The Dickens with Love (11 page)
“Safe home,” he said.
At my look of inquiry, he looked self-conscious. “Only…be safe today.”
I knew then that it wasn’t just me. He felt it too, the thing happening between us. The fragile, magical thing growing, connecting us. So fragile, so magical, so utterly unexpected.
I was late by then and had to run down the cobbled path, feet pounding across the small bridge, and
then cut across the lawn to the parking lot where the bored valets were listening to a boom box.
In the distance I could see a chubby woman in fuchsia trotting along behind a dog pulling vigorously
at its leash. As I drew closer, I realized that the dog was actually my friend the ocelot. I gave them wide berth as I headed for the valet parking.
~ * ~
“I knew you would manage it, James.” Mr. Stephanopoulos was jubilant when I called him on my
break later that afternoon.
“The book is authentic,” I said. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”
“Coming from you that is truly praise.”
That was true. But then I’d never been so staunchly on the side of the seller versus buyer before.
“He knows what he’s got, though,” I warned Mr. S. “There’s no way he’ll consider less than two
million.”
“T-t-two million?” Mr. S. repeated faintly.
“He’s been talking to Evan Amherst among others. I think Evan may have his own buyer in mind.”
That worked exactly as I’d thought it would. Mr. S. was nothing if not competitive. He began
speculating on his possible rivals for the book, while disparaging each man and woman’s brains, taste and lineage. He finished up with, “But you’re sure the book is everything you say it is?”
“And more. If I had a reputation left, I’d stake it on this one.”
He laughed. Then he said anxiously, “And you were careful not to let Professor Crisparkle know you
were acting on my behalf?”
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The Dickens with Love
“I was careful. What exactly is the situation there?”
“English pigheadedness.”
“It sounded more serious than that.”
“You don’t know the English.” He added silkily, “In any case, I don’t pay you to stick your nose into
things that don’t concern you. It’s enough that I tell you what I need done.”
I opened my mouth. The words trembled on the tip of my tongue. I swallowed them. Beggars can’t be
choosers. And the fact was that I was taking Stephanopoulos for an extra half million. Taking it for
Sedgwick, true, but that made it all the sweeter. And my commission on two million would go a long way to soothing my injured feelings.
“Very true,” I said coolly. “Then shall I go ahead and broker the deal?”
“I would like you to get it for less than two million if possible.”
“It’s not possible. I’ve already told you.”
Silence.
“Whose side are you on in this transaction, James?” Mr. S. sounded mildly amused. I wasn’t
deceived.
“I’ve already told you Crisparkle knows what he’s got. He’s open to the idea of a preemptive bid,
which means Amherst may get in there first. Or another dealer. I’m not going to waste time haggling with this guy. If you want to try your hand at horse trading, feel free.”
“This is the old James talking,” he said slowly. “Something has happened.”
“Nothing has happened—beyond the discovery of this quite unique book.”
“Yes, but I think something
has
happened.” Mr. S. was thoughtful. “I don’t quite trust you, James.
There is a certain note in your voice. It’s most annoying.”
“I’m sorry. I’m not sure what you—”
“But that’s it. You’re not sorry. You’re…confident. You haven’t been confident in a long time. I
wonder why you’re so confident now?”
I was starting to hate Stephanopoulos with an intensity that surprised even me. Still, it would be a
very bad idea to give into that dislike.
I said as calmly as I could, “I’m confident because this book is the real deal, the find of the decade.
And, frankly, I believe you’re paying me top dollar for more than my diplomacy skills. Which, I’ll be the first to admit, are not strong.”
His silence grew more unpleasant in quality.
He said at last, very mildly, “You are the expert, James. I’ll be guided by you. I know you are well
aware how unwise it would be to cross me.”
That did give me pause. I said, “I’ll call you with Crisparkle’s answer.”
The day flew by.
59
Josh Lanyon
Employees talked about the possibility of a white Christmas and whether we could legitimately have a
snow day in Los Angeles. “It’s not even raining,” I pointed out irritably to the third person who gleefully asked if I thought it would snow. “Has anyone noticed the sun is shining?”
Customers asked for books on England, on the Victorians, and on Christmas baking. Three people
bought the newest illustrated edition of
A Christmas Carol
. If I believed in signs and omens, I’d have thought someone was trying to tell me something.
In the afternoon, the floor manager asked if I could stay late. Since Sedgwick would be at his dinner, I decided I might as well work a few extra hours.
I ate my raspberry jam sandwich in the break room using Louis Bayard’s
Mr. Timothy
as a barrier from employees who wanted to talk about what they hoped they were getting for Christmas and how they
were going to spend their snow day.
But against my best effort the conversation around me infiltrated my force field and I found, to my
dismay, that I was wondering if Sedgwick would want to spend Christmas together. Then I remembered
Darcy. But that was all right. Maybe Sedgwick would be open to spending a few hours at her place. If not, I could spend the afternoon with Darcy and meet Sedgwick later in the evening.
I wanted to spend Christmas with him. More than I had wanted anything in a long time.
I glanced at the break room clock. He would be at his dinner by now.
I finished my break and returned once more to the fray.
I was too busy to worry about not hearing from Sedgwick. When he didn’t call at eight or nine, I
assumed his dinner ran late. I was finally freed from bondage at nine thirty and I tried calling from the parking lot. No point driving back to Glendale if I was then going to have to turn around and head out to Stone Canyon.
The hotel room phone rang and rang.
I waited fifteen minutes and tried again. By now it was ten o’clock. Surely he would have tried to get free and back to his hotel knowing we were supposed to meet?
It was cold in the car and I was getting chilled and stiff waiting. I headed home, telling myself the
chances of anything happening to him were nil.
I got back to my apartment. In Darcy’s apartment, America was weirdly mute. I tried calling the Hotel
Del Monte at ten thirty, ten forty-five, ten fifty, and eleven.
Nothing.
I tried again at eleven thirty and then at twelve. By then I was worried. Scared to death. What the hell could have happened to him? Anything. It was Los Angeles. Anything could happen to him. A gang
shooting. A car accident. I remembered my parents’ deaths on such a night. Remembered waiting for them to come home from their date night. Remembered the mounting irritation and impatience of the college
student babysitter as it grew later and later—until the police showed up at our front door.
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The Dickens with Love
When I tried his hotel room again at fifteen minutes after twelve o’clock my throat was so tight, I
wasn’t sure I’d be able to speak even if he was there.
He wasn’t. I let the phone ring ten times. I was dangerously close to crying as I let it ring a hopeless eleventh time.
The phone rattled off the hook.
“Yes?” Cold and crisp. I almost didn’t recognize the voice as Sedgwick’s.
In fact, I was so shocked, I could hardly manage a thick, “Sedge?”
“Yes?”
We seemed to have come full circle. He sounded as frosty and distant as he had the first time we’d
spoken on the phone.
“It’s me. I thought…did you try to call me?”
“No.”
I absorbed that with a sick churning in my belly. Something was very wrong. I swallowed hard, made
myself say in as calm a voice as I could manage, “I thought we were getting together tonight.”
“No. We’re not getting together tonight. Or any other night.”
I opened my mouth but nothing came out. That was probably a good thing because anything that came
out would have been humiliating. I’d forgotten how painful and pointless it was to care about another
person.
Into my thoughts, he said in that same clipped, cold voice, “Who is your buyer for
The Christmas
Cake
. What’s his name?”
“I told you, he wishes to—”
“Remain anonymous? Yes. I imagine he does. Your buyer is Grigori Stephanopoulos, correct?”
I sucked in a sharp breath. Safe to say, I’d have never made it as a spy. “I can’t—”
“You don’t have to. Stephanopoulos told you that if I knew he was the buyer, I would not entertain his bid. You knew that. Even if you don’t know the full story, you knew by his own account that this was a man that I would not wish to deal with. You deliberately withheld that information from me. That’s correct, isn’t it?”
I couldn’t seem to find the oxygen to answer him.
Into my stricken silence Sedgwick said, “I already know that it’s correct.”
Words came to me. The wrong words, but I said them anyway. “He’s offering you two million for the
book.”
“I don’t care if he’s offering ten million. I don’t care if he’s the last buyer on the planet. I won’t deal with him—or you. You lied to me from the start.”
“If you would just—”
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Josh Lanyon
“You’re a liar and a cheat and a whore. It’s been very instructional getting to know you, Mr. Winter,
but our acquaintance is now at an end. Don’t call me again.”
He replaced the receiver with a quiet click.
I listened numbly to the dial tone for long seconds before it occurred to me to hang up.
62
Chapter Nine
Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the
old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!
Happy, happy Dickens who never spent Christmas Eve in a department store or mall. Personally, I
doubt if anything was more likely to drive man to want to kill his fellow man than Christmas shopping.
Simply trying to find a place to park is grounds for homicide.
I was scheduled to work early Christmas Eve, and the morning and early afternoon passed in a numb
blur of increasingly frantic customers. By four o’clock I was off with a day and a half of holiday ahead of me. It stretched like a wasteland.
Staying busy helped. Or as busy as one can stay who has virtually no personal obligations. I ordered
America concert tickets for Darcy and that concluded my Christmas shopping. That’s one of the bright
sides of not having anyone in your life around the holidays. No time wasted writing Christmas cards, a fortune saved in stamps and presents. It’s really a positive thing if you look at it right.
I went to Aldine Books on West Sunset and paid for the 1924 edition of Gertrude Chandler Warner’s
The Box-Car Children
which
I’d had the legendary “Old Guy” who owned the place put on hold for me.
On the drive home I decided a numb Christmas would be better than a blue one, and I stopped at a liquor store and bought a bottle of E&J VSOP.
I reached home, poured myself a brandy and did my best not to listen to America’s
Holiday Harmony
through the wall. I couldn’t help trying to identify the familiar melody, and then it came to me: “A
Christmas to Remember.”
As the snow is gently falling, hang the mistletoe you said, A Christmas to remember lay ahead.
I opened the window to the street and let in the sounds of traffic to drown the music.
It struck me how silly this was. Before I’d heard of that damned
Christmas Cake
book or met
Sedgwick Crisparkle, I’d been looking forward to nearly two days of nothing to do but read and rest.
Nothing had changed, really. What was I getting so worked up over?
Other than the fact that I had been foolish enough to commit to spending what was sure to be a very
long and tedious Christmas day with Darcy, everything could still be exactly as I had originally planned. I needed to buck up and start enjoying my restful solitude. To despair at the way things had ended between me and Sedgwick was stupid. Regardless of how, it was always going to end this way. Perhaps not in
Josh Lanyon
Sedgwick believing that I had betrayed him, but with the same result ultimately. In fact, it was probably better this way because I had been getting way too…well, fond of him.
I merely needed to show self-discipline and stop thinking about it.
And I tried. I did.
But apparently it required more discipline than I possessed. Instead, I found myself going over and
over the last three days in my mind, trying to pinpoint the exact moment when I should have told Sedgwick the truth, the moment when I had passed the point of no return, the moment I had lost him.
Stupidly, embarrassingly, I kept hoping the phone would ring. That Sedgwick would relent like he
had the other time he’d judged me unfairly. Except, he hadn’t judged me unfairly, had he? I was exactly was he thought I was. A liar, a cheat, and a whore.
At four o’clock Mr. S. called to find out how Professor Crisparkle had responded to his offer. I didn’t have the guts to take his call. Instead I let it go to message and then listened to it.