“About time,” Carol said. “I just hope a week’s long enough.”
“Go hide out, lie on a beach, forget there are such things as telephones, fax machines, e-mail …”
“Best-selling authors,” Carol interjected.
“C’mon, it can’t be that bad,” Brett countered. “After all, his fans like him, his mother likes him-”
“God knows why,” Carol said, exasperated. “You know, last night he went out-”
“He’s even got a girlfriend,” Brett said.
“What?” Carol asked, her voice shocked.
“Oh, I’m not supposed to say anything, but these kinds of things never stay hidden very long. Truth is, he and Taylor have got a little thing going on.”
“What? What did you say?”
“He and Taylor.”
“Taylor Robinson, his agent?” Carol Gee sounded surprised beyond belief.
“Yeah, it was a shock to me, too,” Brett agreed. “But apparently this may be pretty serious.”
“My God,” Carol whispered, her voice sounding far off.
“Yeah,” Brett said, then added, “Hey, you all right?”
For a few moments, Brett heard only the hissing of trans-continental static. “Carol, you there?”
“Oh, yeah. I’m here. Just surprised. That’s all.”
“The whole world’s going to be surprised,” Brett said, chatting on. “I expect this is the kind of thing that’ll even make the scandal sheets, maybe even
Maybe it’ll even-”
“Brett, I gotta run,” Carol interrupted. “I’ll call you the next day or so, okay?”
“Don’t you dare,” Brett said, her voice mock-stern. “After tonight’s signing, you’re on mandatory R amp;R for the next seven days. I don’t want to hear your voice until you’re back in the office a week from Monday. Okay?”
“Sure,” Carol said. Brett thought she still sounded distracted, far away. “Sure.”
The two women hung up, and Brett went back to the stacks of paper on her desk. As she thumbed through the addenda to a contract that had to go out by next Wednesday, she suddenly remembered her pledge of secrecy to Taylor the night before and briefly felt a surge of guilt.
“What difference does it make?” she whispered to herself as she turned to page six. “These things always go public sooner or later.”
CHAPTER 11
Carol Gee hung up the phone and stared out the twenty-fifth-story window of the Hyatt Regency San Diego. Her room overlooked the harbor and the glimmering deep blue of the Pacific Ocean. The sun was high overhead, the day brilliantly clear. Far below her, in the distance, the Coro-nado ferry chugged slowly southwest.
Right now, she would have given anything to be on that ferry, sailing away to anywhere but here. Ten stories above her-on the Gold Passport floor, of course-Michael Schiftmann was settling into his room and planning God knew what for his last evening on book tour. Carol had almost five hours to herself, time that she would need if she intended to regroup and steel herself for the signing tonight after what she had just learned.
Carol stood there for a long time, leaning against the heavy plate glass and staring out at the sea. She tried to find a calm place inside herself, someplace where she could sort out all the conflicts, all the noise in her head. She wished, honestly wished, that Brett Silverman had never said a thing to her about Michael Schiftmann and Taylor Robinson’s involvement. If she’d never been told, she’d never have been faced with the kind of dilemma now forced upon her.
It wasn’t that Carol Gee and Taylor were even that close.
They knew each other casually, as professionals, in a business that, as large as it was, was still based on personal relationships. And Carol Gee had also been in the publishing business long enough to know that, to paraphrase the cliche, no good deed goes unpunished. The smart thing to do would be to keep her mouth shut, spend one more night babysitting, then go hang out on a beach for a week to rebuild her dimin-ished reserves and forget the past couple of months.
Carol Gee, however, had one problem: a nagging conscience. She wasn’t a prude or moral right-wing zealot; she’d had her share of lovers. And while the number of lovers she’d had in her twenty-eight years would have shocked her parents and probably killed her grandparents, the truth was she was just about average for a woman in her late twenties.
So the fact that Michael Schiftmann had been picking up women on the book tour virtually from day one wasn’t so much a moral issue for Carol as it was one of trust. If she were in Taylor’s position-a thought that momentarily repulsed her-would she want to know the man she was seriously involved with had been bedding the literary equivalent of groupies all across the continent? What about health issues, AIDS and all that? Carol had already seen more than one friend felled by the disease, not all of them gay men.
Carol absentmindedly raised her left thumb to her lips and chewed the nail. Should she tell Taylor what she knew?
Should she call Brett back and let her know, or perhaps ask her advice on how to handle it?
And again, the question came back to her: If it were she, would she want to know?
“Damn it,” she whispered. She looked down, checked the clock: one-thirty. She and Michael planned to meet in the lobby just before six-thirty to drive to the last signing, at the Barnes
amp; Noble on Rosecrans. They would either get dinner together afterward or, as Carol was now extremely inclined to do, each order in from room service and eat alone.
Carol sighed. “I can’t imagine eating another meal with that man,” she said out loud.
She went into the bathroom and washed her face, then brushed her shoulder-length, bone-straight black hair. As she stared into the mirror, she saw for the first time how tired she looked.
“You need a break,” she whispered to her reflection.
Carol walked back into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. She picked up a stack of brochures she’d gotten out of the lobby. As always, she’d read them, then return the ones she didn’t need to the rack downstairs. She looked through the brochure for the San Diego Zoo, then the one for Sea-World. She’d asked at the front desk earlier which was the best attraction and quickly learned that San Diegans split into two camps: Either you’re a zoo fanatic or you’re a Sea-World fanatic. There didn’t seem to be much in between.
Maybe, she thought, a walk on the beach would do just as well.
Then Carol Gee, exhausted, pulled her draperies closed, peeled off her slacks, took off her blouse and put on a T-shirt, and slid between the covers. In a matter of moments, she was fast asleep.
Carol shook her head, trying to focus, to wake completely up, as the polished chrome doors of the elevator opened in the Hyatt Regency lobby. Behind her, the glass walls of the elevator revealed a panorama that Carol, slightly acropho-bic, had been unable to stomach.
She bolted out of the elevator, turned to her immediate left, and pushed her way past a crowd of retirees in golf caps and nearly identical plaid shorts.
“I’m sorry,” she puffed, out of breath, as she walked up to Michael Schiftmann. He stood in the center of the lobby, tapping his foot, his eyes dark.
“Where have you been?” he demanded, his voice low, controlled.
“I’m sorry,” Carol said again before she could stop herself. “I fell asleep and forgot to set the clock.”
Michael raised his jacket sleeve and checked his watch.
“We’re going to be late.”
“We won’t be late,” Carol said defensively. “The bookstore’s only ten minutes away.”
“We’d better not be,” Michael said, turning from her and marching through the lobby toward the back entrance to the parking garage.
