Happy Saturday!
Thank you for joining me on this new journey, and thank you for all the alerts and reviews! I treasure each and every one of them.
I have a few housekeeping items today.
1. Thank you to The Lemonade Stand for featuring Behind the Ivories last week. Welcome to all of you who came here that way, glad to have you on board.
2. My other stories Correct the Narrative and Business Class Girl are nominated in Twifanfictionrecs' Poll for the Top 10 Completed Fics in 2021. Voting is open daily until Feb 25. If you loved the stories, please vote! I won't post the link because ffnet eats them up, but if you Google "Twifanfictionrecs", it's the first result that comes up.
3. Big thanks to Team Momo who work tirelessly to help me make this readable.
Alice's White Rabbit and Midnight Cougar are in the editing chairs. AGoodWitch, IAmBeagle, Driving Edward and RobsmyyummyCabanaBoy pre-read.
4. I continue to own nothing of this, it's all SM's sandbox and I just like to play in it - with EditorWard.
5. Last but not least. A few of you asked last week, "Why didn't Alice just reply to Choc B Flat via email?". Well, I did some research, and for the majority of advice columnists it's either completely unfeasible or not their policy at all to give private replies. They receive thousands of emails/letters a day; if they picked and chose who got a private reply and who didn't, a) they couldn't keep up with their columns, and b) they would be subject to valid scrutiny for possible favoritism. I've also found blog posts from advice columnists who DID provide private replies, and had to discontinue the practice for these exact reasons. So here you have it. It wasn't feasible for Alice to reply. Also, keep in mind another detail that will be relevant later: Alice has editorial control over her column, which means she's the only one who reads the letters she doesn't end up publishing. So even if YOU smart readers figured out who the mystery advice-seeker is, nobody else at the Tatler beyond Alice knows. For now.
Stick a pin in it. For later. ;-)
Without further ado ... on with the show.
BEHIND THE IVORIES – CHAPTER 4
When I step into the meeting room, a cacophony of sounds greets me. The best possible start to a gloomy Monday morning: pouring rain, a pounding headache, and now the fucking staff meeting.
Who had the brilliant idea to set these up first thing on Monday?
That would be me—the editor in chief. Guilty as charged. I couldn't pass the buck on this one even if I tried.
"Hi, boss." My assistant and office manager welcomes me with the meeting agenda, a glass of water, and two Advil. The woman knows me—and has been putting up with my grumpy ass for the last four years. Tanya Reynolds should be a national treasure. She sure is one in our newsroom.
"Thanks, T. Can we start?" I ask.
I throw a glance around the room to peruse the varied sample of humanity that makes up our team at The Back Bay Tatler—the preferred culture, lifestyle, current national, and local issues magazine of the greater Boston area.
"Not yet. Jasper's on the phone. From the harried gesticulations, it sounded important."
Jasper Hale is our music editor and critic. He writes about new releases from local and national artists, but his specialty is keeping his finger on the pulse when it comes to live music venues of all stripes in and around Boston—such a hardship.
Jasper also happens to be my former college roommate, way back when we both toiled through our journalism degrees at Columbia—Jasper with a minor in music, me with a minor in political science. Fast forward fifteen years, give or take, and here we are. It took us that long to end up in the same city and in the same newsroom.
"Yo, Mama T. How's it hanging?" The salute—which sounds like a rejected line from a Jay-Z song—comes from our photographer, photojournalist, and photography editor Emmett McCarty, known as Mac to the Tatler's crew and his revolving door of flavors of the week.
Tanya swats his hand away with an exasperated smile as he tries to steal her cup of coffee. Never steal caffeine from Reynolds—rule number one for survival at the Tatler. But Mac likes living on the edge, and don't I know it.
"Mac, act your age and take a seat. We're just waiting for J to begin," I mutter, still in the clutches of my vicious headache.
Some celebration out on the bay last night was feted with a barrage of noisy and protracted fireworks. Who wastes money on fireworks in Boston in fucking November? The continuous booming shook the floor-to-ceiling windows of my loft and kept me awake. And triggered my flashbacks again. I tried to fight it; after a while, all the techniques my therapist taught me—breathing and grounding exercises, mainly—did ease the anxiety enough to lull me into sleep. But the headache flared this morning like a bad hangover. At least it will give me some half-assed cover for my usual abrupt manners.
"Telling Mac to act his age normally backfires, Ed." Here's Jasper—the ever-present, laid-back voice of reason.
"Ain't that the truth," Tanya replies, shutting the door now that we're all here.
She then calls the meeting to order with her usual, deadly effective method—a wolf whistle—and all sounds of disjointed chatter cease immediately.
Ah. Silence. Peace. For about thirty seconds.
"Reynolds, the floor is yours." I nod at Tanya as my gaze wanders around the room again, even though I know what I'm looking for and where to find it. My floundering is a clear sign that my brain is still somewhat scrambled.
"Behind you, Ed," Jasper answers my unspoken question.
He points a yellow Sharpie highlighter to a stack of mugs and a fresh pot of coffee that are the biggest attraction in our meeting room.
I grab myself a cup of steaming liquid caffeine and finally take a seat.
Before Tanya begins listing our agenda for today, I take stock of my team—the masthead of The Back Bay Tatler, and its truest backbone.
Besides Tanya, Jasper, and Mac, all the other editors and my CFO are here today, as is the case every time we plan our upcoming print issues for the next quarter. Flexibility is the name of the game, and a lot of our features are subject to fluctuate and change because we make it a point to keep up with current affairs. However, some big-ticket items need planning far in advance: photoshoots and interview spots with renowned personalities require some cajoling on our part, and all of this takes time.
The quarterly planning meetings tend to become a sort of tour de force here, likely to last through the morning and sometimes into the afternoon. This is the only effective way to give everyone a voice and an opportunity to pitch in—bouncing ideas off each other has spared me—us—more than a headache over the years. Which is why seeing an expectant or apprehensive face at one of these meetings implies one or more of those fluctuations—potentially of tectonic proportions—might bubble up today.
"If nobody has emergent news, we can confirm the cover shoot and story for January," Tanya begins. It's a relatively vanilla piece about architectural conservation around the South End, where one should draw the line between preserving history and renovating the city, and the pros and cons of gentrification. Bostonians love the cleaned up face of their hometown, but balk when the far-reaching consequences of "cleaning up" depict them as less liberal than they'd like to appear. Figures.
"Actually, I'll need that bumped off the cover," Jasper pipes up. He doesn't have the authority to bump anything anywhere, but the fact he's even asking for it … "I swear, Cullen. It's a top story. Hear me out."
Our features editor Jessica Stanley, whose piece on the South End could get axed or bumped depending on what Jazz is about to say, shoots daggers at him from behind her bling-encrusted glasses. She's a solid reporter, but gets territorial at times and craves the limelight. Not a great strategy with me, and she knows it. She drops the death stare like a bad habit when I shake my head at her.
"Okay. Sell it to me, Hale."
"I have it on good authority that Jacob Black will be opening a new Sharps & Flats club in Boston in the new year."
The name does ring a faint bell. Faint being the operative word. As I'm about to prod Jasper for details, Mac precedes me.
"Wait a minute. We're talking about that guy from New York who single-handedly got Sharps & Flats topping the charts as the best jazz and easy-listening venue in the city in less than five years?"
Mac is a New Yorker born and raised. It's his turf we're talking about.
Jasper nods. "That's the guy, Mac. Good catch. The club in New York rakes in more than any other venue within that target audience and demographic. Every season, he has a line-up chock-full of Grammy and Tony nominees or winners. And if they're not, they quickly become so, often after snagging lucrative record deals. The club is a notorious scouting ground for A&R executives."
I'm trying to keep up, but I don't have enough background on the guy—or his club—to know if I should blow open an issue we've already put to bed to make space for this Jacob Black's new venture in Boston.
"I don't understand how a new club trumps a piece that's all wrapped up in a neat bow already," Jessica complains.
I'm tempted to agree with that point, but it would defeat the purpose of my role—playing referee among my editors and choosing the best material for our first print issue of the year.
"It depends on the club, Jessica. This is one scoop we don't want to miss," Jasper continues. "First, it's going to be in a slightly unusual location for a jazz club. Rumor has it they're taking over the old 'Howl at the Moon' warehouse in the financial district. Second, he's gutting the entire place and redoing it top to bottom. It's going to be on the chic side, not a generic, dark club with skeevy furniture. Third, the act for the grand opening will be … drumroll … Isabella Swan."
Our advice columnist—and Jasper's wife—Alice Brandon-Hale gasps, jumping up and down in her seat. "Isabella Swan? In Boston? For real?"
"One second. Give me one second," I interrupt, desperate for someone to give me more information so I can decide for myself what to do. "Who the hell is Isabella Swan, and why do we care? More importantly, why will Bostonians care?"
That is the mantra I've tried to ingrain in the team from the start of my tenure as the editor in chief. We need to write things Bostonians will care about, even if they don't know it yet.
Alice turns to me from her perch between Jasper and Jessica, an astonished look on her face. "Come on. Don't tell me you don't know who Isabella Swan is?"
"Triple A, if there are no distorted guitars and driving drumbeats, he doesn't even consider it music. Give the guy some latitude," Mac quips with one of his signature smirks.
"I wish you'd drop that stupid nickname. It diminishes the significance of my work," Alice counters with a dainty huff.
Knowing her, she's being sarcastic, but she also doesn't exactly appreciate the moniker Mac inaugurated for her when he started at the Tatler three and a half years ago. Triple A stands for Ask Alice Already, the headline of Alice's advice column in the Tatler, and to everyone's constant astonishment, one of the most viewed pages of our online edition.
"Ignore him, darling. He does it on purpose to rile you up," Jasper murmurs, trying to appease her.
He isn't wrong; Mac can be a pain in the ass if he wants to. But it's time to bring the meeting back to order.
"Enough, children. We have a magazine to produce. Now, back up the wagon. Isabella Swan?"
Alice, strangely, is the one to answer. "Oh, I can't believe you don't know who she is, Edward. Really?"
"I sense you're yearning to tell me, Alice." I motion for her to continue.
"She got her feet wet in Europe as a classical piano performer, but she became famous worldwide almost overnight when she collaborated with an up-and-coming hip-hop artist … now, what's his face …"
I know for a fact Alice doesn't like or listen to hip-hop. Mac, who does listen to hip-hop, interrupts her again. "Wait, that guy … newish guy with unicorn hair and a name that sounds like a physics formula? E …"
"DJ EY2," Jasper supplies.
Mac has a point. The name is a few symbols away from an Einsteinian postulate.
"At the same time," Jasper continues, "she got a few gigs at Sharps & Flats in New York, which garnered her a niche but dedicated following first in New York, and then nationwide. Six months later, she had a record deal and a ten-month tour schedule."
I raise a skeptical eyebrow. "All this fuss for one piano player?"
Alice huffs. "She's not a piano player, you judgmental alternative rocker. She's a composer. She writes and performs her own music. And it's absolutely divine."
Likely instrumental. Possibly boring as fuck. Not my cup of tea. "For insomniacs, maybe."
"Well, insomniacs have been very lucrative for the charming Miss Swan so far, Ed. She has a Twitter following that rivals Beyonce's. Every time she posts a snippet of anything to Instagram, she breaks the internet. She sold millions of records, topped digital sales charts, and filled up concert halls and rock venues alike throughout Europe. With her own instrumental creations that she performs at the piano, alone on a stage. No frills, no fanfare, no nothing. Just a girl in black jeans and a black T-shirt, black hi-top Chucks, and a blue scarf in her hair. That's it."
At this point, our resident geek—the digital editor, Ben Cheney—cuts in, lifting his gaze from his ever-present iPad. "Hang on, hang on … I think I've heard of this chick. That Ferrari ad campaign with the new car gliding through a pristine Tuscany countryside, to the tune of a relaxing, lush piano piece in the background … Wasn't that her? Isabella Swan?"
Jasper nods enthusiastically. "That's her. The ad was nominated for a slew of advertising awards, notably for the soundtrack."
"And the chick raked in more record sales. But wait. Does she even give interviews?"
"No! That's the point," Jasper interjects. "So far she's been … not reclusive, per se, but extremely selective. She doesn't give interviews at all. Her team issues press statements when she starts touring, makes special appearances, releases new music, but that's it. Her fans—rabid following, by the way—"
"They're not rabid, Jazzy. They're dedicated. Protective, even. They love her, and with good cause."
"Well, say anything bad about her, or run afoul of them on social media, and they'll come for you," Ben comments. Because of his role, he's plugged into this scene more than the rest of us. "Forget the Beyhive or the Swifties. If the Duckling Army comes after you, delete your account. It'll be safer."
"Aren't these cliques dangerous, though?" Tanya asks. She helps Ben maintain the Tatler's social media accounts, but only as far as providing content goes. He's the tech guy, and just as well; Tanya's well into her fifties and her relationship with technology is contentious at best. "Also, doesn't that kind of behavior reek of cyberbullying?" But she's up-to-date with the lingo because we did a cover feature on it a few months ago.
"Ben misrepresented it a little, I'm afraid," Alice explains. "Bear in mind that Isabella Swan is a bit of a misfit figure on the music scene. She's had to face pushback from classical performers and music critics on both sides of the Atlantic who regarded her first as a sell-out because she dabbled with hip-hop, then as a fraud because she eschewed the classical music festival and recitals scene to focus on composing her own music. On the other hand, her instrumental pieces don't easily fit into a category, or a genre. In my opinion, that mass of caryatids are just plain jealous."
"Of what?" I ask, trying to understand the draw of this musician about whom, I'll freely admit, I know absolutely zilch. As Alice said, not my preferred drumbeat.
"Of her record deal. Of the million records sold. Of her overnight notoriety. Of her legions of fans worldwide. Of how approachable she's made instrumental music without being a condescending stiff. Do I need to go on? She might be rich and famous now, but the girl hasn't had the easiest life all the time."
"Haven't we all? I still fail to see how and why this results in us changing the lineup of the January issue."
"Well, Jacob Black and Isabella Swan go way back. He gave her what ended up being her first big break. They've been friends since then," Jasper starts explaining. "And by all accounts, he's extremely loyal to all his artists."
"Word around the campfire is that they might be more than friends," Jessica chimes in. She's also the society columnist, which makes her our unofficial gossip expert. "There were pictures of the pair of them traipsing around Alphabet City hand in hand a few months ago."
"Unsubstantiated rumor," Alice counters, incensed. I have a feeling she's rather invested in this piano player. "Don't listen to her, Edward. Jacob and Bella are just friends."
"She's Bella now?" I ask, to everyone's diverted reactions.
"She introduces herself as Bella at each concert. Her fans call her Bella."
"Well, how do you explain her Twitter handle then?" Ben interrupts. "It's BBlackSwan. Kinda suspicious if you ask me."
"There's an explanation, you dolt. B stands for Bella. "Black Swan" alludes to her all-black concert attire. That's all. 'BlackSwan' was already taken, so she tacked an extra B onto it. It's on her Instagram bio somewhere. Same handle over there, too."
"You know an awful lot about this … artist, Alice," I blurt out.
"I'm a fan. She's amazing. I listen to her music all the time."
"Maybe we should let you interview her," I throw out, half-joking.
"Hell no!" Jasper protests. "She never, ever gives interviews. Like ever. She prefers direct, unfiltered contact with her fans, hence all the social media accounts. She does online Q&A sessions. The fans submit questions via Twitter or Instagram, and then she and her team choose a bunch and post video replies. She hasn't given a legit, sit-down interview in almost four years …"
Jessica interrupts him. "Stop the presses. Four years, you said?"
"Almost, Jess. Almost."
"Now I remember. Wasn't her boyfriend at the time also a concert pianist or something?"
With an uncharacteristically unladylike growl, Alice interjects, "Not boyfriend, damn him to the bottom of the bay. He was her fiancé."
"Was?" I ask, half-curious and half-eager to get off Gossip Boulevard and back to the business at hand.
"The piece of shit dumped her for an actress. At their engagement party, no less," Jess adds. That's where her expertise comes in.
"Please don't mention that dark time in her life," Alice counters. From her distressed tone, you'd think she was Bella Swan's therapist, press agent, and best friend all rolled into one.
"Well, that was a factor in her decision to give the proverbial middle finger to the classical music scene and go her own way," Jasper adds. "But that's beside the point. The real point is she's skittish with the press. Especially with the music industry press. Hell, I still don't know how I twisted her manager's arm enough that I got a reluctant yes. It may or may not be because of Jacob Black himself. I know someone on his team, and they were fully on board when I proposed to feature the new club opening in the Tatler."
"So it would be a full spread on both of them? Two spreads? The club opening and the featured artist? Why didn't I hear of this before today?" I'm slowly getting warmer on the idea, but I don't like entertaining the thought that Jasper may have gone behind my back in any way.
"Because I didn't have a feature before … half an hour ago. I had Jacob's people on the phone earlier. And they said they'd bring Isabella Swan in for the interview if we wanted. She's doing Black a favor, apparently."
"Okay, so let me summarize if I got everything. New club, potentially the next hot spot of Boston, in an unusual location for a jazz club." He nods, and I continue enumerating. "Spread about the new club, interview with the owner." Another nod. "Interview with the artist chosen for the grand opening." Third nod. "An artist who never gives interviews. And we'd have an exclusive."
"The likes of which would give a coronary to the editors at Classical Music and Rolling Stone. This is solid, Edward. How many times have I asked to bump a cover story before?"
He has me there. "Never," I admit, tapping my thumb to the table in a staccato rhythm that echoes the throbbing of my lingering headache.
"This will be golden for circulation." Alice is also our CFO, the numbers lady and the scion of our founder and publisher—Curtis Brandon, real estate mogul turned publishing wiz. She doesn't often use the financial argument as leverage to convince me.
"And the clicks. Imagine all those clicks," echoes Ben, already with stars in his eyes thinking of page views and ad revenue. The Tatler isn't hurting for subscribers or money, but let's face it, framed like this we would be idiots to pass up the opportunity.
"Fair enough." I acknowledged their arguments.
As Jessica's expression deflates and Jasper sits up straighter, I hold up my hand, asking for a time-out.
"But I have conditions. First, money—Jazz, Mac, sit down with our illustrious CFO and work out a realistic budget for the photo shoot and a schedule that works for everyone. This will be on the cover, so plan your shots accordingly. Second, the gentrification spread—bump it to the February cover, with an online tease in mid-January. You've worked your butt off for this, Jess. I appreciate that, and since there are no time constraints on it, we'll bump it down the line, but it will keep its prime spot. Third, Triple A—this is not an expansion of the advice column. It's a music piece. I want you nowhere near Jasper during that interview, Alice."
Alice opens her mouth to protest, but Jasper stops her. "She's an interviewee, darling. You know the rules."
"Thank you. No fangirling on an interview subject, Alice. I'm sorry, but that's final. If you happen to get tickets to her gig, that's one thing. But gatecrashing an interview? No, I can't have that."
"The Editor in Chief has spoken," Mac states. "And it looks like I have a fun photo shoot to plan."
&&&IVORIES&&&
"The 'agony aunt' is in agony," Mac deadpans on entering my office two hours later once we've wrapped the staff meeting.
"How so?"
"You're keeping her at arm's length from the piano player. She's quite put out."
While I leaf through the folders and stacks of article printouts piled on my desk, I ponder Mac's comment and shrug. "She'll live. It's Jasper's feature, not hers."
"She seems to know a lot about this chick."
"You know how she gets when she's passionate about something. It's almost a compulsion," I counter.
Alice sees her job as advice columnist like a mission and still seethes whenever Mac dares call her "agony aunt." She erupts against the antiquated terminology as if it were a slur. She takes the stories her readers share with her truly to heart. It pains her that she can't always help them, or she doesn't get to hear if her advice has done any good. So, along these lines, it makes perfect sense for her to feel protective of the artist she loves so much.
"If she weren't so conspicuous and so single-minded, she could have made a good P.I. But then again, no, those frocks she wears sometimes. Just no."
Alice has very unpredictable, quirky tastes when it comes to fashion. Today, she's wearing a black knee-length tunic dress decorated with colorful, stylized, flower-shaped patches, with purple tights, and a long-sleeved yellow shirt. The whole ensemble cuts quite a figure paired with her short, spiky hairdo and her striking gray eyes.
"She's not keen on blending in," Jasper pipes up from the doorway. "Got a minute, Ed? I mean, if you're done discussing my wife's wardrobe?"
Sarcastic asshole. He's lucky I'm quite fond of him. "Come in. What's up?"
He steps inside and plonks down on a chair next to Mac. "I just thought I'd catch you and Mac right after the meeting while it's all fresh in our minds."
He doesn't really need me for this—he can sort out budget requirements and interview arrangements with Mac and Alice. He must have something else he needs to tell me. "Is that all?"
He scratches at his temple, looking anywhere but at me. First, he opens and closes his mouth, as if he didn't quite know how to frame whatever it is he means to say. Then, he starts bouncing his leg in a fast, disjointed rhythm. I know all of Jasper's nervous ticks. And that's the entire menu on display, right there.
"Out with it, man. What's eating at ya?"
He throws a sidelong glance at Mac, who nods almost imperceptibly. Is Mac in on this, too?
"I heard from some of my former pals at the Post"—being The Washington Post, where he spent a few years while I chased grenades in the Middle East—"and our other pal at The Globe confirmed it …"
We have a few pals at The Boston Globe; it comes with the territory. One of them—the most illustrious—is my own mother, Esme Platt-Cullen, now the leading lady of the editorial page after a star-studded career as a political reporter. Journalism runs in the family.
"And?"
"Senator Caulfield is running for re-election."
"And you think I need to know because …?"
The moron is not only a bigot of the first order—all religious freedom crusades and Second Amendment rhetoric run amok, which makes him a bit of an oddity for a Massachusetts Senator—but his claim to fame at the Tatler also doesn't come from his congressional voting record. He happens to be my ex-girlfriend's father. Only, it should hardly be relevant to my personal life after almost six years.
"It's hardly surprising, even if it's not looking like it will be a great year for Republicans."
Mac intervenes. "Rumor has it that he wants to try for the White House in the next cycle, so of course, he needs to stay in the limelight. Hence, vying for a second term in the Senate."
He won his seat in November 2012, only nine months after my previous life got shattered—literally and figuratively—under the rubble of the siege of Homs in Syria. It took eighteen hours to get me out of the few tons of debris I was trapped under in the bomb blast, and five months to get me home to Boston and walking on my own feet again. I came out of it without a job and without a girlfriend. Katherine Caulfield—Kate to Mac and me while we were together in Syria—maneuvered her involvement in a war crime into a career success. She pulled a nice hat trick—not only did she dump me the moment we landed at Boston Logan Airport, she also went behind my back to convince the network not to rehire me. She argued the experience had severely affected my ability to perform in the field, then she got a job at MSNBC that placed her a rung or two above me in the corporate ladder.
When I read the announcement in Politico at the time, it finally dawned on me. Why she'd never come to see me at the hospital in Paris or in Boston, why she spent all her time whispering on the phone. The memories of my hospital stay in Paris are still hazy, but the only face I remember seeing constantly by my bed was Mac's. Kate was never there. She was plotting her exit strategy instead of comforting her ailing boyfriend. Figures.
"That's not all, Mac," Jasper adds, interrupting my stream of consciousness. "There's a rumor about Kate circulating."
"And why should that concern me?"
Normally, they never speak the K word around me. Once I'd taken my hurt and rage out on the med ball at physical therapy, I never uttered her name again. Anything of hers that littered my apartment in New York, I trashed when I moved out. She never contacted me to have her shit back, so I took some wicked satisfaction in exorcising her out of my existence. And, to this day, I haven't gotten entangled with another woman again. I just threw myself into my job.
"Because it's a personal sort of rumor."
I lean back in my office chair, still on the defensive. Anything relating to the Caulfields makes me cranky, as a matter of principle, but now my curiosity is piqued. "Well, regale me."
They exchange a disbelieving look, almost to check with each other whether they should go ahead and tell me or hold their tongues.
I blow out a breath. "You know, if you keep this up any longer, I'm going to think it's much worse than it actually is. I don't give a shit about the Senator or his career-climbing daughter, but somehow, you both seem to think I need to know whatever it is they're up to. So please, regale me."
Mac answers me instead of Jasper. "Remember that cooking show host who sat next to Kate at the White House Correspondents' Dinner last year? They were photographed together at their table while Kate preened to Wolf Blitzer and sundry."
I do remember the pictures. Alice had a field day trying to dissect Kate's expression. "Laurie Mellon? That one?"
"Lauren Mallory," Jasper corrects. "I have it from a reliable source. They're together. As in, together, together. They're a couple."
I can't help but raise an intensely skeptical eyebrow.
"And it seems they're serious."
"She was serious with me, too, until she walked all over my half-body cast to poach my job and dump my titanium-wired ass."
"They're getting married, Edward. It's going to be announced soon."
Okay, I can see why they'd worry about me hearing the news from other sources. "What about the Senator? Still intent on 'burning the gays'?"
"That's where it all gets interesting," Mac chimes in. "It seems he had a Dick Cheney moment since his daughter appears to have found the love of her life, and he realized that maybe being a tad less of a judgmental prick could help him claw back a few thousand votes in a contentious election cycle."
I can't help it. I devolve into raucous, caustic laughter. "That is such a Caulfield move to pull. They should trademark it—'Dispensing with my beliefs for political/professional advancement? Check.' What a crock of shit."
Mac and Jasper exchange another round of befuddled looks.
"Guys, I'm not going to walk downstairs to Alistair's to drown my regrets in a pint of Sam Adams. Not going there."
Jasper scratches the back of his neck, clearly unsure of his next remark. "Well, we thought … Look, Edward, we know you didn't take it well when she left you."
"I had a ring in my pocket that day in Homs, J. Did you know that?"
He shakes his heads, dejected. "No. But that kinda proves my point, doesn't it?"
I heave a deep, tortured sigh. "She broke my heart. Six years ago. But it's water under the bridge. I can't allow her to have that kind of power over me. She made her choice. She made her bed, and it looks like she's been lying in it. Although …"
"What?" Mac prods me.
"I don't care who she marries or that she is getting married. It's her prerogative. But what was I to her at the end of the day? A stepping stone? A substitute? A filler? A stage in her journey of discovery?"
Mac shakes his head. "You know I'm no fan of hers, and you're asking 100 percent legit questions. But I don't think we'll ever know any of that. So, my two cents? Don't allow it to torture you. It'd be a waste of time and energy."
I ponder his words for a moment. Mac is a boisterous, perpetually cheerful, muscled six-foot six hulk of a guy, and yet he hides the keen perceptiveness of a homicide detective behind his boyish dimples and blue eyes. Those sparkling baby blues have seen the same horrors I've witnessed over the years, and there's no way it hasn't affected him or made him more insightful as to what makes people tick.
"Thanks, Mac. J, you too. Look, I'm not going to send a wedding gift. Or show up unannounced at whatever glitzy venue they choose and pitch a hissy fit. I truly don't give a shit. Now, do you need me for the piano player photoshoot, or was that an excuse for this huddle?"
Mac and J exchange another glance. "We know when we're being dismissed," J says, standing to leave.
Mac lingers; he stares at me, his arms crossed over his chest. I know what he's doing. He's trying to figure out if I just lied through my teeth or not.
"Ed, listen …"
I shake my head, hoping he'll get it. I didn't lie. I wasn't entirely truthful either. But I'm not ready to spill the beans. I'm not ready to admit out loud what I'm thinking. What I'm feeling.
Maybe because it's all a weird jumble of memories and emotions. Of lost opportunities and lies. Of dashed hopes and disappointments. The more they all close in on me, the darker it gets in my head.
And, suddenly, I feel like I'm at a dead end.
So, we finally met Edward. What do we think?
Side note: "agony aunt" is a slightly outdated, typically British term for advice columnists. Which makes it the perfect term for Mac to use to taunt Alice. ;-)
Also, The Back Bay Tatler does not exist. Picture it as a mix of the Improper Bostonian, Time Out, and The Atlantic, if you will.
See you all next Saturday!
