Little Pink Slips Part 34

Magnolia stood up and smoothed her ruffled dress as best she could. She grasped the bouquet, holding it tightly in front of her gal loping heart, and walked out of Abbey's bedroom. The rooms at the end of the hall were silent. A blur of faces turned to look at her as she walked toward the candlelight. The guests had parted, leaving a wide swath. The chapel of love, Abbey's dining room, seemed fifty miles away.

As Magnolia walked closer, she saw that Veronique, Abbey's brother and sister-in-law, and Abbey's college roommate were each holding a pole that supported an embroidered Spanish shawl that usually hung on the grand piano. Under the canopy, Daniel stood next to the older man she'd seen with him before-now, his best man.

Matthew Hirsch, in a black velvet yarmulke and a tallis over his Armani suit, winked at Magnolia as she walked toward the chuppah.

Daniel bowed to her slightly and offered a half-smile. A white rose bud was now in his lapel.

The pianist changed to "Here Comes the Bride." Magnolia hadn't taken her friend for the sort of woman who would want that song played at her wedding, but it certainly got everyone's attention. Every eye turned to Abbey as she proceeded through her living room, twin kling like a small star.

Later, when friends asked Magnolia to describe the ceremony, all she could remember was that Abbey circled Daniel seven times, there were vows in three languages-English, French, and Hebrew-and the bride and groom each sipped from a tall silver goblet of wine, pre sumably poured from an excellent Rothschild vintage and a very good year. The rabbi spoke of fate, of people coming together, and used the word beshert. Magnolia glanced down to see if her red bracelet was still there. It had disappeared. "When the job is done, the bracelet will be gone," she remembered Malka as saying. But she couldn't contemplate what the missing bracelet might mean, because just then Daniel stepped on the gla.s.s and kissed Abbey like the actor in the favorite movie of Magnolia's mother, A Man and a Woman. Shouts of mazel tov and bonne chance echoed through the apartment.

As the piano played Cole Porter, waiters circulated with champagne and more champagne. There was dancing, singing, and shrieks of joy.

The pianist struck up "Hava Nagila," and Rabbi Hirsch grabbed Mag nolia by the waist for several loops of the hora. Abbey broke away from Daniel, took both of Magnolia's hands, and began twirling with her in the center of a circle of clapping friends and relatives.

"If you expect me to do the cancan, forget it," Magnolia said.

"Thanks for being so sportive about wearing the dress," Abbey said. "It didn't come from the flea market, by the way."

"Oh, really?" Magnolia said, half out of breath as the two of them whirled.

"It was Daniel's mother's. Couture. From her trousseau."

"Do I have to give it back?" Magnolia said. "I like it better now."

"It's yours," Abbey said. "The least I can do."

At midnight waiters brought out a four-layer wedding cake of chocolate iced in white fondant. Chocolate piping replicated the embroidery from the shawl that had doubled as the wedding canopy.

The couple cut the cake and fed each other pieces, and then everyone gorged on cake, profiteroles, and lemon squares. Well past 1:30, the bride and groom bid the crowd adieu and guests started to drift away.

Magnolia found her boots-which she'd pulled off hours before and left in a corner-and went to Abbey's bedroom to put them on.

Ringlets stuck to her face. She looked as if she'd been to a hockey game, not a wedding.

"Magnolia Gold, I don't believe I've ever seen you this ripped,"

Cameron said as she walked out of the bedroom.

She'd danced with him hours before. Then he'd switched to Veronique as a partner, and Magnolia had got into a long, inebriated conversation with Daniel's father, who promised Magnolia an invita tion to the Cohen villa in St. Tropez, providing she didn't keep her bikini top on like a typical American. Magnolia had agreed.

"Hmmm," Magnolia said to Cameron, swaying in the boots, which felt staggeringly high. "I might have had a little too much to drink."

Feeling at risk of falling, she put her arms around his neck.

In Abbey's hallway, as a clock chimed, she suddenly gave him a sloppy, lingering kiss. He kissed her back. His tongue tasted like chilled champagne.

"C'mon, Mags," he said, grabbing her around the waist. "I'm walk ing you home."

A fine rain fell as they strolled, wordlessly, down Central Park West, then past brownstones on the side streets where more sensible people had gone to bed hours before.

"I can't believe she did it," Magnolia said, several times. "It took such guts."

"Sometimes guts is all you need," Cam said.

"Guts and roses."

They arrived at her building. Magnolia was still happily intoxi cated, but not so skunk-drunk that she didn't remember that fifteen minutes before she'd kissed her longtime former employee and cur rent friend. And he hadn't pulled away. Quite the opposite.

As if she were a doc.u.mentary filmmaker shooting from across the street, she saw-in black and white-a man and a woman holding each other. The couple looked as if they belonged together. Magnolia wondered what would happen next. But mist blurred the image, and she was suddenly exhausted.

It was hard to tell whether what she was seeing was real or a cham pagne dream.

Magnolia awoke at noon and forced herself out of a catatonic sleep. She was wearing her underwear and she was alone, which she decided were both good things. She remembered enough about last night to wonder if Cameron would be there and if they'd both be naked. She winced.

Once she'd published an article in Lady that said if you have a hangover you should make yourself a fruit smoothie from a banana, soy milk, and a handful of vitamins. Magnolia opened her refrigera tor. It contained batteries, leftover pad thai, and some rather nasty carrots. She filled a gla.s.s with water, drank it down with two aspirin, and filled it again.

How big a fool had she made of herself ? Enough so that her first instinct was to go back to bed. This is why people have dogs, she reminded herself as she cleaned up Biggie and Lola's mess, to make sure that they don't simply pull the covers over their heads and never get up after they have thoroughly embarra.s.sed themselves. She fell into some jeans and a sweats.h.i.+rt, grabbed a raincoat and hat, and attached the dogs' leashes.

"Some mail was dropped off for you, Miss Gold," her doorman said as she walked out.

More subpoenas? They could wait. "I'll get it on the way back,"

she said. Magnolia took the dogs to Central Park; the day was surpris ingly warm, with the promise of spring in the air, and the rain stopped the minute she started walking. You weren't supposed to let dogs loose at this time of the day, but what the h.e.l.l-in the ranking of mistakes she might have made in the last twelve hours, the offense was small.

She unhooked Biggie's and Lola's leashes and for a full hour watched them revel in the wet gra.s.s. Her headache faded, she walked back home, and brought up the mail. Sure enough, the thin letter was a subpoena. Bebe and Jock's trial would be starting next week, and she was cordially invited to appear in court.

The second piece of mail was large and heavy, taped shut in a big manila envelope with no stamps or return address. Inside was another sealed envelope, and a handwritten note.

"Magnolia," it read. "I've been wanting to show you my book for a long time. My agent called last night to say it sold. If you'd do me the favor of reading it, I would be very grateful. Also, I need some help with the dedication and acknowledgments."

Magnolia ripped open the second envelope to find a ma.n.u.script of more than five hundred typed pages. The first page had only a few words: A Friend Indeed by Cameron Dane.

She walked to her living room couch, and began to read. Magnolia read through the afternoon, well into the night, and long past sunrise, stopping only for coffee.

At nine, she dialed Cameron's number. His voice mail picked up.

"If you wanted to ask me out," she said, "you could have just called."

Chapter 4 0.

A Goose Is Cooked.

Magnolia slipped into a seat in the remarkably unsupreme courtroom. Elizabeth Lester Duvall, her short hair shorter than usual, had parked herself next to the Post's Mike McCourt, most likely willing him to cover the trial through her own eyes. Darlene Knudson sat behind a row of attorneys-although the lawyer who'd administered Magnolia's deposition was conspicuously absent. Had he been hired by Central Casting, she wondered, to try to unhinge her? On the far right, Felicity Dingle-whose knitting needles were clicking furiously on a long, drab garment-was stationed next to Arthur Montgomery, Bebe's lead lawyer.

"All rise," said a court officer. As everyone in the courtroom stood, a short, stout woman in half-gla.s.ses waddled to the judge's chair. Mag nolia deflated. She'd been expecting the smash of a gavel and, in the role of judge, was thinking along the lines of Meryl Streep. The crowd had barely taken their seats when "the defense calls John Crawford Flanagan Jr., CEO of Scarborough Magazines" rang out in the room. Jock-on this, the second day of the trial-strolled to the witness stand for his swearing-in.

"Why did you enter into an agreement to publish a magazine with Ms. Bebe Blake?" a lawyer from Team Bebe said. Jock pondered the question as if he'd been asked to name and spell the capital of Uzbek istan. After a moment, he furrowed his brow and said, "We thought it was a potentially profitable idea."

"Could you please define 'we'?"

"Our team of top executives," he said with a thinly disguised tone of contempt, reeling off a list that included Darlene's name but, Magnolia noted, not her own.

Yesterday, Magnolia had stayed home and tried to focus on her proposal for Voyeur. She'd been advised that she might be called to testify later in the week and had dutifully turned in an overflowing box of notes and files. But knowing the trial was taking place just miles from her home had made her too twitchy to work. That, and the fact that she couldn't stop thinking about Cameron, who she thought might be there. Today she boarded the subway and found the State Supreme Court of New York.

As soon as she sat down, she scanned the courtroom for Cameron.

She couldn't, however, find his face in the crowd.

Several days had pa.s.sed before Cameron returned the phone mes sage Magnolia had left after she read his ma.n.u.script. This gave Mag nolia ample time to impale herself with regret. Could she have misread his book? With Abbey, her reality meter, away on her honey moon, she went into a spin, obsessing day and insomnia-filled night.

Ultimately, she decided she'd got the subtext of the book just fine; there was, in fact, nothing sub about it. The heroine was one Daisy Silver, a magazine editor, albeit taller, slimmer-hipped, and blonder than she. The hero-a shy, wry colleague-yearned for her. The s.e.x was hot, the love scenes graphic but romantic, and the dialogue, steamy and real. There were a few testosterone explosions along the way-a murder, a terrorist act, the requisite car chase-but the end ing was pure Hollywood, and the writing, clear, clever, and poignant.

Maybe it was her a.s.sessment of the writing-or rather her lack of a.s.sessment-that had tripped her up. Maybe she'd been so focused on the plot she hadn't made it evident to Cam that his talent took her breath away. Maybe he was horribly and legitimately disappointed, not to mention furious, on that count. Maybe he now regretted reveal ing his feelings.

As the days pa.s.sed, Magnolia's worry crescendoed to the most painful possibility of all-maybe their one high-as-a-kite kiss had succeeded in terminating his fantasy. When Cameron did finally call, he talked about everything except what had happened between them.

Then he flew to California on a mission he didn't explain.

Magnolia was left with her maybes, including maybe on Cam eron's return she should beg him to retreat to friends.h.i.+p, with its comforts of weightless silence, scrubbed-face honesty, and chaste but unconditional love-if such a state were now possible.

She looked up. Jock was still on the stand.

"How long does it take for most new magazines to turn a profit?"

the lawyer asked him. "Ballpark figures."

"A year or two," Jock said. Above his eye, a blue vein throbbed like a tiny blinker flas.h.i.+ng "stress." The lawyer reminded him he'd sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. "But more often it takes five years, or even longer," he added.

"So it was unreasonable to expect Bebe to be profitable anytime soon?" he asked. Jock answered with a flurry of figures, but all eyes- even the judge's-had turned to the back of the room. In a tweed suit and a boa, Bebe sashayed to the front of the room. She was treating the courtroom's center aisle as if it were a red carpet, looking from side to side and smiling for invisible paparazzi. Like the Wave, a buzz moved forward as she progressed to her seat.

"Don't mind me," she said loudly to no one in particular. "The president is in town. Traffic sucks." Everyone stared. She shrugged.

"Don't blame me-I didn't vote for him."

Judge Tannenbaum looked over her gla.s.ses and gave Bebe a stern stare. "Glad you could join us, Miss Blake," she said. "Mr. Mont gomery, please, continue."

"I have concluded," he said. One of Cromwell, Adams, and Case's lead attorneys stepped forward to cross-examine.

"Mr. Flanagan," he said, "how much money does Scarborough Magazines stand to lose by Bebe Blake abandoning your co-venture?" "One hundred million dollars," he said.

Magnolia was familiar with Scary's case. Who wasn't, the way it was being tried in the papers? But where Jock was getting this num ber, she didn't know.

When the court officer declared an adjournment until two, Mag nolia made her way through the crowds to the steps outside court. As she reached the bottom, someone shouted her name, startling her. She stumbled into a large puddle of mud and soaked her best black suede boots. Magnolia looked up in time for a television camera to catch her saying, "f.u.c.k."

"How do you think Scary's doing?" a second voice shouted. It was Mike McCourt, approaching with a notebook.

"No comment," she said. Wally had warned her not to talk to the press while her settlement was dragging on, as it was, like a Wagner ian opera.

"Is it true you're on the short list to start a new magazine for another company?" Mike asked. Who fed this guy his intelligence? Abbey and Cam were the only people she'd told about Voyeur, and neither one would squeak a word. The leak had to be from Fancy.

"No comment," she said.

"So, I guess that means 'yes'?" Mike asked. Magnolia was consider ing if she should say, "No comment" once more when Mike craned his neck to her left.

"Mr. Dane?" Mike yelled. "Mr. Dane, that you?"

Magnolia turned as well, and saw Cameron walking toward her.

"Some book deal I'm hearing rumors about," Mike said to Cam.

"Hardcover rights, paperback, audio, foreign in fourteen countries, and a possible TV series and film option. What's up?"

"You must have me confused with someone else, buddy," Cameron said amiably, as he walked toward Magnolia, grabbed her elbow, and steered her out of the throng.

"Cam, is what Mike says true?" Magnolia asked.

He laughed off the question. "Hungry?"

"When have I ever not been hungry?"

"I'm in the mood for dim sum," he said. "Want to join me?" They began walking to Mott Street. "Did you catch my grand legal performance yesterday?" he asked.

"Really?" Magnolia asked. "You testified?" There had been no report of it on television, online, or in the press.

"Chapter and verse about how much money Bebe spent on this and that," Cam said. "I a.s.sure you, Court TV is not flas.h.i.+ng a contract in my face."

"I'm praying I won't be called," she said. "It would kill me to help any of these barbarians win a dime."

They reached the restaurant and continued to dissect the trial. But what Magnolia wanted to talk about was them. As Cameron's hand reached for a sparerib, she imagined it under her skirt, above her soggy boot, inching upward.

"Chicken feet?" he said.

In her mind, the hand warmed her as its sensuous journey con tinued.

"Magnolia?"

"Excuse me," she said. "What's this about cold feet?"

He looked at her strangely. "Chicken feet. You don't like these suckers, do you?" The dim sum lady was standing by their table, try ing to tempt them with some sad little body parts that looked like the last remains after a nuclear holocaust.

"I'll pa.s.s," she said. "Thanks."