“But—”
Rubenstein hung up.
I headed back to the paper, aware that it was nearly impossible for me to get out a story and make the dinner on time. I considered calling Lily and canceling but opted against it.
* * *
Five thirty.
I went back to the office to find Rubenstein had lent me an intern to pull together research for the story on Millstone. I paged through his notes. Interns were known to be overzealous: in this case, the guy had pulled quotes from Millstone’s eighth-grade teacher in Australia, his tattoo artist in Brooklyn and the sandwich maker at the deli he frequented, but he neglected to get quotes from the costars or producers of his new film.
By six o’clock I had edited most of the research and typed my lead. I had called in a favor to George’s office to get an additional quote from the producer of Millstone’s new film. In turn, the producer—with the understanding that I was a chum of George’s—gave me the private cell phone number of Millstone’s publicist, who gave me the first on-the-record quote about the tragedy.
Around six thirty, I finished my story and emailed it to editorial. I was in such a hurry I started shedding my clothing in the hallway, and I finished changing into my tuxedo in the restroom a few seconds later. I glanced at myself in the mirror. Even in the harsh fluorescent light I seemed presentable enough. The governor. A grin broke through my stoicism.
On my way out I looked up at the wall clock in editorial. It was set to precision for deadline’s sake, and it was precisely six forty-five.
I descended the concrete steps two at a time and sprinted to my car. Sunset Boulevard was jammed, and when I finally saw the words Bel-Air lit up in that eye-blinding shade of ice blue, I exhaled. It was only seven-forty. I had twenty minutes on my side. I drove leisurely through the road between Bel-Air’s pillars and mimicked Kurt’s serpentine drive to the Blooms’ before taking the final hairpin turn that led to David’s estate.
I immediately knew something was wrong. There were no signs of a political party—or any party for that matter. There was no security detail, no guards, no music, no catering trucks. The estate was quiet.
I rang the bell on the towering gates protecting the property, but there was dull silence. I heard only the branches of a sycamore tree shimmying in the unseasonably cold fall winds. Lily had definitely said the party was at David’s. Kurt had also double-confirmed that the party was this evening. I pulled my phone from my pocket, but I had no cell service.
I had two choices: drive to Sunset Boulevard to call Lily or use the phone at David’s estate. I rang the bell again before eyeing a ficus hedge that had to have been five times as tall as me.
Panic started to set in. Lily Goldman was a shiny lucky penny in my pocket, the first talisman in a long time I had managed to pick up and secure in my palm, if only briefly. I imagined her this very second, fielding questions as to my whereabouts from the other five guests while she fingered a ruby ring or ivory necklace. I also thought of Carole, eyes heavy with exasperation, instructing the staff to remove the seventh chair that had been so craftily squeezed into the table for six and exchanging an “I told you so” glance with David, his thick eyebrows coming together in agreement.
Tonight was supposed to be a glittering star of a night. Not only was I going to meet the governor, but I was more determined than ever to make a career comeback. Suddenly, with the Goldman story and the Duplaine piece, I had begun to feel as if the future was once again full of possibility. I had always intended to return to Manhattan in glory, to triumph over what had happened there. Possibly it was a pipe dream—it had only been two big articles after all—but I was hoping the trail of plum stories was leading me east.
“Fuck,” I said out loud, still not comprehending where I could have gone wrong.
I backed my car out from David’s impenetrable gates and parked it on a patch of gravel on the side of the narrow road. I rolled down my window, and that was when I heard it.
In the distance was the faint, familiar sound of a tennis ball. There was an oddly regular rhythm to it: pong, pong, pong, quick pong, slow pong, pong, pong, pong, quick pong, slow pong.
I got out of the car and walked over to the side of David’s property, where I saw a shot of fluorescent white light through the trees. I remembered that during our long drive toward the estate we had passed a gate covered in ivy. Behind it must have been a tennis court.
I crept closer, facing a stone wall that could have fortified a federal penitentiary.
“Hello,” I shouted, but the word got caught in the wall. “Is anyone home?”
There was no answer, though there was definitely someone home.
It was then that I noticed an oak tree weeping over David Duplaine’s wall, and I glanced at the lowest branch. It would have been a reach for most men, but I was tall and I had had plenty of practice climbing trees during those muggy mosquito-filled summer days of my childhood in Wisconsin. Even in dress shoes, navigating the tree wasn’t particularly difficult; I conquered one branch after the next, giving me a feeling of satisfaction I hadn’t felt in years.
I scaled half the oak tree and then paused to catch my breath.
My first sight of her was from the back. She stood at the baseline of a red-clay tennis court surrounded by trellises thickly covered with ivy. Her long limbs were tanned golden-brown; but they were coltish, as if she didn’t quite know how to work them yet. It could have been my distorted perspective from above, but she appeared around six feet tall. Her blond ponytail reached the middle of her back and was tied together with a white satin ribbon. Indeed, she wasn’t dressed for practicing serves at all, but for a match at Wimbledon. Her white dress had a bunch of froufrou on it—frills, lace—and it was so short her ruffled tennis panties peeked out from beneath it. The Nike shoes she wore looked brand-new, save for the stain of clay near their soles.
Her ritual was exact: first she chose a bright yellow tennis ball from a hopper, searching carefully for just the right one. Then she situated her shoe at the corner of the baseline tape and the center mark. Finally, she bounced the ball three times, tossed it in the air to the exact one-o’clock position, and served it with a motion so fluid it was the stuff of physics textbooks and tennis academies.
All this exactitude resulted in a beauty of a serve that rivaled those on the professional tour and sent a ball with laser precision into one of the orange cones that sat in the corners of the service box as targets.
This ritual repeated itself eight times until the hopper was drained of balls.
I had grown up around the sport of tennis, so the sight of a girl in a tennis dress embarking on service practice was in itself not particularly interesting. But the scene was captivating in the way that a movie may hold your attention so intensely your real life vanishes.
I could not avert my eyes.
The girl walked over to a viewing pavilion, a plush mini Palladian palace. Silver pitchers, a silver ice bucket and crystal glasses sat on a silver tray on an antique table. She plucked ice out with silver tongs and placed it in one of the glasses, and then she poured water from the pitcher into the glass until it reached the glass’s equator.
She then took a few sips of the water, surveyed the littered balls and made her way back out onto the chilly court. She picked up the hopper and started collecting the bright yellow tennis balls, but she struggled to line the hopper up to push the balls through its rails. For a girl who could serve a hundred miles an hour, it was odd she moved so slowly on this remedial task.
The girl started toward my side of the net, and I took my opportunity.
“Excuse me,” I called down from the oak tree.
The girl stepped backward quickly and looked around, trying to discover where the voice was coming from.
“It’s okay. I won’t hurt you. I’m up here, in