Mistress of the Runes Read online

  *

  Exhausted, disgusted, and angry, I drove in deeply ponderous silence to the Chinese drive-thru and grabbed dinner for Madge and me. She’d offered to put me up until I’d found a place to stay. Having already called one of the townhouse communities that had rentals, I knew I’d be in within a day or two. That’s one thing money can do for me—make the tactical aspects of crises more easily manageable.

  The kid at the drive-thru took my order, then eyed the backseat of my car jammed with clothes and high-tech gear, books, and a tricycle horse.

  “You move?” he asked.

  “No, just taking my stuff for a ride,” I said sourly, thinking of Jeff Foxworthy.

  I phoned my office, lying to Jane about not feeling well and blaming the plane’s air-vent system. The only remaining issue was telling Jane I had a new address. I hated telling her anything. I had hired her upon learning that her boss had been fired and she was about to be summarily dismissed because of her age, although the age issue was not overtly discussed. Jane had been with me for only a few weeks when I discovered that she was a professional busybody, and her hair, which seemed to have been given electric-shock treatment, might well have received it from her own central nervous system, which seemed to have shorted out, making her supremely sensitive and causing her to spend a good deal of her day inordinately addled. My hiring her simply proved Clare Boothe Luce’s point that no good deed goes unpunished.

  I drove to Madge’s house late in the day and used the key she’d left under the mat for me, saying she’d be at the store when I arrived. After tossing the Chinese food on the kitchen counter, I undressed and fell into bed, planning only to nap, but ending up sleeping for hours. When I did awaken, I was staring at a strangely different ceiling—lower and spackled like old, dirty popcorn.

  Disoriented, I began thinking it might be morning, but I wasn’t certain. Where is the clock? 1:11a.m. It was always 1:11. In fact, for several years I’d noticed how ones were everywhere. But at the moment, I had bigger problems to contemplate than my predilection toward only checking the clock at 1:11.

  Where am I? I thought, catching sight of the Shaker rocker in the corner. I sat straight up in bed, feeling as if I’d just been captured by aliens. Madge’s spare bedroom. My mind made sense of the surroundings. Madge’s tiny house where everything smelled different and looked different and the bed was lumpy. I rolled over and covered my head with a pillow and wished I had a sleeping pill.

  Four hours later I awoke again, this time depressed, and crawled around trying to locate my clothes and makeup. I was in a daze and came out of the bedroom forty minutes after the alarm went off, feeling only somewhat disheveled.

  “I’ve never lived with anyone, so how does it go…Hi, honey, sleep well? Can I get you some coffee?” Madge handed me a cup of thickly brewed caffeine.

  “Omigod, real coffee, thank you!”

  “Yes, well, you’re pathetic so I went out and bought some,” Madge said gruffly.

  “Not a bad morning greeting. You might also try, ‘you look smashing in that suit.’”

  “Don’t press your luck, the sun’s not even up,” Madge growled.

  *

  I pulled my Jaguar into the parking lot and sat for just a moment, practicing breathing.

  Do not share your breakup with anyone, that’s a sign of weakness. Yeah, well, weakness is having a goddamned breakup in the first place! I chastised myself before gripping my briefcase, slinging open the car door, and picking up my step. Pace was everything for an executive. Pick up the pace and own the place.

  Papers were piled high, phone messages were in neat stacks, and my phone was ringing. Jane was on lines one and two, so I picked up line three.

  “So how have you been?” Michael Kaloff boomed. Michael was a dark, dapper, self-absorbed man in his mid-fifties—a board member rich enough not to have to care how things turn out in the end.

  “Great, just great,” I lied.

  “Good!” Pleasantries over, he lowered his voice as if people were lurking just outside his office door desperately wanting to overhear this information. “I’m an advocate of Anselm’s, I think you know that. He’s not the easiest person to be around, but he drives the business. I’m less than happy right now with this two-headed monster we’ve created,” he said, referencing Anselm and Puckett’s power wars. “As things begin to shift, just hang on to the rails and don’t bail.”

  “What’s shifting?”

  “Let me put it this way. It’s time to surgically separate the conjoined twins, and I don’t think they’ll both survive. Keep this to yourself. Got another call, talk to you later.” He hung up.

  “Line two,” Jane said over the intercom, “Jonathon King.” I picked up the phone to speak to Kaloff’s nemesis on the board.

  “How are you doing?” he boomed. Jonathon King was a diminutive, middle-aged, brown-suited guy with sandy blond hair and a Midwestern attitude. He wasn’t as rich as Michael Kaloff, nor was he as clever.

  “Great, just great,” I lied again.

  “Good!” he said, not meaning it. “Listen, we’ve got a few board members, I don’t want to name names, who are stirring the pot. They’re not giving the new structure the support it needs to work. For the record, Walter Puckett is a hard driver who is fired up and will turn this place around, given the chance!”

  I thought about Walter’s tits-and-ass comments and wanted to ask how Jonathon King defined “fired up,” but I bit my tongue.

  “I’m aware you’ve known Anselm longer, but I don’t want you to take a bullet for him. Just lay low, keep your skirts clean. We’ve got a lot to do this year!” King chortled over nothing, to let me know he was a warm, friendly guy, and hung up.

  Jane stuck her head through the doorway, saying Anselm had summoned me. I walked over to his office and coded myself in through the two sets of double doors that separated him from the rest of the working world.

  “You’re back,” he stated, not wanting a reply and not pretending to care whether I’d had a good time. I had to give him points for being direct. “Gotten calls from anyone on the board?” Anselm never looked up from his scribbling, but I could tell from his tone that he knew I had.

  “Kaloff and King.”

  “Stay out of it.” Anselm disliked the fact that I had a passing acquaintance with several of the board members and that they phoned me from time to time. “Let me know what you hear?” He never looked up, to underscore that what I might hear was of little consequence.

  On the way back to my office, I mused that other entertainment companies were breathing up our collective shorts while our leadership was busy trying to kill each other off, as if we were suffering from corporate autoimmune disease.

  I had plopped into my chair and was staring out the window when the pinging sound associated with arriving e-mail broke the silence. Expecting it to be from Anselm, I glanced at my computer. It read lchase@kbuu. I stared at it breathlessly for a moment before clicking it open and reading So you’ll know what you missed.

  It took me a minute to realize she was referring to the photos attached. I clicked them open and saw pictures taken during the photo shoot at Tina’s ranch. The horses frozen midchew on my screen looked darling in the confines of my air-conditioned office separated from the heat and the flies. The third photo showed Liz standing next to a horse, her arm around it, looking directly into the camera with those piercing blue eyes. She looked spectacular: her hair blowing in the wind; her beautiful, strong, slightly androgynous face aglow in the superb light; her eyes softened by the presence of the gentle animal resting against her. I had to remember to breathe. As I was forwarding that single picture to my PDA, I thought, I want to see her again.

  I replied to her e-mail: Beautiful pics, thanks. Would next weekend work for our horse adventure? When my finger hit Send, my heart zoomed up into my throat and a voice in my head said, What in the hell are you setting in motion? Too late.

  The instant reply: Yes. I’ll set it
up. Meet me Friday morning, my house at 7 a.m.

  She has audacity, presuming to set the time. I wrote back that I was working Friday.

  Her e-mail reply was You’re the boss; give yourself a day off. See you at 7 a.m.

  I smiled in spite of myself.

  *

  It was as if everyone on the planet had been assigned the job of subverting my trip with Liz. By Thursday evening my office looked like a deli, the line stretching back six people deep, each trying to get one last approval or decision or opinion. Talent acquisition, networks, and research stood in a clump waiting for Jane to quit reciting the phone messages that needed an immediate return.

  “I assume you haven’t formed a singing group but are gathered here for some business reason,” I said to the trio of humanity looming nearby.

  Maxine, head of research, smiled, apparently enjoying my particular brand of humor, and spoke up on behalf of saving the networks’ ratings. “Jack is demanding we sign a guy whose entertainment representation to date, not to mention talent, is marginal at best—starred in infomercials about depilatory remedies, penile dysfunction, and right-wing religious groups.”

  “Does he have a following?” I kept from grinning.

  “Not unless you count the very hairy, impotent guy seeking salvation,” Maxine said dryly as I dialed Jack.

  He answered immediately, saying he thought I was out of town, then addressed me as his own personal goddess of talent, a sure sign that he was up to something.

  “Why are we signing a piece of talent who’s starring in a penile dysfunction commercial?” I asked.

  “Because his brother lives with the network exec who is three layers above Elgin Aria and can get your poor-man’s Jacques Cousteau series green-lighted at a time when programming slots are scarcer than virgins at a rock concert.”

  “That kind of crap erodes our credibility. Not doing it,” I said flatly.

  “Okay, look, no one’s supposed to know this, but…are you alone?” he asked, and I glanced up at Maxine and her entourage and politely waved them off.

  “Go ahead,” I said into the phone.

  “Puckett traded out a penile implant for our handling this kid’s career for a year.” Jack spoke as if he were residing inside his own desk drawer.

  “Jeezus,” I snorted. “I hope the talent isn’t the one who did the surgery.”

  “The talent’s brother, who’s a doctor, did Puckett’s surgery. So you get the kid’s career up, Puckett gets his gear up, and I get to cheer up…because the sonofabitch will be off my ass.” Jack snickered at his own joke.

  “We’re turning into whores,” I moaned, syncing my PalmPilot with my computer.

  “That would be a step up. They get paid every time they get screwed,” he said and hung up.

  I threw my computer into my briefcase, gathered up the phone messages to be returned while I drove, waved good-bye to Jane, and dialed Madge as I exited the office. When she answered, I told her I would be out of town for a few days because I was going on a horse-sightseeing trip with Liz Chase.

  “I thought you were going to leave that alone.”

  “I am. It’s about horses.”

  “It’s about sex. Otherwise you’d be inviting me to go look at horses,” Madge said dryly.

  “Point taken. But I can assure you I’m not going to have sex with her. I’m not going to share a place, space, or my life with her. Can I just go spend a weekend in the country and admire her nice ass?”

  “You’re on the rebound, so just be careful. And don’t mount anything you can’t ride.” Madge hung up.

  Chapter Six

  On business trips I always traveled with too many pieces of matching luggage bearing suits and shoes of every description, so it was freeing to throw a duffel bag loaded with nothing but riding gear and an extra pair of jeans into the back of the car and head off on our three-day horse adventure.

  I picked up the phone to dial Clare and tell her I was leaving…then I stopped. There was no Clare. It was a bit like a death. I was off balance, almost out of my body, my life upside down again and no one to discuss it with. It didn’t matter that Clare was the wrong person for me; it mattered that she was there—the person who kept the house from being empty, the person who allowed me to say I lived with someone, the person whose name I wrote on the line that said whom to contact in case of emergency. Clare could have been almost anyone, and this disconcerting thought made me uneasy—the idea that I missed Clare only because I didn’t want to be alone.

  I chose to pack that thought away and live a life free of self-analysis for three days. It would all be there waiting for me when I returned—the fact that I was now alone again.

  Focus on Liz’s derriere, I told my sad self, and immediately I could feel tingling throughout my body, and that instant physical response made me smile. It proved I wasn’t emotionally dead and that as a general category, hormones were better than drugs.

  I was as excited as a teenager as I pulled into Liz Chase’s driveway and nearly danced up the walkway to her house. She greeted me with a hug and I felt exhilarated. I sucked in air as if breathing in the countryside before we’d even gotten there.

  “Don’t you own a pair of jeans?” I held her at arm’s length to check her out.

  “There’s nowhere I can wear them. The station doesn’t like its talent to be seen on the street looking any less attractive than we are on TV.”

  “Well, you’ve certainly accomplished that. But we’re leaving town, so maybe you want to grab a pair that you can change into once I have you safely over the state line.”

  She grinned and dashed back upstairs, giving me a few minutes to look at the foyer and into the twenty-by-twenty-foot living room. The colors were off-white, the textures were linen, the leather butterscotch tan, and the fabric pale green accents, all put together with casual elegance. Now I know what her taste is. My mind contemplated that phrase in a way it never had. I would like to know what her taste is. I almost laughed at myself. Too many years in the company of men, I thought, excusing myself.

  Liz reappeared with a pair of folded blue jeans and reached down to lug several bags out of the foyer. I took the heaviest one from her and carried it out to the Jag, wondering why I was suddenly turning into a butch.

  “Let’s stop at Starbucks. I hear you’re a bear without it,” she said and I drew back, surprised. “Always befriend the secretaries. Part of my line of work.”

  *

  We drove north on I-30 and then took I-40 through Arkansas, picking up I-55 to Missouri, then all the way up to Illinois: miles and miles of tiny towns, fields of nondescript crops, and fresh air. I loved car trips. They put me in touch with weather and people and roadside greasy spoons and my own thoughts.

  “Watch where you’re driving! Are you okay?” Liz warned as I swerved across the center line, mesmerized by a clothing billboard for men.

  “Did you see that sign? Work clothes, size 20X! If you’re 20X, you define chapped thighs!”

  Off to our right, over the top of a crew-cut-crested field of corn, we saw the largest man to ever sit astride a John Deere tractor, riding right at us in a pair of overalls that flopped over the sides and back of the tractor seat like three denim inner tubes jostling for the same resting place.

  “That could be 30X,” I said in awe as the radio blared “John Deere greeeeen”—the color Billy Bob painted the water tower proclaiming his love for Charlene. I looked over at Liz, then away when she looked back. That glance elevated my nervous system a few frequencies above just getting away from the city and taking a vacation. The two of us together in one small space, strangers really, but sharing the same sense of humor felt so good it was electric.

  Liz had made all the arrangements, surfing the ’net until she’d found Willow Bend Farm and its owners, the Coltons—a friendly couple willing to entertain gawkers. As we neared the farm, a huge storm was gathering, so Liz turned up the car radio to hear an announcer interrupt programming to warn that
a tornado was headed our way. From the looks of the wall cloud just to our west, all hell was imminent! Liz went into meteorologist mode, shushing me every few minutes so she could hear the dire predictions, possible evacuations, and historical comparisons of other such storms. I refused to acknowledge even a dark cloud in the sky.

  “It’s going to miss us,” I said in a Pollyanna tone. The possibility of seeing more than a dozen Icelandic horses and being close to Liz Chase gave me a bigger rush than any drug.

  The grass-rich pastures of Willow Bend appeared around the next curve, and a big barn stood just a few dozen yards in front of our car. I jumped out and walked over to shake hands with Ann Colton. It was dark as she waved us to the corral, the wind was picking up, and lightning was barely visible on the western horizon.

  I can’t describe Ann because the time I spent looking at her was infinitesimal in comparison to my staring at her horses. I was like an archaeologist who’d come upon a rare find and could not take my eyes off it. The newest Icelandic horse was a mottled black and well proportioned, but not as massive and muscular as I’d envisioned one should be.

  A clap of thunder and bolt of lightning came out of nowhere, and a young Icelandic girl spoke in her native tongue to the little horse as she took him back to the barn. I was mystified how every Icelandic horse farm in the U.S. seemed to have acquired a young Icelandic girl. Tina Bogart had one, now Ann had one. Apparently, if one ordered several Icelandic horses, the Icelanders threw in a teenager for free.

  Ann led us into the barn where she had several other horses, and every one of them quickly turned its butt to us and unceremoniously ignored our presence, the human equivalent of giving us the finger. Ann led one of the horses out of its stall for us to admire, but by now, the wind was howling like a she-cat. While the horses were unconcerned, Liz was almost apoplectic.

  Even I was forced to admit the weather had turned inclement, to say the least. Ann insisted we take shelter in her home, but I assured her that we were just a few miles from our hotel. I wasn’t going to risk being trapped with strangers—I’d take my chances in the car with Liz. The fact that I would brave the elements to be alone with Liz registered briefly on my subconscious. We said quick good-byes, and Liz and I dashed to the car just as all hell broke loose.