Showbiz, A Novel (13 page)

             
She stood up and glared down at him. “Is that why you asked me out in the first place? To get dirt on my boss?”

             
He hoped with every fiber of his body that his face didn’t betray his guilt at the truth of her statement. He couldn’t bear for her to think that about him now. She started to go for her coat.

             
“No, Scarlett, wait!” He grabbed her arm and she wheeled around to face him.

             
“Why would I have proof?”

             
It wasn’t going well. “Please just sit down and let’s talk about this.”

             
“I’m done with this conversation.” She jerked her arm out of his grip.

             
“Just hear me out, and if you want to leave after that, you’re free to leave.” He took her hand and she flinched. “I know you’re angry, but please stay. Give me five minutes.”

             
She sighed again. “Fine.” She left him to sit on the couch alone and took a seat in his favorite reading chair across from him.

             
“Thank you. Now let me finish before you storm off again.” She continued to glare at him. “I believe that Candace and Margolies worked together to get Kanter the job and that they paid him off for good reviews. I’ve been putting this together for a year now in bits and pieces, and that’s the only conclusion that makes sense.”

             
“But you’re a finalist for that job. Are you hoping to pad your paychecks from Margolies’ bank account, too?”

             
“No,” he said, stung by her accusation. “I want the job specifically so that I can ensure that no one is getting paid off for anything. Do you realize how long this has been going on? How long it’s been since Broadway has had unbiased, honest journalism?”

             
“Do you think others are doing this, too?”

             
“From what I can tell, it’s just Margolies and it’s just the
Banner
. But they’re the biggest players in the biz.”

             
“But Kanter panned Margolies’ last show.”

             
“He couldn’t make all the reviews good. That would be a giveaway.”

             
“This could certainly explain why Kanter might have chosen suicide. Being a nasty critic is one thing, but being a nasty corrupt critic is a lot to live with.”

             
“More important at this moment is that Margolies and Candace have a lot to lose from Kanter’s death. They’re just lucky he didn’t seem to have left a note.”

             
“Why should I help you?” She got up abruptly and went over to stare out the window.

             
“Because...” He got up and stood behind her, gently placing his hands on her shoulders, hoping she wouldn’t pull away that time. He whispered in her ear, “Margolies’ job could be yours.”

             
She turned to face him with an icy gaze, and he took a step back. “I think you’ve seen
All About Eve
a few too many times.”

             
“Think about it for a second. You could pick up all his shows. I know you’re doing most of the work already. It would be so easy. This is your chance to have what you’ve always wanted.”

             
She stared at him in stony silence.

             
“He built his career on a lie,” Reilly continued, reaching for her hands, trying to coax her over to the couch.

             
She still wasn’t convinced. “His shows run for years,” she said, batting away his hands. “He may be bribing critics, but a lot of those reviews were well deserved. People flock to his shows in the millions. He’s made Broadway what it is today. That’s true regardless of one critic’s reviews.”

             
“I can’t believe you’re defending him!” It was Reilly’s turn to be angry. He began pacing around his tiny living room. His cards were on the table, and he honestly didn’t know what she’d do with that information. All of a sudden, he felt extremely vulnerable. What a disaster, he thought.

             
She watched him pace for a moment and then said slowly, “So, let me get this straight. You’re going to run this exposé article, I get to take over for Margolies...and despite the scandal, the
Banner
hires you as their new critic?” She shook her head in disbelief. “To be honest, it sounds fairly unlikely.”

             
She was right, he thought. It was pretty far-fetched when he looked at it that way. However, during the conversation, another thought had occurred to him. If he had proof about the rigged reviews, he could turn it around on Candace and Margolies. After all, they might already be scheming about how to ensure that the next chief critic was equally corruptible.

             
Reilly simply couldn’t let that happen—and he realized that the best way to ensure honest journalism would be to get the job himself.

             
He was warming to the idea in his head. If Candace and Margolies were determined to play dirty, maybe Reilly just needed to beat them at their own game. Candace would certainly be interested to know what he knew—and interested in keeping his mouth shut. He could forego his exposé article and, instead, use what he knew of their fraud to force them to hand him the chief critic position on his terms—reader votes or not.

             
If he could only get some real proof. But he couldn’t tell Scarlett, not until he’d worked out the details. He worried that his new plan would make him sound opportunistic and out for his own career advancement. And yet he firmly believed that the situation was much bigger than just his career. He knew the integrity of the
Banner
was at stake, and he realized that he was quite possibly the only person who could restore it.

             
He couldn’t risk Scarlett misunderstanding his motives, although that didn’t lessen the fact that he still needed her help. He wondered again what had made her so upset before she came over. Margolies must have pissed her off. That was good for his own cause, though he hated seeing her so unhappy.

             
“Are you in?” he said, carefully grasping her shoulders and meeting her eyes, willing her to go with it.

             
“Why should I trust you?” she said, meeting his gaze.

             
“Because I just told you what I’ve never told anyone. You of all people, who could so easily run to Margolies and tell him everything.” Reilly pulled Scarlett over to the couch and she allowed him, that time. He put his arm around her shoulders and took in the scent of her hair. Her recent misery at the hands of Margolies only intensified his desire to bring her boss down. “Who knows what he’d do to me if this got back to him before I have a chance to get it published.”

             
She tilted her head to glance at him. He could tell from her look that she had already thought of that. He continued. “I’m trusting you. I’m at your mercy.” He kissed her temple. “But this could be a win-win for both our careers.”

             
At that, she stood up and looked at him for a minute. He could see she had made a decision in that moment. She went over to her computer bag and took out a stack of what looked like copies of bank statements. “What kind of proof would you need?”

Scene 23

             
Early the next morning, Scarlett got back to her apartment. She dropped her computer bag heavily on the floor and leaned against the door. The past twelve hours had made her head spin.

             
Her eyes burned. A combination of yesterday’s crying—she really needed to get a thicker skin—and getting very few hours of sleep at Reilly’s apartment. By the time they had finished combing through the bank statements, it had been way too late to go home.

             
The excitement of their first real fight combined with their discoveries about Margolies had proved to be an irresistibly provocative cocktail. She worried that they were moving too fast, yet she had to admit, it had been wonderful to spend the night with Reilly. The evening’s earlier drama had been stressful and fraught with all kinds of moral and emotional implications. And yet she felt like, if anything, all the drama was pushing them closer together.

             
Waking up in Reilly’s arms had felt fantastic. In fact, her impulse was to turn right back around to his apartment and climb back into his inviting bed. She knew, however, that it wouldn’t be prudent to give in to infatuation. She was determined to play it safe where her heart was concerned, though she had a sneaking suspicion that it was way too late for her to turn back.

             
A few weeks earlier, she never would have guessed that she’d fall for Reilly Mitchell, of all people. Or that, by all appearances, he had fallen for her as well. It crossed her mind that in an ironic way, she and Reilly were mirroring a young Candace and Margolies. The aspiring producer and ambitious journalist. It would be an appropriate bookend, Scarlett told herself, for the two of them to make right what Candace and Margolies had set into motion decades before.

             
That morning, the reality of what she had potentially done to Margolies—as well as the reality of what Margolies had been doing all those years—began to sink in. She could hardly comprehend the turn her life and career seemed to be taking.

             
Though she should have been getting changed and heading into the office, she couldn’t get motivated quite yet. She hoped a hot shower would clear her mind.

             
As she stood under the faucet, a wave of mixed emotions washed over her. On one hand, she felt incredibly guilty for not only stealing Margolies’ bank statements but also proceeding to share them with a journalist. On the other hand, she was horrified that all evidence pointed to the fact that Margolies very likely had been bribing Kanter to guarantee good reviews for years.

             
On top of all that, she wondered what would happen when Reilly’s exposé hit the presses. Would she really be in a position—and capable of—picking up the pieces of Margolies’ producing career? Maybe it would blow over and nothing would happen. After all, hadn’t Margolies told her that she was in over her head? Maybe such was the way the world worked at that level. Her mind felt like a broken record, replaying her conversations with Margolies, and later, with Reilly the night before.

             
She wrapped a towel around her wet hair and grabbed her threadbare robe off the hook on the back of the bathroom door. Her brother had bought her a new robe when she moved to NYC, but she had yet to find the right occasion to lounge in its purple satin, fur-cuffed “fabulousness.” She liked the fact that her brother, though he knew better, insisted on picturing her lounging in her Broadway apartment in the elegant satin robe, eating bonbons and smoking a cigarette from a long holder—though he also knew she’d never smoked anything in her life. In reality, there was another reason she hadn’t let go of her old cozy robe. It was a daily reminder of how far she’d come. It was the same robe she’d had since high school. It seemed like much longer than the ten years it had actually been since she had sat in the school’s “cafetorium,” dreaming of being exactly where she was.

             
That day, however, she felt nostalgic for her life back home. The stress of her high-school theater world which had kept her awake many a night at the time now seemed ridiculously petty compared to what was giving her sleepless nights now. She couldn’t bring herself to call her parents. They’d probably have good advice. High school teachers and lawyers tended to have an answer for everything. But she wasn’t in the mood to rehash her week. Plus, it would be really early in the morning their time. Though they claimed she should call anytime, day or night, she knew they would be very worried if they saw her number on caller ID at such an unusual time

             
Unwilling to face the day, she shot off a quick text to the Jeremys:
Let me know how it goes today. I’m there in spirit.
It was the first day of rehearsal, and it broke Scarlett’s heart to be missing it.

             
She felt tempted to text Reilly as well but resisted the urge. She reminded herself that she needed to take things slowly, even after the night they’d spent together.

             
Reluctantly, Scarlett got dressed and made her way into the office with palpable dread.

Scene 24

             
The elegant gallery of the Metropolitan Museum of Art was packed as Scarlett squeezed her way through the impeccably dressed guests. In my next life, I’ll come back as a wealthy theater investor, she thought. They got to have all the fun and glittering glory of showbiz and none of the late nights and heart-attack-inducing crises that made up her daily existence. The ritzy guests had their own daily stresses, she assumed, but their brush with Broadway, at least when the Margolies production team had anything to do with it, was always impressive and memorable.