Chapter Two
June was a hard month in Seattle. It was in this season, when the school bells rang for the last time and the peonies and delphiniums bloomed, that the locals began to complain that they’d been cheated.
The rains had started in October (invariably Seattleites swore it had come early this year); by the last week in May, even the meteorologically challenged denizens of Seattle had had enough.
They watched the news religiously, seeing the first tantalizing shots of people swimming in the warm waters farther south.
Relatives began to call, talking on cell phones as they stood outside to barbecue.
Summer had come to every other corner of America.
The locals saw it as a matter of fairness. They deserved summer. They’d put up with nine solid months of dismal weather and it was past time for the sun to deliver.
So, it was hardly surprising that it rained on the day Nora Bridge celebrated her fiftieth birthday. She didn’t take the weather as an omen or a portent of bad luck.
In retrospect, she should have.
Instead, she simply thought: Rain. Of course. It almost always rained on her birthday.
She stood at the window in her office, sipping her favorite drink—Mumm’s champagne with a slice of fresh peach—and stared out at the traffic on Broad Street. It was four-thirty. Rush hour in a city that had outgrown its highway system ten years ago.
On her windowsill, dozens of birthday cards fanned along the gleaming strip of bird’s-eye maple.
She’d received cards and gifts from everyone who worked on her radio show. Each one was appropriate and lovely, but the most treasured card had come from her elder daughter, Caroline.
Of course, the joy of that card was tempered by the fact that, again this year, there had been no card from Ruby.
“You’ll be fine tomorrow,” she spoke softly to her own reflection, captured in the rainy window.
She gave herself a little time to wallow in regret—ache for the card that wasn’t there—and then she rallied. Fifteen years of therapy had granted her this skill; she could compartmentalize.
In the past few years, she’d finally gotten a grip on her tumultuous emotions. The breakdowns and depressions that had once plagued her life were now a distant, painful memory.
She turned away from the window and glanced at the crystal clock on her desk. It was four-thirty-eight.
They were down in the conference room now, setting out food, bottles of champagne, plates filled with peach slices.
Assistants, publicists, staff writers, producers, they were all preparing to spend an hour of their valuable personal time to put together a “surprise” party for the newest star of talk radio.
She set her champagne flute down on her desk and opened one of her drawers, pulling out a small black Chanel makeup case. She touched up her face, then headed out of the office.
The hallways were unusually quiet. Probably everyone was helping out with the party. At precisely four forty-five, Nora walked into the conference room.
It was empty.
The long table was bare; no food was spread out, no tiny bits of colored confetti lay scattered on the floor. A happy-birthday banner hung from the overhead lights. It looked as if someone had started to decorate for a party and then suddenly stopped.
It was a moment before she noticed the two men standing to her left: Bob Wharton, the station’s owner and manager, and Jason Close, the lead in-house attorney.
Nora smiled warmly. “Hello, Bob. Jason,” she said, moving toward them. “It’s good to see you.”
The men exchanged a quick glance.
She felt a prickling of unease. “Bob?”
Bob’s fleshy face, aged by two-martini lunches and twenty-cigarette days, creased into a frown. “We have some bad news.”
“Bad news?”
Jason eased past Bob and came up to Nora. His steel-gray hair was perfectly combed. A black Armani suit made him look like a forty-year-old mafia don. “Earlier today, Bob took a call from a man named Vince Corell.”
Nora felt as if she’d been smacked in the face. The air rushed out of her lungs.
“He claimed he’d had an affair with you while you were married. He wanted us to pay him to keep quiet.”
“Jesus, Nora,” Bob sputtered angrily. “A goddamn affair. While your kids were at home. You should have told us.”
She’d told her readers and listeners a thousand times to be strong.
Never let them see you’re afraid. Believe in yourself and people will believe in you.
But now that she needed that strength, it was gone.
“I could say he was lying,” she said, wincing when she heard the breathy, desperate tone of her voice.
Jason opened his briefcase and pulled out a manila envelope. “Here.”
Nora’s hands were shaking as she took the envelope and opened it.
There were black-and-white photographs inside. She pulled out the top sheet. It wasn’t more than halfway out when she saw what it was.
“Oh, God,” she whispered. She reached out for the chair nearest her and clutched the metal back. Only pure willpower kept her from sinking to her knees. She crammed the pictures back into the envelope.
“There must be a way to stop this.” She looked at Jason. “An injunction. Those are private photographs.”
“Yes, they are. His. It’s obvious that you . . . knew the camera was there. You’re posing. He’s probably been waiting all this time for you to become famous. That piece in People must have done it.”
She drew in a deep breath and looked at them. “How much does he want?”
There was a pregnant pause, after which Jason stepped closer. “A half million dollars.”
“I can get that amount—”
“Money never kills this kind of thing, Nora. You know that. Sooner or later it’ll come out.”
She understood immediately. “You told him no,” she said woodenly. “And now he’s going to the tabloids.”
Jason nodded. “I’m sorry, Nora.”
“I can explain this to my fans,” she said. “Bob? They’ll underst—”
“You give moral advice, Nora.” Bob shook his head. “This is going to be a hell of a scandal. Jesus, we’ve been promoting you as a modern version of Mother Teresa. Now it turns out you’re Debbie Does Dallas.”
Nora flinched. “Not fair, Bob.”
“Believe us,” Jason said. “The trailer-park set in Small-town U.S.A. will not understand that their idol just had to be free.”
Bob nodded. “When these photos hit the air, we’ll lose advertisers instantly.”
Nora clasped her trembling hands and tried to appear calm. She knew it wasn’t working. “What do we do?”
A pause. A look. Then Jason said, “We want you to take some time off.”
It was all coming at her too fast. She couldn’t think straight. All she knew was that she couldn’t give up. This career was all she had. “I can’t—”
Jason moved closer, touched her shoulder gently.
“You’ve spent the better part of the past decade telling people to honor their commitments and put their families first. How long do you think it will take the press to uncover that you haven’t spoken to your own daughter since the divorce?
Your advice is going to ring a little hollow after that. ”
Bob nodded. “The press is going to rip you limb from limb, Nora. Not because you deserve it, but because they can. The tabloids love a celebrity in trouble . . . and with sexy pictures. Hell, they’ll be jumpin’ up and down over this.”
And just like that, Nora’s life slipped beyond her grasp.
“It’ll blow over,” she whispered, knowing in her heart that it wasn’t true, or if it was true, it wouldn’t matter, not in the end. Some winds were hurricane force and they demolished everything in their path. “I’ll take a few weeks off. See what happens. Spend some time coming up with a statement.”
“For the record,” Jason said, “this is a scheduled vacation. We won’t admit that it has anything to do with the scandal.”
“Thank you.”
“I hope you make it through this,” Jason said. “We all do.”
Jason and Bob both spoke at once, then an awkward silence descended. Nora heard them walk past her. The door clicked shut behind them.
She stood there, alone now, her gaze blurred by tears she couldn’t hold back anymore. After eleven years of working seventy-hour weeks, it was over.
Poof. Her life was gone, blown apart by a few naked photographs taken a lifetime ago. The world would see her hypocrisy, and so too—oh, God—would her daughters.
They would know at last, without question, that their mother had had an affair—and that she’d lied to all of them when she walked out of her marriage.
Ruby had a pounding headache. She’d slept on and off all day.
Finally, she stumbled into the kitchen and went to the fridge. When she opened it, the fluorescent lighting stabbed her aching eyes. Squinting, she grabbed the quart of orange juice and drank it from the container. Liquid trickled down her chin. She backhanded it away.
In the living room—what a joke; if you were living in this empty room, you were either dying or too stupid to keep breathing—she leaned against the rough wall and slid down to a sit, stretching her legs out.
She knew she needed to walk down to Chang’s Mini-Mart and pick up a newspaper, but the thought of turning to the want ads was more than she could bear.
The job at Irma’s hadn’t been much—had been godawful, in fact—but at least it had been hers.
She hadn’t had to stand in a hot line, begging for a chance, saying I’m really a comedian again.
As if she were special, instead of just another loser in the string of men and women who came to Hollywood with a cheap one-way ticket and a dream of someday.
The phone rang.
Ruby didn’t want to answer. It could hardly be good news. At best, it would be Caroline, her über-yuppie, Junior League sister who had two perfect kids and a hunk of a husband.