“Is it enough for the Times? What if I leak some of this stuff to a reporter?”
“The New York Times? The paper of record?” The snort was over the top, he thought. “Do you know how much evidence they need to make accusations like this? Do you know how many sources they need? Trust me, The New York Times is not the way to go here.”
“She’s going to sit on it,” he said when he hung up. “She’s going to sit on it until it dies.”
“Maybe your sister can do something?” Jess picked up his phone and handed it to him.
He dialed her number. Nicole would be able to do something. She didn’t sit on anything when she could pounce. “Nina Goldsmith is useless,” he said, and regaled his sister with Nina’s uselessness.
But Nicole didn’t pounce. She didn’t say a word, just let out a low growl. “She’s right,” Nicole said finally.
The words sounded foreign coming out of her mouth. “What?”
“That school has some juice. The resources, the alumni, the lawyers … You’ve got to come at them with an arsenal. Shoot to kill, baby brother. I want them dead as much as you do, trust me.”
“But …” His mind was spinning. He wanted to trust her. “What about the Times? What if I go to a reporter there who can dig up some—”
“Not yet,” she said. “Last thing you want is to come off as a delusional, paranoid New York parent. You need sources, documentation, evidence, for anyone at the Times to take you seriously.”
“So what am I supposed to do?”
“We’ve got to build our arsenal.”
Jess, who’d been hanging on every word, slumped back on the couch.
“I’ll do some more digging,” Nicole said. “I’ll call you tomorrow. Don’t worry. We’ll get them.”
As soon as he hung up, the phone rang in his hand. It was Rick, and he was slurring. Yelling and slurring. “Fucking Oscars.”
“Rick,” he said. “What’s up?”
“We’re supposed to have a Q&A with Natalie Portman. A ten-minute phoner.”
“To go with the dress-shopping photos. Yeah, I’ve got it all laid out.” He hated when Rick called him on Sundays and it always happened around the Oscars. Every issue through the end of February would spend pages and pages analyzing the getups, the hair, and the bling of anyone who walked down the red carpet. His days were spent looking for the most revealing, embarrassing, hideous, inappropriate, see-through, ripped, or otherwise flawed, fashion choices of Hollywood’s A-list.
“Yeah, well she bagged us. Gave the interview to Us.” He let out a long belch.
“So you need filler?”
“The intern’s writing something about pre-Oscar boob jobs.”
“Is anyone having boob jobs before the Oscars?”
Jess mouthed, boob jobs?
“She’s got leads,” Rick said, but he was lying. “Of course she does. Look, story’ll be on your desk tomorrow. Just get me some images before the close.”
After he killed the call, he threw the phone across the room. “My life,” he pulled two fistfuls of hair, “sucks.”
“Your former life,” she corrected him. “I heard you’re moving soon.”
“That’s right. I’m moving north.” He relaxed as soon as he said it. “To the smallest state in the Union.”
“We prefer intimate.”
“Even better.” He smoothed her hair, allowed his hand to trace the side of her face.
“So how come Buzz can run anything it wants, even if it’s not true?”
“Because Buzz has no standards, not a shred of journalistic integrity.”
“Named, unnamed—we don’t need sources at all.”
Her eyebrows perched high on her forehead in anticipation, waiting for him to put it together. When he did, he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it himself. “You are brilliant.”
He put on a pot of coffee and they worked on the story late into the night. The layout he would hijack the next day could accommodate about five hundred words, which was enough to do the job. It was enough space to get in all the facts, some history and the photos from the nurse’s closet. The only way to make a splash with the article was to tell Toby’s story. He wasn’t a writer, but he’d read enough Buzz stories to know how it was done:
“The best school in Manhattan almost killed my son. Earlier in the year, they succeeded in killing his best friend by insisting that he take ADD medication to improve his focus. Both children were diagnosed as a result of teacher evaluations that had been forged by school officials.” Without naming names, he recounted Bev’s admission. He wrote about how the school had covered up Calvin’s death—though he didn’t name Calvin—by attributing it to peanut allergies. He wrote about how a sky-high percentage of Bradley students were on prescription ADD medication that Garvey said was unnecessary. Billy Horn said to go ahead and quote him about Bradley’s “full-court press” to get him to put Zack on medication. Sean also stuck in the fact that Daniels had given him only part of the “Giftedness” report, and he quoted Noah as an unnamed source saying that schools “did this.” Without naming names, he told Debbie Martin’s story. In keeping with Buzz style, he threw in a lot of “allegedlies,” “sources say,” and “according to those involved.”
For graphics, he enlarged an image he found online of a Metattent Junior capsule and downloaded the best of his cell phone photos. He smiled. It was his best work for Buzz to date.
The next day, he laid out the boob job story. A salacious smile twisted Rick’s lips. “Now that’s a story.”
By the end of the day, the intern was still waiting on a quote from a plastic surgeon who had never treated any of the celebrities mentioned. “I can stay late,” Sean told Rick. “Go home. I got this one.” It was the first time he’d ever wanted to stay late at Buzz.
Rick slapped him on the back. “I owe you one.”
After the intern had gone home, Sean pulled her story and replaced it with his Bradley article. It fit perfectly. The image of the pill cabinet wasn’t the strongest, but it did the trick. At the last minute, he found a photo of Bradley’s entrance, which helped place the story visually. He fooled around with some headlines. “Top School in Country Drugging its Students” was a good one. He also liked “Number One School in Nation Drugs Its Kids.” He finally settled on, “Rx Academy,” which he decided packed the biggest punch.
At midnight, he sent the files and it was done. He’d have to wait until the end of the week when the magazine hit the stands to know if anyone would even bother reading a Buzz story that featured no boobs, fashion gaffes, or celebrity gossip. Even if no one read it, that was okay. He’d have done something when no one else would. He could move on.
CHAPTER THIRTY
“ONE, TWO, THREE, AND GO.” HE AND JESS HOISTED THE FRAME from the ground and walked it to the center of the Sean Benning wall of the gallery. Martin Vols had already hung a series of gory photographs of a decapitation, and Tina Crowe was setting up what looked like an electric chair and camcorder for a performance piece she had tried to describe to them earlier.
“You got it?” he asked as Jess slid her arm behind the frame.
“Almost, wait.” Pieces of hair slipped from her ponytail. “Got it,” she said, releasing the wire onto the hook. She let go of the frame and brushed the hair out of her face with the back of her hand. “Take a look.”
He stepped back and admired her. Her jeans were splattered with the same paint that covered his. “Good. Very good.”
“The frame,” she said. “How’s the frame?”
“Oh, that’s crooked.” He estimated an inch with his fingers. “Up on the left.” She nudged the corner up with acute concentration he found both amusing and touching.
“I think I’ve found my second career,” she said, standing back to appraise her work. “Picture hanger.”
“I’m all for it, if it means you’ll wear those jeans every day.”
She draped h
er arms around his neck. “I don’t think you’re focusing.”
“You don’t?”
“On the right thing.” She kissed him in the middle of the gallery. “We’re almost done.”
They’d been working all afternoon and it was finally coming together. Snow fell outside, but inside, the room was warm and bright and humming with creative energy. “I’ve got something for you.”
She looked skeptical. “For me?”
He reached into the pocket of his down jacket, which was heaped in the middle of the room, and presented her with a gold mesh pouch cinched with a gold ribbon.
“What’s this for?”
“I missed Christmas, so I guess this is for your birthday.”
“My birthday’s in May.”
“Happy early birthday.” He paused, watching her. “Open it.”
She shook the necklace from its pouch and held it in her hand, smiling. “It’s beautiful. I love it,” she said, pressing it against her chest. “But I’m supposed to get you something for your opening. Not the other way around.”
“I’ve never heard that rule.” He took the necklace and stepped behind her to fasten it. When he’d seen it in the store window, he’d had no choice. The owner who’d made the necklace told him it was one-of-a-kind, made from something called blue topaz. When Jess turned to face him, touching the glittering stone, he knew he’d been right. It matched the vapor blue of her eyes. “There was no way I couldn’t get that for you.”
She leaned in and gave him an awesome thank you kiss that made him want to shower her with gifts. She took his hand and said, “have you ever noticed your skin is exactly the same temperature as mine?”
“I have.”
“You’ve got to dance to this song,” Vols announced, as the first atonal crash of “Here Comes Your Man” escaped from the mini speakers hooked up to his iPod. He started bobbing his head to the unmistakably catchy baseline. “The Pixies make such happy fucking music.”
Crowe started to do a chicken dance around the electric chair. Martin Vols’s entire body shook like he was having an epileptic seizure.
“I love this song,” Jess said, and started shimmying around the room and swinging her hips.
He pumped his arms in the air and jumped up and down to the music. Soon, the baseline had them all bobbing around flubbing lyrics at the top of their lungs. They must have looked ridiculous, but no one gave a shit. They had their own show, who cared about anything else?
When the song ended, he and Jess turned, breathless, to his wall, and stared. “Wow,” she said. “It’s spectacular.”
He looked at the collection. Mounted on the wall together, the individual pieces became something he couldn’t have imagined. He thought about the love that had gone into each one of those sketches. He remembered how they’d changed for him when he started weighing down Ellie’s form with the colorful shapes. From a distance, it looked like a mosaic. But as you came closer, peered inside, the whole effect changed and became dark, heavy. A smile crept onto his face. He’d done something. Something good.
Vols turned to look, too. “Those are kickass, man. Jesus, I want to buy one.”
That got Crowe’s attention. She looked up from what she was doing and took in his work. “Fuck me,” she said. “Beautiful. And disturbing.” She gave a slow, affirmative nod.
He could pretty much die a happy man. He looked at the room and at his work alongside two of the most interesting new artists around. Not only did he have a real show, he was moving out of the city to live with Jess. Everything was perfect, which made it that much worse that the Buzz story would go out to subscribers in the next few days, just in time for the opening. He prayed Rick would wait until Monday to fire him.
THE NEXT THREE DAYS WERE INTERMINABLE AS HE WAITED FOR the shit to hit the fan. When he wasn’t making plans with Jess about the move, he buried himself in Oscar research and tried to avoid Rick. He tried to do normal things, like reading and painting. But sustaining concentration was as hopeless as trying to sleep or eat.
“Dad, you’re doing the thing again,” Toby said.
“What thing?” He stared at his fingers thrumming the dining room table. He balled up a fist and gave the table a thud. “Sorry.”
“Are you going to leave your tortellini?”
Sean pushed his plate across the table. “Go ahead.” He was sure the mixture of excitement and dread was going to give him a heart attack, or at least an ulcer.
That night, Ellie called after Toby had gone to bed. Instead of a greeting, she launched right in. “You’re moving to Rhode Island?”
“I was going to tell you,” he said, though he hadn’t exactly decided when. “It’s just been so—”
“With Toby’s teacher?” He could tell Ellie was gearing up for a battle.
But there was nothing to battle over. “Yes.”
“Sean, I don’t even know her. I’m not just going to let my son move to a different state … with a stranger.”
He decided not to point out that she had no say in the matter, that she’d set the tone for leaving months ago. “Jess is amazing and Toby loves her. I love her.” The dead air may have meant he’d hurt her. It wasn’t what he’d intended, but he was glad he’d said it, glad it was out in the open. “I know you don’t know her. But you have to trust me on this one. Jess cares about Toby more than you could imagine. He will be loved.”
“But …”
“I get to have a life too.”
The line went silent again. “I promised Toby I’d see him, that it wouldn’t be like it was before.” Her voice had changed. It was smaller, more fragile. “I won’t break that promise.”
“You better not,” he said, and meant it. “He needs us both.”
HE TOOK A BOTTLE OF TUMS TO BUZZ THE NEXT DAY AND TRIED TO focus on an Oscar hook-up spread. The mouse shook in his hand as he worked.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” Rick shouted from across the office. Something heavy—a piece of furniture or a volume of the Encyclopedia Britanica—crashed against a wall. “Benning!”
GETTING FIRED WASN’T AS BAD AS HE THOUGHT IT WOULD BE. Though he didn’t feel good about screwing Rick, who would certainly be next on the chopping block.
Clearing out his stuff took exactly a minute and a half. He grabbed the only two photos on his desk, one of a tanned Toby from the beach last summer and another of their first hiking trip, with Toby on his shoulders after he’d realized that hiking really meant walking. He shoved three packs of multi-colored Post-its and a handful of pens into his jacket pocket and took the elevator to freedom.
He went directly to the Burdot Gallery to check on the last-minute details and to remind himself that getting canned by his crappy job didn’t matter. He would devote his free time to making art. A day job would only slow him down after the show.
He climbed the stairs to the gallery and saw instantly that it was all wrong. Instead of putting the finishing touches on the show, there were people taking his art off the Sean Benning wall. He rushed at them. “Whoa, stop! What are you doing?”
“Taking this stuff down,” said one of the workers, who wore paint-splattered coveralls.
“Why? What?” His heart was racing and the room seemed too bright. “Can you stop that?” he said to the one taking down his last piece. His head hurt. “Where’s Camille?”
He heard the agitated click of her heels before he saw her. The unflappable Camille Burdot looked like she was about to implode. “Take them down, already,” she yelled at the workers. “Move faster!” When she saw Sean, she clutched her chest and shrieked. “You terrified me. Where did you come from?”
“Why are you taking them down?” His hands were trembling. “Camille, what’s going on?”
“What’s going on,” she said, bitterly, “is that I have to cut you from the show.” She took a breath, then looked him in the eye. “I’m sorry. Very sorry.”
“But,” he stammered, “but it’s all set to go. I’ve invited everyone I know
.” His heart pounded in his ears. “It’s tomorrow.”
“Trust me, this is a major blow to me, too.”
“So why … what’s … how come?”
She sighed. “One of our biggest investors fell in love with a new artist. When he gets this way, he is a big crybaby until he gets what he wants.” She paused. “I had to pull you to include her.”
“But …” His eyes darted around the room. “Why don’t you pull someone else? You promised that I—”
“It’s decided.”
“Camille … I can … look … if I hang my work closer together, I can free up half the wall.” This was a good idea. Constructive.
She was shaking her head tightly.
“Three quarters of the wall. I can figure it out. Just … just don’t cut me.”
“It’s out of my control.”
“But … it’s … Who is it? Who’s the artist?”
“You would not have heard of her,” Camille said. “Like you, she is a newcomer.”
“Camille, please, it’s not fair. I—”
“Tell me about it,” she snapped. “I’m having some nobody shoved down my throat. At my own gallery!” She exhaled sharply through her nose.
“What about one piece? Can I show just one piece?”
“No.”
“No?” The word ricocheted inside his head, infuriating him. “No!? Who the hell are you to tell me no?” Everything in the room was blurring, spinning. He wheeled around, looking for something to help make his point. The stepladder by pregnant Ellie was the only prop around. He lunged for it and wound up aiming for an open piece of wall that used to house his work. He would smash the wall, make a hole, crack the whole gallery apart.
“Don’t do it,” Camille warned. “Just don’t.”
He tried to take a deep breath but the adrenaline was too strong and it came out as a grunt.
“You’re talented.” He noticed that Camille looked pale. “You’ll get a show. Just not here. Not now.”
He hurled the stepladder across the room where it landed with a loud crash. “Screw you, Camille,” he said. “You just ruined my fucking life.” He left without looking back. He was reeling when he hit the sidewalk. His cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He checked caller ID, then picked up.