Revenant Rising Read online

  “Not unlike what I might be expected to do one of these days,” Laurel says.

  “I didn’t say that . . . I didn’t even imply that.”

  “But that is the reason you never brought any of this up, isn’t it?”

  “Should I have been proud of myself for disrespecting a senior employee?” Amanda says.

  “David certainly seems to think so. Tell me, when you were called on the carpet, were you quizzed about this unsuspected font of . . . knowledge?”

  “There was some give and take, yes, but I wouldn’t have called it a test. Once I’d verified everything I said to his assistant, he complimented me on my forthrightness and indicated he might be calling on me as a consultant and said I should call him David.”

  “All of this without my hearing about it.”

  “Are you making us out to be coconspirators or something? You know darn well why . . . Oh never mind. This is getting really tiresome and no wonder. Look at the time.” Amanda indicates the ormolu clock on the mantle of the faux fireplace. “Going on two and we haven’t had lunch yet. No wonder we’re so prickly. Shall I order in or do you want go out?”

  “Order in.”

  “Okay, let me just get a menu.” Amanda disappears into the outer office and returns almost immediately, empty-handed, bright-eyed, and blushing. “You’re three o’clock is in the reception area with this incredibly hopeful look on his face,” she stage whispers.

  FOURTEEN

  Afternoon, April 1, 1987

  “Are you certain I’m not interrupting something?” the client says as Laurel directs him to take the chair Amanda just vacated. “I can hold out longer if I have to.”

  Amanda, who ushered him into the inner office without express permission to do so, takes the lead. “I’m certain. Her calendar’s clear for the rest of the day and if I have anything to say about it, it’ll soon be clear for the rest of—”

  “Thank you, Amanda.” Laurel shoots her a warning look implying she’s already done enough.

  “Yes, thank you, Amanda,” the client echoes before sitting down. “And thank you.” He turns to Laurel. “What . . . what shall I call you?”

  “Call her Laurel,” Amanda says and quick ducks out the door.

  “That okay?” he asks.

  Laurel shrugs and turns up her palms in resignation.

  “Good,” he interprets. “And you’ll call me Colin, then.”

  “Very well.” She’ll call him Colin when pressed, but she’ll rob him of significance the rest of the time by referring to him as just another client.” “Shall we put your early arrival to good use now that name-calling’s been settled?” she asks.

  “Interesting turn of phrase,” he says of her inadvertent slur, the beginnings of a grin working one corner of his mouth. “Agreed it is, let’s not waste one extra minute.”

  She drums a ballpoint pen on the bare desktop before applying it to the legal pad in front of her. “We need to establish how best to implement your request—we need to establish structure, scheduling, frequency of sessions, length of sessions, duration of the interview period, means of remuneration, and in what amount.” She lists these prompts in an ordered column, looks up expecting him to be ogling her the way he did during the meeting.

  Instead, he’s focused on her phone as though he’d never seen one before.

  “Have you just remembered another appointment?” she asks the obvious. “We can put this off until later if you wish.”

  “You’ve caught me staring again, haven’t you then.” He warms her with a broad smile that deepens his dimples and the squint lines around his eyes, and reveals large even teeth, none of which are filed to points or studded with precious stones. “No need to postpone, actually. I only need the phone for a few minutes. I ring home this time of day whenever I can,” he explains.

  “Use mine, or I can set you up in a conference room,” Laurel says.

  “Yours is fine, if you don’t mind.”

  She turns the instrument around so he can access the buttons and gets up to leave. He stops her with the argument that she’s going to be privy to a lot about his life, so she might as well sit in on the phone call.

  Monitoring one end of a conversation isn’t that informative or even that interesting until it becomes clear he’s reprimanding someone for a serious infraction, judging by the client’s stern tone of voice. Then, after a pause, his voice softens and she can guess he’s addressing the child referred to this morning.

  “Hey, sleepyhead, it’s Dad with news from your great friend Jeremiah . . . Simon? Are you listening?”

  Laurel is listening. Acutely. Straining and writing as fast as she can to catch every word of a nonsense verse the client appears to be making up as he goes along.

  When the client finishes the halting narrative, Laurel speed-reads what she managed to scribble down.

  Jeremiah Barely-There/ Happy chap without a care/ Lives in a folly on Goosemud Road/ Shares his pudding with a wormilly Toad. One day old Jeremiah spied/ A CooterSpoof with a tatter proof hide/ He did his best to make it smile/ Have some tea and sit a while. But it failed to fancy Cheshire cheese/ And scones and tarts and camel’s knees/ The mawkish turtle ran away/ To practice fak’ry another day.

  After a short pause the client continues: “Oh . . . okay, Mum, he’s already dropped off, then. Not the first time I’ve lost an audience.” The client laughs and promises his mother he’ll call same time tomorrow.

  Laurel notes the hour the client prefers to call home—two p.m. New York time—and quickly flips to a fresh page before he can see that she captured the essence of the bedtime story.

  He says something she doesn’t quite catch as he leans across the desk to return the phone to its regular position.

  “Sorry? Were you speaking to me?” she asks.

  “Just confessing that I’ll steal from Aesop, Lewis Carroll, Dr. Seuss—anyone, when I don’t have something prepared.”

  “But what I just heard . . . that was all your own, wasn’t it?”

  He confirms her first impression and explains that the Jeremiah stories had their origin with his older boy.

  “When Anthony was first learning right from wrong I got in the habit of putting together little stories with morals to them. Today it doesn’t look like they had much effect because he’s been up to no good again. If you picked up on my scolding just now, it was for something Anthony did.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Sneaked into a neighbor’s fields and challenged their ram. They keep Jacob sheep and Anthony’s got it in his head he can run with the ram like he’s at Pamplona.”

  “Good lord, I hope these neighbors don’t have a bull. How old is Anthony?”

  “Anthony’s eight and thank god they don’t have a bull. The lad knows better, he knows all actions have consequences from having put so many wrongheaded actions to the test. But he’s well beyond the reach of morality tales populated with imaginary creatures, so old Jeremiah’s reserved for Simon and reduced to spouting rhyme without reason—if you’ll forgive the little play on words.”

  “You have quite a way with words,” Laurel can’t help saying.

  “I should hope so. Words are a large part of what I do for a living.”

  “I’m guessing you could write your own life story.”

  “I probably could if I cared to.” His frown discourages pursuit of that possibility.

  “Very well. Before we move on, may I ask about your younger son—Simon is it?”

  “Yes, Simon.” He describes a two-and-a-half-year-old who got off to a bad start and is progressing as well as can be expected. He credits the child for knowing more than he lets on and for crying less than he did at first, which was anytime he was awake. The client does not explain what the child has had to overcome or what the prognosis is for a complete recovery, or if the term even applies.

  “The current ‘Jeremiah Barely-There’ stories are tailored to Simon’s special needs,” the client says without spe
cifying what those special needs are. “He responds well to rhyming and he’ll often laugh at made-up words. I’d love for you to see a picture of him, Anthony as well, but my photo wallet went missing in L.A.”

  Laurel scribbles a line of question marks after Simon’s name and tries another angle.

  “What is Jeremiah Barely-There? What form does he take?” she asks

  “I never decided that, actually. Thought it was more fun for the listener to create his own image.”

  Before she’s tempted to sketch her interpretation of an imaginary creature and get even further afield, she leaves her desk to offer water from the insulated jug set out with glassware on a nearby credenza. She again expects to have his eyes on her and is again mistaken when she returns with the water to find him otherwise engrossed, this time with a pocket calendar.

  “Something I didn’t think about.” He looks up when she sets down the water. “I’m scheduled to return home middle of next week. I don’t suppose you’re willing to come with me,” he says with utmost gravity.

  “That is correct. That is not an option.” Laurel matches his tone and resumes her seat with fresh resolve to get back on track. “And I’m afraid I didn’t consider what your time constraints might be when I established mine. I’m presently planning to give you until Easter—that’s close to three weeks—but if you can’t remain in New York that long—”

  “I’ll work something out. I’ll bloody well make it work . . . Sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “The crude language.”

  “I wasn’t aware . . . oh, you mean bloody? Is that considered crude?”

  “Where I come from, in some circles it is.”

  “I wouldn’t have noticed if you hadn’t brought it up. You probably could have said a lot worse without my noticing because I tend to hear a British accent as a cleanser of sorts. You Brits with your upper crust inflections can get away with saying almost anything, while we Americans come across as brutish when we utter the same profanities.”

  He flashes the fulgent smile again. “Did you just license me to let fly with Anglo-Saxonisms?”

  She looks away as she would from too bright a light. “I do believe I did and now that we have that critical matter out of the way perhaps we can lay these others to rest.”

  She flips back to the top sheet of the legal pad and her list of prompts, picks the one that could cause the most debate. But after hearing her reasons for being paid a commission and a percentage from sales of the proposed biography, he agrees without hesitation, and again agrees when she names a figure and a percentage that David would approve.

  “Do you need to run that by your business manager or independent counsel?” she asks.

  “No, I’m my own man no matter how it might appear.”

  “Very well, I’ll have the contract prepared for your signature.”

  “Is a contract necessary, actually?”

  “For mutual protection and understanding, yes. Absolutely.”

  “How ’bout those ground rules you said we should establish? Should those be contractually agreed to as well?”

  “Only if you want them to be.”

  “I don’t, but I would like it known what my preferences are—stated for the record, you could say.”

  “Very well, let’s hear them.”

  “No, you first. I’m dead certain you have some of your own.”

  She does and she’d call them stipulations rather than preferences.

  His interest waxes and wanes as she states for the record that their interview sessions should take place every day except Sunday, be loosely structured to the comfort of each participant, and never exceed four consecutive hours. She launches into a detailed explanation of what’s meant by loosely structured and sees that she’s lost him altogether.

  “I wonder,” he says when she stops talking mid-sentence, “could I bother you for more water?”

  She brings the jug to the desk in time to see him remove a flattened box from an inside pocket and take from it a small glassine envelope, unmistakable to her courtroom evidence-trained eyes as standard packaging for illegal street substances. The kind synonymous with music industry types.

  Her mouth is open to forbid its use in this chamber—in this building—as he sifts the contents of the envelope into his replenished glass of water and swallows the result in one long gulp.

  Her mouth is still agape when he wipes his own mouth and refocuses on her.

  “What?” he says of her obvious astonishment.

  “I don’t know what David allows, but I cannot allow . . . that. Not in my presence. I am an officer of the law, after all, and I abide by that law,” she says in full nark mode.

  “This?” He takes out the box again and shoves it across the desk for her to examine.

  “Headache remedy it is, with an extra kick of caffeine. Very fast acting, you’ll notice, as I’m already feeling revived.”

  He smirks while she examines the container of Polks Extra Strength Headache Powders short of tasting a sample.

  “I see,” she says, glossing over her embarrassment by insisting that he now state for the goddammed record his list of preferences.

  After retrieving the package of legal drug doses, he does and she hears another preconceived notion go the way of the last. Instead of asking that they get together in the privacy of his hotel suite as expected, he requests that the interview sessions be conducted out-of-doors whenever possible and on foot wherever possible.

  “I could stand to stretch my legs right now. And I’m starting to feel a bit peckish—hence need for the hit of aspirin and caffeine.”

  “Peckish?”

  “Hungry. Got caught up with the official letting go of that army of empty suits you saw at the meeting earlier and missed out on lunch altogether.”

  He could have had lunch the same time she was planning to have her lunch; he did have the extra hour that he chose to steal from her. She continues to smart from the two errors in judgment.

  “Can I convince you to walk with me someplace for a bite? Doesn’t have to be far, just enough for the stretch I need. How far is the Russian Tea Room from here? It’s still there isn’t it—next to Carnegie Hall?”

  She stalls even though her stomach could growl any minute. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”

  “The Tea Room or you coming with me?”

  “The Tea Room. It’s still where you remember, but it’s a tourist magnet as well as a celebrity haunt.”

  “I don’t mind a few tourists . . . I’m a tourist, actually.” He lavishes her with the supersmile again.

  Right, and I’m Eleanor Roosevelt. Laurel withstands the smile without blinking.

  “It’s settled, then.” The client gets to his feet and reclaims the bound agenda he brought with him. “We’ll walk up the avenue and look in the windows on the way.”

  “I didn’t say I was coming.”

  “You didn’t say you weren’t. Grab your coat and off we go, then.”

  FIFTEEN

  Afternoon, April 1, 1987

  On Fifth Avenue, they attract a following right away. If the client knows this, he’s not showing it. Laurel tries not to react and hesitates to interrupt his commentary about his former bandmate, the neighbor with the sheep, who’s better known as one of the best lead guitarists in the world.

  “Chris—Christian Thorne, it is—is married to the former supermodel, Susa Rosa, and they have three daughters. Whilst I was out of commission, Chris was stand-in dad to Anthony and they all pitched in with Simon, even the little girls. When the band split up Chris could have done anything he wanted, but—”

  “Colin, we’ve attracted a following,” she whispers.

  “I know, just ignore them. And thank you for calling me Colin,” he whispers back in rush of warm breath felt against her cheek. They move closer to the display windows of a specialty store and stop to monitor the reflections of these hangers-on, recognizable as tourists from the garish souvenir
garb they’re sporting. Two of the younger gawkers use this opportunity to edge closer and are heard debating if it really is a celebrity they’re shadowing; a third decides the matter by loudly denouncing Laurel as “too fuckin’ drab” to be with a famous rock star.

  Once they drift away the client casts a cautious glance her way.

  “Don’t worry about it, I thought it was funny,” she assures him.

  They pick up the pace and lose the remaining tagalongs who may have also concluded that no bona fide rock star would be seen in public with someone dressed as conservatively—drably—as she is. At the Steuben Glass showroom the client reverts to window-shopping, eyeballing a variety of objects that range from breathtaking to merely charming.

  “I rather fancy the animals.” He indicates a small glass menagerie. “Which would you choose if you could have only one?”

  “The owl,” she says of the most streamlined in the display.

  “Is that your favorite actually, or are you just indulging me?”

  “I’m not apt to indulge you. I do like owls. That is the one I like best.”

  A well-dressed couple nearby overhears and exchanges a knowing look that only labels her difficult and him put-upon. Traffic in and out of the store recognizes neither one of them as out of the ordinary, but how long can that last?

  Near the corner of 57th Street, the client insists on having a look at the small showcase windows of Tiffany & Co., where, just as feared, he attracts another group of gawkers. This fresh challenge compels Laurel to stand closer to him than she’d like and crowd with him against the nearest bulletproof window to block at least one angle of view.

  Colin Elliot is as unbothered by this situation as would be the eternally unflappable David Sebastian, whereas she’s approaching full flappability.

  “It’s all right, we’ll outlast ’em,” he murmurs, his mouth grazing her ear as she shrinks deeper into a raincoat that’s suddenly not drab enough.