and found that he believed.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  June 13

  New York, New York

  Blake woke at 4:30 A.M. when her BlackBerry rang. Oh, my Jesus, please don’t let anything be wrong with Mom! She sat up in bed and punched the Talk button. “Blake here,” she blurted.

  “You CUNT.”

  She was so unused to being called names in the middle of the night, at least since leaving Lang, that she needed to check the caller ID even though she recognized Margot’s voice. Checking confirmed that her best friend was, indeed, cussing her out.

  “Margot, what’s this—”

  “YOU introduced them, Blake. I can’t believe how you’re betraying me! He’s packed his bags and gone to her, and it’s all your fault, you fucking bitch!”

  From Margot’s slurred speech it was obvious she’d been drinking heavily again, but Blake feared she knew what her longtime friend meant, anyway. “Thomas has moved in with another woman? Who?”

  “That pixie-faced whore, that’s who! Robbie.”

  “Robin, you mean?”

  “I hate you, Blake. Do you hear me? I HATE YOU, BLAKE. I never want to see your face or hear your voice again.” The line beeped a few tones as Margot tried to press the End Call button, and went silent as she finally succeeded.

  “Well, the hits just keep on coming.” Blake slid out of bed to get dressed.

  #

  Late Saturday morning, Blake arrived at a conference room in a hotel for the weekend reality show taping. As she settled in and waited for her first mentoring appointment, the cameraman warned her, “We’ve only got an hour.”

  “They’re going to have to deal with it.” Blake shrugged. “Can you do close-ups and record everything that’s said? That should be plenty of material.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “I guess that’s all we really need.” She arranged some demos on the table, taken from her own business, to illustrate for the contestants what she wanted them to understand.

  Her BlackBerry rang again, playing “Big Time” to inform her that the caller was her publicist. Antonio lowered his Ray-Bans to give Blake a quizzical look.

  “There’s only one way to find out,” she told him, and pressed the Talk button. “Hi, Vickie, what’s up?”

  “Now, this is more like it!” Vickie’s voice rang with enthusiasm. “If you’re going to get bad publicity, sidewalk fistfights and restraining orders are the sort of bad publicity you should get. I can work with this.”

  “Shit. You mean that’s all over the news?”

  “It sure is! Today you’re even on the cover of—”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  “I’m going to send out press releases telling your side of the story, of course.”

  “Good. Keep me updated, but I’ve got to go.”

  “Why, what’s going on?”

  “I’ve got to mentor the show’s contestants in a hotel conference room, because Lang has court permission to attend NBC’s functions for The Takeover, but I don’t yet have permission to be there when he is.”

  “Oh, that’s excellent stuff! I’ll put in a quote from you about how unfairly the legal system treats women.”

  Eve Womack stepped into the conference room, and looked as if she thought she should step out again until Blake finished on the phone. Blake waved Eve into a seat as she said, “Gotta go, Vickie,” and clicked the call off.

  “Is this a bad time?” Eve didn’t quite put all her weight on the chair she sat on.

  “This hour is your appointment time, so this is a good time for us to talk. But this whole week has been one disaster after another.” Blake shook her head. “And as if that’s not enough, I’ve got an ongoing disaster to deal with, so I guess you could say my life is a total mess right now.”

  “An ongoing disaster? What’s wrong?” Eve brushed aside the tablet she’d brought with her for taking notes, and watched Blake with eyes wide with concern.

  “Just a property I can’t touch for a year because while I had the flu I trusted someone to file some legal paperwork for me, and they botched it.” Blake reached for one of her demonstration materials. “But let’s talk about what you need to do for this week’s challenge. We’ve only got an hour, so we should get to work.”

  “I don’t understand, though. Why can’t you do anything with your own property, just because of a mistake with some paperwork?”

  “To make a long story short, I need some zoning regulations waived or amended to allow my plans for the property to proceed. It’s several different things—traffic flow in the area of the building, the building’s wiring and so forth need to be modernized, all that sort of stuff.” Blake gestured to the materials she wanted Eve to look at. “If you’ll look at this—”

  “What would happen if you went backward instead of forward?”

  Blake stared at Eve, thoroughly confused. Forward and backward had nothing to do with the demo she was trying to show Eve.

  Her bewilderment must have shown in her face, because Eve said, “The wiring and stuff. What if you went retro with it, instead of modernizing?”

  Can it really be that simple? “You mean restore it to the way it was when it was built? Make it a historical attraction?”

  “Oh, you can do more than that.” Eve’s smile shone like a star as she pulled her tablet close again and entered search terms. “It isn’t just children who love to play. You’re talking about the Wishman Spears building, I think, and with that you could create something unique in the world. It could be like a cross between the Smithsonian and a Disney theme park. People could see the whole industrial era come to life there, do hands-on activities—”

  “But who would be interested in going somewhere like that?”

  “Lots of people! Schools could take field trips there, safety inspectors could hold training seminars to understand from past conditions why today’s safety regulations are what they are, labor unions could educate their members and recruit new ones by showing them what industrial work was like before collective bargaining—”

  “Eve?”

  The woman stopped, her cheeks reddening. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound like I’m telling you how to do your job. I just get an idea and
get excited.”

  “What I was going to say is, you’re a genius.” Blake hugged Eve tight.

  #

  All day Blake felt happy and excited for the first time in what seemed like weeks. She couldn’t wait to be done with the day’s five mentoring sessions, so that she could rush back to her apartment and make phone calls to the people she needed to help her pursue Eve Womack’s suggestion.

  However, simultaneously all day Blake felt a growing worry about Margot’s well-being. By lunchtime she couldn’t endure it alone anymore, so she phoned Edith in Miami. When her longtime personal assistant answered her call, Blake asked, “Could you please do me a favor?”

  “Sure. What do you need?”

  “Would you please go to Margot Mills’s house and see if she’s okay?”

  “I’ll try, but if the door is locked I can’t get in. Unless she keeps a spare key somewhere, and you know the hiding place.”

  “I do.” She gave directions for finding the Millses’ spare house key, and felt much better.

  #

  When her day’s work for The Takeover was done, around mid-afternoon, Blake and Antonio returned to her apartment and she got busy contacting architects, engineers, contractors, attorneys, and other experts she needed to talk to about Eve’s suggestion for the Wishman Spears. She was in the middle of a three-way call with her New York real estate attorneys, Susan Golden and Peter Britell, when call waiting beeped to alert her that someone was trying to contact her. At the moment she was coaxing the lawyers to translate their legalese into plain English for her, and by the time she felt confident she understood their advice, she forgot to check caller ID to see who tried to reach her.

  It was late at night, and Blake was just getting out of the shower, when her phone rang playing “Someone to Watch Over Me.” She glanced at the time before pressing the Talk button.

  Ten thirty-eight.

  My God. Is Edith still at Margot’s? “Hi, Edith, how—”

  “Blake, Margot is in the hospital.” Edith’s voice was shaky. “She was unconscious when I found her, and there were empty whiskey bottles and empty medicine bottles and… Blake, she tried to kill herself. They pumped her stomach, and they’ve got her on suicide watch.”