The Agency

by Ally O'Brien

  I sipped my champagne. I stared out the windows of the flat, which had a view over the nearby roofs toward Green Park. I have this fantasy of being invited to dinner at Buck House someday, and when I meet Liz, after I curtsy, I ask her to do her Helen Mirren impression for me. The fact that I have a fantasy like this tells me that I am not the kind of person who will ever be invited to dinner with the queen.

  Actually, I blame Liz for my affair. Eighteen months ago, I was on my usual 14 bus around midday, expecting it to sail past Hyde Park Corner and continue toward Piccadilly Circus, where I have a brisk ten-minute walk to my office near Trafalgar Square. That day, however, HRH was hosting a diplomatic luncheon at the palace, and it was my bad luck to arrive at the Corner just as a line of flag-waving limousines began to parade down Park Lane. Apparently, the risk of assassination of the prime ministers of Abkhazia and Tuvalu is sufficient to shut down London buses. I could have dashed into the Tube easily enough, but as it happens, it was a stunning late fall day, warm and sunny, with color in all the trees, and I was right across the street from Hyde Park. I decided the office could wait. Fifteen minutes later, I was seated on a bench by the Serpentine, licking up a soft-serve ice cream cone with a Cadbury Flake, watching the lovers in their pedal boats, and indulging one of my guilty pleasures, namely the latest jet-setting, bodice-ripping, caviar-eating novel by Jilly Cooper.

  And that was where I met Darcy.

  I knew who he was, of course, and he knew who I was. We had exchanged pleasantries at parties. A little smiling. A little flirting. Nothing more than that. We had never really talked. I don’t know why it was different this time, except that it was one of those rare days when London feels like paradise, and he was walking his little seven-year-old Westie, and I love Westies. I could have spent hours rubbing his tummy.

  I mean the dog.

  We sat on the bench in Hyde Park and talked. And talked. And talked. I forgot all about the office. His dog nuzzled in the grass. The sun got lower. It got cooler, and he took off his anorak and let me drape it over my shoulders. I felt like I was sixteen. I’m not sure exactly when we both realized that we had crossed the line from strangers into friends, or when we admitted to ourselves that we had already skated past the next line where friends begin to look at each other as lovers. Sometimes an attraction is so obvious that you don’t need to talk about it. It’s just there.

  I really didn’t expect anything to happen. This was one chance meeting, a little memory for me to tuck away, a nothing romance with a “what if” or maybe an “if only” question at the end of it. We both knew, without saying, that we would be fools to acknowledge the reality of what was going on between us. After all, you might fall in love with a house, but if it belongs to someone else and has a great big security fence to keep out trespassers, you’d probably think twice about looking for a way to get inside, right? So the easy thing to do was walk away. Smile. Pretend.

  Except one of the things we talked about was Chihuly glass. Don’t ask me how or why. He told me about the Chihuly ceiling in the lobby at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. I told him about the frieze in the Rainbow Room in Rockefeller Center. We both loved the olive-and-turquoise chandelier at the Victoria and Albert. And it just so happened that a Chihuly exhibit was back at the Tate Modern, and I was planning to take a jaunt across the Millennium Bridge to go there on Friday evening, and would he like to see it with me?

  Completely innocent.

  Except we both knew it wasn’t.

  As we stood at the balcony on the second floor of the Tate and stared at this glowing orange sun made up of squiggling snakes of glass, we just naturally held hands. As we paused on the arch of the bridge two hours later, with a mist dampening our hair and the fuzzy lights of the city twisting along the banks of the Thames, we just naturally kissed. It was Friday. My father was in Somerset. The Mayfair flat, sitting empty, just naturally beckoned us, and by morning, we were contemplating the wreckage we were making of our lives and telling ourselves that we had to stop.

  That was a year and a half ago. We haven’t stopped.

  When I heard the drumroll of his fingertips on the door, my heart took off like a racehorse. I scared myself with my emotions, but I was powerless to stop them. The difference between a crush when you are sixteen and a crush when you are thirty-six is merely that you have more gray hairs and fewer inhibitions. As I ran to the door, I may as well have been a teenager fantasizing about Robbie Williams.

  “Tess,” he murmured to me in that oh-so-English voice. “You are a vision.”

  Melting. Rubbery knees. Girlish giggle.

  I pulled him inside and wasted no time helping him off with his charcoal coat, untying his cravat, and wrapping my arms around his neck and kissing him until we had sprained our tongues. His big hands lifted me effortlessly into the air. I felt weightless, like an astronaut.

  “It’s lovely to see you, darling,” I said when we took a breath.

  We both laughed. I poured him champagne. We flopped down on the sofa, and I lost myself in his chest. He smelled like Dunhill Original. His chiseled jaw was barbershop smooth. His teeth were a row of snow-white soldiers.

  Darcy is a few years older than I, a youthful forty. He has this swept-back mane of salt-and-pepper hair like one of the Landseer lions. His clothes are Manning & Manning, and they make an expensive hummock of silk and wool on the bedroom floor. He is a towering six foot four with the easy grace of an athlete. In his twenties, he was a tennis player, seeded at Wimbledon, but he suffered a groin injury that short-circuited his career. I assure you that his groin is fully recovered.

  When you are a young male sports star, you assume that the river of money will flow forever, and you spend it accordingly. Darcy has a weakness for the finer things in life. It was a rude comeuppance to find himself broke no more than a year after he played his last match. No purses. No promotional appearances. No endorsements for shoes and T-shirts. Just a shriveling bank account. In those circumstances, a man does what he must, and that means marrying up. Find an older woman with a hunger for eye candy and the wallet to pay for it. That’s what Darcy did. Fifteen years later, he professes no love for his wife, but she has him neatly sewn into her pocket, like a teacup dog you pull out at parties. For a man of Darcy’s size, it gets cramped in there.

  “God, it’s been forever,” I said.

  We both kicked off our shoes and propped our stockinged feet on my father’s coffee table. The champagne went down smooth and fast.

  “Three weeks, and it feels like three months,” Darcy said. “I’m sorry, my dear, it took her forever to leave town.”

  “Where is she tonight?”

  “Paris. Eurostar. Back tomorrow.”

  “So you can stay all night?”

  “I can.”

  “Heaven,” I said, nibbling his ear.

  “What’s new in your world, Tessie? I heard about Lowell, of course.”

  I understood his curiosity, but I wasn’t especially interested in making small talk about work. We had other things to do.

  “They found him in a white corset, you know.” My voice a seductive whisper. My throat rumbling with laughter.

  “Are you serious?”

  “No.”

  “You are so bad.”

  “That’s what Emma tells me.”

  “Your sense of humor is going to get you into trouble someday.”

  “Why don’t you get me into trouble now?” I said.

  “Now?”

  “Now.”

  Some things you do not need to ask a man twice.

  His slim, long fingers undid each of the buttons on my shirt and peeled back the strawberry silk. The girls made a dramatic appearance, sky high, bursting in black lace. Emma has nothing to fear from me in the tits department, but mine were at their best tonight.

  “Oh, my,” he said.

  I popped the buttons on the sleeves myself, extracted each arm, and dropped the shirt from my fingers onto the floor behind the sofa.
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br />   His face found my cleavage. Kissed my skin. Inhaled my perfume. His hands squeezed my breasts like a greengrocer testing ripe grapefruits. There is nothing like a thin layer of silk buffing and twisting your nipples. They puckered into two rocklike nubs.

  “Fast or slow?” he asked.

  “Fast now, slow later,” I said.

  He left my bra on. He stood up from the sofa, all big and strong, and began to undress. He knows I like it when he is naked, and I’m not. Cuff links, then white shirt, then undershirt, then braces, then socks, then pants pooling at his ankles, then low-rise black briefs peeled down and flicked aside. For a breathtaking moment, it was just the two of us in the room. Me and his dick.

  “You’re looking healthy,” I said.

  “I took a vitamin V.”

  God help me, I really need to buy stock in Pfizer. That is a wonderful, wonderful company.

  He held up one hand, pointed his index finger down, and made little circles with it. Turn around.

  “Ah,” I said.

  I got the picture.

  I faced the other side of the sofa, jacked my arse in the air, and he came up behind me. When he tugged my zipper down, I expected to hear seams popping as my hips reinflated to their natural size. He pried my jeans over my backside, pulling my knickers with them. I’ve never seen that particular angle on myself, and I really don’t want to, but I heard him let out a decidedly pleasurable gasp behind me, and then Darcy, his dick, and the good people of Pfizer all squeezed in together under my bum and almost launched me into orbit with the first thrust.

  Oh, shit, I said silently, and then not long after, much louder, I heard myself say for the first time, “ohhhh.”

  You’d think I would be satisfied with great sex. You’d think that after two hours of tongues, dicks, nipples, and orgasms, I would be sated enough to fall asleep without doing any further damage to my life. Is that so much to ask? One light-speed ride in the living room, one achingly slow ride in bed, long minutes of touching in the dark, everything a girl could want from a passion-filled, commitment-free affair with another woman’s husband. You’d think I would wrap my slender arms around his barrel chest, sink my face into his back, and close my eyes and dream my way to morning. You’d think there was not one more thing I needed from such a perfect night, and no way that even a master of romantic mistakes such as myself could screw it up.

  But no.

  We were spooned together. He was almost asleep. I was almost asleep. Which was when I said it. I don’t know where the words came from. Someone else must have taken over my body, like a character from Oliver’s book. It couldn’t have been me.

  “I love you.”

  Yes, it was me, after all.

  Oh, fuck.

  8

  I’M GOING TO launch my own perfume brand. You know, like all the stars do. Still by Jennifer Lopez. Fantasy by Britney Spears. Lovely by Sarah Jessica Parker.

  Mine will be called Stupid by Tess Drake.

  When I woke up, Darcy was gone. No note. No message on my voice mail. Just gone. I love you? Now that’s what every man married to a rich older woman loves to hear from his mistress. I’m not clingy or possessive, and I’m not prone to emotional overreactions every time I have an orgasm. So I must really love him. Why I felt the need to say so is a mystery. I probably just took a dagger and stabbed this relationship through its heart.

  I was so disgusted with my lapse in judgment that I decided to go into the office and spend Saturday morning working on client matters in order to get my mind off Darcy and what he must be thinking about me. I like working in the office on Saturdays. It’s dark and quiet. No interruptions. I bring in a triple-shot Italian coffee from Caffè Nero, shut my door, and get more done in a couple of hours than I can get through in an entire day during the week.

  You have to understand that the life of an agent is mostly about solving crises and soothing fragile egos. Somewhere in between, we do deals, but closing a deal doesn’t take nearly as much time as reassuring a blocked chick-lit writer that she still has God’s gift or explaining to a Telegraph reporter why my client compared the latest Galaxy award winner to a vile, steaming chamber pot evacuated into a crowded alley. Much of the time, I feel like that boy with his finger in the dike, plugging up holes as fast as I can while my clients burst through somewhere else.

  Don’t get me wrong. I love my clients. Well, most of them. Many of them. It’s just that I am not the world’s most patient person, and spending an hour listening to Dorothy fret that the Italian cover of The Bamboo Garden makes the pandas look too thin taxes my will to live. However, I do it with a smile. “I understand,” I say. “You are totally right,” I say. “Let me look into that,” I say.

  Usually, by the time I am done with one call, three more have gone to voice mail, and my BlackBerry light is flashing with nine more e-mails. That’s life during the week. Fortunately, the office phone doesn’t ring on Saturday, because there is a general assumption that no one in publishing works on the weekend. That’s mostly true. And good luck if you want to reach an editor on Friday afternoon, too.

  I sipped my espresso. I went through my voice mails.

  Still nothing from Darcy.

  Nicholas Hadley, whoever he is, called again and urgently wants me to call him back. I pressed delete.

  Dorothy Starkwell called “just to chat, my dear.”

  When your most lucrative client calls to chat, you call her back immediately, but when I did, I got no answer. Dorothy has neither voice mail nor an answering machine and no e-mail account, so I have to try again and again when I need to reach her, because most of the time, she is either writing on notebook paper in a Tribeca coffeehouse or attending her animal rallies.

  Frustrating, but you will never hear me say so.

  Oliver Howard’s editor left a message, too. He is a complete fucking idiot. “I’m sorry, Tess, but I think we’re going to take a pass on Duopoly. The sales on Singularity just don’t warrant us continuing with the series. So we’re giving up our option, and you can feel free to shop it elsewhere. Sorry to hear about Lowell, by the way. Cheers.”

  Idiot, idiot, idiot.

  I called him back. He wasn’t there, of course.

  “Malcolm, it’s Tess. When you open your mouth to talk, does everyone around you wonder who farted? Go shag yourself.”

  No, I was more discreet.

  “Malcolm, it’s Tess. I hate to see you miss this opportunity. Tom Cruise may be interested in Singularity for a film. You know what that would do to the price for Duopoly. Last chance, call me.”

  Okay, well, Tom might be interested. If Felicia Castro ever let him read it, he would be interested. Close enough.

  I texted Emma what was really on my mind:

  TOLD DARCY I LOVE HIM. AM I NUTS?

  She replied almost immediately:

  NOT NUTS. YOU GO GIRL.

  Despite Emma’s optimism, I was discouraged, so I called a couple of clients and discreetly floated the idea of starting my own agency, and if I did, would they join me? They said yes, absolutely, you’re our girl, follow you to the ends of the earth, that sort of thing. I was pleased, but I’m no fool. Clients hate change. They like everything to stay exactly the way it is. Having your agent go out on her own induces paroxysms of doubt and a lot of thumb sucking. What about my past deals? what about my future deals? what about my international deals? what about my movie rights? who will pay me? what will my editor say? what about my taxes—that sort of thing. I know that, eventually, I will simply have to pull the trigger and hope that many of my clients have the courage to follow me.

  I read manuscripts for another hour. Finished my coffee. Checked voice mail on my cell phone. Still nothing from Darcy.

  My office phone rang. Rare for a Saturday. I thought it must be him, so I grabbed it up and said “Tess Drake” in as breathy a voice as I could muster.

  It wasn’t him. It was Guy.

  “Oh. Filippa. You’re there.”

  “I
’m here.” Breathy turned to frosty.

  “I thought I’d get your machine.”

  “Well, you got the real deal, Guy. What do you want?” And what the fuck were you doing with Saleema last night?

  “Ah, actually, this is a little awkward.”

  “Now you know how I felt yesterday.”

  “Yes, about that.” He stopped.

  “I’m listening.”

  “The thing is, I’m calling to apologize,” Guy said.

  Apologize? Guy?

  “Ooookay,” I said, drawing out the word so he knew that I was suspicious.

  “Truly, I was out of line.”

  “I know.”

  “I wonder if we could forget all about that conversation and start over.”

  “Why the change of heart, Guy?”

  I was trying to figure out Guy’s ulterior motive and whether it had anything to do with Saleema.

  “Isn’t it enough that I’m telling you I’m sorry?”

  “No.”

  I heard him sigh theatrically. “Look, I was having a bad day. Money problems. I won’t bore you with the details.”

  “Please don’t.”

  “So that whole commission thing—I hope you’ll just forget I said anything of the sort. I wouldn’t want rumors like that to get out.”

  “I forgot it as soon as you said it, Guy, because it was never going to happen.”

  “Ah. Yes. Well, good. And the other thing, I mean, about you and me. You know, Brighton and so forth. I thought perhaps, well … you are very attractive, Filippa. I’ve always thought so.”

  “End of discussion, Guy.”

  “Yes, of course. Again, I’m sorry. What I wanted to tell you is that I am happy to put our negotiations about Dorothy’s next contract on hold for a while. Until you clear up your own situation. Okay? We’ll consider the deal discussion so far to be no more than idle chitchat. The real work will begin when you say so.”