Chapter 11
11
The opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.
THE ART OF WAR , SUN TZU
The five steps to running a con:
Look the part.
Give them the upper hand.
Give them something they want.
Get what you want.
GTFO.
Just Desserts WhatsApp Group. 23.40EST.
Bella
See, I’ve done my research.
Sienna
Where did you get that?
Bella
Psychology USA
Astrid
Hahahahaha.
Bella
No, seriously. It was in their November issue.
Astrid
You’re still scary.
Bella had stayed up all night running through her plan. Whatever Chester C. Carlton wrote, it needed not to come back on her. Otherwise, it would look like her mistake and Chase would wiggle out of it. So, the article needed to very specifically be about him and not about a failed interview that she had set up. In fact, he needed to not mention her at all.
In all of Chester’s hit pieces the main running theme was that his negative expectations were always met; he wanted to like something but he suspected it was going to be awful… and it was. It was his brand. And here was the perfect opportunity. He suspected she was nothing but a nepo-hire socialite with two degrees bought by daddy and nothing between her ears but Prada and Versace.
So that was what he was going to get.
She’d video called Astrid the day before, wanting her input on what Bella had planned to wear. Thankfully Astrid had forgiven her for what was now being referred to as ‘the hedge incident’.
She’d decided to go for monochrome. She needed to look like more of herself, not a caricature, so more jewellery than she would wear, more labels than she would like, more make-up and higher heels.
‘Oh my God, it’s perfect,’ Astrid had screamed. ‘I don’t quite know how you’ve done it. I mean you look like you, but you look like… super annoying. Like the kind of person who would eat three quarters of a plate of food and send it back to the chef.’
‘I would never.’
‘I know you wouldn’t, babe, but you look like you would, and it’s perfect.’
The chat had descended into laughter at that point and they spent another forty minutes on the phone just catching up, despite how tired Bella was leading a double life. Because seeing how much Astrid needed this had pushed Bella’s conscience deep down to a place where it couldn’t disrupt their plans.
She shook off that thought and stopped outside QT, the trendy bar she’d arranged for the ‘interview’. Paige had called in a favour from a friend so that the venue was not under the impression that it would be actually used for an interview in case they got stroppy because it didn’t end up being featured in the magazine. And it was absolutely perfect. Just the right side of chic to not be too trendy. Near enough the gallery to make it absolutely unconscionable that Chase couldn’t make it, far enough away not to raise any suspicion from Nayak staff.
Bella braced herself. She could do this. She would do this. And then the dominos would soon topple on Chase Miller’s career.
She pushed open the glass door by the fake elk horn handle that was, in Bella’s opinion, a little macabre, but would probably appeal to Chester C. Carlton’s style of literary assassination. At 11.30a.m. the bar was eerily empty until a tall attractive blond with hair cut close to their head greeted her with a smile.
‘Are you Bella?’ they asked.
‘Campbel?’
‘Yes, that’s me. Paige told me all about you.’ The mischief twinkling in Campbel’s eyes told Bella that they would be an accomplice to her mission.
‘And me, you. This place is fantastic. I’m just sorry you can’t get any free promo from it.’
Campbel waved her off. ‘No worries. We do alright.’
Bella took in the décor. They must do more than alright. It was beautiful and she already wanted to come back here. With the girls. Maybe to celebrate once they’d all achieved their vengeance. After they’d been to Ali’s restaurant and filled up on delicious fried things.
‘I’ve got you set up back here.’
Bella followed Campbel past the bar and towards more standard seating tables, which, as she told Campbel, were perfect.
‘Okay,’ Bella announced. ‘So, I’ll head out, and if you could call me when he gets here. I’ll probably wait at least ten minutes before “rushing in”, with all the apologies.’
‘Yup. Can do. Anything else?’
‘Yes. Could you perhaps fill this with cold coffee?’ Bella asked, producing a take-out cup. ‘And, I’m sorry in advance for the mess. I’ll clean it up, I promise.’
‘Mess?’
* * *
Nearly fifteen minutes after Chester C. Carlton had arrived at QT, Bella rushed in, bag in the crook of her arm, several pieces of folded paper, phone and keys gripped in one hand, take-out coffee cup in the other, a single, elegant, wisp of hair out of place, and a blush on her cheeks not from rushing here as Chester would think, but from standing out in the damn cold for so long.
Chester C. Carlton had had the gall to be late.
But that only helped her cause.
Step 1. Look the part. Rushed, harried and utterly out of her depth was just what she wanted, because no one loves the fall of a socialite more than a journalist.
‘Oh Mr Carlton, I am so sorry I’m late. There was a problem with the… no, you don’t need to know all that, it’s just… anyway. Mr Carlton,’ she said again, as if trying to gather herself, ‘it is so lovely to meet you. Thank you for taking the time to meet with… us.’
She bit her lip and not-so-secretly checked her watch, scattering papers all over the floor.
‘Oh,’ she said, letting out a squeaking noise that she’d never once made before in her life. It seemed to prompt Chester to action though as he helped to gather up the discarded papers. One of which was a printout email about Zadzisai, which she snatched back a little too quickly for Chester to get a good look at, but enough to make him curious.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said again . ‘It’s just that this is the first time I’ve set up a real interview with such a famous journalist and I’m a little nervous.’ Her tone of voice was practically the definition of obsequious.
Chester C. Carlton grinned with delight, though whether it was the compliment or Bella’s utter ineptitude, she couldn’t tell.
‘That’s okay, sweetheart. You’re doing great,’ he said patronisingly.
Step 2. Give them the upper hand. Making Chester think that he could run this interview lowered his defences and made him overconfident, so when he gestured to the table, Bella knew he’d taken both the lead and the bait.
‘Chase appears to be running a little late I gather.’
‘Chase? Well,’ she winced, a little. ‘Mr Carlton?—’
‘Please, call me Chester,’ he said, laying a hand on her forearm.
She smiled, hiding her grimace. This was what she wanted. ‘Chester,’ she echoed for him. ‘I think… when it comes to artistic types, they are often so preoccupied with their creative endeavours that other things… don’t seem to mean as much.’
‘Things like punctuality,’ Chester said, smiling like the Cheshire Cat. ‘I mean, I have met him before so…’ he dangled.
‘So you know,’ she half cried in mock relief. ‘You know how difficult he is,’ Bella said, stretching the truth. ‘And how… critical he can be.’ Which was almost an outright lie.
‘Oh absolutely. Superior and dismissive,’ Chester added with a smile.
Well, kind of… but not really, she mused, replying, ‘Yes,’ instead. ‘I am very sorry he’s running so late though, so if you’ll let me, I’ll just see where he is.’
‘Absolutely,’ Chester replied.
Bella got up from the table and walked a little away. Enough to make it possible for Chester to try and peek at the paperwork she’d purposely left on the table.
She pressed a button on her phone that brought up the world clock.
‘Yes, Chase? I know, I’m sorry,’ she said, stuttering into her phone as if she were intimidated by him. ‘But we have the… no, I understand but… yes. With Mr Carlton. No, I think he’d wanted to speak to you specifically. Oh… okay… well… No, yes, obviously I… Mm hmm.’
She flicked a glance back to Chester who was eating all this up. And now for the pièce de résistance, she cradled the phone in the crook of her neck, tore a strip off the paper sachet of ground pepper she’d found just for this occasion and sniffed the smallest pinch of it.
‘Oh,’ she exclaimed, accidentally out loud as the pepper reached the delicate lining of her nose. This wasn’t supposed to hurt according to the internet. ‘ Oh ,’ she said again before clamping her mouth shut. But finally, as predicted, though with a lot more inconvenience than imagined, Bella’s eyes began to well with tears.
Bella caught Campbel’s shocked gaze, and the last thing Bella saw before turning back to the table was an impressed thumbs up.
Chester’s rather smug look turned to one of alarm when he caught sight of Bella.
‘Oh lord, what happened?’ he asked, standing up to usher her into the seat opposite him.
‘He’s… ehm, he’s…’ Bella didn’t even have to fake it, she was practically choking on the pepper, tears streaming down her face – it was all becoming a little too much. A glass of water appeared at her hand alongside tissues from Campbel who seemed under the impression that her performance was Oscar-worthy.
‘Oh my God, is he dead?’ gasped Chester C. with rather more glee than horror in his expression.
She shook her hand and her head, causing tears to run in different directions.
‘Not coming… he’s not coming,’ she finally spluttered out.
‘Oh,’ Chester replied, sitting back into his chair and Bella couldn’t work out whether he was disappointed that Chase was still alive or not.
‘I’m just so embarrassed,’ Bella confessed, half truthfully. ‘Mortified, even.’
‘There, there,’ Chester replied, patting the back of her hand.
‘I’ve gone to such lengths to try and get some positive PR after…’ She trailed off, glancing at Chester awkwardly.
‘Oh hun, we all know about Julia.’
‘Yes! Yes, Julia. That’s what I meant.’
Chester opened his mouth and then snapped it shut again, eyes appraising.
‘And now you’ll have to print an article that writes Chase as a no-show and it will all come back on me, because you know how he’s able to slip around things like that. I should have known better, I should have done better,’ she said, leaning heavily into the mea culpa.
‘Oh, no, I wouldn’t do that,’ he offered, not quite sincerely enough for her to be sure yet. She just needed to give him something bigger to write about.
‘And you’ve been so kind,’ she said, leaning across the table and intentionally knocking over the takeaway coffee cup so that coffee spilled across all her paperwork.
She gasped in shock and, hand over mouth, as if it were all too much, she ran towards the ladies’ around the corner, stopping where she could just make out the table reflected in the mirror behind the bar.
Chester looked after her and then back down and… picked up the bait, exactly as planned. Step 3 was an internal email she’d mocked up about Zadzisai pulling out of the running as featured artist. It would be enough for Chester to speak to the people he needed to and put a story together about Chase’s incompetence. Bella had purposefully left Levy out of it, absolutely refusing to draw the young student into this at all.
But she knew she had Chester when he whipped out his phone and snapped pictures of as many of the coffee-soaked documents as he could. She came back around the corner just as he was putting his phone away.
‘I really am sorry,’ she said, offering to pick up a dry-cleaning bill if it had caught any of his clothes.
He assured her it wasn’t necessary, and (a very important Step 4 – getting what she wanted) promised not to breathe a word of the interview before he practically ran for the elk horn-handled door. She didn’t even need Step 5 in the end.
‘Paige said you’d be good, but I must say, I’m very impressed,’ Campbel said, bringing cleaning products to the table. ‘I don’t suppose you fancy trying to break up my sister-in-law and her obnoxious husband?’
Bella smiled, but once again didn’t quite feel as victorious as she thought she might have been feeling.
Just Desserts WhatsApp Group. 11.58EST.
Astrid
How’d it go?
Bella
Like magic.
Sienna
whoop whoop.
But there was still nothing from Paige.
* * *
Chase was on his way back from the studio. He’d spent nearly the entire day with Sascha, working on the unifying idea for the show, whittling it down to something concise and the deepest, purest expression of thought. Now, it was down to Sascha. He’d pop in over the next few weeks, but they’d done much of the hard work, focusing her creativity, developing artistic expressions beyond the constraints of her degree training, pushing and stretching that creativity to where Chase was sure she could be.
It was just…
The paint. The artwork. The creativity.
It was tearing him apart not to be able to meet his own creative needs. Fuck. This was why he’d got a job as gallery director. Because he’d still be in the world, still be able to be near it, but not have to force himself to be around others in the process of creating their art in the way that he no longer could. But now? Now helping Sascha create, hone, and refine her art was the only way he could save the job he’d never wanted in his best friend’s gallery.
And now it was the only way he could save the job he’d never wanted, in his best friend’s gallery. So yeah, he’d do whatever it took to make it work.
Whatever it took.
He hopped out of the Uber, thanking the driver, carrying the package he’d picked up on the way. He didn’t know what he’d been thinking. Clearly, he hadn’t been.
But as he’d left the studio, he’d recognised the bakery from the branding on the pastry box Bella had brought to the gallery at the beginning of the week, and he’d stopped at the window.
She might try to deny it, but Bella Carmichael had the sweetest tooth he’d ever known. He remembered her thumb tapping longingly by the description of the red velvet cake at the restaurant they’d gone to. Denying herself.
He hated seeing that. As if she didn’t think she was allowed a treat, an indulgence. No, Bella probably thought it was bad .
And before he’d even known what he was doing, he’d stepped inside the bakery and bought one red velvet cupcake.
And here he was, riding the elevator up to their floor, with a small cardboard box, wondering if he’d lost his mind.
It was okay to buy a member of his staff a treat, wasn’t it?
Not when your motivation is questionable.
Questionable? he argued with himself. I’m doing something nice.
Two words. Bella. Tempted.
Oh fuck off, he told himself.
Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea.
The doors of the elevator opened and he walked slowly down the corridor. He didn’t have to give her the cake, he mused. He could just…
But his hand was already knocking on the door.
Bella opened the door and his first thought was something was wrong. Her face was pale and her eyes were dull. Subdued was the word he was looking for. And in an instant, it disappeared under that familiar smile he was beginning to dislike so damn much.
‘Chase? Is everything okay?’
‘Yes, I just…’ He didn’t really know what to say.
Bella looked at the box, a little spark flickering in those grey eyes and he nearly laughed.
‘I got this for you. As a thank you,’ he said, the words coming to mind. ‘You’ve been picking up a lot of my slack while I’ve been working with Sascha and this is a little – and by no means the least – thank you, for all your hard work.’
Chase took a breath as he noticed the flush on her cheeks.
‘If we do make it to the opening, it will be thanks to you,’ he added, truthfully. ‘We, I , couldn’t be doing this without you.’
Bella swallowed and he wondered if she’d said something wrong. He’d have thought that she’d be grateful. Or at least even a little snarky, but the quietness was new on her.
‘Thank you,’ she said, taking the box from where he held it out to her.
She took a little peak under the lid.
‘ Oh. It’s red velvet,’ she said, surprised.
‘I thought you’d like it,’ he replied without thinking.
She looked up at him and he was blasted by an unreadable grey gaze.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered.
And again he was struck by the thought that something was wrong. That she needed comfort, or reassurance. He opened his mouth but she cut him off saying good night and closed the door, leaving him half relieved. Because he’d wanted something then. Something he had no business wanting.
Her.