This Life: A Novel (16 page)

Chapter Twenty-Four

June 12

New York
,
New York

Her day got off to a
rotten start when she arrived at the NBC studio to find the security guards and
the producers of
The Takeover
waiting for her. “We need to have a
serious talk, Blake,” said Vanessa. “Let’s go to my office.”

Blake exchanged glances
with Antonio, but followed Vanessa to the office she’d claimed for the duration
of
The Takeover
filming. Waiting in her office was a police officer, who
stood when they entered the room. Vanessa seated herself behind her desk, Blake
and Jerome sat in chairs across from her, and Antonio and the security guards
and the police officer remained standing.

The police officer
looked at Blake. “Are you Ms. Blake Bertrand?”

Shit, am I about to
be arrested? What’s going on here?
“Yes, I am.”

“Ms. Bertrand, it is my
duty as an officer of the law to serve you with this restraining order. You are
ordered to keep at all times a minimum distance of three hundred feet from Lang
Bertrand, except for any exemptions granted on a case-by-case basis by issuing
Judge Harrell. In the case of any granted exemptions, police officers must be
on the premises for the duration of such time as you are within a proximity
normally banned by court order.” The officer handed Blake a sheet of paper with
the official court letterhead at the top and the judge’s signature and seal at
the bottom. “I must ask you to leave these premises, pursuant to the
restraining order against you. Have a good day, ma’am.”

“Wait! This has got to
be a mistake.” Blake got to her feet and faced the policeman. “I work here. I’m
hosting a reality show.”

“Judge Harrell is aware
of that, ma’am. But as he said, nobody is above the law. Witnesses say you went
to the Reebok sports club while Lang Bertrand was there, and you ordered
someone in your employ to attack him and his friends.” The policeman shrugged. “It’s
only a temporary restraining order, Ms. Bertrand. There’s a hearing scheduled.
You can tell your side of the story then—”

“Can I see the judge
today?”

“You can go to the
courthouse and request to speak with him, but you’d better hurry. He usually
leaves early on Fridays.”

“Officer, can you wait
just a minute or two?” Vanessa pleaded.

“Sure, I suppose so.”
The policeman leaned against the shut door.
Making sure I don’t run and try
to hide somewhere in the studio to attack Lang
. The surreal understanding
sank in with Blake.

“I hope you can
understand, Blake, that if this isn’t resolved quickly, it’s going to cost NBC
dearly in lost time and money. We’d have to start over with a new host, and you’d
be considered in breach of your contract with us,” Vanessa advised Blake.

“Give the contestants
that I was supposed to mentor today my cell phone number, and tell them I’ll
meet with them over the weekend to coach them,” Blake said. “I’m on my way to
talk to this judge now, and I expect to be granted an exemption before
Wednesday’s decision filming.”

“We’ll send a crew to
you this weekend.”

“That works.” Blake
looked to the policeman. “Okay, Officer, I’m ready to go.”

#

Judge Harrell agreed to
issue an exemption to the temporary restraining order against Blake, but he
warned her that it would not be processed and her copy delivered until sometime
Monday. Blake yearned to work out her frustrations at the sports club, but she
didn’t dare risk encountering Lang there. She returned to her apartment in such
a foul mood that Antonio actually muttered to Suki, when the martial artist
opened the apartment door, “Watch out, she’s had a bitch of a day and—”

“And the day has made
me a bitch,” Blake finished for him, her voice half a growl, and stalked into
her bedroom. She put some jazz on the turntable and ran a hot bubble bath for
herself, but it didn’t help. When she tromped into the kitchen and took out the
Jack Daniel’s and Coca-Cola, Suki laid a restraining hand on Blake’s arm.

Blake threw a punch
Suki had taught her, and Suki blocked her with ease and faked a punch of her
own. The block that Blake threw up was clumsy and left her off-balance, and a
second later she lay facedown on the kitchen floor with Suki holding her still.

“We could work out
safer in a park, Boss.”

Hysterical laughter and
sobs mingled inside Blake and came pouring out of her mouth, waking Matt and
bringing Antonio running from the living room. Suki released her hold on Blake
and sat back on her heels, waiting for Blake to regain her composure. Meanwhile,
Suki told her colleagues, “She’ll be all right. Boss just needs to break
something or wear herself out trying. I’ll handle it.”

“I love women,
especially my Miranda,” Blake heard Matt murmur to Antonio, “but sometimes I
think they’re all crazy.”

“Our whole species is
crazy. Men and women just do ‘crazy’ different from each other,” Antonio
muttered in reply. If they said anything else about the incident, they were out
of Blake’s hearing range.

“Get changed, Boss,”
said Suki, when Blake finally quieted. “While you do that, I’m going to find a
good park close by, and we’re going to go there, and you’re going to try to
beat the shit out of me.”

“Not possible,” Blake
whispered.

“You might get lucky. I
may trip on something.” Suki gave Blake’s shoulder a friendly slap, then helped
her stand at the same time that she got back on her own feet. It was another of
Suki’s eerie fluid movements that Blake wondered if she gained from years of
martial arts.

Blake changed into one
of her glossy, expensive designer jumpsuits and sandals. Suki held a carry-all
bag as she tucked her phone into her pocket. “Taxi is on the way,” said Suki,
and they went to the elevator to ride down to meet their cab.

When the driver asked
where they wanted to go, Suki sat up and said, “Battery Park.”

“There are a couple of parks
closer to the apartment,” Blake told the bodyguard.

“I’ve never been to
New York
before, and Battery
Park is someplace I’ve heard of all my life. Let’s go there.” Suki actually
looked excited by the idea.

Blake found herself
smiling a little. “Okay. Battery Park it is.”

The driver pulled into
traffic and carried them to the famous collection of cycling, hiking, and
skating paths and open areas for throwing Frisbees or playing tag football,
among other activities. It was a fine early summer afternoon, and the beginning
of a weekend. Battery Park was filled with people enjoying the outdoors.

Suki opened her
carry-all bag and said, “Here. Put these on.”

Blake flinched as Suki
handed her the pair of high heels she usually kept on her bedside table. “What
are you doing with those?”

“Forcing you to wear
them…unless you can keep me from laying hands on you.” And with that Suki aimed
a sweeping kick at Blake’s knees and their battle was begun.

They attacked and
blocked and evaded until the sun was sinking in the west. Both women were
dripping sweat and breathing hard when Suki called, “Time’s up.” Blake was left
gasping while Suki only breathed faster and deeper than usual. Even though
Blake knew Suki must have taken it easy on her, she was deliriously proud that
the black belt never got a good grip on her.

“Good work.” Suki put
the high heels back in her bag. “You keep that up, Boss, and in another ten
years you might be able to kick my ass.” Her blank-faced delivery made Blake
laugh, and Suki chuckled along with her.

“I needed this. Thanks,
Suki.”

“I’m serious. Keep this
up.” Suki leveled a solemn gaze at Blake. “Someday you’re going to decide you
don’t need bodyguards anymore. You can defend yourself then, if you’ve taught
your body how.”

“I will. I promise.”

#

Brett stood to hug and
kiss Sherry when she walked into the Indian restaurant. This was their third
consecutive night of meeting for dinner, and he hoped it would be their third
consecutive night of going to her hotel room after. She was a demon in bed, and
he couldn’t get enough of her. His little buddy stood to greet her, too, as
they hugged, and she giggled when she felt his eagerness.

“This place has always
had fantastic curry,” he advised her as they sat down.

“I look forward to
trying it.” Sherry took out a paper fan and waved it to cool her bosom. Brett
was only too glad to have his attention directed to her generous breasts, and
she knew it and winked over the fan at him. “Before we order, though, someone I
know is here, and I’d really like you to meet him.”

“For you, I’d meet
Satan.” Brett grinned and started to stand again. “Which table is he at?”

“This one,” said a man
who’d been sitting in the booth next to theirs all along. “I’m not Satan, but
you know someone who thinks I am.”

Brett turned and found
himself face-to-face with the infamous Lang Bertrand. He threw a disgusted
glance at Sherry. “You really want to introduce me to this creep?”

“He’s not a creep,
Brett. There are two sides to every story,” said Sherry, leaning closer and
patting Brett’s tush in a way that made his best friend jump for joy. “Isn’t
that something you’ve learned the hard way? You told me how you were framed at—”

“That’s different,”
Brett snapped. “I don’t hit women, but this son of a bitch does.”

“Oh, Brett Skeet. You
have so much to learn.” Lang shook his head. “Some women enjoy a good beating.”

Brett blinked, thought
fast, said, “I can’t see Blake Bertrand as one of those women.”

“I tell you what, young
man. Have a seat, and I’ll do all the talking for a few minutes. Then you think
about what I’ve said, and maybe you’ll decide we can do some business together.”

He’d never imagined
himself listening to what a known wife-beater had to say. But tonight he
listened—and found that he believed.

Chapter Twenty-Five

June 13

New York
,
New York

Blake woke at
4:30
A
.
M
.
when her BlackBerry rang.
Oh, my Jesus, please don’t let
anything be wrong with Mom!
She sat up in bed and punched the Talk button. “Blake
here,” she blurted.

“You CUNT.”

She was so unused to
being called names in the middle of the night, at least since leaving Lang,
that she needed to check the caller ID even though she recognized Margot’s
voice. Checking confirmed that her best friend was, indeed, cussing her out.

“Margot, what’s this—”

“YOU introduced them,
Blake. I can’t believe how you’re betraying me! He’s packed his bags and gone
to her, and it’s all your fault, you fucking bitch!”

From Margot’s slurred
speech it was obvious she’d been drinking heavily again, but Blake feared she knew
what her longtime friend meant, anyway. “Thomas has moved in with another
woman? Who?”

“That pixie-faced
whore, that’s who! Robbie.”

“Robin, you mean?”

“I hate you, Blake. Do
you hear me? I HATE YOU, BLAKE. I never want to see your face or hear your
voice again.” The line beeped a few tones as Margot tried to press the End Call
button, and went silent as she finally succeeded.

“Well, the hits just
keep on coming.” Blake slid out of bed to get dressed.

#

Late Saturday morning,
Blake arrived at a conference room in a hotel for the weekend reality show
taping. As she settled in and waited for her first mentoring appointment, the
cameraman warned her, “We’ve only got an hour.”

“They’re going to have
to deal with it.” Blake shrugged. “Can you do close-ups and record everything
that’s said? That should be plenty of material.”

“Oh, sure.”

“I guess that’s all we
really need.” She arranged some demos on the table, taken from her own
business, to illustrate for the contestants what she wanted them to understand.

Her BlackBerry rang
again, playing “Big Time” to inform her that the caller was her publicist.
Antonio lowered his Ray-Bans to give Blake a quizzical look.

“There’s only one way
to find out,” she told him, and pressed the Talk button. “Hi, Vickie, what’s
up?”

“Now, this is more like
it!” Vickie’s voice rang with enthusiasm. “If you’re going to get bad
publicity, sidewalk fistfights and restraining orders are the sort of bad
publicity you should get. I can work with this.”

“Shit. You mean that’s
all over the news?”

“It sure is! Today you’re
even on the cover of—”

“What are you going to
do about it?”

“I’m going to send out
press releases telling your side of the story, of course.”

“Good. Keep me updated,
but I’ve got to go.”

“Why, what’s going on?”

“I’ve got to mentor the
show’s contestants in a hotel conference room, because Lang has court
permission to attend NBC’s functions for
The Takeover
, but I don’t yet
have permission to be there when he is.”

“Oh, that’s excellent
stuff! I’ll put in a quote from you about how unfairly the legal system treats
women.”

Eve Womack stepped into
the conference room, and looked as if she thought she should step out again
until Blake finished on the phone. Blake waved Eve into a seat as she said, “Gotta
go, Vickie,” and clicked the call off.

“Is this a bad time?”
Eve didn’t quite put all her weight on the chair she sat on.

“This hour is your
appointment time, so this is a good time for us to talk. But this whole week
has been one disaster after another.” Blake shook her head. “And as if that’s
not enough, I’ve got an ongoing disaster to deal with, so I guess you could say
my life is a total mess right now.”

“An ongoing disaster?
What’s wrong?” Eve brushed aside the tablet she’d brought with her for taking
notes, and watched Blake with eyes wide with concern.

“Just a property I can’t
touch for a year because while I had the flu I trusted someone to file some
legal paperwork for me, and they botched it.” Blake reached for one of her
demonstration materials. “But let’s talk about what you need to do for this
week’s challenge. We’ve only got an hour, so we should get to work.”

“I don’t understand,
though. Why can’t you do anything with your own property, just because of a
mistake with some paperwork?”

“To make a long story
short, I need some zoning regulations waived or amended to allow my plans for
the property to proceed. It’s several different things—traffic flow in the area
of the building, the building’s wiring and so forth need to be modernized, all
that sort of stuff.” Blake gestured to the materials she wanted Eve to look at.
“If you’ll look at this—”

“What would happen if
you went backward instead of forward?”

Blake stared at Eve,
thoroughly confused.
Forward
and
backward
had nothing to do with
the demo she was trying to show Eve.

Her bewilderment must
have shown in her face, because Eve said, “The wiring and stuff. What if you
went retro with it, instead of modernizing?”

Can it really be
that simple?
“You mean restore it to the way it was when it was built? Make
it a historical attraction?”

“Oh, you can do more
than that.” Eve’s smile shone like a star as she pulled her tablet close again
and entered search terms. “It isn’t just children who love to play. You’re
talking about the Wishman Spears building, I think, and with that you could
create something unique in the world. It could be like a cross between the
Smithsonian and a Disney theme park. People could see the whole industrial era
come to life there, do hands-on activities—”

“But who would be interested
in going somewhere like that?”

“Lots of people!
Schools could take field trips there, safety inspectors could hold training
seminars to understand from past conditions why today’s safety regulations are
what they are, labor unions could educate their members and recruit new ones by
showing them what industrial work was like before collective bargaining—”

“Eve?”

The woman stopped, her
cheeks reddening. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound like I’m telling you how
to do your job. I just get an idea and get excited.”

“What I was going to
say is, you’re a genius.” Blake hugged Eve tight.

#

All day Blake felt
happy and excited for the first time in what seemed like weeks. She couldn’t
wait to be done with the day’s five mentoring sessions, so that she could rush
back to her apartment and make phone calls to the people she needed to help her
pursue Eve Womack’s suggestion.

However, simultaneously
all day Blake felt a growing worry about Margot’s well-being. By lunchtime she
couldn’t endure it alone anymore, so she phoned Edith in
Miami
. When her longtime
personal assistant answered her call, Blake asked, “Could you please do me a
favor?”

“Sure. What do you
need?”

“Would you please go to
Margot Mills’s house and see if she’s okay?”

“I’ll try, but if the
door is locked I can’t get in. Unless she keeps a spare key somewhere, and you
know the hiding place.”

“I do.” She gave
directions for finding the Millses’ spare house key, and felt much better.

#

When her day’s work for
The Takeover
was done, around mid-afternoon, Blake and Antonio returned
to her apartment and she got busy contacting architects, engineers,
contractors, attorneys, and other experts she needed to talk to about Eve’s
suggestion for the Wishman Spears. She was in the middle of a three-way call
with her
New
York
real
estate attorneys, Susan Golden and Peter Britell, when call waiting beeped to
alert her that someone was trying to contact her. At the moment she was coaxing
the lawyers to translate their legalese into plain English for her, and by the
time she felt confident she understood their advice, she forgot to check caller
ID to see who tried to reach her.

It was late at night,
and Blake was just getting out of the shower, when her phone rang playing “Someone
to Watch Over Me.” She glanced at the time before pressing the Talk button.

Ten thirty-eight
.

My God. Is Edith
still at Margot’s?
“Hi, Edith, how—”

“Blake, Margot is in
the hospital.” Edith’s voice was shaky. “She was unconscious when I found her,
and there were empty whiskey bottles and empty medicine bottles and… Blake, she
tried to kill herself. They pumped her stomach, and they’ve got her on suicide
watch.”

“Jesus.” Blake felt icy
fingers squeeze her heart. “Thank you so much for going to see about her. Can
you do one more favor for me?”

“Do you want to try for
plane tickets for tonight, or wait until morning?”