Charley's Web (2 page)

It would have been easy to dismiss their attitude as stemming from professional jealousy—she knew most of them considered her columns, and, by extension,
her,
to be silly and inconsequential, and resented her high profile—but the truth was that her colleagues’ ever-increasing coldness was largely her own fault. Charley had purposefully shunned their overtures when she first came to work at the
Palm Beach Post,
thinking it was better,
safer,
to keep relationships on a strictly professional level. (Just as she’d never believed it was a good idea to get too chummy with the neighbors. And boy, had she been right about that.) It wasn’t that she was unfriendly exactly, just a little aloof. It hadn’t taken her colleagues very long to get the message. Nobody liked rejection, especially writers, who were already too used to being rejected. Soon the casual invitations to dinner stopped, along with the offers to tag along for a drink after work. Even a polite “Hi. How’s it going?” had stopped coming her way.

Until this morning, she thought with a shudder, recalling the obscene leer that senior editor Mitchell Johnson had given her when she’d walked by his glassed-in office. Never subtle to begin with, Mitch had stared directly at the crotch of her Rock & Republic jeans and asked, “How’s it growing?
Going.
I meant
going,
not
growing,”
he corrected, as if his slip had been unintentional.

He thinks he knows me, Charley thought now, leaning back in her brown leather chair and staring past the dividing wall that separated her tiny space from the dozens of other such cubicles occupying the editorial department’s large center core. The big room was divided into three main areas, although the divisions were more imaginary than concrete. The largest section was comprised of journalists who covered current events and filed daily reports; a second section was reserved for weekly and special-interest columnists such as herself; a third area was for fact-checkers and secretarial staff. People worked at their computers for hours on end, barking into headphones, or balancing old-fashioned black receivers between their shoulders and ears. There were stories to uncover and follow, deadlines to be met, angles to be determined, statements to be corroborated. Someone was always rushing in or out, asking for advice, opinions, or help.

No one ever asked Charley for anything.

They think they know me, Charley thought. They think because I write about Passion parties and Brazilian waxes, that I’m a shallow twit, and they know everything about me.

They know nothing.

WHY CAN’T YOU JUST SHUT UP AND GO AWAY?!!!!

FROM:
Charley Webb

TO:
Irate Reader

SUBJECT:
A reasoned response

DATE:
Mon. 22 Jan. 2007 10:37:06–0800

Dear Irate: You’re mean. Sincerely, Charley Webb.

This time Charley did press the
SEND
button, then waited while her computer confirmed the note had indeed been forwarded. “Probably shouldn’t have done that,” she muttered seconds later. It was never a good idea to deliberately antagonize a reader. There were lots of powder kegs out there just waiting for an excuse to explode. Should have just ignored her, Charley thought, as her phone began ringing. She reached over, picked it up. “Charley Webb,” she announced instead of hello.

“You’re a worthless slut,” the male voice snarled. “Someone should gut you like a fish.”

“Mother, is that you?” Charley asked, then bit down on her tongue. Why hadn’t she checked her caller ID? And what had she just decided about not deliberately trying to antagonize anyone? She should have just hung up, she admonished herself as the phone went dead in her hand. Immediately the phone rang again. Again she picked it up without checking. “Mother?” she asked, unable to resist.

“How’d you know?” her mother replied.

Charley chuckled as she pictured the puzzled expression on her mother’s long, angular face. Elizabeth Webb was fifty-five years old, with shoulder-length blue-black hair that underlined the almost otherworldly whiteness of her skin. She stood six feet one in her bare feet, and dressed in long, flowing skirts that minimized the length of her legs and low-cut blouses that maximized the size of her bosom. She was beautiful by anyone’s definition, as beautiful now as she’d been when she was Charley’s age and already the mother of four young children. But Charley had few memories of this time, and fewer photographs, her mother having disappeared from her life when she was barely eight years old.

Elizabeth Webb had reappeared suddenly two years ago, eager to renew contact with the offspring she’d abandoned some twenty years earlier. Charley’s sisters had chosen to remain loyal to their father and refused to forgive the woman who’d run off to Australia with, not another man, which might have been forgivable, but another woman, which most assuredly was not. Only Charley had been sufficiently curious—spiteful, her father would undoubtedly insist—to agree to see her again. Her brother, of course, continued to shun contact with either of his parents.

“I just wanted you to know that I thoroughly enjoyed your column yesterday,” her mother was saying in the quasi-Australian lilt that clung to the periphery of each word. “I’ve always been very curious about that sort of thing.”

Charley nodded. Like mother, like daughter, she couldn’t help but think. “Thank you.”

“I called you several times yesterday, but you were out.”

“You didn’t leave a message.”

“You know I hate those things,” her mother said.

Charley smiled. Having only recently settled in Palm Beach after two decades of living in the outback, her mother was terrified of all things remotely technical, and she owned neither a computer nor a cell phone. Voice mail continued to be a source of both wonder and frustration, while the Internet was simply beyond her comprehension. “I drove into Miami to see Bram,” Charley told her.

Silence. Then, “How
is
your brother?”

“I don’t know. He wasn’t at his apartment. I waited for hours.”

“Did he know you were coming?”

“He knew.”

Another silence, this one longer than the first. Then, “You think he’s…?” Her mother’s voice trailed off.

“…Drinking and doing drugs?”

“Do you?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“I worry so much about him.”

“A little late for that, don’t you think?” The words were out of Charley’s mouth before she could stop them. “Sorry,” she apologized immediately.

“That’s all right,” her mother conceded. “I guess I deserved that.”

“I didn’t mean to be cruel.”

“Of course you did,” her mother said without rancor. “It’s what makes you such a good writer. And your sister such a mediocre one,” she couldn’t help but add.

“Mother…”

“Sorry, dear. I didn’t mean to be cruel,” she said, borrowing Charley’s words.

“Of course you did.” Charley smiled, felt her mother do the same. “Look, I better go.”

“I thought maybe I could come over later, see the children…”

“Sounds fine.” Absently, Charley clicked open another e-mail.

FROM:
A person of taste

TO:
Charley@Charley’sWeb.com

SUBJECT:
Perverts

DATE:
Mon. 22 Jan. 2007 10:40:05–0400

Dear Charley,

While I’m normally the kind of person who believes in LIVE AND LET LIVE, your most recent column has forced me to reconsider. Your previous column on sex toys was bad enough, but this latest one is an affront to good Christians everywhere. What a vile and disgusting pervert you are. You deserve to BURN IN HELL. So
DIE, BITCH, DIE,
and take your bastard children with you!

P.S.: I’d keep a very close eye on them if I were you. You’d be horrified at what some people are capable of.

Charley felt her breath freeze in her lungs. “Mother, I have to go.” She hung up the phone and jumped to her feet, upending her chair as she raced from her cubicle.

O
kay, Charley, try to calm down.”

“How can I calm down? Some lunatic’s threatening my children.”

“I understand. Just take a few deep breaths, and tell me again….”

Charley took two big gulps of air as Michael Duff got up from behind his massive oak desk and walked to the door of the large, glass-walled office that occupied the southwest corner of the floor.

A small group of reporters had already gathered outside the office to see what all the commotion was about. “Problems?” someone asked.

“Everything’s fine,” Michael told them.

“Everything’s
Charley,
” she heard a woman mutter dismissively as Michael closed the door.

“Okay, so tell me exactly what the e-mail said,” he instructed, signaling for Charley to sit down.

Charley ignored the two green leather chairs in front of Michael’s desk, choosing to pace the sand-colored carpet instead. Outside the rain pelted against the windows, the sound competing with the din of traffic from nearby I-95. “It said I should burn in hell, and I should ‘die, bitch, die,’ and take my bastard children with me.”

“Okay, so obviously not your biggest fan…”

“And then it said that I should watch them carefully, that you never knew what people were capable of.”

Michael’s brow wrinkled with concern as he perched on the side of his desk. His brown eyes narrowed. “Did it say anything else?”

“No, that was it. That was enough.”

Michael rubbed his strong jaw with his large hand, pushed back some gray hair that had fallen across his wide forehead, then crossed muscular arms over his expansive chest. Charley watched each move, noting that everything about the older man was oversized, something she might normally have found comforting, but which this morning only served to underline her growing sense of helplessness. Listening to the effortless boom of his voice, seeing the casual authority inherent in even his smallest gesture, she felt reduced and insubstantial. Looking at him, she understood, for the first time, what people meant when they said someone “assumed control.”
Assumed,
she thought. Not took. Not seized. A man like Michael Duff never had to fight for control, as she always seemed to be doing. It was his—naturally. Something he took for granted, something he just
assumed.

“I shouldn’t have come barging in here like that,” Charley apologized, replaying in her mind the dramatic way she’d burst into the room without so much as a knock on the door. She glanced toward the reporters sitting at their desks beyond the glass wall. She knew that even though they were no longer looking in her direction, they were still watching her. Judging her.

“You’re understandably upset.”

“It’s not that I’ve never gotten nasty e-mails before. Or even death threats.” High-profile reporters routinely received such unpleasantries, and most were as meaningless as the proposals of marriage that also came their way. Along with the abuse also came letters of congratulations on a job well done and more than a few declarations of love. Some readers submitted suggestions for future columns, others forwarded nude pictures of themselves, and a surprising number were looking for someone to pen their life stories. Charley had received two such requests in recent weeks. She’d turned them down as gently as she could—other commitments, I’m not the right person for the job, you should try writing it yourself—but then, some people couldn’t help but take such rejection personally. “It’s just that this is the first time anyone’s threatened my children,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “You think I’m overreacting, don’t you?”

“Not at all. We take threats like this very seriously. Please tell me you saved the letter.”

“Of course.”

“Good. I’ll report what’s happened to the police, forward them a copy of the e-mail, and see if they can trace it.”

“Whoever wrote it probably used an Internet café.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” Michael said. “Most of these nut cases aren’t very bright. Wouldn’t surprise me at all if the creep used his home computer.”

“His?
You think it’s a guy?”

“Sounds like masculine posturing to me.”

“So, what do I do now?”

“Not much you
can
do, except be extra careful,” Michael said, with a shrug. “Don’t open your door to strangers; try not to antagonize anybody; keep a close eye on your kids; let the police handle it. I don’t think he’ll bother you again. Guys like this are basically cowards. He shot his wad when he sent that e-mail.”

Charley smiled, feeling safer already. “Yesterday’s column seems to have upset a lot of people.”

“Just means you’re doing a good job.”

“Thanks.”

“Try not to worry,” Michael said as she opened the door to his office and stepped outside.

“Everything all right?” one of the secretaries inquired as Charley walked past her desk.

“Everything’s fine,” she answered without stopping or looking back, afraid if she did either, she’d burst into tears.

“The hairless wonder,” someone whispered, loud enough to be heard.

“Must itch like hell.”

Muted laughter followed Charley back to her cubicle. What I wouldn’t give for a door to slam, she thought as she stepped inside and stooped to right her fallen chair. The threatening e-mail had disappeared from her computer screen and been replaced by her screen saver: a year-old photograph of her children. Charley stared at their beautiful faces, silently counting up the changes the past twelve months had brought—Franny’s toothless smile was shyer in the picture than it was now that her two front teeth had finally grown in, and her brown hair was shorter and lighter than it had since become, although she had the same sparkle in her luminous green eyes. One freckled arm was draped across her younger brother’s shoulders in what looked like affection but was probably just an attempt to keep him still. James, at four, was a little butterball of nervous energy, even when he wasn’t moving. And while his cheeks had thinned and his body was now taller by several inches, he’d lost none of that energy. He might look like a little cherub with his mop of white-blond hair and navy-blue eyes, she thought, her fingers reaching out to stroke the dimple in his chin, but he was a regular little imp. She adored him. Glancing between him and his sister, Charley couldn’t believe she’d managed to produce anything so absolutely perfect. Sometimes her body actually ached with the love she felt for her children. Why had no one prepared her? Why had no one ever told her it was possible to love this much?

Possibly because there’d been no one to tell her.

Charley sank down in her chair as she reached into the top drawer of her desk. She retrieved a copy of her sister Anne’s latest novel,
Remember Love,
sent to her two weeks ago, and which she’d yet to read. If the cover hadn’t been enough to turn her off—a picture of a young bride, her tear-filled eyes only partly obscured by her wedding veil—the dedication would have.
To my wonderful father, Robert Webb.
What was that all about? Whose father had
she
had? Charley thought of the cold and bitter man in whose house she’d grown up, a house full of angry silences and the echo of stern rebukes. Had her father ever had a kind word to say? To anyone?

Charley flipped to the title page.
To Charlotte,
her sister had scribbled in an elaborate series of loops and swirls she’d no doubt worked weeks to perfect.
With best wishes, Anne.
As if they were no more than strangers. Which perhaps was exactly what they were.

She turned to the first chapter, read the opening sentence:
The first time Tiffany Lang saw Blake Castle, she knew her life had changed forever.

“Oh, dear.”

It wasn’t just that he was the handsomest man she’d ever seen, although that was undeniably true. It wasn’t the blueness of his eyes or even the way they seemed to look right through her, as if he were staring straight into her soul, as if he could read all her most secret thoughts. Nor was it the insolent way he occupied the center of the room, his slim hips tilted slightly forward, his thumbs hooked provocatively into the pockets of his tight jeans, the pout on his full lips issuing a silent invitation, daring her to come closer. Approach at your own risk, he said without speaking.

“Dear God.”

“Whatcha reading?” came a voice from behind her.

Charley quickly closed the book. “Something I can do for you, Mitch?” she asked without turning around.

“Understand you had a death threat.”

Charley swiveled around in her chair. Mitch Johnson was a middle-aged man with a beer belly and a receding hairline who, for reasons Charley had never been able to fathom, thought he was irresistible to women. He stood leaning against the wall of her cubicle, in a studied pose Charley assumed he considered sexy, wearing a frown on his round face and trying to look serious.

“Should have come to me with that,” he admonished. “I’m the senior editor. Your direct superior,” he reminded her, subtlety never having been one of his strong suits. “Shouldn’t go running to Michael every time you have a little problem.”

“I didn’t consider it a little problem.”

“Still should have come to me first,” Mitch said, in the annoying way he had of dropping pronouns from the start of his sentences.

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t really thinking.”

“Think next time,” he said.

“I’m hoping there won’t
be
a next time.”

“Might try writing something a little less provocative for next week’s column, in that case,” he said, his gaze drifting toward her crotch. Charley folded her hands across the book in her lap in order to block his view. “Not that I personally didn’t enjoy yesterday’s little exposé, as it were. Been trying to convince my wife to go Brazilian.” He winked. “Guess she’s not as adventurous as you.”

Charley turned back to her computer. “I’ll forward a copy of that e-mail to your computer,” she told him, punching in the appropriate keys.

“You do that. And next time…”

“You’ll be the first to know.”

“Good. Always liked being the first.”

Charley could feel him wink even with her back to him. What was it with some guys? she wondered. Had they never heard of a little thing called sexual harassment? Did they not think it applied to them? Although she doubted she’d find many sympathizers on this floor. Didn’t she invite this kind of sex-based banter with the columns she wrote? she could hear her fellow columnists ask. Don’t expect any sympathy from us.

Don’t worry, she thought, flipping over the book in her lap. I long ago stopped expecting anything from anyone.

Charley found herself staring at the glamorous photograph of her sister on the back cover of the book. Anne was sitting on a pink velvet sofa, surrounded by decorative white lace pillows, her long auburn hair piled loosely on top of her head, a few photogenic ringlets falling around her heart-shaped face. There was no denying her beauty, despite the layers of heavy makeup she wore. But no amount of mascara or smoky shadow could disguise the sadness in her eyes. Charley had read in the tabloids about Anne’s recent separation from bad-boy husband number two. Rumor had it he was asking for alimony and threatening to sue for custody of their young daughters if he didn’t get it. If Charley remembered correctly, Darcy was two and Tess only eight months. What a mess, she thought, reaching for the phone. She retrieved her sister’s number from her mental files and dialed New York before she could change her mind.

“Webb residence,” the housekeeper announced crisply, answering on the first ring.

“Can I speak to Anne, please? It’s her sister.”

“Miss Anne,” the housekeeper called out. “It’s Emily.”

“No, it’s…”

“Em, how are you?” her sister said, coming on the line.

“It’s not Emily,” Charley corrected.

“Charlotte?”

“Charley,” she corrected again.

There was a long pause.

“Anne? Are you still there?”

“I’m here.”

“I thought for a minute we’d been disconnected.”

“I’m just surprised to hear from you, that’s all. Is everything all right?”

“Everything’s fine.”

“Our mother?”

“She’s fine. Our father?”

“Fine.”

“Good.”

Another pause, even longer than the first.

“So, how are the kids?” Charley asked.

“Well. And yours?”

“They’re great.”

“I take it you’ve heard about A.J. and me splitting up.”

“I’m really sorry.”

“Trust me, I’m well rid of the miserable s.o.b. The turd cheats on me with two of my best friends and still has the nerve to ask for alimony. Can you beat that?”

Charley wasn’t sure what surprised her more: that her soon-to-be-ex-brother-in-law had slept with two of her sister’s best friends or that Anne had so many.

“How’s Emily?” Charley asked.

“Em’s wonderful. You saw her on
Good Morning America,
I take it.”

“Actually, no. I missed it. Nobody told me…”

“She was terrific. Apparently the network is considering a permanent spot for her.”

“That would be great.”

“Yes, it would. How’s Bram?”

“Okay. Have you heard from him lately?”

“Are you kidding? He phones even less than you do. Why? Is something wrong?”

“No.”

“What’s going on, Charley? Why are you calling?”

Why
had
she called?

“Has anyone contacted you from
People
?” Anne asked.

“What people?”

“
People
magazine. My publicist has been trying to convince them to do a piece on me. She was thinking of using the whole Brontë thing.”

“What?”

“Emily thinks it’s a great idea. They haven’t called?”

“No. Not yet. Look, the reason I called…I just wanted to thank you for your book. It was very nice of you to send me a copy.”

“Oh, yeah. That was my publicist’s idea, too. She thought you might write something about it in your column. I told her you probably wouldn’t even read it. Have you?”

“Not yet, but I intend to start it this weekend.”

“Sure.”

“I hear it’s really good,” Charley ventured.