Chapter 3
Charlotte Ramsay was sitting at her desk in her small disordered office.
She was going through her papers to make sure she hadn’t missed anything she had to do by the end of the year.
Her office was a mess, but she was thorough and organized, and she knew where everything was.
She was a senior editor at Vanity Fair, and her forte was celebrity profiles.
There was an edge to what she wrote, and she was brutally but artfully honest, but never mean.
She liked digging deep and satisfying the readers’ lust for insider information, without exposing, humiliating, or enraging her subjects completely. And she never lied to her readers.
She had worked at the magazine for twenty years and was forty-nine years old.
She had been divorced for as long as she had worked there.
She had a casual, youthful look, with long hair wound in a loose knot usually with a pen or two stuck through it.
Her son Hugh was twenty-eight years old.
She had married and divorced young. She had met her ex-husband in college at Brown, got pregnant, married, and divorced in that order within three years.
Her husband was from a fancy family that hadn’t approved of her.
She wasn’t a socialite and hadn’t been a debutante.
She grew up in Chicago and had a Midwestern honesty about her.
She had a candid, straightforward style as a person and in what she wrote.
People found her articles informative and refreshing.
She told all, but nicely, and she wrote well.
Her father, an old-time war correspondent, had been killed while covering a minor war when she was in college.
Her mother had died before that. The only family Charlotte had was her son Hugh.
She went to graduate school at the Columbia School of Journalism, and stayed in New York.
Her son’s father, her ex-husband, was a respected writer at the London Financial Times now with a second family, a wife and three kids.
He had never had a real relationship with Hugh, who was two when they separated.
Hugh’s father was already living in London by then.
He showed up for important events, but nothing else.
Charlotte and her son Hugh were very close.
She hadn’t spoken to her ex since Hugh’s graduation from MIT as an engineer.
Hugh had taken a string of jobs in the Middle East right after he graduated.
He was living in Dubai, and thoroughly enjoying it.
Charlotte had spent Christmas with him there the year before, but this year Hugh was working in the field and couldn’t take time off to see her, since he was the youngest member of the team.
She was planning to spend Christmas alone, and didn’t mind.
She was used to it. She was an independent woman, although she missed her son, but she was happy he had work he loved, and he seemed to enjoy living in Dubai.
She had a small apartment in the West Village and a life she had created for herself, which suited her.
She’d had brief superficial affairs for years, but she didn’t want to get tangled up with anyone’s complicated life, and liked keeping her own simple.
She’d had one serious affair with a married man for six years.
It ended badly, and she had stayed away from deep, complicated relationships ever since, the ones you could never win.
She was planning to catch up on her reading over the holidays, and do some early research on a piece that was due in February, on the governor of New York.
It had been pretty dry so far, and she was trying to figure out how to put some life into it.
There hadn’t been anything juicy or exciting to say about him.
He had a pretty wife and three handsome children, and there hadn’t been a whiff of scandal, which would be disappointing to some readers.
Charlotte made no judgments about her subjects.
She just reported what was true, with intelligence, respect, and accuracy.
Her only cardinal rule to her subjects was “Don’t lie to me. ” And she didn’t either.
Her managing editor, Henry Portman, called her as she was about to leave her office.
They had a good relationship based on mutual admiration, and weren’t afraid to do battle with each other.
They both had strong opinions and a profound love of good journalism.
At Charlotte’s request, the lightweight pieces were always assigned to someone else.
She loved the big meaty stories with difficult subjects.
She got the final vote on whom she interviewed, and had the clout at the magazine to do that.
“Busy?” Henry asked her.
“Not so much. Just cleaning up my desk.” Charlotte had copper-colored red hair, and the personality to go with it. She stood up for what she believed in, and was fiery when she had to be.
“Come see me,” he said. When she did, Henry was sitting at his desk, reading something on his computer.
He looked up and smiled when he saw her.
They liked each other when they weren’t fighting, and she thought he was a fair man, when she wasn’t arguing with him about her next assignment.
In the end, he always let her do what she wanted.
He trusted her instincts. She was rarely wrong about her subjects, and surprised everyone, digging up the unsung good deeds of the worst subjects, and the long-buried scandals of the saintly ones.
People loved to read her interviews. They were always surprising.
“Are you going to Dubai again this Christmas?” he asked her as she sat down.
She was small, and had a youthful style about her.
She could talk to anyone and get them to reveal themselves.
She was a determined but gentle person with strong principles.
“No. Hugh is out in the field somewhere and can’t get time off. I’ll be here. Why?” She could see that he had an idea percolating, and wondered what it was.
“Do you want to get some sun and relax in the Caribbean?” he asked.
“Are you propositioning me, or giving me a big bonus?” she asked him with a grin. He was famously faithful to his wife, which was unusual in their line of work. And they had five kids.
“Neither. I have an assignment for you in the Caribbean. We just got the okay and the only free time our subject has is over Christmas, the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth. He’s on his boat in St. Barth, some big motor yacht, supposedly the biggest in the water. And he’s free over Christmas.”
“Who is it?” She was curious. Henry paused before he answered, and could guess what she would say. He knew her well.
“Ben Sharpe.”
“The high-tech billionaire?” He nodded. “Oh God. I’ve never heard a single decent thing about him, and he sued the magazine that wrote the last piece about him that he didn’t like. Do you really want to take that risk? I don’t.”
“He’s written a book about his life, coming out in May. His PR people want press to raise advance interest in the book, and I’d like to get a jump on it before the book comes out. It will be a big seller. He’s a very interesting guy with an unusual background.”
“All I’ve heard is that he’s a womanizer. He loves young, pretty girls, and goes through them like Kleenex. He’s made a shitload of money, and if we say anything real about him, he could sue us.”
“Possibly. But he has an intriguing history. He grew up dirt-poor. His father was a factory worker who wound up in a wheelchair after a bar fight when Ben was a kid. Ben took care of him until he died, worked three jobs to support his mother and two sisters, and never finished school. He’s the epitome of the American Dream, and one of the richest men in the world today.
And the boat would be fun to see.” He tried to sell it to her, unsuccessfully.
“Fun for you maybe. I hate boats, and I used to get seasick as a kid,” she confessed.
“Do you still?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t checked it out.”
“He’s not inviting you for a cruise, just an interview. He personally requested you, so he must know you don’t put up with bullshit. He’s willing to give us an exclusive interview. He’s been married three times, and is worth fifty billion dollars. There’s got to be something you can say about him.”
“Nothing I want to write. I hate subjects like him. All puffed up about themselves, and they think they can control the interview and the entire world, and get me fired if they don’t like what I say. He’s an accident waiting to happen. You can give that one to someone else.” She sounded definite.
“I can’t,” Henry said, looking aggrieved. “He won’t do the interview if you won’t do the piece. That was his one condition.”
“When did you find that out, before dragging me in here to ruin my Christmas?”
“I thought you said your son won’t be here.”
“No, but I have a stack of books I want to read, and some research to do.”
“Just go to St. Barth and meet with him for a day. Two days tops. How bad can that be? We’ve got the budget.
I can put you up at a good hotel, and I’ll give you two days off down there after the interview, if you want to take some time off.
Not a bad place to spend Christmas. Come on, Charlie, give me a break on this one.
I don’t want to miss this interview, and some other magazine will grab it if we don’t.
” She sat silently, thinking about it, staring into space, and weighing it, and then looked at him squarely.