Hot Streak

by Susan Johnson

  “Luck, boss, although you've had plenty of practice with irate females.” And Allen knew if Carey set his mind to it, he could get most people to do what he wanted. Especially women.

  “This is the only one who matters.” Carey crossed his fingers and then waved Allen out.

  After making her call to the film site. Molly had explained to Carrie that some of Carey Fersten's prominence had spilled over on them. She promised to take her daughter to the beach later, after the photographers were gone. Then she waited, restlessly and disturbed, wondering if her call would be returned.

  She picked up the receiver before the first shrill ring had completely died away.

  “Are you all right?” Carey asked, and she could feel the warmth of his concern.

  “I'm fine,” she replied, determined to remain composed. “But you heard… there're some photographers outside the gate. Can you get rid of them? Is that too much to ask?” Her initial anger had subsided in the interval between her call and his.

  “I'll have some security guards hired and sent over.”

  “Guards? I don't like the sound of that.”

  “Just temporarily, sweetheart.” Until we hire the bodyguards, he thought, once the national scandal sheet hits the streets.

  “They won't just leave if I ask them to, or if you ask them to?”

  “It's a job for them, honey. They're not charitable institutions,” he said with a temperance he was far from feeling, knowing the stormy issues confronting them. Wishing he didn't have to break the news, he said, “Are you sitting down?”

  “That sounds ominous,” Molly said softly.

  “It's not dire, but serious. It's about Carrie.”

  What could possibly be dire? Molly thought with relief. Carrie was here with her, safe and sound in her own room watching Love Connection. “She's here with me, Carey, and perfectly fine.”

  Looking down at the front page article, at the bold headlines and fair, young girl pictured, Carey swore softly under his breath before saying, “I received an advance copy of the Star Inquirer today.”

  “What could that have to do with Carrie? Oh, is there another one of those photos of you and some duchess? Don't worry, Carrie never reads those tabloids. And even if she did, she seems to accept your jet-set reputation without censure.”

  “It's not a duchess, Molly.” His voice was deathly quiet.

  “Well, whatever title, it doesn't matter, really… Carey, you're being overly concerned about something that couldn't possibly affect us, anyway.” Molly was rushing along in a breathless flurry of words because Carey was too quiet, too starkly quiet, and she hoped to fill the awful void of silence. “Even if you are depicted in one of your notorious liaisons on the Star Inquirer, I'll discount it now that we've found each other again.”

  When she stopped for a moment to catch her breath, Carey said, “Carrie's on the cover, with the usual spectacular headlines.”

  “What headlines?” Molly whispered, struck with a terrible premonition of doom.

  He read them to her in an even, modulated tone. The world was about to be introduced to Carey Fersten's natural daughter.

  “Oh, God, no,” Molly breathed, suddenly nauseous. Carrie hadn't even been told yet. And Bart, she suddenly thought, terrified. He was not a benevolent man. “Can't you do something.”

  “I've already checked with our legal staff. I can't sue; it isn't libelous.”

  “My God, Carey!” And for the first time she was struck solidly with the impact of full-scale public scrutiny. Carey may have lived his entire life in a goldfish bowl, but she hadn't, and it mattered fiercely that her daughter not be recognized and inspected by everyone standing in the check-out line at the supermarket.

  “Honeybear, you don't know how sorry I am about this. I'd never want to hurt Carrie.” The sincerity of his words held regret and comfort, his tender diminutive a message from the heart. “Molly, are you still there?”

  She murmured some unintelligible sound, unable to articulate the overwhelming torrent of thoughts flooding through her mind.

  “We have to do something before the paper is released. Do you hear me? Are you all right?”

  “I'm breathing,” she said. “Just barely.”

  “I know it's a shock, and I'm truly sorry, but we have to deal with this immediately. Allen and I agree we should call a press conference.”

  “A press conference?” He could have said a rocket launch and not been any more alarming.

  “As long as everything's going to be public information by the weekend, we might as well acknowledge it in advance and arrest the titillating waves of curiosity. Allen will arrange all the details, and it'll only entail twenty minutes of your time.”

  “I have to be there?”

  “You don't have to say a word. Allen and I will answer all the questions. Molly?” He could barely hear her breathing over the phone.

  Dizzy, her stomach upset, Molly was resting against the headboard of her bed, visualizing dozens of klieg lights, scores of rude reporters, and her life spread out for all the world to see. How had her quiet life altered so suddenly?

  “Answer, or I'm coming down,” he threatened.

  “I'm here.” It was the smallest possible sound fiber optics could transmit.

  “I'm sorry, darling… I'm so damned sorry.”

  His own mind was a jumble of unsorted chaos. He could only deal with one problem at a time: Molly and Carrie first; the film schedule second; then came revenge on the Cerellis of the world who didn't see the human lives behind the dollar signs. “The press conference,” he firmly said, “is the only way to quash all the lurid speculation. I'll be there early tomorrow, and we can talk to Carrie before school. I was planning on coming down for Pooh's birthday, anyway.” Just not before the day's filming was over, he thought. “Allen will schedule this thing for eleven. Okay?”

  What could she say? No, I won't. No, I want to remain completely anonymous. I want our daughter to continue to exist in an insulated world. Stop the Star Inquirer, darling, for me. Instead, she reluctantly said, “Okay.”

  He was there by seven, driven over from the airport after an all-night session of editing. He was losing two more days, and Allen kept reminding him of the costs. But if he seemed remarkably composed for a bone-weary man it was because he was pleased to announce to the world he had a daughter he loved, and was eager to tell the media of his marriage plans.

  Carrie was calmer than either of her parents over breakfast when Molly nervously said, “We have something rather unusual to tell you, darling.”

  “I figured Carey was here this early for something, Mom,” she said, leaning her chin into her cupped palm and watching Carey spoon the seventh measure of sugar into his coffee cup. “That's seven,” she noted with a cheerful grin.

  He looked up like a man waking from a dream, gazed into his cup, and pushed it away.

  “Would you like a fresh cup?” Molly asked.

  He shook his head, but noticed how her hands were clenched, white-fingered, in her lap. They were both scared by this placid little girl with her perfect chin cupped in her hands and her large, dark eyes moving slowly from one to the other.

  “Would you mind missing school today?” Molly said after a fortifying breath to still the pounding of her heart.

  “Are we going somewhere?”

  “Well… no… but, well-” At a loss for words, she turned to Carey in appeal.

  “Is it all right if I tell her?” he asked. Without waiting for an answer, he began, “I knew your mother years ago before you were born… and I loved her very much.” He stopped for a moment, his dark eyes tender as he glanced at Molly, and his voice took on a note of poignancy. “But sometimes things don't always work out.”

  “So Mom married Dad.”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “I shouldn't have,” Molly said softly.

  “And that's why you got a divorce. Mom and Dad always argued,” Carrie explained to the pale-haired man, dressed fo
r a boardroom meeting, sleek and sophisticated at seven in the morning. “Did you get married, too?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” Carey said. “For a while.”

  “And you divorced, too.”

  He nodded his head.

  “Just like Dallas or Lucy's mom and dad, or Tammy's-”

  Molly smiled ruefully. “We're not shocking her sensibilities.”

  “Mom, you're more easily shocked than I am.” It was said with the authority of eight years experience in the world, and her own special brand of assurance.

  “Well, sweetheart,” Carey went on, a small smile responding to her artless competence, “what we have to tell you may startle you, but I want you to know both your mom and I are very happy and love you.”

  “Can I tell Lucy about it?”

  Molly instinctively began to say no, until she recalled the reason for this conversation. After tomorrow the entire world would know-Lucy included. “If you want to, it's fine,” she said.

  There was a lengthening silence, until Carey finally said very quietly, “Bart isn't your father. I am.”

  She sat upright, her placid pose abruptly altered as she looked at her mother for confirmation. When Molly nodded, her gaze traveled to Carey. “Bart isn't my father?”

  Molly expected confused questions like: Why didn't you tell me? What does Bart have to say about that? How will it change things? Why did you wait so long?

  “Carey's my father?”

  She nodded again.

  “You're my father?”

  “Yes,” Carey said, his heart thudding against his ribs, never in his experience so unsure and afraid. She was his only child, the child he thought he would never have.

  Carrie leaned back against the painted kitchen chair, her hair like molten gold next to the swedish blue. Her small face was expressionless, and Molly thought for a moment how like her father she was, her feelings controlled and concealed behind the perfect symmetry of her features. And then her young face lit with the dazzling smile she'd inherited from her father, and she said, “Wow!”

  “You don't mind?” Carey asked with a hesitancy which would have shocked his entire entourage of friends and acquaintances. He was not a man of insecurities.

  “It's great,” his daughter said with feeling.

  Then she glanced at her mother, a small frown furrowing her brow. “It's great for you too, right?”

  Molly nodded. “Yes, the greatest.”

  Carrie's gaze flicked toward her father, her smile re-appearing. “So when are you moving in?”

  And the dire crisis both parents had dreaded with misgivings and doubts, with faint hearts and trepidation, was over.

  They explained to her about the photos, the Star Inquirer, the press conference, and her only reaction was excitement. “My picture's going to be in the Star Inquirer? Wait'll Lucy hears. She'll die of envy. Can I be in one of your movies? If you're my dad, you can fix it up, can't you? Oh, wow, will Lucy just die. Me in a movie, my dad a movie director, wow! Mom, I'll have to learn how to put on makeup now. Lucky I had my ears pierced. Can I call her, Mom, can I, can I call Lucy?” And she ran off to tell her best friend her news.

  Looking at Carey, her mouth quirked with amusement, Molly said, “It must be in the genes. She's as immune to public opinion as you are.”

  Carey smiled. “Indifference to society's judgment runs undiluted through fifty generations of Ferstens. Not to mention my mother's family, who consider themselves obliged to be outrageous.”

  “I'm the only one who prefers anonymity.”

  “You and Greta Garbo. That's it.”

  “I don't like people prying into my private life.”

  “They will, anyway, sweetheart, so why fight it?”

  “It's embarrassing.”

  “Embarrassing that you and I love each other?”

  “Yes, no, oh hell-it's not the whole world's business.”

  “The entertainment industry attracts that kind of fascinated interest, darling. You'll get used to it.”

  “I don't want to.”

  “On the other hand,” he immediately said with a boyish grin, “they could live without knowing what you ate for dinner.”

  “Damn right they could.”

  “All right, we're agreed. No publicity.”

  “We can avoid the press conference?”

  “After the press conference.” Molly's face fell. “Darling, I want to acknowledge Carrie as my daughter. Do you realize how pleased I am to have a daughter? And if we announce a wedding date and explain briefly about our previous friendship, no one will be interested in continuing to examine us under a microscope. Everything will be out in the open. Trust me. It's the best way. If you run and hide, they follow like a pack of wild dogs. We'll feed them all the gossipy tidbits, and then that's it. They'll be satisfied. So when do you want to get married?”

  “When do you have to leave for Australia?”

  “Right after I finish this film.”

  “And you'll be gone for a year?”

  He sighed. “I never realized, when I signed the contract… Damn. You can't really leave, can you?”

  “Not for that long a time,” she replied.

  “Christ-our names should be Romeo and Juliet. Well, we'll just get married and worry about the rest-”

  “Tomorrow, Scarlett?”

  “Yeah. Hell, I'll fly back on weekends, or we could meet in Hawaii, or you take a week off, and then I'll take a week off.”

  Molly laughed. “With our luck, our flights will be canceled or delayed, and we'll miss each other somewhere over the Pacific.”

  “Fuck it. Let's just say when the film's finished, we'll get married. No matter what. How does that sound? That will satisfy me, and hopefully the insatiable press. And then I'll take some time off, and if you can manage to leave your nearly solvent business,” he smiled a sweet, encouraging smile, “we'll check out married love as a lifestyle.”

  Molly smiled, content and happy and very much in love. “Sounds very nice. Am I allowed a temper tantrum or two before we reconcile our working schedules?”

  “As long,” Carey replied with a teasing light in his eyes, “as there's no wine bottle within reach.” He rose from his chair in a swift, fluid movement. Somehow in his busy schedule he found time to keep remarkably fit. Buttoning one of the buttons of his double-breasted suit jacket, he said, “Now I'm off to get briefed before the press conference. Jess is waiting outside. Some security people are scheduled to be here this afternoon to keep the photographers at bay. Allen will send a car over at ten for you.”

  And in those short, terse sentences, he sounded very much like Carey Fersten, International Film Director. Despite his warm smile, Molly thought, despite the adoring look in his eyes, for a brief cold moment he seemed like a stranger.

  CHAPTER 27

  C arey was there to greet her at the service entrance of the hotel. Taking her hand, he drew her alongside him down several corridors into an elevator, then out again and into a small room several yards from the hall scheduled for the news conference. His full entourage was assembled: attorneys; business managers; publicity people flown in the night before; assistants; gophers; and some men looking suspiciously like bodyguards. Molly's uneasiness returned; she was an outsider in a smoothly run operation familiar to all its participants, save one.

  There was no opportunity to talk in the crush of people determined to ask one more question or give one more word of advice. A cup of coffee was shoved into Molly's hand, and when she shook her head, Carey looked up from the document an expensively dressed man was explaining to him and brusquely said, “Tea. I told you Ms. Darian drinks tea. Take the coffee away.” Then his eyes quickly scanned her pale face, his hand securely holding hers. “Are you all right?”

  Molly nodded. In the flurry of nervous activity she couldn't tell him the truth. That she wasn't all right. She had the beginnings of a headache, and her stomach felt like a convention of butterflies.

  “I'm sorry, Hon
eybear. This'll all be over soon.” He squeezed her hand gently and forced his attention back to the man in the Savile Row suit who was pointing out another paragraph with a briskly tapping finger.

  The tea appeared within seconds. In a glass, the way she liked it, with lemon and sugar. Carey had a very good memory. She watched him calmly absorb the attorney's instructions. He asked a few brisk questions, nodded in apparent approval at the answers, and then turned to the next of several assistants who issued further instructions. The tea was warm and soothing. Molly's stomach stopped dancing, and none too soon for the door opened abruptly and a man called out, “Camera time-three minutes.”

  Allen raced in. “You know what to do now,” Carey said to him. “I don't want Molly upset with personal inquiries.” He looked at Molly seriously. “If there was any way to avoid this, Honeybear,” he murmured very low so only she could hear, “I would. Lord, you're pale. If you can't get through it, let me know and we'll just end it. I'm sorry, truly sorry, Honeybear, about all this hassle.” His sincerity tugged at her heart; he seemed her young lover again, boyish, uncertain, miserable that he was hurting her.

  Tears glistened in her eyes, and she saw him swallow hard when his glance met her misty blue gaze. She caught the hand he lifted to her face and said, “I understand. Don't worry about me… I'll manage.”

  “Okay, Honeybear.” He smiled that heart-stopping smile. “It's you and me and twenty TV cameras.”

  Tightening his grip on her hand, he turned to Allen, hovering at his shoulder, and said, “Shall we?” And the entire crowd followed them into the bright lights across the hall.

  The entourage unnerved Molly; it was like a royal court. Carey seemed to take it all in stride; when you walked out in public, forty people followed in your wake. He never opened doors, he never asked twice for a drink or for food. When he wanted something, it was there. When he didn't want something, it disappeared as rapidly.

  In deference to the solemn occasion, he wore a suit, a navy linen Armani, his tie perfectly knotted, his normally bare feet shod in soft black kidskin. Some attempt had been made to set his pale hair in order, but the coarse waves fell in tumbled disarray by the time they mounted the small dais at the front of the room. He had tensely run his fingers through his hair one last time before entering the room.