Of course, his apartment wasn’t much more personal. He had some tasteful abstract paintings on his walls, a black-and-white photograph of the Chrysler building, a plasma-screen TV. But no pictures of friends or family or himself, not even in the bedroom. Her whole career as a journalist—whether she was interviewing high school valedictorians or murder victims’ families or soap actors—Zoe had always searched her subjects’ homes for personal pictures—the happiest moments of their lives, captured and framed. You could tell a lot about a person that way, but not Warren. He captured nothing.
Warren’s closet door was open, but it held just one outfit—the street clothes he had worn that day. At least he doesn’t have to move a lot of stuff out, she thought . . . and then she noticed something hanging behind the clothes, on the back wall of the closet.
It was a cross—plain dark wood, save for a red shape, painted at its center. How long has this been here? Zoe tried to remember the last time, if ever, she’d seen the inside of Warren’s dressing room closet. She got up, moved toward it.
Up close, she saw that the red shape was a heart—not a Valentine, but a fairly realistic painting of a human heart, bulging veins and all. A crown of black thorns squeezed the top of the organ, which oozed deep red rivulets at the points of contact. Zoe grimaced. “Is this a prop?”
Dana shook her head. “He must have brought it back from Mexico.” She got up, took a few steps nearer and peered into the closet. “God it’s . . . it’s awful, isn’t it?” she said. “That isn’t for the record.”
“Obviously.”
“Maybe it was a present from someone special. You know, so he couldn’t throw it away?”
Zoe nodded. “Not much regifting potential.”
They heard footsteps, and instinctively, Dana closed the closet door. Within moments, Warren stepped into the room, shirtless and thumbing his BlackBerry. The publicist said, “There you are,” and Warren jumped a little.
“Christ, Dana, you scared the hell out of . . .” His gaze rested on Zoe, and her pulse sped up. “Zoe Greene.” He said her name as if it were his favorite dish.
“How was San Esteban?” Zoe breathed. “I hear you went there on vacation?”
He gave her a weary smile, then poked at his BlackBerry a few more times and set it down on top of the highlighted scripts. “Not a halfway decent bagel in that entire freakin’ town.”
Seconds later, Zoe’s cell phone vibrated against her hip. She plucked it out of its carrier and glanced at the screen: NEW MESSAGE. Zoe scrolled to her text messages, clicked on the new one, sent from Warren’s BlackBerry.
Dana asked Warren, “You got time for a quickie?”
“Long as your husband doesn’t mind.”
Dana giggled. “Interview. With Zoe.”
“Sure,” he said.
The message said, DINNER 8:00 LEONE’S? Zoe looked up at Warren and, as imperceptibly as she could, nodded. Then she pulled her microcassette recorder out of her purse and clicked it on. “Why did you decide to leave daytime?”
“I’d like to spread my wings creatively—do some stage-work, films, maybe even direct,” he said. “My ten years on Day’s End have been very fulfilling, but . . .” He took a breath, and Zoe caught a glimpse of something new in his eyes—a flatness, as if a door behind them had just slammed shut. “I’m ready to move on.”
“Won’t you miss the show?”
“Of course.” He smiled, and the flatness was gone. Maybe she’d just imagined it. . . . “I’ll miss these interviews, too. I’ll miss . . . all of you wonderful people in the soap opera press.”
“What a charmer, huh?” said Dana.
A male voice called out over the speaker system, “Matthias to wardrobe! Your new bloody shirt is ready.”
“Sorry to cut this short, ladies,” Warren said.
Zoe picked up his BlackBerry. “Don’t forget this.”
As she gave it to him, their hands touched. It was like the smallest sip of water after three weeks in the desert.
“I really will miss these interviews,” Warren said softly.
Zoe’s throat clenched a little. She swallowed hard, but her expression managed to stay neutral; her cheeks were cool. She removed her gaze from his face and glanced at the screen, at the list of e-mails he’d received. She saw her own name in the “FROM” field, wondered if Dana had noticed, too, how she would explain it should Dana ask. . . . Oh, I was just doing some fact-checking on an earlier interview. . . . Then Zoe noticed another name—both under her own and over it, again and again and again. . . .
Vanessa St. James. It sounded familiar.
On the TV in Zoe’s cubicle, Claire Caldwell was telling her philandering husband, Dr. Matthias Caldwell, that he’d ruined her life, as their daughter, Hayley, looked on, cheeks glistening with silent tears. “I should have known better than to trust you!”
A whole lot of emoting was going on—that was for sure. Normally, Zoe would have sent Warren a teasing text message about it. (Should I have known better than to trust u?) But at the moment, she was focused on her computer.
Via Nexis, she’d found dozens of articles, photo spreads and news items on the name she’d seen on Warren’s BlackBerry, Vanessa St. James. And, while she hadn’t gone through all of them, she’d read enough to know that Rolling Stone had dubbed the fifty-five-year-old supergroupie “the eighth wonder of the world,” that Gene Simmons had once offered to buy her a small Caribbean island and that, at Zoe’s age, she had incapacitated all four members of Mötley Crüe for a week.
Despite her reckless youth, she seemed to have aged stunningly. Zoe stared at a PDF she’d downloaded from an eight-month-old People “Where Are They Now?” piece— Vanessa reclining on a chaise longue, wearing nothing but a white string bikini, a silver cross around her neck and an all-too-knowing smile. . . .
What is her connection with Warren?
She heard the electronic trill of her desk phone, muted the TV and picked it up to her boss’s voice. “How’d the interview go, sweetie?”
Zoe winced. Sweetie was not a word you wanted to hear from hard-edged Kathy Kinney. Sweetie was always bad news.
“Interview?”
“With Warren Clark.”
Zoe inhaled sharply. “Fine. I mean . . . not terribly memorable, but . . .”
“Did Warren tell you why he was leaving the show?”
“He said he wanted to spread his wings creatively.”
“Did he say when he decided to spread ’em?”
“When? Uh . . .”
“I ask, sweetie, because I just got off the phone with a friend of mine—a lawyer who handles Day’s End’s contracts. . . .”
“Okay.”
“Warren reupped five weeks ago.”
“What?!”
“You never knew about that.”
“No.” It was true. She’d never known. Ten years on a soap is enough. I’m thirty-five. Now’s the time. . . . He’d told her over Chinese takeout at his place, but when? I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, and . . . Four weeks ago.
“I’ve been hearing rumors,” Kathy said.
“What—was he fired after re-upping?”
Kathy snorted. “Who the hell would fire Warren Clark?”
“Well, then what—”
“I heard he’s leaving Day’s End because of a woman.”
Zoe coughed.
“In Mexico.”
“Mexico?” Zoe stared at her computer screen, as if she expected Vanessa St. James to answer her.
“All I can say is, she must be an earth-shattering lay if she could make him back out of a contract like that one. . . .” Kathy kept speaking, but Zoe didn’t hear. She was too busy reading the tiny caption under the bikini photo. . . .
ST. JAMES RELAXES AT HOME IN SAN ESTEBAN, MEXICO.
Kathy said, “I need you to find out who the Mexican babe is and how close they are. If he’s marrying her next week, I’d better not find out from Soap Opera Digest.”
&nb
sp; Zoe gritted her teeth; her jaw stiffened. “I’ll ask around,” she said.
TWO
Zoe had been best friends with Steve Sorensen for six years, ever since their mothers—members of the same mystery book club at the Tarrytown library— had set them up on a blind date. As an undergrad at Cornell, Steve had been a star hockey player, and at thirty-three he’d managed to more or less maintain his big, imposing build. He shared a lot of surprising things in common with Zoe— from a fascination with cheesy seventies rock operas to a preference for anchovies on his pizza—and he was good-looking, too, in an all-American, Wheaties-eating kind of way. But Steve was also dependable, protective, honest—all qualities that ensured Zoe would never be attracted to him. And, despite the gleam that sometimes crept into his eyes late at night after a few too many Heinekens, the feeling seemed mutual.
Like Zoe, Steve had been a metro crime reporter when they’d met, but unlike Zoe he still was—at Manhattan-based daily the Trumpet. The curiosity she’d worked so hard to drum out of herself, that urge to get to the bottom of any story—Steve still had that, which was the main reason why she hadn’t mentioned Warren’s name to Steve during the four months Warren and she had been involved. Steve would have kept her secret, she knew, but she couldn’t take all the inevitable questions—especially why, which would have been at the top of his list. Steve wasn’t exactly a soap fan.
Two hours before she was supposed to meet Warren for dinner at Leone’s, Zoe was sitting with Steve at their favorite bar—a loud, cavernous place called Katie O’Donnell’s on Fiftieth and Third. Katie’s was packed, like it always was at happy hour. Some woman’s elbow kept knocking Zoe in the back of the head, while a pin-striped Wall Street type leaned against Steve’s broad back like a lover, repeatedly shouting, “Excuse me!” at the oblivious, head-shaved bartender. For years, Zoe and Steve had been meeting here for Friday night happy hours. They loved it because it was cheap and close to both of their workplaces, but Zoe was beginning to think she was getting too old for this scene. Maybe she could stomach a couple extra dollars a drink or ten more blocks of walking if it meant she could pivot a few inches without some junior lawyer’s beer-stained tie flopping into her eyes.
Steve was oblivious, though. He lived on the Lower East Side, in a rent-stabilized apartment the size of Headquarters’ bathroom, next door to a constantly arguing family of five. For him, this place probably seemed like a spa.
Right now, he was talking about a story he was working on—an exposé involving one of the higher-ups in the mayor’s office taking bribes from a strip club owner with mob connections. Zoe was having a hard time keeping all the names straight—it had been years since she’d purposely stopped following the news, plus she could barely hear Steve over the din of customers. Still more distracting though was Zoe’s thought process. She’d absorb a few words, and then her mind would wander to Warren, to the rumors Kathy had heard, to Vanessa St. James in her string bikini. . . .
“She had three screaming orgasms in a row,” said Steve. “And still she wouldn’t give me anything.”
“What? Who?”
“Desiree. The stripper. My source.” He stared at her. “You haven’t been listening to me, have you?”
“I have, but did you just say—”
“Screaming orgasms are drinks, Zoe. Vodka, Baileys and Kahlúa.”
“Oh, right. Sorry. It’s just so loud in here, I think I missed the . . . the drink part.”
He sighed. “Anyway, I wished you were at the bar with us.”
She tried a smile. “Actually, I prefer my screaming orgasms in the privacy of my own home.”
“Seriously . . . you would have known what to say to her. You could always get sources to open up.”
I’ll miss . . . all of you wonderful people in the soap opera press. “Not always.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing.” She took a long pull off her glass of wine—a nice pinot noir that took the chill out of the air-conditioning and soothed her nerves a little. “Call Desiree now. Tell her you hate to bother her, but you’ve been put on probation and you’re scared to death your boss is going to fire you over this story. Tell her she’ll never be named, you’ll get on-the-record sources to back her up. Promise her Deep Throat-level anonymity . . . and be prepared to give it to her. But tell her you need her to talk because your job depends on it.”
“And that will work because . . .”
“She’s scared to death of her boss, too. Talking to sources is like dating, Steve. You get a lot farther if you have something in common.”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “I never have anything in common with my dates.”
“Which explains your decadelong dry spell.” She yanked his cell phone out of his shirt pocket and handed it to him. “Call her.”
“I will.” Steve placed the phone on the bar. “Later.” He gave Zoe a long, probing look that confused her a little. “Okay. I give,” he said finally. “What did he do?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The dude—the one you’ve been with for the past . . . what? Three months? You guys have a fight or something?”
Zoe gasped, audibly. In an attempt to avoid responding right away, she took a massive gulp of her wine, but it went down the wrong way and she started to choke. Steve pushed the Wall Streeter aside and started slapping Zoe on the back, as the bartender asked, “Does she need the Heimlich? I know the Heimlich,” and the woman with the elbow shoved a glass of water under Zoe’s nose, saying, “Drink, drink,” in a slow, soothing voice.
Finally, she managed to croak, “I’m okay,” and everyone calmed down. Everyone, that is, except her. “What makes you think I’ve been seeing somebody?”
“You’re my best friend, Zoe. I’d be a pretty lame reporter if I couldn’t figure that out.”
She exhaled. For about three and a half seconds, she considered lying to Steve—telling him something like, Well, guess what, Seymour Hersh. You’re wrong. But the fact was, Zoe was hurt and confused and sick and tired of covering it all up. The truth bubbled up inside her, as it often did when she was with Steve, and this time, she didn’t force it back down. Why should she? What did she owe Warren Clark? “It’s been four months, not three,” she said. “And I’ve got a pretty good idea he’s going to dump me tonight.”
“Stand him up.” Those three words had been Steve’s entire reaction to the twenty or so minutes Zoe had spent describing her four months in the thrall of the male Susan Lucci, from “Your eyes are incredible” all the way up to Vanessa St. James.
Simple as that advice was, Zoe had to admit there was a certain beauty to it. Stand him up before he dumps you. Never speak to him again. Don’t give him the relief of saying goodbye.
Only a guy could come up with a suggestion like that. But Zoe couldn’t bring herself to follow it. She was not a guy. She had to see this thing through.
After three pinots at Katie’s with Steve, Zoe was now sitting alone at the table that Warren had reserved for them at Leone’s—their usual spot in the back, next to the fireplace. She was working on her fourth pinot and feeling no pain. Scratch that. She was feeling pain—lots of it—but after three and three-quarter glasses of wine, it was at least the type of pain she could live with.
Warren was fifteen minutes late. Zoe was starting to wonder if maybe he was standing her up, when she noticed him by the front door, involved in some kind of hushed, intense conversation with the head waiter. She watched him for a while before he caught a glimpse of her, ended whatever it was he was saying and hurried across the restaurant to their table.
“Hi, beautiful.” He took the chair across from hers. His face was flushed. Above his smooth upper lip, she noticed a faint sheen of sweat. “Have you been waiting long?”
Zoe finished the rest of her glass of wine and dabbed at her mouth with her napkin. She started to tell Warren she’d been waiting for fifteen minutes, but then she decided, what was the point? He knew how long she’d been
here. He had a damn watch. So instead, she called the waiter over and ordered another glass of wine.
“You okay?” said Warren.
She looked into those sky blue eyes of his—so pure a color it was sort of ironic when you thought about it—and she felt as if she were on camera, playing out some awful soap opera scene. Her gaze went from Warren’s symmetrical face to the dripless red candle in its sparkling crystal holder on the immaculate white tablecloth, to the basket of dried flowers and herbs (fake, she was sure; they were that flawless), placed in the center of the white brick fireplace—a fireplace that was never lit, no matter what time of year—and it occurred to her that nothing here was real, nothing at all. I should have known better than to trust you. . . .
“I’m sorry I’m late,” Warren said. “It was my last day on set and everyone wanted to say goodbye.”
Another waiter—the same one Warren had been speaking to at the door—showed up with Zoe’s pinot, a huge smile plastered on his face, as the busboy poured glasses of ice water. “Are you two ready to order?” the waiter said, his voice cheerful to the point of parody.
Warren said, “Give us a minute,” as Zoe lifted the wineglass to her lips and drained it like a vampire.
The waiter stepped away. This latest glass warmed her face and made her feel kind of floaty, anesthetized. She could barely feel her lips moving, yet she heard her own voice, calm and dull, as if she were cold reading a line from a script. “I know about her.”
The blue eyes widened. “What are you talking about?!”
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