Enchanted August (16 page)

He gave himself a last glance in the mirror, decided to ditch the tie. Writers are supposed to be the worst-dressed people in the room, he remembered someone—Charlie Kaufman?—saying. Maybe I'll wear the tie after all.

The office wasn't as glamorous as he'd thought it would be, and he'd thought it wouldn't be glamorous. The Lowenstein Company clearly believed the framed lobby-sized movie posters were impressive enough. And they were: all the big blockbusters and a whole bunch of Oscars had been conjured out of this office. His movie almost paled in comparison with the rest of them. But it had been Danny Lowenstein's baby, and he knew how to make a cash-cow franchise.
The Pentagon Conscription
was a clear moneymaker in the U.S. and had brought in a lot of gravy overseas, so Fred congratulated himself on deserving his place on the wall. He allowed himself to stare at his poster—he felt suddenly legitimized in this context—with “Based on the novel by Mike McGowan” in the same point size as the screenwriter's credit, per his contract.

A soignée assistant, doubtless unpaid, smiled mechanically as Holly and he took the three or four footsteps to the reception desk. “We're here for the Mike McGowan meeting,” Holly said.

“The meet and greet,” the assistant replied. “You must be Holly Stampler. And you are . . . ?”

“This is my assistant, Fred Rose,” said Holly. It was the alias they had decided on; it sounded wistful now.

“Please wait here. Can I get you some water?”

“Please,” said Holly. She had warned Fred to say nothing.

“Cold or room temperature?”

“Either,” Holly said.

Two ostentatiously humble glasses of tepid water were produced in an instant.

“I love when they pitch to
us
,” she said to Fred and clinked glasses with him. She was the type of agent who hovered over every deal, saying whatever everyone wanted to hear and then agreeing to nothing until she got every single thing she wanted. Fred had made Holly rich, and she him. He had barely put his glass to his lips when the assistant said, “Follow me, please.”

They wound down a narrow corridor festooned with more posters, to a nondescript windowless conference room. “Danny will be with you in a few moments,” said the assistant. Fred named her Montana in his head. Four or even six years in the liberal arts and now poor Montana was a dogsbody to a reputed bully and ingenue fucker. He wondered idly where the economy would be when Bea and Ben were her age.

It was a lot more than a few moments.

Holly was texting, so Fred picked up
The
Hollywood Reporter
and started to read the self-aggrandizing ads that proliferated even now, in the dead of August. He loosened and tightened his tie.

“Should I keep the tie?” he asked, stupidly.

“You are very needy today,” Holly said without looking up.

Had she guessed his obsession with Caroline Dester? If she had, she was refusing to acknowledge it. His plan was not quite clear, but he was scripting it in his head. Caroline walks in; something pulls her gaze to his undeniably manly presence, which cuts through the pretense of Hollywood to the intellectual superiority of the literary world and all it carries with it. Their eyes lock. The meeting proceeds, with Holly and Danny bluffing their way through it while he and Caroline screw with their eyes. She suddenly excuses herself, giving him the glance that unmistakably means I want you to fuck my brains out. He follows her twitching ass into a beige office with a large couch made for the purpose, and before they even get to the couch, he does exactly that.

“Holly!”

Danny Lowenstein's gravelly voice crushed the fantasy to pieces. Holly rose to shake his hand but Fred did not dare rise. He hoped his failure to stand would be taken as deferential—as Holly's assistant I am too inconsequential to be acknowledged, was his message. It seemed to work. He was unnoticed, as was Danny's assistant, who had shrunk into a corner when Danny came in.

Danny and Holly's exchange of pleasantries was actually a pissing match: his movies versus her books that spawned his movies. Fred barely registered. Would Caroline follow through the door Danny had come in? Or from the door behind him? Was she usually this late? (Their meeting, scheduled for four thirty, was already running forty-five minutes behind and it hadn't actually begun yet.) How late could he be to call the twins if she wanted him more than once?

Jesus, Fred. Get a grip. Listen up.

“Mike sends his regards,” said Holly. “He loves you. He loves the movies. He can't wait to see what you do with the next one. And he's so pleased that you were able to get Caroline Dester set up for this.” She glanced ever so swiftly in Fred's direction. Oh, she knows, he thought. “Will she be joining us soon?”

“I love Caroline but Caroline's out of town,” said Danny. “I set up this meet and greet with you and she skips out.”

Fred caught his breath. What a stupid fool I am. Of course she is not going to show up for the author's agent. Much less for the author. The walls felt more windowless than they already were. Let me get out of here. What a schoolboy.

“It's August, Holly. No one's working except you and me.”

“Oh, that is too bad,” she said, “when we came down here especially. Mike said specifically I should meet her face-to-face so he could feel comfortable with her in the part.”

“Mike will feel comfortable when he cashes the checks,” said Danny, “if Caroline is attached.”

“She did have that unfortunate moment at—”

Danny cut her off. “You know she's good for the franchise; she'll kill this part. It'll stretch her.” He grinned.

Fred imagined Danny with a bleeding, broken nose.

Holly proffered the autographed “commemorative” edition of the new book that Fred had signed for Caroline. It was one of the hundred clothbound boxed copies Random House had had printed for collectors—an easy way for the publisher to make more cash in the age of e-books, and nice for movie stars.

“This was our leave-behind,” Holly said with her don't-deny-me smile. “It's for Caroline.”

“I'll make sure she gets it,” said Danny. “Nice to see you, Holly.”

The assistant rose to accept the book from Holly. She'd be pretty if she didn't look so scared, Fred thought. A young, scared Liv Tyler.

“Oh, I don't want to burden you with that. We'll send it to her,” Holly said. “If you let us know where she is.”

“All we know is she's on an island somewhere,” Danny said. “We can't reach her.”

Fred was defeated and humiliated. He signaled to Holly. “Your drinks date is next,” he said in a quiet assistant voice. Montana gave a tiny smile of solidarity.

“Mike asked me to put this into Caroline's hands today,” said Holly. “I'll fly it to Tenerife if I have to.”

“If I could tell you where she went, I would,” said Danny. “I'd do anything to get Mike's blessing on this casting decision; you know that. But I really don't know where she is. She texted me her coordinates before she left. My assistant is supposed to keep all my texts but she's an idiot and she deleted it.” Montana blinked twice. The kid must be new, Fred thought with sympathy. “Too bad, Holly. It was great to see you. I'll let you get to your cocktails. Anyone I know?” He gave Holly the requisite air kiss. “The kid will take you to the elevator,” he said and left the room. “If she hadn't screwed up, we could have helped,” he said with utmost fake sincerity, and closed the door.

Holly and Fred wound through the long corridor back to the tiny entryway to the elevator. That's when Montana, bless her heart, spoke up. “I didn't screw up,” she said, with something of a pout. “Here it is.”

Fred's pulse raced. “Oh, well
done
,” said Holly. “Fred, take it down, will you?”

Montana showed him her screen. Not only was Caroline's cell number in evidence; she had given Danny Lowenstein her precise location. Fred thought he could memorize the address of anywhere Caroline might be, but he couldn't memorize this.

44.333640° N, 68.049994° W

He took a snapshot with his own phone. The elevator door closed.

“
She'll
never work in this town again,” said Holly. Fred, staring at his phone, did not reply. “Careful what you wish for, Fred Rose,” she added. Fred barely heard her.

Holly's car was waiting but Fred elected to take the subway so he could search the jumble of numbers as he walked. He stood on the sidewalk outside Tribeca Grill and willed his hands to stop trembling. “If she's not in Maui, I'm going,” he said. And she wasn't in Maui, that much he knew from the 44th parallel. “Come on, come on,” he said as his phone churned. “Shit.”

He must have entered the numbers wrong. Google was not showing an island. Would he have to wait till he got home to figure this out? He couldn't.

He took a deep breath, got himself onto the Google Earth site: much more accurate. He found it at once.

Little Lost Island, Maine.

Jesus Christ, she's on an island in the same state as Rose, he thought. Why can't I catch a break?

He Googled “number of islands in Maine” and the second site gave him his answer. God bless mainethingstodo.com, he thought.

Maine's coast is sheltered by as many as 4613 islands.

That was enough. He looked up from his screen and thought of having his way with Caroline on the soft moss of the forest floor as she begged him for more. He was going up there, if he had to row the whole way. He sighed a deep sigh. Maine is a very big state. Forty-six hundred thirteen is a lot of islands.

He whistled as he took the subway steps two at a time and planned his trip. “What are the chances?” he thought.

C
aroline was now getting pissed at Little Lost Island and its Little Lost denizens. What was wrong with them? She shouldn't be that much of a pariah. Especially in Maine.

She pulled off her stupid cloche and threw it into the woods. Let the raccoons get it, she thought. It'll look better on them than it does on me, anyway.

She passed a couple of women in large straw hats who smiled at her and said, “Evening.” Caroline did not reply. Everyone was having fun here except her. It was time to go.

She pulled out her phone and started texting her pilot. He could be here in two hours. But the texts did not send. Which meant there was no phone signal. Why is there never any fucking signal on this fucking island?

She would drive home in the Mini.

Caroline couldn't remember the ferry schedule and she thought she might already have missed the last one. She was almost tempted to row across in somebody's boat but she didn't much want blisters or the humiliation of getting halfway over and collapsing of exhaustion and having to be pulled the rest of the way by some grinning motorboater. Who would sell his story to
Hello!

She remembered that the schedule was tacked on the bulletin board at the island post office, which was pretty nearby, wasn't it? She turned off the main boardwalk onto a side path through the woods. The post office was right in front of her.

The sight of the low building, with its spindly columns and wide porch, its sweet wooden sign with the island's zip code and its altogether hopeful aspect, cheered Caroline slightly. This is the post office that Isadora must have gone to when she was roaming the island in her long white pin-tucked linen dresses, Caroline thought. She mailed letters to the handsome buck her parents wanted her to marry and hid among them postcards to the young, earnest, bespectacled scholar she actually loved. Caroline had heard about the current postmaster from Lottie—he was an elderly former waterskiing champion who took the job very seriously and couldn't hear very well. He took an outboard to the mainland every day to pick up the mail and sort it into the heavy brass boxes with tiny windows, one for each cottage. Maybe he was a descendant of the first postmaster on Little Lost, the one who must have brought Isadora her mail. She would come down here early every morning to see if her scholar had written her again, hiding his elegant penmanship from her parents. Only the postmaster knew what was going on between them.

“Jesus,” said Caroline. Where is my mind going? It's turning into mush on this island. The post office was closed for the day but the building was open. Nobody locked anything here. She checked the schedule on the wall. If she ran down to the dock she could get on the five-thirty. She'd drive to Boston and take a shuttle if they were still running. She'd be home by midnight if luck was with her.

She ran down toward the dock.

On the
Eleventh Hour
Max had already started the engine; she could hear it from the boardwalk path. She knew he would pull out if she wasn't on board at the stroke of the half hour, so she turned on the speed. One thing about movies: they keep you in good shape. She was barely out of breath as Max untied the boat. She walked calmly on and went upstairs to the upper level. Barely anyone was going over to the mainland on such a gorgeous evening. Why would they?

Caroline looked down at the shimmering water as the boat turned toward the shore. The lobster buoys were like confetti on the surface of the water. Max could pilot a boat, that's for sure. They skimmed over the channel to the landing.

This was kind of a foolish thing to do, now that she thought about it. She'd have to send someone to pack up her stuff. She didn't even have her license in the clutch she had brought to the hat party—a clutch that she had taken from the third floor of Hopewell, in fact. At least she had some cash in the pocket of her linen sundress, surely enough to get home by car. Just don't get into any accidents on 95, Caroline. Not the press you want right now.

A waterbird made a sudden dive into the water as they passed. Caroline still didn't know its name. She did know that she wouldn't learn it in New York.

The one she felt worst about leaving was Beverly. Naked Jon was pretty funny too, and Lottie, so annoyingly jolly. And she believed she and thoughtful Rose might have been friends.

Too bad.

The ferry pulled in to the dock on Big Lost. Max tied up. Caroline alighted from the boat. “Thank you,” she said. She wanted to tell him that she was leaving and not coming back. She wanted to give him another chance. To give them all another chance.

“See you,” he said.

Crushed, Caroline tried to get a signal again before she got in the car. There was nothing. She opened the door to the oven that was the Mini and started on the long road back to New York.

The city would be dead. No one is there in August. She could go out to the Hamptons to that richer-than-thou scenario, but after this it did not appeal. She could take the plane somewhere else, somewhere where no one knew her and she could figure out who she was meant to be. That was exactly what she had wanted to do on Little Lost. I am a little lost soul, she thought, aware she was full of self-pity. Wherever I go, there I am.

The road back to Route 1 followed the bend of the river into town. Caroline hadn't even known exactly what an estuary was till she got here and Rose explained. “It's a salt river we're on, not the ocean itself. A river with tides, a river that runs into the sea.”

Rose could make anything sound like a poem. Their river was called the Dorset. Everything around here had an English name if it didn't have an Indian name. Penobscot, again courtesy of Rose.

Would it be easier to get the others out of the cottage than for her to leave? If she were all alone, no one to intrude, no one to say she was beautiful or luminous and no one to imply she was not, possibly then this exquisite place would be bearable.

Her phone dinged. She was back on the grid.

She was right in front of the Dorset library. She would text her mother and say she'd be out in the wretched Hamptons tonight and to leave the alarm off.

Before she could swipe open her phone, she saw what had come in when it dinged.

It's Mike McGowan. . . .

Who's Mike McGowan? she thought as she slid open the phone and scrolled.

The writer of the movie you're considering. One of the movies.

A screenwriter was texting her on her private phone? Where the fuck had he gotten the number? And the gall?

Caroline did not respond. Her phone dinged again.

Mike McGowan. I wrote The Benghazi Contraction. The book.

Oh, this was the author of the book. The secret genius. Why was he texting her?

How did you get my number?

Danny Lowenstein's office.

I'll kill him.
Why are you texting me?

I want to see you. I need to see you.

Ah, this kind of message she recognized.

Give me one reason you need to see me.
Half a beat. Was he hesitating?

Mon triste coeur bave à la poupe. :)

Ha! Texting in French! He's done his homework, I'll give him that. What does it mean, though—my sad heart dribbles on the poop deck? She knew it was a quote from something but she couldn't remember what. Caroline thought back to the short time she was at Brown. French lit was going to be her concentration till she took that eighteenth-century English novel class with that teacher she loved so much. Professor Phelan. Tweedy, bearded, though not pipe smoking, he was her vision of a college professor come to life. They read
Clarissa
, with which she struggled,
The Monk
for a laugh, and
Tom Jones
, which she adored. After Phelan, she was going to change her concentration to English, but she dropped out when she got the call for the Oliver Stone movie (which ended up not getting made).

Which was why her French was rustier than the publicists said it was.

Where are you?

I'm in New York but I could be there tonight.

Do not come tonight.

A gawper. Back away. Although, on reflection, a little admiration from a genius would not go amiss here. She was not going to regret toying with Mike McGowan.

Don't come unless you're prepared to tell me who you are. Who you REALLY are.

There was a pause then. Caroline had been told by asshole Danny Lowenstein how carefully the Mike McGowan myth was preserved. To learn who was behind the name would be a coup, like finding out that Dan Brown was really Philip Roth.

She tapped the screen away to text her mother. Mike McGowan came back strong.

I can tell you in person.

He was persistent.

Not till I say so.

Please say so.

This guy had it bad. She looked up from her screen and smiled at a couple of little girls who were heading into the library. It was their late night tonight.

We'll see.

Caroline followed the girls inside. They peeled off toward the children's room, a festive-looking place that she'd go into another time. She went instead over to the fiction shelves. Patterson, O'Brian, O'Connor, McMurtry, McGowan.
The Pentagon Conscription
was there, but not the newest one. Or the one with a part for her, of course. He was still writing that one.

She looked back at her phone. No message from Mike McGowan, which was good; any more after her last would have been too much.

She went to the desk, where a tattooed librarian looked over chic glasses, waiting for her to make an overture. If you want something, ask for it, was the message in Dorset.

“Good evening.” She used her most embracing voice. That good evening implied not only do I respect and truly understand librarians, but I also like your eyewear choice, which she actually did. The librarian smiled. “I was hoping to get a book by Mike McGowan.”

“Oh, he's very popular,” she replied. “We have a waiting list for his newest.”

Caroline's face fell. She knew how to do bravely overcoming disappointment.

“It's not long. Three or four more weeks. I would order more copies if we had the budget.” The librarian was almost too Yankee to glance in the direction of the Capital Improvement Fund donation can.

“Oh, I had so wanted to read it today,” Caroline said. She didn't even realize she had used her own, genuine voice. Maybe the librarian recognized her. Maybe she just thought Caroline was an unusually needy book patron. But she reached under the counter and rooted out her bag, another chic little number, vintage alligator.

“Here, take mine,” the librarian said. “I'm a blogger. The publishers give me advance copies for free. Mind you, give it back to the library's secondhand book sale, though.” She withheld it until Caroline gave her assent.

“I will. How kind you are.” She made a mental note to make a generous donation to the Dorset Harbor Library fund.

“Not at all,” said the librarian.
A-tall.
“It's not very good.”

“I'm sure you're right,” said Caroline. “Thank you.”

She studied the flashy jacket as she left the room. She ran her index finger over the raised letters of the author's name.
MIKE MCGOWAN
.

A genius? A gawper? A conquest? A diversion?

True love?

She took out her phone.

Little lost island, maine.
She could still get out of this.
But not till I say so.

An immediate swoosh back.

Please say so.