Falling Star (28 page)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kelly mounted the stairs.
Enough with the limestone.

The agent yammered to her back. "This is a
custom staircase. And we have three bedrooms on the upper level,
and two full baths, one of them en suite."

At the top of the stairs the woman darted
ahead of her to lead the way. Kelly rolled her eyes. The fake
French shit was driving her nuts. And she couldn't stand the way
the agent kept trying to guide her around, as if she'd get lost
otherwise. The place wasn't that big.

The woman corralled her into the master
bedroom. "Coved ceilings, as you can see, and sea-grass floor
coverings." She pointed up and down like a model from
The Price
Is Right
, then ran across the room to throw open what Kelly had
learned were French doors. Figured. "And because this is a hillside
property, from this level we can walk out to the garden."

The woman traipsed out and Kelly followed.
"Oh, it has a pool," Kelly said. She liked pools. Rich people had
pools. And not those blue plastic ones, either, like her family had
in Fresno. That embarrassing kind that you took out of a box every
summer and set up in the backyard and that trashed the lawn by
Labor Day.

"This pool has an exercise jet," the agent
went on. "And, of course, a Jacuzzi."

Of course. Everything was "of course." "Of
course" a Sub-Zero. "Of course" a Thermador range. "Of course" a
convection oven. Like Kelly knew what any of that was.

"So what do they want for this place?" Kelly
asked.

"Seven fifty." The woman leaned in closer.
Kelly got a whiff of stale coffee and plain old bad breath. "But I
expect the sellers to exhibit some flexibility."

"What, they're hard up for cash?"

The agent looked shocked. "I wouldn't say
that. But they've already purchased a new home and are eager to
close a deal on this property."

"Right." Hard up for cash. Kelly made a loop
around the pool, then went back inside and down to the first floor.
She walked out the front door to look at the house again from the
street.

She just wasn't sure it was fancy enough.
English Country, the agent told her, but all she knew was that it
said "doing pretty well" and not "raging." After all, she was a
prime-time anchor now. Her house should make a statement.

But maybe it was the best statement she could
make. As it was, it was kind of a stretch. The rule of thumb
somebody told her was that she should spend no more than three
times her annual income buying a house. Even though Scoppio seemed
stuck on a hundred thirty grand a year, she was pretty sure Rico
could get him up to a quarter million. Then
pas de
problem
.

"What would be the down payment on this?" she
asked the agent, who'd scurried outside to stand next to her on the
curb.

The woman's eyes lit up.
Pathetic,
Kelly thought.
She really needs the bucks
.

"Assuming you were able to get it for, say,
seven twenty-five"—the woman pulled a calculator out of her purse
and punched some buttons—"the standard twenty percent down would be
one forty-five. And you should expect an additional ten thousand in
closing costs."

Kelly processed that. So all that stood
between her and a Bel Air address was a hundred fifty-five
grand.

Which she had no doubt she could pry out of
Miles. He was just the kind of guy who liked to show how big and
important he was by throwing cash around.

"Give me a day or two," she told the agent.
"I might make an offer."

*

So far, so good
. Natalie moved aside
script pages L04 and L05 and listened to Jim read page L06, the
final story of the final section. They were almost done with the
audition's newscast portion and she hadn't made a single flub. Her
ability to read PrompTer without stumbling had once again gotten
her through.

Jim paused and made a half turn in her
direction, signaling the start of the chitchat. She smiled,
anticipating a specific question to which she could craft a clever
response.

"So, Natalie," he said, "tell me about
yourself."

She stared at him.
Thanks, idiot
. But
then she smiled instead. "Well, Jim," she began, "I was born and
raised in Los Angeles but have always taken whatever chance I had
to come here to New York." She inclined her head slightly to
include the camera in the conversation, as though it were another
person in the room. "I remember years ago when I first visited the
Metropolitan Museum—" She went on briefly, relating a funny
anecdote from the trip, which she'd taken during spring break her
junior year in college.

Jim chuckled and Natalie laughed, giving him
a chance to ask another question.

He never did.

Instead the intercom system buzzed on.
"Thanks, Natalie." It was Dean Drosher. "An intern will escort you
to my office."

That's it?
That was nothing by way of
an interview, nothing. She'd deliberately kept her first response
short because she'd expected several questions, a real
conversation. In fact, she had a few questions lined up to ask
Jim.

Who had already stood up. "Thanks, Natalie."
He shook her hand and walked off.

That's it?
She tried to ignore the
warning bells that were by now sounding a cacophony in her brain.
Am I just here as a courtesy? Are they not really considering me
for this job?

Because it didn't seem like they were. She
unplugged her earpiece from the console and carefully removed the
mike, trying to contain the sinking feeling in her gut. Things just
didn't add up. Having her audition with the morning guy. Giving her
almost no time to prep the script. Truncating her interview
segment. Not even bothering to have her meet the news director
beforehand.

"Right this way, Miss Daniels." The same
intern who'd summoned Natalie from the makeup room now stood by the
anchor desk to lead her away.

Natalie smoothed her skirt and jacket and
followed the girl through a maze of hallways.
Don't worry about
it,
she told herself
. The audition went fine. Focus now on
charming the hell out of Dean Drosher.

Because she'd learned long ago that getting
hired for on-air jobs was like getting asked out on dates. Similar
dynamics were at play. It was usually a male who did the deciding.
The judgments were subjective, when it came right down to it, made
on a gut level. If he liked you, you were in. If he didn't like
you, you had to cut your losses and move on.

They arrived at the news director's office.
Natalie held out her hand and flashed Dean Drosher her most
brilliant smile, the one that had worked wonders on the two news
directors in her past who'd hired her for anchor jobs, in
Sacramento and Los Angeles.

And that had worked such magic on Miles. He'd
proposed in two months. Of course she'd been younger then. By a
lot.

She assessed her smile's effect on Dean
Drosher.

Nothing.

Then the real shocker. He glanced at his
watch, furtively, as if he didn't want her to notice.

He's already bored and we haven't even
started?
The date equivalent was requesting the check right
after the appetizer.

"Sit down, Natalie." He motioned her toward a
brown Naugahyde couch that hunched beneath the tone window. His
office looked like every other news director's office. Stacks of
videotapes and periodicals. Numerous awards, of the plaque and
statuette variety. Mementoes from cities past, where he'd earned
his journalistic stripes. Rochester and Pittsburgh, in Dean
Drosher's case.

The man himself looked preppy and intense. He
was small and wiry, with a receding hairline and round
tortoiseshell glasses. Natalie knew him to be in his early
thirties, a TV-news wunderkind. She knew Tony Scoppio resented the
hell out of him.

And he's almost a decade younger than
me
. What a switch. The other two news directors for whom she'd
auditioned in the past had been old enough to be her father.

"I enjoyed your work from Monaco," he said.
"Very impressive."

"Thank you. I—"

"I'm surprised KXLA is willing to let you
go."

He was giving her a funny look but she'd
anticipated the question. "Dean, there's only one way I can explain
it. It basically stems from a personality conflict with Tony
Scoppio. This is the first time—"

He cut her off again. "I don't want to hear
about you and Scoppio. Tell me about the stories on your reel."

For a beat, she was silent.
I didn't think
I'd ever find a news director who's more abrupt than Scoppio
.
But then she began to talk about the stories and she and Drosher
had a real give and take. There was no question he was engaged. And
the packages on her reel were good—she knew it. The story about the
Korean shopkeeper who'd lost everything in the LA riots, for which
she'd won both an Emmy and a Golden Mike. The piece from Kobe, in
the aftermath of the quake, in which a local boy walked her down a
street on which every single house had been destroyed and every
single family had lost a loved one. And of course, a segment from
the Hope Dalmont interview, hastily edited on to the reel before
Geoff had FedExed it to Dean Drosher.

When she stopped speaking, she noticed
Drosher was eyeing her carefully. Steadily she returned his stare,
keeping a light in her eyes and a smile on her lips. But she was
stunned when totally out of left field he asked her a question
she'd never before in her life heard from a news director.

"Is there any reason you might not be
psychologically equipped to handle the day-to-day stress of an
anchor position?"

Before she could respond his intercom buzzed.
"The two o'clock's here," a female voice said.

His hand snapped out. "Thanks for coming out,
Natalie."

What in the world kind of question was
that? And who in hell is "the two o'clock"?
They'd barely
talked for fifteen minutes and their conversation had ended on the
oddest of odd notes. Nor had he said word one about the actual job,
though both of them knew exactly what it entailed. Prime-time
anchor jobs were prime-time anchor jobs, the same everywhere.

He rose and stood by his door. This time he
looked at his watch with no attempt to hide the gesture. He might
as well have said, "Shoo," he was so clearly eager for her to
leave.

Slowly she rose as well, reluctant to go. But
he was standing by his door, looking damned impatient. "Thank you,
Dean," she said and again shook his hand. She held on to it.
"Please know there is nothing that would limit my ability to
perform this role. If there is any other tape I might show you, or
references—"

"We don't need to see anything more." He
pulled his hand away and nodded, not meeting her eyes. The same
intern appeared to spirit her away.

It was over. She'd been dismissed. She
emerged into the bright Manhattan sunshine, the July afternoon
glorious and hot. On the wide sidewalk pedestrians jostled past:
businesspeople, matrons, joggers with dogs on leash—all apparently
with somewhere to go and something to do.

In a daze she forced herself to move
purposefully in the direction of the Met. She'd walk there, even if
it took forever, even if she sweated like a pig, even if her feet
killed by the time she arrived.

Who cared, anyway? She had nothing better to
do.

*

Geoff watched Janet. She was laughing, her
head thrown back, her long blond hair whipped by the wind as the
44-foot
Island Lady
cut through the waves on its way from
Long Beach to Catalina Island. He'd hired the oceangoing sloop and
a man to sail it so that he could be on the water with Janet but
not have to focus on the boating. Geoff loved the sea. He'd made
most of his big-life decisions on the water, like the Sunday
morning when he was 21 and surfing off Bell's Beach and finally
decided that, yes, he would leave Sydney for Los Angeles. So this
was the right place to be this afternoon.

He'd left work much earlier than usual and
asked Janet to meet him at his house. Now, hours later, he gazed at
her, in her white shorts and white sleeveless tee. She looked
exquisite, he thought, as if she should live on the water.
And
she's such a classic, she'll always be beautiful. And warm and
giving and good with children and dogs.

He glanced away from the woman he was
planning to make his wife and stared into the distance, the salty
sea air making his eyes water. Ahead of him Catalina Island rose
hulking from the sea, verdant and green. It was a spectacular day.
A regatta was sailing out of the harbor, colorful spinnakers
slapping gaily in the wind. His heart was pounding, which amazed
him. Janet was so perfect and still he was nervous.

Perhaps it shouldn't surprise him. Men must
always be nervous before they propose, he reasoned. Nervous because
she might say no. Nervous because she might say yes. And he,
especially, should be nervous, because he had never been eager to
climb aboard the commitment bandwagon. Already he'd put it off for
longer than most men. And once he married, that would be it. Done.
No turning back.

He really should do it now. He wiped his
palms on his shorts. They'd already been out on the water for three
hours and he hadn't done it yet. They were almost to Catalina. He
hadn't done it yet.

He checked his pocket again, just to be sure.
Yes, the little black velvet box was there. Waiting. He took a deep
breath.

All right.

Ready.

Carefully he moved into the center of the
boat and got down on one knee on the floorboards in front of Janet.
She looked down at him, laughing still, and riffled his hair. Then,
almost imperceptibly, her face changed. He couldn't put a finger on
quite how. A slight tilt of the head, maybe, a stillness in her
demeanor.
What must be in my face?
he wondered. He had no
idea.
But she sees something there. Of course she does. She
knows me so well.