Good as Dead(39)

I signed for the letter, then looked at the return address. It didn’t have the word “collections” in it, creditors were too smart for that. They didn’t want to tip the delinquent recipient off before he signed for it and risk it coming back unopened.

I didn’t recognize the name as someone we owed money to, but that was no surprise. At this point my debts probably extended well into the sphere of strangers. I was about to open it when I saw it wasn’t addressed to me. This certified letter that I had just signed for was for Libby.

I got nervous for a whole new host of reasons. Maybe she had called a divorce lawyer after all? Her parents never offered to give us money, but they would certainly help her get out of a shitty marriage. Once divorced, she’d probably want to move back home to New York. I couldn’t afford a long custody battle, so if I wanted to see my kids, I’d have to go, too. A divorce would effectively end my career. The thought filled me with equal parts disappointment and relief.

“Is that for me?” Libby asked as she appeared out of nowhere. The woman was like a cat, I never heard her coming. Or maybe the torrent of my tormented thoughts was so loud it drowned out the sound of her approaching footsteps.

“It is,” I said matter-of-factly, then offered her the envelope. But she didn’t take it from me. Her hazelnut-brown eyes flicked up to meet mine. It would break my heart to give up my career, but it would smash it to pieces to lose her.

“You can open it,” she said. I tried to read her expression. Normally I was pretty good at reading body language. She had her hands on her hips, which usually signaled confidence, but could also indicate impatience or boredom. Her lips were pinched in a tight smile. People often smiled like that when they pitied you or felt bad about something that happened or was about to happen. All bad signs for me in that moment.

I must have hesitated or looked uncertain, because she egged me on. “Go ahead. It’s not going to bite you.”

She shifted her weight. If hands on hips meant impatience, it was growing.

I slid my thumb under the flap. The envelope was creamy and thick—the kind high-end law firms use—and I tried not to look nervous as I eased out the contents. It was two pages stapled together. The first page was a letter.

“Dear Mrs. Berenson,” I read aloud. “We are pleased to inform you that the 2.5 carat loose round diamond you placed with us on consignment has sold.” I stopped reading and looked up at Libby. Her smile had flipped. Her eyes were shiny.

“Oh, Lib . . . ,” I said, letting the letter droop toward the floor. A tear leaked out and rolled down her cheek. I pulled her toward me and encircled her in a hug. The second page was a check—high five figures, enough to give us room to breathe again.

“I’m not giving up on you,” she said into my chest.

Tears stung my eyes as I held her tight. We both knew she didn’t have to do this. She could have insisted we pack up and leave.

But she didn’t. Because she was gloriously stubborn and fiercely loyal and the best wife a man could ever hope for.

I kissed her hair, and in that moment, vowed to get us back on track—by working my ass off and writing a script the great Jack Kimball couldn’t turn down.





CHAPTER 21


It was Monday afternoon, and we still hadn’t heard from Jack.

He’d had the script exclusively for a week, and today was the deadline.

I waited until after lunch, then called Laura, my agent. She hadn’t heard anything, and her attempt to cheer me up only made me feel worse. “If he doesn’t want it, there are plenty of other buyers,” she encouraged. But I knew how this would go. Laura would have to huddle with her colleagues and make a list of who else might “respond” to the material. That would take a week. Then she would have to call all the potential interested parties to tease that something big was coming. That would take another week, possibly more, depending on how many companies she was targeting. Then, in a coordinated attack, she would send the script to the five, ten, or however many potential buyers she had lined up. Then we would wait for them to read it.

It would take another two weeks minimum for responses to start coming in. Whoever Laura sent the script to would either pass or send it up the line to their boss or bosses. That’s where most spec sales fizzled out. It only took one person at a given company to say no for a project to die. And there was always one.

I had written this script specifically for Jack. The protagonist—a scrappy CIA agent in a strained marriage (which I wrote vividly from personal experience)—was engineered to showcase Jack’s particular brand of stoic charisma. It was an expensive movie to make, with its exotic European locations and big action scenes, and so wouldn’t move forward without a star. Hollywood didn’t make many stars. If Jack didn’t want to play the lead, our odds of landing another actor with his star power were slimmer than a lame horse winning the Kentucky Derby.

Libby had taken control of our finances so I could spend the summer writing. It made sense, given that she and her diamond were the breadwinners this year, and I was all too happy to have the chore of juggling bills off my plate. I knew there were things she had gone without for many months, and she certainly deserved them, but with no guarantees I was ever going to work again, I knew she wouldn’t indulge. She didn’t complain, but I could tell she wasn’t happy. I can’t say I wished she hadn’t sold her rock, because I don’t know how we would have stayed afloat if she hadn’t. But her patience was growing thin. We had burned through over half of our windfall in three short months. Watching our bank balance drop every month put us both on edge. And if this spec didn’t sell, things were going to get a whole lot worse.