“Anything you want to talk about?”
Taylor turned away, uncomfortable. “Not really.”
“You know, when you called today I got the feeling something was the matter. I also figured it was kind of weird your being willing to come to my house. You almost always want to meet somewhere in the midtown area close to your office.”
Taylor sighed, took another long sip of wine, and set the glass down on the counter. “Well, there is something …”
Brett nervously pulled her long hair over her shoulders into a ponytail and grasped it with her right hand. Her left hand drummed on the countertop. “I think I’m beginning to understand. Something tells me there’s a man involved in this story somewhere.”
“There is,” Taylor confessed. “And if I don’t talk to somebody soon, I’m going to go nuts. One thing though …”
Brett let go of her hair. “Yeah?”
“You’ve got to swear,” Taylor said, her voice somber. “I mean it, Brett, this can’t go any further than this kitchen.”
“Whoa, girl,” Brett said. “This does sound serious. What is he? Some famous actor or, let me see, the head of a major publishing house? Is that it? You’re afraid of being accused of sleeping your way into book deals, right?”
Taylor wearily rubbed her eyes, then squinted and focused on the woman across from her. “Worse than that, I’m afraid.”
Brett’s forehead wrinkled. “Good heavens, Robinson, who the hell is it?”
“You’ve got to promise,” Taylor insisted. “This is top secret. For your ears only.”
“You got it,” Brett said. “I swear. No further. But who is it?”
Taylor hesitated a few more moments, still agonizing over whether to say anything. But then, she realized, she had to talk to somebody or she was going to go crazy.
“It’s a certain best-selling author we both know,” Taylor said softly.
Brett focused on a midair space halfway between her nose and Taylor’s. “Best-selling author,” she mumbled. And then, as if a burst of light had gone off inside her head like an explosion, her mouth opened and her eyes seemed to quiver in their sockets.
“No!” she gasped.
Taylor nodded her head.
“It can’t be,” Brett whispered.
“It is, dear heart. Believe it.”
“You’re sleeping with a client?” Brett asked, aghast.
Taylor leaned forward, rested her forehead on the counter, and moaned.
“Oh my God, is it serious?”
Taylor raised her head. “He’s moving here after the tour.
And he wants to go on vacation together. The Caribbean …”
Brett walked around the counter and sat on a stool next to Taylor, then put an arm around her shoulder.
“I mean, Taylor-” she stammered. “How did it happen?”
Taylor wearily let her head fall onto Brett’s shoulder. “Oh, God, he was staying at my apartment. We’d been working so closely together for so long and we went out to celebrate the night he signed the contract and had that great signing at the Barnes amp; Noble. There was a lot of brandy and hand-holding, and then we went back to my place and one thing just kind of led to another.”
“But sweetie, that night of the party he had that blond bimbo up in the guest bedroom.”
Taylor sat up straight, reached for her wineglass. “I know,”
she said defensively. “I know. He apologized. Profusely …
He was so damn charming about it all.” She took another long sip of the wine, polishing off all but a few drops at the bottom. Then she turned and smiled weakly at Brett.
“At least we did the safe-sex thing.”
Brett smiled back at her sympathetically. “Well, thank God for small favors.” She got up, retrieved the wine bottle, and filled both their glasses.
“I’ve got to ask this, babe,” Brett said as she stuffed the cork back in the wine bottle. “I mean, do you like this guy?
Are you in love with him? Is this going anywhere?”
“I don’t know,” Taylor said, trying not to sound whiny and not at all sure she was succeeding. “But it’s been so long since I’ve been with anyone. I work a gazillion hours a week. You know how hard it is to meet anybody in Manhattan if you don’t do the bar scene?”
Brett shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never not done the bar scene.”
“It’s damn hard. And the men I work with are either disaffected grungemeisters or incredibly attractive, perfect men who also happen to be gay.”
“Okay,” Brett snapped. “You’re lonely, you’re horny, blah blah blah. But Michael Schiftmann? “
“Why not?” Taylor demanded. “I mean, he’s a good-looking guy, he’s intelligent-”
Brett turned, held up her index finger. “And he is rich.”
“Okay, that too. So what’s wrong with it?”
“Have you ever read his books?” Brett asked. “The guy’s a perv! Trust me, I edit him!”
“Of course I’ve read his books. His books aren’t him,”
Taylor insisted.
“Okay, grant you that. The main question is, do you like him?”
Taylor thought for a moment. “I like him. Yes, I like him.
Could I love him? I don’t know.”
Brett leaned down on the counter again, smiling, and lowering her voice to a conspiratorial level. “And there is one other thing … Is he any good?”
Taylor looked directly into her friend’s eyes and stared for a moment, then: “Un-fucking-believable. The best ever, Brett. I mean it, the Earth shook and I was fogged up the rest of the day.”
Brett straightened up quickly. “Whoa, girl! Okay, as your friend and spiritual advisor in matters of the heart, I recommend you go for it, ASAP. Ride that wave as far as it’ll go.”
Taylor smiled. “You think so?”
“Hey, what’s the downside? The worst that can happen is it doesn’t work out, then you have to suffer with great sex from a rich guy until he dumps you or you dump him.”
“It could be worse than that,” Taylor said. “I could lose him as a client.”
Brett took her hands in hers and squeezed them. “He’s a smart guy, Taylor. He knows who got him where he is. Business is business, no matter what.”
Taylor thought about that for a moment. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. At least I hope you are.”
“C’mon, the Empire Diner awaits. Let’s get down there before it gets too crowded.”
Brett Silverman always considered Saturdays her quiet time in the office; a chance to go through the mountain of paper in her in-box, stack up the phone calls that hadn’t yet been returned so she’d be ready to go first thing Monday morning, go through the e-mail messages she hadn’t had time to deal with.
Pull together the stack of rejected submissions for Marcie, her assistant, to get started on …
Brett had slept late this Saturday after a huge meal at the Empire Diner with Taylor the night before, followed by several more glasses of wine before bedtime after her friend grabbed a cab back to SoHo. She’d watched an old movie on cable, gotten more than a little drunk, then stayed under the covers until almost noon. She drank a pot of coffee and scrambled some eggs and read the Times before grabbing a cab to her office around three. There was no particular reason to move quickly on this Saturday afternoon; this was only the latest in a string of dateless Saturday nights she’d endured. She was beginning to wonder how long her dry spell was going to last.
Manhattan had chilled overnight; the afternoon temperatures back down into the low thirties. In line with the latest cost-saving measures, the heat in her building had been cut back. Brett threw off her parka but left her ski sweater on as she sat down at her desk.
At least, she thought, she was here alone: no meetings, no frantic phone calls, no juggling six projects at once.
An hour into her work, Brett Silverman began to get sleepy and to wonder if she shouldn’t just bag it and head back to her brownstone for a long nap before her solo dinner. She leaned back in her chair and rubbed her eyes, fighting the urge to indulge in self-pity at the prospect of eating dinner alone. She wondered if perhaps Taylor might be free again tonight. What the hell, with her new boyfriend thousands of miles away in Southern California, she was probably facing a dateless Saturday night as well.