Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
He wasn’t as cute, as clever, or even as well-connected as Elizabeth had hoped.
But George Wickham did have charm and a thick Rolodex—or what passed for one in the contact list on his iPhone.
And she needed to get ahold of a few names totally out of her reach if she was going to get this coffee-table book wrapped up and to the publishers by May.
It was for this reason alone that Elizabeth trudged through the late January snow to meet him for coffee.
Did that mean she was using him? Maybe a little, but at least he wasn’t hard to spend time with.
She’d met George a few weeks earlier at Blackie’s, a sports bar near the Philips/Hill offices.
She was with a large group from work watching the Knicks lose, and he was hanging out with what he called his “band of brothers.” She cocked an eyebrow at that overused phrase.
“Really? Did you fight together side by side on St. Crispin’s Day or just hang out and watch Netflix together? ”
He smiled perhaps the whitest smile Elizabeth had ever seen—she was sure it would glow in black light—and assured her that he and his boys were united by two important, all-consuming bonds: their fantasy football league and the fact that none of them, though nearing thirty, were yet married.
“We won’t give up the first, but one or two of us are yearning for hearth and home.
” She nodded and wondered how sports-obsessed metrosexuals who gambled could qualify as husband material.
It wasn’t until she learned he was a sports agent that Elizabeth could set aside her first impression of his blindingly shiny facade and start a normal conversation about sports, the book project she was working on, and the athletes she’d like to include in it.
And it was pretty amazing that George happened to know half a dozen of the names she mentioned.
“Derek Jeter? No problem.” Her hopes swelling, they exchanged numbers, and he vowed to follow up.
Since that initial meeting, Elizabeth had secured two of the big names she’d sought, exchanged e-mails with a few others, and sat down and interviewed perhaps the largest man she’d ever met: an Alabama boy turned all-pro defensive linebacker.
He looked like a fearsome giant until he broke into a gentle smile.
She wondered what it would be like not to have a neck or to have biceps and triceps bigger than an average person’s waist. It was a great interview, and he shared a wonderful story about Bear Bryant, the venerated college coach turned into a saint by Crimson Tide fans.
Elizabeth was thrilled and couldn’t wait for the biggest catch of all; George said he was well acquainted with a number of current and former Yankees players.
He had lots of stories, and she couldn’t help but notice a natural charisma that appeared to win over everyone they encountered.
Although she kept their meetings to her office or a lunch table, Elizabeth did enjoy spending time with him.
She knew college sports, but through George and his contacts, she was also learning a lot about the inside game of professional sports.
He seemed interested in her, too, especially after he overheard her on the phone insisting to Jane that she didn’t want to go to any happy hour that included the Bingley sisters.
“Bingley? Do they have a brother named Charles?” George put down his coffee and looked at her curiously.
“Yes, my sister’s dating him.”
George looked stricken. “Oh. That means his friend is hovering about…Darcy? Poor little rich boy Darcy?”
Elizabeth’s phone chimed, signaling a text. She ignored it and peered at him closely. “Yes, the illustrious Fitzwilliam Darcy. You know him?”
“Much to my great misfortune. He is the bane of my existence.”
A chill enveloped her. “Exactly how is it you know him?”
Wickham looked bleakly at her. “You wonder why I spend so much time with my buddies? Because they’re the band of brothers who took care of me after Darcy ruined my life.”
Elizabeth stared at him. “What?”
George reached across the table and took her hand.
“I was dating the most beautiful woman. She was wealthy, a blue-blooded Vassar girl, but she loved me. Me. A guy from Yonkers. She was at some Park Avenue shindig without me, and he was there and put the moves on her. Told her she’d be the perfect Mrs. Darcy, but once he’d slept with her and was done messing with her head, he tossed her aside.
As always. He uses his money and his nice cars to get what he wants.
I wanted to marry her, but after she saw the life I couldn’t give her, she didn’t love me anymore. ”
“Oh my God.” She doesn’t sound like a keeper, though.
“Darcy’s likely slept with every socialite between here and London. He’s got himself some serious mommy issues. His mother was a bit of a party girl herself.”
Oh.
“Do be careful around him, Liz. You’re a nice girl, so you’re probably safe. He doesn’t touch nice, middle-class girls.”
“Oh dear. Well, you know us nice state college co-eds; we have cooties.” She rolled her eyes until she recalled Darcy’s censure of their interlude. “This is wrong. We can’t do this.”
George smiled and rubbed his thumb over her knuckles. “He’s an idiot. Doesn’t know what he’s missing with someone like you.”
Tell me about it. She pulled her hand out of his and sipped her coffee.
She could tell George had more to say, but she didn’t want to hear it.
Darcy apparently was even more awful than she thought.
She knew enough about unhappy mothers, and learning Fitzwilliam Darcy also had mommy issues left her feeling uncomfortable for reasons she didn’t want to explore.
Not long after that overly caffeinated conversation, George texted her about a probable meeting with Derek Jeter.
Then he asked her out on a real date. After rolling her eyes at his texted invitation to dinner, Elizabeth declined, citing the ethical separation of her work and social life.
She didn’t bring up Darcy again and kept their subsequent meetings focused on George’s acquaintances and whether they—Hall of Fame tight end for the Cowboys, Olympic silver medalist in speed skating—could be contacted.
Other than that dinner date, he hadn’t asked for anything in return…
yet. In truth, she didn’t want him to. His charm was infectious, but that made him dangerous.
Being around him was all too easy, and that, like his solicitous charm, was a red flag.
Besides, she didn’t have time for men. There was work, there was her research on the 1950s Red Scare for the book she was writing in her spare time, and there was her hope of going for her PhD once she was out of debt.
And there was Jane, who needed Elizabeth’s ear more than usual.
Charles was “The One.” Hmm…was he? Tony, James, and Jeff had seemed pretty much perfect too—until Jane decided they weren’t.
And then they all went off and found women who liked them just the way they were, got married, and in at least one case, became a father.
You’re twenty-six, Jane. Just have fun. This isn’t the nineteenth century.
You have at least another decade, maybe more, before you can start to freak out.
So much time. Their parents, Ted and Sylvia, had made a mistake, the first of many, when they married two months after they met.
“He didn’t pull out,” according to their mother’s oft-told “Let This Be a Warning to You!” story, and she became pregnant their very first time.
So they got hitched; it’s what nice girls did then.
That baby was lost but they forged on together.
A few years passed, and they welcomed Jane, followed just over a year later by Elizabeth.
Rather than justifying her choice to marry, having two little girls only compounded their mother’s belief that her life as then scripted was a mistake.
Jane might chalk it up to undiagnosed post-partum depression, but Elizabeth could neither excuse nor forgive her mother for spending mortgage payments on QVC, going off for “girls’ weekends” in Atlantic City, and then, finally, leaving them for good a decade later.
Last time either girl had seen a birthday card from their mother it had arrived from Branson, Missouri, where Sylvia Bennet-LaRue was pursuing a career as a backup singer at Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede.
Elizabeth wondered whether she and Jane were afraid of making the same mistakes as their mother—not by late-night credit card binges on purses, kitchen appliances, and Elizabeth Taylor jewelry knockoffs, but by settling for somebody because it felt safe and only realizing the mistake too far in with children, mortgages, and car payments.
Jane always jumped in with both feet and her heart on her sleeve.
As a result of her emotional leaps, Jane’s twenties had proved messy. Until Charles. “The One.”