Chapter 8 Bahrain #2
Without warning, she scuttles backward off the bed, standing and stretching. “Send me that video, ’kay? I gotta hang it up and get some sleep. Tomorrow’s kind of a big deal.”
“It is.”
She yanks the fairy lights from the socket and stuffs them into the bag, then pockets her mobile. “And, uh, you don’t have to stay for the race. You should go back to London now.”
I get to my feet. “You don’t need me?”
“I thought you wanted to leave,” she says, a bit peevish.
My eyes narrow. “Is this…” My words falter and I point at the bed. “Did something almost happen here, and now you’re angry with me? Because I felt as if—”
“Nothing ‘almost happened.’ Jesus, you wish.” She unties the knot in her shirt and swipes the wrinkles. “You know what? Skip Saudi too. Don’t show up until Melbourne. It’s… probably better.”
“For whom?”
She rolls her eyes and turns away, grabbing the props bag. “I’ll call if I need anything before the Australian GP. But, y’know, I won’t.” She backs toward the door.
“You’re punishing me and I’m unsure why.”
Her expression darkens. “Got about a year for me to list off the reasons? We can start with your fucking blog.”
So. Here we are, in a dance that feels like ten steps forward, nine back. “All right. I’d hoped we might move past that, but apparently not yet.”
She twists the neck of the bag. “Look, you have your moments, and you’re hot and all that, but I don’t trust you. And I can’t afford a distraction.” She pulls a wry face. “I can get away with taking one sample bite of cake, one sip of booze. But I’m not, uh, not sampling you.”
I follow her to the doorway and open it for her. “That’s probably wise,” I say, flashing a devilish smile despite the sting in my heart. “I don’t think you could stop at one bite either.”
LONDON
ALEXANDER
I’ve been home for over a week now but have felt a bit shit.
I’ve spent my time playing my piano and day-drinking a case of 2009 Chateau Latour.
Badrick is in France visiting Laurent’s family, or I might’ve had a pint with him…
though maybe not, since it would take roughly thirty seconds for him to diagnose my malady and give me no end of grief about it.
Salvia officinalis.
The deluge of her fierce, impulsive nature is like a mad cloudburst, and I submitted to the storm and opened my arms until I was soaked to the skin.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve imagined caressing the strong curve of her tattooed neck, the ink peeking between my spread fingers. Walking her back against the nearest wall, our eyes locked. Bracing her in place and devouring that sweet, impertinent mouth of hers…
It’s doing my head in, longing for Sage. I can’t wait for the week of the Australian GP when I can see her again. I want to hear that taunting chuckle of hers, catch her scent as she dances past, oblivious and grand in her unselfconscious movements.
But part of me hopes she sends a message saying, Don’t bother coming to Melbourne; I’ve had my sport of you and it’s done, thus freeing me from my intractable lust. Maybe then I can return to the hunt with uncomplicated—and less venomous—prey.
I’m sitting at the piano, fueled on wine and depression as I lean into the angst of “River Flows in You,” when my front door flies open. I don’t even have to look; my mother is the only one with a key.
I close my eyes briefly, sighing, but don’t miss a note. “Can I help you with something?” I ask the busy clatter of her high heels, which grows louder as she advances to the living room.
The noise muffles as she steps onto the Oushak rug. “What are you moping about?” she asks with her trademark hint of mockery. “You always play the Yiruma when you’re moping.”
I continue to the end of the measure, then drop my hands discordantly to the keys. “No, when I’m feeling blue, I’m more likely to play Brubeck’s ‘The City Is Crying.’”
Never mind that I did just play it…
I lift the marmalade jar of red wine from its makeshift coaster—a takeaway menu from a nearby kebab shop—and polish off the last inch before lifting the bottle and finding it empty.
“Hmm.” She comes to the piano. Flicking a red-taloned fingertip against the paper menu, she pulls a face.
“Are you a student in a bedsit? Bloody hell.” She waves an arm at the room.
“Like a haunted attic in here. Litter everywhere”—in evidence she gestures at the menu, a stack of neatly folded laundry I’ve simply neglected to put away, and a pair of slippers on the floor—“and an empty bottle at noon. Drinking out of a jam jar? How very bohemian. Surely you’re not taking unemployment so hard.
” She strides toward my window to throw back the drapes, inviting a feeble wash of rainy-day light.
“I’m rich. I’ve no need to be employed,” I say, dancing an arpeggio up the keyboard.
“Good lord—” She cuts off and forces out a cough as if choked by dust. “At least get your maid in here to hoover and run a rag over things.”
I stand to take the wine remnants to my open kitchen, setting the bottle in the bin and the jar in the sink.
Shoving the wine-stained menu into a drawer, I lean against the counter and fold my arms. “Might I inquire as to the reason you’re gracing me with your presence, Mother? Just here to take the piss?”
“No, here to take your art,” she shoots back.
“I want your Marguerite Horner. I’ve had my home office redone, and a little black-and-white dash of drama would be perfect between the south-facing windows.
Where is it?” She plants both hands on her hips and scans the room, then takes off for my bedroom when she doesn’t spot what she’s looking for.
“You can’t have that one,” I protest, following at her heels. “I love it. If you’re just trying to match a color scheme, can’t you move your Robert Longo?”
“Already thought of that, dearheart. It’s too big.
” She finds the Marguerite Horner and stretches to pluck it off the wall with the brisk efficiency of a bird divesting a branch of its berries.
“This will do.” Seeing my scowl, her own expression softens to a girlish pout. “You don’t truly mind, do you, Alekos?”
“You’ll wear me down anyway if I say no, so just have the damned thing.” I push my unkempt hair off my forehead. “Why give me any thought, beyond how I might be of use?”
She squints with amusement, passing me into the hallway. “Whoever’s made you melancholy, don’t bring her to the gala tomorrow. I don’t need you making a scene with some ill-mannered tart. We hardly need a repeat of what happened when you brought the last one to Glyndebourne.”
My stomach roils with a combination of sudden anxiety and empty-stomach cabernet. “The gala’s tomorrow?”
“Tsk! Of course you forgot. If you still had a PA, you’d have remembered. But you enrage the plain, sensible ones until they quit and fuck the pretty ones away.”
“I lack an assistant because you fired me.”
She lifts a towel off the stack on my breakfast bar and wraps it around the artwork before reaching to grasp my chin and turn my head toward the window, inspecting my stubble-shadowed face. “Sort yourself out before tomorrow. You look like a drifter.”
“Surely you know better than to use terms like that, even at your age.”
She gives a crooked smile and pats my cheek.
“Nice try, love. But you’ll need sharper tools to wound me.
” She adjusts the painting in her arms before rotating on one stilettoed heel and heading for the foyer.
“Go to Guerlain and get a facial, for God’s sake,” she calls over her shoulder.
“This will be the first time we’ve allowed so-called influencers at the publishing gala, and I need you in top form, seeing as you’re comfortable moving in that sphere. ”
She dips her knees to reach the door knob, then descends my front walk with her sprightly steps clacking away, dying out as she ducks into a black Bentley Mulsanne held open by her long-suffering driver, Ismail. I give him a polite nod, and he nods back.
After closing my door, I peer at myself in the oval mirror beside the coatrack.
I’m ghastly—a week of drink has done me no favors.
I look like a child who’s smeared on Halloween makeup to appear as a cartoonish approximation of an old man.
I try to brighten things with a smile, but it’s conspicuously half-hearted.
Possibly, I admit to myself, because the other half is currently in Jeddah with Sage.
“I’d like a Macallan, please,” I say to the woman behind the bar. “And…?” My voice rises, stopping her as she reaches for the visible bottle of twelve-year.
She looks over her shoulder, stern and silent.
“Not that one,” I specify. “I know there’s a bottle of Macallan 30 hiding back there—Mother wouldn’t settle for anything else.
” Seeing the skeptical downturn of the woman’s lips, I shoot a winning smile at her, smoothing a hand down my necktie.
“Alexander Laskaris, pet. I’m approved for the good stuff.
Now, do let me whet my parched nepo-baby whistle. ”
Remaining wordless is one of her only weapons of revenge, and she wields it deftly. She levels a jigger with miserly precision and tips it into a glass—not a drop more than an ounce and a half—then slides it across the bar top.
I lift it and inhale the heady scent before taking a sip. Pulling a ￡50 note from an inside pocket, I drop it into her tip jar—a Lalique “Bacchantes” vase—as compensation for having to put up with me. I’m an annoying prat, but at least a self-aware one.
My mother wouldn’t suffer a DJ for this event, despite the recommendation by both myself and her assistant, Inez, that the annual gala drag itself into the modern age.
A band plays at one end of the huge room, doing classical-sounding covers of current pop songs.
Older guests won’t recognize the tunes (does the world need a cello-and-harp version of “Unholy”?); younger ones no doubt view it as corny.