Any Given Moment (The Alexandra Chronicles Book 3)

by Laura Van Wormer

  The anchorwoman was probably lonely. They all were. They said good-bye as Georgiana hurried off to catch a 10:30 flight to L.A., and Alexandra promised to give her a call soon. Two days later, when her housekeeper announced that Ms. Waring was on the phone, Georgiana had been delighted.

  "I hope you don't think it's odd that I'm calling you," Alexandra said. "It's just that I don't have many friends outside of work, and you seem to understand a great deal about the kind of life I have to lead."

  Typical Alexandra sentence. Straightforward on one level, utterly cryptic on another.

  "Of course not, I'm glad you did," Georgiana said. In the back­ground, she could hear the noise of the DBS newsroom, which confused her until Alexandra explained that she had been working for thirty-two straight hours and was waiting for a bulletin and had decided to make a short call to the outside world to see if it was still there.

  No one seemed to know very much about Alexandra beyond the fact that she was the most pleasant and charismatic of the TV news stars, a feat no doubt accomplished at the expense of a personal life. She wasn't married, but she had been engaged to a longtime beau, a TV producer, and people said Alexandra had never gotten over the breakup. Apparently her fiancé had wanted a wife instead of someone who was launching a national TV news network; he had married his secretary.

  Alexandra called Georgiana again about a week later just to say hello. When they hung up, Georgiana called Jessica Wright. "She's my best friend and probably saved my life—what more do you want to know?" Jessica said.

  "I suppose I wanted to know who she is, what she's really like," Georgiana said, suddenly feeling foolish.

  "Gee, that's a tough one," Jessica joked. "Maybe you should just ask her."

  What Georgiana really wanted to know was whether the ambi­guity she sensed in the air was a product of her imagination or not. She didn't trust Jessica with that one, however, and so she changed the subject.

  After three days of lying around in the hospital, Georgiana begged her doctor to get to work on her nose. She didn't care about the pain.

  While waiting to be wheeled into the operating room, Georgiana ran into two people she knew, who were, like herself, lying horizon­tally on gurneys in the hallway. One, who was out cold, was an actress she had worked with in a Joe Papp "Shakespeare in the Park" pro­duction in New York three summers before. The other person was a television director with whom she had once worked. Like Geor­giana, he was on a divine pre-op combination of Demerol, Valium, and morphine shots, so the two of them sat up and gaily chatted away, laughing and gossiping as if they were at a cocktail party.

  "I'm having my eyes done and Carmen's getting her boobs lifted," he said, nodding in the unconscious actress's direction. Leaning forward, he added, "She needs it. And you, darling, it's really good you're getting everything done now, because you look like shit. I'm sorry, but you do. I was so shocked when I realized that was you." Suddenly Georgiana decided she wasn't having such a good time anymore and laid back down, feeling very sorry for herself because she was one of the few actresses who had actually been born with a beautiful nose. After years of working so hard to care for her body, at thirty-two she had to go under the knife because some stupid pest-control truck with a demonic plastic ant on its roof had been speeding.

  Her housekeeper, Cachi, arrived late the following afternoon with her mail and a week's worth of newspapers. When Georgiana read that the driver of the van that had hit her was in a coma, she felt badly and started to count her blessings.

  Kim from DBS News arrived in the early evening to see how she was doing, and Georgiana wanted to crawl under the bed. She knew how awful she must look, with a big X of adhesive tape accenting the black, blue, green, and yellow bruises. Her nose was in a cast, her neck in a brace, and her mouth in a retainer. Georgiana had been receiving an awful lot of flowers and Kim suggested that they could be distributed throughout the hospital. Georgiana quickly agreed, grateful for Kim's help, but happy to see her leave because she couldn't stand people seeing her this way!

  The phone rang all day, which was maddening since she couldn’t say anything with all the wire they had put in her mouth. She'd pick up the phone and listen and people would say, "Hello? Hello?" and then hang up. One person got it, though.

  "Georgiana? It's Alexandra calling," the voice said. "I know you can't talk, but if you just tap the receiver on the bed I'll know it's you I'm talking to."

  Georgiana smiled and hit the phone against the metal side bar and brought the receiver to her ear. Alexandra was laughing. "Well that was an Oscar-winning slam if I ever heard one. Bette Davis would have loved it!"

  Georgiana started to laugh but, oh God, it hurt!

  Alexandra called her every day. Sometimes twice. And as soon as she got the wires removed and the swelling began to go down, Georgiana started talking back.

  Millicent Parks's letter was waiting for Georgiana when she got home. Its contents disturbed her deeply. ICA without Ben Rothstein was bad enough, but the thought of ICA hurting the Hillingses made Georgiana wild. She would have to do something, but what?

  The next morning she stood in front of the mirror and took a hard look at what she had come to call the Architectural Revitaliza­tion Program. She was beginning to resemble herself. She no longer had those charming black and purple rings around her eyes, and the whites of her eyes were almost clear now. Her hairdresser had al­ready come over to rehabilitate her long, light brown hair which was streaked with blond, and that was looking okay. Her nose was still badly swollen, but it was beginning to look human, and her mouth, while still very puffy, felt almost okay. Since she had pale, fine skin, every nick and stitch and bruise looked far worse than it was.

  Georgiana was said to be every bit the Scottish beauty that Lady Harriet Hamilton-Ayres, her paternal grandmother, had been, but it was clear to Georgiana that most of her curves in life had come from her mother, the former Miss Lauren Rosenblatt of Brooklyn, better known as Lilliana Bartlett. Her mother's marriage to her father had been the second of four, and she could not remember her parents ever being together, so brief was their cohabitation.

  Georgiana had read an unauthorized biography of her mother not long ago (that her mother would kill her if she knew about. But how else was Georgiana supposed to know anything, since her mother was forever being committed and her father rarely spoke of anything but how Corn Laws had destroyed Great Britain?). The biography reported that Lilliana had married Lord Hamilton-Ayres to have a child, and that she had used the eighteen months with him in his ancestral home outside Inverness as a kind of self-imposed detoxification center to produce a healthy baby. Lord Hamilton­-Ayres, for his part, had married the wealthy actress to get the an­cestral estate out of hock.

  Georgiana had only been nine months old when her mother bolted for Hollywood, taking her with her. At the time Lord Hamilton-Ayres hadn't a clue that his wife had no intention of coming back. And when he learned the truth, the famous custody battle ensued, a mighty clash familiar to anyone who read the pa­pers in 1962. As for Georgiana, all she had ever known for sure was that whenever her mother got hold of alcohol or tranquilizers, she turned into someone else and went crazy; and her father, although very distinguished looking and socially active, was not, in truth, very bright. In fact, Georgiana found him rather thick. ("It's the inbreeding," her mother would say. "They're like a bunch of royal hillbillies up there in Scotland.")

  Georgiana's fondest memories of childhood were the two years she had spent living with the Hillingses in Gramercy Park while her mother had been bouncing in and out of rehabilitation in Michigan. The alternative would have been for the courts to ship the young girl off to Scotland, where, in turn, her father would have shipped her off to boarding school in England. And so, secretly, Georgiana had lived with the Hillingses and attended the Dalton School.

  She had been twelve. Her fourth day there she had gotten her first period. It was awful, how scared she had been, not because she didn't know what
it was, but how—if possible—was she to ask for help? For someone to explain what it was she was supposed to do. She had wadded up Kleenex in her underpants and returned to the dinner table where Mrs. Hillings instantly asked if something was wrong. Georgiana had shaken her head, staring at her plate. Mr. Hillings asked if she would like to go for a walk after dinner and Georgiana had said no, she was sorry, she couldn't, and then she looked up and saw the concern in his eyes and it made her burst into tears. Her parents never looked at her that way and she knew, intuitively, that maybe they should sometimes—and she apologized, before running from the table to her new room.

  She was still crying when Mrs. Hillings came in. For a while she refused to tell her what was wrong, but then, finally, she said she wanted to go for a walk but she couldn't.

  "Darling heart, do you have your period?" Mrs. Hillings asked.

  Georgiana was so surprised that she stopped crying. The way Mrs. Hillings said it made it sound like a great achievement. She sat up, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, and nodded.

  Mrs. Hillings handed her a tissue and told her she would be right back. Then she returned with a sanitary belt and a box of Kotex napkins, a quick painless lesson ensued. "Contrary to rumor, this is quite simple. You'll do it without thinking in no time, my dear, I promise you." And then Mrs. Hillings had sent her off for a quick shower and a solo effort. "When you're ready, I'll tell Henry you've changed your mind about a walk. If you don't mind, I'd like to come too. I'm feeling a little off myself."

  After that, Georgiana found herself able to tell Mrs. Hillings anything. And there had been a lot to tell.

  She sighed, still looking in the mirror, gingerly touching her nose. Numb. Exactly. Like what all the rest of her life would be­come if she did not focus on what was important.

  Georgiana had always wanted to have an opportunity to repay a little bit of the kindness and love Mrs. Hillings had so freely ex­tended to her over the years. This ICA business was her first chance.

  And so she would go to New York for that meeting. In the mean­time, she'd call Dorothy to see how she was. And, if she didn't look too awful, while she was in New York she'd try to see Alexandra.

  7

  "Ya gotta pay your bills, man," the guy in his driveway said.

  This was unbelievable. Unbelievable. David made more than a million dollars a year and these assholes said they were taking his car. "Wait a minute, wait a minute," David said, pacing the front yard with his portable phone pressed to his ear, dressed only in boxer shorts. "He'll be on in a second."

  But his business manager's secretary came back on the line again, sounding scared now. "I'm terribly sorry, Mr. Aussenhoff, but Mr. Trent isn't here. I thought he was, but I was mistaken."

  "Ya gonna give me the keys, or do I have to tow it?" the guy asked him. At the end of the driveway was a tow truck and standing outside of it were two of the biggest thugs David had ever seen. This whole thing had to be a joke.

  "Just get the receipts for the car," David yelled into the phone at the secretary. "I've got these assholes over here trying to repos­sess my car!"

  "Assholes," the guy said to his companions, "the gentleman called us assholes. And he doesn't even pay his bills." He gave David the finger and turned to his companions. "Take it. He doesn't know his head from his ass."

  "Wait!" David said. Into the phone, "Get the friggin' receipt for the Lamborghini, will you?"

  "I'm not sure there is one," the secretary finally admitted.

  "Fuck!" David said, hurling the telephone over the fence into his neighbor's yard and whirling around. "All right!" he yelled. "Take the goddamn car. But when I get the receipt for it, I'm gonna haul your asses into court!"

  "Let the man have his moment of self-righteous indignation," the guy explained to his men as they hitched the towline hook onto the rear axle. "This is yet another sad story of Hollywood."

  Even the damn repo man in this town sounded like an actor! David stormed up the stairs of his house and went inside.

  "What's the matter, honey bunny?" Susie asked him, wandering out of the bedroom with his robe on. She looked out the front window. "Why are they taking the car? Is it broken?" Susie was an actress. Susie was built. They each understood their relationship perfectly and its relation to the new movie David was producing.

  "Honey bunny's business manager is a stupid fucking shithead!" David explained, going to the bedroom. "And I'm going to pound his mangy little head in." He began tearing clothes out of the closet and yanking them on. Brooks Brothers blue-striped cotton shirt, khaki pants, cowboy boots.

  The doorbell rang.

  "Now what?" David muttered, going to the front door.

  "David Aussenhoff" the Federal Express man asked.

  David grunted and reached for the pen and clipboard. "Thanks," he said, handing the guy a couple of bucks and closing the door.

  "God, now what?" David asked, tearing open the cardboard envelope. He read the letter quickly, frowned, dropped his hand to his side, and looked to the ceiling.

  "What is it, Davey?"

  Davey. Only his worst enemies called him Davey. Or women he didn't know well who wished to feign intimacy. He liked honey bunny better. He sighed, walked over to the couch, and plunked down next to her. "I gotta read this again," he said. He looked at her. Kissed her briefly on the mouth. "Not a very nice good morn­ing for you, is it?"

  "I've had worse," Susie said. She looked out the window. "They repossess your car?"

  "That's what they said."

  "You broke?" she asked him.

  "Not that I know of."

  "I got a little money," Susie said. "About three thousand. If it'll help—"

  His heart hurt at this. Susie meant it. When it came to being broke and desperate, like most actors, she identified. But unlike almost anyone he knew, Susie instinctively offered to help. And suddenly Susie became real to David. A charming girl, actually.

  She reminded David of someone he had once loved. Someone he had made a terrible mistake with.

  But then, this letter reminded him of a lot of mistakes he had made in the past. Back when he really did something, wanted some­thing, still had a life ahead of him to live.

  His novel had been called Darkness Visible. The Hillingses had suggested a new name, The Young Man. Whether it had been the Hillingses' editorial suggestions or their clout or the new title, what another literary agent had been unable to sell became a fifty-­thousand-dollar project in the Hillingses' hands. There had been a Publishers Weekly article about the sale: NYU undergraduate wrote novel about being single and con­fused in New York. Got an agent. Couldn't sell manuscript. Was sitting, depressed, in Washington Square, debating whether to finish school or kill himself. A couple sat down on the same bench. Woman caught his eye and smiled. "Regardless of what they tell you, young man, this too shall pass," she said. Turned out they were Dorothy and Henry Hillings, the famous agents. They would like to read his manuscript. The rest is history. Book big best-seller for the fall, sold to the movies for six figures by Ben Rothstein himself, Chairman, International Communications Artists.

  What the article—and all the other off-the-book-page stories about this best-selling twenty-one-year-old first novelist—did not write about were the painful scenes that were to come between the author and his agents.

  "You aren't listening to me, David," Henry Hillings had said, sitting behind the beautiful mahogany desk in his office at 101 Fifth Avenue. Dorothy had been there, sitting in a chair next to David's, as if she were part of his defense against what her husband had to say. "What I said," Henry continued, "is that I worry about what living that life-style in Los Angeles might do to you—as a novel­ist—at this point in your life. I do not doubt, not for a minute, that you can write a good screenplay from your book."

  "Look, you're my agent," David said, "you should want me to go—it means a lot more money for you."

  "Oh, David," Dorothy sighed, looking upset, "if our only wish was to make m
oney, dear, we would be very different people than the ones who sat down next to you on that park bench. We care about our clients and what's best for them."

  "It's your temperament, David," Henry said. "In two years—a year, maybe—the story would be different, but all of this is so new, we can only caution you against diving in all the way."

  "So you'd want me to lose this opportunity just to finish god­damn school," David said.

  "We would like to see you get your college degree, yes," Dor­othy said.

  "I can work on my degree out there." David leaned back in his chair, waiting for them to respond.

  The Hillingses looked at one another and then back at David. "You're twenty-one years old," Dorothy began, "a very talented, handsome, nice young man."

  "You'll be given a swanky apartment, a sleek car, and a tremen­dous amount of money," Henry continued. "You'll be let loose in an environment where you will be seen as only one thing" —he paused for emphasis—"a person to be taken advantage of." David looked puzzled. "Taken advantage of by the studio, by women, by men, too," Henry added, "if that's—"

  "God, no way!" David said indignantly.

  "You'll be offered drugs," Dorothy said. "Better drugs than what we know you are already experimenting with now. In short, David, dear, every conceivable temptation will be yours."

  "And you don't think I can handle it," David said angrily. "Well, look, I hate to shock you folks, but this doesn't sound bad to me."

  "Of course not," Henry said, "because you're not yet accus­tomed to being a talented writer of note. If you were, you would understand how tenuous your position is—and in certain circum­stances, how tenuous your hold on your talent might be."

  "And what are you going to do if I take it? If I go?" David was pacing around the office by now, hands jammed into his trouser pockets.

  "We'll simply be here if you need us. And I'll pray for you, dear," Dorothy said evenly. She was serious, he knew, which made the whole scene seem even more ludicrous to him.