7. Georgia
7
GEORGIA
A nother day, and another chance to personally deliver a dress on my lunch break. Seeing as the actress needed on-the-spot adjustments, I was out again. This hotel wasn’t as far from my office as the one yesterday, so I took my time to walk through a park and take a quick break on a bench, then jumped on the bus. It was a hot day, the LA sun baking down on me. My clothes were better suited for working in an overly air-conditioned office, not walking around on the street. I was sweating already.
At a leisurely pace, I headed to the hotel where I’d do my out-of-office adjustments. I had the dress, plus a heavy backpack with everything I could possibly need to fix the item of clothing.
A little later, I was knocking on the door of a suite, at the very top of a very fancy hotel.
The actress’s assistant let me in. I’d met Alexandra a handful of times before. She worked hard as hell and she never failed to impress me. Today, she took my heavy backpack from me right away.
“I hope you brought an abundance of patience, you’re going to need it,” she warned me.
“What? Why? Did Elise gain?” The one thing that I didn’t have in my bag was the ability to make the dress I had designed bigger.
“No, nothing like that. Her boyfriend is here… or the guy she wishes was her boyfriend.”
Well, that was a relief. I could ignore any canoodling, that was no big deal, but the dress needed to be ready tonight.
I followed Alexandra into the sitting room and paused as I took in the scene. Elise was a French actress who everyone was talking about. The kind all the boys wanted to be with, and all the girls wanted to be. Right now, she was putting on a show for a man dressed in black, slouched arrogantly in an armchair. The worst part was how he was staring at his phone instead of the bombshell gyrating in front of him.
His eyes flickered over to us.
“Excuse me, Elise, the dressmaker is here to do alterations.”
Elise straightened up and looked at us with a hazy expression. Her pupils were small. Was she on something? I’d seen it all in my years working for the Hollywood elite, but Elise had never been high or drunk or unprepared for our meetings before.
She stood and swayed.
“Okay, fine. Give me it.”
I approached. “I’ll help you put it on.”
“Whatever.” She sighed and pulled off her dressing gown. She was completely naked underneath.
I grabbed it off the floor and held it in front of her.
“Maybe some privacy,” I said pointedly to the man sitting in the chair.
Now that I was up close to him, he didn’t seem like Elise’s type at all. He seemed too disreputable to be an exec and too tattooed to be another actor. I’d have recognized him if I’d seen him in anything, so he’d have to be a newbie. There was no way this man was new to anything. His confidence oozed off him.
“Are you talking to me?” he asked, arrogance striking through in his tone.
Something about it was so fucking annoying. I felt like I’d spent my entire life being ordered around by arrogant men, and after last night with Howel, I’d had enough.
“Yes, I am,” I blurted, before Alexandra could step in to smooth things over.
“What we mean to say is—” Alexandra waded in.
“I think she knows exactly what she means to say and has, in fact, said it.” He stood, adjusting his suit. He had a slight accent. Something Eastern European.
“Don’t worry, there is nothing here I haven’t seen before,” he said and stopped in front of me. The man was tall. “Except for a woman who isn’t trying to impress anyone.”
“Is that supposed to be a compliment?” I heard myself ask before I could stop myself.
“Georgia,” Alexandra murmured to me in warning.
The man chuckled softly and reached into his pocket. “My name is Roman. Roman Sokolov. If you ever find yourself in Philadelphia, give me a call.” He held out a matte-black business card.
“I won’t.” I made no move to take it.
After a long, tense moment, Roman tucked it into my jeans pocket and nodded to Elise.
“До свидания, Elise. Be good.”
And with that, the menacing man left. I took a deep breath as soon as he’d disappeared.
“Well, that was intense,” Alexandra muttered when Elise stepped into the other room to put on her dress.
I’d make whatever adjustments were needed once I saw it on. “Was it? What was that guy’s deal anyway?”
Alexandra just shrugged. “Some guy Elise started to pursue after meeting him when she was shooting on location. He was here for business, and she basically begged him to stop by.”
I winced. “Well, he seems awful.”
“He does, doesn’t he, and dangerous.”
I knew danger from men like that. I’d grown up in Castel Amaro, home to the De Sanctis summer estate.
“Well, at least Philly is far away from here. She’ll be fine,” Alexandra said and clapped when Elise came out, the designer gown frothing around her. She had an awards ceremony that night, and she was going to rock the red carpet.
“You look amazing,” Alexandra enthused.
Elise nodded, distractedly. Her hair was untidy and her eyes glassy. A deep twinge of empathy moved through me. I knew better than most how the wrong man could wreck you.
“Let’s get you all cleaned up and finish fitting this dress. You’re going to be the belle of the ball tonight.”
She gazed at me, a hint of fragility dancing across her delicate features.
“Really?”
“I promise.”
Once I’d fixed Elise’s dress, she passed out in her room. Alexandra grabbed her purse and nodded toward the door.
“Have you had lunch yet?”
I shook my head.
“Me neither. My treat. Let’s go.”
We sat in the dining room of the hotel. I’d never eat here if Alexandra wasn’t paying. I ordered the cheapest thing on the menu and sipped at my water while she talked about the Hollywood scene.
It all sounded utterly exhausting.
“And how about you? How’s it going? Dating anyone new?” she asked.
I laughed. “Nothing can compare to your fun and games… I’m boring.”
She raised an eyebrow at me. “That’s a no, then?”
I nodded. “It’s a no. I don’t have the time or inclination.”
“I get that, but what about sex? Battery-operated devices just don’t compare to the weight and smell of a real-life man.”
“Smell? Pass.” It didn’t seem like a good time to explain that it had been so long since I’d had sex, I was worried cobwebs had formed down there.
We ate while making easy small talk. These were the kinds of things I lived for nowadays. Interactions, lunch and pleasant conversation, a walk in the sun. Simple pleasures. Simple but priceless.
While we waited for the bill, Alexandra left to visit the ladies’, and I relaxed back in my seat. I glanced around the room, watching the other diners.
That feeling of being watched was still niggling at me, but there was no one in sight. Literally, no one was looking at me. My father’s news had made me paranoid, clearly. Like anyone was going to bother traveling from Italy to the US just to threaten me… I hadn’t even seen my father in fourteen years. Right. So, everything is fine. I didn’t quite believe it.
I drank a little more and tried to shrug off my worries. I was probably giving myself far too much importance.
The sad truth was, outside my father and maybe Erica, no one in the world really cared what happened to me.
That stark fact was my final thought before the first shots rang out.