Any Given Moment (The Alexandra Chronicles Book 3)

by Laura Van Wormer

  "And what are you going to do later when you go to ICA as an author? Oh, look, it's the temp, Patty Jamison—now she's author Patty Kleczak."

  "They won't know," Patty said, spreading the next layer of low-fat cheese for the lasagna she was making for dinner. "The agent I've been talking to is in Los Angeles and she's never seen me. Besides," she added, "I'll be in disguise."

  "Cool, Mom," Mary Ellen said, looking up from her Spanish book. "I always said you belonged in the Gestapo."

  "Patty," Ted said, "I don't know who the hell these people are in New York who are putting you up to this, but I can guarantee you, they don't have as much at risk as you do."

  "For heaven's sake, Ted," she said, exasperated, wiping her hands on a dish towel and then starting on the next layer of pasta, "don't make such a big deal out of it. I go in, I type, I answer the phone for a few days. I might learn something, I might not. Re­gardless, they'll treat me like a migrant laborer, never even know my name, and I'll make a few dollars."

  Somehow it didn't sound quite as simple as it had when Eliza­beth Robinson had called to talk to her about it. She had been so excited to be asked to do something, she hadn't really thought it through. And—oh, boy—if Ted was upset about this, she'd better not show him the wig she had come home with. Darn, she had been kind of looking forward to wearing it tonight after the kids went to bed.

  "Of course people will know it's not your natural hair color," the theatrical wig expert had explained to her earlier that day in New York. "The wig is quite blond and your eyebrows are dark."

  "Which looks absolutely marvelous!" Georgiana Hamilton­-Ayres had cried. "Harry, you're a genius!" She bent next to Patty and talked to her in the mirror. "I've got to leave for the airport now, and so I will leave you in Harry's expert hands. He'll show you how to put the wig on, and you can practice."

  "Thank you so much," Patty had said in a daze.

  What an afternoon! She had taken the train in to meet with the Hillingses' lawyer, Joshua Lafayette, to go over the things she was to look and listen for at ICA. Then he had taken her to the Hill­ingses' incredible apartment, where, after talking about the need for a disguise, Georgiana Hamilton-Ayres, the beautiful young actress, had taken her across town to the theater district to meet Harry, the man who did all of Georgiana's wigs for her movies.

  And Patty had to admit, she did look sensational as a blonde. Something between Madonna and Ellen Barkin, but with brown eyes. And kids. Big kids. Oh, well.

  "I'm absolutely against this," Ted was saying. "It's crazy."

  Patty finished the lasagna and threw it into the microwave. It did not help her cause to be late with dinner.

  "I understand you feel that this is your business, because it's your novel and your agent, but all of us are part of your life, too."

  She looked at him. "It's my decision, Ted."

  "Damn it, Patty." He took off his coach's jacket, rolled up his shirtsleeves, and began to wash his hands furiously at the kitchen sink.

  Mary Ellen's head was swinging back and forth between them.

  "We'll discuss it later," Patty said, starting in on the salad.

  "There's nothing left to discuss, if I hear you right. You gave your word to those people." He dried his hands on a kitchen towel, kicked the screen door open, and walked into the backyard.

  As she tore lettuce, Patty was aware of Mary Ellen's eyes on her. "Do your homework, Mary Ellen. If you have to go back to summer school again this year, I'll strangle you."

  "If you get rich are you going to leave us?" her daughter asked.

  Patty slapped the lettuce down on the cutting board and looked at her daughter. "Yes, that's right, Mary Ellen, just as soon as I have the money, I'm out of here."

  "Cool," Mary Ellen said.

  "Mary Ellen," her mother said sternly. "Whether you like it or not, you are stuck with me because I love you and everyone in this family—with all my heart!"

  “But not enough to listen to Daddy," Mary Ellen noted, turning back to her book.

  31

  "These flowers came for you this morning, sir," the room ser­vice waiter reported, wheeling in Monty's breakfast. A basket of exotic spring flowers was sitting on the cart, swathed in clear plastic. Monty signed for the breakfast and opened the card.

  Dear Montgomery, Please forgive me. I promise never to advise you in matters of the heart again. As you can tell, it is not my field of expertise. Fondly, Elizabeth

  He looked at the flowers again and then picked up the phone and called the Hillingses'. Elizabeth answered with a cautious, "Hello?"

  "Monty," he said, "I will forgive you if you call me Monty! The way you say 'Montgomery' always makes me feel like I'm in trouble at Sunday school or something."

  She laughed. "I'm so relieved. And I really am so sorry, Monty, I didn't mean to—"

  "It wasn't you," he sighed. "I was angry and I lost my temper."

  They talked a little more, about what the day held for them both, and he agreed to come over to the apartment after his show to go over the latest on the Hillings & Hillings situation. "Professor," he said just before getting off.

  "Yes?" she said.

  "I still think you should be careful of that Aussenhoff guy. There's something not on the up-and-up about him."

  "Now it's your turn to send flowers," she said, hanging up.

  The ICA offices took up three floors on West Fifty-Seventh Street in a fairly nice office building. Patty was there for only ten minutes before being shown to an IBM computer and handed a pile of dictation tapes. "Whose dictation is this?" she asked the woman to whom she reported.

  "What do you care?"

  "It would help to know whose name should be on the letters."

  "Oh," the woman said coldly, walking away. "Carol Garten."

  You could tell a lot about people by the way they treated their temporary secretaries, which is to say, at least in Patty's experience, that the people most abused in an office tended to head straight for the temps so they could kick them around. So far, so good. ICA was not terribly different from the offices Patty had temped for in New Jersey. What had been a horrible recession for most of the North­east had been a heyday for temps, who were used to replace full­time clerical workers so big corporations didn't have to pay employee benefits.

  Patty looked at the desks to her left and right. Both secretaries were doing their best to ignore her. "Excuse me," she said to the one on her right. "Do you know how to spell Carol Garten's name?"

  "It's got an e," the secretary told her.

  "C-a-r-o-I-e?" Patty asked. "G-a-r-t-e-n?"

  "Yeah," the secretary said, picking up her phone.

  Okay, fine, Patty thought, putting on the Dictaphone earphones and pressing the foot pedal on the floor. On the tape was the voice of a woman who was evidently some kind of foreign-markets agent. Patty dutifully set to work, typing letters and reports and demands to people all over the world, flipping through the massive Rolodex assigned to her to check addresses and the spelling of names.

  On the spur of the moment, she flipped to H and found Hillings & Hillings with the scribbled notation: Dorothy—literary; Henry—dramatic. Patty reviewed the names Elizabeth and Josh had given her: Marion Ballicutt, James Stanley Johnson, Creighton Berns. She was to pay attention to anything she saw or heard in connection with them.

  One thing was for sure, though, no one talked much at ICA; at least the assistants and secretaries were a very close-mouthed group. When she tried to ask questions, the office staff pretty well ignored her. Later in the morning, when Patty was put off yet again by someone who wouldn't answer her questions about who did what at ICA, the secretary next to her whispered, "Look, every actress and her aunt sneaks in here as a temp. If you want your big break, it's going to have to come from walking through the door as your talented self. Okay?"

  "You think I'm an actress?" Patty asked her, amazed and very, very pleased.

  The secretary rolled her eyes and swiveled her cha
ir so her back was to Patty.

  When lunchtime carne, Patty went into the ladies' room and very nearly jumped out of her skin when she passed the mirror. She had completely forgotten about the blond wig. Realizing that two women were staring at her in the mirror (well, what would she do if someone walked into the ladies' room and screamed, "Oh!" and jumped a mile high when she saw herself in the mirror?), she smiled and explained that she thought she had lost her necklace, but there it was, hanging around her neck!

  The women looked at each other and moved out of her way.

  She was given an hour for lunch, so Patty headed downstairs to the lobby to look at the building directory. Marion Ballicutt and James Stanley Johnson were both on her floor, but where? She got a sandwich at the New York Deli and went back up to her floor, casually asking the receptionist where Marion Ballicutt's office was.

  "Why?" a voice demanded.

  She turned to find an older, very prim woman staring at her.

  "I'm sorry," Patty said, "I'm just a temp and I've been given a list of memos to distribute and I was trying to save time. I have to send things to people here and in Los Angeles and I don't know who is where."

  Good answer! she thought to herself.

  "Mrs. Ballicutt's office is down at the end of this hall," the woman said, pointing to a corridor that was far from Patty's as­signed desk. "She's head legal counsel for the New York office.”

  "I see," Patty said humbly, "thank you very much."

  "I will be out for approximately thirty minutes, Sylvia," the woman said, ignoring Patty. "I forwarded the phones."

  "Yes, Miss Andersen," the receptionist said. The woman walked out to the elevators without further word. "They're all bitchy at that end," the receptionist explained as soon as the woman was out of earshot.

  Patty nodded. "And where is James Stanley Johnson's office?"

  "He's down there, too, next to Mrs. Ballicutt."

  "Oh, do they work together?" Patty asked.

  "Who knows?" the receptionist said. "They're so secretive down there these days they've just been given their own Xerox machine." She made a face. "They've always had their own bath­rooms. I guess they don't think we're fit to mix with, if you know what I mean."

  Patty thanked her and turned right down the hallway, instead of left. The major passageway seemed to head right again and so she kept going, emerging onto a small reception area. There was no one at the desk, but there were three office doors enticingly close by. She peeked in the first, but it seemed to be some sort of conference room. Gaining courage, she looked in the second and was startled to find a man in horn-rimmed glasses looking up at her from where he was sitting on the floor, surrounded by folders and papers that fanned out in every direction.

  "Oh, excuse me," she said. "I was looking for Mrs. Ballicutt's office."

  "Next door," he said, flicking his head in the direction of the office she hadn't peeked in yet.

  Patty started to leave, but came back. "I'm sorry to interrupt again, but I can't help asking, "What are you doing? I thought when people got to be as successful as you are, they were allowed to sit in a chair."

  The man smiled. "Looking for a needle in a haystack."

  "Well, if you need any help, I wish you'd ask to have me trans­ferred down here," Patty said. "I'm temping at the other end and it's a madhouse down there. I like doing research and I wouldn't mind sitting on the floor."

  He laughed. "Well, it's not as pleasant down here as you think, but thanks for the offer."

  "You're Mr. Johnson, aren't you?" Patty asked.

  He looked up again, startled.

  "You're a great favorite with one of the girls down the hall," Patty said quickly. "Although she'd probably die a thousand deaths if you knew."

  "Well, the truth is, I'm a happily married man." He gestured to a picture of a woman and two young children that sat on a nearby console.

  "That's probably why she likes you," Patty said.

  They laughed.

  "Well, I better let you go," she said, moving on.

  "Bye-bye," he said.

  Patty saw the photocopying machine stuck right in the middle of the hall in a clearly haphazard arrangement for what were oth­erwise immaculate offices. Next to it, a desk guarded the entrance to Marion Ballicutt's office.

  "What are you doing?" asked a voice from behind which she recognized from before as the secretary's. Patty's heart skipped a beat. Damn, she wasn't supposed to be back yet. Patty turned around, acutely conscious of the soda and sandwich she was still holding.

  "I was just talking to Mr. Johnson, Miss Andersen," Patty said. "I got mixed up and didn't know which way was out."

  The secretary was frowning. "I think you better go back to where you belong, don't you?" She moved over to her desk, picked up the phone, and punched in a number. "I'm back, Sylvia, thank you for taking calls." She hung up and looked at Patty.

  "I'm not an aspiring actress or anything," Patty assured her.

  "Obviously," Miss Andersen told her.

  Unlike actors who were tied to a television series, Georgiana could essentially live wherever she pleased. She had chosen Los Angeles in recent years, but instead of buying in Santa Monica or Malibu, near the ocean, she had opted to rent in Bel Air, if for no other reason than it was the closest thing to a hometown she had ever known. In fact, there were still places in Bel Air where Geor­giana could wave to an old neighbor, still there after all these years.

  In Scotland she was a famous actress today, but her local celeb­rity in Inverness—bequeathed to her at birth as the only child of Lord Hamilton-Ayres—produced a kind of awe and admiration that far exceeded anything she could earn on her own merits. While "the mother" had been written off decades ago as utterly common, the area proudly claimed the beautiful and talented young heiress to the old Hamilton-Ayres estate as their own. It was a rather extraor­dinary life, but then, what marriage between Hollywood aristocracy and royalty had ever produced children with anything less?

  After the accident with the renegade pest-control truck, Geor­giana had not the heart or desire to get back into a classic car of any make. Instead, her business manager had leased her a new silver Jaguar convertible that, she had been assured, had an airbag in the steering wheel and on the passenger's side. It was in the garage when she got home from New York.

  Georgiana took it out for the first time Thursday afternoon, driving down Stone Canyon Road, twisting and turning through the lush green of Bel Air's Santa Monica Mountains, until she reached the intersection with Sunset Boulevard. When the light changed, she turned left and zipped along Sunset through Beverly Hills, turning right on Doheny, right again into the parking lot of the ICA building. She had been surprised and oddly flattered that a call to Creighton Berns's office yesterday afternoon had gotten her a two-thirty appointment with him today.

  She was checked in through security and took the elevator to the top floor. When she got off, she noticed the offices had been com­pletely redone. It was as if Ben Rothstein and his famous ICA art collection had never existed. There was nothing to remember him by. Everything was different.

  "Ms. Hamilton-Ayres," a young man said to her, shaking her hand, "how wonderful you look! One would never know you'd been in such a terrible accident."

  Inwardly she winced, wondering how she would have been re­ceived at ICA had they been able to tell how badly her face had been smashed up.

  "I'm Mr. Berns's assistant, Joseph Colum," he explained. "Mr. Berns is wrapping up a meeting and then you're to go straight in."

  Georgiana smiled and looked around for a seat.

  "I know you don't remember me," he added, "but I was one of the members of the Hasty Pudding Club that presented you with the award three years ago."

  "Oh," she said, sitting down, "yes, I thought you looked famil­iar. I felt very honored by that award, thank you." He grinned. "From Harvard to Hollywood, is it?"

  "Yes," he said. "May I get you some coffee or something?"

&nb
sp; "Some water would be lovely, thank you," Georgiana said. She picked up today's issue of Variety and flipped through it. A young woman brought her a bottle of Evian and a glass. Georgiana drank the water while she browsed through a copy of Women's Wear Daily, checking her watch periodically.

  Interesting. He was keeping her waiting.

  Finally his office door opened and Georgiana had to cover her surprise when David Aussenhoff walked out. She was unsure how to play it, and so she waited for a hint from him.

  "Ms. Hamilton-Ayres," David said, extending his hand, "how wonderful to see you—David Aussenhoff. I hope and pray this agent of yours will encourage you to work on one of my films again."

  "Thank you, David," Georgiana said, shaking his hand. She looked at Creighton Berns.

  "Hello, Georgiana," he said, taking her hand and giving her a kiss on the cheek.

  "Congratulations, Creighton," she said.

  They said good-bye to David, and Georgiana went into his office, where they exchanged a few pleasantries about how well she looked, how the insurance company had come through to fully compensate for the accident, about how desperate Metropolis Pic­tures must be to have lost Creighton, and how evidently wonder­fully well he had done at ICA already.

  "But that's not what you want to talk about, Georgiana," he said, sitting back in his chair. "Quite right," she acknowledged. She paused a moment, chang­ing to the script she had written for herself. "Creighton, I'm not sure you're aware of this, but when I was a child I lived with Dorothy and Henry Hillings for over two years. And they were wonderful to me."

  "They also sold your children's book," Creighton said.

  "Yes, that's right. And so perhaps you can understand how ter­ribly upset I am about the way this merger with ICA has been mishandled. And knowing you, Creighton, having worked with you in Metropolis, I've had a very hard time believing that you have any real idea of what has been going on in New York."

  "What, exactly, are you referring to?" he asked her.

  "The sudden impounding of the Hillings & Hillings offices, for a start."