Authors: Megan Crane
‘Ken called?’ Jenna asked.
‘That’s what I said.’ Eugenia sniffed, and raked Jenna from head to foot with her piercing eyes. ‘It must be painful to have such a crush on a man who will never, ever notice you. I almost pity you.’
But her gales of laughter as she sauntered away said different.
Jenna wanted to throw the lamp after her, possibly braining her, but restrained herself. After all, this was the plan. Convince Eugenia that Jenna yearned hopelessly after Tommy, and she would be less territorial over Duncan, which might –
might
– allow for some bonding down the road. Jenna and Tommy had agreed that it was the best – and, really, only – plan they had at the moment.
The downside being, of course, that it was only the fact that Jenna really did yearn after Tommy that made her believe she could tolerate Eugenia long enough to pretend to bond in the first place.
Times Square looked sketchy and frightening in the late-morning sun, and Jenna ran from the cab to the door of the office building as if the homeless drug addicts were likely to pursue her if she slowed down. Inside, she ran into the still-snarly Princess-Diana-Haired receptionist in the elevator, and wondered, briefly, why every female she encountered in the Eighties hated her on sight.
She was used to being the kind of woman other women liked. She had primarily female friends, back in her own life. She wasn’t one of those alien women who avoided females like the plague and concentrated her emotional energy on men. She had, in fact, long maintained that such women had severe problems of their own, even as she envied them their ease with members of the opposite sex. So what was going on?
As she headed down the lush, opulent hallway on the fancy executive floor, hurrying to do Ken Dollimore’s bidding, Jenna suddenly realized that her New Jenna
Project life actually resembled her sad and pathetic Former Jenna life. More than it should. Sure, she was stuck over twenty years in the past, but she still spent all her waking hours consumed with the Wild Boys. She still worked at Video TV, even if she hadn’t spent much time in the office lately. She still spent her nights alone in a small Manhattan apartment, with too much Tommy in her head.
You could take the girl out of her time, but you couldn’t take the way she spent her time out of the girl. What did that say about her, that she could be catapulted into a different era and still continue doing the exact same things? On the one hand, maybe that spoke of her strength of character, that it stood the test of time, rigorously. On the other hand, maybe she should accept that she was the world’s biggest loser, as witnessed across
several
decades.
On that cheery note, she stepped into her office and found Ken Dollimore in a tizzy. He was scowling into the telephone, and didn’t glance up as she walked in and stood in front of his desk. Today his outfit once again brought to mind the character of Ducky in
Pretty in Pink
, with the oversized yellow blazer, complete with rolled-up sleeves and FRANKIE SAYS RELAX T-Shirt underneath. He was a bright eyesore.
‘Finally!’ he cried when he saw her, rising to a half-crouch above his desk, which was piled high with precarious stacks of paper. ‘This place is a disaster without you, Jen.’
Jenna murmured something vague and hopefully soothing, but Ken was on a roll.
‘I have no idea what I’m doing,’ he told her in frenzied tones. ‘My calendar is a disaster and I keep missing appointments. I never miss appointments! Gigi Unger called me today and became hysterical – I missed the entire exhibit! How could this happen?’ When he saw Jenna’s blank stare, he threw his hands in the air, theatrically. ‘Gigi Unger? The art broker? She manages three different downtown artists whose work was
finally
getting some respect, and I missed the exhibit.’
The slightest trickle of a memory teased at the edges of Jenna’s brain then. She had the vaguest recollection of the name Gigi, and the word installation, and she was almost certain she’d spoken to this person in the three minutes she had been impersonating her far-better-organized aunt before Duncan Paradis had spirited her away. She felt guilty, but not guilty enough to confess.
‘Gigi Unger is always hysterical,’ Jenna claimed authoritatively, as if she had any idea. She based that assertion entirely on her faint memory, and what Ken had just said. ‘And artists generally show their work again, especially if they’re up and coming. They have to. I hope you told her to relax.’
‘Yes, thank you, I know it’s not the end of the world,’ Ken said with a groan, and flopped back in his chair. He sighed in a great gust. ‘Tell me what you’re doing over there in Wild Boy heaven, as Duncan Paradis’s little seeing-eye dog.’
Jenna blinked. ‘What a delightful description.’
‘He’s a delightful guy,’ Ken said drily. He made a face. ‘He’s a bully, to put it mildly, and I wish there was some other way, but if I want Video TV to have an exclusive relationship with the Wild Boys …’ He shrugged. ‘There it is. Those bastards at MTV wet themselves when they saw that live show of yours. Brilliant idea.’
‘It’s going well,’ Jenna said. ‘I mean, I guess it is. I just sit there. The band doesn’t pay any attention to me. Most of the time I read magazines.’
‘Money in the bank,’ Ken said with a shrug. He ran a hand over his chin, thoughtfully. ‘See if you can figure out what they think the first single will be from the new album. If I can get some creative people working on it now, I’m pretty sure I can wow them and get the world premiere. MTV can eat my dust.’
Jenna looked at him for a moment. Once again, loyalty to her employer compelled her to answer.
‘“Misery Loves Company”,’ she said, ‘That’s the first single. I think they’re planning to release it next week.’
‘You are a goddess,’ Ken breathed. He pointed at her. ‘Stay right there. I have to make a few calls.’
Jenna eased down into one of the bright blue and red beanbag chairs that served as visitor seating in Ken’s office, and perched there gingerly, her butt making the beans crunch as they compressed.
She couldn’t help going over the events of the day in her mind. She’d spent a month doing absolutely nothing – fending off Duncan’s rants, exchanging barbs with Eugenia
– and today, suddenly, Tommy had talked to her like she was another person and not just another annoyance.
She knew that it had as much to do with the topic they’d discussed as it had to do with the fact that she’d stopped seeing him as the imaginary creature she’d made up. She didn’t know what this new, complicated Tommy might do or say. She didn’t know him at all. But she wanted to.
And more than anything, she wanted to keep him from dying in a few short weeks.
How, she wondered, as that thought crashed through her with sudden force, had she managed to put that fact out of her mind? Whether Duncan Paradis murdered him or he got drunk and did it himself, he was still going to die. That was what happened. She knew, because she’d already lived through 1987 once before. So how had she let herself think about anything else?
Oh, she knew that
Tommy Seer, the legendary singer
died on a certain date at a certain time, but in the past month, if she’d thought about it seriously, it had been in the abstract. Only now, sitting on a beanbag listening to Ken light fires under the behinds of numerous creative professionals, did it dawn on Jenna that
this
Tommy was the one who would die. Not the legend she’d made up in her own mind, the one who had been like a teddy bear or a comforter to soothe her as she’d needed over the years. That one would die too, but
this
Tommy was the one with bare feet and a slight smile.
This
Tommy told bad jokes and hummed at the ceiling.
This
Tommy didn’t bother to
dress in anything but the most casual jeans and T-shirts, and he sometimes went without his morning shower too, turning up in the studio with a day or two of beard growth, and could still look so adorable while he made eggs for everyone.
This
Tommy had to be saved.
He had to be.
And she was the unlikely person to do it, because she was the only one who knew what was coming. He might suspect it, but she could tell he thought he was being paranoid. Jenna
knew.
‘You have a terrifying look on your face,’ Ken said, interrupting her reverie. ‘I’m proud of you for taking one for the team, kiddo,’ he said with a smile. ‘But I’m not going to lie and tell you I think it’s anything but a crappy job.’ He sighed, not unhappily. ‘And now I have to go kiss Chuck’s ass. What I need you to do is take a break from the Wild Boys and do something with this office, so I can work again. Can you do that?’
‘Of course I can do that,’ Jenna assured him, with the sort of cool confidence she imagined Aunt Jen, organizer extraordinaire, might exude.
‘That is way cool,’ Ken said, sounding relieved. He came around the side of the desk. ‘Because I can’t take the clutter any more. I can’t find anything. You’re my saviour.’ He grinned. ‘I’ve got to book. I’ll see you in few hours, when Chuck finishes yelling and screaming.’
Chuck, Jenna knew, was Chuck Arendt, the CEO. Once the best of friends, Chuck and Ken had fallen out by the late Eighties, though no one knew exactly why. People
claimed it was because Chuck was jealous that Ken was seen as the creative genius behind Video TV, and felt he was equally responsible. Ken didn’t bother to explain, he just scurried out of the room, taking his absurdly bright jacket with him.
Which left Jenna with the unenviable task of having to neaten up and organize his disaster of an office in Aunt Jen style. Not something she was at all sure she could do, actually.
The good news, she discovered quickly, was that he had been unable to completely undo, in a few short weeks, the spectacularly well-organized system Aunt Jen had implemented. Once Jenna sorted through the immediate mess, the architecture behind it was sound. Which meant she could turn her head off and let it return to its new favourite subject: Tommy’s approaching demise.
Jenna’s mind raced. If he was really Tommy’s killer, how had Duncan gotten away with it? Had he really used Eugenia? That seemed unlikely – she might be one hundred and sixty-seven people away from the throne of England, but that didn’t mean she was a good choice for a partner in crime. Given how confrontational she was, and how much Duncan seemed to enjoy talking down to her, Jenna couldn’t imagine him conspiring with her at all. On the other hand, the two of them were involved in an elaborate charade involving her supposed engagement to Tommy, just to hide their affair. So who knew what was more unlikely for such people?
Having watched every single episode of
The Sopranos
,
Jenna had all kinds of ideas about nearby places where Duncan might have disposed of poor Tommy. She needed to think no further than the New Jersey Meadowlands, a place she saw only when flying into Newark airport, but which her imagination insisted was brimming with mafia-discarded remains. She repressed a shiver.
Was Duncan a shooter? Or did he plan to bash Tommy over the head with something – after all, he was stocky enough to do some damage? Jenna’s head whirled with one grisly image after another, until she had to stop before she completely freaked herself out. It was hard enough to walk around the far more dangerous New York she found herself in these days, let alone imagining a murderous Duncan Paradis with a chainsaw, for the love of all that was holy.
She had calmed herself down and was sitting at her desk, going through Ken’s mail, when he came rushing back in the door a few hours later.
‘Why didn’t you tell me that the Wild Boys are going to start shooting the video for the new single next week?’ he demanded in lieu of a greeting. ‘Dante La Rue pulled me aside after the meeting and told me his secretary had given him the message, but he didn’t know how I didn’t already know about the shoot.’
‘I don’t know anything about it either,’ Jenna assured him. ‘They don’t give me a schedule, Ken. They do whatever it is they’re doing and allow me to tag along.’
Ken stood there, his skinny arms propped on his skinny hips, his glaring yellow jacket brightening up the whole
room, and not in a good way. Jenna was tempted to pull out her sunglasses.
‘That needs to change,’ he said. ‘I can’t be kept in the dark. They must have some kind of schedule somewhere. Tell them you need it.’
‘I will,’ Jenna promised. She indicated his office, behind her. ‘I think you’ll find everything is back the way you like it.’
Smiling, Ken walked into his office. Jenna followed. Ken beamed as he saw the neat desk, all the piles he’d left for her no more than a memory.
‘You are truly a miracle worker,’ he told her with a happy sigh.
Which is what she tried to tell herself a little bit later, as she walked from the subway through the Village on her way to the town house again. Maybe she wasn’t actually a miracle worker, but she did have the advantage of not only having been through 1987 before, but having been
obsessed
with it ever after. She had so many facts about the last few months of Tommy’s life running through her brain that she could probably write an encyclopedia on them.
Maybe it was the fact that she’d just spent hours face to face with organizational genius, but it occurred to her that if she wanted to help Tommy avoid his fate, she should, well,
get organized.
Thank you, Aunt Jen
, she thought, sending that thought spinning out away from her, into whatever mysterious void had brought her here.
I hope you really are in my twenty-first-century
life, because I think you’ll enjoy low-waisted jeans. You deserve to look that good, and so much less hippy.
And then she climbed up the front stairs, succumbed to her second entrance exam of the day, and went in search of a pen and paper.
She would start writing down every little fact she could remember about this period. Surely, now that she was actually
in
1987 instead of thinking back on it from years in the future, she’d be able to discern some pattern. Some answer.
Something.