“I thought I put devils behind me when I was fired.” She sank back in her seat, dejected. “I don’t know what to say to you, Reilly.”
“Help me fix this, Scarlett. I would never hurt you,” he said, trying to turn the conversation around.
“You don’t know Margolies like I do.” Her eyes were dull and she looked tired.
“I’m definitely getting the idea. I haven’t even told you the best part,” he said with a mirthless laugh. “If I don’t do what they say, he and Candace are prepared to run a column saying that they’ve knocked me out of the running, claiming I tried to cheat the contest. My reputation will be shot. Career over.”
She leaned in abruptly. “Wait, there may be a way out of this. What about the proof you have? The bank statements.” She was starting to get excited. “Can’t you go to your old editor and see if she’d run the exposé now? If you discredited Margolies and Candace preemptively, they couldn’t hold you to their deal.”
“If only.” If only Scarlett wasn’t so smart, he thought. “I didn’t want to scare you, but Scarlett, they broke into my apartment. They stole the bank statements, my laptop, my notes.”
Her face went pale. “I can’t believe they would do that. Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. It happened while I was meeting with them. They were clearly sending me a message and tying my hands all at the same time. I don’t suppose you kept extra copies of those bank statements.”
Scarlett put her head in her hands and shook her head. Reilly finished the rest of his wine in one swallow.
“What am I going to do?” she said quietly.
Reilly asked himself the same question. At least he had told her and they could fix it together. He reached out and patted her head, still buried in her hands. “Let’s go home.”
She batted his hand away and looked up at him, her eyes blazing again.
“Wait a second. How did they know about your article? How did they know you would have documents in your apartment?”
His heart sank. He was hoping he wouldn’t have to go into his part, how he’d actually started the whole mess.
“Well…” he began sheepishly. “I may have let Candace know that I had an inkling of what was going on with Kanter.”
“This all makes so much sense now.” A chilly smile played at her lips. “You tried to blackmail them, and they beat you at your own game. You are just like them, Reilly Mitchell. I should have known.”
She slid out of the booth in a hurry, knocking over her untouched glass of wine and grabbing her coat. He reached for her hand.
“Don’t touch me,” she snapped. “Don’t ever touch me again.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“It’s exactly what I think.” She was crying. “I can’t believe I ever trusted you, Reilly.”
“Let me at least make sure you get home safely.”
Ever since the break-in at his apartment, he’d been paranoid and looking over his shoulder. He had managed to avoid mentioning anything about Scarlett’s involvement to Margolies, but the man was bound to know. It was probably the real reason she was fired, he thought.
“Oh, so one minute you’re killing my show and destroying my career, and the next minute you’re worried about me?” she said sarcastically.
“I told you, I’d fix this. Just...please don’t tell anyone,” he said lamely.
“You’re pathetic!” she said, turning on her heel and disappearing out the door.
Reilly put his head down on the table, ignoring the puddle of wine left from her spilled drink. He had never felt more deplorable and miserable in his life. There had to be a way out of it. At the moment, however, he had absolutely no idea how.
Scene 39
Candace pushed through the revolving doors of her office building toward the street. She was glad to be through with another long day. Her work hours had become consumed with working with her staff on prepping the online mechanism they’d use to solicit and collect votes. The vote would happen the week after next, once the final finalist, Reilly, had taken his turn. It was annoying that she’d need to go through the motions for another week, putting the complicated and labor intensive process in place, when it would all be a sham, anyway.
On her way to her waiting car, she literally bumped into Reilly, who was blocking her way.
“Oomph! Excuse me... Reilly Mitchell?” She looked at him closely. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week, and she barely recognized him in a trench coat and baseball cap. “I almost didn’t recognize you. What the hell do you think you’re doing here?”
“I need to talk to you,” he said urgently.
“Are you out of your mind?” she said, continuing toward her car. “We can’t talk here.”
“Well, let’s go somewhere, then,” Reilly said.
“I can’t be seen with you.” She pulled open the door of the town car and slid in. Reilly threw himself in beside her.
“What are you doing?” She pushed him away.
“Please, I just need a few minutes.”
“Fine. But close the door.” Even as she said it, she reached over him and pulled it shut herself. They were safely hidden behind the car’s tinted windows.
“You look like shit, you know that?” she said, incredibly irritated that he would risk talking to her in public—in front of her office, no less. He needed to learn the rules, if he was going to survive at her Banner.
“Candace...” he began as the car pulled out into traffic.
She pulled out her cell phone. “I’m calling Margolies.”
“No! Wait. Hear me out.”
She glared as he reached over and grabbed her cell phone out of her hand before she could make the call.
“You are way out of line, Reilly. It’s not too late to pull the plug.”
“I just need five minutes.”
“Fine. But we can’t talk here,” she whispered, indicating the driver, who was easily within earshot. “Wait.”
They sat quietly for the remainder of the drive downtown. Reilly’s fidgeting annoyed Candace to no end. She really needed a drink.
“Follow me,” she said, leading the way to her brownstone, looking both ways to see if they were being observed. She felt a little silly, but she couldn’t be too careful. She wouldn’t put it past Margolies to be spying on her.
Candace threw her briefcase against the wall and made her way to the open kitchen off the main living room. She poured herself a bourbon on ice, not bothering to offer one to Reilly. As she took a deep sip, she eyed him standing awkwardly on the edge of her living room.
He had seemed so confident when it all started. Now he looked nervous. Just another victim of the Margolies Effect. She finished off her bourbon and poured herself another, filling the glass to the brim. On an empty stomach she could already feel the bourbon working its magic.
She made her way over to the couch, taking her time so as not to spill her very full drink, and intentionally making him wait. It was a trick she’d learned from Margolies, a power play, and it seemed to be working.
She sank into the couch, put her feet on the coffee table, and slid over a stack of newspapers to make room for her feet. She considered asking him to sit down but decided not to. He wasn’t a welcome guest after all. It feels nice to be powerful, she thought. It has been a while.
“What’s so important that you had to see me and risk ruining everything?” she said, finally.
“That’s just it.” He took a seat on the edge of the chair across from her. “This plan. It’s ruining everything for me. It’s ruining my life.”
“I find that hard to believe,” she said, taking another long sip. “I’m offering you a life. A life as the chief theater critic at one of the largest paper in the world.” She spread her arms wide, the ice c
linking in her glass.
He rubbed the stubble on his chin and looked at her with desperate eyes. “I know, but the truth is, I can’t go through with it.”
“What...did...you...just...say?” she said coldly.
“Well...um.” Reilly looked down at his hands.
She took her feet off the table and leaned toward him. “We will bury you, Reilly Mitchell. You have no idea how deep we will bury you.”
“Can we just talk about this? I thought you might understand,” he pleaded.
“Talk,” she said, sinking back into the couch.
He looked her in the eye. “Do you know that Swan Song is my girlfriend's show? Do you know how long she’s worked on it? There has to be another way.” He looked at her pleadingly.
“You think I give a shit about your girlfriend and her little show? This is way bigger than all of that. Didn’t you hear anything Margolies told you last week? We are giving you a chance to play with the big boys, to join the ranks of the Broadway elite.”
“I know, and I’m ready. I just thought...” His voiced tapered off.
“What did you think?”
“I just thought that maybe you didn’t want a corrupt critic, either. You’re a journalist at one of the top newspapers in the world. I see what Margolies has to gain from paying off the critic, but, if you don’t mind me asking, what do you gain?”
She stared at him. After a moment, she finished her second drink and started to stand up. She felt surprisingly wobbly. She must have poured more than she thought. She stayed seated, leaning forward, looking Reilly in the eye.
“That’s none of your business,” she said, but her tone belied her ebbing conviction. She’d be a fool to throw in her lot with Reilly and risk Margolies’ vengeance. But Reilly appealed to her better self. She set her drink down. She needed to focus. “It’s this or nothing,” she said. Margolies would be proud of her.
His face hardened. “I could still expose you.”
Candace suddenly didn’t like the direction the conversation was going. “No, you can’t. I know for a fact that you don’t have proof.”
“Maybe I do. Maybe you and Margolies and your thugs didn’t get everything.”
“You’re bluffing.” In her anger and drunkenness, she was slurring but didn’t care.
“Maybe. Maybe not.” He leaned forward and met her gaze. “What are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t believe you,” she said, looking away.
“Fine, don’t.”
She looked back at him carefully. He sounded like he was telling the truth, but she couldn’t be sure. Margolies would have made sure there was no proof. For once, she wished he was there.
Candace pulled her phone out of her pantsuit pocket. “I’m calling Margolies!”
Reilly whipped out his phone. “And I’m calling the Manhattan Journal.”
“You wouldn’t dare!” She was enraged. Not her best self after all.
“Try me,” he said with an edge to his voice she hadn’t heard before. His eyes were steely.
They had reached an impasse. A tense moment stretched on, neither of them willing to concede the point. Finally, Candace broke the silence.
“I know it won’t mean a lot coming from me,” she began with dull resignation in her voice, “but I respect your integrity.”
“Then help me,” Reilly said, the lessening tension in the room leaving them both fatigued.
“I wish I could,” Candace said honestly. “But I don’t need to tell you how powerful Margolies is. He has us both backed into a corner.”
She saw the light of an idea flash in Reilly’s eyes.
“He thinks he does.” Reilly got up and started pacing. Candace remembered having energy and hope like that, back in the day. “Margolies’ whole plan revolves around what gets printed in the paper—the Swan Song review, the contest winner, all of it. But only you can dictate what actually gets published.”
“So what are you saying?” she asked. “Tell him you’re going along with his deal but then print a positive Swan Song review…and still have you win the critic contest? I don’t see how that helps. He’d come after me. He’d come after you.”
“But what could he do to us? If he revealed your involvement in the Kanter corruption, he’d be implicated as well.”
She could see Reilly getting excited about his idea.“I need to think about it.” It made sense. Of course, it did. It was what she had wanted in the first place. An honest critic. But Margolies was a formidable force to be reckoned with, and she had yet to prove herself up to the challenge of crossing him.
Reilly came over to the couch and sat next to her, looking her in the eyes. “You know this is the right thing to do. For the public. For the Banner. Together we can beat Margolies.”
“I’ll need to think about.” She swirled the mostly melted ice cubes around her glass.
“You know this is the right thing to do,” said Reilly quietly. “It’s not too late—”
“Okay,” she said, almost inaudibly, putting up her hand, still not looking his way. “Okay, okay, okay,” she chanted, warming to the idea. She just wanted the whole mess to be behind her. “Now show yourself out. I’m tired.”
“Thank you!” Reilly said, giving her an awkward hug before standing up. “You won’t regret this.” He practically danced to the door.
Candace heard the door click behind him. She felt drained. She closed her eyes. That was the last thing she remembered, until the late-morning sun hit her face through her open curtains the next day.
Scene 40
Margolies tried Candace again as he walked into the Olympus theater. He’d started thinking of it as his Olympus theater, since he intended for the show to run for a very long time. Not only did he want the show to run forever, but he actually needed it to in order to earn back the massive up-front capital he’d raised to get it off the ground. He couldn’t take any chances with the whole critic debacle.
He hadn’t heard from Candace in a few days. He was antsy to get an update. He knew that she’d been spending the week working with her staff on the online voting, and he wanted to make sure there wouldn’t be a glitch in their plan once Reilly’s review came out.
Olympus had taught him that technology could be his Achilles heel. He didn’t want to take any chances. At least he was feeling good today. Olympus had made it through the first two weeks of previews with surprisingly few stops.
Of course, most of his shows didn’t have to stop at all during preview performances, but considering the enormity of what they were trying to do and the new technology, he felt like it was a success. The audiences seemed to be enjoying it in the theater. Although he would have liked the online chatter to have been a little nicer the past couple of weeks.
The early previews of a Broadway show were always populated with chat room folks and bloggers. They hadn’t been very generous to Olympus. Then again, he thought, it’s not like those losers will be buying full-priced tickets, anyway.
He slid into a seat at the back of the house in order to oversee the crew and technicians run the trouble spots until they went smoothly. He expected the show to run all the way through that evening. He never knew when someone from OSHA safety board or the union reps would come through, and he needed them to see for themselves that everything on the show was working and safe.
He crossed his hands behind his head and leaned back. He was starting to feel like his old self again. Ticket sales were strong, thanks in large part to massive amount of press they were getting. Most of the coverage revolved around the “can he or can’t he?” pull of the largest show ever attempted on Broadway. Audiences loved that kind of thing and couldn’t resist seeing for themselves. A good thing, too, because with astronomical weekly running costs, he’d need to move a lot of full-priced tickets in order to
pay back his investors.
A momentary dark cloud passed across his otherwise sunny mood. He didn’t like having to answer to his new investing contingent. They were staying too close, breathing down his neck. He’d known they would be, but he had hoped they’d trust that he knew what he was doing.
He relaxed again. It would all work out. Reilly’s guaranteed rave review on opening night in three weeks would seal the deal–and he’d be back on top!
Scene 41
Scarlett sat staring glassy eyed out the window of her apartment. It crossed her mind that if she didn’t get up soon, she might fuse with the chair. On the other hand, that would be okay. She couldn’t think of one good reason to ever get up again.
She heard her phone ring in her purse by the door for what seemed like the millionth time in the past twenty-four hours. She marveled that it hadn’t run out of batteries. She didn’t need to look at it. She could guess who was calling—Reilly. He might as well give up. He was the last person she wanted to talk to.
She should probably at least tell the Jeremys or Lawrence that she was sick. Or at least give them some excuse for why she had been a no-show at Swan Song the previous night. Maybe she wasn’t technically sick, but she was heart-sick. That was the worst kind. They would wonder why she had stopped showing up to the theater with only a few days left before opening night. She slumped further in the chair. At least she’d run out of tears.
How could someone have it all one day—a good job, a great boyfriend, a Broadway-bound show—and nothing the next? She wondered again and again. And a bigger question plagued her: How could everyone outside her window be going about life as if everything was normal, when her whole life had shattered to pieces?
A knock on her door interrupted her pity-party reverie. She registered the interruption briefly but chose to ignore it. There was no one she wanted to see. Another knock, louder that time, soon turned to pounding.
“Scarlett, are you in there?” Lawrence’s voice. “Scarlett?”
Showbiz, A Novel Page 16