“Hardly. No trust fund idlers in our group. We all work in the wedding industry. A baker, a DJ, a photographer. For the most part self-employed, which translates to low antes. Merely a chance to shoot the breeze. And no shop talk. I promise you, nothing cancels out the annoyance of women like the clink of poker chips.”
True. In fact, the night sounded like just what the doctor ordered. “Throw in a beer and I’m all yours.”
“There’s the rub. Carl—the unlucky recipient of food poisoning? It was his turn to supply the beer. If you take his seat at the table, you also assume his responsibilities.”
Hauling himself to his feet, Ben let out a long, low whistle. “I am being hustled.”
“Maybe just a bit.” Gib laughed, and Ben couldn’t help but join in.
“Fair enough.” It was worth the price of a couple of six packs not to think about Ivy for the rest of the night.
* * *
“Come in. I’ve been dying to meet you. I’m Milo, the office manager at Aisle Bound. You have simply got to be Bennett.” Before Ben could react, a skinny blond man enfolded him in a hug.
“Uh, hi.” Ben pushed his way out of the hug immediately. He wasn’t a hugger. Especially not with guys. Especially not with guys he’d never met before. With an elaborate sweep of his arm, Milo ushered him into Gib’s townhouse. A quick scan as he crossed the threshold revealed green velvet drapes, green-and-white-striped wallpaper, and a couch big enough to hold the starting line of the Chicago Bears. Comfortable and flamboyant at the same time. Maybe he’d read Gibson wrong, and he played for the other team. Pretty obvious that the hugger did. Not that it mattered at all to Ben. Not when his eyes were magnetically drawn straight to a five-foot-long sub sandwich bisecting the dining room table like a human sacrifice.
“Well? How did your first official event with Ivy go? Did you capture her brilliance and poise?”
“I didn’t expect to see anyone from Aisle Bound here.” Not a great way to kick off his not-thinking-about-Ivy night.
“Why not? Did Gib forget to tell you he’s got a roommate? Moi?” Milo twirled like a ballerina.
That certainly explained the velvet draperies. And why Milo wore a matching green velvet smoking jacket that would do Hugh Hefner proud. “He didn’t mention it.”
“How naughty of him.”
Huh uh. Naughty didn’t come close to the word Ben wanted to use. “The wedding went great.”
“Details, if you please.”
Ben shrugged. “No bloodshed and it ended on time. That makes it a winner in my book.”
“Milo, ease off a bit. Remember the rule: no shop talk on poker night.” Gib handed Ben a tumbler. “Jack and Coke to tide you over until the beer chills a bit?”
“Perfect.”
Three loud, laughing men spilled through the front door. While two were in jeans, the shortest man with a crooked nose that spoke of a long history of breaks sported a full tuxedo.
“Miguel, how many times have I told you: poker is semi-formal. We only go black tie for craps and roulette.” Milo pulled off the bow tie with a quick yank.
“Very funny. I came straight from a gig. Trust me, I’m itching to get out of this penguin suit.” He barreled up the stairs with a quick wave in the general direction of Gib and Ben.
“Miguel’s a reformed boxer turned DJ,” Milo explained. “After spending so many years wearing only shorts to work, he still chafes about dressing up for events. I’ve tried to teach him to appreciate the finer points of style, but it doesn’t seem to sink in at all.”
“Give it up already, it’s a losing battle. But you’ve got enough panache for all of us.” A lanky man in an Aquaman tee shook Ben’s hand. “Hi, I’m Lewis. Gib texted us that you’d take Carl’s place. As long as you brought the beer, you’re welcome here.”
“It’s in the fridge.” Ben returned the shake. Lewis had his priorities straight. And he held a sack in one arm brimming with bags of potato chips. The night was looking up.
“Good man.”
The last of the trio deposited a large white bakery box on the dining room table. “Sam Lyons,” he said as he turned, hand outstretched for introductions. When his eyes met Ben’s, he paused. His other hand rose to brush a wave of dark hair off his forehead in surprise.
“You’re Bennett Westcott.”
Here we go, Ben thought. His anonymity in Chicago had lasted all of nine hours. “Yup,” he said curtly, hoping his unfriendly tone would head off the inevitable questions.
“Do you know who this is?” Sam asked his friends.
“I’m gonna go with…Bennett Westcott?” said Lewis. He dropped onto the sofa and propped one foot on the coffee table, despite Milo’s violent hiss of disapproval.
“Are you famous, Ben? Do we have a celebrity in our midst?” Gib asked.
No reason not to answer. If Sam recognized him, it was pointless to try and hide the facts. “More like infamous.” Ben took a long, bracing gulp, taking comfort in the distraction of the searing hit at the back of his throat. Too edgy to sit down, he paced the length of the room.
“Wow, I’m sorry. You took me by surprise. Should’ve kept my big mouth shut.” Sam clapped him on the shoulder. “I’m guessing you don’t want to relive the whole thing, do you?”
“Nah. Why should I mind going over the excruciating details of the biggest mistake of my life?” Nothing like getting an emotional root canal to start off a night of cards.
“This is Bennett Westcott,” Sam repeated. “Doesn’t the name ring a bell?”
“Not really sure.” Gib cocked his head. “Why don’t you say it a few dozen more times, see if anything shakes loose?”
“I just can’t believe you don’t recognize him. The man’s face was plastered all over the news for like a week straight. How do you not recognize him?”
Miguel loped down the stairs. “Recognize who?” Without using even one hand for leverage, he leapt over the back of the sofa and landed next to Lewis. Impressive move.
“Bennett Westcott.” Sam slowly over-enunciated the name.
“For Christ’s sake, if you promise to stop saying my name I’ll tell the story.” Ben drained his glass. “I used to be a documentary journalist. My team traveled all over the world doing exposes. The last one I worked on, we shadowed a presidential candidate. Unprecedented access. Hell of a long shot, because we didn’t know if our guy would survive the first primary, let alone go all the way.”
“Oh. My. God. You’re the guy who dropped the camera!” squealed Milo. He hopped from one foot to the other as if crossing a bed of hot coals. “During the assassination attempt on President Calhoun in Alaska. You were on the dais, right behind him. Twenty other news cameras caught the whole thing on tape. The first shot rang out, you panned the camera toward the crowd. Then you dropped it and ducked for cover. Missed Calhoun shaking off the Secret Service, grabbing his rifle and tagging the shooter himself. Most people say that day won him the election. It gave him a new slogan for the last six weeks of the race. A man strong enough to protect himself can protect the whole country.”
Ben looked at the guys. All wore some variation of slack-jawed astonishment on their faces. Nothing he hadn’t seen a hundred or so times in the past two years. “Yes. That is the official story. I’m the lily-livered coward. The scaredy cat who ignored the biggest story of the decade unfolding in front of him and curled up in a ball on the floor. Film at eleven.” He bent into a mocking half-bow.
“What do you mean, the official story?” Gib asked. Without any prompting, he’d prepared a fresh drink and handed it to Ben.
“Doesn’t matter. Calhoun’s a hero, and I’m a laughingstock. Career down the drain.”
Sam shook his head and crossed his arms, his eyebrows drawing together into a thick, dark row. “Suddenly, I’m not buying that line. Look, I feel awful about bringing this up.”
“You should. Usually it takes a trailer hitch and a two-ton tractor to pull so much as the weather forecast out of Mr.
Taciturn over there. You picked a hell of a moment to get chatty,” Miguel remonstrated. He pulled out a bag of chips and smacked it open with a loud pop.
“Hey, it’s not every day one of my personal heroes shows up for poker.”
Ben sipped his drink, reminded himself it was number two. Time to pace. He had no intentions of revisiting the drunken island of forgetfulness he’d parked himself on for a month after losing his job. No matter how tempting. “I’m no hero. If polled, I’m pretty sure a whopping, let’s see…all of America would agree.”
“Then they’d be wrong. I’ve seen every one of your documentaries. Brilliant work. You deserved those five awards. And you were robbed last year when you didn’t win for your piece on the families of drug gangsters in Rio. Can’t believe they gave it to a film on shark preservation instead. Come on, they’re sharks. Natural predator, right? Where’s the story there?”
Lewis rolled his eyes. Speaking around a mouthful of chips, he said, “You’ll have to excuse Sam’s babbling. He’s a bit of a news junkie. Since he spends most of his waking hours playing with chocolate and frosting, he’s a little bit scared of turning into a girl. He overdoses on news to compensate. Even made his parents install TiVo in the bakery.”
“There’s no shame in staying abreast of the news of the day,” said Gib. “You can’t rib Sam for being well informed.”
Miguel scowled and opened another bag of chips. “Well, make him stop fawning over our new poker player like he’s a friggin’ movie star. Ask for Ben’s autograph and be done with it already, man. I’m ready to play.”
“Go divvy up the chips if you’re so ready.” Sam pointed to the dining table without taking his eyes off Ben. “Shuffle the cards. Grab plates for the sandwich. But I’m not laying out an ante until we hear the rest of Ben’s story. If there’s more to it, you’ve got to spill. Don’t leave us hanging.”
Funny. Ben had spent the past eighteen months either being ignored, or treated like dirt once people recognized him. Now he’d found the one person in the country who respected his body of work. At least, the work he used to do. Doubtful Sam was a hardcore fan of Wild Wedding Smackdown. It felt kind of good. Reminded him who he used to be. The man he was proud to be. Too bad that sense of pride came as a package deal along with a double scoop of bitterness and pain at losing it all. Why not tell them what really went down? At this point, his day couldn’t get any worse. Ben took one final sip then set the glass on a bookcase and stepped away.
“Here’s the deal. I didn’t actually drop the camera and hide from the bullets. It was the kind of once in a lifetime moment you yearn for. Never, in a million years would I have dropped the camera.” Sucking in a breath and squinching his eyes shut, Ben paused before letting everything go. The shrink he’d blown off after two visits would be so proud.
“I passed out. Right before the first bullet. I was already halfway to the floor when all hell broke loose. The timing is so split second that it’s hard to tell unless you know what you’re looking for on the video. One of the Secret Service kicked my legs out of the way when he ran to protect Calhoun, which is why it looks like I’m curled in a ball.”
Miguel jerked his chin. “Healthy guys like you don’t just pass out.”
“Not too healthy. You should’ve seen him on the treadmill at the gym this afternoon, sucking wind.” Gib clutched at his chest and loudly gasped for air.
“That was after I’d swum laps for half an hour.” Irritation sharpened his tone. Ben had a feeling Gib wouldn’t let him live the episode down for the rest of his stay in Chicago. “Regardless of my current fitness level, Miguel’s right. A super-high fever made me pass out. Conveniently, none of the news organizations rolled tape of me being loaded onto a stretcher and taken away in an ambulance, still unconscious. They preferred to run with the sensational story of a hardened journalist dropping his camera.”
Silently, Lewis offered his bag of chips. Ben interpreted the gesture as an attempt at commiseration. Grateful for an excuse to step away from the heavy weight of their stares, he took it to the kitchen and dumped the contents into a bowl. Only a handful of people had heard his version of the worst day of his life. It didn’t exactly roll off his tongue. He needed a minute to brace himself for the next step, the inevitable, manhood-shriveling looks of pity.
Miguel and the others crowded into the kitchen almost immediately. Right. Now that they knew who he was, they probably didn’t want him at their poker game. He’d been kidding himself. After all, every one of his buddies in New York and D.C. dropped him. Practically overnight they’d frozen him out, both as friends and professionally. He couldn’t get another job for six months after being let go. Doors slammed in his face time and time again. Why would total strangers want the guy known around the world as “the Cowering Cameraman” sitting at their table? To his surprise, Miguel was the first to speak. He jammed beefy fists into the pockets of his cargo shorts.
“Finish the story.”
“Yeah. We can’t concentrate on the game if we’re worried you’re gonna give all of us Ebola or something,” added Lewis with a wink.
Ben snorted out a half laugh. Teasing he could handle “You’re not far off the mark. The week before, I took a couple days off and flew down to Brazil. My team helped expose a major player in a drug cartel. We wanted to film him being sentenced, to cap off the story. Felt good, watching his face as it sank in he’d spend the rest of his life in jail. The courtroom was filled with family members of his victims. Drug mules who died when balloons of heroin burst in their stomach. Innocent children caught in machine gun crossfire. Strung-out addicts who sacrificed their entire lives to feed their habit. Each family got to speak, to explain why this scum shouldn’t see the light of day again his entire life.”
“You were at the Perez trial?” Sam’s hushed whisper approached hero worship. “The man’s a monster. I heard it was an American news team that finally managed to catch him in a web of lies.”
“You heard wrong. We were with a multi-national team of drug enforcement agents from five different countries. They’d been trying to nail him for a couple of years. We just happened to be around when it all came together.” An understatement of gigantic proportion, but they’d all signed about fifty different confidentiality agreements. Chances were slim these Chicago wedding vendors would even know how to rat him out to the Bolivian government, but why risk it?
“Because I’d been to Brazil, the doctors had a list as long as my arm of funky tropical diseases my body could’ve been hosting. Ebola was about the only thing not on the table. For a while the contender was dengue fever. Nobody wanted to start a panic, so they locked down all information. Even my family didn’t find out I’d been in the hospital for a week until after they released me. Turned out the culprit wasn’t Brazil, but the senator’s recent trip to Colorado. I was the proud owner of a case of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.”
“Sounds itchy.” Lewis wrinkled his nose.
“Don’t remember much of it, to be honest. By the time I fully surfaced, it was too late for damage control. I’d been branded the Cowering Cameraman. Got fired before I even regained consciousness.” That probably stung the most. Out of all the indignities, the name calling, the derision, he’d been astonished his producer hadn’t fought for him. Had bowed to public opinion even though he knew damn well Ben lay in a hospital bed covered in icepacks to bring down the stubborn fever. Fucking gutless wonder.
Gib’s jaw dropped to the floor, followed a second later by his butt dropping onto a white, wooden stool at the breakfast counter. “They sacked you? For being deathly ill?”
“More for looking like an idiot. It took me a month to recover, two months to stop being pissed at the world, and three more months to find anyone willing to hire me to hold a camera in any capacity.” Ben held his hands out, palms up, at his waist. “So ends my sad saga.”
Would they believe him? Or would they see it as a trumped up, stupid attempt at an excuse? Ben’s parents and si
ster believed him. Hard to argue with the facts presented when Ben showed up on his sister’s doorstep, so weak the doorman had to help him from the cab to the elevator. Or the hospital bills his parents helped pay because he’d been dropped from his insurance carrier. But when he’d tried to explain what really happened to a so-called friend at CNN, the guy laughed in his still hospital-pale face. Tried again two more times with worse results.
Didn’t matter, in the end. Ben knew better than to expect people to stick by him. Nobody looks out for you but you. Might as well be his family’s motto. Generations of divorces and betrayal seared that little saying into the Westcott family DNA. Why the hell had he even bothered trotting out the truth one last time? Ben figured he should leave now before they tossed him out. He turned sideways to slip between Miguel and Milo, but never made it to the kitchen door. Miguel straight armed him, fist out. It took Ben a second to adjust his perception and realize he was being offered the highest male accolade—the fist bump. Almost in slow motion, he bumped back.
“Dude, you got screwed. Proves you’re not from here. It never would’ve happened in Chicago.”
Milo nodded. “You’ll show them. When Planning for Love rockets to the top of the ratings and you get to go on Letterman and talk about your miraculous comeback, vengeance will be yours.”
Sam squished in between Milo and the refrigerator to clap his hand in a staccato salute on Ben’s back. “You can’t let the general ignorance of people get to you. You stood strong against adversity. Hell, maybe someday they’ll shoot a documentary based on your life. Reveal the truth to the world. Wouldn’t that be ironic?”
After rattling in the cupboard, Lewis slammed down a handful of shot glasses. “Bring it in, guys. We’ll do a shot for Ben. For getting a new job, and giving all those douchebags the finger.” Milo produced a bottle of Maker’s Mark and poured a round.
“Really? Is that truly necessary? You know I prefer to show my enthusiasm by a firm jolly well done. British reserve isn’t a cliché. It is an emotional chasm that cannot be overcome simply by living in America for five years.” But while Gibson rambled, he picked up a glass.
Planning for Love Page 14