Chapter 10 #2
Clementine blinked three exaggerated times, one of the few movements her face made.
“He was flashing a huge wad of cash last night, like ten thousand dollars.” I emphasized the ridiculous sum of money that he’d been waving around so she would understand why it was drawing the wrong kind of attention. “Ten thousand dollars.”
Clementine looked over at me again. “And?”
“So people wanted to steal the ten thousand dollars he had on him.”
She was still staring at me, no expression, but she leaned toward me as if anticipating that I would finish the thought.
Finally, she asked, “Why?”
“Because it was ten grand!”
Clementine finally just shook her head and held up one hand as if to stop the madness. “I must not be understanding the situation. Maybe we can talk about this over a cup of coffee instead of vodka?”
Oh God, vodka. Vodka was the last thing Nicolai needed in his system. “Was that vodka that was in those shot glasses out there?”
“Tequila is being served in shot glasses. I drink vodka tonics.”
Tequila wasn’t any better than vodka. I needed to get back out there before Nicolai got wasted again.
But, before that, “Hey, thank you for lending me these earrings. I can give them back to you tonight.”
She waved her hand like she was clearing the cigarette smoke that permeated even the air in the bathroom. “Tomorrow is fine. Or keep them. I don’t care.”
“I have no idea what I’m doing here,” I continued. “I’m trying to help Nicolai, but I’m screwing it up.”
She shook her head with slightly pursed lips. “That is a problem.”
“And, well, I’m sorry to bring this up, and I don’t even know if it’s any of my business. But, does Nicolai have a drinking problem?”
Clementine shrugged and looked away as if to scry an answer to my question. “No more than any of us. This is John’s bachelor party week. One is expected to imbibe a bit more than usual. Nico is actually one of the more sober people I know.”
That was not particularly encouraging.
Clementine took one last look at me from head to toe, examining everything I was wearing. “You’ll do for tonight. Do you know if you’ll be attending any other events this week?”
When Jimmy had left me at the altar, my whole life had spun out of control. I wasn’t even hanging on with my fingertips. I was bouncing off the walls like a cicada in a soda can being shaken by a sadistic kid. “I have no idea what’s going on.”
“I’ll confer with Nico tomorrow and see what else you’re going to need, besides jewelry and purses, of course.” She pointed at the white beaded bucket bag dangling from my wrist with her fingers artfully positioned like a ballet dancer. “What is that?”
Maybe telling Clementine that it was the reception purse for my other wedding wasn’t the smart thing. “It’s an antique. Vintage, I guess you’d say.”
“No, it’s not.”
Damn. “It’s a craft bag. For crafts. I didn’t have anything else with me.”
She blinked as if I’d said something horrifying. “Crafts. All right, we’ll have a selection of accessories delivered. I feel quite sorry for you that you’ve been tossed into our shark-infested waters headfirst. I should at least throw you a life preserver.”
“That’s how I felt last night, when Nicolai was in the middle of that crowd. The sharks were circling.”
Clementine shook her head. “I’ll come over to the Sanctuary for coffee tomorrow afternoon, and we’ll figure out a plan. Tonight, just be a bit bland. No one looks twice at a bland woman.”
I was not thinking when I uttered the words, “True, dat.”
Clementine’s whole body shivered. “Just tell people it is lovely to meet them and don’t say anything else.”
I nodded, mostly so I wouldn’t say anything else.
The bathroom door slammed open, and three gorgeous, slim, fashionable women strode inside, moving in a chevron like a fighter plane attack formation.
My body flushed and misted with sweat like the mean girls at Scottsbluff High had caught me alone in the girls’ room without my theater friends around.
Clementine grabbed my arm and shoved me behind her. “Ottalie, Charlotte.” Her voice dropped a few notes, and she almost snarled. “Poppy.”
The woman on the right raised her blond eyebrows at Clementine but didn’t answer.
“What do you need?” Clementine asked them all.
“Victoria said Nicolai Romanov got married last night,” the one in the middle said. “She said that he Vegas-married some woman he met in Italy a few years ago and has been keeping her a secret.”
Clementine lifted her chin and surveyed the three women confronting us. “It’s true.”
They wilted and covered their mouths with their hands like an atrocity had occurred.
The leftward one muttered, “Goddamn it.”
The middle one sighed. “Shit. The one guy with skills.”
Right-side chick said, “Ever since Hannelore broke things off with him, he’s been the one reliable guy to have some fun with. What are we going to do for rebounds now? For a quick fuck? Damn.”
Left-side said, “One of the few heteros left, gone. Just like that, gone. And the rest of them are all poster-children for the male loneliness epidemic because they wouldn’t know how to find a clitoris with a ruler and a YouTube instructional video.”
Right-side girl said, “He didn’t even fucking text me that he was off the market.
For two years, I’ve jumped on a plane at his beck and call, running all over the world to slide into his bed whenever he slides into my DMs, and nothing.
Not even a courtesy text that he was seeing someone seriously, or was engaged, or even that the booty calls were over. ”
“Poppy, you couldn’t expect him to call all the girls individually that he was fucking,” Clementine said. “It would’ve taken hours. Maybe days. And Ottalie, surely you didn’t think he was going to marry you.”
Left-side girl, who was evidently Ottalie, glared at Clementine. “I was just in it for the dick. Half of those guys out there are fucking each other. Nicolai was one guy worth my time in bed. And I didn’t expect him to marry me. I wouldn’t want to marry a guy who doesn’t feel emotion.”
Clementine tsked her teeth. “That’s ridiculous.”
Charlotte nodded. “Hannelore thinks he’s a sociopath.
She said he presents like he’s the perfect man, but when the son of the Duke of Atholl flirted with her, and Michael outranks Nicolai in the UK, you know, Nico just shrugged.
They never fought about anything because he didn’t care what she did.
When she broke up with him, he was pleasant.
His manners at lunch were perfect. He didn’t even drop his fork or pause before taking his next bite.
Hannalore would’ve been insulted if she weren’t just like him. ”
Poppy shook her head. “Nico is great for a night or a weekend, but I wouldn’t want to marry a guy who won’t even pretend he loves you at least a little, even if he does have a magic dick.”
Oh, wow. How many people thought Nicolai had a magic dick? Had they all talked about it and agreed on the terminology?
I didn’t have to worry about that, I insisted to myself. Nicolai’s previous sex life was none of my concern.
This marriage was a contract for a year and nothing more.
An interlude.
“I guess it’s back to the battery-operated boyfriend if I want to have an O.” Ottalie gazed off behind us somewhere. “Damn, I’m going to miss the D.”
Charlotte scowled. “It’s just the lack of warning, none at all. Just ‘So long, and thanks for all the fucks.’ Jesus Christ, I’m going to miss that giant dick of his.”
Giant. Not just magic, but giant.
The bathroom floor bounced as my knees wobbled.
Clementine lifted her hands and swiveled her head like a mime in a box. “Please! I’m his cousin! I do not want to know about my cousin’s enormous cock.”
Poppy half-collapsed, her shoulders rounding. “It was really his tongue. First the tongue, then the dick. Damn, I just wanted one last good-bye fuck, you know?”
Ottalie snarked, “Cosima Biggsly had just gotten on his list after seeing the recs in our group chat. She’s going to be devastated that she only got one turn at the trough.”
The trough? Did they just compare Nico, my Nico, to drinking at a horse trough?
And holy cow, I hoped they meant a water trough for horses and not a slop trough for pigs.
No. No-no. I didn’t like this one bit.
I supposed I started glaring at them from around Clementine’s shoulder, and just like high school, I could not keep my big fat mouth shut. “I think that’s unfair to Nicolai, and I don’t like how you’ve been treating him.”
That was the moment a few stray shafts of light from the wall sconces, glowing on the dark marble walls, caught in the massive diamond of my engagement ring and flashed the bathroom with glittering spangles.
I slapped my hand over my ring, shutting off the light show.
The middle one leaned and glared back at me while I tried not to look like I was cowering behind Clementine. “Is this her? Is this the tart who finally snagged him?”
Clementine braced her fists on her slim hips like she was protecting me from them. “This is Lexi Romanov, Nicolai’s wife. His bride. I’m sure she’d rather not hear about your sexcapades with her husband.”
I dredged up a tight smile and peeked around Clementine while I waved. “Yeah, he married me. Lovely to meet you.”
The three of them stared at me like I was unexpected filth, as if they had searched for something special about me and found nothing.
Poppy asked the room, “This is the woman who trapped Nicolai Romanov? This shrimpy autumn without a decent purse? What the hell is that handbag, anyway?”
I clutched my white-beaded reception bag. “It’s vintage.”
Fair, though.
Clementine swung her hair around her shoulder again. “Lexi probably talked to him. You know, had an actual conversation about topics or current events or feelings, unlike you bitches, and that’s why she got the ring.”
The side-eyes they gave each other were appalling.
They hadn’t talked to Nico? They’d just shown up and flopped on the bed or something?
Poppy was scowling. “We’re busy people. We don’t have time to talk.”
Charlotte muttered, “He didn’t seem to want to talk.” She frowned like she was analyzing memories. “I guess.”
“But what about the next morning? Or over breakfast?” I asked them. “I mean, there’s a lot of time in there where you weren’t getting laid, right?”
The three of them shuffled their feet again.
Charlotte’s British-accented voice was barely audible over the dance-thumping music from outside the bathroom. “He always met me at my hotel. I never asked where he was staying, but he was gone before breakfast.”
“Sometimes he didn’t even hang around until I fell asleep,” Ottalie said. “But I take a long time to fall asleep.”
“Yeah, he doesn’t like to sleep in the same bed with people,” Charlotte said.
“Even Hannalore said that he had a separate bedroom that he slid out of bed and left for. Said that Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip had separate bedrooms, and it seemed like a good idea. I always wondered if he snored or something.”
“No,” I said. “He doesn’t snore.”
Their sharp glare at me was like I’d plopped a Loch Ness monster down in the middle of the public bathroom’s tiled floor.
Yeah, he’d boinked them, but he’d never slept with them.
This is what he’d had in his life? Hook-ups who behaved like hookers?
Heck, professional sex workers probably had better bedside manner, so to speak.
“Seriously?” The word just shot out of my throat. “You never even cuddled him, or snuggled, or anything?”
Their shoulders fell farther, and they didn’t look at me.
“So what?” Poppy grumbled. “It’s not like he’s a dog or anything.”
My heart fell for Nicolai, my hot, ripped stranger-husband with sad eyes who, when stumbling around seeking someone to insta-marry, had walked outside to look for a stranger.
Clementine sighed at them. Like, I could tell, her sigh was directed toward their tiresome proximity. “All right, you bitches. Get out. Go fuck your bodyguards or horse grooms if you need to scratch an itch. Bodyguards and grooms are all sluts.”
Whoa, way to talk about the men of the working class, Clementine.
But Clementine was staring the three of them down again. “You shouldn’t have been using the Tsesarevich Nicolai Romanov like a warm sybian.”
I didn’t know what that word meant, but I kept my face in its outrage-emotion setting and glared at them for treating Nicolai like a warm sybian. A warm sybian, dang it! Unreal.
“I was never on top,” Ottalie said. “Were you two ever on top?”
Poppy’s over-mascaraed eyes rolled toward the ceiling. “Once. For about thirty seconds. Then he flipped me and fucked my ass as punishment. Still came so hard I saw stars, though.”
Clementine slammed her hands over her ears, and her long hair swayed. “Oh, Lord. I don’t want to hear another word. Not one. Get out. Go!” She flicked her thin hands at them, dismissing all three of them and making that hissing tsk that could have been git or zip. “Go!”
Ottalie, Charlotte, and Poppy slunk out of the bathroom.
The door swung shut behind them.
Clementine sighed with a groan and braced her arms on the sink counter. “One of these days, those bitches will go too far, and I will spill their secrets to the men.”
I leaned on the counter, too. “If we were still in high school, I’d say the mean girls had found us.”
Clementine swung her long, moonlight hair back over her shoulder and peered at me. “No, darling. They are not the mean girls. I am the mean girls. When I say ‘Whatever, bitches,’ the bitches whatever. Come, people will wonder why we’ve been gone so long.”