Tommy Hill doodled the words, “Kill Bridget” on a cocktail napkin. Then thought better of it. Changing it to “Call Bridget.”
He shook the last two ice cubes in his British Airways two buck screwdriver.
"Feckin' cheap shite..."
He was happy to have the row to himself. No stupid fuckin' elitist fop in a suit sitting next to him like the flight from Dublin to London.
Just him. All the way from London to New York.
He slid the blind up and looked out into the black sky. The plane bumped and the ice cubes clinked.
Everyone was asleep. All quiet back here in 22A.
Get downtown, meet a guy named Paulie - were they all fuckin' named Paulie in America? Paulie wasn't Irish. But he had guns. And that's what he needed to pick up. Then another guy named Denny up at Delaney's Pub in something called Midtown was gonna give Tommy the instructions. If they could find her.
All he knew was he was fuckin' happy to be on the run. Belfast was getting to be a bunch of shite.
Sure, the girls were pretty. And at 22, that should be all he thought about. It used to be.
Til the Protestant UDA shot his parents on the street in Belfast like fucking dogs when they were on their way home from church three years ago. Now all Tommy thought about was killing fuckin' Protestants. Or British squaddies. One clean bullet to the head right through. Had he done it?
A few times.
It never got old.
Tommy shook off the memory. Time to keep clear. He was the best because he didn't feel shite anymore. Because he had taught himself to be a fuckin' sociopath.
Which was good cause his assignment was kill a traitor. She wasn't supposed to skip town. She wasn't supposed to tell the cops about Jackie Cleary’s stash of weapons. She was supposed to follow through, leave the bomb - and, like the rest of them, take whatever blackness her heart had become when the Protestants murdered someone she loved - take it, use it, leave the bomb. Then meet back at the pub.
But the bomb went off too soon and a cleaner and two security guys died. And when Ciaran went to Bridget's house the next morning, she was gone.
Bridget.
Tommy knew her his whole life but didn't know she was a traitor. Traitor's get death. Simple as that.
And if he'd been in love with her since they were kids, that was gonna have to not matter for shite.
Tommy felt a coldness wash over him where his heart used to be. The cause. Those fuckers will pay. A free Northern Ireland. It filled up everything.
He was drinking a screwdriver on an airplane flying to New York using a fake passport, and he wasn't kidding around. He wasn't sure how, but he'd find her.
Bridget O’Shaughnessy was as good as dead.
10
“Oh my god, I’m so nervous.”
Jamie paced at the bus stop and felt a bead of sweat trickle down the back of her neck.
She glanced at her watch. 1:15.
Forty-five minutes to get uptown to 6th Avenue and 56th Street and meet her new editor.
Penny fucking Langston.
The biggest celebrity editor in New York publishing was taking over her book.
When the woman from Peckham Press Business Affairs had called the day before, Jamie asked her repeat the information twice to be sure she heard it right.
Connie Pell was taking a leave of absence. Jamie’s heart sank. Connie had been her biggest champion.
“And Penny Langston is taking over your book.”
“Wow,” was all Jamie could say.
Barb from business affairs chuckled. “She’s a pretty big deal around here,” she said. “You know her books?”
“Yes,” Jamie said. “Who doesn’t?”
Penny Langston was a 35-year-old publishing world sensation and Gossip column Page Six favorite. She was also the wife of Davis Llewellyn, who basically created New York publishing in the past 20 years. They were always out at Studio 54 and Elaine's. The beautiful couple to be and to know.
Jamie had just seen an article about her a few Sundays ago in the New York Times Magazine. Photos in her office, and at home in Westchester.
She was British and gorgeous and smart as hell.
She was also the path to a number one book.
And Jamie had read four bestsellers in the past year that Penny Langston had edited. Each a treasure. Literary, smart, page-turners. Some books had a soul, and every book this woman touched had one.
Like the kinds of books that made Jamie want to become a writer in the first place. Like Franny and Zooey had sixteen years earlier when 12-year-old Jamie Brennan spotted this new release with the funny name and the green and white dust jacket at Spencer Books on Purchase Street in downtown Rye.
Jamie’s mother had been trying to convince her to buy the more age-appropriate Pippi Longstocking. But little Jamie Brennan was unmoved. First, there was the cover - the lettering, the colors - it all just screamed NEW! And YOUNG! And READ ME!
Then she cracked it open. And in the first pages of this book, she fell in love with this young college girl and her brother. And she fell in love with literature.
Jamie went home that day and read the whole thing in one go, sitting outside on the flat-topped roof of the family garage that overlooked the street and the woods across the way. A late October Saturday afternoon that smelled like rich earth and wet leaves and fires in people’s fireplaces.
It was the same place where she would hang out and read most afternoons after the ridiculous indignities of a day at Junior High. She’d sit and watch the sloping hill of Leewood Drive and stare out at the woods across the street, where the train went by on its way into Manhattan. And she would dream of better things.
Like sometimes she would imagine a story where her father would come back. He’d left a few years earlier to move in with that divorced lady who worked at the doctor’s office up on the Post Road. And her three asshole kids.
But Jamie would imagine a scene where he’d come walking up the street carrying his brown suitcase. He’d plunk it down on the road. Look up at Jamie and say, “Well, that was a mistake.”
But on this day, Jamie Brennan sat there on the roof of the garage where life didn’t change like she wanted it to and read Franny and Zooey from cover to cover. And she turned the last page just as it was almost too dark to see the words anymore.
She paused in the ending of the wonderful words. Then flipped the cover closed and felt a sob echo out of her throat.
The kind 12-year-olds are ashamed of. The true kind. The baby kind.
Tears streamed down her face and they wouldn’t stop.
And it wasn't because the book was sad. It was because everything else was. And this book and its words filled an ache in her that nothing else had touched or noticed.
She pulled her knees up to her chest and looked out to the woods, wiping away the last of the tears.
"That’s what I want to do," she whispered to no one. She figured the trees in the woods understood what she was saying. To make someone else feel this. To write.
Jamie slipped her blazer over her arm and peered down Sixth for the bus. She glanced across the street at the new digital clock on the bank.
Thirty eight minutes to get there.
She was about to take the bus uptown to a chance in a million. The best book editor in the world was taking her on.
If she could keep the flop sweat to a minimum, she would be just fine.
11
“Ms, Langston will see you now. Last office on your right at the end of the corridor.”
“Thanks.”
Jamie stood up from the leather couch and peered across the modern glass lobby of Peckham Press. Her heart was pounding.
She unbuttoned her blazer, smoothed her blouse down and gently brushed her blond hair out of her eyes.
She took a deep breath.
“Don’t be nervous… Don’t be nervous. Don’t be nervous…She’s just like you. But a genius. She’s brilliant. You suck. No big deal…. Oh Jesus, I’m sweat
ing.”
At the end of the hall, she saw the nameplate outside the door. Penny Langston. Editor. She rapped on the door.
“Come in,” she heard from inside.
Jamie opened the door and stepped inside.
Penny Langston stood up from behind her desk and Jamie’s first thought was not helpful to her nerves.
“Oh Jesus. She's fucking gorgeous.”
And with that Jamie tripped on a bump in the orange carpet.
"Oh god..." she muttered with a laugh.
Penny Langston smiled. "Careful there..."
Pictures in magazines did not tell the whole story. She was take-your-breath-away beautiful. And chic. Dressed in a navy sleeveless silk top and grey slacks. Auburn hair she tucked behind her ear that fell effortlessly over her shoulders. Jamie noticed she had these piercing blue eyes and this creamy skin that could only have been produced with British DNA. And the perfect smile of a lady in a toothpaste commercial.
But sexiest of all, she exuded charm and intelligence.
She extended her hand for Jamie to shake, which Jamie did quickly.
“Hi, I’m Jamie Brennan.”
“Hi, Jamie,” Penny said with a polite smile. “I’m Penny Langston.”
“Of course you are,” Jamie said. “I’m a big fan.”
“That’s very kind, Jamie. Please... have a seat."
Penny gestured to one of two small curved orange chairs. The kind that look like a tennis ball with a space cut out to sit. Expensive. The whole office was decorated in oranges and yellows. Like Starburst fruit chews. And a brown couch with a coffee table.
Jamie sat down on the edge of the seat, half afraid she might get stuck in the chair.
Penny Langston made her way back behind her desk and pulled herself in to get closer. She leaned forward on her elbows towards Jamie.
“So,” she said cheerfully, then checked her watch. “ I read your first book. The Readers.”
Jamie smiled, waiting for the compliments.
Pause.
“I’m perhaps more of a narrative fiction fan, but it had a lot of charm.”
“Ah - Well charm is good?”
“It is. Although if I’m being honest, it just wasn’t entirely…” She let the sentence trail off. “…You know, my thing. Tell me about your new book….”
Penny smiled. She checked her watch again. She leaned forward on her elbows listening.
“Sure,” Jamie said, “It’s about a woman who leaves her life in New York at the end of a bad marriage and gets a job working in Florence. She starts up an American museum there for a wealthy American industrialist with more money than art sense. A private museum. Not unlike the Frick – you know the Frick?”
“Of course.”
“But in Florence. I wanted to follow one woman’s journey as she discovers what love is and what art is through everything she loses and everything that Florence and Art wake up in her.”
Penny nodded as if waiting for more. “Sounds great. And what is love?”
“Oh – what is - In life? Or in the book?”
Penny Langston let a smile curl across her lips, which she seemed to try and suppress. “In the book. Does she meet someone or....”
“Ah, yes - she does.”
Penny glanced across her desk at the pretty young woman with the intelligent blue eyes and the eager words and the little scar on her chin. She had a quick, sweet smile and a warmth that was a bit disarming.
Jamie Brennan had a good look. Joan Sussman was right – this would play well for TV promotion. She was very pretty. Sort of like a Sarah Lawrence college girl. Tailored blazer, crisp white shirt, her blond hair up in a ponytail.
She seemed shy. Or awkward. It was charming.
She was sitting with perfect posture at the edge of the chair like she might get up and leave at any moment. Her words tumbling out in an enthusiastic spree.
“The love interest,” Jamie Brennan was saying, “It's someone she works with at the museum. A woman.”
Uh oh. Suddenly all Penny could think of was Francine in marketing with her usual, "Who's going to buy it in Peoria?!" incantation.
“Hmm. Does it have to be a woman?" Penny said.
Jamie Brennan smiled nervously, then wiped her palm on her slacks. In a world of arrogant authors, Penny loved the shy.
“Oh... Connie said it wouldn't be a problem... Is it a problem?"
"No, no. It's not a problem," Penny said. "It's just a marketing issue. No need to change it if that's what you want to write."
“I’d like to… I mean, if it’s okay- ”
“If you feel it works.”
Jamie felt herself blush. She quickly glanced away. Her eyes found a picture on the wall of Penny Langston at the White House with Jimmy Carter.
“Wow. You went to the White House?"
"I’m sorry?" Penny glanced up at the photo, one of a series of dignitaries and award ceremonies mixed up in the jumble of best-sellers on the wall. She let out a small chuckle.
"My husband... Some presidential medal for his publishing company. My husband is in publishing."
"Oh, is he?"
Jamie felt like an idiot as soon as the words came out of her mouth. Of course she knew Davis Llewellyn was Penny’s husband. And she knew full well what he did. Every writer did. He ran Llewellyn and Parker, the biggest publishing house in New York.
“Right,” Jamie said. “Well, I’m more familiar with your work.”
She knew she mostly said it because she felt that everyone should be. Penny Langston created brilliant bestsellers. Davis Llewellyn was a famous businessman. Big difference.
“I loved ‘The Last Friday’.”
“Thank you. That was quite a juggernaut,” Penny smiled.
“Your reputation precedes you, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Thank you, Jamie, that’s very kind.”
Jamie fidgeted in the chair. “Although, I think I just sounded like a character from Upstairs Downstairs. I’m sorry… I’m a little nervous.”
“Don’t be. And nothing wrong with Upstairs Downstairs. It’s a good show.”
“Underrated.”
“Quite.”
“Have you seen it?”
“Not a lick,” Penny smiled. “But I’m sure it’s fantastic.”
“And you,” Jamie said, beginning to relax. “I presume you’re from - Upstairs.”
Penny laughed. “Ah, yes, England, where you have to choose. Truth be told, Ms. Brennan, I always felt a lot more comfortable with the people from downstairs.”
“Hm, that’s telling.”
“Is it?”
“Should it be?”
Penny let a smile curl across her lips - Jamie noticed this time her eyes sparkled.
“No, it shouldn’t be,” Penny said. "Anyway, if you want the character to be in love with a woman, all I ask is you find some truth there as opposed to gimmickry."
"Absolutely."
“Or it would be best left to a gay woman to write her own experience, I think.”
“Ah.”
Jamie rubbed her eyebrow with her index finger trying to relieve some tension.
“Right - well. Y’know - for me… I am… sort of…” Jamie said, looking for the word ‘gay’, not finding it. As often happened - chickening out halfway between the start and end of the sentence.
“I myself am… y’know…”
Every time she had to tell someone she was gay, even at twenty eight, was a challenge. It was like a conversational surprise - a sentence ending jack-in-the-box, despite the five minutes of lever cranking and mechanical melody.
And let’s face it, everyone hates a fucking jack-in-the-box.
“You’re…” Penny said, helping Jamie out.
"I'm - it's familiar to me,” Jamie said. “I’m gay…”
Penny’s eyebrows raised. "Ah, well then..." Penny said. “Good for you. Be whoever you are. We just may have to deal with this cleverly for the marketing department. They can
be less than sophisticated and worldly."
"So can the rest of the world."
Penny actually smiled this time. “Yes,” she said. “Very true.”
Something like the real Penny Langston just got revealed and it was a thousand times more beautiful than the outside of her.
“Right,” Penny said, seeming to take her in anew with a glance. “Onwards… You don’t look gay, the way…”
Those words usually made Jamie bristle. She gave Penny Langston a pass.
“Alright –" Penny continued, "I’m intrigued to read more – shall we say you can get me the first chapter next week?”
“Absolutely.”
All of a sudden the reality hit Jamie - this wasn’t Connie Pell who was good with just talking about ideas. An actual chapter for an actual big deal genius. Jamie was going to have to be able to write something amazing when she hadn’t been able to write anything at all.
Penny’s phone buzzed. Her secretary's voice cut through the phone’s intercom.
“Ms. Langston, you have a meeting in the boardroom.”
Penny pressed the intercom. “Thanks, Cathy.”
Jamie realized this was her cue. She stood up.
But as she did, the rest of her body went haywire.
Jamie’s heart started to race, and, as she rose, the rest of her body pulled her down. She felt light headed.
Not this shit again.
Lately, Jamie’s body would kick into something like terror out of the blue.
Her heart sped up.
Oh fuck. I’m going to faint.
She steadied herself with a few fingers on Penny’s glass desk as the world dimmed to black and back up again. Like the five-minute intermission warning at Lincoln Center.
She glanced down at the desk to steady herself.
Not here... Don’t fall apart. Don’t faint.
This had happened to her last month and she passed out in the middle of Dean and Deluca.
Panic from nowhere. A racing heart. And heavy limbs.
The stupid psychologist lady with the chunky earrings in the West Village the cops sent her to after it happened was no help. “You must be very traumatized…” the shrink lady would opine when Jamie tried to talk about what happened. “Feelings of despair? Insomnia? Inability to concentrate? Intimacy issues? Lack of appetite…”
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