I sat in Matt’s office browsing the latest copy of
Publishers Weekly
while he returned Anne Tripper’s call.
“Now,” I said after his conversation had ended, “how about getting to my reason for being in New York.”
“Right. Your next book. The way I see it . . .”
I left Matt’s office forty-five minutes later and went to my hotel, where I called Grady at his new company.
“You’re serious, Aunt Jess?” he said, his voice bubbling with enthusiasm. “You’re willing to see the creative director of Permezzo’s advertising agency?”
“We’re only going to talk,” I said. “I’m not committing to anything, you understand.”
“Aunt Jess, you’re going to love this lady. She’s smart and sharp, really knows her stuff.”
“I’m sure she’s all that and more,” I said. “I don’t know if I’ll feel comfortable making a credit card commercial, but I’m willing to learn more about it.”
“Thank you, Aunt Jess. You won’t regret it, I promise you. Frank is going to be so excited when I tell him.”
“Grady, you’re getting ahead of yourself.”
“I know, I know. Sometimes I do that.”
I smiled. “Sometimes” was an understatement.
“I’ll call you as soon as I set up the meeting,” he said. “Just wait till I tell Carl. This is going to put me in good with the boss. You’re terrific, Aunt Jess.”
Oh dear,
I thought as I hung up the phone and sank down on the soft edge of the bed in my tiny hotel room.
What have I gotten myself into?
Chapter Three
“M
rs. Fletcher? We spoke on the phone. I’m Betsy Archibald of Mindbenders. We’re the agency for Permezzo. I’m so glad you could come today. We’re all excited about your participation.” Instead of shaking my hand, the petite redhead handed me her business card.
“Nice to meet you,” I said, glancing at the card and putting it in my pocket.
“And you are?” She directed her gaze to Grady.
He hopped forward with his hand outstretched. “Grady Fletcher, Betsy. Dan Howerstein introduced me to you last week. I happened to be in the Eye Screen production office when you were having the, uh, the pre-pro conference call. Remember?”
Betsy looked at Grady’s hand and said, “I don’t shake hands. If we’d met before, you should know that.” She turned away. “Please follow me. Your costars are here already.”
Grady glanced at his hand and wiped it awkwardly on the side of his jacket. Then he extended it toward me. “After you, Aunt Jess,” he said, forcing a smile.
Betsy rang for the elevator. Before it arrived, a musical chime sounded, followed by a simple tune. I looked around for its source. “That’s mine,” Betsy said, drawing her cell phone from a pocket, and squinting at the screen. “I hope you’re on your way,” she told her caller. “The meeting is about to start.” There was a pause. “You know I can’t pay you until the client pays me. Look, I can’t talk to you now. We can discuss it tonight. You can take me to dinner.” There was another pause and a shrug. “Break it!”
The elevator door opened and the three of us stepped in. We stood in silence as the illuminated numbers went from one to two to three, but it gave me the opportunity to observe the agency’s chief creative officer. I estimated she was in her late thirties, although with her small stature I imagine there may have been times she was easily mistaken for someone much younger, especially when she wasn’t wearing the open-toe black patent leather four-inch heels she had on. Even with the added height her shoes provided, she was more than a head shorter than I. She was dressed elegantly but in clothing far from the corporate attire I would have expected. She had paired charcoal harem pants, an Indian scarf tied at the waist, with an aqua off-the-shoulder knit top, which revealed the heavy sprinkling of freckles on her shoulder, evidence that her hair was naturally red, if perhaps not the bright coppery shade she wore in loose ringlets framing her face. When the elevator stopped at the third floor, Betsy led the way, her stride long and hips swaying like a diminutive version of a runway model. My eyes were drawn to the scarlet soles of her shoes.
How does she walk in those things?
I thought. I’ve made some sacrifices for beauty and fashion in my day, but chancing a twisted ankle from an impossibly high-heeled shoe was not one of them.
The office Betsy led us through was a huge loft space with tall windows at either end. All the utility pipes and ductwork exposed overhead were painted in brilliant colors—shocking pink, yellow, orange, acid green, deep turquoise. Everything else in the space was black and white. A series of eight or ten of what Betsy called “pods”—white tables lined up to form loose rectangles around the room’s supporting columns—were occupied by small groups of people sitting in black chairs, working on black laptops, most of them wearing black as well. At every junction between the pods there was a lounge area with deep armchairs, upholstered in white canvas, and modern sofas in black felt. Several of them were used by employees enjoying a nap.
“We don’t have regular hours,” Betsy explained, pausing to straighten a chair. “Creativity can’t always be summoned from nine to five. The office is open twenty-four hours a day. Some people prefer to work at night or very early in the morning, and we encourage our staff to take advantage of whenever they feel productive.”
“Must be tough on family life,” Grady muttered.
Betsy heard him. “Families have to make sacrifices for art,” she said. “Our agency has won every coveted creative-advertising award there is—the One Club, the AICP Show, Cannes Lions, New York Festivals, London International, the Clios. We’ve won them all. We credit not only our staff but also their families in our success.”
“Ex-excuse me, Betsy?” A young man had come up to her holding a board with a piece of white paper covering some artwork. Clearly nervous, he handed her the board, his hands shaking, the loose paper quivering. “Sorry to interrupt, but I thought you’d want to see this right away. I . . . I worked on it all night.”
Betsy lifted the cover sheet and concentrated on the page beneath. I peered over her shoulder to see what she was studying so intently. It was a design for a logo with two
A
s intertwined.
Betsy glanced up at me and quickly covered the design. She aimed a brilliant smile at the young man, whose face immediately flooded with pleasure. “Perfect, Kip,” she said.
“You really like it? I mean, thanks. Just thanks,” Kip said, bouncing on his toes, obviously pleased.
“Don’t forget what I said, though.” She looked at him sternly.
He grinned at her, then moved his fingers over his lips as if zipping them shut. He backed away from us awkwardly, raised his hand in a wave, and walked quickly to his computer at the nearest pod.
Betsy flashed a brief smile at Grady and me, and continued on, stopping at a curved wall on the loft’s periphery. “Ah, here we are.” She tapped on a door that had no knob. It was opened by a rotund gentleman in a three-piece gray silk suit.
“Jessica Fletcher! I have been waiting on—how you say?—needles and pins for you,” he said, grabbing my fingers and bringing them to his lips.
The expression on Betsy’s face was priceless. For a woman who didn’t like to shake hands, the prospect of a kiss on the fingers must be terrifying, but she schooled her features quickly and made the introduction. “Mrs. Fletcher, this is our most important client, Antonio Tedeschi, Permezzo’s president and chief marketing officer.”
“How do you do,” I said.
“
Ecco
,
bella
, you are exactly as I pictured you,” he said, pulling my hand under his arm and escorting me into the room. He looked back at Betsy and winked.
A dozen people stood around an artfully arranged buffet table with platters of food, enough to feed a crowd three times our number. Antonio leaned close to my ear. “Such an important lady. Such talent. We shall make a big success together, yes?”
“I hope so,” I said, trying not to appear rude by drawing away.
“I tell my Betsy I am so excited to meet you. I read all your books, and then look what she does. She brings you to me.”
“Ain’t he too much?” A lady with short blond hair and a big smile approached us. “Antonio, Ah’m goin’ to take you home to Dallas so you can teach my honey Homer the right way to treat a woman.”
“It would be my pleasure to visit your amiable home,” he replied.
She didn’t wait for an introduction. “Howdy, Mrs. Fletcher. I’m Stella Bedford,” she said, pumping my hand after Antonio had released it. “I could say I’m a writer, too—I have a bunch of cookbooks out—but that would be a lie. All my books are written by a ghostwriter. I can cook up a storm, but Ah can hardly put two words together on paper. I do so admire someone who can.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I said. “But please call me Jessica.”
“Jessica it is.” She was dressed in an elegant green and white shirtwaist dress, which showed off her generous curves, and had a pink cashmere cardigan resting on her shoulders. She wore shocking pink lipstick and her blue eyes were accented by jet-black mascara and a long set of false eyelashes.
Antonio turned to me. “May I bring you some coffee?”
“Tea, please,” I replied.
“You can get me a coffee, hon. I take two sugars,” Stella told Antonio. She turned to Grady. “And who’s this handsome fellow?”
Grady blushed at the compliment.
“This is my nephew, Grady Fletcher. Grady, this is Stella Bedford.”
He smiled at her, but after his experience with Betsy Archibald, he wasn’t sure if he should offer his hand. He settled on “Nice to meet you.”
“Actually, at home they call me Cookie,” she said, taking Grady’s arm. “ ‘Stella’ is such a formal name, doncha think?” She gazed up at him, batting her eyelashes. Still holding his arm, she addressed me. “I tried to get the TV folks to name my show
Cookin’ with Cookie
, but they wouldn’t. Said it sounds like I’m a baker, not a barbecue chef.” She squeezed Grady’s arm. “Bet you were expecting to see me with a piece of straw in my teeth, weren’t you, hon?”
Grady’s blush became deeper. “No, ma’am.”
“Ooh, you were, too. Just admit it. They make me wear these silly overalls on the show. Said it makes me memorable. They may be right. My last cookbook’s been flying off the shelves, not quite as fast as your books of course,” she said, reaching out and tapping me on the arm, “but we’re doin’ good.”
Antonio returned with a waiter holding a tray on which were two mugs, one with coffee and one tea, as well as a bowl of sugar, a pitcher of cream, and a small dish of lemon slices. He also brought with him a lanky man I recognized, and in their wake a young woman with dark hair clutching a clipboard to her chest and appearing ill at ease. The tall man batted his hand behind his back, stopping the young woman in her tracks.
“Jessica, my dear, it’s been a long time,” he said. “How is the world treating you?” He raised the half-glasses that were dangling from a cord around his neck, and peered at me through the lenses as if they were a monocle. He spoke with a British accent.
“Hello, Lance, nice to see you again,” I said, taking my mug from the tray.
“Ah, you already have the acquaintance made of this gentleman,” Antonio said.
“Mr. Sevenson and I were on a panel together in Wisconsin a number of years ago.”
“It was before the success of my show when I was flogging one of my early books.” He tapped a long finger on his thin lips. “
Crystals in Your Life
, I think that was the one. Book tours are the pits. All those housewives in hair rollers.” He raised his eyebrows, leered at Stella, and slid his glasses on his nose. “ ’Course, I’d love to see you in hair rollers.”
“It’ll never happen, darlin,’ ” she said, but her answering smile was brittle. “Excuse me, y’all. I have to find Jimbo, my manager.” She took her coffee from the tray and walked away.
I introduced Grady to Antonio and Lance.
“Keeping your aunt out of trouble?” Lance asked.
“Actually, I work for the production company’s, uh, payroll company,” Grady said.
“Oh goody. Are you the one writing us the big checks?”
“Not really. No. The agency pays the talent, not the production company.”
“And we are the ‘talent,’ ” Lance said, guffawing. “Oh, I like that word. As if anyone could think that woman is talented.” He cocked his head toward Stella Bedford’s back. “Or that one, for that matter.” He tipped his head down so he could peer over his half-glasses.
I followed his gaze to a woman with long straight blond hair who was arguing with Betsy Archibald. She wore a sleeveless black scoop-neck dress with knee-high black boots. A quilted red bag hung from her shoulder by a gold chain, leaving her hands free to wave in the air as she spoke animatedly, light reflecting off the many rings on her fingers. She was frowning, and I got the impression Betsy was not about to placate her.
“La bocca,”
Antonio said, seeing the direction of our eyes. “
Mah!
She is a difficult woman. Yes. But
bella
! So beautiful. And many people listen to her.”
“She’s got a mouth all right,” Lance said, “but no one pays attention to what she says. She’s a total bimbo.” He looked at me. “You and I are the only true stars in the firmament here, my dear. The others are strictly wannabes. Poor Betsy. No wonder she pushed me into this. I’ll see you later. Gotta feed my genius.” He patted his stomach and ambled off toward the buffet.
Antonio looked distressed. “Bimbo? I don’t know this word.”
“Just as well,” I said.
“Is this a bad thing?”
“It’s not a compliment. Apparently, Mr. Sevenson does not count himself among Anne Tripper’s fans.”
“But many do,” Antonio said, reassuring himself that he had the right people to represent his credit card. “She is big on the television. Even in Italy, we know who she is. You have her acquaintance, yes?”