June (35 page)

Jack drove them to the Great Northern Hotel, which shared a vast fireproof building with the Northern Opera House. June watched the valet dash toward the car. “You don’t think I’m checking in with you?” she asked.

Jack laughed. “I’m here for dinner. Though if you’re game to get a room afterward, you’ll get no objection from me.” He was playing with her. His eyes skittered over her breasts, and she knew he was desperate to undress her. She was desperate too, which was dangerous; they were walking into a hotel together in a city that was not their own.

The steak house was on the first floor. They entered at the restaurant instead of through the lobby; whatever happened tonight, there could be no mistaking their good intentions. A table was waiting at the back, behind a plaster column and a cloud of smoke. The tall man who seated them didn’t bat an eye, but June supposed men like this were paid not to bat an eye. He handed them their menus over an arm draped with a white cloth. June took the menu as if this was the way she ordered every meal.

“Rib eye,” Jack said, waving off a menu. “Medium-rare. Whiskey, neat. Baked potato and creamed spinach.”

“And for the lady?”

Just when Jack made you feel at the center of his world, he reminded you that there wasn’t much room. “I’ll need to look first,” she said.

Jack seemed surprised. “Hold my order till she makes hers. Except for the whiskey. Bring that now.”

“Drink?” Jack asked her before the waiter was dismissed.

June shook her head. She thought of Persephone’s pomegranate seeds. How many meals like this would June be able to eat before she had to join Jack’s world? How many Jackson Pollocks would she be offered before she believed she had a right to own one?

She glanced around the hazy dining room. White tablecloths, candles flickering. The few businessmen eating early dinners didn’t notice them as anything but a good-looking couple out on the town. June had never been anywhere so fancy. But she could see it was nothing to Jack.

“Order me a filet mignon,” she said, handing Jack her menu.

“You all right?”

“Just need to powder my nose.” But the truth was she’d never ordered a filet mignon and her hands were shaking. She needed a moment, or maybe a few of them.

She followed the sign for the restroom out into the lobby, which was a marble wonder. Three stories above her, a crystal chandelier sparkled. She supposed that, too, would be small potatoes in Jack’s eyes. Her blood coursed at how willingly he could take this place for granted. How easily he might take her virginity here. How gladly she would give it to him. The ladies’ room was across the great hall, but she climbed the stairs instead, up to the second floor. She needed to stretch her legs. She needed to think, carefully, before she went back down and ate that steak.

Thomas pulled the Olds up to the curb. Diane was quick, not giving the valet the chance to open her door. She grabbed Lindie by the wrist and pulled her from the car and across the sidewalk. Lindie was so shocked that she obediently followed.

Just inside the restaurant, they were met by a tall man in a suit, but Diane didn’t want to be seated and she didn’t want his help. She was smiling now, but it wasn’t a smile at all. A few tables in the front were occupied, but whomever Diane was looking for wasn’t seated there. Smoke hung in the air, stinging Lindie’s eyes. Diane muttered to herself, something about knowing he had a reservation, voice lowering into a snarling lament. If anyone recognized her, they didn’t let on. And, all the while, her hand was clamped hard around Lindie’s wrist.

They paced toward the back of the restaurant. Suddenly the tall man was in their path again. “Miss DeSoto, we’re so pleased to have you here.” His voice was loud now, unnaturally so, as though warning someone of their arrival.

Diane smelled blood. She charged right through.

There, at the back of the restaurant, tucked in beside a column, sat Jack Montgomery with a glass of whiskey. If he was surprised to see them, he didn’t show it.

“There you are!” Diane said, much too loudly for the room. “Thomas told us we’d find you here!”

Jack glanced at Lindie perfunctorily, but when his eyes reached her face, he showed genuine surprise. “Is that you in there, Rabbit Legs?” Lindie blushed, not in pleasure, looking down to take in the awful rickrack at her neck, the yellow rosebuds spread tight across her bumpy chest. They both knew she looked awful.

“Expecting someone else?” Diane asked. She hovered over Jack now, taking stock of the two sets of silverware on the table.

He held up the single menu. “Just me. Needed to get out of town. Aren’t you supposed to be on set?”

“No,” said Diane.

Over Diane’s shoulder, Lindie noticed the tall man slip into the hotel lobby. It occurred to her, only then, that Jack really might not be dining alone.

He frowned. “You’re not helping your case, you know.”

“What are they going to do, reshoot all my scenes? The movie is made, Jack.” Diane’s voice was pitching toward something frantic. “A girl is entitled to a break every now and then.” She wobbled a little on her heels.

Jack offered his hand. She released Lindie’s wrist to take it. Blood tingled back into the girl’s fingertips.

“You look exhausted,” Jack said in an even, lowered voice.

“Well I am!” Diane was practically yelling now, voice churning with emotion. Her back was slumped, her posture ruined. Her hair had shaken loose on one side. Her face glistened with sweat, and Jack rose to hold her up. “In fact, I suddenly find myself so terribly tired. I need to go home, Jack. I need you to take me home. Have you had too much to drink? I need to be alone with you. Tell me you haven’t had too much. We’ll go in your car and I’ll send her home with Thomas.”

Jack flagged down another waiter, short and squat, for the tall man was still out in the lobby somewhere.

“Yes, sir.”

Diane’s body weight was now fully supported by Jack. It was hard to imagine that this was the same woman who’d blackmailed Thomas and Lindie on the drive south. She was fragile, pale, her thin ankles barely keeping her upright.

“I’ll take the steak in a doggie bag,” Jack said.

The waiter cleared his throat, eyeing Diane. His voice came out high. “The rib eye or the filet?”

Diane’s eyes cut toward Jack. But he was smooth as silk. He grinned widely at her. “Couldn’t pick. So I got both!”

The waiter bowed and dashed for the kitchen.

Diane swayed before Jack now, inches from his face. “You are alone, aren’t you?” Each word quivered.

Jack pulled out his billfold and threw a fifty down on the table, then hitched his arm under Diane’s. “Did you take your pills today?”

Fury passed across her face, but then sorrow rose over it like a great tidal wave. She began to sob.

“You’ve got to take them every day, honey,” he said gently and, without another look at Lindie, led Diane—practically carried her—out the front door toward the valet.

Lindie stood in their wake, in the haze of the restaurant, wondering what to do. Just go get in the car with Thomas?

And then Jack bounded back toward her. He grabbed the fedora he’d left at the table, and tipped it to her. “Tell June I’m sorry,” he said gravely, but, before she could ask what to do next, he was gone.

She wandered toward the waiter who’d helped with the steaks, and asked if there’d been a girl with Jack. He pressed his lips together primly. She said, “I’m her friend and she needs my help.” Had June actually come with Jack to a hotel? What was she thinking?

The waiter conferred with another well-dressed man at the back of the restaurant, then led Lindie into the lobby, toward a dark corner where June sat huddled in an armchair. She looked stricken. At the sight of Lindie in her costume, she cried, “What happened to you?”

Thomas drove them back to St. Jude. Lindie watched the headlights beam out into the night, gamboling with the insects who then gamely splattered themselves across the windshield.

June wept.

It rained all day, cold drops dowsing the green world. The DNA lady left, having duly swabbed those who needed swabbing. Tate and company started packing. Cassie shut herself in her room with a box of hemp crackers and a bag of grapes, the closest she could get to junk food under Hank’s regime, and watched the dark, wet circle on her ceiling grow.

She ignored the knocks at her door. She didn’t want to see anyone, especially Nick. Hank and Tate were equally loathsome, and Elda wasn’t Switzerland in Cassie’s eyes.

Eventually it got dark. Eventually she slept. The dreams she had were drenched with humiliation, of the girl version of June weeping in the very bed in which Cassie was now dreaming of her. Inside the dream, it finally occurred to Cassie that this girl might be June, and what she felt was a quivering, sorrowful longing for her grandmother as she had never known her, in full bloom.

By morning, Cassie was ravenous. The circle on her ceiling had grown. The light of day sharpened her intentions. She wanted her visitors to leave. As soon as they did, she would call someone to come look at the roof. Today was going to be different.

The women were downstairs. The house was still shut up; the paparazzi had made soggy camp out on the sidewalk. Boxes and suitcases lined the foyer. Hank and Elda eyed her carefully, as though she might break.

Tate was her fabulous self again. She came toward Cassie with arms outstretched, enveloping Cassie’s stiff form in a cashmere embrace.

“Can I talk to you?” Her voice was a mix of pity and forgiveness.

“You’ve heard back from the lab already?” Cassie tried to disguise any feeling in her voice. The woman from the Columbus DNA lab, whose name was Madison or McKenzie or something like that, had promised to “fast-track” their samples; Cassie was guessing the ten thousand dollars Nick had offered her to expedite things would grease any sticky wheels. She braced herself for the news.

Tate shook her head with a disappointed frown.

Nick strode into the foyer from the dining room, hands thrust into his pockets. “Can I talk to you?” He spoke directly to Cassie, as though none of what had happened the day before mattered, as though Tate wasn’t there.

“No thank you,” Cassie replied, making her voice cold. She could feel his eyes on her as Tate led her up the stairs.

Most of Tate’s belongings had been placed in the boxes along the edge of the master bedroom. But the pictures of her dog’s goofy face still dominated June’s mantelpiece; Cassie was angry at herself for having given the place over so freely.

Tate patted the bed next to her. Cassie did not obey.

“I’m sorry,” Tate said, “if you felt accused.”

“I didn’t feel accused; I was accused.”

Tate held up her hands. “It’s an unfortunate situation. Don’t punish Nick; he’s on your side. He argued your case all night.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

“Cassie!” Tate looked genuinely shocked that Cassie had such little tolerance for this. “Give me a chance.”

Cassie crossed her arms. She felt like a teenager, sullen and gruff in a way her grandmother had never tolerated for long.

“I know I can seem…cold,” Tate said. She was choosing her words carefully. Cassie saw that she wanted them to mean something. “That was my problem at the beginning. ‘The Ice Queen.’ You’re too young to remember it, but that’s how they billed me. I was too much like my mother, they said, too bitchy, too particular.” Tate grimaced. “I was headed for a career of guest spots and supporting roles. Because no one would be honest with me. No one would say it to my face. Pedigree can work for or against you. I knew it was a question of changing myself into something more appealing. But I had no idea how.”

The rain had stopped, Cassie realized. Now it was just the sound of the water spattering off leaves. She resisted the urge to lift the blind to check on the photographers.

“I had just hired my first real assistant,” Tate reminisced. “One night, I’d gotten a particularly nasty casting rejection, and I asked her what I should do. How could I change myself into what they wanted? She said I didn’t need to change so much as find the part of Daddy that everyone loved, the part of him that lives inside of me. That I needed to learn to lead with that. She said Mommy had made me strong, but Daddy would make me a star. I knew, right away, that she was right. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it myself.” Her face lit up at the memory. “I worked on my smile, my walk, my clothes. Did practice interviews so I’d come off better, had plastic surgery to play up my best features, did exercise that would take me from severe to strong. I studied Daddy’s movies, watched how he won over an audience; you couldn’t take your eyes off him. And of course I took any opportunity to step out on his arm. So much of it was about brand recognition. Jack Montgomery, the man everyone wants to either be or marry. And I was the heir to the throne.”

“Was your dad pleased?”

Tate waved her hand as if the question didn’t matter, and, in that gesture, Cassie saw that, in fact, it had mattered a great deal and that, no, he hadn’t been. “He was busy. But he supported me. No matter what Elda says, he supported both of us. He wanted us to be happy; I truly know that in my heart. And the last few years—well, we didn’t see as much of each other as we both would have liked—but he seemed…lighter. He made sure I knew how much he enjoyed my company. I’ll be forever grateful we had that time.”

“Okay,” Cassie said impatiently.

“Anyway, that was Margaret.”

Cassie waited for more of an explanation; when it didn’t come, she said, “I’m not sure I follow.”

Tate looked flummoxed; the logic was perfectly obvious to her. “You see what a mess my family is. Elda hates me. Mommy chose to slit her wrists on a Thursday, the one day she knew I’d be home to find her. And Daddy, well, he tried. He tried.”

“But Margaret.”

“Yes, Margaret. She was the assistant. She believed in me. She cared about me from the beginning, when I was nothing, just the Ice Queen. Before the money, before Max and Aloysius and my Emmys and my Oscar nomination. Before I was famous on my own terms.”

Fascinating that Tate Montgomery still lived in a fantasy world in which she’d started out as “nothing.” Cassie tensed as she predicted how this would go: Tate would recount how Max had cheated on her with Margaret. She’d weep in Cassie’s arms about the greatest betrayal of her life. Cassie would be expected to comfort her, and Tate would believe they’d made amends. At least she’d be gone by sundown.

But instead Tate said: “I fell for her.” She gasped at her own declaration. “Not right away. At first we were boss and employee, and then friends and then…” Tate stilled her hands. “I fell for her. That’s the only way to describe it, Cassie. I’d never been attracted to women, or whatever, but Margaret wasn’t just some woman, she was Margaret. We’d been working so hard to get me what I wanted. But by then Max and I were married, and I loved him too, as much as he’ll let anyone love him. We were the It couple. The roles came pouring in. He won Grammies, I won Emmys. I finally had everything I’d ever wanted.” She sounded dazed.

Was Tate Montgomery actually telling Cassie that she’d cheated on Max Hall with a woman? Was that what the infidelity rumors had really been? Cassie had just assumed Hank meant Max and Margaret. But it was really Margaret and Tate?

“So what happened?”

“Margaret asked me to leave Max. Said if I truly loved her, I’d do it. Said I was America’s Sweetheart now, and they’d love me no matter who I was sleeping with. But you and I both know that’s a damn lie.”

“I don’t care who you sleep with.”

Tate fixed Cassie squarely in her gaze. “If you read in some tabloid that I cheated on the hottest man alive with my overweight, middle-aged dykey assistant, it wouldn’t change how you feel about me?”

Cassie swallowed. Tate nodded triumphantly.

“Anyway, it didn’t matter. Margaret quit. Then Max found out. I don’t know how. For all I know, she told him. He said a lot of very nasty things. Made a lot of very nasty threats. Margaret completely cut me off. Won’t so much as answer a phone call. At least they can agree on hating me.”

“So why would Max agree to keep the circumstances of your divorce a secret? He comes out of this looking fine.”

“ ‘The Sexiest Man Alive Turns His Wife Gay’?” Tate laughed at the implausibility of the tabloid headline. “No way.”

Cassie’s eyes skimmed the pictures of that ridiculous dog in front of all those fancy places. How many frequent flier miles had that poor canine logged? “Why are you telling me this?” she asked. She felt bored and exhausted. She didn’t know why she was supposed to care.

“I thought a lot about what you had to say. About how it’s going to come out eventually. And you’re right, I’d rather control it. That’s how you have to handle these things.” Tate looked Cassie keenly in the eye. “I’d like for you to leak it to your source.”

Cassie stared at Tate for a long time. “My source?”

“I don’t blame you for releasing the pictures—they’re very arty. The online optics are much more positive than we would have thought. As for the divorce stuff, well, I’m not thrilled it’s out there, but the truth is, hon, you didn’t know any better. Nick messed up; you were too much of a distraction, and well, he…” She shrugged. “Anyway, we can use it to our advantage now, even if Nick’s being a wet rag about the whole thing. Better to rip off the Band-Aid, that’s what Daddy always said.”

Cassie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “I didn’t give the press those pictures. I didn’t tell anyone about your divorce. And I’m certainly not going to tell a soul about your affair with Margaret.”

“Would money be a motivator? I’m sure we can come to terms.”

Cassie had to get out of there.

“You seem upset.”

“Damn right I’m upset. I can’t believe—”

There was a sharp knock at the door, and Nick’s head popped in. “Sorry to break this up”—he wasn’t at all, Cassie could tell—“but I’ve got the lab on the phone.”

Tate held out her hand impatiently.

“Downstairs,” he said sharply, clutching said phone to his chest. He turned back toward the master staircase without waiting to see if they were coming too.