Let Me Whisper in Your Ear

by Mary Jane Clark

  Yes, she had made a beautiful place for their trysts. And, for a while, that had been enough.

  But where was she going? Though she denied it to Laura in their myriad conversations about her affair with Leonard, Francheska was not content with being the “other woman.” It was not how she had been raised. If her parents knew that she was being kept by a married man, it would kill them, and God knew they had already had a tough enough time of it.

  She loved her parents and their good and decent ways. And yet, she had wanted to escape them. She didn’t want to repeat their lives of hard work that got them nowhere. Francheska had realized early on that her looks were her ticket out of a world where one lived from paycheck to paycheck.

  She had still been living with her aunt since her parents had moved to Puerto Rico, working on a painfully sporadic modeling career, when she met Laura at the World Gym near Lincoln Center. As they got to know one another, panting through aerobics classes, Francheska learned that Laura had just moved into a small Manhattan apartment at a good address, but was having to budget carefully to come up with the ridiculous New York City rent each month. Francheska seized the opportunity to get away from home and asked Laura if she would consider a roommate.

  They had had a lot of fun together in that apartment, but Francheska’s modeling assignments were not dependable enough. Some months, Laura had to advance Francheska’s portion of the rent. When Leonard Costello came along, Francheska was ready to be taken care of.

  Glancing at her watch, Francheska realized that Leonard should be arriving in about a half hour. She went in to take a shower and dress.

  She dropped her clothes on the bathroom floor and, twisting up her long dark hair and clipping it to the top of her head, she stepped into the tub. The sliding glass shower door was covered with steam as Francheska let the hot spray douse her sleek body.

  She had to talk to Leonard. Maybe he did care enough about her to leave his wife—though, in her heart, she was afraid she knew already what his answer would be. But she felt compelled to bring things to a head. If she had no real future with Leonard, painful though it may be, it was time to move on.

  She was practicing in her mind what she would say when the shower door slid open. Leonard stood naked before her. And, God help her, she was excited by the sight of him.

  Afterward, as Francheska dried his well-exercised body with a thick towel, she told him that she had his favorite dinner waiting.

  Leonard looked uncomfortable.

  “Don’t tell me.” Francheska pulled away from him.

  “I’m sorry, Francie, but I can’t stay. Anne has something planned with the kids tonight. I thought I could get out of it, but I can’t.”

  Biting the corner of her lip, she answered him with silence. Pulling a robe from the hook on the back of the bathroom door and covering herself, she stormed into the bedroom. Leonard followed behind her and began to dress quickly.

  “Do you have any idea how this makes me feel, Leonard? Do you even care how this makes me feel?” Francheska exploded. She could dissolve into tears if she let herself, but she wouldn’t. Not now. There would be the whole lonely night in front of her to do that.

  “Come on, Francheska. I’ve had a long day and I don’t need to get into this crap now.” He was strapping on his Rolex.

  “Great. That’s just great.” She stalked out of the bedroom, pulling the tie of her bathrobe tight around her waist. She was taking the goulash from the oven when Leonard, now fully dressed, came up behind her and began to nuzzle her neck.

  “I’m sorry, Francie. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

  “Um-hmm.” She wouldn’t look at him.

  Leonard tried to change the subject. “Hey, you’ll never guess who is lying at Mt. Olympia on life support.”

  22

  “WHY DON’T YOU get in a cab and come over here right now?” Laura urged her distraught friend. “Sleep over. It will be just like the old days.”

  They had been on the telephone for the better part of an hour now, going over and over the same old thing. Francheska’s humiliation tonight was just the latest episode in the ongoing saga. She had to get rid of that guy. She knew it. But she could never bring herself to do it.

  Laura hated to hear her friend’s alternating sobbing and angered anguish. And, though she hated to admit it to herself, Laura was losing patience with Francheska. No matter how much she tried to encourage Francheska and reassure her that she would be better off out of this relationship no matter what she had to give up, Francheska didn’t budge. While Laura hoped that Leonard’s actions tonight might be the final nail in the coffin of the affair, she sensed that Francheska still held out hope. Big mistake.

  Laura tried to put herself in her friend’s shoes. How would Francheska support herself once she lost the Dr. Costello meal ticket? She had given up modeling in the years she had been with Leonard. But she had purchased a computer and taken a few business courses at Fordham during her empty afternoons. Maybe she could get some sort of job and finish her degree at night. Francheska was bright enough. Other people did it; so could she. But she had to want it. No amount of encouraging pep talks from Laura, helpful though they were, could make Francheska do it. Francheska had to want it herself.

  Francheska sniffled on the other end of the phone line. “Thanks, Laura. But I’m just too tired to come over. I’m just going to wash my face and go to bed.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “All right, then. I’ll call you tomorrow.” Laura was about to hang up.

  “Hey, so that the night won’t be a total waste, I did get something out of Leonard’s visit,” Francheska remembered.

  “And that would be what?” Laura asked.

  “That tennis player? The one who won Wimbledon and the U.S. Open last year…?” Francheska’s voice trailed off as she tried to pull the name from her tired brain.

  Laura prompted her with the name.

  “Yeah, that’s the one. Well, Leonard told me he’s on life-support machines at Mt. Olympia. Drug overdose. His parents are flying in tonight to pull the plug.”

  23

  Wednesday, December 29

  THE FIRST THING Laura did when she arrived at her desk the next morning was call the tape library and order some video of last summer’s U.S. Open. With two days before the Yearender was to air, she knew right where she could use the pictures of the strapping, healthy tennis player in her video montage. So confident was she of Francheska’s information that Laura went ahead and edited the video into her piece well before the Associated Press wire service issued a bulletin on the athlete’s death.

  As she exited the editing room, Mike Schultz was waiting for her.

  “Laura, I’ve got an obit for you to do.”

  “I’ve got the tapes right here,” Laura responded.

  Mike looked surprised as he looked at the videotapes labeled with the tennis star’s name that Laura held in her hands.

  “How did you know that?” he asked in wonder, shaking his head.

  “I have my sources,” Laura said with a shrug as she headed toward her desk to write her obituary script.

  24

  WHEN GWYNETH HUNG up the phone after her conversation with her agent, her heart was pounding. She sank gratefully into the tufted slipper chair that sat in front of her dressing table and smiled slyly at her reflection in the mirror.

  It was done! The Is were dotted and the Ts were crossed in the contract, and CBS had given her everything she had wanted, and then some, to lure her over to their team.

  Now came the even better part. She got to tell Joel.

  Gwyneth wanted to do it herself, and right away, before he had a chance to hear it through the immediate and superactive broadcasting grapevine. She didn’t want him to have time to think or couch his response to her news. The fun would be in getting his raw reaction, catching him completely off guard. She wished she could tell him in person and see Joel’s face as he heard the
news, but she didn’t dare wait even the time it would take to catch a cab over to the Broadcast Center. Someone from CBS could call him to gloat before she got there.

  She glanced at the crystal timepiece on the bedside table. Six o’clock. He’d still be there, waiting to watch the Evening Headlines. Gwyneth’s manicured fingers plucked nervously at the chair’s velvet piping as she waited for Joel to pickup his private line.

  “Yes?” Joel’s voice was clipped and she could hear him exhaling a drag of his cigarette.

  “It’s me, Joel.”

  “Gwyneth, baby!” His voice changed to his best purr as he instantly recognized her voice. “How are you, kiddo? All set for your party?”

  “Sure. Everything should be wonderful, Joel, but I’m not so sure you’ll want to come after you hear what I have to tell you.”

  “Tell me what?” he asked cautiously.

  “I’m leaving Hourglass, Joel. Leaving KEY and going over to CBS. The contract is all set.”

  She listened quietly, smirking at her reflection in the beveled glass of the mirror as Joel let loose with the expletives she had anticipated. It felt good to anger him, to hurt him, to pay him back for the hurt that he had caused her.

  A marriage between them probably would have been a disaster. Gwyneth knew that. But as much as she always declared that she was not the marrying kind, she had been deeply wounded that Joel had never, in all the time that they had carried on their affair, suggested that he would leave Kitzi and make an honest woman of his star. If he had, Gwyneth wasn’t even sure what she would have answered. But it didn’t matter. He should have asked. And, over the years, Joel’s omission had festered within her.

  Now, as she listened to him yelling into the telephone and pictured the rage in his reddened face, Gwyneth felt smug satisfaction in rejecting him.

  “Goddamn it, Gwyneth, you owe me more than this!” Joel demanded.

  “I don’t owe you anything, Joel,” Gwyneth answered determinedly. “You owe me. I’m the reason for your success, and the success of Hourglass. We both know that.”

  “No! We don’t both know that!” Joel sputtered. “I’ve made you the star that you’ve become, and don’t you ever forget it! If it weren’t for me, you’d be nowhere. You and your kind are a dime a dozen, baby. Don’t kid yourself, Gwyneth, you’ll be easily replaced. And, I might add, by a younger, fresher, prettier version.”

  Gwyneth rose to Joel’s bait. She screamed into the phone, calling him every foul name she could think of. “You can go to hell!” she hissed as she went to slam down the receiver.

  “I’ll see you there,” answered the executive producer. “I’ll see you there.”

  25

  New Year’s Eve

  LAURA WAS EAGER to get to the Broadcast Center on New Year’s Eve morning. All the hard work was done. Now she would have the pleasure of watching her Yearender air on the KEY Television Network.

  She tucked a starched white cotton shirt into her favorite pair of jeans and pulled a loose-fitting dark green sweater over her head. No need to dress up today. Only a skeleton staff would be working. Almost all the executives were on holiday vacation, available on beeper if any big news story broke. Those who reported to the Broadcast Center today were the worker bees.

  She hoped this would be the last time that she would be responsible for the Yearender. If things went the way she planned, this time next year, she’d be producing for Hourglass.

  Laura lifted the Murphy bed up into the wall and wished for the thousandth time that she had more space. It seemed amazing to her, now, that Francheska and she had once shared this apartment.

  If she got the new job, the first thing she was going to do was look for a bigger apartment. Hopefully, something would open up in the same building. She loved the Oliver Cromwell on West 72nd Street. Just a half block from Central Park and a pleasant walk to the Broadcast Center. The neighborhood was wonderful. Lots of good restaurants, interesting shops, multiple movie theaters and, of course, Lincoln Center. She’d made a New Year’s resolution to take better advantage of the cultural opportunities that were just blocks from her front door.

  Raising the shade at the picture window, Laura glanced at her “view,” the apartment across the alley. No one was stirring at the Pilsners’. She laughed to herself.

  She really had no idea what the people who lived in that apartment were really named. But every night she watched the family gather for dinner, the father always drinking beer from a Pilsner glass. And so Laura had christened them.

  She did not think that the Pilsners noticed that she watched them. In the beginning, she kept track of how many beers the father drank. Usually he stopped at two, and Laura was relieved for the little boy who sat at the table with his parents.

  Fleetingly, Laura wondered if she would miss the Pilsners when she moved. No. The next view she had was going to be a more interesting one. Perhaps the expansive Manhattan skyline to the south, or at least the broad boulevard scene of 72nd Street to the north.

  As she waited for the kettle to boil on the old stove in the closet-sized kitchen, Laura carefully lifted the hanging bag that was hooked to the top of the bathroom door frame. Pulling back the plastic, she inspected the midnight-blue velvet cocktail dress she would wear tonight to Gwyneth’s party. It fit like skin and she was glad that she had been keeping up with her jogging even as the weather had gotten cold.

  She had spent almost a week’s salary on the dress. But it was worth it. She knew she would feel confident wearing it to the party, whose guests probably never worried about price tags.

  Of course, with a dress like this, she needed shoes to do it justice, and she had spent almost an equal amount on the Manolo Blahnik silk crepe de chine high-heeled mules that she and Francheska found at a Madison Avenue boutique. She rationalized that the purchases were investments, though she doubted she’d have many occasions to wear them again. But one could hope.

  The kettle whistled as Laura pulled the plastic down over the velvet dress. She walked over to the stove and poured the steaming water over a tea bag and considered the possibilities of the evening ahead. Joel Malcolm would be at the party and that would provide another opportunity to talk with him. Another chance to remind him that she wanted to work for him.

  Naturally, she would not even bring up the fact that she wanted the job. They both knew it. But it would be beneficial for Joel to see that Gwyneth thought enough of Laura to invite her.

  And you never know. Maybe she would meet someone tonight. Someone exciting. Francheska was always nagging Laura about her love life, or rather the lack of it. But things could change in an instant, couldn’t they?

  26

  “GREAT JOB.” “I didn’t know she was dead.”

  “I thought he had died a long time ago!”

  “Nice work, Laura.”

  The Yearender aired and Laura basked in the reactions from her co-workers in the Bulletin Center. Praise was not dispensed freely at KEY News, although you were always quick to find out when you fouled up.

  “You get better every year,” said Mike Schultz. “That was a first-rate piece of work, Laura. You got fifty people in there beautifully.”

  “Thanks, Mike. Thanks a lot. From you, I consider that quite a compliment.”

  “Come in to see me when you have a minute.”

  “Sure. Just let me check that the script information is in the computer. I want to make sure that the stations know they have to pay music rights when they air this thing.”

  Ten minutes later, Laura approached the open door of Mike Schultz’s office. She overheard the tail end of his telephone conversation.

  “Listen, honey, I don’t want to go, either, but we have to. That’s all there is to it. I’ll meet you there at nine.”

  Laura heard the phone receiver returned firmly to its cradle. She waited a moment and knocked tentatively on the side of the open door.

  “Come on in and sit down, Laura.” Mike sighed. “if you can find a place.
And close the door.”

  Laura smiled as she glanced around the small office. Mike’s desk was crowded with piles of papers and stacks of videotapes. The extra chair was covered with a bundle of newspapers. Laura lifted it and put it on the floor.

  “I’m dying for a cigarette,” Mike grumbled as he rummaged through his desk. “Do you mind?”

  “Not at all.” Laura laughed. “But aren’t you worried about the smoking police?”

  “Screw ’em.” Mike lit the end of a Marlboro Light.

  Laura waited expectantly.

  “I got a call from Joel Malcolm yesterday.”

  “And?”

  “He was asking a lot of questions about you and your work.” Mike took another drag on his cigarette. “I, of course, told him the truth. Your work is terrific. And so is your attitude. A rare combination to come by around this place.”

  “Thanks, Mike, I appreciate that.” Laura, feeling uncomfortable, shifted position in her chair. “I’ve been meaning to tell you, but it’s been so busy around here, there hasn’t been the right time. But, as you’ve probably figured out, I’m trying to get a job on Hourglass.”

  Mike nodded. “That makes a lot of sense. It’s a good career move for you, Laura. But I’m sure as hell going to miss you.”

  “Well, I don’t have the job yet.”

  “I think it looks good,” Mike assured her. “Malcolm was very enthused about you, especially when I told him that you seemed to have an uncanny ability to predict whose obits to have ready. He got a big charge out of that.”

  Laura smiled. “We both know, Mike, that comes from common sense, some research and a little bit of luck.”

  “Some well-placed contacts don’t hurt, either.”

  “That, too,” Laura admitted.

  Mike dropped his cigarette butt into an empty Coke can. “Well, when things get firmed up, let’s talk again. I spent some time at Hourglass myself. I’ll fill you in on how they get things done there.”