Page 12 of Second Act
“She’d make more money there,” Andy said. It was a catch-22, and it sounded as though Violet was trapped where she was, whichwas good luck for him. He still couldn’t get over her guesswork with the bookcase. That was quite a trick. He would never have known the false wall was there, and the realtor hadn’t told them and maybe didn’t know.
As promised, Violet came to do his office work for him, five half days a week, and everything he needed got done. She kept to herself and spoke very little and was willing to do whatever project he asked of her. She was resourceful when she needed to be, creative, intelligent, and vastly overqualified as he had guessed, but she didn’t feel demeaned by the job. She thanked him regularly for the opportunity. She was respectful, pleasant, and discreet, and never spoke of herself. In some ways she reminded him of Frances in the beginning, when she was still young and very shy. He had come to realize that Violet wasn’t so much shy as reserved. She had strong boundaries that she enforced, and although Andy was aware that she knew Mrs. MacInnes, she didn’t visit in the kitchen and try to hang out with her. She stayed in the library, which she used as an office. Maybe because she was British, she was even more formal and old-school than Andy. He had encouraged her after the first day to call him by his first name, which she did, but she was always respectful.
He had so much financial work the second week that she worked all day Friday, until after six o’clock, and she didn’t complain about having to stay late when they finished at almost seven o’clock. She was in a hurry when she left. She was having dinner with a friend, and pedaled off on her bicycle with a wave at Andy, and wished him a good weekend. He couldn’t help wondering if she had a boyfriend, she was such a good-looking woman. He hated to think of womenlike Violet and Frances being alone, and there were so many of them. They didn’t get out in the world to meet someone, were either justifiably afraid of the internet or had had bad experiences with it, and many had few opportunities in their jobs to meet men. In Violet’s case, none at all. Andy had no visitors to his office in Winchelsea Beach, and he had had very few suitable single male visitors, other than major movie stars, for Frances in LA. He hoped that Frances would meet a good guy in her new job.
After Violet left his house on Friday night, Andy poured himself a scotch from the bar in the library. He hadn’t had a drink since the previous weekend, but he was feeling relaxed and had nothing to do. He still hadn’t tried eating at the local pubs. He didn’t like dining out alone and was living mostly on takeaway food. He noticed a folder on Violet’s desk that didn’t look familiar, and wondered if she had started a new filing system of her own. He opened the file and was surprised to see what looked like a manuscript for a book. He flipped through the pages and saw that there were three chapters, and he saw Violet’s name carefully written on the inside cover. Feeling like a thief, he sat down on the couch with it, and read it straight through with a second scotch. It was beautifully written, a gripping story of a woman held in the thrall of a dangerous narcissist with criminal intentions who was blackmailing her, holds her hostage, and plans to kill her. Andy was frustrated when the last chapter ended, and he wanted to read more. There were no further chapters in the folder. It was a fantastic story, and would make an excellent book, and even better movie. He put it back on the desk, thinking of Violet, a woman of carefully hidden talents. She had mentionednothing about her writing skills in the interview. He couldn’t wait to ask her about it on Monday, although he would have to admit that he had read it without her permission. She was a very talented writer, and he couldn’t wait to see her and ask her about it, and if she had written more yet.
She was an intriguing woman, and something about her quiet demeanor suggested to him that she had secrets. And the sadness he had glimpsed on the beach haunted him.
His own life was an open book to her now, or very nearly. The correspondence she had read and scanned from his lawyer talked about his severance agreement from Global Studios, as did the emails from his investment advisor. If she read between the lines, she would know that he had been fired from somewhere. It didn’t take much to piece the story together, and she was a bright woman. She had signed a standard confidentiality form when she came to work for him, and he wondered how much she had figured out. She hadn’t said anything to him, or asked. She was very discreet and polite.
—
As Andy had guessed, Violet was intrigued by his emails. She hadn’t figured out all of it, but it was clear that he had been fired, and the name Global Studios was in some of the correspondence. The payments had come from two different corporations, both AMCO, which she was familiar with, and FAQTS, which she had never heard of. The payments were for an astronomical amount of money, although she had seen amounts like it before, and bigger. She wasmore worldly than she appeared. She had seen things that Andy could never have dreamed of. But she was sure that Andy was an honest man. In the two weeks she’d been there, he never talked about his job, and she wasn’t sure if he was retired or still working, and if he might be working remotely from England. He seemed to be taking time off from his job, whatever it was, and even in the informal setting of the house he had rented, she could sense how important he was in the world from the way people addressed him in their emails.
Feeling guilty for doing so, she looked him up on the internet that weekend, and saw all the recent articles about his being fired in the sale of Global Studios. She was shocked to read that he had been head of the studio for nineteen years and had been fired summarily. And then she realized what he was doing in England. He was licking his wounds, and probably figuring out what to do next. She felt sorry for him when she had read it all. What they had done to him sounded cruel and unfair to her. Violet knew about cruel and had been there herself. But she hated to see it happen to someone else, and he seemed like a kind, honorable man. She could only imagine how much he must be hurting now, particularly to have come so far from his home, to live in a strange house, in a country not his own.
She thought about him all weekend, and had new compassion for him. She didn’t want to let him know that she knew now, but she liked him even better, knowing what he’d been through only a month before. She knew he must still be reverberating from the shock of being fired. She wanted to console him, but dignity and discretion demanded that she not even let on that she knew. Theywere strangers to each other and she was only his employee. She couldn’t say anything, all she could do was live up to his faith in her. She was grateful that he had asked her nothing personal about herself since the interview. She had wounds of her own that she had no desire to share, with him or anyone else.
Chapter 7
Andy was eager for Violet to arrive while he finished his breakfast and coffee on Monday morning. He had read Violet’s chapters again the night before, and they read even better the second time than the first. Her story was fantastic, and so was the pace. Her writing was smooth and beautiful, the story was gripping, the characters strong. He wanted to know about the story and how much of it she had written, if there was more, or was she just starting? She was a talented writer.
Violet came to say hello to him in the kitchen when she got to work. He thought she looked relaxed and in good spirits, and she and Mrs. MacInnes smiled at each other. Andy got up as soon as he saw her, walked to the study with her, and asked her to sit down. She looked suddenly frightened. He was so serious that she was afraid he was going to fire her.
“Did I do something wrong?” she asked, and looked on the verge of tears.
“No, far from it. I want to ask you about this.” He turned and took the folder off the table and held it so she could see it, and she went pale.
“I’m sorry, Andy. I shouldn’t have. It’s some papers of mine. I brought it to work to use your copy machine. The one in town is always broken. I should have asked you before copying my own papers without your permission.”
“You can make a hundred copies of what’s in this folder, as long as you give me one of them,” he said. “Violet, these are among the best opening chapters I’ve ever read, and the others were by famous professionals. This is brilliant. I apologize to you for reading it. You left the file on the desk. I opened it on Friday night, and I saw what was in it. I was curious and read it. So, I apologize to you. What are you doing with it? Are you writing a book? I read it again last night and I couldn’t put it down. I liked it even better the second time.” Her dark violet eyes looked huge in her face.
“I’m trying to write a book. I’ve always wanted to, but I didn’t have time, or the courage. I’ve only been working on this for a few months. And yes, there’s more. I’ve almost finished it. I’m working on the last chapter now. But the rest is all handwritten. I haven’t typed it up yet. I’ve only typed the first three chapters, which is why I brought them in to copy on Friday.”
“Then I have a proposition to make you. I will pay you for full days, till five every day, and when you finish my work at one every day, you can spend the rest of the day typing your manuscript. I want you to finish this soon. You are sitting on an absolutely spectacular piece of work. And I have a question to ask you. Do you want to try to have this published as a book, or would you like to turn itinto a screenplay? You could publish the book afterward, if you wanted to, or the reverse, and have a movie follow the book. It’s incredibly cinematic, and I think you should do it first as a screenplay. I can find someone to work with you if you want, or even help you do it.” Andy paused then, and continued to look at her. “You’ve been scanning my legal and financial correspondence for two weeks. I’m sure you’ve figured out that I was the head of Global Studios for nineteen years. I got fired a month ago when the studio was sold. They said I was protected in the deal, but I wasn’t. They signed the deal on Friday night and fired me at nine o’clock on Monday morning. So, to put it bluntly, I’m out of a job and unemployed. I may even stay that way. Studio head positions don’t come along very often.
“I was a screenwriter for sixteen years before I got hired to run the studio. I know screenwriting in my sleep, and I’ve never written anything as strong as you just did. But I can show you how to do it as a screenplay, if you want to do it yourself, and use my connections to set you up with a producer who would help put a deal together for you. You can still publish it as a book, before or after. My son-in-law is a book publisher and I’d be happy to introduce you to him too. Violet, this is big league stuff, and I may have been fired a month ago, but I have all the connections you need to get this project going. I’d like you to use them, if you’re willing.” Suddenly he laughed as he looked as her. “Hell, maybe I’ll be an agent in my next life. And if so, I want to be yours. But seriously, I’d like to help you with this. You have an award-winning piece of work here.”
“You would do all that for me? Why?” Violet asked him, with tears in her eyes.
“Because you have an incredible talent, and you’re a good person. And you deserve it,” he said simply. “Everyone deserves a break sometime, especially with a talent like yours. You have a gold mine here, Violet. Would you let me make some calls for you, to see who might be interested, and who you could send the manuscript to, after you type it up?”
“Of course,” she said, breathless over everything he had told her and what he was willing to do for her. It was like the hand of destiny that Andy had rented the house and needed an assistant and the bank had called her.
“May I read the handwritten material you have now, before you type it, so I don’t have to wait?” He was eager to see the rest of the story.
“I’ll bring it tomorrow morning, or I can go home for it at lunchtime when I finish your work today. I’ll bring it for you, and then I’ll start typing the rest of what I have. You probably read faster than I type,” Violet said, smiling. She felt as though a miracle had happened. “And if you’re serious, I think I’d like to do a movie first. They can publish the book later.”
“I agree,” Andy said, feeling the same way she did about it. The hand of destiny had touched them both. He needed something to occupy his time, and he had the connections she needed. And she had no idea where to go or who to talk to about what she’d written. He could open important doors for her. He knew them all. Big filmmakers, small ones, the studios that were favorable to new writers and unknown talent, the directors, producers, and stars who were constantly looking for scripts. Violet was an extremely talented writer, and her manuscript deserved to see the light of day. She hadwritten big league material in this fusty old beach town in England. Andy was blown away and determined to help her.
He had very little work for her that day, and she went home as promised at lunchtime and brought back what she’d written, longhand. It was all there except for the last chapter, which she hadn’t completed yet. She wanted to do that first.
“What happens in the end?” he asked her.
“He tries to kill her and fails. She has the opportunity to kill him and doesn’t. The gun is in her hands, she escapes, the police come, there’s a gunfight, she’s wounded, but she survives, and they arrest him. He goes to prison.”
“A satisfying ending. Is there a love interest?”
