Blessing in Disguise (60 page)

Where was Grace staying? Jack wondered as he peeled off his rumpled clothes. He’d forgotten to ask Nell Sorensen, or, more likely, had purposely avoided making it his business.

Like he’d avoided asking around to see if she was dating anyone. He tried to imagine her with another man, drinking coffee at the breakfast table with him each morning—Grace all rumpled and smelling sweetly of the fabric softener she used too much of so the sheets wouldn’t wrinkle if she didn’t have time to fold them.

But the only thing that was real to him was the interminable evenings and weekends when he couldn’t see her or touch her. He missed watching her emerge from the shower, wrapped in his robe, its hem trailing across the bathroom carpet. He missed her laugh, the way she lapsed into hiccoughs when he really got her going. He even missed the way she’d nibble off his plate in restaurants. ...

Enough.

Jack pictured a massive steel door clanging shut. Final, immutable. And that’s how he had to be if he was ever going to put Grace behind him.

He drifted asleep in Frau Strutz’s brick-hard bed under the crisp duvet, wondering what Grace would be wearing when he saw her, if she’d smell of the Opium he’d bought her on his way home from last year’s Frankfurt ... and whether she’d remember that tomorrow would be nine months, two weeks, and three days since he’d last made love to her.

The Carroll Agency’s party was always at the same place—an art gallery in Sossenheim, twenty minutes or so from the heart of Frankfurt. But well worth the drive. Jack thought as he was climbing out of his taxi. Far from the huge, overly ornate hotel banquet rooms where most
Buchmesse
parties were held, the Luxembourg was a series of rooms, one leading through wide archways into the next—clean, white, bare except for the startlingly modern paintings on the walls and the occasional modernist sculpture.

Jack, handing his coat to the attendant at the door, glanced to his left, where a buffet had been laid out—not the usual heavy German fare, but oysters and clams on a bed of shaved ice, endive leaves arranged like petals on a rose, each with a tiny dollop of sour cream and caviar, some sort of chopped meat rolled up in phyllo leaves, a platter of poached
haricots verts
and wild mushrooms. All of it looking good enough to make him wish he had an appetite.

But his lingering jet lag fled at the sight of Grace. She was standing at the head of a receiving line made up of Hank, Gina Ransome, who handled Carroll’s foreign rights, and Douglas Kruger, who was in charge of scouting for foreign publishers. She looked ... spectacular. She wore a filmy ankle-length sheath in a brilliant pattern of greens and blues, her shoulders bare, a diamond pendant about her slim throat. Diamond studs in her ears. Her hair swept back from her forehead with a black velvet headband.

Jack felt a bubble of insane hope rising in him.

He realized he was shaking someone’s hand, a Swedish publisher he’d had lunch with only a month ago, but whose name now slipped his mind.

Then, thank goodness, it came to him.

“Good to see you, Sven, you’re looking well. Did you ever settle that problem you were having with your scout?” Somehow the correct words were rolling off his tongue.

The gaunt, bearded Swede nodded, vigorously pumping Jack’s hand in both of his. “Ya, I fired him. What is the reason I pay a thousand dollars a month, I tell him, if I hear of these books before you have told me?”

Plump, motherly Francesca Zenterro now was swooping down on Jack, kissing him on both cheeks. “I shall withhold all future payments to Cadogan until you promise you are taking better care of yourself. Look at you! So thin! Have you been working too hard?” She peered up at him, her brow wrinkled with concern.

“Jet lag,” he reassured her with a laugh, though it was true he had lost weight. His tuxedo was almost baggy.

But Francesca, who had the face of Sophia Loren and the body of Rosanne Arnold, darted a glance at Grace and clucked knowingly. “Yes, I know,” she said. “Some people, it takes a long time to catch up. Take care of yourself, Jack.”

“Nice lady, lousy publisher,” Kurt Reinhold muttered in his ear as Francesca was squeezing past them. “She killed Young’s last book in Italy. Bad cover, zero publicity. Let’s see if we can get someone else for the next one.”

Jack bristled, but said nothing. What was there to say? Reinhold simply couldn’t stand it that Jack had robbed him of a good reason for firing his ass.

But would that have been so terrible? Lately he was starting to wonder if he might not be better off just retiring to his cabin in the woods. ...

Jack’s gaze fell on Benjamin, elegant in a shawl-collared tux and muted paisley cummerbund. His son, deep in conversation with old Hauptman himself, appeared to be holding the interest of the garrulous gnome, who was peering fixedly up at Ben with those pale-blue eyes that had always made Jack think of a peregrine’s. A good sign? Jack hoped so.

He found himself drifting over toward the receiving line, toward Grace. He’d been dreading this. But at the same time, nothing could have kept him from her. Touching her. Speaking with her, even if it was only pleasantries.

Then she was greeting him, her small hand engulfed by his, smiling a smile that he wanted to believe was wistful. But most likely she was jet-lagged, too, and it was simply one of exhaustion.

“Hello, Jack.”

He kissed her cheek lightly, but even that was almost more than he could bear. She
was
wearing his perfume. “I should have said hello before this,” he told her. “Forgive me.”

Her gaze seemed to challenge him. “Oh, come on, Jack.”

Jack thought:
I want to kiss you.

“Can I get you a drink?” he asked.

“I’d love one ... anything. I’m parched.”

“You look wonderful,” he told her. “New dress?”

“New-old. I bought it at an antiques fair. When I went into the bathroom to try it on, guess who was there? Brooke Shields. And you know something? She seemed just as anxious about how she looked as I was. After that, I stopped worrying.” She laughed. “It cost a small fortune, but I thought I’d treat myself.”

“You deserve it, Grace, I can’t tell you how pleased we are. You’ve done a terrific job ... and you deserve every bit of your success.”

He thought he saw a shadow of something—anger? disappointment?—pass over her face, but then it was gone. She had to be thinking how full of it he was—bullshitting away like a goddamn emcee of a Miss America pageant. What she didn’t know was how close he was to losing control. ...

“Thanks,” she said. “I was lucky. We both were.”

“Spoken with your mother lately?”

She shrugged, and the light caught her diamond pendant. He stared at the little bird-shaped hollow at the base of her throat, and thought about touching it, lightly pressing his finger to her warm flesh, where he could see a pulse jumping.

“I wish I could say all this stuff about how my father had brought us together. Let’s just say we’re working on it. Mother is ... oh, I don’t know, softer. Not so judgmental. I think it might have something to do with this man she’s been seeing, but it might just be that she’s mellowing. Like telling Sissy she could
not
move back in simply because she’s getting divorced. If someone had told me even a year ago that Mother would be keeping Sissy at arm’s length, I wouldn’t have believed it.”

“ ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio ...’ ”

She cocked her head at him, her smile definitely wistful now. “You’ve ruined me forever for Shakespeare, you know. I can’t see a play or hear someone quoting
Hamlet
without thinking of you.”

Jack felt a pain twist up through his chest. But all he could do was stand there wearing what felt like the stupidest of grins. Happiness, he thought, was like trying to ride a Brahma bull—you had to hang on to it until your arms and legs were about to be pulled from their sockets and your heart was bursting. But all those months ago, with Grace, he’d taken the easy way out: he’d let go because his
head
had told him to.

“People tend to take Shakespeare way too seriously, anyway,” he said. “Hold on, I’ll get you that drink.”

He turned away abruptly. What he felt like doing was grabbing her hand, pulling her away from all this, out into the chilly October night, where he could wrap his arms around her. So what was stopping him?

Time, he thought. Too much time had elapsed. There was an awkwardness between them now. And why let himself get hurt all over again?

Yet somehow he was functioning. He brought Grace her drink—soda with a twist of lemon. But now she was surrounded by a bevy of Koreans, and could only nod to him in thanks.

Suddenly Jack found himself whispering in her ear, “Meet me outside in fifteen minutes. There’s a little courtyard in the back.”

He walked away quickly, before she could tell him yes or no. Jesus, what would he say to her? At the same time, he was feeling better than he had all evening.

Maybe ... just maybe ...

Back at the bar, he killed time by shmoozing with Herr Hessel, who managed the gallery. But just as he was about to go, Bernhard Hauptman collared him, holding out his hand. Jack managed to look interested while the old man launched into some tale about when his company—now with book clubs and publishing houses in fifteen countries—had gotten its start publishing Westerns written by a German who’d never set foot on American soil, and who thought that buffalo, as recently as the fifties, still roamed the plains.

“We were all of us so full of enthusiasm in those days,” the old man went on in his oddly slurred, Manchester-accented English, derived from his British wife. “Too busy to check every detail. Perhaps it was a bad thing ... but I miss that energy.” His sharp eyes fixed on Jack. “Your son has that kind of dynamism. He’s very sure of himself.”

“He works hard,” Jack agreed. But the cold light in Hauptman’s watery blue eyes hadn’t escaped him. Had Ben been singing his own praises to the old man? Jesus, didn’t he know that Hauptman, like Jack himself, was of the old school—work your way up from the bottom, respect your superiors, show some smarts, but be humble where it counted?

“Benjamin has told me of his desire to be the youngest editor-in-chief in the history of Cadogan. Rather ambitious, don’t you think?”

Jack tried not to react. “It’s not impossible,” he said.

“But have you not recommended him for this position? He left me with the impression you had.”

He was being set up, that much was obvious. A trap that, if he walked into it, would make Ben look bad. But, damnit, he wasn’t going to lie. This time, Ben
had
gone too far.

“You’ve met Jerry Schiller, haven’t you?” Jack hedged. “He’s been with the company as long as I have. Right now, I can’t imagine anyone else who could do a more effective job as editor-in-chief.”

“That’s not what Ben tells me.”

“What exactly did he say?” Jack asked, no longer attempting to hide his dismay.

“He intimated that perhaps you yourself are not acting in the best interests of Cadogan.”

“It sounds like you two had quite a conversation.”

“Quite.” The old man now was leaning forward, about to impart a secret that Jack wasn’t sure he wanted to hear. “Do you know the old fable, Herr Gold, about the man who nurses a viper, only to get bitten? I, too, once had a son such as yours. No, he is not dead—I only speak of him in the past tense. As far as I am concerned, he is no longer my son.”

Jack remembered now the rumors a few years back—something about Hauptman’s son conspiring to oust his father. Apparently the old boy had been wilier than the young man had counted on.

“Ben may go overboard at times,” Jack said, “but he’s not out to get anyone, least of all his own father.” Remembering his own conversations with Ben, Jack wasn’t so sure, but he wasn’t admitting that to Hauptman.

“You are his father,” Hauptman replied. “You will be the last to see it coming. Believe me, I know. That is why I saved you from the task of seeing that he is let go. ... Kurt, I believe, is speaking to him right now.”

Jack couldn’t breathe for a moment, as if the wind had been knocked out of him. Before he could protest, or even comment, Hauptman turned on his heel and was gone, swallowed up by the crowd.

Christ. He had to find Ben, warn him. At the same time. Jack wanted nothing more than to let Ben get what he had coming.

Navigating his way through the people thronging the main gallery, he scanned the room, frying to spot his son. But no sign of Ben, not even in the WC or the cloakroom. Could Reinhold have taken him outside, where it was quieter?

Jack found the narrow corridor in back with a door at the end that opened onto a tiny brick courtyard. He pushed his way outside, then stopped.

In the center of the quadrangle, a shadowy figure lounged against a sculpture made of wildly juxtaposed Plexiglas cubes held together with what looked like PVC pipe.

“Checking up on me, Dad?”

Ben. He’d been drinking. And from the ghastly whiteness of his face, it was obvious he’d gotten the word from on high, via Reinhold, who was nowhere in sight.

Jack sucked in a breath, and leaned against the doorpost, looking up at the clouds strung like dingy laundry between the flat roofs on either side. A handful of stars shone through, but so faintly he could hardly see them.

“I was looking for you. Seems you’ve made quite an impression on Herr Hauptman.”

“You bet. Only guess what? Turns out he’s a lot like you, he’s got a thing against young upstarts who crowd in on the old-boy network.” Ben’s voice was flat—as if he hadn’t yet fully absorbed Reinhold’s blow.

“I hate to say it, Ben, but this is one you brought on yourself.”

Ben grinned, a flash of white that jumped out from the shadows engulfing his face. “You’re so damned predictable, Dad. I always know what you’re gonna say. But this time, I don’t have to swallow it. Because, as of tonight,
I don’t work for you anymore!”

Jack, feeling a little sick to his stomach, watched his elegant son languidly unfold himself from his seat on that ugly modern sculpture. Ben was losing some of his ashen, shocked look—but in its place was a high, fevered color Jack didn’t like.