The Friends We Keep(82)

Topher’s heart started beating so fast, he could hardly catch his breath. “Alan, what are you talking about?”

Alan faltered. “Oh my God. You haven’t . . .”

Topher frowned. “I haven’t seen . . . I don’t know . . .”

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I wouldn’t have said anything.”

“Can you just tell me?”

“Absolutely.” He was embarrassed, as if bearing the bad news somehow made it his fault. He stepped back to his table and grabbed his phone as the man he was sitting with caught Topher’s eye. His look, too, was one of pity. He knew as well, Topher realized. They were probably talking about it before Alan approached him. He turned to look around the restaurant, seeing people still staring, wondering what the hell he had been embroiled in now.

He wasn’t unused to bad publicity, but God knew what they’d printed this time. A former lover giving an explicit tell-all to one of the gossip blogs? He tried to think of what it could be, but his mind was blank.

Alan busied himself with his phone, eventually handing it to Topher with an apologetic expression. On the screen he saw the gossip blog that everyone in the business read. He read it, all his friends read it, everyone he knew read it (even if they wouldn’t admit it).

The headline made him feel faint. Soap Star Revealed as Fraud! Author of Behind the Scenes accused of plagiarizing book!

He didn’t read more. He felt dizzy and slightly sick.

“Here,” Alan said, gesturing to their table. “Do you want to sit down? I am so sorry. You didn’t know about this?”

“I . . . my phone has been switched off. I haven’t been online. I didn’t know.”

“Can I do something for you? Call anyone?”

“I’m fine,” he lied, forcing a smile. “Please don’t feel bad for telling me. I’m glad I know.” He rolled his eyes. “They’ll drag up any old garbage on you.”

“I know,” Alan commiserated. “Sometimes I thank God I’ve never been successful.” They said goodbye as Topher headed toward Dickie, ignoring the feeling that every single person in the restaurant was staring at him and thinking he was a fraud and a liar.

“Are you okay?” Dickie shot him a look as he approached.

“No. I’ll tell you outside.”

Topher showed him the story on the way home. It was worse than he thought when Alan showed him the headline. They had printed paragraphs from Topher’s book, and paragraphs from the self-published memoir Topher had picked up in Maine, lining up and highlighting the sentences that were the same. The beautiful sentences Topher had copied into his own manuscript to try to inspire him at a time when he had no idea what to write. Sentences, he realized now, he had forgotten to remove.

He was supposed to read through the final edits and approve them, but he was so fed up with the book by that time, he didn’t have it in him to read it again. He gave the book to his assistant to approve, figuring she would pick up on any typos or grammatical errors. Which she did. What she did not pick up on were the numerous sections that had been directly copied from someone else’s work.

“What do we do?” Benedict asked, not worried, for he had been around long enough to know that these things always blew over. “How do we address this?”

“Maybe with the truth?” Topher said, turning the corner onto their block. Outside their apartment building was a swarm of journalists. Topher slowed to a halt, his mouth dropping open. There were photographers, journalists, even a news crew. This can’t be for me, he thought, until he heard his name, and suddenly they were all running toward him.

“Topher! Daily News here. Can you just tell us a few words about how you’re feeling? We’d love to have an exclusive.” Topher kept his head down, looking at the pavement, raising a hand for the first yellow cab, ushering them both in as his heart pounded.

“This is not good,” Dickie said, finally looking worried.

“What the hell am I supposed to do?” said Topher. “Where am I supposed to go? And how on earth am I supposed to explain that this was all a terrible mistake?”





thirty-seven


- 2019 -



They spent the afternoon holed up in the apartment, speaking to various crisis management PR firms. Topher didn’t deny the plagiarism, he honestly had meant to change it, but even that was problematic. While the PR experts conceded that the memoir wasn’t necessarily one hundred percent real, adding in full paragraphs that did not belong to you did not bode well.

Perhaps they could spin that it wasn’t supposed to be a memoir. That it started as a novel, and it was not unusual for writers to add notes from things that inspired them, that those passages—and they were numerous—were overlooked.

The local cable news channel featured the story, showing the growing press outside their apartment, kept at bay—thank God—by their ferocious doorman, and both Topher and Dickie turned their cell phones off, turning them back on only to make calls rather than to take them.

Topher spent much of the day feeling sick. For years he had been famous, feted, loved. He had been interviewed by everyone, even the Today show, and had seen his memoir climb up the bestseller lists. Today, every time he heard his name mentioned by a news anchor, it was synonymous with fraud. A part of him wanted to crawl under the covers and never come out; he wanted to run away from all of it and disappear, but he didn’t dare leave his apartment.