‘What is this?’ He held up what seemed to be a manuscript, and looked at his wife, who was making garlic bread to accompany the fresh pasta they were having for dinner. ‘Nina?’
She glanced over. ‘It’s nothing.’
‘Doesn’t look like nothing.’
‘It’s just something Phoebe and I wrote a couple of years ago.’
Nick was looking at the front page. ‘Is it a novel?’
She shook her head. ‘A children’s story. About a girl who’s haunted by a strange spirit creature who glows in the dark. It’s a little bizarre in places. It’s nothing.’
‘May I read it?’
‘Sure.’ Nina laid a cloth over the warm, fragrant bread. ‘If you really want to.’
Nick began to remove the elastic band that held the pages together.
‘After dinner,’ Nina said.
‘This is not nothing,’ Nick said, a little before midnight.
‘What do you mean?’ Nina, beside him in bed, closed her new Patricia Cornwell mystery and turned to look at him. The light in the bedroom was soft and flickering with flame from the fireplace. Nick’s face, tough enough in daylight, seemed almost delicate in the firelight, his bone structure more clearly delineated. He looked, Nina thought with a pang, vulnerable.
Nick put the manuscript carefully down on the quilt. ‘This is a truly wonderful children’s story.’
‘Really?’ Nina was startled.
Nick sat up. He felt intensely excited and stirred. ‘Really,’ he said. ‘It’s dark and it’s warm and it’s just dangerous enough to get them scared and intrigued and longing for more.’
‘I don’t know.’ Nina lay back against her pillows. ‘Phoebe and I both agreed when we finished it that it was more of a cathartic exercise than anything else. It seemed like a harmless way of expressing our old childhood nightmares. We certainly never thought it would interest anyone else.’
Handling it gently, Nick pulled the elastic band back around the manuscript. ‘I’d like to try my hand at illustrating it.’
Nina stared at him. ‘You’re kidding.’
‘I never kid about my work. Not when something really triggers me.’
She was silent for a moment, then shrugged.
‘Go for it,’ she said. ‘If you really want to.’
‘Do you think Phoebe would mind?’
‘On the contrary,’ Nina said.
The results of their collaboration were, Clare Hawkins – a literary agent who operated out of her home in the Russian Hill district – told them, fascinating: beyond-Rackham, sensuous and fragile, but deliciously close enough to nightmare realms to attract even the most precocious, horrorwise youngsters of the nineties. Looking at Firefly again alongside Nick’s illustrations, Phoebe became ecstatic and even Nina – who still had reservations about the story being too much the product of the post-traumatic phase of their lives – began to admit that the package might have some potential.
It turned out to have considerably more than potential, attracting not only publishers and readers, but also the brains behind Meganimity, a fast-growing animation production company in Los Angeles.
‘We want you to work with us,’ Steve Cohn of Meganimity told Nick in the late fall of 1995, with the book about to hit the stores all over the country. ‘I mean, we really want you on board with us for this one.’
‘When are things going to start to happen?’ Nick asked Cohn.
‘Soon,’ Cohn replied. ‘Spring of next year. Be prepared to spend quite a bit of time with us here in LA.’
‘That’s fine for me,’ Nick told him. ‘But Nina and Phoebe have a real estate company to run in San Francisco.’
‘No problem,’ Cohn said. ‘They’re just the writers – you’re the artist.’ He paused. ‘Though you might like to make sure they’re ready to cook up a new story in their spare time.’
‘My wife,’ Nick pointed out, amiably enough, ‘would probably want me to tell you what you could do with that last remark. My sister-in-law would simply come out and tell you that you’re a sexist pig.’
Cohn grinned. ‘And my wife would agree with them both.’
To the young artist and movie fan, accustomed to the small peaks and troughs of alternating creative triumph and gloom, all the attention that followed the publication of Firefly was a revelation. Suddenly, people of substance and influence were sitting up, taking notice and wanting more. Nick loved it, though not quite as much as he had loved the period of collaboration with Nina and Phoebe.
They all counted their blessings regularly. The book, already in its eighth printing, was so hot that six months after publication parents, aunts and uncles still couldn’t get enough copies. Nick, Nina and Phoebe were in demand for signings and bookstore readings. Nick was flying to and from Los Angeles for meetings with Meganimity’s Hollywood-based producers, and there was talk of spin-offs in the electronic games and multimedia markets – though Clare Hawkins was advising them to take much of this LA-speak with a handsome pinch of salt.
‘What you guys should be thinking about is your next book,’ Hawkins, a tall, slim, handsome woman in her late forties, told Nick, Nina and Phoebe when she came to 1315 Antonia Street for dinner in late April. ‘Do you have any ideas?’
‘No,’ Phoebe said.
‘Nor do we plan to have any,’ Nina added.
‘I told you,’ Nick said, with a wry smile.
Clare shrugged. ‘I thought you might have persuaded them.’
‘Nina and Phoebe Ford are not easy women to persuade.’
‘We’re realtors,’ Nina said, gently, ‘not writers.’
‘Tell that to your readers,’ Clare said.
They were eating Nina’s homemade ravioli stuffed with crabmeat at the round oak table in their dining room, an austere space softened by a warm Persian rug snared at a Jackson Square auction and by three glowing candelabra from an antique shop on Fillmore Street.
‘I don’t need convincing,’ Nick told Clare. ‘I’d love nothing more than to illustrate another Ford book.’
‘Except that you understand,’ Nina said, ‘that Firefly was a once-only piece of therapy turned good fortune.’
‘Maybe not,’ Clare said. ‘Have you tried?’
‘We don’t really want to try,’ Phoebe answered for them both. ‘We’ve had such a great time with this one – it’s been the experience of a lifetime.’
‘And it’s done wonders for Nick’s career,’ Nina added.
‘And there’s nothing to stop him going on in the same vein,’ Phoebe said. ‘You’ve said yourself that you’ve had approaches from other writers wanting Nick to illustrate for them.’
‘Nothing that’s inspired him,’ Clare said.
‘Because there’s been nothing to touch Firefly,’ Nick explained simply. ‘Nothing’s even come close. Which is why I’m planning to paint some portraits, work on some of those good bread-and-butter magazine commissions you’ve got for me, and hold on for the right book deal.’
‘Meganimity will be disappointed,’ Clare said. ‘Knowing you had another one on the way might make them even keener to promote Firefly.’
‘There is another creation on the way,’ Phoebe said, reaching out and touching her sister’s still flat stomach.
‘You’re beaten, Clare,’ Nick said. ‘Face it.’
He was too content to care. If Nina and Phoebe ever changed their minds and wrote another story, no one would be happier than him, but there was always the possibility that they were right and that Firefly had been a one-off feat. Besides, they did have a business they loved, and Nina and he would, before too long, be pretty much occupied with their child. And though all the attention and royalty cheques and talk of advances were more than welcome, and it was good to have been able to take over the mortgage repayments from Nina, he was a painter – an artist, for heaven’s sake – not some big-league commodity.
Critics, publishers, movie producers and even agents would come and go. Love, warmth, sharing
and, above all, sanity, were something else entirely. It had taken Nick most of his life to find them. He would not give them up without a fight.
Chapter Five
Holly Bourne is in her final week at Nussbaum, Koch, Morgan. There will be a party for her at official close of business tomorrow evening, though almost everyone who attends – associates, partners, even secretaries – will be returning to their offices after a drink or two. Holly remembers her mother complaining sometimes about her father’s long working hours. Eleanor Bourne has always taken great pride in her senior administrative job with the State Department, but Richard Bourne’s regular fifteen-hour days in his DC law practice have often given her cause for grievance. Holly – along with some of the other ambitious associates at NKM – has already grown used to working eighteen-hour stretches, six or seven days a week. Holly’s never been afraid of hard work, never been afraid of anything much that’s necessary to get her where she wants to be.
From the end of next month – if she’s passed the bar exam – which she will – she’ll be working in Los Angeles for Zadok, Giulini & O’Connell in Century City offices just two blocks away from her fiancé’s own law firm. She’ll be taking a small salary cut to achieve that move, but her prospects are high. Michael Giulini and Alan Zadok, the partners who conducted her interview, were both aware at that time of her impending marriage to Jack Taylor, of Anderson, Taylor, and are prepared to wait for her until after the wedding (at the Hotel Bel-Air in LA, despite her parents’ hopes of hosting her big day in Washington DC), and the Grand Cayman honeymoon. Holly knows that Giulini and Zadok are set to do far more for her in time if she meets their expectations. She intends to do that and more. Holly intends to work her small, exercise-tightened butt off to achieve her goals.
She has just emerged from Bergdorf Goodman with three shopping bags – the rest to be delivered – and is walking along Fifth past the Doubleday bookstore, when she sees the notice in the window.
Her throat tightens. Her pulse rate quickens.
She steps inside. The security guard at the door looks at her shopping bags, and Holly opens them to be checked and stapled shut to stop her from slipping unpaid-for merchandise into them. As if.
The book-signing is on the second floor. There’s quite a queue. Mothers, aunts, a few small children, a couple of fathers.
The two women authors are sitting side by side behind a table, taking their time over each signing. Though seated, one of them seems petite, with carrot-coloured hair, white skin and green eyes, the other taller, an elegant honey-blonde with a long nose and unusual, not-quite-hazel, eyes. As each successive customer passes them a book, both women smile and chat for a few moments, then the blonde signs before the redhead, and the book is handed back. They make a good team.
He is not there.
Holly walks over to a table where the books have been stacked in an intricate pyramid-like edifice. She has already bought the book, did so last November soon after publication, when she read it carefully, studied each illustration at length, and then threw it away.
She takes another copy now and gets in line.
‘Wonderful book,’ the woman ahead of her turns around and says to Holly. She is holding three copies. ‘My daughter loved it so much I thought it would be nice to get her an autographed copy.’ She beams. ‘The other two are for my friend’s children.’
Holly’s smile is warm. ‘Mine is for my niece.’ She has no niece, but it sounds apt.
‘Boys seem to love it just as much as girls, you know.’
‘Really,’ Holly says.
The woman turns away as she reaches the table and hands over her copies with pride. The blonde is speaking to her, some comment about her buying three, but another woman in the line is coughing loudly, so Holly can’t hear exactly what is being said.
Now it’s her turn.
‘Thank you very much,’ the redhead says.
‘You’re welcome.’ Holly places her copy of Firefly on the table. ‘I’m glad to meet you both.’
‘The pleasure’s ours.’ The blonde’s British accent is more pronounced than her sister’s. ‘Is this for someone in particular?’
‘It’s for myself,’ Holly says. ‘I collect children’s books.’ Another invention.
The redhead smiles. ‘That’s nice.’
‘Anything special you’d like us tp write?’ the blonde asks.
Holly takes an instant, still making up her mind.
‘There’s a Wordsworth quotation I particularly like,’ she says. ‘Some find it a little gruesome – I just find it moving.’
The blond woman picks up her Mont Blanc fountain pen.
Holly dictates, slowly and clearly.
‘A simple child,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?’
The woman hesitates for an instant, then finishes writing the verse and signs her name. She puts down her pen in silence, blots the words and passes Firefly to her sister. The redhead adds her own name, looks up at Holly and gives her a small, curious smile as she hands the book back to her.
‘Interesting choice,’ she says.
The blonde makes no comment.
‘Have a nice day,’ Holly says and gives way to the next in line.
Outside, back on Fifth Avenue, she crosses over Fifty-sixth Street and stops by a trash can. She slips the Bergdorf Goodman shopping bags over her left wrist, takes Firefly from the Doubleday bag and opens the book at the signed page. Very carefully, she tears out the page and places it back in the bag.
And then she throws the book into the trash can.
Chapter Six
I look at my work sometimes, at my portraits, and I see in some of them the reflection of my memories, of my innermost emotions and responses to the people who have meant the most to me.
I look at Ethan Miller, my father, the quiet, gifted, successful architect, with his calm, concentrated face, his brown eyes and thick, wavy hair, so like my own, and at Kate, my mother, the high school art teacher, with her short, fair hair and her pretty blue eyes always so open and candid, like her personality, and I remember the early pleasures of watching them both at work. My dad hunched over his drawing board, my mother in another world at her easel. The smells of paint and turpentine and varnish. The sounds: of rapid, smooth sketching, of brushes and palette knives on canvas, the clear, clean swish of the draughtsman’s pen. And I remember how, by the age of nine – when we moved to Bethesda from Philadelphia – I had become as content with a stick of charcoal or a paintbrush as most other boys my age were with a catcher’s mitt or basketball.
I look at my portrait of Richard Bourne, distinguished, bespectacled, grey-templed Washington lawyer and gentle man, who loved Holly dearly yet half recognized, I always suspected, at least some of her problems. Unlike Eleanor Bourne. Such a fine-looking, tightly controlled, high-achieving woman, of whose dislike I was always aware, who had the capacity to slay with a single fire-ice glance from her dark eyes anyone who dared suggest to her that her child was less than perfect. A complex woman, Eleanor Bourne. Holly told me once that Eleanor blamed her for Eric’s death, and because of that, for a while, Holly said she had blamed herself too. And yet, once Holly had started growing up and doing so well, Eleanor was the first in line handing out accolades to her daughter and refusing to accept that Holly could do wrong. Blame where none was due; not where it was needed. A complex, difficult woman, Eleanor Bourne.
And then there’s Holly’s portrait.
I painted several of her through the years, but kept only one: the first, painted about three years after my parents and I first moved into Holly’s street. How lovely she was back then. Hair the colour of roasting chestnuts, pale, smooth skin, calm grey eyes. Richard’s eyes. And that smile. Holly’s very own smile. The girl-next-door who everyone always said – then and in years to come – was such pure delight to look at and to know.
I believed
that too, in the early days. Or I thought I did.
I still remember the first time I saw her, framed in her bedroom window. I remember a sad, sweet face gazing down at me, and I remember how that sadness seemed to vanish the instant I smiled back up at her. Light out of darkness. I heard, soon after that, what had happened to her brother Eric, and how desolate Holly had been since losing him, and I remember thinking – friendless new boy in town that I was – that it might be kind of a nice thing if I could help make her feel better again.
And I did. Even Eleanor was grateful to me back then for helping get Holly back on track. Not that Eleanor actually liked me, not even in those days. I was okay, I guess, for the boy next door, but Holly – well, it was obvious to Eleanor and just about everyone else that Holly, frankly, was in another league. She was a year younger than I was, but she was ‘special’. With those looks, and with her high intelligence, there was never any doubting that Holly Bourne was destined for all-round success.
Special.
Chapter Seven
‘I like you,’ she said to Nick in the second week of December 1976, not long before his first Bethesda Christmas.
He grinned at her.
‘I like you too,’ he said.
‘Do you love me?’ she asked him.
He was startled. It seemed to him a weird kind of question. He loved two people: his mom and his dad. It had never occurred to him to love anyone else.
‘I don’t know.’ He saw hurt in her face. ‘I guess. Maybe.’
The hurt went away. ‘I love you,’ Holly told him. ‘I love you a lot.’
He grinned again. Hearing her say that she loved him made him feel a little dumb, but glad, too.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
He didn’t know what else he was supposed to say.
Chapter Eight
Our relationship was uneven from the beginning, and I guess it was always potentially dangerous, an unhealthy kind of see-saw. There are two ways of looking back at those early days, I realize that now. There was the way I used to tell myself I thought it was, and then there was the way I really, deep-down, knew it was.
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