Chapter Twenty-Nine
Twenty-nine
Back in the car, I told Spike that Book Babe and Leila Donnelly were one and the same.
“That’s nuts!” he said. “Call your editor, Melanie Joan. Tell him to stop the presses. Or start the presses. What’s the right terminology?”
Melanie Joan shrugged. She said nothing. She didn’t pick up her phone.
“How about Tony?” I said. “He’s going to be thrilled.”
“Not right now,” she said. “I don’t want to tell anybody at the moment.”
“But…that review she posted is worthless,” Spike said. “Your editor and agent should know.”
She shook her head.
“Maybe we should keep it to ourselves and make her sweat?” I tried. “Is that your line of thinking? You want to see if she posts a positive review and an apology on her own? That might carry more weight with Evan. But I still think we should tell Tony.”
Melanie Joan stayed silent.
Spike and I looked at each other.
I pulled down my visor and glanced in the mirror. Melanie Joan sat in the backseat, arms and legs crossed tight, half her face shielded by her sunglasses. Unreadable.
“Melanie Joan?” I said. “Are you okay?”
“I hate her,” she said. “I hate Leila Donnelly.”
“Me, too,” I said. “We all do.”
“She called me washed-up,” Melanie Joan said. “And fossilized. And…old.”
“Sticks and stones,” Spike said. “And anyway, you know that’s bullshit. You’re fabulous.”
Melanie Joan said nothing for a long while. She smoothed her hair and crossed her hands demurely in her lap.
“Spike’s right, you know,” I said. “You really shouldn’t let anything she said back there—”
“You know what? I think I need a nice long nap,” Melanie Joan said. And then she was through talking.
—
Two hours later, when I was in my office and Spike was at his restaurant and Melanie Joan was back at her hotel, presumably taking that nap, Blake came in from reception and told me that someone named ForeverLove@ had emailed my website.
He wouldn’t have bothered me, he said, but the subject line was URGENT in all caps.
I was amazed that anybody still used Hotmail, but I opened it anyway. I had a feeling I knew who the sender was.
The email consisted of one line: It’s LD. Can we please meet? Plus a phone number. I found the “please” part interesting. I called the number. A woman picked up. I recognized that whispery voice immediately.
“Hello, Leila,” I said.
“I need to talk to you.”
“What about?”
“Nothing I can say over the phone.”
I took my time responding. “Can Melanie Joan come?”
“Just you.”
“Why?”
“Because what I have to say is very…sensitive. Plus, she hates me.”
“Do you blame her?”
She breathed, in and out. “No.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Sunny, listen. What you guys think about me is true. But only partly.”
“Which part?”
“The part I can’t say over the phone.”
I took a moment. Thought about it. “I don’t know.”
“Please,” she said. “I’ll come to you. Banners Kitchen & Tap. Five p.m.”
I’d been to Banners. It was a sports bar. Burgers. Beer. Enormous screens. Very public, yet at the same time, the perfect place for a famous romance writer to go unnoticed. I looked at the clock on my desktop. It was three-fifty p.m. “You’re leaving now?”
“Yes.”
“What about Tommy?”
“He’s at my mom’s.”
I was curious about what she had to say to me, but I didn’t want to seem too eager. I looked at the clock on my computer screen, waited for the minute to pass. When it seemed like enough time had elapsed, I responded. “Okay.”
“Thank you,” she said. “And thank you…for not telling Melanie Joan.”
She hung up.
—
At six p.m., I was nursing a beer at a high-top near the bar at Banners.
The Red Sox were playing the Padres on the forty-foot screen.
Everyone at the bar was shouting, and everyone on the screen was going wild.
Home run for the Sox. The sound system was far too excellent for its own good.
Banners annoyed me nearly as much as baseball did.
Leila Donnelly still hadn’t shown. I was starting to wonder if this wasn’t some kind of ill-advised prank.
For the third time, I called the number she’d emailed me.
Again, the call went straight to voicemail and the mailbox was full.
“Okay, Hotmail,” I said. “You had your chance.” I couldn’t even hear my own voice in this place. Fenway was probably quieter.
I took a few more swallows of my beer. Then I started scrolling through my contacts.
I knew more journalists than I’d thought. I figured I’d call my friend Tom Gorman at The Globe first—keep things Boston Strong. Then I’d go wide with the story. And what a story it would be: how the Taylor Swift of romance had duped her loyal fans.
The bar crowd quieted down a bit. I prayed nobody would hit another home run, at least until I could pay my tab.
I got out my wallet and my phone vibrated.
I thought maybe it might be Leila, but no such luck.
Tony’s name was on my screen. I’d called him shortly after we returned from Connecticut to tell him about Book Babe’s true identity.
He’d been thrilled, of course. Let’s keep this close to the vest for now, he’d said.
See how much public groveling we can get out of her.
It was the last I’d spoken with him. I wondered if Leila had decided to talk to Tony rather than to me. If that was the case, I wished she’d told me before I’d wasted a full hour at a sports bar.
As I accepted the call, Bregman stepped up to the plate. Everyone around me started cheering. I’d forgotten my earbuds as usual, so I plugged my left ear in order to hear Tony. “You’ll never guess what I’m watching on the world’s biggest TV right now,” I said. “Seriously. You will not guess.”
“Is she with you?” Tony said.
“Who?” I said.
“Who else?”
I sighed. “We dropped her off at the hotel at about one,” I said. “She was planning on sleeping all day, which seemed like a good idea.”
“Yeah, well, it would have been.”
“What?”
“We’ve lost her again,” Tony said.
“Oh, no.”
“She told Harold that she was hitting the sack. He ran out to do a few errands, and when he checked in on her, she was gone. She’d shoved pillows under the covers like a goddamn middle-schooler sneaking out past curfew.”
“Maybe she’s at the hotel gym?” I said. “Or out for a walk.”
“We checked the gym,” he said. “And it would be a long walk, even for Melanie Joan. She’s been gone for at least three hours.”
I exhaled. “I don’t understand her sometimes.”
“Sometimes?”
Bregman hit a home run. The place exploded in cheers. I needed to pay my bill and get out of this hellhole. “Have you tried Spike’s?” I said. “She sort of has a thing for him.”
“I know,” he said. “I tried. She’s not there.”
Just as he said it, I thought I heard the sound of my own name ringing out from the din. “Wait a minute,” I said. I listened. There was no mistaking it. Melanie Joan’s voice was strange like that. It occupied its own special register. “She’s here,” I said.