Fantasy Summer Page 15

  “Only if you forgive me,” Robin said.

  They hugged again, and then they kissed. Robin didn’t care who saw them. She never wanted to leave Tim’s embrace again.

  “I don’t believe it,” Ashley said, walking over to them. “Hi, Tim. Do you believe it?”

  “What?” Tim asked, breaking away reluctantly from Robin.

  “They picked Torey,” Ashley said.

  “Oh, that’s right,” Robin said. “You picked Annie.”

  “I thought they’d pick me,” Ashley said sharply. “They should have picked me. The only reason they didn’t was that I was too sharp for them. They wanted a hick, not somebody with sophistication. I’m better-looking than Torey. I have so much more style. They should have picked me.”

  “I know how you feel, Ashley,” Robin” said. “I was disappointed too. But Torey is beautiful, and she looked great in that photograph. She was a perfectly reasonable choice.”

  “They should have picked me,” Ashley muttered, and started walking away from them.

  “Ashley, where are you going?” Robin asked.

  “To find Morrison,” Ashley replied. “And forget my sorrows.”

  Robin thought about trying to stop Ashley, but realized there was no point. Ashley would calm down. Besides, she had only two more Wednesdays left in New York, and this was one she intended to spend with Tim.

  15

  Friday morning, Robin was hanging out at the studio, waiting for Herb to return from the darkroom, when the telephone rang. It startled her. She’d been thinking about how there was only one more week left, and one and a half weekends. It turned out there was a farewell party scheduled for the girls a week from Saturday, so she’d made her plane reservations for Sunday instead.

  Nine days wasn’t a heck of a lot of time, she was thinking when she heard the phone. She picked it up with a sigh.

  “Robin? This is Shelley.”

  “Sure, Shelley,” Robin said. “What’s up?”

  “I just got a message for you to go to Mrs. Brundege’s office,” Shelley told her.

  “Okay,” Robin said. “Do you know what it’s about?”

  “Not really,” Shelley said. “I was told to find you and send you over immediately. So I’d get a move on.”

  “I’m on my way,” Robin said, and hung up. She left a note for Herb telling him where she was going, and started the walk through the corridors. She had the uncomfortable feeling of having been summoned to the principal’s office. Still, she couldn’t remember having done anything wrong recently, so she was probably safe. Nonetheless, she wouldn’t have minded seeing a friendly face as she made her way.

  She opened the door, and Mrs. Brundege’s secretary didn’t even say hello. She just picked up the phone and said, “Robin Schyler is here.”

  Something about the way last name sounded scared Robin. She searched her brain frantically to see what she could possibly have done. But nothing came to mind.

  “Go on in,” Mrs. Brundege’s secretary said to her. “She’s expecting you.”

  Robin assumed she was, since she had summoned her in the first place. She opened the door to Mrs. Brundege’s office and found her and Jean sitting behind the desk. The situation was becoming less and less appealing.

  “Sit down, Robin,” Mrs. Brundege said, so Robin did. For the life of her, she couldn’t think of anything bad she’d done. Was this possibly Image’s way of announcing good news? But that, she knew, was wishful thinking.

  “We have a very serious problem,” Mrs. Brundege told her. “And we have reason to believe you are in some way involved.”

  Robin choked down a request for a lawyer. What was going on?

  “Does this look familiar to you?” Mrs. Brundege asked, and handed Robin a sheet of paper.

  Robin stared at it. It was a black-and-white duplicate, crudely printed, of the cover of the intern issue of Image. She recognized it from the TV show. Only where Torey’s picture should have been was one of Ashley instead, wearing the exact same outfit Torey had had on.

  Robin looked at it for a full minute before handing it back to Mrs. Brundege. If she’d been confused before, that was nothing compared with how she felt now. “What is that?” she finally asked.

  “Are you saying you’ve never seen it before?” Jean asked.

  “Yes,” Robin said, starting to get mad. “I have never seen it before. I don’t even know what it is. What’s going on?”

  “As I’m sure you can see, it’s a duplicate of one of our future covers,” Mrs. Brundege said. “It was left on my desk this morning. The only way the cover could have been duplicated was if somebody had taken the board dummy from the art department, substituted Ashley’s picture for Torey’s, and then returned it. We checked the records, and you’re listed as having signed the dummy out and returned it.”

  “Let me see that,” Robin said, so Mrs. Brundege gave her the sheet. “That isn’t my signature,” Robin said when she located her name. “That isn’t even a forgery of my signature. It’s just my name.”

  “So you swear you have nothing to do with this?” Mrs. Brundege asked. “I hope you realize the seriousness of the situation.”

  Robin didn’t completely, but she knew it was a relief not to be guilty. “I had nothing to do with this,” she declared.

  The phone rang before Mrs. Brundege had a chance to respond. She picked it up, listened for a moment, and then said, “Send her in.” A few seconds later, Ashley entered the room. She seemed startled to see Robin there. Robin felt considerably less startled.

  “Sit down, Ashley,” Mrs. Brundege said, so Ashley took the chair next to Robin’s. “We were wondering if you could tell us anything about this?” And she showed Ashley the mock cover.

  “Do you like it?” Ashley asked, and Robin was shocked to hear the hope in her voice.

  “Are you admitting, then, that you had something to do with it?” Jean asked.

  Robin yearned to warn Ashley to keep her mouth shut, but she knew it wouldn’t do any good.

  “I had everything to do with it,” Ashely said. “I knew you hadn’t really considered my picture for the cover because of that outfit they’d put me in—you know Mrs. Brundege, the magazine editors—and I thought that if you only had a chance to see me in something decent, something more Image, if you know what I mean, you’d reconsider. Torey may be more classically beautiful than me, but I look a lot more like a model. So I reconstructed the outfit and got my picture taken. See. I have glossies of me in the outfit, if you want to see them.” She paused for a moment, dug through her oversized bag, and handed pictures to Mrs. Brundege and Jean. They stared at the pictures for what felt like an eternity, and then put them back down on the desk.

  “I think they came out really well,” Ashley said. “Don’t you? Anyway, I figured the best possible presentation would be in the form of an Image cover, so I borrowed one and used it. The copy didn’t come out nearly as well as I’d hoped, but I figured if you were interested, I could show you the glossy. What do you think?”

  “How did you get the dummy?” Mrs. Brundege asked.

  “I signed out for it,” Ashley said.

  “Using your own name?” Mrs. Brundege persisted.

  Ashley paused for a moment, and drew back almost imperceptibly. “Why are you asking?” she finally said.

  “We couldn’t find your name on the sign-out sheet,” Mrs. Brundege told her.

  “I used Robin’s,” Ashley said. “Sorry, Robin, but I figured nobody would think twice if they saw your name. You work in the art department, after all. It never occurred to me Robin might get into trouble over it.”

  “Robin isn’t in trouble,” Mrs. Brundege said, but Robin no longer felt any relief over the announcement. “Who took the picture for you, Ashley?”

  “Jessie King,” Ashley said. “I wanted the best, you know, so I called her up, and I told her Robin suggested I contact her. It was no problem for me to find her phone number, since Robin had left her card on he
r bureau drawer. Oh, maybe you don’t know. Robin and I have been sharing a room all summer long. It was supposed to be Robin and Annie, you know, but they’re cousins, you know, and they decided they didn’t want to share a room. I’m sure you know all that by now, don’t you?”

  “Now we do,” Jean said. Robin didn’t know whether to cry or to kill.

  “That’s not the issue here,” Mrs. Brundege said. “You paid Jessie King to take the picture?”

  “And lots more,” Ashley said. “I paid her to shoot a portfolio’s worth. Only I figured the rest of the pictures could wait until this weekend. The only one there was a rush on was the one for the mock cover. I think it turned out really well. Of course, that outfit isn’t exactly my style, but I wanted to make a point. And for that, I think it’s very effective.”

  “How did you intend to pay Ms. King?” Mrs. Brundege asked.

  “Oh, I have the money,” Ashley said. “My mother is always sending me stacks of the stuff. I don’t even have to ask for it; she just ships it to me. She sends me my allowance, and then she gets a little drunk and can’t remember whether she sent it to me, so she sends it to me again. And then she feels guilty that she should forget something that important, so she sends me more. I’ve been getting my allowance three or four times a week all summer. Plus my salary, of course. So I’ve had plenty of money, and I figured I might as well spend it on something important, something that could affect my entire future. An investment, you might say.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Robin said, finally exploding. “You used my name, and you forged my signature, and you went through my stuff, and you ratted on me right now, and you don’t even care?”

  “I didn’t forge your name,” Ashley said. “I just signed it. A forgery is when you make it look like the real thing. I don’t know how to do that. And I didn’t tell Jessie I was you. I just used your name. People do that all the time.” She smiled at Robin.

  “Do you need me for anything else?” Robin asked Mrs. Brundege.

  “No,” Mrs. Brundege said. “And I’m sorry to have involved you in this situation.”

  “That’s all right,” Robin said. “That wasn’t your fault.”

  “Thank you, Robin,” Mrs. Brundege said. “I’m sure we’ll be talking with you later about your rooming situation.”

  “All right,” Robin said. She’d worry about that when she had to. In the meantime, it was enough to get away from the atmosphere in that office. She didn’t know what was going to happen to Ashley, but she felt nothing but relief that it wasn’t going to happen to her.

  It drove her half-crazy, but she waited the half-hour until lunch to locate Torey and Annie to tell them what had happened. She found she was shaking as she related the story in the relative privacy of a booth in the building’s coffee shop.

  “I don’t believe Ashley did all that,” Annie said. “What an idiot she is.”

  “And mean,” Robin said. “I just can’t get over how she involved me. I thought we were friends.”

  “It wasn’t just you,” Annie said. “What she did to Torey was rotten to.”

  “What did she do to me?” Torey asked.

  “She tried to get you off the cover,” Annie said. “Of course we’ve all been jealous that you ended up on the cover. You think I lost all that weight without hoping for the payoff? But they picked you, understandably, and that was that. It hurts, but you don’t lose any sleep over it. Well, no more than a night’s worth. You sure don’t go out and try to convince Mrs. Brundege to take you off the cover and put somebody else on.”

  “I hate that cover,” Torey said. “I really hate it. This summer I made friends of my own, friends who didn’t have to be involved with my family situation, and that meant so much to me. It’s insane to think something as meaningless as the cover should get between us. I thought the four of us were something special.”

  “Do you mean to tell me you’re not angry at Ashley?” Robin asked. “I sure am.”

  “I’m mad at Image for promising the four of us something only one of us can have,” Torey said. “The only thing I feel for Ashley is pity.”

  “Sometimes your nobility drives me crazy,” Annie declared. “Don’t you have any baser instincts, Torey?”

  “Of course not,” Torey replied. “I can’t afford them.”

  In spite of herself, Robin joined in the laughter.

  “Did you see Ashley after you left the office?” Annie asked Robin.

  Robin shook her head. “For all I know, she’s still being grilled by Mrs. Brundege.”

  “More likely she’s back at the hotel,” Torey said. “All alone, and scared silly. I’m going to go there and see how she is.”

  “I’ll go,” Robin said. “She might not even want you to know what she did. If Mrs. Brundege just chewed her out, she may hope nobody else will hear about it.”

  “Good point,” Torey said. “Okay, you go over. I’ll tell Shelley where you are if you don’t get back to the office for a while.”

  “Thanks,” Robin said, and left some money for the check. Not that she’d have a chance to eat more than a mouthful. As soon as she realized it would be a while before she’d have a chance to eat again, her appetite returned full force. It was clearly destined to be one of those days.

  She walked back to the hotel, stopping on the way to buy a pretzel from a vendor, and munched on it thoughtfully as she walked. Ashley had found herself in a bad jam and had tried to pull down everybody else with her. Not, perhaps, the way Robin would have handled the situation, but then again, she wasn’t Ashley, thank goodness. Although she wouldn’t mind getting three or four allowances a week.

  She went straight up to her room, and heard noises in there. Torey had been right. She really did understand Ashley in a way Robin never would.

  She unlocked the door without giving Ashley any warning. It was hard to tell who was more shocked, Ashley at the sight of Robin, or Robin at what she was seeing.

  Strewn over both beds were all of Ashley’s clothes. Her suitcases were on the floor, half-filled with clothes thrown in them.

  “What’s going on?” Robin asked.

  “What does it look like?” Ashley asked. “I’ve been kicked out. What are you doing here?”

  “I don’t know,” Robin said. “I mean, I just figured I’d see how you were. They kicked you out?”

  “Did they ever,” Ashley said, going to the closet and yanking out another pile of blouses. “It seems what I did wasn’t just a sin. It was a flat-out crime. They could have me arrested for theft or embezzlement or something if they really wanted to. I’m getting off lucky that they’re just sending me home early. They’re not even going to kick me out of the issue. Generous of them, isn’t it?” She began ripping the blouses off their hangers.

  “I don’t understand,” Robin said. “What kind of crime?”

  “Mrs. Brundege explained it to me,” Ashley said, tossing the blouses onto the floor. “You’re not allowed to take unpublished issues of Image out of the office. What if the competition got to see them? What if you were selling them to the competition? What if you took the Image logo and put a pornographic picture on the cover? Great idea. I only wish I’d thought of it.”

  “And for that they’re kicking you out?” Robin asked. She cleared off a space on her bed to sit down.

  “If I had just substituted my picture for Torey’s, or just left the picture on Mrs. Brundege’s desk, then they’d be angry, but they wouldn’t send me home early,” Ashley said, sitting on the floor, surrounded by blouses. “I’d be a bad sport, which is a sin but not a crime. But just because I borrowed their precious board dummy for a few hours, then it’s prison time. But they decided to be generous and just send me home a few days early. That’s what she said. A few days early. It’s nine full days, and they’re sending me back to a prison worse than any they could find for me in New York.”

  “Don’t exaggerate,” Robin said. “Sure, your mother will be mad, but she’ll get over it.
”

  “You don’t understand,” Ashley said, and started removing the blouses from their hangers again. “It isn’t my mother. She won’t care. It’s the old man. My grandfather. He’s going to be furious at me.”

  “I’m sure when you explain it to him …” Robin said, feeling extremely uncomfortable.

  “He’s going to be furious,” Ashley said. “Not at what I did. That he might even admire. But that I handled it so badly. That I got caught and punished. He’s going to get so angry. And what’s worse, he’s going to be satisfied, too. He’s always so sure I’m going to mess up, it makes him happy when I live up to his expectations.”

  Robin didn’t know what to say. So she began folding the clothes on her bed.

  “I see you’re glad to be rid of me too,” Ashley said. “Well, I can’t say I blame you. I shouldn’t have used your name, and I know I shouldn’t have told them you’d switched rooms. I really am sorry about that. Do you believe me?”

  “I do,” Robin said, but she couldn’t make eye contact. She didn’t want to have to look at the pain and desperation in Ashley’s eyes.

  “Mrs. Brundege said she’d call home to tell them I’d be arriving tomorrow,” Ashley continued. “I guess she didn’t trust me to make the call. Which was smart of her. She had Jean make the reservations for me, while I sat there. Jean is supposed to take me to the airport tomorrow. Lucky Jean.”

  “That’s part of her job,” Robin said.

  “Jean hates my guts,” Ashley said. “Oh, well. Why should she be different from anybody else?”

  “Oh, come on, now,” Robin said. “Everybody doesn’t hate you, Ashley. You broke the rules and you got caught and you’re being punished. That happens to everybody at some point or other. And your family will be mad, and then they’ll get over it, and the school year will start, and your mother will keep giving you tons of money, and you can relax and have a good time.”