Mistress of the Runes Page 3

  “She’s probably giving him a blow job right now and telling him what an impossible bitch I am,” I said, and she grimaced. I started to elaborate on the office politics, but Clare was leaning into the sheet music again, studying the notes as if they were rubbings from a cave wall. She was all-consumed, and any conversation would be an irritant.

  *

  I hadn’t been in my office for more than an hour when Walter made the obligatory CEO-to-president phone call to assure me he liked what I was doing and we would be a great team. CEO Walter Puckett was testament to the disconnect between the board, its deal makers, and its pledge to operate the company effectively for shareholders. But in a world where deals were slam dunks, executives were benched, and everyone strove for a win/win, tall, graying former basketball star Walter Puckett was a male fantasy incarnate—a leader who could jump four feet flat-footed and who took the corporate slang right out of full-court press.

  “I had an amazing weekend,” he said, making small talk. “I was in Yankee Stadium and there were thousands of cheerleaders, I mean thousands. They had come from all over the country to audition. It was mind-blowing. They were jumping and dancing. I never saw so many huge tits! And I said, we have to do this—create an event to honor young women. They typify All-American athleticism—they’re healthy, robust, and full of life like our corporation. We’ll have a corporate tent stocked with great food and booze.” Walter waxed on, blending inflammatory phrases like “great ass” with more palatable ones like “scholarships for women.”

  Jack walked into my office at the tail end of my Walter Puckett call, looking a lot like Jack Lemmon; in fact, I was convinced that was why he had no difficulty getting sales appointments or jobs, for that matter. People like look-alikes—genetic shorthand.

  “Hey,” Jack said, as I hung up the phone. “Sorry about the other day, but I had no choice. How’s she doin’?” he asked, referring to Megan Stanford.

  “Does it really matter how she’s doin’ since we hired her for who she’s doin’?”

  “Let up, will ya, Brice? She’s scared of you.”

  “Smart girl.”

  “Hell, I’m scared of you. You’re like having my mother around—if she had a sexy smile and great tits.” Jack got a smile out of me. “You talked to Walter Puckett since he came on board?”

  “Just did. You’ll love him. He’s only interested in getting laid.” I smirked.

  “I know! I had to pull teeth to get him an invite to the Lakers party to bed this redheaded groupie.” Jack gave me another Cheshire-cat grin.

  “Glad you two have bonded,” I said, irritated over how quickly men could find common ground in sports, sex, and war.

  “I’m head of sales. That’s what sales guys do. We find out what rings your bell and give you the ringer—ding-a-ding! Advice, Brice?” He didn’t pause to get my permission. “Cut him some slack. You don’t need Walter thinking you’re, you know—”

  I knew exactly. “A bitch, a dyke, a middle-aged bat spoiling his fun with young girls?” Jack grimaced, not unlike Clare. “My goal is to make him look good by dropping lots of cash to the bottom line, despite the fact that Walter believes the bottom line is the point at which a girl’s panties stop.”

  “You make it worth comin’ to work,” Jack snorted. “Ya wanna go see the Lakers next time you’re in L.A.? I can get ya tickets,” he offered, knowing I wouldn’t take him up on it.

  What am I doing here? I caught myself wondering as I stared at the back of Jack’s worn pinstripe suit and sloping shoulders as he retreated from my office. Peggy Lee was right to ask “Is that all there is?” I turned back to my computer thinking I needed to win the lotto. I thought of a recent news report of a man in California who won the lotto and said he’d continue to work in the city’s sanitation department as a trash hauler because he loved his job. Crazy bastard, I thought. Lotto recipients should have to prove their worthiness by running from their offices shouting, “Fuck you, I’m free!”

  An e-mail pinged onto my desktop. It was from Liz Chase. My heart leapt into my throat and my stomach sank, two critical organs seeking solace in opposite directions, though I had no explanation for my immediate nervous attack. Her note contained a succinct apology for her behavior and an invitation to attend a video shoot at an Icelandic horse farm in Washington state in a few weeks. She had attached a map with directions to the farm.

  I paused, then e-mailed her back, thanking her for the note but saying it was doubtful I would be on the West Coast at that time. Then I printed out the map and put it in my briefcase, telling myself I might want to visit a horse farm on my own someday and I should keep the driving directions.

  Chapter Three

  Ensconced in one of the larger Hollywood executive offices, I waited for Elgin Aria to arrive and contemplated the irony that a man named Elgin could not tell time. Meetings with Elgin were legend; he had turned tardiness into an art form. I was there to sell him a television series showcasing A-Media’s Stinett Stone—an Olympic diver who performed like a dolphin in the water but floundered on dry land—and if I allowed myself a moment of truth, I was there for what might happen after the meeting—a plane ride north to Yakima and the Icelandic horse farm and, not coincidentally, Liz Chase.

  Why do I want to see a woman who’s insulted me and whom I’ve insulted in return? Because I find her interesting and clever and she’s not afraid of me. In fact, she’s shown no deference at all, which I’m sure I’ll find only briefly charming. So I’ll see horses and be briefly charmed.

  Half an hour after I’d been seated in Elgin’s office growing moss, I heard him breeze past his assistant heading my way. Elgin was a diminutive, charismatic man whose wild, curly mop of hair looked like forest creatures could live there and go unfound for weeks. He entered talking, waggling his index finger at me.

  “Who cares about another Jacques Cousteau if he’s unbearably uh-gah-lee—your client is sooo ugly he makes the show bo-ring! And don’t tell me he’s in a diver’s mask because that’s the best he ever looks! Let’s deal with prit-teee people, shall we? Submerge the entire Bolshoi Ballet in a sunken ship! Sort of what-happens-to-this-dance-troupe-in-the-last-few-minutes-before-they-die kind of thing. Of course no one dies, so the Standards and Practices goons don’t get all worked up. It will be great, greeeeaaaat!” He dashed out of the room and his very thin, very gay assistant poked his head in to say Elgin would be back in an “eentzy teenzy,” a phrase that made me want to behead him.

  “I can’t do a damned show about submerging the Bolshoi Ballet! What the hell does that mean, anyway?” I moaned.

  “It means you could have a series,” he said.

  “Ballerinas swimming for their lives—is that a series?”

  “If Elgin wants it to be.” The assistant gave me a princely smile, letting me know who was king in this realm, and once again I was face-to-face with the insanity of my profession.

  *

  I booked a late-afternoon flight to Yakima, still muttering under my breath over my Elgin Aria meeting and wondering how I was going to get him off the Bolshoi Ballet idea. I made it to LAX on time, but my flight was delayed on the runway due to mechanical difficulties, and the hour grew later and later, jeopardizing my arrival at the shoot and my chances of seeing Liz Chase.

  When we finally touched down, I was so irritable and antsy that I literally ejected myself out of first class, jogged to the car-rental counter, and took whatever they had available that was fast and ready to go. I threw my luggage into the backseat, grabbed the directions, programmed the nav system, and drove off at high speed.

  Ninety minutes later, I wheeled the rental car through the elegant front gates of the B Famous Ranch, proceeding cautiously along the short and narrow gravel drive to Tina Bogart’s home. Mountain wildflowers hung from pots and peered out of trellises, but I saw no sign of human life. I relaxed when I spotted a production van—the crew and Liz were still here.

  Suddenly the front door of an arty ranch-
style bungalow swung open, revealing a warm and welcoming blonde about my age, with ample thighs. I admit I wondered how my own thighs might look pressed flat, in mammogram fashion, against the sides of a horse. It’s not that I have the bulging thighs of an Olympic speed skater; it’s more that I don’t have the thighs of every woman ever pictured in an ad involving riding apparel. Over the years, advertisers had programmed my brain, encoding an image of the perfect female rider: thirtysomething, just under six feet tall, long, natural blond hair, and Rockette legs.

  Being five foot eight, with light auburn hair, sturdy thighs, and having thirty-something in my rearview mirror, I felt Town & Country was definitely warning me off horses. But now here was Tina Bogart, who happily did not bear the traditional stork legs. There might be hope for me. I introduced myself as Liz Chase’s guest.

  “You missed the big filming. Everyone’s packed up and left except those two boys,” she said, pointing to the grips by the remote truck loading up equipment. My heart flopped leadlike and I was irretrievably disconsolate. Liz is gone. Why didn’t she wait for me? Maybe because you told her you most likely weren’t coming, idiot!

  “I can still show you the horses under the arena lights,” Tina said, stepping out of the house and steering me around to the side of it and down a lane toward the barn. There, in small corrals, several Icelandic horses stood solemnly. I don’t know what I’d expected—perhaps that she’d fling open the back door, and, just as it happened in the Irish Spring commercial, I would be transported to a land of green, grassy tundras lashed by cold winds that whipped the manes and tails of the most glorious creatures on earth. Instead, I was looking at some rather chunky, pony-sized animals, each having its own issue with life in America. A freshly scrubbed young girl with an Icelandic accent, looking tall and Spartan without makeup and wearing a riding helmet, walked past me leading a beautiful bay horse who seemed healthy but hot.

  Tina said her horses weren’t used to the heat but that they’d have to get used to it because when a horse or its tack left Iceland, it was never allowed to return, thus protecting the small country from imported disease. Even horses that left the country to attend horse shows had to be sold afterward because they couldn’t return home, a fact that could make me teary if I dwelled on it; but then in middle age, I could no longer differentiate between a sad story and a sudden lack of estrogen.

  Tina said the Icelandic horses’ intelligence and temperament were extraordinary, as the Icelanders were known to slaughter and eat the willful ones, a practice I found abhorrent.

  “They go from being one with the horses, to eating one of the horses?”

  Tina shrugged. “It’s a rough life.”

  A young grip came running up to me and interrupted to ask if I was Brice Chandler. When I replied that I was, he handed me a note bearing the name and address of a restaurant, driving directions, and Liz Chase’s cell-phone number, asking me to call to confirm I could meet her there. My heart fired up like a generator and I thanked Tina, said a quick good-bye, got into my car, and turned left out of the ranch gates in the direction the hand-drawn map indicated. Only then did I dial Liz’s cell phone, taking a deep breath. Liz answered almost immediately, the sound of her voice relaxed and intimate.

  “We missed you.” She seemed to know somehow that I would show up.

  “My plane was delayed,” I responded, trying to regulate my breathing.

  “Can you meet me for dinner?”

  “I don’t know how long it will take me from here.”

  “Twenty-two minutes. Not that I clocked it for you or anything.”

  “Well then, I’m nineteen and a half minutes away,” I replied and hung up, realizing, somewhere in the depths of my subconscious, I was headed for trouble and anxious to get there.

  Chapter Four

  The restaurant was an old mill, circa 1800, right on the Yakima River, and when I opened the car door, the cool river breeze sent a chill across my chest. I was nervous about how I looked, which was uncharacteristic of me and due perhaps to my awareness that Liz Chase was a TV personality and they were always obsessed with how they look. This is completely ridiculous, I chastised myself. Go in, say hello, and eat, for God’s sake! This isn’t a date. But it feels like a date. Madge is right. I’ve got to get my personal life straightened out.

  Liz waved to me from the old front porch. She was wearing khaki pants with loose net pockets, a white linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows, sandals, and a smile. I thought she looked even better than she did on TV or at dinner the night I’d first met her. On those occasions she had looked completely female, and now with the sun angling off her tall frame, her khakis slung loose on her slender hips, and no real jewelry, she looked rakish, almost a tomboy. I liked that. The short, loose curls were in strange contrast to the strong, angular jawline, high cheekbones, and sculpted good looks. The combination was stunning. When she hugged me, I noticed that she was about two inches shorter than I.

  “You smell good!” she said in a tone that assured we were merely two good friends exchanging compliments. She asked immediately if Tina had shown me the horses.

  “They didn’t look as proud and dramatic as I expected,” I ventured as we entered the restaurant.

  “I guess not—ripped from the tundra, corralled for weeks or months waiting for enough horses to make a planeload, shipped in crates by air to New York, quarantined, waiting for three days for the blood work to get back that determines on the spot whether they get to live or die.”

  “Please, I’m going to cry!” I said.

  “Can you tell I don’t like the whole process? Get one that’s here already!”

  She led the way into the decaying old building and down jagged stone steps to a sitting area overlooking the river. A young woman was waiting for her with rapt attention; I assumed Liz had her cued up to make sure our every need was met, TV people being quite anal about time. She dismissed the woman with a slight gesture and a smile, saying we’d like to talk for a while and we’d let her know when we were ready for our waiter. Liz reached for my wineglass, and I held up my hand.

  “You don’t drink?” she inquired.

  “I do but—”

  “You’re afraid some insane woman will get you drunk and demand to see more of you?” Her eyes danced. “Look, let me get this out of the way so we can relax. My comment when you gave me a lift home was a one-time-never-going-to-happen-again inappropriate proposal. You were just really smashing and I was…smashed! What can I say?” She poured me a glass of wine, ignoring the fact that I’d refused it.

  “Thank you. It’s fine, really.” I felt embarrassed by the apology—actually that I should be the one apologizing. Liz had merely expressed an honest emotion, and I had acted like a 1950s nun in a brothel. I started to say something about my behavior, then feared that might take us back in the wrong direction. Liz saved me by abruptly changing the subject.

  “So you saw Tina’s ranch? Did you see the black-and-white photo of Tina in competition on her Icelandic stallion doing the flying pace?”

  When I told her I hadn’t, she said, “The horse’s right front and right rear legs, and left front and left rear legs, stay in sync, like a cross-country skier.”

  “I missed that. I was fixated on her TRUST IN JESUS sign on the corral gate.” I rolled my eyes and Liz laughed. “Those who hang signs for strangers to observe, observe strangers for signs they should hang!”

  She stared at me transfixed.

  “What? Is my shirt unbuttoned?” I laughed, but thought I saw in that look an appreciation for the way I could express the very emotions she was feeling, and from that slender thread of knowing the evening unfolded.

  She had graduated from Chapel Hill and worked at CNN Atlanta, ending up back in Dallas years later when she started dating a Texas boy—which I found off-putting, to say the least. She’d become a producer at KBUU and two months later was plucked from her behind-the-scenes duties to temporarily replace a woman on pregnancy
leave, and never gave up the chair again. Now her life was an endless sea of groundbreakings, storm chasings, and all the gang-banger crime stories a girl could ask for.

  “And everybody knows your name, as they say in the Cheers bar.” I toasted her with my wineglass. “Do you like your job?”

  She began a rehearsed response, touting all the celebrity and excitement, then broke off midsentence as if suddenly injected with truth serum and simply said, “No.”

  I arched my eyebrow in a playful question mark.

  She locked eyes with me, her voice lowering in pitch, and said, “For the same reason you don’t like being division president of a big corporation—we’re enacting men’s fantasies, pursuing men’s goals, and making men rich while wasting our potential and our lives.”

  I sipped my wine, unable to stop gazing at her, taking the measure of this outspoken woman and how far this shared moment would go. Is it our work experience, our femaleness, or our very souls that have connected? On that last thought, I sat up straighter in my chair, changing the energy, and Liz clearly felt it.

  “Let’s find you an Icelandic horse to ride, since you managed to miss the shoot. You wouldn’t buy a car unless you at least test-drove it,” she said, doing a one-eighty from the intimate moment before.

  As she quickly shifted psychological gears, I was caught off balance. “I’m not buying a horse,” I finally managed to say. “I have no place to put one.”

  “Well, not tonight.” She laughed as the waiter came to our table offering bread.

  “I shouldn’t eat any. I’ll never lose weight.” I sighed, trying to distract myself from thoughts of Liz.