Underneath It All

He was out of here.

Running on instinct, he tore down several flights of stairs, spurred by the sounds of pursuit far above. Then he abruptly stopped and, as quietly as possible, opened the door to the twelfth floor and the law offices of Stoat, Remington, Bryce, where his buddy Bart worked. Since the receptionist knew him, she motioned him to go on through.

“You never saw me,” he panted, and, ignoring her startled expression, kept going, racing through the hallowed halls of the law offices to seek temporary shelter with his old friend.

Stumbling into Bart’s office without knocking, he shut the door, put his sunglasses on and borrowed the Yankees baseball cap Bart kept hanging on his wall along with a signed pennant. Then he slouched low in the leather club chair Bart kept for office visitors.

“Drop in anytime,” Bart said as he watched Darren.

“I’m in trouble.”

“Hey,” Bart complained, as Darren tugged on the cap. “You can’t wear that! You’re a Giants fan.”

“I’m in serious trouble, Bart.” Darren panted, expecting any second to hear the sounds of that crazy female after him like a baying hound after a juicy fox.

“You have to help me.”

As well as being a good friend, Bart was a dedicated lawyer. He immediately assumed an air of concern. “You did the right thing coming here. What’s up?”

“I quit my job just now and I have to get out of town. Go far away where no one has ever heard of Matchmaker.”

Bart’s expression of concern was replaced with one of hastily suppressed amusement. “Is that what your trouble is?”

“Yes! It’s that magazine.”

“I don’t want to make your day any worse, old buddy, but you’re everywhere. It’s not just the magazine. It’s the Internet, chat groups, newspapers and on the TV. You, my friend, are news.”

“I need to stop being news. Damn it, I never agreed to be Match of the Year. I want to sue Matchmaker Enterprises or whatever they call themselves, Bart.”

“What for?”

“You’re my lawyer. Aren’t you supposed to advise me? How about defamation of character? Harassment? Libel?”

“Buddy, they aren’t defaming you when they call you God’s gift to women. It’s supposed to be a compliment.”

“I can’t even live in peace in my own home. I’m being mobbed, stalked. Women I don’t know give me their bras. Mary Jane Lancer proposed.” He’d known Mary Jane for years. Their fathers belonged to the same club. She was part of his social circle, but there never had been a hint of attraction between them until the bachelor thing.

A rich chuckle answered him. “Harassment. Hmm. There are men all over America who would kill to be in your shoes. You’d only make a fool of yourself.”

There was a long pause. Darren waited while Bart drummed his fingers on his blotter, obviously deep in thought.

“But libel, now you’ve got something. Let’s see, I just happen to have a copy of the magazine.” He twirled his chair and found the hated magazine in a stack of papers and flipped it open. “Ah, here it is. They called you rich, good-looking and intelligent. Man, we can sue for millions.”

Darren’s heart sank. “Okay, very funny. So what do I do?”

“My best advice is to go with the flow. Have fun with it. Make your father’s company a few more millions. Enjoy your fifteen minutes of fame and kiss a bunch of gorgeous women. Seriously, have you seen the babes who go for stuff like this? Be the rich boy all the girls want to marry. It’ll be over in a year and long before that somebody else will be news.”

“You don’t get it. It’s not just me being a minor celebrity and that’s it. A week ago I was a happy single man living a wonderful single life. I was a New York bachelor. One of millions. Now I’m some freakin’ great catch and no one but no one thinks I should remain a happy bachelor.”

He paused to take a breath and a quick check outside Bart’s office. So far he seemed safe.

“In the past week, I have been proposed to by girls with braces, women old enough to be my mother, loonies, the lonely, the desperate, and even women I thought were my friends, Like Mary Jane Lancer.” That, he thought, had been the worst. “It’s like they’re trying to snap me up before any other woman gets a chance.”

Bart started to chuckle. “Let me get this straight. Are you telling me you don’t want women all over the country throwing themselves at you? Is that what I’m hearing?”

“Yes! I told Serena Ashcroft I won’t cooperate. They should admit they made a mistake and find someone else. She told me to think about it. No hurry. I told her I won’t change my mind and she laughed.”

“I’m sure they would stop writing about you if you won’t cooperate. They have the right to choose you as the most eligible bachelor, though. You can’t stop them loving you.”

“I don’t know. She’s a devious woman. Who knows what she’s planning? I can’t stand it anymore.”

Bart shrugged. “Do what movie stars do when they want some privacy. Hide. Lay low somewhere until this blows over.”

“Hide?”

“Sure. If you insist on trying to avoid publicity, why don’t you pretend you’re in the Witness Protection Program? Find a new locale, a new identity. Maybe a disguise.”

Bart had enjoyed a brief spell of fame in college as an actor. Particularly memorable had been his Falstaff. Truly a method actor, he’d become roaring drunk every night for weeks before the performance in order to prepare for the role. He’d been good, too. Except that his brain had been so alcohol-saturated and his hangover so severe, that he’d forgotten half his lines on opening night.

What Bart was suggesting was that Darren run away. He’d never been the type to run from his problems, but suddenly it seemed as though he were being offered freedom, the likes of which he’d never known.

He sat up, slipping his sunglasses down his nose so he could regard his friend more clearly. “If I hide out somewhere, I can take some time to work on my own stuff.” Not having to sneak in his real work at night would be incredible. He had some money saved up, and if he sold his BMW he would have some decent cash quickly, enough to live on for a while. He could probably finish his line of software programs in less than a year.

“Right. You’re the next Bill Gates. I forgot.”

Darren didn’t bother to correct him. He had one line of educational software he was developing to help kids read. His younger brother Eric had a symbol-retrieval problem and he’d found a way to help him by writing a simple program. Eric was now studying engineering at college—and the fact that he’d made the difference in his younger bro’s life gave him a lot more pride and satisfaction than his most successful day at the family firm. Now he wanted to see if he could create a more elaborate program that might help other kids like his brother.

Maybe his program wouldn’t cure cancer, but helping kids overcome learning hurdles felt more useful to him than getting some KIM client’s brand of deodorant up two percentage points in the marketplace.

“Okay. But you’ve got to help me.”

Bart grinned. “You have come to the right place,” he said, almost rubbing his hands with glee. “You’re one of the most famous faces in America. But, my man, we’re about to change all that.” Bart, the sometime actor, rose majestically from behind his desk and gestured. “Follow me,” he said. After a surreptitious glance up and down the hallway, they surmised the coast was clear, then took the elevator to the main floor.

After hiding in the back seat while Bart drove them out of the building’s car park, Darren wondered how famous people handled celebrity. He felt hunted, and the baseball cap and dark glasses, not to mention the Brooks Brothers suit, weren’t helping him blend in with the crowd.

They ended up in a drugstore, where Bart pondered a row of Miss Clairol boxes. “You want to blend in with the locals, but look completely different from how you look now. Where are you going, anyway?”

Maybe it was the throwaway comment about Bill Gates, but it made up Darren’s mind. “Seattle.”

“That’s a long way away.”

“Exactly. I don’t know anyone there, I’ve no reason to go. Hell, I was only there once for a weekend. No one will think to look for me in Seattle.”

Bart picked up a box of dark brown hair dye.

“What are we doing in the girl aisle?”

“Women’s hair dye doesn’t last as long as the men’s stuff,” Bart explained, reading the instructions on the box as though he might actually need them.