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  “Fuck it,” she said to herself. She grabbed the phone and dialed her dad.

  Gail picked up. She’d taken to answering Marty’s phone lately, making sure he was never available when Janine called. “He’s sleeping, sweetie. You’re up early.”

  “Busy day.”

  “Really?” Gail asked with an astute incredulity that made Janine hot with anger. “What’s on the schedule?”

  “Just stuff.” She knew that swimming laps, going to therapy, and buying Col-Erase pencils for the cartooning class wouldn’t constitute busy by most people’s standards. Not that Gail was in any position to judge her. “Is it that hard to imagine I have things to do?” Janine laughed, failing to sound invulnerable.

  “Of course not. I was just curious about what you were up to.”

  Janine knew exactly what Gail was curious about. She was curious about why her boyfriend’s middle-aged daughter didn’t have a job or at least a husband and maybe children who could justify her unemployment. It was a reasonable question but the answer was complicated and Janine wasn’t about to get into it. However, she did need the six hundred dollars, and apparently she’d have to ask Gail.

  “Mmm. Do you know how to type?” Gail asked once Janine had explained the situation.

  “Type?” Janine laughed. “I’m gonna be a secretary?”

  “You can be a personal assistant,” she suggested. “There’s always a demand for that kind of work.”

  “I’m forty-one years old and not exactly equipped to take care of someone else’s business affairs.” You go be someone’s secretary, you mercenary bitch, she thought.

  Janine had initially imagined that Gail might be good for her dad. She was a longtime family friend, almost age-appropriate, smarter than she was attractive, and comfortably well-off following the death of her second husband, Bob Engler, a few years earlier. Only once Gail and her father had become an item did Janine realize that Gail had married Bob Engler after his first round of chemotherapy and had, as she told anyone who’d listen, “taken care of him for years” when “nobody else” (meaning his son) was available. “It’s not like Bob had dementia,” she would explain when forced to confront the raised eyebrows at her having inherited so much after a relatively short marriage.

  “Cartooning just seems so…specific,” Gail continued.

  “I guess.”

  “What about nursing or teaching?”

  The conversation was like the lowest points in therapy, a humiliating analysis of Janine’s limitations that made her want to evaporate. It would take her eight years to get her teaching credentials or qualify for a nursing degree. She’d be in her fifties before anyone would even let her change a colostomy bag.

  At least she wasn’t like so many of her friends from the studio days. Seraphina was on Celebrity Fit Club. Both Tom and Noel had been on Celebrity Rehab and Survivor. The rest had overdosed or gotten multiple DUIs or become porn stars; a few had done all three. She’d rather be dead than humiliate her father like that. Once she’d tried to get a job selling makeup at Bergdorf Goodman but the flamboyant queen with the bad eyelift behind the counter had flipped out when he saw her name on the application. He’d made such a scene that Janine stayed home for five days afterward.

  “There’s always real estate,” Gail suggested.

  “I don’t want to be a real estate agent,” Janine snapped. She started crying, hating herself for letting Gail burrow under her skin.

  “Janine,” Gail said. “What did I say? I’m so sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  Janine didn’t think anything Gail did was accidental. The woman scheduled her dinner parties based on the post-op recovery time from her sundry plastic surgeries.

  “Let me talk to your father,” Gail whispered in a conspiratorial tone. As if Janine needed Gail to ask her father for permission. As if Janine couldn’t speak to her dad directly. As if Gail were the new sentry.

  The next day Gail left a message on Janine’s machine. “It’s all taken care of, honey. The money was wired over this morning with a little bit extra. Go buy yourself something nice from us.”

  “Us?” Janine said out loud, even though she was alone. She deleted the message and looked out the window. Fuck, Gail was the new sentry.

  Marty

  Los Angeles

  “I’ll just go in,” Marty said, smiling graciously at the receptionist as he walked past her and down the long hall of partners’ offices. Marty Kessler was the only client who just walked into Ed Rothstein’s office. Not even Tom Hanks did that. Ed Rothstein was a hotshot attorney now. His law firm represented everybody, but it was Marty who’d given Ed his legs. Ed had been green in 1975 but Marty had liked him immediately. Marty’s career success was based almost exclusively on instinct and intuition, so why shouldn’t he take a gamble on his attorney? It had been a smart bet. Ed was a good lawyer, an honest lawyer—something Marty had always thought was an oxymoron. And back in the day, when Marty was an executive on the rise and then, quickly thereafter, one of the most powerful producers in Hollywood, everybody wanted to use Marty Kessler’s people. He couldn’t entirely take credit for Ed’s success, but a thank-you from him every now and then would have been nice.

  Now Ed was in the power seat and Marty was a useless old fossil. But he’d be damned if he’d let Ed push him around. Ed had been trying for months to get Marty to come in for a discussion about the sad state of his finances and the importance of scaling back on expenses. Marty didn’t want to talk about that. He’d had so much money once. How was it even possible there was so little left? Marty walked into Ed’s office and reluctantly took a seat.

  Despite Ed’s success, his office hadn’t changed much over the decades. The room was humorless and stodgy, dark and lined with books. It still had the same Persian rug, the same leather tub chairs, and the same mahogany partners’ desk. It even had the same executive paralegal who’d always worked there, Lynn. She must be over eighty, Marty thought. He knew the most expensive object in the office was the Tiffany Nautilus desk lamp he had given Ed on his fiftieth birthday. He admired the patinaed base, trying to remember how much he’d spent on it. Seven thousand dollars? Ten thousand?

  Lynn walked in with a cup of coffee for him. She put it on the desk, and he stood to give her a hug and a compliment about her new hairstyle. She blushed and scurried out of the room.

  “About your portfolio,” Ed began.

  Marty tried to reach for the coffee. His hands were too shaky. Why the hell had he skipped his morning bump, he wondered, looking at Ed and folding his hands in his lap. He’d try again in a few minutes. “I don’t want to talk about my goddamn portfolio,” he said, clenching his jaw.

  “Will you just hear me out?” Ed asked. “You’ve got to promise me something. With all due respect, and I know you and Gail are getting serious, you cannot get married again.” Ed tapped Marty’s unopened file. “These divorces are cleaning you out. Not to mention the aftershocks.” They both knew Ed was alluding to Marty’s multiple stints in rehab following his most recent divorce, from Elise, seven years ago.

  By the time Marty had realized that Elise was a serious drug addict, so was he. She’d been right about the efficacy of even a little heroin for his back pain when the Percocet stopped working, but how the hell had a man of his stature and supposed intelligence ever agreed to that first roll? What the fuck had he been thinking? Elise had been a complete catastrophe, the greatest blow being that he’d given her nearly twenty million dollars of his fortune when the marriage fell apart. Elise was long gone. The cravings were not. Heroin was a motherfucker.

  “I’m never getting married again,” Marty told Ed, hoping his hands were now steady enough for him to pick up the coffee. “So that takes care of that conversation.” He successfully seized the cup and took a sip. It needed more sugar.

  “I’ve heard that before, Marty. Three times,” Ed said, holding up three fingers. “You’ve told me you’re never getting married again three times.�
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  “I was single for six years between Pamela and Karen. Nineteen years between Karen and Elise. That’s a hell of a decent run.”

  “Single?” Ed laughed as he ticked off the names of the many women who had populated the years between Marty’s official pairings. “Virginia, Ginger, Heather T., Whitney, Kelly, Heather B.”

  “I didn’t marry them,” Marty said, irritated. “They were friends.”

  “Expensive friends.”

  “Cheaper than inexpensive wives.”

  Ed smiled, ceding Marty’s point.

  Marty had been officially married four times, although most people didn’t know about his first wife. Ed was one of the few people left in Marty’s life who knew he’d been married before Pamela, way back when Bunny Small wasn’t a household name and a perennial fixture on bestseller lists worldwide. That marriage hadn’t lasted a year.

  “Anyway,” Marty continued, “since this isn’t about my getting married—”

  “I’m talking about girlfriends too,” Ed interrupted. Marty knew Ed was referring to Gail—his latest and, hopefully, his last—and he didn’t like it.

  “You can’t keep paying these women like they’re on salary. You’re still making Heather Bruckner’s car payments and giving a monthly allowance to a woman I don’t think you’d even recognize if she walked in here and gave you a hug.”

  “Of course I’d recognize her.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Wendy.”

  “Whitney,” Ed said. “Her name is Whitney.”

  “That’s what I meant, for Christ’s sake.”

  “I’m just saying, Marty. Please, no more payouts. No more wives, no more damsel-in-distress girlfriends. You cannot afford it.”

  “If Gail’s a damsel in distress,” Marty said, nodding his head, “Oprah’s shy.”

  Ed sat quietly, leaving Marty to chuckle at his own bad joke. He knew Ed was right. Marty’s reputation as a fearless negotiator had never applied to his personal life. Four marriages and he’d yet to utter the words prenuptial agreement. Not wanting to…what? Offend? As if the inevitability of divorce lacked romance. Who the hell was he kidding? Maybe he figured they’d earned it for putting up with him. Whatever his reasons, he understood that his foolish generosity had been catching up with him for years, and Gail had quickly made it her business to protect what remained. From whom and for whom she was protecting it was a little vague, even to Marty.

  “Anyway, this isn’t about Gail,” Marty snapped.

  Ed deflated. “So what is it you wanted to talk about, then? You sounded like it was something important. I’d hoped—”

  “The will,” Marty said.

  Ed leaned forward, burying his long, lean face in his hands.

  “It’s my goddamn will, Ed.”

  “Marty.”

  “Don’t Marty me. Just a few small changes. Nothing drastic.”

  “Like?”

  “The charities.”

  Ed looked up and narrowed his eyes. “What about them?”

  “Take ’em out. If the TreePeople are depending on my largesse to survive, they’re in real fucking trouble. I’m clearly not solving the homeless crisis.” Marty paused for a second. “Keep the elephant, though. Thirty-five thousand to that elephant in Georgia. But that’s it.”

  Ed tapped his fingers on his desk a few times before speaking. He sighed and cleared his throat. “So this business about cutting the charities—it’s Gail’s idea?”

  “No, it’s not Gail’s idea,” Marty lied, furious. “I’m trying to make sure there’s something left when I go.”

  “Exactly,” Ed cried, hoping he was finally getting through.

  Marty looked down at his lap. “Gail worries about money. I don’t want her to have to worry.”

  Ed placed his palms together as if in prayer before speaking. “It’s my job to protect you and your family. We’ve known each other a long time. Janine wasn’t even born when we met.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “You’ve got to scale back. You’ve got to get smart about this. The charities are just the tip of a very large iceberg.”

  Ed wasn’t wrong. Marty had even seriously considered cutting Sandro out of his will, but he couldn’t do it. Sandro and Maria had worked for Marty’s family for forty years, and they’d lived in his guesthouse for most of that time. Maria had practically raised his girls. Marty sat back, trying to tamp down the grief swelling in his gut. Her death last year still weighed heavily on him. Who the hell would have thought he’d outlive Maria? Now he was leaving her intended bequest to Sandro, whose salary Marty still paid and who lived on at the guesthouse rent-free but who was too depressed to do any gardening. Gail had been on him for months about firing Sandro. “The yard looks like shit,” she’d said. True, he’d admitted. Jimmy Hoffa could be buried back there and nobody’d ever know. But Sandro didn’t have anywhere else to go. So Sandro was staying. For now.

  Ed looked at Marty, his fingers laced together tightly, as if he were clutching a rosary. “What about your girls, Marty? Think about your daughters.”

  There was a short silence before Marty spoke. Maybe it was the drugs—quite possibly it was the drugs—but he was feeling a little confused about his daughters lately. Gail had managed to make him see that it was okay not to leave them too much. Her parents hadn’t left her a thing, she’d explained. Inheriting money was a crutch. “They’ll never really grow up,” Gail often said, “if they’ve got daddy cushions strapped to their asses.”

  “Amanda’s okay,” Marty said to Ed. “The divorce was tough, but she’s teaching at Fairmont now.”

  “Fair Hills,” Ed said, correcting him. “I know.”

  “She’s getting job offers every other week since the LA Times reviewed her show last year. Sarah Lawrence in New York offered her a job. Did you know that?” Marty asked with satisfaction. “But she’s happy at Fairmont. She likes being back in LA. She hated living in San Diego.”

  Amanda had done all right for herself. She’d gotten her act together after he’d pulled the plug on her acting career all those years ago. One teenage Hollywood casualty was enough. From what he understood, she’d become something of a star in the world of prep-school theater. Whatever the fuck that meant. No doubt the Kessler name had helped, Marty thought, quickly checking his lack of generosity toward his younger daughter. Why was it he could never allow himself to feel good about Amanda? He should be proud of her.

  “And the twins—Hailey and Jaycee?” Ed asked. “Your grandchildren? What about college for them?”

  “Amanda can take care of them,” Marty said, not feeling convinced. “How long is her family my responsibility? It was her decision to divorce Kevin.”

  Ed sighed again, rubbing his closed eyes with his thumb and finger. “This is not a conversation I enjoy, Marty,” he said, opening his eyes. “I am appealing to your better nature here. I am trying to have a real conversation with you. The you who I know wants to do the right thing.”

  Marty said nothing.

  “If you’ll pardon my saying so,” Ed continued, “Amanda’s ex-husband makes less than forty thousand dollars a year, which means it will be Amanda’s financial responsibility to send your grandchildren to college. She doesn’t make that much money and they’re already sixteen. They’ll be going in two years.”

  “It’s not as if I haven’t helped her along the way. I think we can agree I’ve been more than generous. I didn’t tell her to marry a Jungian therapist.”

  “Your daughters still depend on you financially.” Ed tilted his head, an invitation for Marty to disagree with him. “You can all continue to pretend that’s not the reality but the fact is, you need to set up a trust. It won’t cover college, but it’s something. Obviously this should have been done years ago, as I’ve said many times, but it’s not too late.”

  Marty took a deep breath, working hard not to explode with anger.

  Ed briefly held his ace. Very briefly. “And wh
at about Janine?” he asked.

  Marty felt his stomach tighten. What about Janine? She still had his heart. Forty-one years old and living in that same one-bedroom Manhattan apartment with that same goddamn cat. She’d never married, never had a career after Family Happens. That her inertia might somehow be his fault felt like a shot to the head.

  “I cover her living expenses,” Marty said. “And she’s got the residuals from the show.”

  Ed made a little wheezing sound. “The residuals from the show add up to about two thousand dollars a month. And that’s good. If we hadn’t worked out that sweetheart contract with NBC, she’d have gotten residuals only on the first rerun. But she can’t live on that after you’re gone. Twenty-four thousand a year, before taxes, in Manhattan?”

  “Sweetheart contract, my ass.”

  Ed didn’t say anything. He’d played his hand.

  That stupid fucking show, Marty thought. Pamela’s train wreck of an idea. It was still in syndication three times a day all over the country. He couldn’t turn on the TV without seeing Janine at twelve or fourteen immersed in some hijinks with her television family. He should have at least insisted on a better deal for his daughter. He’d been in the position to get her whatever he wanted back then. Standard network protocol didn’t apply to him. But he’d been too furious with Pamela for deceiving him, for encouraging the girls’ acting careers when he’d wanted them to have normal childhoods. He’d convinced himself that taking a penny more of NBC’s money would make him further complicit in what he thought of as prostituting his daughter.

  That and he hadn’t thought it would ever matter. He’d been very rich and he never thought that would change.

  “You think I enabled them?” Marty asked Ed, circling back to the earlier topic, hoping Ed might absolve him of blame for the way things had turned out.