Saturday afternoon, Manhattan
The flight from Bonaire to JFK was so uneventful as to be tedious. The sky was gray, overcast, threatening a late winter snow as Taylor and Michael emerged from the plane and walked down the Jetway in a kind of shock. Six hours earlier they’d been in paradise; now they were back in the city.
That said it all.
The two were quiet during the long taxi ride to Taylor’s loft on Grande Street. They dragged their suitcases and mesh bags full of scuba equipment upstairs, began unpacking, and then found themselves once more in bed. They made love yet again, perhaps a bit more subdued now that they were out of paradise and a bit more tired, then fell into a deep, silent sleep that went on for hours.
Taylor felt herself coming to and rolled over. The glowing orange numerals of the alarm clock read 8:47. She moaned, unable to believe that they’d been asleep nearly four hours.
She shook herself awake and sat up on the side of the bed.
Next to her, Michael was breathing deeply and rhythmically, still sound asleep.
She picked up her underwear off the floor and slipped into it, then quietly lifted her sweatshirt from the chair next to her bed. She crept out of the bedroom into the hallway and down the stairs to the main floor of her loft. The cavernous room, as high as two stories, was cold and drafty this time of year. Taylor shivered as she pulled the sweatshirt on, the rough material scraping her nipples. She crossed her arms across her chest, rubbing herself, as she walked into the kitchen.
She hadn’t bothered to look at the stack of mail she’d brought up after digging it out of her jammed mailbox. And she noticed the message light on her answering machine was blinking madly. Not completely awake yet, she pushed the mail stack aside and opened the refrigerator. She pulled out a container of orange juice and poured a glass, then casually hit the button on the answering machine.
The computerized voice came on and announced that she had sixteen messages. Taylor shook her head wearily and reached for a pad of paper and one of the pencils from a jammed coffee mug full of pens, pencils, markers, and anything else she could cram in.
The first message was from Brett Silverman, delivered in her usual upbeat, high-energy, in-your-face fashion: “Hey girl! So you’re off to the Caribe, eh? You gotta drink some of those frou-frou drinks with the paper umbrellas for me, and for Chrissakes, have lots of sex!”
“God,” Taylor whispered, “if you only knew.”
The second message was a frantic one from Joan Delaney, something about a lost contract. The third, fourth, and fifth messages were from Joan as well, the last one announcing that the contracts had been located and she could ignore the other messages. There was the usual depressing message from her mother, followed by one from her floor leader on the co-op board about the next monthly meeting, and a few other dreary, routine business messages. Taylor made notes of any message that actually required something of her, and either mentally filed away or dumped the others.
Then the next-to-last message, time-stamped Friday morning at nine-thirty, was Brett Silverman again. “I hear you’re going to be in Saturday afternoon. You get your ass out of that apartment and buy the Sunday Times the second it hits the newsstand!”
Taylor perked up. There was nothing else to the message but a moment of silence followed by a beep, then another time stamp for Friday morning, nine thirty-four, and Joan’s voice again:
“We did it!” she screamed. “He’s number one! And the other four are all on the paperback list at the same time!”
Taylor’s heart leaped into her throat. Could it be? She dropped the pencil on the counter, grinning broadly, then ran out of the kitchen, her bare feet pounding on the hardwood floors, then breathlessly up the stairs. She flung open the bedroom door and swiped the wall to hit the light switch.
“Wake up!” she yelled.
Michael shot up out of bed like a tiger who’d just taken the first bullet. He was halfway on his feet, furious, something dark, almost murderous in his face. He raised a fist, a wild look in his eye, and took a step toward her.
“Wait!” Taylor barked, startled. “It’s me! It’s me, baby, just me.”
He stood there a moment, stunned, staring at her as if she were a stranger. Taylor looked into his face and saw something she’d never seen before, something that frightened her terribly. She took a step backward, into the doorframe.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” she said softly.
Michael stood there at the edge of the bed for a moment, his nude body tight and tense as if poised to leap. Then he seemed to relax, the breath rushing out of his chest, and dropped onto the mattress still sitting up, stunned.
“I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I was sound asleep.”
Taylor rushed over to the edge of the bed and dropped to her knees in front of him. She put her arms around his waist.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to do that. I was just excited.”
He ran his hands through her hair and pulled her to him, his torso bending down over her head. He was still breathing hard. Against his chest, Taylor felt his heart beating like a hammer. Michael hugged her to him.
“I’m sorry, too. I didn’t mean to look like a crazy person.”
She pulled away from him and looked up into his eyes, smiling once again. “My father always told me to never wake a sleeping dog.”
Michael laughed, reached down, and pulled her up off her knees, then fell back on the bed, pulling her on top of him.
She leaned down and kissed him softly, as he held her there.
She felt him getting hard once again and found herself rubbing against him, feeling him through the silk of her underwear. She moaned softly.
“Oh, wait,” she said suddenly. “I almost forgot.”
“What?”
“Brett Silverman and Joan both left frantic messages yesterday morning. We’ve got to go pick up the Sunday Times.”
His eyes widened. “You mean?”
She nodded. “Yep. You made it.”
Michael jerked upright, carrying her with him. She almost bounced off him and landed on the balls of her feet.
“When’s it come out?” he yelped.
“There’s a newsstand over on Houston that gets them in around nine.”
Michael stood, a look of incredulity on his face. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it.”
“Believe it,” Taylor said. “It’s real. It’s happened.”
“Number one on the New York Times best-seller list,” he said in wonder, as if it were a dream, an illusion.
The look on his face almost made her want to cry. “I’m so happy for you,” she said.
Michael bit his lower lip. “I wish my mother were alive to see this,” he said. “She would have been proud.”
Taylor nodded. “I know she would have. I’m proud of you.”
Michael stepped toward her and threw his arms around her waist, then lifted her up in the air and twirled her. They shouted and giggled and yelled.
Then they got dressed as fast as they could and headed out into the bitterly cold Manhattan night.
Sunday morning they slept in late, partially out of fatigue, partially to recover from the hangovers they were shouldering after the previous night’s celebration. Michael had bought twenty copies of the Sunday New York Times, which turned out to be a load of newspaper to carry in the wet weather. They’d found a cab and gone to N’s, the trendy Manhattan bar where they’d had their first date. The place was packed and they had to wedge into a corner table, made all the more difficult by the nearly four-foot-high stack of newspapers. Michael ordered a bottle of champagne, and while waiting for it, opened the book review and simply stared at the page for a long time. Then he turned the page to the paperback best sellers and held it there in front of him.
Michael Schiftmann, Taylor thought, had done it. It was the culmination of a life’s dream. The Fifth Letter was the number one book on the New York Times hardcover best-seller list, and four of the fifteen slots on the paperback list were Michael’s as well.
Taylor wondered what lay in front of him. But then the champagne came, and the thought left her head.
One bottle of champagne was followed by another, and part of a third. By the end of the evening, Michael and Taylor had hooked up with the people at another couple of tables, and soon there was a party going on. They laughed and drank and danced and, in the end, went home with one copy of the complete Sunday Times and nineteen copies of the book review, the rest of the newspapers dumped in a wire litter basket on the sidewalk.
Taylor realized as they got to her co-op that she was dizzy from a combination of fatigue, excitement, and champagne.
Michael was still wired, still animated. All she wanted was sleep.
And now, at nearly noon on Sunday, she rolled over in bed, faced a sleeping Michael, and smiled at the thought of what he had wanted. The act of smiling, though, made her head hurt even more. She hadn’t had a pounding head like this in years.
“You’re insatiable,” she whispered. He stirred, moaned, and shifted beneath the sheets. She eased herself out of bed, slipped into the bathroom, peed, and swallowed three Ad-vils. She threw on her thick bathrobe and slippers and padded downstairs without waking Michael.
She started a pot of coffee and, while waiting, managed to down half a glass of cranberry juice. She didn’t drink much, ordinarily, but if there was ever a reason to celebrate, this was it. She opened the Sunday Times book review and turned to the best-seller page again. She stared down at it, almost wistfully, and realized that this was as big a day for her as it was for Michael. That night in Bonaire, the night he proposed, he said that finding her had been the thing that turned everything around in his life. Taylor realized, as she stood there staring down at the pages, finding him had been the biggest break she’d ever had as well. She was already the star agent at Joan Delaney’s agency. Now this would elevate her several notches further.
Maybe, she mused, it was time to open her own agency, hang out her own shingle. Maybe she could use this as a stepping stone to lure even more heavy hitters to her own shop. At this moment, standing in her chilly New York kitchen on a cold day in March, it seemed to Taylor as if her options were unlimited.
The world had opened for her.
The shrill chirp of the cordless phone brought her out of her reverie. She picked the phone up quickly and hit the talk button.
“Hello.”
“Hey, beautiful! You’re back!”
Taylor smiled. “Good morning, Brett.”
“Morning, hell, there’s precisely ten minutes of morning left.”
Taylor glanced over at the clock on the microwave, which read eleven fifty-three.
“Not even that much,” Taylor said. “And I’m just getting out of bed. I should be ashamed.”
Brett Silverman laughed. “That depends on what you were doing in bed.”
“You’re terrible,” Taylor teased. “So what’s up?”
“I just wanted to make sure you got my message and picked up the Times.”
“Twenty copies,” Taylor said. “I thought we were going to have to hire a car to bring them home.”
“You could buy the car now,” Brett said. “A whole fleet of them. So tell me, girl, how was the Caribbean?”
“Unbelievable. Incredible. It was warm, balmy, sunny, romantic. We scuba dived-or is it scuba dove?-and ate and drank and slept late.”
“Either one, I think. Dived or dove. And what else did you do?”
Taylor hesitated. “What?”
“You know … Lots of?”
Taylor felt herself blushing. “Yes, plenty of that as well.
In fact, I’ve got a little surprise for you. Word’s going to get around anyway, so you may as well be the first. We’re engaged.”
Taylor jerked the phone away from her ear as Brett shrieked on the other end. The screeching went on for a full five seconds, and then evolved into an almost maniacal laugh.
“I don’t believe it!” she squealed after returning to the English language. “That’s awesome! Incredible!”
“Yeah, that was kind of the way I took it. It’s crazy, but I think we’re going to go through with it.”
“Where is he now?”
“Upstairs,” Taylor answered, cradling the phone in the crook of her neck so she could pour a mug of coffee. “Still knocked out.”
“That’s unbelievable,” Brett said again. “Have you set a date?”
“Haven’t gotten that far.”
“I’m really happy for you, Taylor,” Brett said, her voice suddenly serious. “I wish you nothing but happiness. Always.”
“I appreciate that. Really.” Taylor raised the mug to her lips and took a sip of the coffee without even adding her usual sugar and cream. The coffee was hot, strong, and she needed it now.
“So is this a big secret? Can I tell?”
“Sure. I’ll make the announcement at the office tomorrow.”
“Awesome … I mean, I can’t even find the words. But I do wish you luck. Marriage is hard, you know. I’ve been there three times.”
“Three?” Taylor asked. “I thought it was two.”
“Nope, there’s another one back there somewhere. I forget exactly where. I was young. It didn’t last long.”
“Wow,” Taylor said softly. “The truth is, I’m scared. I never saw myself getting married. Just didn’t think it was in the cards.”
“This was pretty sudden, wasn’t it?”
Taylor was silent for a moment, thinking. “Yeah, maybe a bit too sudden. But we’ll take it slow from here on out.”
“Good move, good thinking. Now, you got time for a little business?”
“Sure, shoot.”
“Okay,” Brett said. “First, Jack Hamlett from ICM called last week trying to find you. They’ve got the option terms worked out. They’re ready to go to contract.”
“I hope that means the higher figure we were talking about. You know my motto: ‘No cheap options.’”
“Got you covered there,” Brett agreed. “We’re not giving these guys shit. They’re paying top dollar. And he’s got a package he wants to present to you and Michael. He didn’t give me all the details, but he’s got George Melford set to produce and Jack Holt to star as Chaney.”
“Jack Holt,” Taylor said, impressed. “Damn, he’s good.
Sexy, too.”
“He’ll draw the chick demographic, that’s for sure.”
“So this is all looking good,” Taylor offered. “I can let Michael know.”
“Tell him to get his signing pen ready.”
“He’ll be locked and loaded, I’m sure.”
“And there’s one other thing, Taylor. This one’s a little weird. But have you heard anything from Carol Gee?”
Taylor frowned, set the coffee mug down on the counter.
“The publicist?”
“Yeah, have you heard anything from her?”
“No, nothing. Why should I?”
“Just wondered,” Brett said, pausing. “She’s sort of disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” Taylor asked, surprised.
“Yeah. Out of nowhere. She was set to take some vacation after the last tour ended. She was flying from San Diego to somewhere. Hell, I forget where. But apparently she never showed up. And when her vacation was over, she never came back to work.”
“Well, has anyone gone by her apartment or tried to call?”
“Kim over in publicity tracked down her roommates. She lives with three other girls in a two-bedroom apartment over in Woodside. They haven’t heard from her, either. Big mystery.”
“She got a boyfriend?”
“I don’t know. Nobody exactly knows how to handle this.
Human resources is taking the point on this, but they sent around an e-mail asking all of us who knew her to keep an eye out.”
Taylor shrugged. “I haven’t heard a word. But if I do hear anything, I’ll let you know. When’s the last time anyone saw her?”
“The last person we’ve been able to track down is the bookstore manager at Michael’s San Diego signing. The next morning, she did the automatic checkout from the hotel and no one’s seen her since.”
Taylor glanced upstairs in the direction of her bedroom.
“I’ll ask Michael when he wakes up. Maybe he knows something.”
“Yeah, do that. And are we still on for lunch Tuesday?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Taylor answered. “See you at one.”
The two exchanged good-byes, then hung up. Taylor poured herself another cup of coffee and sat down with the rest of the Sunday Times. She drank the coffee and scanned the front page, but in the back of her mind, she kept wondering what had happened to Carol Gee.