The Idea of Him. Holly Peterson

did you leave?” I asked.

      “I started writing longer pieces for magazines, and then I landed my first job as an editor, and the chance to rise was too powerful to pass up.”

      “And that makes you melancholy for the hard news?”

      All of a sudden, he sat very rigidly, as if trying to make up for something he’d just done wrong. “You know the way life pulls you away from your goals, before you know it’s happening? I have a different kind of influence working at Meter, I guess I could say, but it isn’t the same real sense of breaking news. I get to pick important people to go after and we do significant hard news pieces sometimes, but there’s a lot more celebrity stuff I never thought I’d get involved with. Truth is, for those people, a Meter cover can make someone’s career. It’s a major statement. Period.”

      He took a sip of his drink and looked at me strangely, like I may have been the first woman he’d dated in a while with whom he could talk. He liked me. I could read it all over his face. “I’m not saying it’s me, you know. It’s the magazine, to be alongside more substantive pieces about movies, blue-blood scandals, and literary sensations. It’s a huge opportunity for that kid across the room, pure and simple, and he’s making me work for it when it’s usually the other way around. Yes, I got in this business to root out the bad guys, but now that I’m the editor, the bottom line keeps my job afloat and I have to focus on what the magazine needs, which is celebrity cluster-fucks.” He shook his head.

      “Do you mind the ‘whoring’?”

      He held my gaze. “You wanna know the truth?”

      “Sure.” I didn’t dare blink.

      “Put it this way: I don’t like to lose.” He placed his forearms flat almost to my edge of the table. “And I like to think I’m more of a high-class courtesan than a two-bit hooker.”

      We talked into the night and I was amazed at my ability to hold my own with an accomplished editor ten years older than me. Yes, I felt like the imposter, as I often do even today around new people I meet in the city, but I also sensed this man before me needed to be tamed. He liked my point of view, he liked me putting him in his place, and he even liked not acting like a pretentious ass for once. I tried to make my PR work for Murray sound more serious than event planning, which was most of what I did at the beginning. Wade was interested in my job, but not as interested as he was in explaining his.

      While he was coming to quick terms with the idea that he’d finally found an attractive woman who cared about his world of nonstop news and gossip, right away, I knew that I too certainly liked the idea of this Wade Crawford man before me. He fit a need, like a square peg into a square hole. His enthusiasm for life and work would soften my losses: my father in a plane to the ravages of an untimely blizzard and James to a burning obsession to save every child on the other side of the world.

      New York glimmered around us that night, the way it can when spontaneity falls perfectly into place. After dinner, Wade escorted me to two downtown parties filled with cigarette smoke and writers. Someday I hoped to be like his writer friends who wrote long magazine stories and books that they’d mined from their souls. It was clear from every angle that Wade’s nonstop joie de vivre was more than contagious. He was sheer fun, and full of the possibility of escape, of renewal even.

      He dropped me at my stoop at dawn, kissing me tenderly on the lips and disappearing into the early morning glow. As I watched him bounce down the street, all I could think was that he had Daddy’s electricity and confidence. And that suited me just fine.

      NOW I THREW the photo on the side table, my heart tightening. Next I did some more sifting through his desk to look for something a young girl could categorize as “unsafe” and a clue to his affections for this same girl. No jewelry receipts, no trips to swanky hotels in South Beach, no damaging Monkey Business photos. Was it possible my wifely hunch was off? Was Jackie honestly trying to help me at the bar? And in my own laundry room?

      Around Wade’s work alcove, I only found celebrity snapshots amid journalistic projects I knew he was working on—cocaine dealers in Tijuana, photos of well-known American CEOs at an exclusive conference in the Rockies, and a draft piece about a society murder in Argentina linked to the grandson of an SS Nazi officer—but nothing seemed secret or nefarious. Or they all seemed secret and nefarious, but that was the nature of Wade’s work: find twisted stories that drew people in.

      And then, something hidden inside a book in his right desk drawer—an annual company report on Luxor computer chips—caught my attention. Luxor, a growing computer networking company, wasn’t the kind of flashy story Wade would usually go after. It was suspicious purely because it seemed so mundane. Was he investing someone else’s cash? The one thing any wife in any regular situation would think was normal to see in her husband’s desk—a company annual report—I found disturbingly abnormal.

      It had rattled me enough that I unfolded the gum wrapper in my back pocket and sent Jackie a text.

      ME: It’s Allie. Is this Jackie?

      About thirty seconds later she texted:

       Find anything?

      ME: No. Nothing at all.

      JACKIE: Can we meet? Tudor Room tomorrow?

      Meet with a woman I’d like wiped off the face of the planet? Problem was the admonition she delivered as she exited the laundry room rang in my ears and I’d have to understand what she meant before she got whacked. Next, I froze. This was way too early. I had no business contacting her. I don’t know what I was thinking by texting her so rashly.

      ME: Tomorrow no good. Just wanted to know this was you for sure.

      I googled her immediately, but I couldn’t find any information on her. No digital footprints at all.

      I sensed only this: Jackie Malone used her sexual appeal to drive men over the edge. What she did with that power once they were plummeting, I did not know.

       9

       No Choice but the Grindstone

      The cold light of day sobered my brain as I sat at my desk a week later. I was doing my best to focus on the screen in front of me, open to a blank page, the cursor pulsing like an impatient suitor. At least this was something that was all mine, not a writing task to boost a demanding client’s career or image. Two months earlier, I had gathered my courage and submitted an old script I’d left for dead to a Tuesday night screenwriting class at New York University. I’d assumed I’d get rejected, but to my surprise, I got in, and this week’s assignment was in danger of being late if I couldn’t concentrate and begin it.

      I’d write a few sentences of dialogue, but when I couldn’t find the word I was searching for, my marriage angst would cloud my head instead, and then the beaming faces of our two children would break my heart more. A week had passed, and I hadn’t made a move yet to meet Jackie. I wanted to lie low, find clues, consider my actions before I jumped too fast. Asking Wade how he knew her would yield another obfuscation until I could prove something solid.

      I was very tempted to text Jackie again and meet her. She might say something to use as a comeback when Wade denied doing something with her. I also had to figure out what her bizarre warnings meant, if anything.

      Yet, if I contacted her, how would I be able to tell if Jackie were lying? Was she possibly just blowing my husband in there? Maybe this wild-goose chase to find documents was nothing more than a game of distract-the-wife.

      One thing was certain: I had to face the fact that I’d been feeling on edge with Wade—I believe now because I felt him pulling away. Before we were in sync; now he and I weren’t. He made the motions, he’d kissed my ear at a party in