My mother was beautiful in a superficial way. The same way I’d imagined Lily would be in about twenty years. Everything was too groomed and too tight, leathery skin on newly bleached hair.
I couldn’t fault her for wanting to look younger. My father treated his women like he owned a car dealership. A newer, shinier model rolled in every few years. Maman’s hair was blow-dried to perfection, and she wore a satin gown in silver.
“My beautiful son,” she purred, not bothering to get up from the couch. I sauntered over to her, placing a kiss on each of her cheeks. Jude stood behind me and offered a little wave.
I gestured to my companion. “This is Judith Humphry.”
There was no point in calling her my employee, because she was much more than that, or my girlfriend, because I wasn’t sure if she was. Maman’s lips curved into a secretive smile, and she hooked her forefinger in the air, motioning for Jude to come closer.
“I don’t bite, my dear.”
“But your son does…” I heard Judith mumbling under her breath as she made her way past me.
She shook my mother’s hand. A few minutes later, the housekeeper presented us with pistachio shortbread cookies and coffee, and we all sat down. Instead of fucking around, I decided to broach the subject I’d come here for.
“Have you listened to the recordings, Maman?”
“I have. How did you get them?”
“Irrelevant. Point is, Mathias is trying to kill LBC by selling ad space to questionable parties and cutting my budget even though we’re making clean profits. In other words, he is trying to weaken our product while injecting harmful commercial content into the channel.”
“Sounds like something my ex-husband would do.”
Iris Laurent was the sole heiress of LBC News Channel. An American-born royal with French roots, she fell in love with my father on the shore of St-Jean-Cap-De-Ferrat, France, under the swooshing trees and the influence of expensive champagne. He’d been a nobody trying to be somebody, a French punk with a thick accent and nothing but a bag of dreams and a lot of charm. A year later they were already married and pregnant with me. Mathias knew a thing or two about social climbing, but my mother still held most of the power in LBC—not enough to overthrow him, but enough to keep him on his toes.
I powered up my laptop, connecting it to the huge flat screen in front of us.
“Give me the skinny on things.” Maman alternated between puffing on a cigarette and sucking on a shortbread cookie without eating it. God forbid.
“Ratings are still strong for our main show, but we’re flailing in other time slots. The morning show is a trainwreck, and the political talk show is losing steam by the nanosecond, due to the fact that Mathias hired someone who cannot string two sentences without offending entire nations.”
“Your father has five more years in him, if he’s lucky.” Maman’s voice was sweet with satisfaction. “Can you not wait it out?”
“At this rate, the network will be dead in five months.”
“Well, it is quite unfortunate, then, that you broke off your engagement with Lily. The Davis family holds ten percent of the shares in LBC, and they and I would have made a majority. That’s why I pushed you into dating her when you were kids. I predicted this would happen with your father.”
“And I would have appreciated your endorsement of the Davis girl, had she not opened her legs to your ex-husband. Now, let’s focus on getting the board to see how dangerous Mathias’ game is.” I hit the conference call button.
Jude sat beside us, away from the webcam, and stared at us curiously, Kipling in her lap.
My mother scowled, placing the thoroughly sucked cookie back in its plate.
The conference call was my idea of hell.
My father looked smug in a Hawaiian shirt, sitting on a yacht—hopefully somewhere with Sudanese pirates—his curly white chest hair peeking out of his collar, a cigar between his teeth, and a giggling woman in his lap. Maman kept her mouth pursed as he coughed out the details of the string of deals he wanted to sign, laying out all the millions the network was going to make.
The rest of the board ate it up the minute they heard the magic word revenue.
“LBC is a business like any other. It’s not a nonprofit organization.”—Bigwig 1
“And the fact that the main show is performing just as well despite the cut in staff means the extra employees weren’t necessary.”—Bigwig 2
“No, it means that my remaining employees are breaking their backs to maintain the level of accuracy and quality our viewers are used to so you can treat your third wives to a new set of tits,” I stated matter-of-factly, pushing my hands into my pockets so I wouldn’t punch the screen.