Her appointment with the publisher was at two and she was meeting her agent, Melissa, for lunch beforehand.
‘I’ll order something for us in my office, Suki. I’ve got a West Coast conference call at twelve. We won’t have time to go out,’ Melissa informed her when it was all being set up.
Suki knew what that meant: the Suki Richardson account made so little money, taking her out to lunch was no longer financially viable.
The old Suki would have raged about being treated badly.
The new Suki said ‘fine’.
She had a long way to go to become the goliath she’d once been, if she could ever get back there.
When the adrenalin was flowing, Suki felt a match for anybody: when she’d been on television all the time, when boys in Avalon had lusted after her, when she was Kyle Richardson’s wife, when she was with Jethro … But for herself, in herself, she didn’t know the last time she’d felt truly confident. That scared her like nothing else. If she could no longer fight, what would become of her?
The offices of Carr and Lowenstein had once occupied half of a suitably grand brownstone, but when they’d joined forces with a theatrical agency, they’d all moved into a glass tower. Suki spent the time in the elevator on the way to the forty-fifth floor fighting vertigo, a feeling which worsened when she stepped into the sheeny lobby, which was all reflective surfaces, to emphasize how high up they were. The reception had just-big-enough olive trees in planters in every corner and the silvery-green walls were massed with photos of the agency’s most famous and highest-earning clients.
In the Jethro days, he told her the record company people put photos of TradeWind on every wall of their office and played their latest album whenever they visited.
‘Flipped the switch to play another band as soon as we left, man!’ pointed out Stas, the band’s lead guitarist.
‘Sure did,’ agreed Jethro, unconcerned. ‘That’s business, nothing personal.’
Suki saw no photos of herself on the walls of Carr and Lowenstein. Not even an itty, bitty one. And it did feel personal.
The receptionist, a Cosmo-girl vision dressed in nude shades with Lincoln Park After Dark nails, didn’t bother to feign a polite smile as she took Suki’s name and told her to wait. The receptionist knew everything. Who was on the up, who was on the way down.
No picture on the wall and no smiles from Cosmo-girl. It all told a story.
Suki sat on a couch and felt the panic rise. Her career was over. She was broke. There was nowhere left to go and the most dangerous man in the dirty biography business wanted to write about her and the Richardson family. Suki didn’t want all the mistakes she’d made in her life turned into trash-biography horror. It would destroy any credibility she’d got left.
The terror which had been building since Eric Gold first told her that Redmond Suarez wanted to write the book exploded fully into Suki’s body.
‘Which way is the women’s room?’ she asked Cosmo-girl.
‘Straight down the hall and second left,’ said the girl with barely a flicker in Suki’s direction.
Tess would have introduced herself and made the girl smile, Suki thought. Tess was beautiful and yet she’d had that gift of being able to stop other women from hating her. Suki had never mastered it. Men loved her, women were wary of her.
Why was she thinking about Tess so much? It had to be all the worry over the book and how it all linked up. The past, Avalon, all the things she’d tried to forget, all the secrets.
In the women’s room, she locked herself in a stall, put down the toilet seat lid and sat. A Xanax for nerves, some Tylenol for the headache that was rumbling at the base of her skull and one of her prescription antacids to quell the bile that seemed to rise so easily these days. She washed it all down with her bottle of water. That all these ailments were stress-related didn’t pass her by, but Suki knew there was no easy fix when it came to stress. She was broke, so that stress wasn’t going away anytime soon. And the book …
The women’s room door slammed and Suki got up, flushed the loo loudly to imply she wasn’t in there taking cocaine – which she would have been, back in the day – and came out.
She slicked on some lip gloss and walked back up the hall as if she hadn’t a care in the world. Act as if, she thought.
Melissa Lowenstein was a tall, striking woman who favoured tailored pantsuits worn with a single large piece of costume jewellery. Today’s was a striking orange Perspex brooch on one lapel.
‘Suki, great to see you,’ she said, shaking hands.
Melissa didn’t go in for continental air kissing. ‘Gives some men the wrong idea,’ she’d told Suki once. ‘Kissing can make them think it’s fine to put a hand on your butt. Kissing blurs all the rules. So I keep it simple. No kissing anyone, no touching – and no messing if they overstep that line.’
Suki found this approach strange. She liked seeing the flicker of admiration in men’s eyes, liked using her sexuality as part of her personal arsenal of weapons. But it was different for Melissa, she realized: Suki was the talent, the performer, whereas Melissa had to do deals with men. Totally different.
At Melissa’s small boardroom-style table, lunch was set up for two: some deli cold cuts, bagels, salad and diet sodas.
They sat and helped themselves, even though Suki wasn’t in the slightest bit hungry. The Xanax was kicking in and now she wanted a strong coffee, preferably a macchiato with foam, and a cigarette, then she’d relax totally. But instead she made up a plate of salad and poured herself a diet drink.
‘How’s the book going?’ Melissa asked.
Suki had already worked out how she was going to answer this.
‘Slowly,’ she said. There was no point in lying to Melissa. She was about to explain all the issues which were clouding her head: money worries, the damn Suarez book, and point out that if she was earning more money, then she could concentrate …
‘What’s wrong?’ rasped Melissa, bonhomie gone, suddenly looking panicked. ‘You’ve given the publishers the outline, Suki. That’s what they’ve paid for. Reuben is a big fan of yours, he turned down Women and Their Wars all those years ago and he still regrets it. That’s money in the bank for you, but the publishers won’t keep waiting for ever. Past glories have got you this far, now you have to deliver – on schedule. My ass is on the line with this. Your due date is in three months and they’ve had nothing so far. What’s going on?’
Suki could feel the hand holding the glass of soda shake at Melissa’s lengthy outburst. The fear rose in her again.
‘It’s Redmond Suarez,’ she said. ‘He’s writing a book about the Richardsons. He’s interested in me. I’m so stressed about all of this, I just can’t write.’
The words, once blurted out, had the effect of making Melissa sit back and smile with relief.
‘Suki, relax, honey. This is good, better than good. This is a publicist’s dream. I get that you’re worried. Nobody wants a guy like that writing about them. Suarez is a sewer rat – but people are interested in sewer rats. No matter what he says, it will be good for your profile. A little of that high-class Wasp stuff can only do you good. Plus, Reuben is going to flip with joy. He’s always had a thing for the old Republican Mayflower types like the Richardsons and he’d like nothing better than to see them red-faced with embarrassment – if WASPS can go red, that is. Money can’t buy it!’ She beamed. ‘This is all good. Why didn’t you tell me before?’
Melissa began eating her bagel again and Suki somehow found the strength to put her glass down. ‘I need a coffee,’ she said. ‘I can’t eat.’
Melissa flipped a switch on the desk phone and asked for coffee.