by Jane Heller
“To me, too, but there’s more.”
“Go on.”
I recounted my chance meeting with Tara on the street. “I’d just spent three years in therapy and had finally managed to put her out of my mind,” I said. “Then there she was, in the flesh, looking so damn perfect, and all my old insecurities came flooding back. The more she went on and on about her fabulous life with Stuart, the more my self-esteem took a dive. It was as if some old habit kicked in, some old reflex where I was instantly reduced by her presence.”
“But you have so much more going for you than Tara does,” said Tony. “Why would you feel reduced by someone so one-dimensional?”
I smiled, heartened that there actually existed a man who failed to be captivated by her. “History, I guess. Once I was standing on that street next to her with her gorgeous clothes and gorgeous hair and gorgeous everything, it didn’t matter what I had accomplished in my life—how many jobs I’d gotten, or friends I’d made, or good deeds I’d done. It didn’t even matter that it had been years since I’d viewed her with anything resembling respect. She’s not fun or cool or interesting anymore, the way she seemed when we were kids. She’s still beautiful, of course, but she’s become almost a parody of herself—the cheerleader/prom queen who peaked in high school, never really evolving. And yet—and this is what’s so crazy—all that mattered to me that day on the street was that she was Tara Messer and I was her second fiddle. I reverted right back to type.”
“But she was the one who behaved badly, Amy. She was the one who should have felt reduced when you two met again.”
“I know. Look, maybe this isn’t a guy thing, so it’s hard for you to understand. Maybe it’s only women who get caught up in these kinds of emotions. All I can say is that when Tara asked me if I had a boyfriend, I felt this overpowering urge to tell her I did, even though I didn’t. I had this compulsion to show her, Tony. To show her I was doing just fine in the romance department. Better than fine. And so—here’s the bad part—I lied. I told her I not only had a boyfriend but that he and I were engaged and getting married in six months. It was a spontaneous remark, something I just blurted out without considering the consequences. I wanted her to walk away thinking to herself, Amy Sherman is so amazing. Even after what I put her through, she’s found a way to have it all—a great career, a great apartment, and a great guy.”
“Well, it may be a female thing more than a male thing, but I don’t blame you for lying. I really don’t.”
“Right, but here’s where you will blame me.” I paused, imagining his face when I told him the rest. “Once Tara was back in my life, she kept asking about my ‘fiancé’ and I kept avoiding the issue. Then one day we were on the phone and she announced that you were her favorite author—hers and Stuart’s. She started raving about you, Tony, and it dawned on me that the key to impressing—”
“Stop.”
“Why?”
“Because I know what you’re going to say. All through dinner, I kept wondering why they were making those references to weddings and kids and that sort of stuff. I thought maybe they were one of those pushy married couples who wants everyone else to be married, too. But now I get it. You told them we’re engaged. Tara raved about me, and suddenly I was your candidate for fiancé. See that? I’m not as dumb as I look.”
“You’re hardly dumb, Tony. But are you okay about this?”
“Do I wish you’d told me what was going on beforehand? Yeah, I do.”
“I couldn’t tell you. Not after you made it clear how angry you are at that woman who came to the restaurant, the one who lied to you and tried to get you to participate in her lie. Remember how the waiter practically had to bar her from the door?”
“I remember.” He shifted in his chair, his discomfort obvious at the mere mention of her. “But let’s get back to you, to the dilemma you’ve created for yourself.”
“It is a dilemma, and—Oh, Tony, I know you’re such a straight shooter and it’s not in your nature to pretend to be somebody you’re not. But this is important to me. It shouldn’t be, but it is. So please. Is there any way you would agree to play my fiancé? Just for a little while?”
He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he looked at me with those piercing blue eyes, looked at me as if he couldn’t decide whether I was a wacko or a woman who’d simply made a mess of things. “What do you mean by ‘a little while’?”
“Well, at first I thought the charade would only have to last for tonight, or whenever we get out of here. But now I realize that it might have to go on for a few months, until Tara’s book is published and she’s out of my life for good. What I’m saying is that I’ll have to continue to see her after tomorrow, which means that we would have to continue to see her. As I’ve told you, Betsy Kirby has given me strict marching orders on Simply Beautiful: I’m supposed to keep the author happy or else, and socializing with her is part of the equation. You know how it is. I tried to socialize with you each time you had a new book out, but you always begged off.”
“That’s because your idea of socializing was dragging me to some L and T thing and selling me out to a bunch of number crunchers.”
“Tony. Could you stop being a wiseass just for a second and tell me if you’ll do it?”
He thought a minute. “If you’d asked me a few weeks ago, I probably would have turned you down.”
“But now?” I said hopefully.
“Now I know you’re a die-hard Rangers fan. Major difference.”
Whoops. I’d forgotten about that particular lie of mine. About the wine and the sports cars, too. Minor details, all of them. No need to tell the truth about those, I figured. “So you’ll go along with it? You’ll say yes to our playing the part of an engaged couple? Keep in mind that it’s not a forever type of commitment. Once Tara’s out of the picture, you can throw yourself back into circulation.”
He smiled, ran his gaze over me. I felt myself flush from the attention. “I guess it wouldn’t be that hard to play a guy who’s made a commitment to you.”
My flush deepened and my heart did a little skip. So he did like me. Not that his liking me was crucial to the mission, but it was better than the alternative.
“I assume that in order to really inhabit our roles as an engaged couple, we’d have to spend a lot of time together,” he went on, “and put on public displays of affection and learn to tolerate each other’s annoying habits. Oh, and we’d have to see each other exclusively. No dating other people.”
“That’s what commitment means, Tony.” And he was the wordsmith? “But as I said, it would only be temporary.”
“And we’d have to fall into an actual routine—really behave as if we were getting married.”
“Yes. Exactly.”
He nodded vigorously. “It just might work. It just might be a good exercise.”
“A good exercise?” That’s an odd way to describe the situation, I thought, like I’m—what?—his Thighmaster? But I was so grateful for what appeared to be his cooperation that I could hardly quibble. Besides, he had just leaned toward me, arranged his face so close to mine that it was tough to concentrate on anything but how much I wanted him to kiss me.
Yeah, I did want him to kiss me. Partly because he was being so nice about everything and partly because I hadn’t been kissed by a man in ages and partly (okay, mostly) because I liked him as much as he apparently liked me.
“Yes,” he said. I could feel his breath on my skin. “This could be the perfect opportunity for me.”
“Opportunity for you?” I said dreamily.
“For my books, I mean.”
“I’m not following you.”
“Oh, Amy, Amy. This could be just the ticket to solving my Lucy West problem.”
I pulled away suddenly. So much for the kiss. “Lucy West? Your character?”
“Yeah: You know. Joe West’s wife.”
“Sure, but what does she have to do with you pretending to be my fiancé?”
“Everything,” he said with growing excitement. “I’ve been getting trashed by reviewers, remember? They think Joe’s marriage to Lucy has been weakly written, thinly developed, not up to the other elements of my books. They claim the relationship doesn’t ‘ring true.’ Well, tell me I’m thin-skinned, but all the criticism has been driving me nuts and I’ve been trying to figure out what to do about it. Thanks to you, I’ve got my answer.”
“Thanks to me?”
“You and this scheme of yours. If I pretend to be your fiancé for a few months, I can really research what it’s like to be in a committed relationship. You know me—it’s all about the research.” He chuckled. “And once I’ve done my research, I’ll be able to write about Lucy and Joe with more authority, and the reviews will reflect that. Hey, this could be great for both of us, right?”
“Right.” So he wasn’t helping me because he liked me. He was helping me because he wanted better reviews. Well, it didn’t matter why he was helping me, just that he was.
“It’ll be sort of a quid pro quo,” he said. “I’ll be your project and you’ll be my project.”
“I suppose you could look at it like that.”
“Sure, because you’ll get what you need and so will I.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So now that we’ve worked all this out, we should get to bed,” he said, rising from the chair. “Speaking of which, do you want the right side or the left?”
“Either one,” I said blankly as I watched him wander off into the other room. He was mumbling about how he wished he’d brought his laptop, so he could type up some spur-of-the-moment ideas for Joe and Lucy’s bedtime rituals.
After he left and I’d had a chance to process the rather surprising way that my plan had evolved into his plan, I slipped on Tara’s slinky black nightgown. The irony of the situation didn’t escape me. There I was, plotting to gain control over her for a change, when she’d found a way to dress me in her clothes.
No, the joke’s definitely on her, I reminded myself. She probably thought Tony and I were in the guest house screwing our brains out, when in reality we were sleeping on opposite sides of the bed, because we were only kidding about being engaged and because he was too busy researching his book even to notice me in her slinky black nightgown.
Okay, so maybe the joke was on me, too.
17
“Good morning, good morning, good morning!” said Tara as she waved us over to the breakfast table. It was 9:00 a.m. on Saturday. The sky was clear, the wind was calm, and she had just come back from her daily five-mile jog and was now bustling about the kitchen in a pink velour sweatsuit and matching running shoes. Her hair was in a ponytail and she wasn’t wearing any makeup except for lip gloss. Despite the strenuous workout and the early hour, she looked fresh and perky enough to be on her way to cheerleading practice, and, once again, I wanted to smack her.
I, on the other hand, looked like hell. While Tony slept like a baby—well, a baby who snores—I spent the night trying to avoid bumping into him accidentally. He was a roller, which meant that he didn’t stick to his side of the bed as promised. He rolled over to my side, he rolled back over to his, he rolled over to the middle, and then he lay there spread-eagle. He was all over the place, in other words, and I ended up exhausted. By 6:30, I gave up on sleep and crept out of bed, put my clothes back on, and started flipping through the issue of the Robb Report that Tara had placed ostentatiously on the night table. In case you’re not familiar with the magazine, it celebrates the lifestyles of the super-rich. I was skipping over ads for yachts and jewelry and authentic British butlers when I came upon a photo of Stuart, of all people. He’d been interviewed for an article called “High-Style Birthday Parties,” in which he described how, on the occasion of Tara’s thirtieth birthday, he’d thrown her a million-dollar bash at their rented villa in Tuscany. It sounded like sort of an upscale toga party, and my head exploded as he described the lavishness of it. What I’m saying is that I slept badly and then awoke badly, so by the time I landed in Tara’s kitchen, I had to force myself to rally in order to play the part of the dewy-eyed bride-to-be.
“Here’s some fresh-squeezed orange juice,” she said, handing Tony and me our glasses, both of which were rimmed with brown sugar, just as she advocated in Simply Beautiful.
“Thanks, Tara,” said Tony. “And thanks for letting us sleep in the guest house last night.” He leaned over and gave me a loud mushy kiss on the cheek. “It turned out to be a pretty romantic spot for us, didn’t it, buttercup?”
Buttercup. Nice. No wonder the critics panned Joe’s marriage to Lucy. Tony had a lot of work to do if he wanted to make that relationship ring true. “Oh Tony.” I sighed, as if reliving some passionate X-rated moment. “Last night could have been a rehearsal for our honeymoon.”
Tara averted her eyes, which I loved, because it suggested that my bliss was too much for her to take. “I’m glad you two have decided to abandon the reserved, hush-hush bit,” she said, “and are letting everybody see how happy you are together.”
“Not everybody,” I cautioned. “We’re still keeping our engagement under wraps, Tara. We’re only sharing our news—our joy—with you and Stuart.”
“Your secret is safe with us,” she said. “Now, how about some breakfast? Michelle’s not here, but I can whip something up for you guys. Stuart likes scrambled egg whites, since he’s watching his cholesterol. What do you two usually eat for breakfast?”
Since I had never eaten breakfast with Tony, I could only speak for myself. But he had other ideas.
“Amy and I aren’t really breakfast people,” he said. “Just a cup of coffee and we’re good to go. Right, buttercup?”
Okay, so I would talk to him about the buttercup. I would also talk to him about the fact that I drank tea, not coffee, and that I was a breakfast person and was starving.
We made it through the first fifteen minutes of chitchat, then were joined by Stuart, who had traded his Brooks Brothers suit for the same sweatsuit as Tara’s, except that his was black.
“Good morning, everybody,” he said to the room at large, then glanced at his idol. “Sleep okay, Tony?”
“Like a rock,” he said, “once Amy and I had worn ourselves out in the bedroom.”
This time, it was Stuart who averted his eyes, but only briefly. “Well, I just wanted to make sure our star author got his rest.” He patted Tony on the back, as if they were two manly men with a knack for satisfying their women. “I’d hate to think that it was our tree falling in the driveway that gave you a case of writer’s block.”
“Not to worry, Stuart,” said Tony. “I have a feeling this whole episode is actually going to stir my creative juices.”
“Good. Good. Glad to help. I’ve called the tree people, by the way. They can’t get to us until this afternoon because of all the other damage in the area, but they’ll be here between three and five.”
Swell. That was hours away.
“And since our garage is blocked, too,” he went on, turning to Tara, “I’ll be doing a little work at home today.”
“Oh, do you really have to, sweetheart?” she said. “I was hoping you could spend the whole time with Amy and Tony and me.”
“Me, too, but Mandy’s coming over soon with some papers for me to look at.”
“Mandy’s his secretary,” Tara explained.
“And then Walter’s dropping by to go over the company’s taxes.”
“Walter’s his accountant,” she said.
“And then Bobby will be here to stretch me out.”
“Bobby’s his personal trainer,” she said.
“And then there’s my standing appointment with Chaya.”
“Chaya’s his massage therapist,” she said. “She teaches yoga, too, but Stuart’s not very Zen, so he sticks with the massage.”
“I’m sorry about all the visitors,” said Stuart, who didn’t seem that sorry; instead, he seemed rather pleased with his own importance, “but they’re
previous commitments. I had no idea we’d be having guests today.”
“Don’t give it a thought, either of you,” said Tony, who gazed at me adoringly. “Amy and I can keep ourselves occupied. We can always go back to bed.”
I thought Tara’s eyes would bug out of her head. “Uh, well, you’re free to do whatever you like, but I’ll be at your disposal today. We could sit and talk some more. I’m dying to hear how you two became a couple, for instance. I know you work together, but how did the romance blossom? I mean, which one of you was the pursuer?”
“He was,” I said at the very instant that Tony said, “She was.”
Tara laughed. “Come on. Get your stories straight.”
“The truth is that I made the first move in that direction,” said Tony. “And let me tell you, I had to get my courage up to do it.”
“Your courage?” Tara said skeptically. “You don’t strike me as the wimpy type, Tony.”
“Are you kidding? I was totally intimidated by the idea of pursuing Amy. You probably don’t realize this, Tara, but she’s a legend in book-publishing circles. Authors would kill to have her as their publicist. She’s considered the best in the business.”
Yesss! Tony was playing his part magnificently. Tara seemed surprised to hear what a success I was. Even Stuart poked his head out of his newspaper for a minute and was viewing me with new respect.
“And then there were all the men she’d been linked with,” Tony continued. “I’m talking about big guns—the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, an Emmy award-winning television producer, the senator from a certain New England state. Powerful competition, right? The thought of asking her out on a date made me feel like an insecure high school boy.”
Well, yeah, maybe he was going for too much, but I was lapping up every word, especially the high school reference. Even I thought I sounded like hot shit. And you should have seen Tara and Stuart. They were listening to Tony but staring at me, as if to try to reframe me in their minds from poor sweet Amy to Amy the siren.
“And, of course, there was her beauty,” said Tony, reaching over to stroke my cheek. “I know you and she were friends when you were kids, Tara, so you probably witnessed the effect her looks had on people back then. She was the prettiest girl in town, right?”