Hide & Seek - James Patterson [60]
A Caputo public relations flack came running into the restaurant around eleven-thirty. Everyone looked up. This was the moment they had been waiting for.
“A hit!” he shouted, waving a copy of the New York Times. “A serious rave. Well, close enough.”
He handed the paper, already folded to the Entertainment Section, to his boss, then stood in the crowd which had gathered around Caputo to hear the producer/director read the important review aloud.
“Michael Lenox Caputo, that master of blockbusters, who alone among our current crop of directors can still produce an engrossing, even enthralling, entertainment, has surpassed himself with Primrose, sure to be one of this season's biggest box-office successes. …”
A cheer went up from the guests, especially the studio executives. A small band hired for the party played “Hail to the Chief.” Caputo read on silently as the noise continued, then, when the room was once again quiet, flung the paper aside.
“Modesty forbids me from reading more,” he said. “You'll all have your copies in the morning. Meanwhile, let's have a celebratory drink! Let's have several drinks! We've earned it tonight.”
Waiters served expensive champagne. The paper, which had landed on a table near the entrance, went unheeded by everyone except Will, who picked it up with a casual air, and began to read, wondering why Caputo had not gone on.
He found his own name almost immediately:
Caputo is wonderfully served by his female star, Suzanne Purcell, who radiates innocence and sensuality in equal measures and, in her love scenes, manages to be both nineteen (which in real life she is not) and a woman comfortable with her sexual appetite. Her male counterpart, however, the former sports star Will Shepherd, is patently more comfortable on a soccer pitch than the beautifully photographed plains of Texas. He treats her as though she were some luscious morsel, no more important than a slice of New York cheesecake, or maybe even Texas cheesecake. Both stars look great without their shirts, but when Mr. Shepherd is actually called upon to act, whatever emotion is generated by the raw sex disintegrates into a pout, a forced smile, or glycerine tears applied by a makeup man, but not produced by the heart. Mr. Shepherd seems not to have much of one. He should not have been so hasty about giving up his athletic career.
Will read no further. He turned toward the guests. He was feeling crazed and frantic, absolutely wild.
He looked around the room, searching desperately for Maggie. She was standing by Caputo's side, smiling at something the director said. Well, fuck her.
She was supposed to be my salvation, my soul mate. That's what her songs promised.
But she told me I was wonderful in the film.
She lied to me, goddamn her.
Bitch!
He hurled the paper down, and disappeared into the night. He feared that he was going mad, or maybe that he was already there. He needed to hear the cheers of the crowd, to feel that kind of absolute love, but there was nothing for him here.
Will turned onto Seventh Avenue and he started to jog. Soon he was running at almost full speed. And still there was no cheering, no love anywhere in sight.
The werewolf of New York, he thought.
CHAPTER 69
WILL HAD BEEN missing for two days, and I felt as though my heart had stopped.
Winnie Lawrence and I looked for him frantically, checking local and New York hospitals and police stations, calling everybody at the party with whom he might have left. The kids were in a panic too.
No one had a clue as to where Will might have gone. I remembered stories he'd told me about Rio—his disappointment. Something had happened down there that had changed him.
I had read the Times movie review, of course, as soon as Will had left the room—read it with horror and anger as I realized what it would do to him, how it would hurt. I'd been there myself. I'd suffered through mean-spirited reviews, some deserved, some not.
Another high-profile