Therese Fowler - Reunion

But what Julian hadn’t understood then was that not everyone was interested in, or equipped to travel, his chosen path, either. Some people were spotlights, some were reflectors. The world needed both. Yes, he’d pushed Julian too hard at the time, he saw that later. He’d been too passionate, too single-minded, hadn’t recognized that Julian was so much like him—and still was. Just not in the ways he had wanted him to be.

Well, he’d mellowed. Which didn’t mean he was any less passionate about literature’s relevance. Literary Lions grew from his urge to demonstrate that relevance in a new way … and, if he was fully honest, demonstrate his own relevance as well. Since Craig’s sudden death, he’d gone around feeling as though he had one foot in the grave. What was his legacy, other than a collection of articles, a couple of books read by approximately fourteen people, two failed marriages, and a strained relationship with his only son? With Lions , he hoped to rectify the past and revise his outlook for the future.

A future that appeared to want Brenda in it in ways he’d hardly imagined.

“Dr Forrester? Dr Forrester ?” A student’s voice penetrated, finally.

“Sorry—you caught me daydreaming about, um, spending spring break in Key West,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

“Well, I was going to ask if Archer’s mistaken perception of May is a good example of dramatic irony—but I like your new topic better.”

To celebrate Mitch’s fifty-first birthday, he and Brenda joined two other couples at Mez, a new “green” Mexican restaurant Brenda wanted to try. Deirdre and Corbin he’d known since moving to Chapel Hill: she taught human genetics; he taught physics. Mitch met them at a UNC basketball game. The other pair was Tony and Gemma, both college administrators whose friendship stretched back to a time when he was dating Angie, who’d worked with Tony in the recruiting office. The couple’s friendship was one of the few things he’d kept when he and Angie split.

Deirdre raised her margarita and said, “Here’s to Mitch. Good to see you made it another year, and that you’re making it with Brenda—oops, I didn’t mean that like it sounded!”

“To Mitch,” the group echoed.

“To making it,” Tony added.

By the third pitcher of margaritas, their dinner plates were cleared and Mitch was discussing Lions with much less reluctance than usual. According to some in the English department, the idea of such a series was seditious—literature was not video , for crying out loud, and never the twain should meet. Just look at what Hollywood had done to Frankenstein ! It hardly mattered that he wasn’t attempting to adapt any of the works. They felt he would be making their world common, and that would never do.

Corbin, however, was all about demystifying the universe, especially when the tequila was doing its work on him. “I think the show’s got serious possibilities,” he said.

Gemma said, “Serious, like, he gets millions of dollars and moves to Hollywood?”

Everyone looked at Mitch, who shook his head. “Not likely.”

Corbin preferred his vision. “It’s happened.”

“To whom?” Brenda scoffed, left eyebrow raised just as it often was during faculty meetings.

“All kinds of people. Just look at all the shows where a chef or a decorator or a geographist—”

Tony snorted. “A geographist ? What the hell’s that?”

Deirdre said, “A historicist of places—”

“These experts,” Corbin said, “ supposed experts sometimes— attractive , supposed experts, right? These people get a break and then, boom! They’re superstars—like Steve Irwin, for instance. Simon Cowell.” He nodded at Brenda. “It happens.”

Mitch said, “I just want to share some literary love.” Tony clinked his glass to Mitch’s.

“Seriously,” Deirdre said, “you’re wa-a-ay more attractive than Simon. I can see it.”

Brenda shook her head. “That’s not realistic. If he went into it with those kinds of expectations—”

Gemma said, “Somebody refill her glass!”

“No, come on, I’m just trying to be the voice of reason.”

“Who wants reason, for crying out loud?” Gemma stood up, nearly tipping the table. “We want fame, and money!”

The patrons around them cheered.

Corbin, laughing, said, “Okay, okay, but I don’t know that we’re winning the birthday boy enough points to score later, so … how about those Tarheels?”

Talk turned to the team’s recent performance in the ACC basketball tournament, but Mitch’s tipsy mind stayed stuck on Corbin’s last statement. Would he “score” later? Of course he wanted to, even as he was unsure how wise it was to take his revised friendship with the woman who was also his boss—more or less—to that complicated level. She was lovely, and more desirable than he’d let himself acknowledge when Craig was alive. Want was not a question. Neither did it mean, though, that they would—or should—sleep together.

Did she want to?

His questions ceased when he felt her hand on his thigh. His libido took over for his brain, making it much easier for him to later accept the birthday present that she was saying, softly, close to his ear, waited for him when they were through.

Chapter Four

After climbing the jet’s steps and greeting the flight crew Saturday morning, Blue took a seat in the spot she preferred, left side, just in front of the wing. The jet, customized to the most demanding celebrity standards, wasn’t hers. She could not do it, could not transform the numbers on her accounts statement into one of these sleek white and silver aircraft. They’d chartered this Gulfstream G500 for the week, a $65,000 expense. That was far less than the $50 million or so she’d pay to purchase one. How many times could they charter luxury jets before they even approached that figure? She was too tired to do the math, but surely it was many, many times. Buying one seemed wasteful—and imagine what Melody would say if she owned a Gulfstream, when Mel and Jeff still drove a ’95 Chevy pickup.

In a meeting last year, when Jim, her business manager, spoke about capital investments and appreciable assets and tax advantages of ownership, Marcy had said, “ Buy one. What else are you going to do with the money?”

“More of what I’m doing already.” An assortment of charitable endeavors selected and implemented by Jim’s partner, who briefed her about them monthly.

After ten years in syndication and almost as many spent watching her finance manager diversify her holdings in a series of double-up ventures, of seeing her net worth mushroom with the energy of an atomic blast, she still could not quite match the numbers to her life. She could not quite believe—even as she inhabited them—what those numbers meant in concrete terms. If she had known things could turn out like this , chartered jets with hand-stitched leather seats and burnished walnut tables; silk twill pants suits and everyday diamond earrings; twenty-eight full-time employees whose houses and cars and designer martinis were bought with paychecks she signed … If she could have forecasted her success the way her old WLVC-TV colleague Carl Newman forecasted the weather, she never would have given up her son.

—Or so she liked to think, when the truth was that she wouldn’t have stepped onto even the first rung of this ladder if she’d had a child. The whole idea of working as a television journalist was about avoiding Harmony Blue Kucharski by keeping her attention on anyone, on everyone, else. If she had not given up her son, an uneducated single mother with little support and no prospects is what she would have been. Worse off than her mother at nineteen, the child worse off than the child she’d been.