Billie Jean

He just shook his head. "I thought about both situations then Blake and I realized a few things. Number one as soon as she found out that you weren't going to try to get back with her Sue Anne dropped me like a hot rock. She was using me to get back at you and I fell for it. Everyone I knew told me that you'd go after Mandy and turn about was fair play. But you were above all of that then. That's the way I see it now."

"I didn't come here to gloat or to rub your face in anything. I came here to offer you a job," he said. And he turned and started walking back to his car.

"Wait Seize," I called. "What did you have in mind?"

We spent the rest of the afternoon talking. There were a few things of interest to both of us. Our strengths actually complemented each other. Caesar was an executive. He was great at delegating and running the business. He needed an office manager to handle all of the paperwork and clerical things, but the whole executive profile fit him to a tee.

I on the other hand, hate all of the bullshit socializing and company to company get-togethers. I hate paper work and employee evaluations. I hate signing requisitions for paperclips and toner. Shit, I rarely get to work on time. I do one thing really fucking well. Sell advertising campaigns. I'm very good at meeting clients and telling them what I can do for them, but after that I have just enough contact with them to plan out what we'll do for their account and then show it to them for their feedback. After that I'm back hunting for new business.

This was a good thing. It meant that we wouldn't get on each other's toes. But the bottom line was as I had already told Myra, I made four million dollars the previous year. CA associates only sold 1.5 million dollars in total sales for that same period of time. He simply could not come anywhere close to affording me.

It wasn't that I was above coming down in salary, it would simply be crazy for me to put myself in a situation where I'd be working in a smaller company and doing much more work for much less compensation.

"Well, I guess it just wasn't meant to be, Blake," he said. "But I'm sure you'll bounce back."

Suddenly I had what I thought was the answer. "Seize how much is your company worth?" I asked.

"Well my banker tried to get two million dollars from a consortium that wanted to buy us out, but they balked and bought another similar company," he said.

"Okay let's say that is your current value then," I said. "Sell me half of it. We'll be partners. 50/50."

He thought about the idea and we dickered. We came up with the idea that he and I would each own 45 percent of the company. We would look over everyone who worked for us over the next few days and divide the remaining 10 percent of the company between the employees who remained with us. We'd probably have to re-staff and make a few other decisions, including hiring more associates, but we could work out the details later. It was nearly six o'clock California time and he had an engagement planned for the evening.

As he drove off, I was actually happy. The partnership I'd worked so hard for at McMillan Worth, was finally mine albeit at a far smaller company...for now. I called Myra.

"Hello," she said answering her phone.

"What the hell are you doing?" I yelled. Before she could figure out what was going on, I continued. "Get your ass back to work, tomorrow, 9 a.m."

"So I take you accepted the job from Anthony," she smirked. "What would you like your loyal assistant to do first?"

"Nope," I smirked back. "I bought half of his company."

There was silence on the line.

"Myra the first thing I want you to do is get my Florida car paid for. You still have all of my account info right? And after that I need you to interview and hire a new assistant for me."

"Why would you need a new assistant?" she asked. "What's wrong with me?"

"Myra, you're going to be the office manager and a minor stockholder." Before I could finish she was screaming and crying.

"I can't wait to go back to McMillan Worth to clean out my desk," she said.

After hanging up the phone, I wandered around my house. It felt empty. I guess no matter how nice the house may be, without someone to share it with, it's really just a big box to keep your stuff in. It takes love and memories to make a house into a home. I went into the kitchen and remembered that less than a day ago; I'd been at the lowest point in my life and still headed downwards. I'd stopped falling and had reached a solid bottom so now I could only head for the top.

The soft buzzing at my hip startled me. It wasn't the house phone it was my cell phone.

"Mr. Alexander," the voice was quiet and tentative with just a trace of an accent, mostly on the vowels and a few consonants. I recognized it but I wasn't sure who it belonged to.

"Yes," I said. Shit it could be another reporter.

"I'm not angry with you," she said. "I realize that what happened in the papers was not your fault. Is your life always that way?"

"Yep, all the time," I said.

"And I wanted to tell you that I'm sorry about you losing your marriage over this. Somehow it just doesn't seem fair. Everything about this seems funny. You claim this is not your child, yet you step forward to take responsibility, just in case. Meanwhile neither I or my people can find any information about the child or his living conditions while the mother is across the country going on TV shows, talking about how all she wants is Justice and the best for a child she left nearly a month ago and has not been home to visit since."

"Thank you, Miss Martinez," I said. "It makes me feel good to know that the Florida State officials are interested in finding out the truth."

"You can call me Helena," she said. "I'm not in the office right now."

We actually spent the rest of the evening on the phone. It was one of the most pleasant conversations I'd had in a long time. I told her about how all of the Billie Jean stuff had begun. And about my life in general. She sympathized with me about the stupid way that this whole situation had destroyed my feelings for Mary Beth and our marriage.

When I asked her about why someone as attractive as she was wasn't out with her boyfriend or husband, she filled me in on her life. Her personal tragedy was nearly as sad as my own. She'd been in three relationships during her whole life and all of them had ended in part to her physical attributes or the way people thought she was because of them.

Her first boyfriend had wooed her during college. It took her months to become comfortable enough with him to give herself to him and it turned out, that he was only a very patient predator. His only intention from the beginning had been to as she later heard from a mutual friend, "To get his hands on those Tig Ass Bitties."

Once she'd heard about this, she'd dumped him with extreme prejudice. To make the breakup even more painful, she'd called him over and had him bring a couple of friends on the pretense of helping her move some heavy furniture. Once they'd arrived, she met him at the door in only a very low cut sweater with no bra. While his eyes nearly exploded, she'd told him to start by putting the boxes on her porch into his car.

"What's in the boxes, babe?" he'd asked.

"All of your shit," she'd replied. "Take it all home with you, we're done. And you should probably take a picture of these," she said leaning forward towards him. "Because you'll never see or touch them again."

Her second lover was one of her professors a couple of years later. That had been a mistake from the beginning. He'd given her all of the classic lines about how his wife didn't understand him. She'd been flattered by the attention from an older more sophisticated man, he had more experience and was far more gentle than all of the boys who constantly followed her breasts around.

In the end it came down just the same to quickies in cheap hotels and in his office after hours. The final straw was when she actually met his wife. The callous, conniving bitch who didn't understand him and made his life a living hell, turned out to be a very sweet, caring woman who loved her husband an incredible amount and was completely devoted to him. The worse thing was that she actually invited Helena to their home so she could seek extra help from the professor. The poor woman truly believed that her husband loved her as much as she loved him. She had no idea of what a bastard he was.

The finale of Helena's romantic escapades had come from an old friend whom she'd lost touch with. When they reconnected at a picnic for her mom's church, she'd become very interested in him. Perhaps someone she'd grown up around, who shared a similar background and upbringing might be the answer.

Life had thrown him a few lemons, but he was trying to rise above his station. He'd just gotten out of jail and was looking for a job. Over a few months, depression from not finding the perfect job had escalated until she found herself screaming at him to just take any fucking job and stop mooching off of her. He could probably find something if he'd get off her fucking couch and turn off the play station. He'd gone out and gotten drunk. The argument that followed led to him hitting her.

Before he could apologize she'd called the cops and gotten him removed. She set all of his stuff outside where he could find it. There was no going back from that. She worked all day long with women who were the victims of abuse. She'd never allow herself to become one of them. She took several pictures of herself with her face swollen up, as a reminder of what she would look like. It had been more than enough to deter her from going out with anyone she even thought had a temper.

Before we knew it we'd talked the evening away. She didn't want to get off of the phone, but I reminded her that she had work tomorrow.

"Don't you?" she asked. I laughed realizing that after less than a day, I was no longer unemployed.

The next few days were a flurry of activity. Anthony-Alexander LLC was getting ready to open for business. We rented out a much larger office suite and bought equipment. Caesar Anthony had misgivings about it. "We can't really afford this yet. We don't have any clients," he said.

"Don't worry," I told him. "Our first step is to get set up. After that the rest will handle itself or we'll handle it."

Seize shrugged his shoulder and threw himself into it. We retained his personal assistant and hired a new girl to serve as mine. We got rid of all but three of the associates he had. We'd spent time reviewing all of their records and most of his people had not been working very hard to bring in business. We kept the three top performers and intended to hire at least three more. Myra became our office manager and oversaw the whole thing.

We bought computers and printers and got a network set up. After a flurry of activity during which time the Billie Jean thing seemed to be dying down we sat back to look at what we'd accomplished.

Caesar, Myra and I were proud of ourselves. "What do we do now?" he asked me.

"Hold that thought Seize," I said my phone was ringing.

"We need to talk. We're not happy at all." I'd heard the voice described by her husband as "Somewhere between low and high pitched with nothing in between."

When we first met she'd been the editor of his first book, a book that had gone on to become a best seller and a great movie as well. The advertising campaign I'd done for that book had been one of my first big successes.

Now Marissa was a successful author herself, but she still helped with her husband's projects as well as her own.

"What's wrong Marissa?" I asked.

"You tell me," she said. "I know you're busy being a media darling these days but what's with this whole "Indefinite Leave" thing?"

"It's complicated M," I said. "But let's suffice it to say that I'm no longer with McMillan Worth."

"Okay, then let's suffice it to say that Tyler and I are not happy with the people that McMillan worth have assigned to his new book and we're going to the publisher to tell them that we want a different ad agency. Who are you with now?"

"Anthony-Alexander LLC," I said.

"Ooh, we're dealing with an owner," she said. "We're going to have to work fast. The book comes out in two months, and six weeks after that my new book comes out. That way we can do our summer book tours together. How soon can you get here so we can figure this out?"

"I'll be there tomorrow, I'll have Myra call you with my arrangements," I said.

"Good, Tyler really wants to talk to you." she said as she hung up.

I put the phone down and turned back to our conversation. I had the strangest look on my face. "Oh my fucking God" I said. I had the same look on my face that a shark gets when it's released into a tank of smaller fish.

"What's wrong?" asked Myra.

"Yeah, are you okay?" asked Caesar.

"Remember how when you're let go from McMillan Worth you're given a non-compete waiver to sign. If you don't sign it you aren't given your severance package," I said.

"Most companies have something like that," said Caesar.

"I didn't have to sign one," said Myra.

"You were only an assistant there," volunteered Caesar.

"I quit and didn't sign shit," I said smiling.

"What exactly does that mean?" he asked.

"And why do you have that funny look on your face?" asked Myra.

"It means tomorrow, I'm flying to Illinois to talk to our first two potential clients. If we do well here, we could end up with all of their publisher's business." I smiled again.

"That would be a pretty nice chunk of change, but all it really means..." I smiled even more. "Is that hunting season is open. When I get back from Illinois I'll start making some calls. Seize pack your shit, we have to make some plans. Within two weeks we're going to Paris."

"You're not seriously going to...?" began Myra smiling.

"Why not?" I asked. "McMillan Worth doesn't officially have the account yet and it's a ten million dollar deal."

Less than a day later I looked out from the inside of a beautiful but not ostentatious house at a pool. In a chair with his back turned towards me sat Tyler Collins. He watched as four kids played around in the pool. I knew three of the four. One was Tyler and Marissa's daughter. Her brother, Ben was the product of Tyler's previous marriage. Even stranger was the fact that the last child I recognized was the step brother of Tyler's son Ben. The boy was Tyler's ex wife's step son. I didn't recognize the youngest child but I had my suspicions.

It struck me as amazing the way that kids could just get together and play and have a good time regardless of who they were and who they came from. They just wanted to have a good time. There was universal acceptance. If you were "nice" they liked you.

Second chances were granted so easily. All it took was an "I'm sorry," and they could be friends again.

I stepped out onto the deck and got a wave from the kids, which caused Tyler to turn and see me.

He looked a little worried, which was unusual for him. Tyler was normally pretty easy going. He smiled as I came over. I saw a thick stack of newspapers next to him.

"Research?" I asked him. He nodded and just pointed to his diet Pepsi.

I shook my head. "Straight to business as usual, huh?" he asked.

"Let's get the bad stuff out of the way first," I said.

"You mean the easy stuff?" he said. I nodded.

"I love to write," he said. "I just need a subject that grabs me and the words just come. They lift off the pages. It's almost as if the books write themselves. But it's strange because technically, Marissa is a far better writer than I am. She knows all of the stuff about punctuation, building tension, word usage and formatting. Without her editing most of my stuff wouldn't be half as good. My gift is the ability to simply tell a story. To find something that people find interesting and frame it in a way that they want to read it. It's almost like I'm a spot light and Marissa is the lens that varies my intensity."

I knew that Tyler Collins was crazy smart. It sometimes took me a while before I caught up to him. Either that or the fact that I'd received a call from Sarah that morning at the airport that confirmed one of my suspicions. Luckily for me Sarah had called first and warned me as usual. The woman's list of contacts in a city she didn't live in was amazing.

"Anyway, Marissa and I don't like the way McMillan Worth wants to do our ads," he said.

"Let me guess, since this is your first non-mystery book, you'd like to feature ads that are outside of the normal literary advertizing spectrum. Since the potential for a movie tie-in is even greater this time around you're looking for more market saturation. What we want to do is release the ads in more and more varied types of media outlets to reach a broader audience than just general readers and mystery readers," I said.

"Exactly," said Marissa, chiming in. "Why can't that idiot they assigned to us see that?"She asked.

"And I had an idea for you too Rissa," I said. "Have you ever heard of the SyFy network?"

"Yeah," she smiled. "They do all of those really cheesy movies but a lot of their series' are great. I really like the one about the town where all of those scientific geniuses live. Tyler and I watch it all the time."

"What I'm trying to arrange is for you to host one of their Saturday night movies. You'd come on and talk about the book after every commercial and lead back into the cheesy movie. That way before we even release the book you've got all of the sci fi geeks curious about it," I told her. I could tell she was enthused by the idea.

"Okay, it's official," said Tyler. "You're hired." Marissa nodded and went to make yet another phone call.

"We could have done this over the phone Tyler. What did you really want to talk about?" I asked. Having known Tyler for years I knew that there were things he wanted to know. He had the sensitive soul of an artist. He could very often discern things that were not readily available to the average person just by observance.

"I've had questions, during this whole thing, but now after seeing you. I have my answers," he said. I was still confused.

"You didn't so this," he said. "When I look at you I can see a mixture of a lot of things. I see pain. If you were guilty of this there'd be frustration because it won't end or because you thought you'd gotten away with it. But from the pain you have at what you're going through and what it cost you I can tell that you didn't do this."

"Well thanks for the belief," I said. "You don't know how much that means."

"Here's the hard part," he said. "When this is all over would you sit down with me and fill me in on all of the details?"

I looked at him strangely.

"I guess I'd like to write the story as my next book," he said. "So I want to know the whole thing. I'd like to interview you and as many of the key players as possible," he said.

I picked up my cell phone as it interrupted his thought.

"Yeah Mr. Maitland, I'm here," I said as Tyler's eyes went huge. I put the phone on speaker so Tyler could hear the conversation.

"Blake, I'm afraid I don't have good news for you and you can call me Bill. That girl Sarah of yours is incredible she's coming up with leads that my own guys can't track down and they live here. Anyway like you figured the DNA is inconclusive but we can only come up with a 79% certainty. The state requires 85% minimum, but it's close enough that we're going to retest and proceed with the paternity hearing. It's going to take longer because we're going to use a more definitive test," he said. "Unfortunately with our computers that will take longer, probably six to eight weeks, but we won't release the results until we have definite proof."