Jacqueline Susann's Shadow of the Dolls (23 page)

“Yes.”

“And you were wrong, weren’t you.”

“I suppose.”

“This is real life, Anne. What we have together, it’s as good as it gets. The other way—that doesn’t last. You believe in it when you’re young, but then you realize it doesn’t last. If you’re waiting for that again, my God. Are you waiting for that again?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered.

“If you are, it doesn’t exist.” He took her face in his hands. “I love you, Anne. This is love. This is what real love looks like.” He kissed her. “This is what real love feels like.”

They kissed for a while. She felt no passion; it was the same as always, nothing stirred in her until his hands were on her body, and then she began to feel herself heat up, slowly, so slowly, his large hands moving her along. She had seen him touch animals this way, watched him calm a nervous dog or a frightened horse with a few sure strokes. He carried her upstairs. They made love quietly, slowly. She could feel him about to finish, and then his hand was on her and they finished together.

“I love you,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “I think I know it better than you do.”

“I just need time.”

“I won’t rush you,” he said. “There’s no rush.”

“You,” she said, kissing him again. “You’re the best man in the world.” Was it love, she wondered, or just an enormous feeling of relief? She imagined life as Mrs. William Carter. Perfect man, perfect house, perfect life. Wasn’t this just what she needed? And just what Jenn needed—a stable home, another kind of man to look up to, a place where values still mattered.

Bill was right: she was waiting for something that would never
happen. She was too old to find that kind of passion again. And even if she did, would she trust it? Did passion ever last? And that kind of man—how long would someone like Anne keep him satisfied? Maybe that kind of man needed another kind of woman, a woman whose blood ran hotter, a woman who was wild all the way through. Anne knew what she was, and she wasn’t that. She was, at heart, a nice girl from Lawrenceville. A Welles. Her mother’s daughter. Breeding meant more than inherited silver. It was who you were. How you were made. And who you were made for.

After Bill fell asleep, she snuck downstairs and put the ring back on. He would see it in the morning, and he would know.

A
nne watched the Academy Awards alone, on the tiny television set she kept in the kitchen.

“Good for you,” she said to the empty room when Neely went up to accept the award. Neely wore an elegant low-cut green velvet dress and a complicated diamond necklace that was surely borrowed. Anne counted the thank-yous: seventeen.

“And thank you, Helen Lawson, for being such a great old broad!” Neely said in closing. Her eyes were dry. Anne missed the old days, when actresses wept, and went on too long, and picked out their own clothes. Now everyone was tasteful and assured. There was a small army of people—stylists, jewelers, publicists—to protect Neely from making a mistake.

Anne didn’t go to the movies anymore. There wasn’t any time. There was work all day, and at night there was prep reading or one of the parties the IBC publicity department told her to go to. On the weekends, she drove up to Connecticut to see Bill or out to Southampton with Jenn.

Morning Talk
led their time slot in the May sweeps. Charles
Brady sent her a dozen yellow roses, Bill a dozen red ones. Anne was sitting at her desk, talking to one of the producers about a series on automobile safety, when her phone buzzed.

“I’m sorry, I asked her to hold all calls,” Anne said. “This will just take a second.” She picked up the phone. “Yes?”

“I know you told me not to interrupt, but it’s Keith Enright,” her secretary said.

“On the phone?” Anne said. Keith Enright was the head of IBC network news. “For me?”

“Yup. Well, his secretary. You’re going to take it, right?”

Anne looked at her producer apologetically. “Can I swing by in a minute?” she asked him. Keith Enright was famous for five things, and one of them was never returning phone calls. The producer nodded and left. “Okay, I’m alone,” she told her secretary.

“Okay, here goes.”

“Hello? Miss Welles?” It was Keith Enright’s secretary. “Hold, please.”

Anne waited for what seemed like two minutes. Why would Keith Enright be calling her? He had lunch with Charles Brady every couple of months, but other than that, he couldn’t be bothered with anyone at the local affiliate.

“Anne,” he said when he came on the line. “Anne Welles. How are you.”

“Just fine, thank you. And you.”

“Nice going last week. Very nice going.”

“Thank you.”

“Listen. Can you come up. There’s something I want to ask you,” he said.

“Well, sure. When would be—”

“Great, great. Hold on, we’ll get it set up.” There was a click, and then his secretary was back on the line.

“Miss Welles? How is two-forty this afternoon?” she asked.

“Just fine. I’ll see you then.” That was the second thing Enright was famous for: even the busiest executives at IBC scheduled their calendars at fifteen-minute intervals, but Enright divided his hours into six ten-minute slots.

The third thing everyone said about Enright was that he refused to talk to anyone on the elevator. There were four elevator banks in the IBC building, each one going to a separate set of floors. The first elevator bank went to the lowest floors, where there were offices for the local affiliate, for payroll and office services, and for IT. The mailroom was on three,
Morning Talk
on four. The second elevator bank went higher: to sports, legal, and finance. The third elevator bank went to the entertainment division, and the last elevator bank went to the highest floors: the news division and the executive offices in the penthouse.

Everyone joked that you could often tell which elevator bank people would use by what they looked like. Anyone who was casually or unfashionably dressed was bound to be headed for the lower floors. Men in navy blazers and gray flannel trousers worked in sports. Men with fashionably colored ties and women in expensive suits—short, straight skirts and long, tailored jackets—worked in entertainment. The last elevator bank was the province of men who wore traditional white shirts and suits in a gray so dark that it was almost black.

At 2:25 Anne applied a fresh coat of lipstick, went downstairs to the lobby, and crossed over to the last elevator bank. She was still wearing her on-camera outfit: a peach silk suit, a white silk T-shirt, pale stockings, and camel-colored pumps with three-inch heels. There were five men on the elevator, and none of them spoke during the long ride up. They were dressed almost identically, except for their ties, which were slightly different shades of red.

She waited in Keith Enright’s outer office for twenty minutes. The secretary offered her a beverage, then seemed surprised when
Anne asked for a glass of water. The water arrived on a tray: a plastic bottle of French spring water and a glass a quarter full of ice.

The secretary twisted off the bottlecap.

“Thank you,” Anne said, “I can take it from here.”

“That’s okay,” the secretary said, sounding at once utterly polite and just a touch condescending. “We wouldn’t want to spill anything on that gorgeous suit of yours.”

At 2:41 Anne was ushered inside. The secretary followed behind with a fresh bottle of water and a cup of coffee for Keith Enright. He was on the phone, his back to the room.

“I know, I know,” he was saying. “But numbers are numbers. We can’t wait till November.” He swirled around and waved to Anne. “I know you can,” he said into the phone, “we have full faith.” He hung up without saying goodbye.

“So,” he said to Anne. “How are things down on three?”

“Just great. It’s four, actually.”

“Of course, of course,” he said. “Been awhile. I’ve been meaning to say hello.” He stroked his mustache. That was another thing he was famous for: long after mustaches had become unfashionable, long after every other man had gone clean-shaven, losing the beard and the youthful sideburns, Keith had kept his mustache. It was steel gray and neatly trimmed, arching over a thin mouth and perfect white teeth that were the envy of the newscasters who worked for him. Anne guessed that Keith was somewhere in his early fifties. His thick salt-and-pepper hair fell forward onto his face. He looked more like an aging rock-and-roll star than what he was: one of the most powerful men in American television.

They hadn’t spoken in years. Keith used to come to Anne and Lyon’s parties, always with a beautiful woman on his arm, always someone different. He was one of those people who just disappeared from her life after the divorce: no more Christmas cards, no more invitations. Anne hadn’t held it against him. At the time it felt
as though pretty much everyone had disappeared, or rather, it was Anne who had disappeared: without the right kind of man, without money, without the right kind of job, she had simply ceased to exist for people like Keith Enright.

“I think we might have something interesting for you,” he said. “I assume you’ve been following our little situation with the evening news.”

Anne nodded. The month before, another network had gone after one of the weekend anchors. That had set a domino effect in motion, a flurry of telephone calls from agents, and secret lunches that nonetheless made it into the gossip columns, and speculation about who would end up where. In the most radical scenario, a dozen jobs were in play: on the evening news, the prime-time magazines, and the network morning shows that preceded
Morning Talk
.

“We may have a spot at one of the prime-time magazine shows,” he said, his face blank.

Anne’s expression did not change. She breathed in slowly through her nose, trying hard not to blink. It was something Charles Brady had taught her, and she heard his voice going through her head:
Don’t smile so much, Anne, look them in the eyes and don’t move a muscle
.

“May have,” she said.

“There are stronger candidates,” he said. “You don’t really have the background for it. No news experience. No reporting in the field. It would be a pretty broad jump.”

“I can do it,” she said.

“I think you can, too. You have a touch, in the interviews, and now that we’re doing all these celebrity pieces, all these Hollywood people …” He shrugged. “We have more than enough guys fighting over the other stuff.” He picked up a pen and balanced it in the crook of his index finger. “They won’t make it easy for you, you know. Don’t expect a warm welcome.”

“
May
have,” she repeated.

“There are some others in the running. This isn’t really the obvious next step for you. What would you say is the obvious place for you to go next?”

She watched the pen seesaw back and forth over his finger and didn’t say a word.

He continued. “The morning show, right? Move you from the affiliate to the network? That’s where the smart money is right now.”

She lifted an eyebrow.

“I want you to think about this. We’re going to be making a decision very quickly. It’s a very tough game up here, I’m not going to kid you. You’ll have my full support, but it’s different rules up here.” He waved toward the bank of offices on his right. “Competitive doesn’t begin to describe it. So you need to think about whether you want to do it, whether you have the, the …” He paused, put down the pen.

“The
cojones
,” she said.

He laughed, and a second later she laughed, too. “And I don’t want to get jerked around. I don’t want a whisper of this in the press.” He stood up and began to walk her out.

“Lovely ring,” he said.

She lifted her left hand into the light. “A gift, from a friend.” She remembered the last thing Keith Enright was famous for, she remembered him brushing against her in the hallway of her old apartment, asking for a dance. “From my fiancé,” she said.

“You know, the first year of a job like this takes everything you have. The job will have to come first. Your family, your friends—you won’t have much left over for them.”

“I’m ready,” she said. Jenn was in high school. Bill had said he could wait.

They shook hands at the door. “Charlie was right about you,” Keith said.

“Charlie has taught me a lot.”

“Uncle Charlie taught me everything I know,” he said. “Well, almost everything.”

She was back in her office by three. She marched into Charles Brady’s office and closed the door behind her.

“I have to talk to you. Now.”

He grinned. “Been somewhere interesting?”

“You know where I was!”

“Oh, tell me. I want to hear you say it. I want to hear everything.”

“Don’t tease me.”

He began to hum.

“What song is that?”

“You don’t recognize it?” he said. He hummed another bar. “Up to the highest height. It’s from
Mary Poppins
. Don’t you watch
Mary Poppins
with that lovely daughter of yours?”

“Jenn is fifteen, Charlie.”

“Sweet fifteen.”

“You have to tell me what’s going on.”

“What’s going on with what?”

“Come on. I know you know every little thing that happens up there.”

“Sit down, dear. Get yourself a glass of water. Collect yourself.” He waited. “That’s better. What’s happening is that you’re being offered a remarkable opportunity. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“It’s got to be more complicated than that.”

“Dear, it’s always more complicated than that. You have a big brain. You figure it out.” He leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head. “Tell me.”

“Well,” Anne said, “for starters, if they wanted me for this job, they didn’t have to call me up there. And certainly Keith Enright
didn’t have to see me personally. I mean, all they needed to do is have one of the producers call Trip.”

“Good start,” he said.

“I mean, everyone knows how the receptionists gossip. It’s going to be all over the building by five
P.M.”

“Too true.”

“So, what does that mean?”