Try Try Again Read online

  While Liv was over Indiana on her flight to LAX, a heavy storm was coming across the Blue Ridge from the west, newsradio said. Jill’s and Ellie’s flight got out, just barely, before the first squall line hit Northern Virginia and Dulles International.

  True to her word, Jill called up the Appleton, Inc. database contract on her tab and flagged several places where Dill-Tech had some wiggle room – at least until some court or arbitrator said otherwise. But by then she’d be long gone from that dreary office. She emailed her comments and erased the entire business from her mind.

  Ellie had seldom flown, and kept her nose out of Jillian’s contract analysis work for most of the trip, watching the flyover states roll by.

  Toward the end of the flight, Jill looked at CNN on her tab and noticed, as polls had predicted, Thomas James Conning had been elected President of the United States. In her excitement at winning the big prize, she’d completely forgotten to vote.

  Jill and Ellie walked through a plastic-sheeted tunnel into one of the LAX terminals. They were met by a smooth-faced young man holding up a sign “J. HALL E. MASON.” Jillian Hall and Ellie Mason joined him. Without a word other than “Good trip?” which didn’t include waiting for an answer, he retrieved their bags and escorted them to his car. Jill had been expecting a limo, perhaps even a stretch limo with a fridge and champagne, but was shown to an ordinary-looking sedan. It was, however, she reflected, clean. In contrast to her own car.

  The smooth young man, whose name tag read “Leo,” led them to the front desk of their hotel, bags in hand, and wished them well and walked off. He had obviously no idea who J. HALL was: the toast of tinsel-town, the newest tri-millionaire who had done what no one had ever done before, and her faithful sidekick.

  The word “Tonto” flashed into Jill’s mind, as did “Sancho.” She quickly banished both.

  Their adjoining rooms were each adorned with a fruit basket and arrangement of flowers. Jill’s phone-light was flashing, and there was a voice message. “Hi and welcome to Hollywood! This is Hub Landon. Can you be here at two o’clock tomorrow? It’s important. I’m sending a car.”

  Jill faced the delicate question of including Ellie in the meeting or not. Ellie pre-empted Jill’s dilemma by announcing next morning she would take a cab to Rodeo Drive and drool at the goodies, even if she couldn’t afford to buy anything but a “Rodeo Drive” T-shirt.

  Jill, the novo-riche, didn’t know what to say. Offer to buy Ellie something at Porsche Design? Give her a fistful of hundred-dollar bills?

  Ellie caught her breath. “Oh I shouldn’t have said that! Should I have?”

  Add one more to the perils of being rich, Jill thought. Most rich people had years of growing wealth to figure out stuff like this. She had been dumped into the life and there was no book called, “How a New Millionaire Should Behave Without Becoming a Complete Boor, for Idiots.”

  Chapter 22: Two Years and One Month After the Assassination

  Promptly at eleven twenty five the next morning, Tuesday, a car pulled up to the Four Seasons and the bellman announced “Ms. Saunders?”

  Half an hour later, an associate (they weren’t called “maids” anymore) announced herself as Mr. Landon’s Associate, admitted her to the Hub mansion, showed her to a room, and suggested she might freshen up (my God, did she look so bad?), and then join Mr. Landon in the piscine, s’il vous plais. And oh did you bring a swimsuit? Fine. You can leave it off for now. Gee, thanks, does that mean I should go naked? But Liv said that to herself.

  Per Hub’s instructions, Liv had indeed brought a swimsuit, black, of course, one-piece and severe. She expected to have to put it on later. Who knows what this place was really like? Maybe there were cameras. Maybe Hub’s pool was twenty-four-hour U-tubed with cameras on the bottom looking up?

  Making her way to the piscine – couldn’t miss it, it was in the center of the house – she encountered (a) a large swimming pool in the shape of an old-fashioned claw-footed bathtub, and (b) Hub Landon rising from it.

  He waved to her as he put on a robe. “Hello, Liv! We have plenty of swimsuits for after lunch, but you don’t have to wear anything if you don’t want to!”

  Liv blushed, told him she had brought a swimsuit of her own, and sat down on the pool edge near where Hub was standing and pouring himself a drink. The pool did look nice, though. Perhaps later.

  “OK,” she said, “I’m here. I’m glad to see you again.” They shook hands, awkwardly considering their relative positions vis-à-vis the water. “So you think this Jillian Hall might have cheated to win three million dollars on your show?”

  “Don’t know… Liv? Should I call you Liv? You can call me Hub.” Liv gave him a rare smile and nodded. “I’ve always hated ‘Olivia,’ she said. “So when my mother started calling me ‘Liv’ I was glad, and picked up on it.”

  Hub continued, “Getting back to the question, Hall wasn’t just the best ‘Liv Saunders’ on that episode, but the best of anybody for any character in either season – and by an extraordinary amount – one hundred fourteen and a half seconds, being the best anybody during every half-second T-slice of that one hundred fourteen and a half seconds, or tied for the best in a some of them. That’s never happened before. And she wasn’t just the best you ever, she was the best anybody, ever.”

  Liv frowned. “There has to be a best.”

  “All right,” Hub said, “always have to watch myself around a lawyer. But she wasn’t just a little better than our previously best agonist, but a lot better. Almost twice as good. And she wasn’t one of the handful of agonists who score in the top ten or so every episode. Looking back, I saw she’d won a thousand dollars in season one, but I’d never heard of her. Why was there an outlier? Why was Jillian Hall that outlier? It would be like Rosie Ruiz winning the New York marathon.”

  Liv gave Hub a blank stare.

  “OK,” said Hub. “That was a long time ago. Now what I wanted you here for was to help me – me and Jillian Hall – watch the show around the time of that fatal hundred fourteen and a half seconds when she did so well, and see what kind of answer we can come up with. Have you ever met her, by the way? Spoken with her?”

  Liv shook her head.

  “Hall’s win was done imitating you, so I thought perhaps you’d coached her. After all, you don’t live more than three or four hours’ drive apart. But you said you never met her. Right? Now that wouldn’t be cheating, coaching her I mean, although some people might consider it unfair, even if Jill agreed to give you a cut of the winnings – a little smarmy, but …”

  Liv cut him off. “No, and no, and no! I’d never met her or heard of her before she won. I’ve never considered coaching anyone to be me – can you imagine how strange that would feel? But now that you’ve accused me, I think I will. I’ll start a “how to be me” business. And I’ll get a cut of that three million dollars next season and you and Frank Dickstein can just go bankrupt!”

  Hub edged backwards. “No, I’m not accusing you of anything. I just want to know what happened, before everyone in America concludes that ‘Try Try Again’ is rigged.”

  Liv took a deep breath and calmed down.

  “Maybe we can trip her up,” Hub said, “Jillian Hall, I mean, and get her to tell us how she won. Or maybe she was just that good. Either way, we need to find out, because Frankie’s out two million more than he thought he could be, and he’s pissed at the world, myself being a key part of his world – at least I was before Hall came along. We need to understand what the hell happened and say it was OK, or a fluke, or if something more subtle was going on. And put a stop to it.

  “Now,” he said, “Jillian Hall will be here about two o’clock and we’ll thrash it all out. But first, how about lunch? My chef would be world famous if I didn’t keep him locked in the wine cellar.” Hub winked, as if either the chef wasn’t imprisoned in the wine cellar, or if he was he didn’t mind, just drank a lot.

  The Associate appeared and escorted Hub and Liv into a surpr
isingly small dining room. The Associate noticed Liv’s look. “Intime,” The Associate said, “très intimate pour just two people. Our other dining room is très grand.” She curtseyed and left.

  Liv looked at Hub. “Where on earth did you get her?”

  “She’s between roles,” was all he said.

  The chef appeared and ushered in a young woman carrying plates of crisped halibut with potato crust on a bed of braised baby kale, and a bottle of Balducci’s pinot grigio.

  “Just something light,” said Hub. “Our dinner tonight with Jillian will be ‘special.’” Liv attached herself to the wine.

  “Did you watch season two?” asked Hub after a few minutes.

  “No, and I didn’t watch season one either,” said Liv. “Just too creepy, the thought of me watching myself.”

  “Well, I watched all of season one, but just a few minutes of one or two of the season two episodes,” said Hub. “Frankie had cut out a few seconds of footage here and there after season one, so the commercials could be longer. One of those cuts took effect in season two, episode four, right before Hall started winning. It’s normal I suppose, for contestants to be thrown off by a change, since most of them had practiced on the old season-one tapes. And indeed they were thrown off, at least for a few seconds, in episode four and the other episodes as well, wherever the footage had been clipped out after season one was shown. But not Jillian Hall, not at this particular cut. Why not?”

  Liv didn’t respond.

  For the two p.m. meeting, Jill had dressed in her “Liv Saunders” outfit, a near-approach to the one Liv had worn on that fourth, and fateful for Jill, day of the trial. She made sure her hair was like Liv’s had been at the trial, too. In a way this was a joke, but one she hoped Hub would appreciate.

  Leo called up on the hotel phone, and Jill was soon being whisked past the houses of those accustomed to an unending breeze of money.

  Shortly before two o’clock, Jill arrived at Hub’s big house – it would be called a mansion in Pimmit Hills. Before she could ring the doorbell, a smiling man opened the door. He looked older than his Wikipedia photo, she decided, and not so chubby. Maybe he’d lost weight, or maybe the shot had been taken wide-angle.

  “You must be Jillian Hall,” he said, “the celeb herself!”

  Jill was flustered, but managed to say “Yes, the one and only. Call me Jill.”

  “Come on in, Jill; we’ve got lots of drinks and a great place to relax.”

  Hub ushered her down a long corridor and into the study, and said “the bar’s over there; help yourself,” but she heard only the first three words, because sitting in a straight chair, looking calm but severe, was Olivia Saunders herself.

  Jill was instantly sorry she’d worn her “Liv” outfit: Hub could think it clever, but Saunders might be annoyed at a bad joke, an insult, a jape. Jill covered up her shock and shame as best she could, and smiled at the two as Hub was saying, “the bourbon’s my own brand. Not that I make the stuff myself, but private labeling is ...” Jill saw he’d noticed her reaction. Oh, oh.

  She looks like an older me, Jill thought. Not just the outfit or the face, but the angle her arms made to her side, the posture that broadcast uneasiness even if she might not be uneasy. Here was the woman whose identity she had usurped, had used it to win more money than Liv had probably ever seen.

  Jill felt like one of those spirits that were supposed to take over other peoples’ souls and needed to be exorcised. Well, just brave it out.

  She walked over to Liv and said “Hi! I’m Jillian Hall,” holding out her hand.

  Liv Saunders was taken aback, seeing an image of herself some fifteen years younger. Liv had looked like that, but had she been so – forward? Engaging? Maybe so. But a lot can happen in fifteen years. A lot had happened.

  Liv hadn’t been expecting Jill to show up in character, and was annoyed. Jill hadn’t needed to do that. Now I suppose she’ll be imitating my voice too, thought Liv, and my mannerisms before I can get to them myself. She felt as if something had been stolen from her. She had an image of herself speaking while sitting on her hands, while Jill was making Liv’s habitual gestures.

  Liv was suddenly aware of her own talk, of her body language. I used to be like Jill, she thought, just like that. Happy, ebullient. I’ve changed. The world made me change, but Jill hasn’t changed. Yet. No wonder she did such a good job of being me – she’s me back then, but even now there’s something in her that might become – a Liv. She’s just like I was, before ….

  But wait, there were differences. Liv suddenly realized Jill wasn’t being the Liv of now; she was the Liv of two years before, the Liv of the trial. Liv had moved on from that bad period after she’d been let go by Holmes & Epperly, but here she was again, thrown back into the past, that day when she’d been handed a cardboard box and told to just go away.

  She looked at Jill for a moment and finally took the hand. “Glad to meet the famous ­­­me,” she said with a smile. Jill smiled, too. It was the same smile, Liv noted, a smile slightly curious, slightly confused – that she had bestowed on Charley Dukes that fateful day.

  Hub observed the two women as they were making small-talk. It was odd, disconcerting. Not just the clothing and hair styles, and the voice, and the facial features, but how their heads tilted, the timbre and rhythm of their voices. Maybe twelve, fifteen years younger, it occurred to him, Liv could be Jill; older, Jill could be Liv. But of course there was a subtle personality difference, Liv being reserved, almost weary, Jill more innocent, curious.

  He had picked up on the uneasiness between the women, but didn’t know what to say. Automatic took over: “How about a drink!” Liv nodded, Jill said no thanks. He escorted them to the “library” (glued book-spines on the walls; who had real books anymore? Nobody had loved the books that were donated for their spines, anyway. Not enough to keep them. He comforted himself with that thought). He asked Jill and Liv to take a seat, and took their drink orders.

  Hub exited to the bar and made two Manhattans, the double for himself, and a Bloody Mary. Even though the identical-women faux pas hadn’t been his, he felt like it had. He could have let each of them know the other was expected. Well hell, too late for regrets. He took a gulp of his Manhattan.

  Re-entering the library, he found the two women seated as far from each other as the room permitted. Two cats, he thought, both alike; who would howl first, the copy, or the original? He distributed the drinks and took two large mouthfuls from his own.

  Just then the proverbial light burst upon Hub Landon. There had been no cheating: Jill was the perfect Liv.

  There was an uneasy silence that seemed longer than it was.

  “Jillian,” Hub finally said, “Jill. Look: I invited you and Liv here to review the tapes of episode four, alongside my datascreen that shows how the agonists, you and others, statistically, were doing. I will have to say that Frankie first, and then I, thought you must have cheated – no one, as we said, had ever won or tied so many T-slices in a row. Of course someone has to hold the record, but your performance was off the charts.”

  Jill nodded. Liv had no expression at all.

  “But now I don’t think you cheated, because you’re very good at ‘Try Try Again.’ And unless you were involved in some kind of plot with WizWhiz, there was no way to cheat, even if you’d wanted to. It was just a fluke.”

  Jill looked up. Her cheeks reddened. “Fluke?” she said, in a louder voice than she’d intended, “do you know how long I practiced, how many training sessions I paid for?” Her voice was rising. “How many season-one downloads of that stupid show I worked through, trying to look stiff?” She glanced at Liv. So Liv and Hub had been thinking of her as a suspect. She was being treated like Charley, now, the accused. ‘Stiff and awkward,’ she’d almost said. But she decided to save that ammunition for use later, if any additional shots were needed.

  Liv, who’d been sitting perfectly still, her drink untouched, became more perfectly stiller.
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  “Wait!” said Hub, “I didn’t mean that. I shouldn’t have said it. Nothing against your ability or dedication, Jill. I know you earned that money, every penny of it.”

  “Thank you,” said Jill, more calmly. “But if I’m no longer a suspect, what am I doing here?”

  Liv spoke up. “Hub and I were going to question you, that’s all. I’m used to questioning people on the stand, so Hub and I thought I could be of some use here. But now the show’s director has decided you didn’t cheat, I really don’t believe you’re required here, or me, for that matter. – Hub?”

  Jill looked positively distraught at this. Maybe Liv didn’t mean it the way it came out. Well, yes, Jill would have meant it that way, so Liv would have meant it that way.

  Hub ignored the byplay between the two women, said “Since you’re here, Jill, you know there’s still a mystery and maybe the three of us can figure it out. About Charley, I mean. And about why your hundred and fourteen and a half seconds of fame, happened just when it did.

  “And I don’t want to leave either of you stranded until the Awards Ceremony tomorrow. Hospitality. Get to know each other, the three of us, talk about the show.” He looked at both women. “Now drink up,” he said, looking desperate, “and let’s get into the tub. Changing rooms are to your left.”

  Liv had seen the “tub” earlier that day, but the place was new to Jill. She stopped short and took it in: it looked like a bathtub, but it was a good twenty feet long and twelve wide.

  Hub laughed. “This is the ‘Hub tub,’ my friends call it. I had my indoor pool built this way because ever since I was a kid I got my best ideas in the bathtub, and now I share it with special friends, and sometimes they get ideas, too.”

  The three got in, arranged themselves in various ways. Hub pulled a lever and a large tray swung out over the tub, with liquor and mixers and ice.

  The three helped themselves, Liv eagerly. Both Hub and Jill noticed this, and Liv suddenly caught them glancing at her. What am I doing? She wondered. She’d never actually got drunk, had she? Not for a long time now, surely. But she hadn’t been drinking this much before going to the Stirrup. Well, maybe. But drinking alone was a kind of downer. With friends, however, …