Cheating at Solitaire (5 page)

Caroline turned to her daughter and came face-to-face with a newsstand full of variations of the same picture—Julia and a handsome stranger, smiling on a New York street, their arms full of toys. A dumbfounded Caroline stared, mouth gaping, as she found the word to finish her sentence: "reputation."

Julia spent the first part of her morning on a Ritz treadmill. When she finally made it back to her suite, it was half past nine and the message light on her phone was blinking. Also, her cell phone showed eight new voicemails.
Eight?
She didn't think she'd ever in her life had eight messages at one time. Her first thought was for her family.
What i f someone was sick or hurt?

She reached to call her sister, but as soon as she gripped the phone it rang, and the caller ID

showed Nina was checking in.

"Weren't you even going to tell we?"

The sentence was so abrupt, so unexpected, that Julia might have wondered who had called her by mistake if Nina Anders hadn't sounded like a chain smoker since the second grade. No one on earth could impersonate her well enough to fool Julia.

"Hello to you, too," Julia said, a little put off with her best friend.

"Don't you change the subject on me! Who
is
he?" -

"Who is who?" Julia asked.

"The hunk!" Nina yelled just as Julia flipped on the TV and saw her own smiling face staring back at her. First she saw her book's jacket photo, then some news footage of her making the media rounds, and finally, a scene from the day before as she left FAO Schwarz, Lance Collins trailing dutifully behind. Julia fumbled with the remote control and turned up the volume in time to hear the anchorwoman say, "The popular author and aspiring actor are all the buzz in the entertainment industry. No word yet on how they met, but spokespeople from the Collins camp do confirm that the couple is deliriously happy."

Lance woke up in a good mood. There had been some big tippers at the bar the night before and, for the first time in a long time, it looked like he was going to make rent without any help from his mother. He crawled out of bed at ten forty-five and checked his messages. He pressed

"play" and listened to the automated voice tell him, "You have thirty-two new messages."

What the .
. . Lance thought just as Tammy's voice came blaring out of the speakers. "Lance, it's Tammy. I just want you to know I'm fine with it." A long pause, and then, as if berating herself, she snapped, "Never date an actor! Anyhow, Calvin Klein is sending some clothes for you, and we'll have a car there to pick you up at five. Bye."
Calvin Klein clothes? Car service?
Then he heard the next message.

"Hey, stud. Richard Stone here. Martin and Steven just called looking for you, champ. Everyone wants Lance Collins! You're the hottest ticket on two coasts, kid, so give me a call on my private line." He gave the number.

The messages played on, one right after the other, each a little more surreal. If they hadn't referred to him by name, Lance would have sworn that the phone company had made a mistake. But no. People he didn't even know kept calling him
darling
and
sweetheart
and
champ,
and there was no surer sign that somehow he'd made it big in show business.

A banging drew him away from the machine. He unbolted the door and opened it, revealing a team of people who gave the words "high fashion" a whole new meaning. There was a man who was so tall and thin and dressed so elaborately that he reminded Lance of Mr. Peanut, all that was missing was the top hat and monocle. Flanking him were three women dressed in black who wore their hair pulled back so tightly that they looked like victims of botched face-lifts.

"Well," Mr. Peanut said, "do we have our work cut out for us here?"

He pushed into the apartment, his sirens in tow, and the four of them began undressing Lance, running fingers through his hair, inspecting his hands and nails. Meanwhile, the messages just kept playing. Amid the chorus of strangers pretending to be friends, Lance heard one voice he recognized.

"Mr. Collins. Julia James here. We . . . no, strike that.
You
have a big problem. Expect a call from my attorney."

"Attorney?" the fashionable man said. "Do I hear prenuptial?"

The women squealed, and then they pounced on Lance like lionesses on prey.

Chapter Five

WAY #12: Build a support system.

People who are happily single are that way because they're happily independent. But
everyone has to know their own limitations and when to staff things out. By surrounding
yourself with people you can trust, life wil be immeasurably easier.

—from 707 Ways to
Cheat at Solitaire

" Wow, darling, relax. We're on this. It's taken care of," Candon Jeffries soothed, but Julia didn't sit. She paced IM the conference room and ignored its palatial views. The Manhattan skyline had never held so little appeal to her. All she could think was that Lance Collins was out there somewhere, loose in the city. He had used her like a scratch-off lottery ticket, trading her in for fifteen minutes of fame, and Julia wanted to make sure he wouldn't get a minute more.

"Come on," her editor went on. "Sit down. Drink some tea. Relax."

"Relax!" she yelled in a voice so high that she was lucky the windows didn't shatter and fall thirty-six floors to the street below. "I'm supposed to relax? My face is plastered across every sleazy rag in the country, with me looking like the world's biggest hypocrite! I can't believe you'd offer me tea. Do I look like I need caffeine? Plus"—Julia softened, sank into a seat at the table, and felt tears rush to the surface—"it's a really bad picture. I've got this whole"—she motioned to the makings of a double chin—"thing going on. "I look like a hypocrite. A
fat
hypocrite with a shopping disorder."

Candon slid into the seat beside her, saying, "I think it's a wonderful picture."

"Where's Harvey?" Julia asked abruptly. She picked up her cell phone and held it toward the windows as if there, in the middle of Manhattan, she might not have a signal. "Has Harvey called you?"

"I'm sure he'll call."

"I want my credibility back, Candon. I want it back, and I want it back now."

"We don't know it's been damaged. Let's look at the numbers and see."

"I don't care what the numbers say." She stood and slammed the newspaper, photo up, onto the table in front of him. "A picture's worth a thousand words."

***

Lance's eyes were starting to adjust to the dark shades that he didn't dare take off. He'd passed no fewer than ten newsstands, each one overflowing with pictures of him and a woman he barely knew. After the third person congratulated him on "getting some of that," he'd darted into a market and bought cheap sunglasses and a
NY
baseball cap. But even in the elevator alone, Lance couldn't remove his disguise. He didn't like the person he'd become overnight.

That morning, his grin was on every newsstand in America, but Lance didn't feel like smiling.

The elevator doors opened to reveal the usual purgatory outside the office of Poindexter-Stone.

Eager actors lined the walls, so Lance pulled the cap lower and turned up the collar of his jacket and tried to bolt toward the door, hoping to fly by so quickly that none of his compatriots could aim and fire. He wasn't ten feet away from the elevator when he heard the first whoop.

"There he is, the man of the hour."

"Way to go, Lance!"

"Don't forget the little people, man."

"Does she have a friend?"

Lance should have had a smile and a comeback for each bit of locker-room banter, but all he could think of was reaching the door and strangling Richard Stone. He hurled himself into the office, slammed the door, and pressed his back against it as if trying to stem the tide of "atta boy" that flowed from the other side.

Tammy must have called in sick, or quit, because she wasn't there. If not for the calendar on the wall, Lance might have sworn it had been twenty years since he'd last set foot in that room.

Everything looked a little bit different and a little bit the same, especially the woman who was on the phone, reading Tammy's magazine, looking exactly like the receptionist's future self.

Unlike Tammy, this woman bolted to her feet at the sight of Lance, sliding her office chair back so quickly that it rolled into the table behind her and knocked over a stack of foam cups and left a pot of thick coffee sloshing like toxic sludge.

"Oh!" she stuttered. "It's you!"

Lance quickly glanced at her left hand. No ring. This woman was single and, he guessed, a Julia James disciple.
How,
he wondered,
were women taking the news that their crown princess was
off the market, thanks to him?

He eased toward the woman and took his cap off, for politeness' sake. The sunglasses, however, he kept on. "Is Richard here?" he asked, not quite recognizing his own voice, as if he'd somehow put a disguise on that, too.

"Where is he? Where's my golden boy?" Richard Stone virtually leapt into view like a Broadway extra—the only thing missing was the jazz hands. "Come here, you beautiful boy. Is this kid photogenic or what?" He pulled a tall stack of newspapers from her desk, and holding one toward Future Tammy, he asked, "I mean, can this kid take a picture? Look at those teeth. What do we have here—braces, caps?" He stepped toward Lance and tried to look in his mouth like a trainer inspecting a Thoroughbred.

"I need to talk to you," Lance said, slapping Richard's hands away.

"Great," Richard said, oblivious to the tension in Lance's voice. "Gotta strike while the iron is hot. Glad to see you get it." He stepped toward the filing cabinets and the hallway behind them.

"Babe," he said to Future Tammy. "Hold my calls."

Richard Stone's office was surprisingly clean. If it had been two days earlier, Lance would have taken that as a sign of professionalism, and he would have ignored the mayhem of the hall and the lobby. He would have convinced himself that his career was going somewhere. But in the last twenty-four hours, he had developed the perspective he needed to see Richard and his office for what they really were—sparse and empty.

"Take a load off." Richard walked behind an enormous desk and sat down. But Lance didn't take the seat in front of him. He didn't move at all.

"Your legs broke?" Richard asked, impatience creeping into his voice. "Sit."

Lance stayed standing. "Whatever you started yesterday, you need to find a way to stop it."

"Excuse me?" Richard asked, jerking his head like he'd had water in his ears and hadn't heard correctly. "What did you say?"

"They're lies. Take them back," Lance said, growing stronger.

"Take them back? I hate to break it to you, Romeo, but this isn't second grade."

"She's a nice woman," Lance shot back. "We shared a cab and bought some toys, and now she's suing my ass!"

Richard stood, but with his small stature, standing behind the enormous desk made him appear even less powerful. "Are you growing a conscience on me?" he cried. "It's a tuna-fish world, and I'm offering you filet mignon, and you're growing a conscience?" He held up a stack of movie scripts and shuffled through them like a deck of cards, flashing the cover sheets as if asking Lance to pick a card, any card. "You see the names on these? You see the parts I have for you?"

The roles and projects that passed before Lance's eyes were, in a word, legitimate. Not B-level films or infomercials. Far better actors had started with far less. It would take one, just one . . .

Lance felt himself reach for a script, but then he snapped back into the moment. "It's over. No deal."

"You don't even know her," Richard cajoled.

"Uh, yeah," Lance snapped. "That's kind of the point."

"This is America. Land of the tabloid. Home of E! Entertainment Television. There's no such thing as bad publicity! She owes you. You"—Richard pointed a Vienna sausage-shaped finger at Lance—"owe me."

When Lance turned to leave, Richard yelled out, "I can get you a baked potato to go with that steak." Lance took another step. "You're doing her a favor."

Lance wheeled and yelled, "You don't even know her!"

With eyebrows raised in the ultimate portrayal of irony, Richard said, "Neither do you." He sank back onto the throne of Poindexter-Stone and continued. "A buddy of mine in the book business just called. Her stuff is flying off the shelves, single-day sales records all over the place.

Rumor has it they're gonna ink a seven-figure deal this afternoon. All because of our little project." "I don't believe it!"

"Oh, believe it," the little man said. "Thanks to you, she's Cinderella."

***

The temperature had dropped, and the weather forecasters predicted that a late-spring snowstorm could blow in overnight. But when Julia wrapped a scarf around her head, it was as much to keep hidden as to keep warm. She pulled her hands into the hot-pink mittens Cassie had given her for Christmas, so when her cell phone rang, she had to struggle to flip the tiny device open and say hello.

"Julia?" the soft voice asked, and she almost couldn't make out her own name amid the noises of the city.

With her hands cupped around her ears, she replied, "Yes?"

"Julia, dear, it's Francesca." Then a mental image popped into Julia's mind to match the voice on the phone.
Harvey's Francesca,
the delicate, beautiful woman who had been her agent's world for more than forty years.

Julia darted into an apartment building alcove, ignored the stares of the doorman, and listened closely.

"Dear, I got your messages. . . . " "Francesca, I've got to talk to Harvey. Could you . . . " "No."