Joy Fielding - The Wild Zone

THE WILD ZONE

ALSO BY JOY FIELDING

Still Life

Charleys Web

Heartstopper

Mad River Road

Puppet

Lost

Whispers and Lies

Grand Avenue

The First Time

Missing Pieces

Dont Cry Now

Tell Me No Secrets

See Jane Run

Good Intentions

The Deep End

Life Penalty

The Other Woman

Kiss Mommy Goodbye

Trance

The Transformation

The Best of Friends

THE WILD ZONE

A Novel

JOY FIELDING

A Division of Simon ' Schuster, Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance
to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2010 by Joy Fielding, Inc.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions
thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Atria Books hardcover edition February 2010

ATRIA BOOKS and colophon are trademarks of Simon ' Schuster, Inc.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon ' Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or business@simonandschuster.com.

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Designed by Suet Y. Chong

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fielding, Joy.

The wild zone : a novel / by Joy Fielding.1st Atria books hardcover ed.

p. cm.

1. FriendsFiction. 2. DeceptionFiction. 3. Lesbians
Fiction. I. Title.

PR9199.3.F518W55 2010

813'.54dc22

2009027112

ISBN 978-1-4165-8529-9
ISBN 978-1-4391-9930-5 (ebook)

To Rod and Bessie

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I consider myself very lucky that I have pretty much the same group of people to thank every time out. It means my support structure is sound and doing a terrific job. So, once again, here goes:

A huge, sincere thank you for everything youve done and continue to do to Larry Mirkin, Beverley Slopen, Tracy Fisher, Elizabeth Reed, Emily Bestler, Sarah Branham, Judith Curr, Laura Stern, Louise Burke, David Brown, Carole Schwindeller, Brad Martin, Maya Mavjee, Kristin Cochrane, Val Gow, Adria Iwasutiak, and all the other wonderful people at the William Morris Agency, Atria Books in the United States, and Doubleday in Canada who work so hard to make my books a success. Thank you to all my foreign publishers and translators and also to the best website designer and operator in the world, Corinne Assayag.

A special thank you to software developer and personal trainer Michael Raphael for not only whipping me into shape twice a week but for providing me with the killer workout routine described in this book.

On the home front, thanks to Aurora Mendoza for keeping me well fed and looked after. I also want to thank my husband, Warren, for his continuing encouragement and support, and for not getting his nose out of joint when I name the bad guy after him. Thank you to my daughter, Shannon, for (a) being the beautiful, talented daughter she is, and (b) for managing my Twitter and Facebook sites. Thank you to my other beautiful and talented daughter, Annie, and her husband, Courtney, who will have made me a first-time grandmother by the time you read this. Im so excited and grateful.

And lastly, as always, to you, the readers, who make everything worthwhile.

THE WILD ZONE

ONE

T HIS IS HOW IT starts.

With a joke.

So, a man walks into a bar, Jeff began, already chuckling. He sees another man sitting there, nursing a drink and a glum expression. On the bar in front of him is a bottle of whiskey and a tiny little man, no more than a foot high, playing an equally tiny little piano. Whats going on? the first man asks. Have a drink, offers the second. The first man grabs the bottle and is about to pour himself a drink when suddenly there is a large puff of smoke and a genie emerges from the bottle. Make a wish, the genie instructs him. Anything you desire, you shall have. Thats easy, the man says. I want ten million bucks. The genie nods and disappears in another cloud of smoke. Instantly, the bar is filled with millions and millions of loud, quacking ducks. What the hell is this? the man demands angrily. Are you deaf? I said bucks, you idiot. Not ducks. He looks imploringly at the man beside him. The man shrugs, nodding sadly toward the tiny piano player on the bar. What? You think I wished for a twelve-inch pianist?

A slight pause followed by an explosion of laughter punctuated the jokes conclusion, the laughter neatly summing up the personalities of the three men relaxing at the crowded bar. Jeff, at thirty-two, the oldest of the three, laughed the loudest. The laugh, like the man himself, was almost too big for the small room, dwarfing the loud rock music emanating from the old-fashioned jukebox near the front door and reverberating across the shiny black marble surface of the long bar, where it threatened to overturn delicate glasses and crack the large, bottle-lined mirror behind it. His friend Toms laugh was almost as loud, and although it lacked Jeffs resonance and easy command, it made up for these shortcomings by lasting longer and containing an assortment of decorative trills. Good one, Tom managed to croak out between a succession of dying snorts and chuckles. That was a good one.

The third mans laughter was more restrained, although no less genuine, his admiring smile stretching from the natural, almost girlish, pout of his lips into his large brown eyes. Will had heard the joke before, maybe five years ago, in fact, when he was still a nervous undergraduate at Princeton, but he would never tell that to Jeff. Besides, Jeff had told it better. His brother did most things better than other people, Will was thinking as he signaled Kristin for another round of drinks. Kristin smiled and tossed her long, straight blond hair from one shoulder to the other, the way hed noted the sun-kissed women of South Beach always seemed to be doing. Will wondered idly if this habit was particular to Miami or endemic to southern climes in general. He didnt remember the young women of New Jersey tossing their hair with such frequency and authority. But then, maybe hed just been too busy, or too shy, to notice.

Will watched as Kristin poured Miller draft into three tall glasses and expertly slid them in single file along the bars smooth surface, bending forward just enough to let the other men gathered around have a quick peek down her V-neck, leopard-print blouse. They always tipped more when you gave them a flash of flesh, shed confided the other night, claiming to make as much as three hundred dollars a night in tips. Not bad for a bar as small as the Wild Zone, which comfortably seated only forty people and had room for maybe another thirty at the always busy bar.

YOU HAVE ENTERED THE WILD ZONE , an orange neon sign flashed provocatively above the mirror. PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK.

The bars owner had seen a similar sign along the side of a Florida highway and decided the Wild Zone would be the perfect name for the upscale bar he was planning to open on Ocean Drive. His instincts had proved correct. The Wild Zone had opened its heavy steel doors in October, just in time for Miamis busy winter season, and it was still going strong eight months later, despite the oppressive heat and the departure of most tourists. Will loved the name, with its accompanying echoes of danger and irresponsibility. It made him feel vaguely reckless just being here. He smiled at his brother, silently thanking him for letting him tag along.