Sundays at Tiffany's - James Patterson [36]
I continued riffling through the messages. There was nothing from Michael.
“I asked you a question,” Vivienne said loudly, leaning on my desk, so as to better get in my face. “In a very civil tone, I should add.”
“Have you got another Splenda?” I asked MaryLouise.
She nodded and opened a desk drawer.
My mother looked speechless for just a moment, but of course that was too good to last. She got her second wind as I stirred the Splenda into my coffee. “Well, I certainly want to hear where you were yesterday and yesterday evening,” she said firmly. “I called you so many times, I think I broke the redial button. You don’t have the common courtesy to return your mother’s call? Is your machine broken? Or is this some kind of teenage rebellion, twenty years too late?”
At my continuing silence, Vivienne changed tacks. “I heard about what happened with poor Hugh and Felicia and Ronnie,” she said, making it sound like “Hiroshima called. They said you bombed them.” “I don’t know what on earth is wrong with you. Do you know how angry they all are? And rightfully so. Because you happen to be stubborn, and you happen to be wrong. I know show business like you’ll never know it, and Hugh McGrath is perfect for that movie role. Without Hugh, there is no movie.”
“Why, thank you, Mother,” I said, but she didn’t get the Hugh-you-confusion thing. I took another gulp of coffee and let the phone messages drop like confetti into the wastepaper basket.
“You’re lucky I’m here to do damage control,” my mother went on. “We’re going to have to meet with poor Hugh and his people at lunch. Call Gotham Bar and Grill. We’ll meet them down there at one. If they’ll let you into the place dressed like a cowgirl.”
I drank the last of the coffee.
“Are you finished, Mother?”
Her eyes blazed.
“First, I’m a grown woman. I was out yesterday. With a friend. Where we were is absolutely none of your business.
“No, my machine is not broken. But I was busy. This is not teenage rebellion, since, as I mentioned, I’m a grown woman. This is me, acting like a grown woman. I suggest you join me.
“Now, onto Hugh, not Grant, not Jackman, and the role in the movie. That discussion is closed. We will never ever talk about it again. Thank Heaven is my property. I got the funding. I got the studio involved. And I want someone better than Hugh McGrath. Do you hear me, Mother? I never want to discuss it again.
“So I’m afraid lunch with Hugh and his minions is out. I won’t respond to your critique of my outfit because I decide what I will wear, and I’m not really interested in anyone else’s opinions.” Except Michael’s. “And you know what, Mother? I think I look great.”
Vivienne gaped at me as if I had sprouted antennae. She sputtered and stammered for a few seconds, then turned around and stormed away, slamming my door first, then the door to her office down the hall.
“Will that be all?” MaryLouise asked.
“I think that about covers it.”
Forty-one
WHAT WAS GOING ON WITH HIM? More to the point, what was going on with him and Jane?
Hell if he knew.
Michael got into the shower and turned the water to hot. He was going to see Jane today. He felt nervous and excited and happy and kind of filled with dread, all at the same time. It was the most emotion he’d ever experienced, and he felt kind of sick, actually. He stayed in the shower for a long time, then wrapped himself in a towel, wiped the fog from the mirror over the sink, and began to shave.
Feeling as if he didn’t recognize the face in the mirror, he covered it with shaving cream and began swiping smooth tracks with one of those superefficient five-bladed razors.
And then it happened.
Something that had never happened to him before. The unthinkable.
He cut himself shaving.
First time ever.
A dot of red puffed near his chin, then mixed with the shaving cream to form a patch of pink.
He watched this phenomenon as if he were watching a miracle, like water suddenly gushing from a rock, or the dinner