Milly Houston Pt. 02

Thank you. We have no wish to seek an injunction that would delay publication.'

Both women signed the letter.

"That will scare the pants off the cold-ass bitches in publishing," Gran chortled.

A few days later a ranch-hand arrived with a courier pack collected from the nearest post office containing six complimentary books plus a letter from the publishing house's senior editor. The editor wrote:

'Dear Miss Cameron

We are delight to advise your suggestion for the title of your Biography will be as you have suggested but just turned about: 'LOVE, DUST & MAYHEM - The Memoirs of Gloria Isobel Cameron'

We find that title totally acceptable and thank you for your interest. I look forward to meeting you at the book launch. We'll send you and your daughter and your granddaughter complimentary air tickets and luxury hotel accommodation for two nights for that event.'

Gran crowed in delight. "Thank you again for that letter darling. Please fetch the original letter and Milly. We will then watch her read both letters and watch her reactions."

The huge grins alerted Milly but she was still amazed at what just one letter had achieved.

After Milly complimented then in obvious delight, Gran said proudly, "My tough-ass daughter knows when and how to show her teeth."

Two days later Elaine called to check that Milly would be at the christening and when answered yes said, "You best come prepared to stay. I'll help you find a studio apartment without you being ripped off. Probably down Long Island overlooking the sea but near a railway station. The Veitch family are prepared to offer you $40,000 to write the biography of their second oldest daughter Susan who as a teenager won international ski events and then switched to her other passion and became an internationally acclaimed mountaineer. Their mother's youngest sister is our senior editor who gave Susan's parents a print-out of your biography of Gloria Isobel Cameron to read and where were amazed at what you have done with Miss Cameron. Susan had a nasty fall recently, fracturing several vertebra and intends retiring from mountaineering with the announcement timed a month before the biography appearing in May in time for the book to catch the summer vacation market."

"Okay."

"What, don't you want to meet the family and Susan first?"

"Nope. I have to do something so may as well do that. The money sounds good. It will be a pot-boiler, nowhere near as complex as working on Gran's life."

"But you and Susan mightn't like each other?"

"I've read she can be a real bitch but who wants to write about a ho-hum nobody. There is a story to investigate that she'd had a fuck on every mountain she's climbed. I suggest the title of 'Fuck the Mountains'.

Elaine dropped the phone through laughing so much.

"Our house will be full for the christening with both sets of parents staying with us plus my two sisters. Ian's two sisters are staying across the street with young friends of ours and I've arranged for you to stay with my elder brother Dean and his current live-in girl friend."

"What, fat four-eyes can attract women?"

Elaine laughed. He had laser treatment to correct his sight so doesn't wear glasses these day. He also served in the Army engineers for seven years and came home almost a hunk. I...god, it never occurred to me that Dean and you..."

"Dean and me what?"

"Well, obviously need someone taking care of your sexual needs."

"Dean -- are you joking."

"He's not the Dean you remember darling."

The next day there was a tearful farewell that turned into sadness when Milly drove away from the ranch house for the last time. She found a specialist storage place in Colorado Springs for her car, paying six month's rental of space in advance and went to airport to catch the first available flight to New York, as Gran would say, to begin her next big adventure.

* * *

Dean turned out to be nice enough but wasn't the dean Milly remembered or had any reason to want to remember. As soon as she saw him and noticed his disinterest in her she said to herself he's gay. And at the apartment she found the girlfriend was actually a boyfriend and Dean said apologetically, "John is more than a pal to me. Elaine thinks his name is actually Joan. I'd appreciate it if you allow Elaine to remain innocently mistaken."

"You mean to do all I can to perpetuate my deception?"

The 'girlfriend' snarled "You bitch" and Dean told John to cool it and said he'd appreciate Milly doing that.

"I'll volunteer nothing. It's not of my business." She picked up her two bags and said, "Bye boys, I'm off to a hotel. Elaine is my best friend and in no way do I wish to become involved in anything to deceive her."

Wordlessly the two guys watched her leave the apartment. In the foyer Milly acted on impulse and called a number Elaine had given her ten days earlier.

"Good evening, Susan Veitch speaking."

"Hi, it's your biographer."

"Milly Houston?"

"Yes. Thanks for remembering my name. Look I've arrived in New York for a christening of my godchild on Sunday..."

"Elaine and Ian's baby Lilly?"

"Why yes?"

"We're all going. My mother is Ian's godmother; mom is Ian's mom's best friend. So you'd like a bed?"

"Yes, and to spend time with you if I can. To get the feel of you before we begin work."

"Feel of me...er...?"

"Good heaves no. Oh spare me. I'm not that forward but if you can find me a guy over the weekend I would be delighted."

"We're going out for dinner tonight, just my family. My brother is without a partner. May I suggest..."

"Yes, I would be a pleasure. He can wear a clown suit for all I care. It would be a wonderful environment for me to immerse myself in my first contact with the family."

"I agree. You are so far-sighted and clever. I have confidence in you already. I'll come and get you, give me the address."

Milly gave the details and Susan said that was less than ten minutes away.

Milly said, "I'm wearing..."

"I'll be in my mom's white Mercedes. The seating in my sports car gives me back-pain."

"Look, don't risk your back -- I'll get a cab."

"No, I'm on my way."

Well, if Susan was a bitch she hadn't shown it, Milly thought. She sounded friendly and outgoing. Fingers crossed.

The nondescript pale blonde of forty with a scars on her face from her fall hidden under mesh in the first stages of skin grafts came around the car and hugged Milly who's come out of the apartment block with her two bags on rollers.

"God you cute and what a figure."

"A cold figure. I stupidly packed my coat but was too lazy to get it out."

"That sounds the opposite to me. Inside the car is warm. We are not dining till 9:30 so want to stop for a drink somewhere?"

"Yes, that would be lovely Susan. You appear remarkably mobile?"

"I'm out of my back brace and excellent physiotherapy is returning flexibility. It's fourteen weeks since the accident. I'm having a lot of work done on my face to strip skin damage caused by sun burn, freeze burning and being hit by falling debris. As a young woman I came close to being called beautiful but not now. I aim to look better again but not to wear a plastic face."

"Good for you. You won't want to loose facial character, will you? Your family could have difficulty coping with that."

"That' my thinking exactly. Here's a supervised parking lot. The attendant ought to be able to steer us to a bar suitable for respectable women."

Doubting that such bars existed they appeared to find one. Being Friday night it was filled with male and females in business suits and were not accosted, not that Susan would have expected that, the porous dressings on her face allowing new skin grafts to 'breath' visible beyond the huge lens sunglasses inviting thoughts in a bar that she might be fighting a virulent strain of STD. The two women were eager to appeal to the other and this interlude gave them time to gel at little. The signs were good, Milly thought.

They stopped outside a brick apartment building on the north side of 18th Street in Chelsea and waited for the heavy grill door of the basement to open.

"Oh, do you have a couple of floors in this building?"

Susan smiled and said it was a townhouse and they occupied all six levels including the basement.

"What does daddy do?"

"He's in insurance and mom his one of his four other partners in the business. They won't be home until between 8.30 and 9.00 because they have drinkies at the office on Friday nights and drinking doesn't start till 7:00."

As the grill closed with a thump behind them and Susan looked into the vehicle's video screen and said she was watching electronic data that reported not sign of intruders in the basement or any occupants on any floors of the townhouse she unlocked the vehicle's doors and said, "Welcome to our townhouse home."

They toured the lovely restored apartment with its original pumpkin pine floors, having to climb to all floors because there was no elevator.

"It's lovely. How long has it been in the family?"

"Since 1911."

"Oooh, your father must be old."

Susan laughed genuinely and told Milly she had great humor.

They reached the top floor and Susan said that is my youngest sister's room beside yours and over here is my brother's room stretching the full length and with an office and access to the rooftop garden which is no place to visit in winter. It has a lovely view and you can get to share it if you sleep with him.

Milled laughed merrily and told Susan she had a waspish humor.

"I'm not joking. One look at you and he'll want you."

"Oh god, what will your parents think of me?"

"Depraved."

"Oh god is there a lock on my door?"

"Yes."

"Well in that case I shall stay."

Susan said, "If you would feel safer you could sleep with me one floor down. I also have a daybed in my room."

"That's a lovely thought but think of your reputation?"

"Darling, my good reputation began its decline when I turned nineteen."

"So it would be okay for the Sunday papers to scream, 'Famous mountaineer sleeping with female biographer'?"

Susan began to laugh but stopped dead: "Oh god. I didn't see that coming."

"Well I began as a newspaper reporter so know how the Sunday swine think and work. Actually I have no fear of your brother. If he won't keep his hands off me he'll find himself minus a testicle."

They fell about laughing and went down to the lounge where Susan began probing to find out more about Milly.

Debrecini entered the room, saw Milly and then looked at Susan with an enquiring eyebrow raised.

"Milly meet my mom. Mon meet my biography Milly Houston. Please call her Milly and you too Justine."

The nineteen year old hurried over and went to shake Milly's hand but Milly buried her into a hug. "Susan told me you are studying journalism."

"Yes, I was so excited when I found you are coming to write about Susan. I wanted mom to invite you to stay with us but she said..."

"I said I wasn't impressed by many female newspaper journalists who looked like sluts even if they weren't but please forgive me for classifying you sight unseen Miss Houston."

"Debrecini please call me Milly."

"I hadn't decided whether to invite you to call me by my first name."

"But you will have, I'm simply cutting that corner."

"I see, will please call me Debrecini. Tongue-tied beside me is Susan's father Dirk. It appears he also wasn't expected a well groomed beauty."

"Welcome to our home Milly," said the silky-haired guy of around sixty-five, a little older than his wife. "You grace our home and would you kindly stay with us?"

Susan said she already was settled into the guest room next to Justine. "Milly had been billeted to stay with Dean, unaware of his sexual preference and his latest love proved to be bitchy."

"Darling I'm so glad you thought of asking if you could stay with us", Debrecini said, indicating she had the thinking power to cut corners in dialogue.

"Y-you know Dean is not straight?"

"It's kept under the covers Milly. I think Elaine is possibly the only one who doesn't know."

"But I do?"

Debrecini smiled. "You are a journalist darling and were in the wrong place at the wrong time so found out. Elaine as you know was a master's graduate in English lit and insulates herself somewhat from the real world with her family and her book world. Susan, Justine and I are taking Milly and her mother Alice and mother-in-law Yvonne to lunch tomorrow. I would be pleased if you would join us. Now we must have food before all that alcohol stupefies my brain and body. I'll leave a note for Garrison where to find us."

More to Come...