by Sue Margolis
Cyn went to bed and dreamed that Flick hired an electronic rodeo bull for the wedding reception. Joe from therapy was in the saddle. He looked unbelievably gorgeous in his dinner suit, especially with his tie and shirt undone. One large, firm hand gripped the reins, the other he waved high in the air. She watched his body and hips writhe and thrash as the saddle pitched wildly. The longer he stayed on, the louder the whoops and cheers from the guests. Finally the bull stopped. Joe dismounted to wild applause and strode over to Cyn. His face was one huge grin. As he took her in his arms and held her to him, she closed her eyes, breathed in his heady, musky, sweaty smell. A second later his lips had found hers.
The next morning, just before eight, the phone rang. Cyn was still asleep. She sort of came to, reached out from under the duvet and groped for the receiver. “Mum, please,” she begged groggily. “It’s the middle of the night. I’m all salmon Wellingtoned out from yesterday. Can we talk later?”
“It’s not your mum, it’s me.” It was Hugh.
“Hi, Me. Wassup?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute. For the moment, I’m more interested in finding out what you mean when you say you’re all salmon Wellingtoned out.”
“Wedding menu stuff. Jonny and Flick are getting married.”
“That’s great. Moozzle tov.”
“Actually, that’s mazel tov, but thank you anyway.”
“You’re welcome,” Hugh said. “By the way, you do know it’s nearly eight o’clock. Shouldn’t you be getting ready for work?”
“Christ, it isn’t, is it?” She sat up and squinted at the clock on her bedside table. It was. She swung her feet onto the carpet. “Bloody alarm didn’t go off. Now I’m going to be late. Look, Huge, I’ve gotta go.”
“But you don’t know why I rang.”
“Oh, right.” She rubbed some sleep from the corner of her eye. “So, why did you?”
“Well, it’s just that I’ve got an early start and a mad day and I know I won’t get a chance to call you. I thought we could have dinner at my place if you haven’t got anything else on. I thought you needed cheering up, what with this Chelsea thing. I tried asking Harms, but she’s got a couple of late appointments at the salon.” Cyn said she would love to come.
“So, do you reckon you’ll see this impersonation scheme through?”
“I’m in too deep to get out of it now.”
“You know something, gorgeous, I really have to admire your balls.”
She giggled. “Fine, but can it wait until later?”
“Hah, hah.” He said he would see her about eight and they could order in a curry.
Fifteen minutes after putting down the phone she was showered and dressed. Somehow, in the time it took to toast a crumpet, she managed to roughly blow-dry her hair, put on her mascara and give Morris fresh food and water.
“You will never guess the dream I had last night,” she said, closing Morris’s cage.
“Hot, sweaty, jungle shag,” he squawked, head tilted appealingly to one side.
“Not quite,” she said, smiling. “But you’re in the right ballpark.”
When she got to the office, Luke was standing with his headphones on, having one of his moshing water cooler moments. She gave him a wave, but he was too far gone for it to register.
The moment she sat down at her desk, a chirpy but irritating junior copywriter named Ade came over. He was always telling crap jokes with pointless punch lines. They were made worse by him being in possession of a voice totally incapable of inflection. He announced that he had found “this wicked hemorrhoid joke” on the Internet. She listened politely, tittered at the appropriate point and then, when it looked like he was going to hang around for a general gossip, she gave him a broad smile, said she would love to chat, but she was up to her eyes in work. He didn’t seem remotely put out and tootled off to find somebody else to annoy with his hemorrhoid joke.
She was being perfectly truthful when she said she had work to do. First, what with all the Chelsea stuff, she had gotten behind with her other work. Sainsbury’s was waiting for her to submit a proposal for a TV commercial and she hadn’t even begun to think about it. On top of that, she realized on the drive into work that she hadn’t sent Gazza the final cost breakdown for the Droolin’ Dream commercial. She assumed that Chelsea had been planning to take them to the meeting with Gazza and the marketing people and they were on her computer. She couldn’t help feeling anxious. If the figures weren’t there, things could get difficult. She could always get a copy from somebody in the finance department, but not without questions being asked. All in all, it would be much simpler if Chelsea had the figures.
She went over to Chelsea’s computer, which still hadn’t been switched off. She went into the Droolin’ Dream file and found the cost breakdown straightaway. Easy. Yesss. She let out a long breath. Five minutes later she was sitting at her own computer, e-mailing the figures to Gazza. She signed herself: “Cyn—PA to Chelsea Roggenfelder.”
She’d just finished when she saw Luke coming toward her, doing that lopey-jiggy walk of his. As she watched him, she couldn’t help wondering what it was that twenty-something women found so attractive about men who wore their jeans so low that they exposed four inches of boxer short.
Having only vaguely acknowledged her, since he still had his headset on, Luke stood beside her desk, sifting through envelopes. At the same time he was making low tch-tch-ktksssh sounds and jerking his head like a rapping rooster. He put three letters on her desk and then immediately took one back.
“Ooops, sorry. That one’s addressed to Chelsea.” She waited for him to wander off, but he didn’t. Instead he took off his headphones and hung them round his neck.
“You know, this really weird thing happened with Chelsea the other day.” He had a south London accent and spotty skin that was pink and dry from Clearasil overuse.
“Really?” Cyn said. “What?”
“Well, I was in the ladies’ toilet and—”
“Hang on. You were in the ladies’ room?”
“Yeah.”
“Any particular reason? Like you wanted to try out the hand lotion?”
“Der. I’m not a perv. The cleaner had gone for ’er break and forgotten to put in fresh soap and new toilet rolls. Somebody asked me to do it. Look, I made sure there was nobody in there before I went in.”
“OK, go on.”
“Right, well, anyway. I was in the end cubicle fitting a toilet roll, when Chelsea comes in—except I didn’t know it was her until she got on her mobile and I heard her voice. Anyway, she’s begging this bloke to help her with something . . .”
“Hang on, Luke. Why are you telling me all this? I mean, it just sounds like gossip.” She’d always thought Luke was a bit idle and an MP3 short of an iPod, but she had never had him down as a gossip.
“No, it isn’t. I’m telling you because she sounded really upset. She was crying and begging this bloke to help her and everything. It totally freaked me out. She sounded like my sister, Kelly, when my dad refuses to give her money. And that’s pretty bad. I mean, Kelly can really turn on the waterworks, but this was much worse. I know nobody likes Chelsea much, but I’ve seen you two chatting and I thought that if she’s in trouble, maybe you could help her.” She was reassessing her view of Luke. Maybe he wasn’t the brightest of lads, but he was a sensitive, caring soul.
“She kept repeating the same thing over and over: ‘Please, just this last time. I’ll never ask you again.’ And ‘Charlie’ was mentioned a few times.” He looked around to check nobody was eavesdropping. “You know what I reckon? I reckon she could have a drug habit.” Luke explained that his elder brother was in rehab. “I saw what he went through and I wouldn’t want the same to happen to Chelsea.”
“Luke, you’re a really sweet lad, do you know that?” He colored up.
Cyn supposed it was possible that Chelsea had a drug habit, but she was so into healthy eating and food supplements, it didn’t seem likely. On the oth
er hand, hadn’t she read somewhere that the reason everybody in L.A. snorted cocaine was because it helped them absorb vitamins faster?
The begging conversation Luke described reminded Cyn of the fraught exchange she’d heard Chelsea having on the phone the other day. She’d been talking to a chap called Charlie then, too. She’d said he was her brother.
“Were any other names mentioned?” Cyn said.
“Yeah. She kept going on about a bloke called Skippy, saying how she really appreciated him helping out with Skippy, but she desperately needed something else. I reckon he’s her dealer. And she also kept talking about a bust.”
It was as much as Cyn could do to keep a straight face. Skippy was definitely not Chelsea’s drug dealer. Skippy referred to the Skippy peanut butter account she had just finished working on. She had come up with a spectacular, potentially award-winning new TV ad. Cyn’s mind began churning. Wasn’t there an American ad agency called BUST? Standing for Benning Uberdorfer Samuelson and somebody? It was beginning to make sense.
“OK, Luke, don’t worry. Just leave it with me. Chelsea’s in hospital now, so I’m sure she’s not taking anything she shouldn’t. Thank you for coming to me and I will talk to her.”
“You promise? Because my brother got really violent and everything. Crack nearly ruined his life.”
“Don’t worry, Luke. I really will deal with it.”
He seemed relieved. “Thanks, Cyn.”
The moment he disappeared Cyn turned back to her computer and went onto Google. She typed in Charlie, Bust, Advertising, Los Angeles. She scrolled down the page—past all the sites devoted to the legalizing of cocaine—until she came to something that caught her attention: www.bust-ads.com/charlie-taylor. The Taylor bit didn’t quite make sense, though, because she was expecting to find Chelsea’s brother, who would be called Roggenfelder. But she clicked on the link anyway.
From what she could tell, Charlie Taylor was the “T” bit of the BUST partnership. She looked at his CV. He was the son of Max Taylor senior. From 1962 to 1973 Max senior had been Sargent Roggenfelder’s partner. Cyn sat back. So, Charlie wasn’t her brother, he was the son of her father’s business partner. They were friends. He could even be an ex-boyfriend. Whatever his relationship with Chelsea, one thing was certain: Charlie Taylor was a shit-hot ad man. If Chelsea hadn’t been begging him for money—which had never made sense, bearing in mind her wealth—what had she wanted from him?
Was it possible that despite her brilliance, Chelsea didn’t have a creative bone in her body? Was it possible that she was getting this Charlie to help her? That would explain why she was always so quiet at those preliminary brainstorming meetings. She said nothing because she had nothing to say. But why go into advertising if she knew she was crap at it? It didn’t take Freud to work it out. She would put money on Chelsea being an only child. She must have done it to please her father.
Cyn spent the rest of the morning trying to navigate her way through her feelings. She still felt hurt and monumentally furious with Chelsea, but now—assuming her theory was correct—she also felt sorry for her. Hugh and Harmony would say she was being pathetic, but she couldn’t help it. She thought about phoning Chelsea and attempting some kind of heart-to-heart. Bit by bit, Cyn’s courage returned. Chelsea was the last person on earth to hold up her hands and beg forgiveness. Emotionally damaged she might be, but there was still no doubt in Cyn’s mind that Chelsea Roggenfelder needed to be taught a lesson. Carrying on with the impersonation plan was the only way to get through to her.
It was lunchtime before she got round to checking her e-mail. There was one from Gazza.
cyn please could you pass this message on to chel . . .
howzit going in rain forest? thanks for sending figures which will stick in executive microwave to see how they defrost with powers that be upstairs but sure there’ll be no problemo. big night out tonight with lads from accounts. promises to be wild with a capital mad. let’s make date as soon as you’re back.
xx gazza
Cyn groaned out loud at the mention of the date. Then she wondered what a load of accountants got up to on a wild night out. What did they do—find somebody to gang audit?
The intimidatingly grand house that Hugh was looking after for his parents’ friends was just a few paces from Harrods. It was a formal, echoing museum of a place, full of dark oil paintings and hefty, lumpen antiques. This was a house where pompous dinner guests had competitive conversations about Wagner and Schiller and an infinitive had never dared be split. Whenever she stepped inside, Cyn got the urge to play naked Twister with the Red Hot Chili Peppers on the stereo at full blast.
“You OK?” Cyn said to Hugh as he took her coat. She was aware that his face matched the gray of his suit.
“I’ve lost my job.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. They want me out at the end of the week.”
“But why would they want to get rid of you? I thought you had more customers than you could handle.”
“I do. Despite that, the Surrogate Boyfriend scheme isn’t making the profit the company had hoped for. So they’re winding it up and I’ve been given the boot. The rotten part about it is that my boss took me out for this expensive lunch. I thought he was going to offer me a pay raise. Then he tells me my job doesn’t exist anymore.”
“Oh, Huge.”
“It gets worse. Two minutes after sacking me he picks up his glass of wine and says, ‘You know, Hugh, this is great. We should do it more often.’ ”
She put her arms around him. “I am so sorry. Look, if there’s anything I can do. I mean, if you run short of money . . .”
“Thanks, gorgeous, I appreciate it, but don’t worry, I’ll be fine. Something will come up.” He led her across the chessboard entrance hall, toward the drawing room.
“I’ll phone Harvey Nicks—see if they need any personal shoppers.” He pulled off his tie, opened the top button of his shirt and draped himself languorously over a maroon chaise longue. He looked like Noël Coward in a decline.
Cyn sat opposite him on an upright mahogany chair with a tall carved back that dug into her spine. “Blimey, where did they find this, Anne Boleyn’s death cell?”
He didn’t react. “No news about the screenplay, I take it?” she said and immediately wished she hadn’t. If he’d heard anything he would have said. Now all she’d succeeded in doing was making him more miserable. She thought it best not to mention that with one thing and another she hadn’t gotten round to reading it yet.
“Rien, ma chérie,” he said crossing his spider legs. “Harms offered me a job at the salon, at reception, which was awfully sweet of her.”
“She offered me a job, too, if this Chelsea thing goes tits up. We could work there together. It’d be fun.”
He managed a smile. “So, how are things with you?”
“Oh, you know . . . there’s a new bloke who’s joined my therapy group and I think I fancy him.”
“Not good. Steer clear of mad people, that’s my motto.”
“That’s what Harm said.”
“Goodness, me and McFarmsworth agreeing. That has to be a first.”
“But I’m in therapy and I’m not mad,” she said, repeating what she’d said to Harmony.
“Just because you’re not doesn’t mean to say he isn’t.”
“Anyway, nothing’s going to happen.” She explained about Veronica’s rule.
“Well, let’s all sing hallelujah and give thanks for Veronica,” he said. “Now, then, why don’t we order some food? These friends of my parents keep telling me to help myself to anything I fancy from the wine cellar, so I’ve chosen two bottles of a rather exceptional Château Lafitte. Of course, drinking vintage Lafitte with curry is a bit like mixing Armani with Gap, but I don’t care. I just want to get trolleyed.” He went off to the kitchen and came back with the takeaway menu, the wine and two glasses.
She watched him pour the wine. “I’m pretty sure I’ve worked o
ut why Chelsea stole my Droolin’ Dream idea.”
“Go on.”
She explained about Luke overhearing Chelsea’s conversation with Charlie Taylor and how she was pretty certain it was Charlie who was coming up with Chelsea’s ideas. “It’s all about impressing her father.”
“And now you feel sorry for her and you’ve lost your nerve.”
“OK, I admit I had a bit of a wobble when I found out, but no, I haven’t lost my nerve.”
“Good girl. What she did to you was nothing short of evil. You have every right to get your own back. The woman has it coming.”
She sipped her wine. “You’re right.”
They were studying the takeaway menu and discussing various job options for Hugh when the idea hit her. “Omigod. I’ve got it.”
“What?”
“I think I may have a job for you. My mum is trying to organize Jonny and Flick’s wedding and everybody thinks it’s too much for her and that she’s losing the plot. Why don’t I try and persuade her to take you on as her wedding planner? It wouldn’t pay much, but it would tide you over.”
Hugh didn’t seem particularly thrilled by the prospect. The only thing that was going to cheer him up was a call from Warner Bros. to say his screenplay was the best thing they had seen in decades and could he fly out to L.A. immediately, first class, at their expense, for preliminary discussions about casting. She got up and went to sit next to him on the chaise longue. “Come on, Huge.” She took his hand. “You organize spectacular parties. Harmony’s fortieth for a start. She still hasn’t gotten over the way you turned her living room into an Arabian tent. And she wasn’t the only one. People did double takes when they came in and saw what you’d done. You found rugs, cushions, hookahs. It was like a film set. You organized musicians, dancers, the most wonderful caterers. Don’t you remember those waitresses in veils and Aladdin pants handing round dishes of pistachio Turkish Delight? It was a magical evening. Everybody said so. You’re really gifted, Huge, and this is an emergency.”