Mr. Love: A Romantic Comedy (19 page)

5
5

Jane, back from a walk through the sad streets of
Hicksville, opens the front door of her mother’s house and hears Gordon Rushworth’s voice.

Hears him saying
her
name.

Hurrying through to the living room she sees her mother sitting watching
The Sarah Snowdon Show
.

“Jane, your Mr. Love is on,” Myra Cooper says, “and he’s talking about
you
!”

Jane sits on the edge of a chair, eyes on the screen, as Sarah Snowdon says, “The person you’re talking about, Jane Cooper, was the literary agent representing
Iv
y, is that right?”

“Yes. She still represents the book.”

Sarah raises a plucked eyebrow.

“Really? I thought she was fired?”

Gordon shrugs.

“What does that matter? She’s my agent, that’s all that counts. But what I was saying is that Jane was a victim here. She knew nothing of th
e lies and represented my sister in good faith.”

“I understand you want to apologize, Gordon, but what does this have to do with you denying authorship of
Ivy
?”

“I was ashamed of
Ivy
, true. I thought it just another example of a genre I despised: the bleeding heart, ten-tissue weepy kind of stuff about love affairs and failed marriages. So I distanced myself from it. Then Jane Cooper, whom I met when she was representing my sister, challenged my dismissive attitude toward women’s fiction. She asked me a question that has stayed with me.”

Gordon looks into the camera and it’s as if he’s looking straight at Jane.

“Jane, maybe you’re out there somewhere watching this, so I’m doing my best to reproduce your question. Forgive me if I don’t do it justice, but here goes.”

He looks back at Sarah.

“She asked me why supposedly lightweight
feminine
themes like divorce, adultery and family life suddenly become
important
when tackled by male novelists like Updike, Eugenides or Franzen?”

“A good question.”

“Yes, a
very
good question.”

“And what was your reply?”

“Oh, I fobbed her off saying something about those men elevating them beyond chick-lit.”

“Do you believe that now?”

“No, I don’t. Jane told me that she found
Ivy
honest and moving, and even profound. I would like to believe that she is right.”

Sarah turns to the audience.

“What do we think?”

Roars of approval.

Jane hears her cell phone trilling from down the corridor where she has left it in her old bedroom.

She hurries into the room and sees the phone going crazy.

Missed calls.

Texts.

All from New York publishing houses.

She mutes the phone, throws it in a drawer which she slams shut
before she bolts from the house.

Escaping the deluge unleashed upon her by the insufferable Gordon Rushworth.

56

Jane is in
Hicksville’s only surviving bar, a gloomy place down near the Greyhound station.

Aside from her
, the patrons are exclusively male and over the age of fifty.

Nobody bothers Jane and the bartender, a giant with a wall eye and a badly set broken nose, seems to have no use for conversation.

Her requests for more beer are met with a solemn nod of the head and a wheezing breath as he reaches into the cooler below the counter, emerges with a longneck, pops the cap and sets the bottle down before her.

She has long made it clear that she has no need of a glass.

Some hours into her solitary bender—long enough for the hard edges of the room to lose focus and melt like a Dali painting—a man heaves himself onto the stool beside her.

“Janey?” he says. “Janey Cooper?”

Jane closes one eye in an effort to bring him into focus.

He is maybe forty-five, big—though no
t as huge as the barkeep—and bald, with a smile that may have been charming a few thousand cigarettes ago.

She doesn’t recognize him.

Maybe an acquaintance of her father’s?

“Do I know you
?” Jane says, slurring only a little.

He laughs.

“Richie,” he says. “Richie Packer.”

She stares at him blankly.

“We were in high school together. I was captain of the football team.”

With great effort she finds remnants of the smug young jock of more than a decade ago hidden inside the oaf who has fallen victim to premature middle-age.

“Okay,” she says, turning back to her beer.

“So I heard about your father, Janey. That’s too bad.”

“Yeah.”

“Get you a beer?”

“I’m okay,” she says, but he ignores her and orders two bottles from the bartender.

“You’re looking real good, Janey,” Richie says with a leer that is meant to be suave.

“You too.”

He laughs around the neck of his beer.

“So I hear you’re up in New York City?”

“That’s right.”

“Doin’ what?”

“Publishing.”

“Publishing?” he says as if this is something suspiciously un-American. “The big time, huh?”

“Oh yeah,” she says. “Huge.”

She drinks.

“And you, Robbie—”

“Richie.”

“Richie! What do you do?”

“I’m in waste management.”

She giggles.

“Like Tony Soprano?”

He stares at her blankly.

“Who’s he?”

Things go downhill from
there.

Richie leans in close, his breath smelling of stale beer and cigarettes and
she has to keep shifting on her stool as he paws at her like a horny Labrador while he tells her—in excruciating detail—of his failed marriage.

After what seems like hours h
e heaves himself from his seat, saying, “I’m gonna drain the main vein, then whaddaya say we get outta this place? Find somewhere more intimate?”

Jane says nothing, all her concentration on her beer.

A while later she sees Richie emerge from the washroom.

Somehow the giant bartender has
left his station without her noticing and stands waiting for Richie.

A few words are exchanged, drowned by the jukebox that’s stocked exclusively with eighties hits, and then the barkeep uses his massive hands to speed the romantically inclined Richie out of the door and into the night.

More time passes.

More beer is consumed.

The place is nearly empty when, again, Jane senses a man sitting down beside her.

“Jane?”

She turns, the room and this guy a blur.

Even the trick of closing one eye does little to bring him into focus.

“Hey,” she says, “you look like some asshole I used to know.”

“Jane,” he says
, “I think it’s time to go.”

“You look like that miserable excuse for a man, Gordy Rushworth.”

“It
is
me, Jane,” he says. “It’s Gordon.”

She leans in close to examine his face, saying, “Gordy, Gordy, Gordy?” as she tips forward off the stool and falls headlong into blackness.

57

A road crew, led by a very enthusiastic jackhammer operator, are hard at work inside Jane’s head.

She opens an eye and groans, the small shaft of sunlight that penetrates the curtains of her childhood bedroom like a laser to her eye.

She lies a while and takes stock.

Remembers drinking a vast amount of beer.

Remembers some guy from school—Robbie? Richie?—trying to hit on her and then not much else after that.

She sits up and has to wait until the room stops spinning before she levers herself slowly to her feet, noticing that she wears a pair of paisley PJs that can only belong to her mother.

Jane finds a robe and manages to shrug it on, the pounding in her head almost felling her.

Dragging herself down the corridor toward the kitchen in search of Tylenol, she remembers something else through the fog of booze.

Another guy sitting beside her in that bar.

A guy who had looked weirdly like Gordon Rushworth.

Jane shuffles into the kitchen, her eyes on the floor, and when a voice says, “Jane?” she screams and has to grab hold of the door to stop herself falling.

“Jane, are you okay?” Gordon says, standing up from the kitchen table.

She gapes at him.

“Gordon?”

“Yes,” he says.

“You
were
in that bar last night?”

“Yes, I was.”

He takes her by the elbow.

“Come
, sit down.’

She slumps into a seat at the table.

“You brought me home?”

“Yes. It took all my powers of persuasion to convince the bartender that my intentions were honorable.”

“Are they?”

“What?”

“Honorable?”             

He smiles.

“Can I get you a cup of coffee?” he asks.

“No, water. And Tylenol. They’re in the closet by the fridge.”

Gordon finds the container and fills a glass with water.

Jane slugs back the
pills and stares at Gordon.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“I came to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“About being my agent. About representing
Ivy
.”

“That ship has sailed, Gordon. Or sunk, rather.”

“Not at all. I don’t know if you heard but I was on
The Sarah Snowdon Show
yesterday?”

She is not about to give him the satisfaction of telling him that she saw him on the show, so she shakes her head.

An action she immediately regrets.

She groans.

“Are you okay?”

“Will you stop fussing over me, Gordon? Where’s my mother?”

“She went to the store.”

“Where did you stay last night
?”

“Your mother kindly allowed me use of
her sleeper couch.”

Jan
e drags her mouth down in something like a smile.

“You’re a real couch guy aren’t you, Gordon?”

He raises his hands as if surrendering.

“Jane, please let me make amends. Interest in
Ivy
has never been higher.”

“Bully for you,
Gordo
.”

She stares at him.

“I did catch a bit of that show yesterday. Heard you mouthing all of my arguments in favor of women’s fiction.”

“I did give you credit.”

“I’m not buying this sudden conversion of yours, Gordon, from the literary snob to the champion of chick-lit. I think you’re—in the words of my dear departed old dad—blowing smoke up my butt.”

He shrugs.

“Okay, let me be honest—”

“Why don’t you try that? You may enjoy the novelty.”

“Jane, I will admit that I still revere great writing but I am adjusting my frame of reference sufficiently to see the virtues of popular fiction.”

“How damned
egalitarian
of you, Gordo.”

“I’ve claimed
Ivy
as my own.”

“Only after Bitsy outed you.”

“Be that as it may, I have claimed authorship and I’m prepared to concede that as a piece of writing
Ivy
is far more successful than
Too Long the Night
.”

“Well, hallelujah for that.”

“And I have you to thank for opening my eyes.”

She stares at him.

“What do you want, Gordon? Just showing up like this?”

“I want you, Jane.”

“Really? What’s the turn on, my lion’s breath or my mother’s PJs?”

He has the good grace to blush.

“Well, of course, I would hope that our personal relationship would blossom along with our professional one.”

“Hell, Gordon, which century are you living in? Can’t you speak American for God’s sake?”

“Jane let’s stop sniping at one another and keep our eyes on the prize. There, is that
American
enough for you?”

“Keep going.”

“All the things you negotiated for
Ivy
when you were with Blunt are still on the table: the paperback sale, the movie deal.”

“Gordon, I was fired.”

“I know that. So you’re, so-to-speak, a free agent?”

“If you mean unemployed and unemployable, yes.”

“Then I’m here to sign with JCA.”

“What’s JCA?”

“The Jane Cooper Agency.”

“There is no
Jane Cooper Agency.”

“There is now.”

She stares at him.

“I’m broke, living in my mother’s house in
Hicksville.”

He places two airplane tickets on the table.

“There’s a flight to New York City leaving Indianapolis in three hours. If you hurry we can make it.”

“You’re serious about all this?”

“Yes, I am.”

“What happens when we get to
New York?”

“You talk to the publishers. You talk to
Hollywood.”

“I don’t even have an office.”

“Right now all you need is a cell phone and an iPad.”

He smiles.

“And me.”