by Stone, Jean
“And within ten minutes of check-in every tabloid in the country will know about it.”
Marisol circled the table again. “Well, then we’ll find a real private place. Somewhere far away.”
“Marisol. I appreciate what you’re trying to do here. Honest, I do. But you have to be realistic. First of all, I can’t go to any spa. They’re expensive. I have no money.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Right. I think I have a few thousand in a checking account with my name on it. Money I’m going to need. Not money to blow on losing a few pounds.” She stood up and went to the window. “What I need to do is sell this place. Move. Find a new life. One without dreams.”
“I got money.”
Zoe turned and faced her friend. “What?”
“I said I got money. Plenty of money. You’ve paid me a lot of money over the years. I saved up.”
Zoe shook her head. “No. Whatever you have is yours. You took care of me. Of Scott. You never let me hire a housekeeper. You protected me from strangers, from the media, from the snooping eyes of people who would have loved to know how far and how low I’d fallen. No, Marisol, what you have is yours. You earned it.”
“No. I want you to have it.”
Zoe waved her hands. “Absolutely not. I won’t have you spending your money on me.”
“So what’ve you been doing all these years? You’ve been spending yours on me. Now it’s my turn. Besides, you and Scottie, you’re my family. You know that.”
“Marisol …”
“Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll find you a place to go. A spa. I’ll pay for it. Then we’ll see where we go from there.”
“Marisol, I love you more than I would my own sister if I had one, or my own mother if she were still living. But the truth is, I don’t think I can be an actress again.”
“That’s your first mistake.”
“What?”
“You don’t call yourself an ‘actress’ anymore. You’re an ‘actor’ now. The men won that round.”
Zoe laughed. It felt good to laugh.
“And you’re going to start tomorrow. Tomorrow you’re going to meet that agent William used to work with. What was his name?”
“Tim? Tim Danahy?”
“Yeah. Him. You’re going to meet him and tell him you want to act again. You’ve got nothing to lose.”
“Marisol,” Zoe said quietly as she walked back to the table. “There’s one thing you haven’t considered. I don’t think I even want to be an actress again.”
Marisol shook her head. “Yes, you do.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Because, honey, you got no choice.”
She wore a short blond wig, large-framed sunglasses, black leggings, and an oversize black-and-white tunic. Zoe didn’t know if she was really camouflaging her face or her fat; then again, if no one was expecting her, they probably wouldn’t recognize her. It had been so long. So many years.
She took a deep breath and stepped beyond the door that was lettered The Timothy Danahy Agency, remembering when it read Hartmann and Danahy. That was before William and Tim had split, just before William made Zoe a star.
Inside the small waiting room everything looked surprisingly the same. Same earth-tones decor, same understated furniture, same lackluster oil paintings purchased at some no-name street fair. Tim Danahy, Zoe suspected, was surviving. Barely.
Zoe walked to the middle-aged receptionist, who peered at her suspiciously over half glasses. “Yes?”
“Is Tim available?” Zoe asked. She’d not phoned ahead; she hadn’t wanted to make an appointment in case she changed her mind.
“Is he expecting you?”
Zoe tucked a flyaway blond curl behind her ear. She wondered if her black hair had crept out. It had been so long since she’d had to disguise herself to go out; it had been so long since she’d gone out, period. “No.”
The woman chewed the side of a pencil. “You’ll have to make an appointment,” she said dryly.
Zoe took another deep breath. “If he’s available, I think he’ll see me.”
The woman’s eyebrows raised.
“Please,” Zoe said.
“What’s your name?” the woman asked.
“Tell him it’s a friend from long ago,” she said. “Tell him it’s Zoe.”
The woman laughed. “Sure, miss. And I’m Cindy Crawford.”
Zoe took off her sunglasses and looked around. The door had closed behind her; there were no other people in the room. She pulled off the wig and shook out her long black hair.
The woman gasped. “My God. It really is you.”
Zoe smiled. “Yes.”
The woman simply stared. “I can’t believe it’s you.” Then she paused. “Oh, my, I’m so sorry about your husband.”
“Thank you. Now, do you think Tim is available?”
The woman sprang from her chair. “Oh, my, yes. Follow me.” She crossed the room, then opened the door to an inner office. “Tim …,” she began to say.
“I know,” came a deep voice beyond. A voice that was so familiar to Zoe. “Send her in.”
Zoe went inside and the woman discreetly disappeared, probably in a hurry to get on the phone and tell her friends who was there. Tim Danahy sat with his back to Zoe. “You knew I was here?” she asked.
He swiveled around in the chair and faced Zoe. He pointed to a small box on his desk. “I monitor everything that goes on out front.”
Zoe smiled. Same old Tim. Same old paranoid Tim.
He stood up and came around the desk. He reached out and hugged her. His arms felt good. Comforting. “How are you, Zoe?”
“Fine, Tim. Honestly.”
He pulled back and motioned to a chair. “Have a seat. I was there, you know. At William’s funeral.”
“I didn’t know.” As she sat on a worn leather chair, Zoe noticed that one thing had changed: the pungent stench of Tim’s trademark cigars no longer clung to the air and everything in the room. Sometime over the past fifteen years Tim must have quit smoking. She wondered if he’d changed in other ways as well.
He returned to his desk chair, shaking his head. “I still can’t believe it. That William is gone.”
“I know.”
He put his elbows on the desk and propped his face in his hands. “And now you’re here.”
Zoe shifted uncomfortably on the chair. “Now I’m here.”
“I don’t think I have to guess why.”
Zoe let her gaze drop to her lap.
“It wasn’t a secret, Zoe. About the hard times that had fallen on William.”
“It was to me,” she said quietly.
“And now you want my help.”
She raised her head. “I want to act again. I need to.” God, why did she feel as though she were begging? It wasn’t as though she had to prove herself to him. It had, after all, actually been Tim Danahy—not William—who’d first spotted Zoe. Who’d discovered her. She’d been Zoe Naddlemeyer then. Small town, small potatoes, Zoe Naddlemeyer. It had been Tim’s idea to drop her last name. It had been Tim—not William—who had created “Zoe.”
He laughed, though not unkindly. “Zoe, darling, if you’d asked me for money, that would be easier. And believe me, I don’t have much of that myself these days.”
Zoe sat silently.
“Of course,” he went on, “I would have had more money—lots of money—if William hadn’t stolen you out from under me.”
Zoe realized that Tim might have changed his cigar-smoking habit, but part of him was still angry. She didn’t blame him. “Tim …”
He waved his hand. “Sorry. That wasn’t fair. But he did steal you. In more ways than one. I was in love with you, you know.”
Zoe had known. But back then it seemed everyone was in love with her. Her face, her body, her ability to stun the camera.
“William lied to me. He told me you were taken by some boy from back home.”
An image of Eric Matthews r
ushed into her mind. The boy from back home. The boy who had forever altered the course of her life. “That wasn’t a lie.”
“No? Then William told me our partnership was over, and the next thing I knew the boy was out of the picture and you and William were married.”
“It didn’t happen quite that quickly.”
“No, it didn’t. First William split off from me. Then you became a star.”
Then Eric left me, Zoe thought, with a tug at her heart that had never quite gone away, not even after all the hurt he’d caused. The emotional hurt, the physical. She touched the loosened muscle at the corner of her mouth.
“Then,” Tim continued, “William married you.”
“You remember it well.”
“I told you. I was in love with you. When you love someone, you remember the pain as well as the pleasure.”
Zoe sighed. She’d never as much as had dinner with Tim Danahy, let alone given him “pleasure.” She folded her hands in her lap. “Tim, it’s all ancient history now.”
“You’re right.” He neither apologized nor appeared to be embarrassed.
“I need a job,” Zoe said quickly. “That’s all I’m here for. I need to get back to work.”
“So why come here? Look around, Zoe. I haven’t exactly been successful.”
“I’m here because I trust you, Tim.”
“Ahh. The trust factor.”
“And I need you. I need your help.”
Tim stood and walked to a wall of bookcases, which were filled not with books, but with videotapes. “How old are you now, Zoe?”
She swallowed. “Forty.”
“Forty years old and trying to start over in a world of twenty-year-olds.”
“I was hoping that had changed.”
He shrugged. “It has somewhat. Streep. Glenn Close. God, even MacLaine. They’ve proved you don’t have to be twenty to be a star.” He shook his head and turned back to her. “But they’ve had a hard fight, Zoe. Are you sure you’re up to it?”
She wasn’t sure at all. “Yes,” she said.
“It could take some time to find you the right part.”
“I don’t have time, Tim.”
He returned to his desk and began rifling through a drawer. He pulled out a thick manuscript. “This is something one of my writers came up with.”
“You just happened to have a script in your desk?”
Tim smiled. “Let’s say I thought you might be dropping by.”
Zoe didn’t know if he was patronizing her, but she decided she was in no position to play prima donna.
“It’s a decent script,” Tim continued. “I’ve been talking with Cal Baker about production.”
“Cal Baker?”
“He’s a director, Zoe. A top-notch one. God. You have been out of circulation.”
She took the manuscript. Close Ties, the title page read.
“It’ll be a miniseries,” Tim said. “Made for TV.”
Zoe pushed the manuscript aside. “I don’t do TV, Tim. I’m an actress.”
He leaned back in his chair. “Then don’t plan on getting any work,” he said.
She looked at him. The steady gaze of his eyes told her he was serious. She picked up the manuscript again.
“The part of Jan Wexler calls for a thirty-five-year-old. Do you think you could pass?”
“How much time would I have?”
“A month. Six weeks.”
She stared at the manuscript. She was grateful that Tim hadn’t mentioned her weight. Or, if he’d noticed, the telltale droopy lip, the remains of her stroke. Zoe thought about Marisol’s offer of the spa. “Yes,” she answered. “Sure.”
“You’d have to test.”
“What? A screen test?”
“Yep.”
“God, Tim, you’re not going to make this easy, are you?”
He looked into her eyes with the same intensity that he had long ago. The same intensity, the same concern. “It’s been a long time, Zoe. The camera could look at you differently now.”
She touched the corner of her mouth once again. Had he noticed, after all?
“Take the script, Zoe. Study it. We’ll see what happens.”
She stood up and tucked the script into her large bag. “I knew I could count on you, Tim.”
He stood and put his hands on his hips. “Give me a call when you’re ready. Oh, and Zoe …”
She turned as she walked toward the door.
“Would you answer one question for me?”
She held her breath a moment.
“Your son. What’s his name?”
“Scott?”
“Yes. Scott. He really isn’t William’s is he?”
She clinched the strap of her bag. “I’ll be in touch, Tim,” she said, and went out the door.
On the drive back to Cedar Bluff, Zoe stopped at a 7-Eleven. With her blond wig and sunglasses firmly back in place, she entered the store and headed for the junk-food aisle. Tomorrow would be soon enough to start her diet.
4
Meg closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. With all the walking she did in the city, it was hard to believe that the insides of her thighs were so tight with pain as she sat cross-legged on the small mat.
“Okay, ladies, breathe in … slowly …” A whissh of sucking filled the room. “And … out …” A whoosh of air was expelled. With it came the sour scents of female body odor, seeping through cirrus clouds of invisible French perfume.
This was ridiculous. Meg opened her eyes and looked around the walnut-lined conservatory of the Golden Key Spa. At one end of the room stood a silent, lace-draped grand piano; at the other, a small grouping of stiff, velvet-covered Victorian chairs. In between, scattered across the hand-worked needlepoint carpet, two-dozen leotarded ladies with varying layers of cellulite and divergent degrees of cosmetic surgery sat, entranced, at the afternoon seminar entitled “Stress and Self.” These were the women Avery Larson expected Meg to relate to. Schmooze with. And bring into the firm one day, as clients.
“Find your center, ladies. Now, slowly … in … out.”
She closed her eyes again and wondered how one went about finding one’s “center.” It was an issue that had never arisen for her in nearly thirty-nine years. Maybe it was a technique developed at birth, or maybe it was a genetic thing. It certainly wasn’t anything she’d learned at Harvard Law School. An icy chill ran up Meg’s uncentered spine.
“ICE MAIDEN COOPER GETS ANOTHER ONE OFF.” As if the headline wasn’t bad enough, there had been that picture, taken sixteen years ago, of Meg and the “professor.” They were sitting under a tree in Harvard Square. And they were holding hands.
She tried to take a deep breath, but the air stopped somewhere between the memories of yesterday and the reality of today. The article had paralleled the questionable morals of Meg—the prominent, yet elusive, criminal attorney—with those of the notorious clients she served. But it was seeing that old photo that had upset her the most. Though back then it had altered the course of Meg’s life, the scandal that followed had been relatively minor. At the time they had been lucky. It was an era that was pre–Gary Hart, pre–Donna Rice, and the picture had appeared in the campus newspaper as only one of a montage of photos depicting “students cavorting with faculty.” Fortunately, even the tabloid reporter of the nineties had apparently not discovered that the man holding Meg’s hand was married. And that he had gone on to become a United States senator.
Still, Avery had exploded. “This is not the type of publicity we want for the firm,” he’d shouted, while his white eyebrows danced up and down and his face grew redder by the second.
Meg had withdrawn. With a new need to get out of town and a halfhearted desire to appease Avery, she quickly made reservations and ducked out to the Golden Key Spa. There was no point in confronting the libelous tabloid: doing that, Meg knew, would only have triggered their interest, risked the truth coming out, and would have accomplished nothing—exactly what this simple
minded exercise was accomplishing now. Meg straightened her shoulders and wondered when her life had become so complicated. And she wondered why.
She opened her eyes again. Beside her breathed a pale-faced, birdlike creature. The diamonds on the woman’s bony fingers were larger than Meg’s own two-carat earrings—the ones she’d bought herself for her last birthday. On the other side sat a portly pink woman whose flesh reverberated with each in … and … out. She, too, was heavily bejeweled, in a display of sparkle incongruous with her straining spandex. Meg would have bet that these women hadn’t bought—or at least hadn’t paid for—those baubles themselves. These were women who were “materialized” by husbands, indulged with limitless checkbooks and multiple homes in multiple places, and chauffeurs and servants and unfathomable wardrobes and getaway trips to luxurious health spas. Women with no need to inspect their pasts or doubt their futures. Women with obviously nothing to do but sit and breathe. And perhaps worry if their heirs would slaughter them in their sleep.
Anger swelled in Meg’s chest. No one had the right to glide through life without contributing, without being productive at something more than traveling or shopping or doing lunch. She rubbed a spot below her throat, trying to ease the pressure, longing for the calming high of total immersion in her work, instead of this pathetic farce of reality. Then, from the corner of one eye, Meg saw a sharp movement. She flicked her gaze to the front of the room, where the picture-of-health instructor stood, wagging a reprimanding finger in Meg’s direction. Meg smiled and shrugged. Then she quietly stood, reached down, picked up her straw mat, and left the room.
Alissa walked into her suite. It was, she noted, a carbon copy of the California Golden Key: all peachy and forest-green, the right blend of lightness and elegance. She tossed her purse onto the overstuffed lounger in the sitting room and went into the bedroom. Her suitcases had been placed in front of the wall of brass-accented, mirrored closet doors. Alissa sighed. In Beverly Hills they would have unpacked her things and put them away. But, then, Beverly Hills was the last place she wanted to be right now. She knew too many people there. The Berkshires were safer; anonymity was what she needed. Anonymity, and a little peace and quiet.
She returned to the sitting room, unbuttoning her silk blouse as she went, trying not to think about Robert, Grant Wentworth, and her beautiful, youthful daughters.