Any Given Moment (The Alexandra Chronicles Book 3)
Any Given Moment
Any Given Moment
A novel by
Laura Van Wormer
Author & Company
Connecticut New York Denver
The Novels by Laura Van Wormer
Loosely Referred to as
“The Alexandra Chronicles”
Riverside Drive
West End
Any Given Moment
Exposé
Talk
The Last Lover *
Trouble Becomes Her *
The Bad Witness *
The Kill Fee *
Mr. Murder *
Riverside Park
*The Sally Harrington Mysteries
Other Novels
Benedict Canyon
Jury Duty
Just for the Summer
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where the name of actual persons, living or dead, are used, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict any actual events or change the entirely fictional nature of the work.
Copyright © 1995, 2014 by Laura Van Wormer
All rights reserved.
No part of part of this book may be used or reproduced in any electronic manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews. For information please address: Author & Company, LLC, P.O. Box, Cheshire, CT 06410-9998
Contents
Prologue
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Part II
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Part III
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Part IV
Chapter 47
Chapter 16
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Part V
Chapter 60
Acknowledgments
About the Author
For Nancy Levin
“You must remember, dear, that
at any given moment your whole life could change.”
—Dorothy Dunstable Hillings
Prologue
Everyone in the boardroom was nervous. After serving as chairman of International Communications Artists for twenty-seven years, Ben Rothstein was being forcibly retired. What happened next would be up to Ben; he could come down and face them, or he could simply leave the building.
After fifteen tense minutes, all heads swiveled at the sound of the door.
Ben Rothstein walked in smiling. (He's killed Creighton, one board member thought.) Rothstein was a powerful and attractive-looking man with a thick head of iron gray hair, but he was anything but handsome. His face looked as though it had been hit with a baseball bat more than a few times back in the Bronx of his childhood, and it probably had been.
Granted, some from his old New York neighborhood had traveled through highly suspect channels to reach top positions in Hollywood, but not Ben Rothstein. Although he looked like someone who might be tied to the Mafia, he was, in fact, one of the most ethical men in business. And the distinguished reputation of the ICA empire—the global leader in entertainment representation—was synonymous with his name.
It was he who had first seen the advantage of packaging entire projects, not only representing actors, but screenwriters and directors, and later producers, composers, singers, and choreographers, too. ICA was then in a powerful position to suggest combinations of talents, properties, and production executives to the studios and networks. It was a highly successful strategy that worked well for ICA's clients, and also for ICA, which could then build hefty agency fees directly into the production's budget. William Morris and ICM and other entertainment agencies caught on quickly, but they had high overheads to maintain from running elaborate literary divisions in New York City. ICA, always the renegade, had steered clear of that kind of expense, preferring instead to form ties with a few premiere literary agencies.
ICA's most famous alliance was with Hillings & Hillings, a distinguished New York literary agency run by Henry and Dorothy Hillings. In 1955 they first collaborated with ICA to sell the movie rights to the 1950 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, A Dark Garden. Since that time ICA and Hillings & Hillings had collaborated on so many projects and had made so much money for so many authors, that to benefit from their alliance was to be considered a member of "the royal family."
Last year the Hillingses and Ben Rothstein had decided to formalize their alliance with a gradual merger of the Hillings & Hillings agency into the ICA empire, a process which would not be completed until the day the Hillingses decided to retire.
Walking into the boardroom behind Ben Rothstein this morning in Los Angeles was the man who would replace him, young Creighton Berns, most recently president of ICA. The well-heeled son of a Toluca Lake dentist, Berns had earned a combined undergraduate degree in film and business administration from UCLA and an MBA from Wharton. He had achieved immediate success in network television programming, and then had jumped to movies, where he made unparalleled profits as the youngest studio head of Metropolis Pictures ever. He was just thirty-five.
The board had decided that Creighton Berns was the future of Hollywood. The cost, however, would be Ben Rothstein. After much secret deliberation, they had agreed to retire Ben and offer to set him up as an independent producer.
It had all sounded good a month ago, but now that it was actually happening most of the board members felt vaguely ill. No matter how golden the handshake they gave Ben, they were still essentially firing the man who had made the company everything it was.
(Had Vanity Fair not published the last ICA corporate Christmas card and suggested that its message and graphics were better suited to a retirement home, things might have been different.)
"Gentlemen, good morning," Ben said as he rounded the table to take his place at the head. His comportment was the same as it had been at every board meeting for the last twenty-seven years. He was wearing an impeccably cut gray suit, white shirt, red bow tie, and black loafers. His face was tan from the golf he loved, and his body fit from the personal trainer he always said he was going to
strangle if and when he could get fit enough to do it. Instead of sitting at his place, Ben stood, leaning forward over the table.
"It is a very generous settlement I have been offered, and I am grateful to you. I am also excited about trying my hand at some entertainment projects for ICA. I have nothing else to say, gentlemen, except thank you-for a hell of a career, for a very nice life, and for asking me to step down while I still have a lot of my life left to live."
After one dazed moment, the board began to applaud.
"And may I officially welcome the new chairman of ICA," Ben said, straightening up. "Gentlemen, Mr. Creighton Berns."
The board applauded again as Creighton made his way to the head of the table.
Ben, with a slight bow, slipped away to the side and graciously left the room. Only after the door had closed behind him did board members realize that Ben had managed to avoid the symbol of closure—a handshake with his successor.
As he had done almost every weekday morning since 1947, Henry Hillings held the door of 101 Fifth Avenue open for his wife. They were always the first people in the office. They liked an hour to themselves to sip coffee and read through the final mail delivery from the night before. It was also the most convenient time to make overseas calls.
"I hate to admit it, Henry," Dorothy Hillings said, "but it makes me feel old. He's only sixty-two." Dorothy had turned seventy in April; Henry was seventy-six. "I know, darling," Henry sighed, pushing the elevator button. "It's the end of an era." The elevator doors opened.
"It just won't be as much fun anymore," she said, stepping inside. "Half of the excitement was doing business with old friends like Ben." The doors closed and the elevator started its ascent. She looked at her husband. "And I hate to say it, but do you realize that most of our contemporaries in the business are either retired or dead?"
"Doe," he said, giving his wife a sideways look.
"Well, it seems so unfair. One would think one received a little extra credit for being a decent person, wouldn't you think?"
Henry smiled. "But we have been given extra credit, Doe. We've been given the opportunity to ease out of the agency, now, while we're still healthy enough to enjoy ourselves."
"Enjoy ourselves doing what? Running off to Bora Bora to visit Ben and poor Ruth, or wherever in Sam Hill he took her? We started the agency, I hasten to remind you, dear, because we couldn't stand doing what everybody else was doing-and everybody else is retiring, and frankly I hate it."
"Maybe it's time we tried a little harder to be like other people," her husband said. "We are getting older." The elevator was easing to a stop.
"Nonsense, Henry, you're twice the—"
As the elevator doors opened, Dorothy's mouth fell open. The two stood there staring, speechless, until the elevator doors tried to close. Henry found the button to control the door at the same time that Dorothy found her voice.
"What in God's name!" she said, stepping out. There were padlocks and NO TRESPASSING signs all over the doors of their offices. "Henry, what is going on!"
Henry dropped his briefcase, took his glasses out of his pocket, and read the notice on the door. "This is ridiculous," he said after a moment. "This must be some kind of a joke—or a very serious mistake. This is a sheriff’s notice of repossession."
"Henry—" Dorothy said in a strangled voice.
He turned to find her leaning against the wall, hand to her chest. Her bag lay at her feet. "I can't breathe," she managed to get out.
He held her, murmuring that everything was going to be all right. Slowly he eased his wife down along the wall to a sitting position on the floor, falling heavily to his knees in the process.
She was having a heart attack. Dorothy was having a heart attack.
Any Given Moment
PART I
1
She could remember the day she decided to be smart instead of shy.
It had been the first day of fifth grade, and Elizabeth had known she absolutely could not stand being shy anymore, couldn't stand blushing, feeling awkward, being unable to say anything. She had always been a brain, but up until then she had never considered using her intellect as a shield, one that often seemed to intimidate people in a very gratifying way. Looking back, Elizabeth realized what a gift it had been for that dreadfully shy girl to be given the ability to hide whenever she was scared—but to be able to do it right out in the open. All she had to do was revert to her "smart self," she who could merrily prattle intelligent instant analyses like an interesting third-person narrator who wasn't even really there. Like a walking book, someone once said, and Elizabeth had smiled, pleased.
Like all of today's gifts, however, this persona of brain extraordinaire became one of tomorrow's problems. As Elizabeth grew older, cultivating her smartness and downplaying her emerging good looks, her life began to take on a certain unreality. More and more she felt like she was a third-person narrator to her own life, and that she was only occasionally an actual participant in it, and that when she was, she would more than likely mess things up.
As a matter of fact, Elizabeth's life as a brain had become so extraordinary (on darker days, Elizabeth would say weird), that today, at thirty-three, she had to wonder if it was even possible at this point to achieve the sense of belonging she had always craved—the sense of belonging for which she had become a brain in the first place—so that she could at least participate on some level in the world.
She was the youngest emotional has-been, she thought, or the world's oldest adolescent. In the meantime, she got to move through the world as a celebrated professor of history.
But Elizabeth was lonely. Almost as lonely as she had been on the first day of fifth grade.
Young Mr. A. W. Babcock, self-important junior clerk of the British Library, was shaking his head as he came back to the desk of gorgeous mahogany. "There are no such letters in our archives," he announced.
"But I know they're here," Elizabeth insisted, opening her briefcase. "This is the receipt you gave to the family."
"Receipt I gave the family?" Mr. A. W. Babcock loftily asked. He looked at the document. "This receipt is from 1924. I was not even born until 1960."
Elizabeth laughed politely, thinking, You might get away with bullying the public, but you're not going to get away with it with me. But she didn't say it. No big surprise there. In the face of adversity, Elizabeth always automatically moved into her fallback position, that of the surprisingly likable and accessible young professor whom anyone would be pleased to know. While she was indeed a wonderful teacher, and was very glad of it—outside of reading and writing, teaching was the joy of her life—Elizabeth wished she could be a little less eternally pleasant and start demonstrating a lot more backbone in dealing with everyday life. But no. Professor Robinson was a wimp at heart. Always had been. She had never been able to complain about poor food in a restaurant; she had never been able to return anything to a store; she had never pushed her way into anywhere or anything.
No, what Elizabeth did was to go to extraordinary lengths to charm and cajole and befriend complete and utter strangers so that she might tactfully ask for whatever it was she wanted or needed. While other women had gotten married and had children, Elizabeth had spent her life becoming best friends with people like taxi drivers so they would slow down and enjoy the ride and not kill her in a horrible accident. So while Elizabeth would probably never be able to tell a cashier outright that he had overcharged her, she would always probably know a little something about, say, Pakistani politics.
Elizabeth had been made a full professor by age twenty-nine on the merits of her academic scholarship, but it was her charismatic charm and accessibility in a world of posturing, politics, and jealousy—in other words, academe—that had made her a star. And too, of course, it hadn't hurt that Elizabeth had turned her dissertation on an obscure eighteenth-century duchess into a best-selling biography, The Duchess of Desire, which had been made into a hit movie starring Faye
Dunaway. The academy loved nothing more than to counter the saying, "Those who can't, teach," by offering as proof professors like Elizabeth, who clearly could choose other professions but chose to continue teaching-and make a small fortune on the side to boot!
Elizabeth's smile broadened as she leaned closer to Mr. A. W. Babcock of the British Library. "I've checked very carefully," she told him in her I-may-be-a-professor-but-I'm-still-a-woman-lost-without-a-man voice, "and there is no evidence the letters were ever moved." What a coward she was.
"Not to the British Museum?" he asked, looking into her eyes.
"Not to the British Museum," she said earnestly.
"Not to the Theatre Museum?" he said, looking at her hair.
"Not to the Theatre Museum," she said, practically batting her eyes. Some feminist, Elizabeth Robinson!
"Not to"—the librarian paused, swallowing, thinking, eyes briefly landing on Elizabeth's mouth and then quickly darting away, a blush starting down his neck—"the Victoria and Albert?"
"No, I'm afraid not," she murmured.
"Well, then, if this is true," he said, looking at the document again, "we have a box of letters somewhere that has been missing since 1924." He made a sound in his throat. "I'll need you to register, Professor, before I can write up a search request." He pushed a form across the counter to her. "If the letters are here, they'll be in the rare manuscripts division." He paused for a moment. "You know, they're right about you. You do look like Katharine Hepburn."
"Thank you," she said, as she handed him her passport and faculty card and began scribbling information on the form. Her face was burning in embarrassment. Regardless of any vows taken in fifth grade, Elizabeth still had trouble accepting compliments about the looks she always pretended not to rely on, but often felt she had to.