Chapter 9 #2
“And what good did it do me? How many copies did we sell?”
“It takes time to build a reputation. Those books were a beginning. They were intellectually exciting.”
"This one will be, too.” She leaned forward, bracing her elbows on the arms of the chair.
“Don’t you see? That’s my skill—to pull deeper meaning out of something seemingly shallow.
That was what my biography of Dorothea DeBlois was all about.
Her name meant nothing. She was a newspaper colunmist whose work had been buried.
But she wrote things before 1910 that are right on the mark today.
And there were good reasons why she saw things the way she did, reasons that had to do with the times and her family and where she lived.
That was what I was able to bring out in the book.
That was where the excitement came from. ”
Recomposing herself, she looked Arlan in the eye.
“I can make the same kind of excitement with this one. The book will sell because of who it’s about.
The 20/20 segment is proof of that. John is a marketable commodity now, only I have a unique angle.
I can offer insight into the man and his mind.
I can analyze him in ways that no therapist could because John would never open up to a therapist. But he’s opened to me. I’m the one to do it, Arlan.”
He was interested. She could see it in his eyes. Still he held back. “How long have you known John St. George?”
“The first time I set eyes on him, I was twelve. The first time I talked with him, I was fifteen. I was seventeen when we became friends. I’m forty-four now. You figure it out.”
Arlan arched a brow. “Friends all that time?”
“Enemies on occasion. All friends are.”
“And lovers?”
“I didn’t say we were lovers.”
“But you were: Did you have a falling out?”
“Why do you ask that?”
“Because writing a book like the one you’re talking about won’t please him. He may hate you.”
“Making The New York Times list will be ample compensation for that.”
“There are no guarantees. If you write the book and it doesn’t make the lists, you’ll still have made an enemy. What then?”
“Life goes on.” The words came blithely. Lord knew she’d said them enough times in the last few days.
“Without John?”
“My God, Arlan, you have a one-track mind. Yes, life goes on without John! He isn’t the be-all and end-all of my world! Why are you making such an issue of this?”
“Because I don’t understand your relationship with him. It’s another piece of the puzzle you are, and, dammit, you are a puzzle. Your life before New York is a big blank to me. Each time I ask, you evade.”
“My life is New York.”
“Baloney. You didn’t just grow like Topsy in a corner of Central Park. You spent six years in Boston before you came here, and eighteen before that in Tammany Hall—”
“Timiny Cove,” she corrected, smiling in spite of herself. “Why do you always do that?”
“Because the place has no meaning to me. You won’t say a thing about it. There are times when I wonder whether it isn’t fictitious.”
“It isn’t.”
“Then it must be some kind of evil little town that you had to flee on threat of death.”
“Not quite.” Her smile went flat. “But we all move on. You did it when you left Poughkeepsie. Do I ask you what it was like as a little boy growing up there?”
“You already know it was boring as sin.” He tapped a pen against his chin. “And anyway, maybe you’re not into understanding my mind the way I’m into understanding yours. I adore you.”
Hillary sighed and looked at the ceiling.
“I do,” he insisted. “If I didn’t have a perfectly good wife at home—”
“How is she, by the way?”
He settled back in his seat. “Pissed off that I won’t take her to Puerto Vallarta next month, but otherwise fine.”
“Why won’t you take her to Puerto Vallarta?”
“Because every time I set foot in Mexico, I get sick. I told her to find a place in Florida, maybe one of the Keys. But she wants Puerto Vallarta. What’s so special about Puerto Vallarta?”
“The person you’re there with,” Hillary replied, then paused, stricken.
She’d spent her fortieth birthday in Puerto Vallarta with John.
It was one of the few times they’d traveled together.
John rarely took vacations. He was a workaholic in the truest sense of the word.
His initial motivation had been building the business, but it had been a long time since the business had demanded the hours he still put in.
To him, work was both an excuse and an escape.
It was one way to keep people at a comfortable distance.
For all his success, he had never come to feel totally accepted by, and therefore at ease with, society’s crème de la crème.
Of course, that hadn’t come out on 20/20.
Spurred by that thought, Hillary took a breath. “I have to write this book, Arlan. It’s something in me that’s aching to be done.”
“All of a sudden?”
“No. I’ve thought of doing it before.” More than once over the years, as she’d watched John transform St. George Mining from a small-scale gem enterprise into the sophisticated parent of Facets, she had thought to document the change.
Corporate reports told only half the story.
“But I was never quite sure before now that John was a big enough somebody to make the book a success. And I want a success. I need one. I’m forty-four and growing older every day.
I’ve had two books published, neither with much hoopla, and dozens of magazine articles that may or may not have been read.
I’ve reached a plateau. My career is stagnating.
If I don’t hit it big soon, I’ll run out of time.
Or strength. Or sanity.” She scowled. “Dammit, I want my turn on Donahue. I want to be written up in People. I want to go to parties and have people know what I do for a living. I want to be someone.”
“Like John St. George?”
His words stopped her cold. “Yes, like John St. George.” She didn’t hide her pique.
“I can’t take away from what he’s achieved.
No one can do that. John took over St. George Mining after his father died and built it into something his father hadn’t begun to dream of.
Professionally, the man deserves kudos. As a person, he stinks. ”
She went to look out the window. The view was concrete and bleak.
“John St. George is a totally self-centered man. At an early age he decided what he wanted in life and set out to get it. The real shrewdness hasn’t been so much in how he built Facets as in how he used people along the way.
No one steps in his path and stays there for long.
He sweeps them away—threatens them, bribes them, manipulates them so cleverly that some don’t even know it’s happened.
He may have done enough work to earn his place in the limelight, but there are a hell of a lot of people who should be right up there with him. ”
“Like who?”
“Like Pam. His sister, stepsister, actually.”
“The jewelry designer?”
Hillary sent a wry grin toward Arlan’s reflection in the dirty glass.
The fact that he knew who Pam was made her point about the family’s prominence.
“That’s right. Her work is what makes Facets so special.
And successful. But John pretends not to see that.
He concentrates on the ledger’s bottom line.
God forbid he should acknowledge that Pam contributes something crucial to that bottom line.
” She turned. “And then there’s Patricia, John’s stepmother.
I won’t begin to tell you what he did to her.
Suffice it to say that she lives in a private institution on the outskirts of Boston.
And Cutter, who should have been Pam’s husband—what John has done to Cutter is unconscionable. ”
Those three were the most obvious examples.
Angry and tense at the thought, she said, “The hell of it is that he got away with it. He hasn’t been called to account for half of what he’s done in his life, and he blithely goes on as though he hasn’t a thing to regret.
We’re talking warped values here. The man doesn’t have a conscience. ”
“So what do you see in him?”
She should have known Arlan would ask. But how could she answer?
How did one explain a case of idol worship that had turned into an obsession?
She had been aware of John’s faults for years, but they hadn’t diminished her attraction to him.
Even now, after he’d dumped her so cruelly, she wasn’t sure that if she were face to face with him she’d be able to spit in his eye.
“You’ve been friends a long time,” Arlan prodded. “What’s the basis for the friendship?”
“Time, history, mutual appreciation of slow dancing—I don’t know, Arlan.” She wished he wouldn’t push. The issue was too sensitive. “You reach a point where the relationship is a basis in itself. Maybe it’s habit.”
“Or compulsion.”
“Maybe.” She faced him head-on. “But if that’s so, it’ll make for damn good reading.
Now, are you interested in this book, or aren’t you, because if you’re not, I’m taking it elsewhere.
” She felt in control again and filled with resolve.
There was solace in knowing that John’s betrayal was being put to good use.
“I don’t want to have to go elsewhere. We work well together, you and I.
We both know this is your kind of story.
It involves a smooth, good-looking, wealthy guy.
” She arched a luring brow. “Wouldn’t you love to see him smeared? ”