Falling Star (20 page)

That pissed Geoff off. He wasn't some effete
intellectual who watched PBS and nothing but. And Natalie was
popular with the public, for whom he had a higher regard than
Scoppio apparently did.

"You'd better hope we don't have another
earthquake this week, Scoppio." He rose from the chair, beginning
to despise this man. "Because if we do, you'll have to rely on
Kelly Devlin for wall-to-wall coverage. You think she can ad lib?
You think she can go live without PrompTer? In thirty seconds
you'll be wishing you had Natalie back."

"You know what?" Tony raised his chin.
"Kelly'll be rough the first time out. I know that. But she's
smart. She'll learn. You think Natalie was perfect fifteen years
ago? I don't think so."

"That's the bottom line here, isn't it?"
Geoff felt anger bubble up within him, like a pot ready to boil.
And like his lust hours earlier, he was having trouble bottling it
up.

"What is?"

"That's why you've been gunning for Natalie
ever since you got here." Even he could hear that his voice had
turned quietly lethal. The two men eyed each other warily across
Tony's desk. "Her age. That's it, isn't that right, Scoppio?"

Tony said nothing. Both men knew they had
moved onto dangerous terrain.

"That's why you're not promoting the
newscast," Geoff went on, "so you can use the lower numbers as an
excuse to trade her in for somebody younger. Somebody cheaper."

Tony shrugged. "I make no excuses for
investing in somebody for the future."

"Tony, Natalie is a star.'' Geoff laid his
hands on Tony's desk and leaned forward. "She stands head and
shoulders above Kelly. You can't replace her with a pretty little
no-name and get the same punch."

Tony shrugged. "Not immediately. But give
anybody enough airtime and you'll make 'em a star."

"And meanwhile you see the difference on the
bottom line."

"Hey, let's not pretend this is a charity
operation. I gotta worry about the bottom line."

"Especially since how it reads determines
whether or not you take home a bonus."

Scoppio snorted. "You got a lot of nerve
talking to me about money, Marner. You get fifteen percent off
Natalie Daniels. What's that this year? A hundred ten, a hundred
fifteen thousand smackers? No wonder you want her to keep her
job."

That pissed him off: this newsroom pasha
presuming to judge what motivated Geoff Marner. He jabbed at the
air in Tony's direction. "Natalie Daniels means a hell of a lot
more to me than a commission."

The admission hung in the air, as telling a
blunder as lipstick on a man's collar. Geoff cursed himself. Tony
Scoppio only smiled.

"Then you got a bigger problem than me,
Marner." Tony casually clasped his hands over his paunch. "I'm
ending this conversation. I got a newsroom to run."

Geoff clenched his jaw. He was almost shaking
from anger. That was two times he'd lost control that day. That was
totally unacceptable. He towered over Tony's desk and delivered his
final salvo. "It's not over, Scoppio. Not by a long shot."

Tuesday, July 16, 4:49 PM

Natalie parked the Mercedes in her reserved
space on the KXLA lot, thinking how much she lived her life by
ritual. It was day three of her suspension. Day three that she was
off the air. Still, on each of those days, she'd forced herself to
go through the same ritualistic exercise of going to work, despite
the stupefying reality that she had nothing to do there. She'd been
purged from
The KXLA Primetime News
as thoroughly as if the
letters of her name had been deleted from the alphabet.

She pulled the key from the ignition and set
the hand brake. To her at least this ritual did have a point.
Everyone expected her to stay home and out of sight. That was what
all suspended people did: retreat into their humiliation. But
Natalie would neither skulk nor hide.
Out of sight, out of mind.
So I refuse to go out of sight.

She grabbed her purse and briefcase and
headed for the loading dock entrance to the gray fortresslike news
building. Nor was her suspension the only vigil she was
maintaining. The other was the wait for Geoff's call. They'd spoken
only once, by phone, since the day of her arrest. It had been a
brief, unsatisfying conversation in which neither of them had
neared the topic of their love-making. Now it almost felt as if
that had never occurred.

Almost
. She couldn't truly forget it,
not the tactile sense of it. The feel of him was buried deep in her
pores and could not so easily be excised. The possibility that he
could simply cut her out, like a surgeon eliminating a malignancy,
was too hurtful to fathom.

Glumly she walked through the loading dock
and into the station, greeting the few coworkers who weren't too
embarrassed to look at her, then made a pit stop in the basement
mailroom to pick up her snail mail. This was the one thing buoying
her up. Not only had her viewer mail ballooned since her
suspension, but four to one, viewers thought she should promptly be
reinstated to the anchor desk. Natalie carried the load to her
yellow cubbyhole of an office and carefully set it on her desk.
"I'm still here," she declared sternly to the empty room,
punctuating her pronouncement with a slap on her desk blotter. The
rap sent a shiver of pain up her arm and made her pens rattle in
their copper holder. "I am."

She cleared a space on her desk next to the
letters, shaking out the
Los Angeles Times
to give it a good
read. This was yet another of her suspension rituals: reading the
Times
in the evening at the station rather than in the
morning over coffee. It gave her something to do during those
hellacious hours between five and eleven PM, when normally she
would be reviewing scripts, taping teases, anchoring a
newscast.

She pored over the front section, Metro,
Calendar, and Business, even reading the articles about obscure
foreign countries and unknown corporations. Then she moved on to
Sports, going through it item by item, learning more than she cared
to know about wrestling and Nascar. The only section she allowed
herself to toss was the classifieds, and the only thing she saved,
as a kind of newsprint dessert, was the
Hollywood Insider
.
That day an item in
Tidbits
leaped off the page.

LAMBERT NETS LUCRATIVE PAYDAY

Sources at Heartbeat Studios tell
The
Insider
that the creator of the season's most anticipated new
sitcom,
Forget Maui
, will pocket a whopping three million
dollars for his efforts. Miles Lambert will take home the princely
sum for executive producing one full season of the comedy, which
NBC already has slated into a coveted Thursday prime-time
slot.

Natalie's hand flew to her throat. Three
million dollars? She was the one footing the bill the entire time
they were married—twelve years!—and then a few months after he
walks out on her he lands a three-million-dollar gig?

She reared up from her chair and began pacing
her small office, four steps in one direction, four steps back. It
was unbelievable. It was infuriating. What did it mean?

She raced back to her phone. Berta picked up
on the first ring and Natalie relayed the gist of the item.

"Good news," Berta declared instantly.

"How so?"

"Miles never filed for legal separation and
neither did you. So the three million qualifies as marital
property."

She was puzzled. "What do you mean? He moved
out. We—"

"No. Legal separation is a specific process,
Natalie." She paused. "Since Miles is claiming there's no
prenuptial agreement, this sitcom money is fair game."

"You mean we can go after it?"

"Absolutely." Berta spoke wryly. "As his
wife, in this community-property state, you can lay claim to
half."

One point five million dollars. It would
render divorcing Miles even less painful than it already was.

Berta ended their conversation with a
reminder to Natalie to assemble the financial documents from all
twelve years of the marriage, for the discovery process soon to
begin. Natalie got off the phone and resumed her pacing, finally
halting in the center of her office to glare at a crack in the
yellow paint.

Geoff. What a polar opposite he was to Miles.
Honorable where Miles was slimy. Hardworking. Understanding. Kind.
It amazed her how blind she'd been about him. How could she have
missed it?

Because you were married to Miles
, an
inner voice reminded her. She shook her head. What a mistake. And
how much time wasted.

Slowly she returned to her desk.
But Geoff
is your agent
. That made getting involved with him risky. What
if it didn't work out? She'd probably have to go elsewhere for
representation. And good agents were nearly as hard to find as good
men.

But Geoff was so exceptional. She laid her
head on her desk and shut her eyes. Maybe that explained why he
hadn't called. He probably had a zillion other options. And no
doubt she was geriatric compared to most of them.

Not to mention that she'd insulted his pride.
She understood that now. She'd insulted him by zeroing in on Tony's
voice mail and using Geoff only to parse what Tony meant. He would
be justified in thinking her wildly self-absorbed.

She reached for the phone, then drew back her
hand. No, better not to call. Better not to crowd him. When he
wanted to talk, he would call. Just wait.

Exactly what she hated doing. But the right
play. For now.

*

Forget it. I'm not waiting anymore
.
Geoff ignored the illuminated seat belt sign and freed himself from
the woven strap across his lap. He reached beneath the seat in
front of him for his briefcase, wanting both to work and to get
some sleep before the United Airlines 767 landed at dawn at Kennedy
Airport.

He had a great deal of travel over the next
few weeks. He'd barely get back to LA from this round of meetings
before he had to fly to Boston, then continue on to London. But
perhaps it was good to be out of LA for a time. Get some distance.
Some perspective.

He winced, remembering that mortifying
conversation the prior week with Scoppio.
Natalie Daniels means
a hell of a lot more to me than just a commission
. And that
smug grin on Scoppio's face.
Then you got a bigger problem than
me, Marner
.

He got hold of the well-worn leather
briefcase just as the guy one row ahead cranked his seat into the
recline position, conking Geoff on the skull. He stayed doubled
over, head between his knees, and a throb began to reverberate in
his cranium. Damned uncomfortable business, flying, even first
class, even with every imaginable perk the airline could squeeze
onto this high-tech tin can hurtling through space.

He dislodged his briefcase and pulled out his
laptop, booting it up. He didn't bother with the overhead light: he
liked working by the computer screen's dim glow. Everyone around
him in the darkened cabin was quiet, either reading or asleep. He
felt alone, as he usually did even among people, but it was a
pleasant, productive alone, an alone he knew how to handle.

He punched a few keys, trolling the e-mails
not yet read, the tapping of the keys a staccato accompaniment to
the soft rustlings around him. 42 e-mails. Geoff scanned the list.
Most were run-of-the-mill work-related but one caught his eye:
[email protected]. He stared at it, then punched a key to bring
the missive full screen:

Honey, remember how we talked about doing a
long Labor Day weekend with Liddy's family in Tahoe? Turns out we
need to confirm the cabin within 24 hours or lose it. Are you game?
xoxoxo Janet

Geoff stared at the screen, the 767 bobbing
in a sudden bout with turbulence. Great. A long weekend in a small
cabin with Janet's less-than-exciting oldest sister and her boor of
a husband, not to mention their drooling two-year-old, whom he'd
met once and swiftly decided didn't merit a subsequent viewing.

He shook his head. Not a pleasing prospect.
Yet no woman came without some downside, Janet no exception. He'd
concluded long ago that, when it came to such a serious business as
marriage, it was a matter of choosing the best total package.

He sat silently in the half dark, idly
staring out his small rectangle of tempered glass, his computer
screen going dark from neglect. Janet pleased him in nearly every
way. On the key dimensions of looks, temperament, and athleticism,
she was clearly a keeper. And her family . . . The Roswells had a
solidity, a permanence, he hadn't run across since he'd left
Sydney. They were a long-time San Marino clan, Establishment by
southern California standards. They owned a lovely home on a
gracious tree-lined street near the venerable Huntington Museum;
they were on the A List for the best blue-hair parties; they made
him feel anchored and secure in a way he never did in the Hollywood
whirl. And he liked—he admired—John Roswell, Janet's father—a
cardiologist, one of the best in town, a smart, solid man who
clearly loved all three of his daughters but had a special twinkle
when it came to his youngest. Yet—

Truth be told, Janet wasn't always the most
scintillating companion. She was prone to chattering on about how
houses were decorated or people were dressed. Of course, all of
that mattered a great deal to a San Marino Junior Leaguer. And, no
surprise, she talked nonstop about children. He truly shouldn't
fault her for that, she was after all a teacher. But the ins and
outs of first-grade education didn't exactly grab him.

Sometimes, odd as it seemed, he had the
feeling that he slid neatly into an open slot in Janet's life,
labeled, for the moment at least, BOYFRIEND. Geoff Marner, lucky
him, had what it took: he was a Dewey, Climer senior partner; he
made a lot of money; he dressed and spoke well; and being Aussie,
he did it all with a dash of exotic flair. Sometimes it felt as
though another guy who fit the same bill might just as well slide
into his place if need be, that it wasn't really about him at
all.