Mr. Nice Guy

by Jennifer Miller

  Sofia raised an eyebrow. “Are you finished?”

  Lucas continued to stare at her. Something was just sinking in. Why I despise Nicholas Spragg. “You didn’t apply to be my partner,” he said. “How did you even…”

  She shook her head. “Jays came to me and asked if I’d like the position. Of course, I said yes. How could I not?”

  Lucas felt the air rush out of him. All of this was connected. The timing wasn’t coincidental. Somehow, Jays, Sofia, and Spragg were all pieces of a larger puzzle. But … why? How? What the hell was the point? Lucas tried to mentally snap the pieces together, but it was like a baby banging a cube into a round hole. Who was secretly on the phone that day Jays tried to fire him—Spragg or Sofia? Whose idea was it for Sofia to join “Love the Critics,” and why was she picked over the actual candidates Lucas wanted?

  Lucas knew who could figure it out—who might have even seen this coming. Carmen. She kept telling Lucas that Jays was motivated solely by self-interest, that he played a long game. And Lucas, in the end, had acted the same way. He was equally selfish, equally careless. He’d screwed Carmen, destroying the reputation and career of the one person who’d been there for him, who’d cared for him, who’d believed in him. The one person who’d been generous with him.

  My god, he thought now, how generous. She had tried to protect him. And when his own myopia threatened to rain humiliation down on them both, she had pleaded with him to step out of the spotlight, away from the crowds and their cameras. She’d fought for her and Lucas’s privacy in the one moment when it really mattered. But he’d forged ahead, heedless of the consequences. How ignorant he’d been. How callous. And then to sit back and do nothing as everyone piled on? To revel, even privately, in her evisceration, and not just by strangers but by the magazine she’d devoted herself to. So she’d lied in those early columns. So what? She’d been trying to forge a career, doing whatever she could to stay relevant—not to mention employed—without completely sacrificing her dignity. Lucas, careless person that he was, had sacrificed it for her.

  Now his reward was to become a pawn in a game he couldn’t understand.

  He ran out of the bathroom without saying another word to Sofia and left the restaurant. As he hurried toward Sixth Avenue, he shot off a text to Tyler. “Meet me at Union Square,” he wrote. “VERY IMPORTANT.” He didn’t know what he was going to do, but he needed to do something. Anything to make things right with Carmen.

  Tyler found Lucas at the northern outskirts of the farmers market, pacing frantically between the baked goods and heirloom vegetables. “Jesus Christ,” he said, and put his sturdy hands on Lucas’s shoulders. “You need a drink.” He steered Lucas toward Pete’s Tavern, installed him in a booth, and brought over two shots of bourbon.

  “Now,” Tyler said. “The TODAY show! Sofia? Tell me everything.” He looked legitimately concerned but clearly relished his proximity to the drama.

  “Spragg,” Lucas sputtered.

  “Spragg!” Tyler exclaimed. “I knew he’d show up again.”

  Lucas nodded miserably. He told Tyler everything—how the day unfolded, what he learned about Carmen, and what just transpired in the bathroom with Sofia. “If I can just figure out who was on the phone in Jays’ office, and why,” Lucas said. “Everything else seems connected to that.”

  Tyler looked Lucas directly in the eyes, held up his hand like he was being sworn in for jury duty, and said, “Lucas, I have a confession—and please don’t bite my head off.”

  “Are you serious?” Lucas yelled. “It was you?”

  “No! No. Fuck no,” Tyler said. “But listen, here’s the thing. Remember months ago when we ran into each other at the Wilde’s party and you asked how I knew the Sphinxes?”

  That’s right—Tyler had referred to Jays’ secretaries by their code name. It struck Lucas as odd, but he’d promptly forgotten about it. What with meeting Sofia for the first time.

  “Well,” Tyler continued, “I used to intern at Empire. For a summer in college.”

  “Hold up,” Lucas said. “That’s something you might have mentioned, like, the first time we met.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. But I was covering Jays for Noser, and you worked for him, and I didn’t want to create a conflict of interest. But look, something weird happened to me at Empire that could explain what’s going on. You and I actually had really similar paths at the magazine. I came in superambitious, just like you, and Jays took an outsized interest in me. I was thrilled, of course, and chalked it up to my extraordinary talents.”

  “Just like I did,” Lucas said quietly.

  “To make it here, man, you’ve got to be at least a little full of yourself, a little bit deluded.”

  Lucas shook his head. Was that really true?

  “Anyway, Jays put me on the event beat—sending me out to parties with instructions to peek into the personal lives of various prominent individuals. I was good at it. I’d come back with all kinds of dirt and write these short columns exposing everyone’s little secrets, which Jays said would run as gossipy stories in the magazine. But they never appeared. Eventually, I went back to school, assuming I’d failed to impress Jays. But here’s the strange thing. After a while, Empire started running stories about the people I’d reported on—and without fail, instead of all the dirt I found, the articles would be superpositive. Basically giant blow jobs. So I started keeping track. And three things were always the same. You ready?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Well, buckle down, because a lot of shit is going to come together at once. Here we go. Number one, these people were all superrich. Number two, they were all the worst of the worst—like they’d committed serious ethical lapses, or had done something straight-up illegal. And three, within a few months of Empire running a positive story about them, they’d all start palling around with Jays. Sometimes, a news report would even say they’d gone into business with him.”

  Lucas sat with this information for a moment. Spragg fit this pattern perfectly. Lucas finds dirt on Spragg. The dirt never runs. A positive profile appears instead. Spragg and Jays seem to have some social connection.

  “And,” Tyler said, “you know Jays is having serious financial trouble, right? The Wild Boar is closing next month and Jays’ new project—”

  “The College?”

  Tyler nodded. “It’s rumored to be in trouble, too. Jays is close to defaulting on his loans. But I’ll bet you anything that he’s about to receive a huge influx of capital, if he hasn’t already.”

  “You think he’s blackmailing Spragg? Isn’t that illegal?”

  “I think it’s more like whitemail. Jays is basically telling people: ‘I won’t just protect your secrets from public scrutiny—I’ll let everyone know how fabulous you are. And in exchange for my generosity, maybe you could help me out.’”

  Now it began to make sense. Lucas could imagine the scene. Jays calls Spragg and makes him an offer: He’ll kill Lucas’s story and make sure no word of Spragg’s rape accusation ever becomes public, in exchange for a major investment in the restaurant and The College. Spragg accepts but wants vengeance as well: He wants Lucas to be fired, and he wants to hear it happen live. So then Lucas gets called into the office and—

  Or maybe it went down differently. Maybe Jays called Spragg and said, “You’re a very impressive man and I hate how this kid Lucas treated you, so I’m firing him right now and I want you to hear it.” It would have been Jays’ way of building Spragg’s trust, before asking for the money. So Lucas gets called into the Editor’s office for a lashing and—

  Or maybe Spragg called Jays and demanded that Jays kill the story. Jays said he would, for a price. And for a mere $250,000 more, Spragg can listen as Jays fires Lucas. So Lucas gets called into the office and—

  Whichever way, Jays clearly didn’t expect Lucas to reveal himself as Nice Guy. But that didn’t deter the Editor. It just changed his game.

  “And instead of Jays being the bad gu
y, extorting Spragg, I become the enemy,” Lucas said.

  “It’s kind of brilliant, right?” Tyler said. “I mean, that’s the problem with blackmail—the person you’re extorting hates you, which makes you vulnerable. But if you can establish yourself as the advocate and protector, then you get what you want and a thank-you. The manipulative faculties required to pull it off are really quite impressive.”

  Lucas put his head on the table.

  “Cheer up, man; it’s not so bad.”

  “So how did Sofia get into this mess?” Lucas asked.

  Tyler shrugged. “You know what she’s like. She craves new opportunities, but she’s also kind of an opportunist. I bet Spragg’s just using her to fuck with you. That dude hates you now.”

  Lucas lifted his head, dejected. “Carmen tried to warn me about something exactly like this, but I wouldn’t listen. And then I let Jays spoon-feed me that crap about Carmen’s made-up columns. I need to fix this, Tyler. I need to blow this whole thing open.”

  “You want to apologize to Carmen by committing professional seppuku? Lucas, ruining your own career isn’t going to save hers.”

  “But it’s the right thing to do.” Lucas looked imploringly at Tyler.

  “Well, with any luck, we’ll see a financial transaction between Nicholas and Jays soon. In the meantime, we need more proof to make our case. I’ve got an idea, but it’s a long shot.”

  “What is it? I’ll do anything.” Lucas leaned eagerly over the table.

  “Those are words people usually regret.”

  Lucas sighed and sat back.

  “During my internship, Jays occasionally had me bring dry cleaning and other packages to his house. Once, he even called me on a Saturday afternoon to bring him coffee.”

  “What a dick.”

  “Yeah, well, I was happy to oblige. That house is legendary. Very few people in the office have been there. And suddenly I—an intern—am at Jays’ kitchen table eating a sandwich! Or in Jays’ sitting room having a nightcap! I mean, my god. I thought I was the luckiest person alive. Of course, he was only kneading me into a pliable piece of dough. But one night, when we’re drinking in Jays’ sitting room, he goes into his closet. It’s this massive walk-in, basically the size of our apartment, and covered in mirrors. It’s the most narcissistic room. And he’s taking off his shoes and his tie. And I’m thinking, is this about to become some weird sex thing?”

  “Please tell me it was a weird sex thing.” Lucas was again leaning over the table.

  “He stops at the tie. But because of all the mirrors, I see him climb a ladder. All along the top shelf are notebooks. Just like the ones he’s always carrying around. He pulls one down. And then he asks me questions about one of the people I’ve been investigating for him. Just casually, like it’s no big deal. But I can see him making notes. Then he pulls out another and asks me more questions.”

  “And this didn’t make you totally suspicious?”

  “Was it weird that Jay Jacobson kept slam books in his closet? Sure. But did I think he was going to use it for a series of elaborate manipulations to help prop up his personal investments? I know you find it difficult to believe, Lucas, but I haven’t always been a hard-boiled reporter. I was nineteen!”

  “Right, but this was what—seven years ago? Aren’t those notebooks gone?”

  “Those notebooks cost a thousand dollars each! And yes, I think he’s arrogant enough to keep them. The worst people in history are always great at paperwork.” Lucas quickly flashed back to college classes about Nazis and communists. It was true: both meticulous notetakers. “They’re like his arsenal. But imagine if we could cross-reference his notes with the positive press and then trace each person’s financial contributions back to Jays? It’s a pretty damning picture.”

  Lucas regarded his roommate: the muscled arms folded over his chest, the dark expectant eyes, the mischievous grin. “Wait,” Lucas said. “Is all of this the reason you’re writing for Noser under a pseudonym? Jays doesn’t realize you’re snooping around.”

  “J. P. Maddox at your service.”

  “You’re like the caped crusader of New York media!”

  Tyler laughed heartily. “If I am, then you’re Clark Kent and together we’re unstoppable. But seriously, can you get me one of those books?”

  “How am I going to—” Lucas said, but then stopped. He knew exactly how he’d get into Jays’ apartment, because Jays had already invited him there. The very next week, the Editor was opening his home to New York society in celebration of Lucas and Sofia’s first kiss—or “first” as far as the public knew.

  Despite his height, Lucas had often felt small in the shadow of Tyler’s bombastic personality. But at this moment, he felt robust, like he could stand in the middle of Broadway and stop Ubers with his bare hands. Like he could morph from credulous, selfish peon into a skeptical, altruistic warrior faster than Superman changed clothes in a phone booth. “I’m in,” he told Tyler. “I am so in.”

  CHAPTER 46

  Carmen was writing. And writing. And writing. For nearly two months, she’d visited Kettle of Fish daily, sitting at the bar with her laptop or, when the place was crowded, holed up at a corner table. She felt a little guilty: She should be out looking for a job. But Mira quickly squashed that suggestion. “This work you’re doing is too important,” she contended. “You’re on a roll. You can’t stop now.”

  But rolling toward what? For the first few weeks, Carmen didn’t consider the document to be anything. She was flushing a lot of pain from her system, just words purged onto Microsoft Word. She was—god forbid—indulging herself. It was a point of pride that she had never done so in the past. She was a reporter and a critic. Her columns weren’t about her personal life so much as they covered her personal life. Every detail, every admission, served to buttress an argument or strip down a source—and, really, until Lucas came along, that’s how she thought about these men: as sources. The writer Janet Malcolm famously called journalism the art of seduction and betrayal. Well, then, the sex and relationships beat was journalism distilled to its purest form.

  Only now, for the first time, Carmen wasn’t trying to seduce or betray anyone. Instead, she stripped herself down, layer by protective layer. The voice in these pages wasn’t the character she’d created to protect her heart or her ego from the world’s judgment. Nor was it speaking at someone else’s command. It was her voice, talking her truth: about how vulnerable she’d been, how mean, how proud, how gutsy, how jaded, how repressed, how judgmental. And she did so here at a bar, where everyone could see her. It was a kind of personal affirmation: Fuck you, haters. I’m done hiding.

  Slowly a story emerged. If was, of course, her own: a tale of scrappy ambition, of romantic-professional entanglement, of manipulation, self-delusion, and the forfeiture of her dignity for the sake of love and career, all set against the backdrop of New York media. And that was just the part about her and Jays. She hadn’t even gotten to Lucas yet.

  Mira, bless her heart, was already kicking around titles and sketching out cover designs, while Carmen could barely bring herself to say the word “book.” It seemed grandiose, if not downright impossible. But this being the West Village, it was perhaps inevitable that one evening, the New Yorker writer, National Book Award winner, and New York Times best-selling author Richie Sullivan would saunter in with Lydia Rothsfeld, his estimable powerhouse literary agent. And it was, perhaps, further pre-ordained that Sullivan, who’d gotten Jays to hire his son Pete in exchange for a 650-word column on silk socks, looked over, saw Carmen typing away, and whispered, “Lydia, it’s that disgraced Empire sex columnist.”

  The agent nodded and sighed. “She got a raw deal. Her work was smart, even if some of it was fiction.”

  As it happened, Rothsfeld was just complaining about her upcoming seventy-fifth birthday party at the National Arts Club, planned by the new forty-year-old head of her agency. The city’s literary elite had been invited and they were all coming, wh
ich meant just one thing: “It’s not a celebration,” Rothsfeld said. “It’s a send-off. I’m being pushed into the abyss on a burning barge. I won’t have it.” She latched her wrinkled, manicured fingers onto Sullivan’s arm with startling force. “Be a dear, Sully, and buy me two Manhattans.”

  “Two?” Sullivan asked.

  “One for me.” Rothsfeld nodded at Carmen. “And one for her.”

  CHAPTER 47

  Jay Jacobson lived in a Greenwich Village brownstone, but he was increasingly fed up with the neighborhood. It wasn’t because of gentrification; by the time he arrived, the beatniks and artists were long gone and the gays and first-generation yuppies priced out. (Just because you could afford a five-ingredient latte seven days a week, that didn’t mean you could pay five thousand dollars a month for a studio.) But lately, not even high-end boutiques could afford the rent. Jay didn’t know what was worse—five Marc Jacobs properties on a single block, or none at all. And then the community board had the gall to reject his remodeling application—his ideal building façade, the ultra-modern love child of Shigeru Ban and Snøhetta—on the grounds that it would “disturb the character of the neighborhood.”

  Such were the thoughts that needled Jay as he arrived home on a Thursday afternoon in mid-May. Most days, he could banish them once the front door closed and he was safe from the community board’s clutches. His four stories hummed with efficiency and convenience. If only his employees and business associates took direction as obediently as his speakers and thermostat. Because today, the house was abuzz with activity. His event planner orchestrated her team like a conductor, slashing her arms through the air. Caterers rushed around the chef’s kitchen, covering the Italian-sourced marble counters with canapé trays. Furniture was rearranged and the origami-like decorations, built from living flora, were arrayed on mantles and shelves. Candles were placed among the succulents’ dark green and deep purple leaves. Jay hated bright colors and had refused the event planner’s desire for even “pops” of orange or red.