Alexandra Waring Page 7

  “Kato,” the gardener said.

  “What number?” Alexandra said.

  “Six,” she said.

  “That’s what I thought,” Alexandra said, putting the soil back.

  The gardener glanced at her assistant and then back to Alexandra. “Something wrong?”

  “Hmmm?” Alexandra said, turning. “Oh, no, I think you’re doing a wonderful job. I just wanted to know what we were using so that when the summer light starts in here I’ll want to cut back two grades.”

  “Hey,” Clancy said loudly, swinging in through the doorway, “before I forget—the wife wants to know how the shoulder’s doin’. It mending okay?”

  Alexandra turned and smiled. “Tell her it’s mending great, thanks.”

  Gordon fell in love with Julie Stantree while he was working on a TV series called Highland Street and Julie was starring in a sitcom that was filmed in the studio next door. He asked her to marry him, twice, and shortly after her series was canceled she said yes. They were married, moved into a large rental in Beverly Hills and, eleven months later, had a baby, Christopher. Julie was thirty-five, Gordon was thirty-one, and the year was 1984, the same year David Waring and his wife came to visit and told him—while Julie was in the back of the house, putting Christopher down for his nap—that Alexandra was getting married in the fall.

  “Huh,” Gordon said.

  “Name’s Tyler Mandell,” David said. “He’s a big architect-builder in Kansas City. I think he’s too old for Lexy—he’s thirty-eight and sort of a buffoon, if you ask me.”

  “But no one’s asking you,” David’s wife said. To Gordon, “He’s very handsome and everyone says he’s going into politics.”

  David looked at Gordon. “I don’t know, I still wish you guys could have—”

  “David!” his wife said, clearly horrified at what she imagined her husband was about to say.

  Three months later David called Gordon and told him that Alexandra had suddenly called off the wedding, offering no explanation except that she wasn’t ready.

  “Huh,” Gordon said.

  “Mom and Dad are going nuts,” David said. “They’re convinced Mandell did something—you know, has a mistress or something—but Lexy won’t tell them anything.”

  “What do you think?” Gordon said.

  Crackle, crackle went the long-distance line.

  “I think,” David finally said, speaking slowly, “that Lexy might have done something. She’s got that look these days.”

  “Which?”

  “The sphinx.”

  Gordon knew that look. It was the same look Alexandra had had between the time she made up her mind to take the KSCT job and when she told him.

  “Someone else?” Gordon said.

  “I don’t know. But there’s something,” David said. He hesitated and then asked, “You don’t know anything about it, do you?”

  “Jesus, David,” Gordon said.

  “Sorry. I just didn’t know who else it could be.”

  Two months later, in October of 1984, Julie left Gordon for Émile Ruvais, a French film director some twenty-two years her senior. Ruvais was considered to be the national treasure of France and, since he was also one of the most powerful men in the movie industry, irreproachable in all matters, including the battle for custody over Christopher, and the Stantree-Strenn divorce. Caught completely by surprise, Gordon had to change lawyers four times over the course of the court battle to find someone who could take on Ruvais’s legion of attorneys, but by then it was too late. He was divorced against his will; he lost custody of his son; and he had over three hundred thousand dollars in legal bills—which that son of a bitch Ruvais then offered to pay. Gordon did not take him up on his offer.

  Badly shaken, drinking a bit too much, crying some and sleeping around a lot, Gordon moved to New York in 1985 to start work on This Side of Paradise for public television. He flew to Paris once a month to visit Christopher and getting used to that, in combination with his work, helped to steady him. By the time Alexandra arrived in New York to anchor the news at WWKK in 1986, Gordon had settled into a meaningless but stable relationship with a twenty-year-old model.

  Alexandra was no more the same young woman he had known than he was the same young man she had known. To begin with, there didn’t seem to be anything very young about either one of them anymore. And while Alexandra was as beautiful and dynamic as ever-more so, actually—there was something closed off about her now. After a few weeks of friendly chats and showing her around New York, Gordon put his finger on something else that was different: Alexandra no longer trusted him.

  As always, if he didn’t pick up on the message indirectly, then Alexandra practically spelled it out for him. No, she didn’t say, “Gordon, I don’t trust you.” What happened was, they went out to dinner one night with Alexandra’s boss, Michael Cochran, and his wife, Cassy. It was really an awful dinner, with Michael getting very drunk in the restaurant and slobbering all over Alexandra while they all tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. When they finally got the Cochrans out of the restaurant and into a cab, Alexandra wanted to walk for a while and so they did, up Fifth Avenue and then across 59th Street, along the south wall of Central Park.

  That was the night he told her the whole long, horrible story of Julie and Christopher. Alexandra held his hand, her head bowed, as they walked, and she was genuinely moved by what he told her. But she was not moved enough to tell him, in return, why she had called off her wedding in Kansas City.

  Truth was, Gordon had been hoping that she would say, “Because David came back from Los Angeles and told me he thought you loved me.” Or, “David told me your marriage couldn’t last.” Or, “Hearing about you made me realize that I couldn’t marry a man I didn’t love.” But no, Alexandra didn’t say any of those things.

  By this time they had crossed the street and were walking back east, along the string of hotels facing the park. They were passing the Berkshire House when he asked her why she had called off the wedding and Alexandra stopped, there under the light, and looked at him. Her eyes were steady, but her face had flushed scarlet. Then she said, quietly, “I don’t want to lie to you.”

  “I don’t want you to lie to me either,” he said.

  “Then drop it, Gordie, please,” she said, taking his hand and walking on.

  And he let it drop, though when he made love to her that night it was on his mind, which perhaps had something to do with why he made love to her in the first place. Neither one of them was ready to get re-involved; he knew it the moment after he came inside her when, instead of feeling close to her, he felt like slamming her up against the wall and demanding to know if she was happy that she had ruined his life by leaving him. But he didn’t do that, and it was Alexandra on her own initiative, sat on the edge of the bed and cried, apologizing for what she said she didn’t even know, but that she did know she couldn’t do this, not with him, not now.

  And so he let her go. Because he couldn’t do it either, not with her, not yet.

  But, with summer, Alexandra’s popularity exploded in New York and Gordon would stare at her face on the side of buses in midtown traffic at lunchtime and wonder at how screwed up he must be to let her go so easily. And then he would be so filled with adrenalin and excitement he would think, Who cares? Just go see her—now! and he would dash over to WWKK, demanding to see her, and she always saw him, no matter how busy she was, and he would just sort of sit in the corner, watching her—in the newsroom, in the editing room—for five minutes or so. And then as he was leaving, Alexandra would smile, gently, as if to say, “I know. I need to know you still exist too.”

  And then, late at night, when she got home from the studio, they would talk on the phone just long enough for Gordon to make sure that she was not about to run away and marry someone else. Once that was ascertained, he felt okay again, and so he would climb into his bed with his model.

  It all changed after Alexandra joined The Network. They were talk
ing one night, as they had started doing as soon as she moved to Washington, and suddenly Alexandra had started to cry, saying that she thought she was going to die of loneliness, and that he was the last person she should drag back into her life but knew that that was what she was about to try and do. Gordon said she couldn’t drag him back into her life unless he wanted to be dragged back in—what did she have in mind? She said she was so confused about everything that she didn’t even know. He asked her how much the fact that she lived in Washington and he lived in New York had to do with it, the safety in knowing they couldn’t be together full time anyway. She said she didn’t know and then she broke down again, saying that she was the last person in the world he should get involved with, that if they tried to resurrect their relationship again it might only wreck everything between them.

  But it didn’t.

  He flew down to Washington and made love to her that very night. And as he did, she said, over and over again, “This is it. This is what I need—I need you, Gordon,” and he was so very, very glad she said it, because that night he knew how much he needed her, too.

  “All-Light-and-Love on five,” Betty said over the intercom.

  “Princess All-Light-and-Love to you,” Gordon said. “One day and you’re overly familiar already.” Gordon pushed a button. “Hi.”

  “How does someone find Langley?” Alexandra asked him. There was a horrendous banging noise in the background and so she had to shout.

  Gordon stood up, turned toward his window and shouted, “Did you try his office?”

  “His secretary said he was on his way down half an hour ago.”

  “Where are you?” The banging noise on her end was getting louder.

  “In what I hope’s going to be the newsroom—if we can get any work done around here,” she shouted. “Where the heck could he have disappeared to? If you can believe it, until we get an executive producer, there isn’t anyone who can sign for anything except Langley.”

  “Sign for what?” Gordon shouted.

  “Wire service machines. They won’t hook them up until someone signs the authorization sheet.”

  “You can sign it,” Gordon shouted.

  “What?” she said, And then she laughed. “Oh, that’s right—I can, can’t I? But do I want to?” she added a second later. “Oh! Never mind, here comes Langley now. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Alexandra—”

  “What?” she shouted. Now there was a sawing noise too.

  “I’ll go with you tonight,” he shouted.

  “To look at the apartment? Really?”

  “Yep. And guess what else?”

  “What?”

  “I love you. Maybe even enough to stay at the Plaza.”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line and then a laugh. “You’re not shouting this through the halls, are you?”

  Gordon turned around. Sure enough, there was Betty, leaning against the doorway, arms folded, and standing next to her was Jackson.

  “I see,” Jackson said. And then he looked at Gordon and smiled. “Better tell your mama you’re going to England, boy,” he said. “And better tell her that you’re leaving tonight.”

  4

  Langley Peterson

  Langley Peterson wondered if Gordon had any idea that it was because of his girlfriend, Alexandra, that he was being sent to England tonight. Probably not.

  “And so,” Langley concluded, learning forward on his desk to wrap up the briefing, “you tell Hargrave’s people anything and everything you’re going to need over there. I want you to take your secretary with you, because I’m going to want itemized notes on the meetings. So take Betty and then send her back to me with the notes no later than Friday afternoon. “

  Gordon nodded once.

  “She’s smart,” Langley added, adjusting his glasses. “I think she should be doing more than teaching Adele how to bowl.”

  Gordon smiled, nodding again.

  “So that’s it. When you shake hands with the Brits, we’re on our way,” he finished.

  “Sounds good,” Gordon said.

  It should sound good, Langley knew, because it was good. With the Writers Guild strike looking as though it might last through the summer, they had been trying to figure out a way to keep their schedule on Love Across the Atlantic, and moving the whole production out of the United States seemed to be the answer. And so, since almost half of the exteriors had been planned to be shot on location in England anyway, Jackson had called on his friend Lord Gregory Hargrave, and Hargrave had extended an invitation to DBS to consolidate production on the miniseries at his studios in London.

  The part Langley neglected to tell Gordon, however, was that Lord Hargrave was now a silent partner in the miniseries. So silent, in fact, that no one—especially the board of directors of Darenbrook Communications—knew about it. Because, if the board found out, then they would figure out that, after they had voted down Jackson’s motion to double the budget of DBS News and launch it a year early in order to sign Alexandra, Jackson had not proceeded to fund it out of his own pocket as he said he would but had, in fact, “borrowed” the money from the miniseries-money that was now being made up by Lord Hargrave in the form of studio facilities, crews and accommodations.

  Because, if the board found that out, then it would only be a matter of time before they also found out that the reason Jackson was not funding the first year of DBS News himself was because he had recently paid a bank consortium some sixty million dollars to make good on his brother Beau’s stock market option losses in the October crash. And if the board found that out, then they would also find out that Beau had used Field Day, the Darenbrook magazine of which he was publisher, as illegal collateral on his margin accounts.

  And if the board found that out, not only could they vote Beau off the board but they could send him to jail, particularly since company bylaws dictated that, in such a case, Beau’s interest in Darenbrook Communications would then revert back to the company for nothing, and his voting stock would be divided among the remaining members of the board.

  Sigh. It was never boring working for the Darenbrook family.

  But Langley hated dealing this way with Gordon Strenn. Gordon was a very straightforward, diligent kind of guy and had upgraded the Love Across the Atlantic project from an A rating to AAA by, among other things, his coup of signing Vanessa Winslow in the lead. He deserved to know the score. But Langley knew he wouldn’t and shouldn’t tell Gordon anything because, if something were to go wrong and the board caught on, then Gordon would be best left out of it. Some of the Darenbrooks could be pretty nasty.

  Although each board member had an equal financial interest in the company, they did not share equal voting stock. Big El, who controlled twenty-five percent of it, would, thankfully, almost always vote to reinvest a percentage of the profits back into the company for research and development, though he was apt to disagree with Jackson on how to divide it among divisions. He was, for example, the one to put the brakes on DBS News, refusing to allocate any more funds to broadcasting or to alter the financial timetable already agreed upon.

  Cordelia, who ran the Mendolyn Street house in Hilleanderville where her father still lived, usually cast her eight and a quarter voting shares the same way Big El did. (Or Big El cast his vote in the same way Cordelia did, nobody was quite sure anymore.)

  Little El and the twins, Norbert and Noreen—who held eight and a quarter shares each—voted for anything that put cash in their pockets and voted to sell anything that didn’t.

  The two remaining members of the board, Beau and Belinda, represented Jackson’s power base. As the three flesh-and-blood children of Alice May Darenbrook, each had inherited a third of Alice May’s voting shares, boosting their holdings past that of their half siblings to twelve percent. Jackson also enjoyed an extra five percent as chairman. And so, with seventeen percent of his own holdings and the twenty-four percent of ever loyal Beau’s and Belinda’s, Jackson had forty-one pe
rcent of the vote at his disposal.

  However, these days, Beau and Belinda constantly ran the risk of being voted off the board, Beau with his gambling and Belinda with her…

  Belinda. The beautiful, fair-haired Darenbrook baby, now thirty-seven, whose increasing episodes of insane behavior had the twins and Little El cheering her on to flip out completely. Because, if their baby sister could be proved incapable of managing her own affairs, then company bylaws dictated that Belinda’s voting shares had to revert back to the board for redistribution.

  And so one could say there was a delicate balance of power within Darenbrook Communications.

  Since Langley was always the president of whatever new company they launched until it got on its feet, he was quite accustomed to playing “funny money” within the corporation with Jackson to properly finance projects that had been underfunded by the board. However, launching DBS News a year early with money rerouted from the miniseries—well, this made him very nervous. Although next year they would have the board-approved funds for DBS News to rechannel through the miniseries to repay Lord Hargrave, even if DBS News achieved all of its goals, since Jackson had already doubled the News budget, they’d still have the second half of the first-year DBS News costs to somehow make up.

  Sitting here, in his office, Langley decided that he should absolutely keep Gordon Strenn clear of this mess. Langley’s intercom buzzed then, startling him. “Excuse me,” he said to Gordon, picking up the phone. “Yes?”

  “A Jim Malbern calling from Group K Productions in Tucson,” Adele said. “He says it’s very important.”

  “I’ll take it,” Langley said, pushing a button. “Hello, Jim, what can I do for you?”

  “You can send Jessica back here, that’s what you can do,” he said.

  Jim Malbern was evidently referring to Jessica Wright, the young talk show hostess whose contract they had recently bought out from Group K Productions for DBS.

  “I don’t have her to send,” Langley said. “She isn’t expected until April first.”