Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Wes
Wes came downstairs first, despite needing a few minutes to lie on his bed and stare at the ceiling.
He imagined lifting Maureen’s shirt over her head and rumpling her hair.
He pictured the softness of her skin under his fingertips and what her low, sweet voice would sound like moaning into his ear.
The curse of being a creative. He had more than enough imagination to play the whole scene out to its frustratingly satisfying conclusion.
He needed to stop thinking about her, though, or he wouldn’t make it down the stairs without getting another erection.
Attraction or not, this was still a competition.
His best skill was charm, and he hoped to introduce himself to Estelle’s daughters before Mo.
He hadn’t gone on a tour with Maureen to seduce her, but if that had somehow thrown her off the game, then all the better.
Boxing had taught him to get in a jab when the opportunity allowed—but that wasn’t why he’d wanted to see Maureen.
In all honesty, he was lonely and unsettled after the news about his parents.
Seeing Mo, walking and talking to her—and eventually kissing her—had been such a shock to the system that it almost made him feel balanced again.
Gary greeted him at the bottom of the steps.
His mustache bloomed around his mouth, fuzzy and gray.
Wes wondered if Estelle liked it. He had never been much for facial hair, but then again, everyone’s tastes were different.
Gary was a good-looking older man, especially in his knit green vest. Gary glanced behind Wes as if waiting for Maureen.
“She’s on her way,” Wes said. “Probably soon.”
“You’re attached at the hip, from what it looks like to me,” Gary said, smiling.
At least she’s not my boss, Wes wanted to say, but he refrained. “Lucky for me that the competition turned out to be so interesting.”
He could see Gary wanted to ask something, but Wes didn’t want to answer anything. Instead, Wes asked, “What do you think of our chapters so far?”
“Very distinct. To be honest, I never much liked The Proud and the Lost . Not really my kind of book. I like mysteries. Detectives in English countryside, bodies turning up at the county fair and the vicar is involved. That kind of thing.”
Wes was gobsmacked. “How in the world did you end up working for the Morgan estate?”
“Estelle gave a lecture at my college many, many years ago.”
“Oh, about books?”
“No, accountancy. She worked as an accountant for years. Anyway, we clicked. I was more interested in her than in her mother’s work, and that seemed like what she was looking for.
I will say that her late husband was a big fan of her mother’s, and it made it boring overhearing them.
Not that I was spying, but working for her for so long—I think even Estelle got bored of thinking about her mother’s legacy at times. ”
Wes could understand the notion of being bored of hearing about a famous parent.
He stood at the French doors into the drawing room while Gary plowed forward.
The room hadn’t changed much in an hour, but the atmosphere sure had.
Four figures were silhouetted by the large windows.
One was Estelle, of course, and he knew two others.
Estelle’s children were notorious via gossip and photographs.
Neither the gossip nor the photographs had been especially flattering, but Wes was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. He knew how the tabloids could be.
Back when Wes was little, Ulla had begun her upward climb to celebrity and Wes became an infrequent feature of that attention. He sometimes disliked being sent to boarding school, but at least behind its walls, he had a foot of brick and ivy to cover him.
Rather than dodging the limelight, Estelle’s children had done their best to stay in it.
Her older daughter, Flor (short, Wes assumed, for Florence or Flora?) was a celebrity Realtor around the Hamptons.
She had an overworked nose that smelled of too much surgery.
That nose appeared all over billboards that said things like “Trust Flor” and “Flor’s the Door to New Homeownership” (which Wes read in a kind of off-rhyme, like ‘FLOR is the DOOR to new HOMEownerSHIP’—probably giving her family’s history in literature too much credit).
The younger daughter, who was in her late forties, was Talia.
Talia was a curvaceous brunette whose default expression seemed to be something smells bad .
She had starred in a range of lifestyle reality TV shows called Rich Wives of Manhattan .
She was most likely the reason the whole family had gotten dragged in and out of the tabloids in the first place.
From what Wes had seen, Estelle had never participated in the Rich Wives franchise.
As the literary agent to the estate, Wes had enough contact with her lawyer to know that the word gauche was thrown around frequently in terms of how her younger daughter had made a name for herself.
Talia’s husband, Gus, was an entrepreneur of some kind, which was never made explicit in the show and was even less explicit in the wording of the company.
He “managed logistics” for a “transportation firm,” the kind of transportation never being exactly obvious.
It all felt mafia-y to Wes, but he would never mention that to Gus, who was even taller in person than he had been on TV.
Seeing Flor and Talia in the flesh was jarring, but Wes took a deep breath and followed Gary inside.
There were light-green cocktails in tall glasses sweating slightly on a silver platter on top of the coffee table in the middle of the room.
Delicate butter cookies filled a second, smaller silver platter, with a stack of white napkins set next to it.
He grabbed a drink but ignored the cookies.
Suddenly his stomach wasn’t up to it. The glass cooled his too-warm hands, and he took a sip.
Mint and lime mixed in Wes’s mouth, along with something slightly sparkly—distinct.
Distinct in a terrible way. Wes made a noise that made Gus turn around.
The noise might have sounded like trying to spit something out.
He swallowed instead and studied Gus’s square face. “Surprising taste. What’s the mixer?”
“Mountain Dew. We call this the Mountain Mama. Feels appropriate for the Hill.”
It wasn’t. Wes would need to find a convenient window ledge to forget it on, but the only candidate for that had Talia leaning out of it.
“It’s a favorite of mine,” Gus said, “though Tally says it’s responsible for all my dental bills.” He offered a hand to shake, not smiling. “Gus. You must be Wes, the agent-turned- novelist.”
“Still an agent too,” Wes said. As he shook Gus’s hand.
he thought about the email wasteland that waited in his inbox.
He had purposefully left his laptop behind and unsynced the work email from his phone for the weekend.
He had, however, answered two client texts about nerves and revision questions.
It was hard to say Hi, give me a tiny break.
I’m a writer and need my creative space and time to be nervous, too.
Flor turned from the sofa and gave a demure wave.
“I don’t shake since the virus. I can’t believe we all shook hands for so long; my God, what barbarians we all were.
Even my clients get used to the wave these days.
When I close deals, I sometimes will shake, but you know how the pressure of that deal moment feels, don’t you? ”
Wes nodded, trying to manage a response that didn’t bring COVID back up again, and settled on turning his attention to Talia.
She, it turned out, stayed near the window as well, but only to allow her cigarette smoke to drift out of it.
“Hi,” she said, voice deep and throaty and familiar.
“I’d shake your hand—I’m not a kook—but Mom says smoke goes outside or I do, so … ”
Wes waved, cut off at the knees here with only his little shell-less snail of a creative self to offer.
They were about to hear the ending of his book, the little tender work of his heart, without hearing any of the preceding chapters.
Suddenly he had a better idea, one that came from his agent-mind, not his writer one.
“I’ll make some copies of my full manuscript to leave with all of you in case my final chapter makes you curious about the rest.”
“Oh, Gary could do that, couldn’t you, Gary?” Flor asked lazily.
Wes saw Gary’s back straighten. “I could.”
“Make a copy of the one that Mom has. We’ll have a sister book club. Won’t that be fun?” Talia asked, blowing a final puff of smoke out the window.
“What about having full copies of both manuscripts?” Flor asked.
He could tell from the change in the room that Mo was behind him.
He wasn’t trying to sneak one past her or get a leg up by offering his full book, but he was embarrassed that it might look that way.
He took a sip of the awful drink, resisting the urge to look over his shoulder at her.
When he did, he saw she was wearing the dress she’d gotten that afternoon. His heart beat faster at the sight of her pale arms crossed in front of her. She shouldn’t be allowed to drive him to distraction when he was the one that had driven them to the Hill.
Talia glanced at Maureen. “Yes, both books. Or, Mom, what about the one you told us about too? The horror movie one? Clive goes on a killing spree? You said it was very The Shining . We could see all three.”
Estelle’s expression clouded over. “No. We’re not considering that one.”
Flor turned to Gary with the air of someone in a drive-through. “We’ll each take a copy of these two, then, Gary.”
Gary put his plate down and rubbed his hands on his gray slacks. “I’ll go get those printed.”