Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
OCEAN CLOUD IV
ATTN: DAMIEN DE DANDENEAU
CABINA #148
90133 PALERMO, PA
ITALIA
Damien, my apologies for such a late reply. I must say, you certainly have a way with your words. And truly, I feel the same as you, like my perspective has completely shifted ever since we’ve been writing. I’ve never felt so seen before, so safe to share. Speaking of, I need to get this out... well a few things.
First, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t know some details about Jamie’s and your past, and it’s not the prettiest of pictures. Something to do with buying out businesses in èze for a commercial shopping center and him undermining your efforts? It’s only fair to hear your side of the story. I’m sure you both had your reasons and both probably felt they were valid.
The other thing I’d like to get your thoughts on—why’d you get involved in your line of work? When you started with venture capital, was it for your family? Did you find interest in it? I’ve been thinking about this lately. How do we know when our goals are really ours, or if they’re just what we thought people wanted of us? So we spend years clamoring for it, fusing them to our identity. And going back now would completely disintegrate the archetype we’ve structured our life around. I’m not sure how, but every passing day in France, I lose a few degrees of interest in the Young Soarers program. It’s strange and so unlike me, yet I’ve never felt more myself. Or maybe my nerves are playing with me.
Eager to read your thoughts. Hope you enjoy the last few days of the trip in Sicily.
Bisous,
Kat
* * *
T he last thing I needed today was to wake up with sun-scorched shoulders where my spaghetti strap cover-up hadn’t done its job. I wanted to put yesterday out of mind, but the fire dancing along my red and raw skin had another plan.
This, of course, is no concern to Solange, who, after handing Manon her lemonade and me an espresso at our weekly editorial meeting, sinks into her large leather desk chair, humming with glee.
“You see this?” Solange points around the room. We’ve come a long way since our folding chairs and paper cups to a well-furnished travel consultant’s office. A coffee cart with fresh pastries sits beside plush sofas and a bookcase stocked with copies of Conseils and travel guides categorized by region. She nods toward the lamps alight behind her desk and taps on her watch. It’s nearly five in the evening.
“L’électricité!” Manon exclaims.
Solange interlaces her fingers. “We are, how you Américains say, back in business.”
To think that we’ve done all this just with words on paper and videos online—and Solange’s clientele management. The moment pulls me out of my low spirits, sharing in the delicious triumph. But my pride shrivels up in a matter of seconds when she rips a piece of paper from a notebook and hands it to me.
“What’s this?”
Solange raises her brow. “Your next assignment. Don’t think I forgot.”
Chicken scratch questions lie underneath a taped-on picture of the crumbling chateau near the Chessley villa. It’s the gossip piece she’s wanted since the beginning. Except now, she’s reframed the angle to be a little less tabloid-like and a bit more new and noteworthy town buzz.
Manon leans over, peering at the paper with excited eyes.
Under another pretense, something more along the lines of writing up the building’s history, its features, or its landscape would have been a pleasant task. But Solange’s notes take a starkly different tone.
“Your articles and video guides are impressive, oui,” Solange says. “But I want something juicy. I want to do a ‘Bienvenue à Eze’ spread on these mysterious new owners. Do some digging. Find out who they are, where they’ve come from, and why they’re keeping secrets.”
“Who says they’re keeping secrets?” Manon asks.
Solange folds her arms over her desk. “They’ve owned that property for two months and haven’t introduced themselves. They must be hiding something.”
“Privacy maybe,” I mumble.
Solange pulls her head back. “Is there a problem?”
I cross my legs and straighten my spine. “We’re not a tabloid.”
A gentle smile crosses Solange’s mouth, layered on thick with a neon-orange lacquer.
“People love a little friendly gossip no matter where they go. Conseils needs something fresh. And it’s not a tabloid piece. We’re welcoming them to the neighborhood,” she says.
Hmm, by putting their names and backstory on display. Whoever they are, they picked the wrong place for anonymity.
And as much as I detest those publications with outlandish headlines and weakly strung, conjectured story threads, succumbing to pride at the present really wouldn’t do any of us good. Solange knows that my time with Conseils is temporary, and though her average weekly clientele has picked up at the agency, she’ll rely on advertisement revenue in Conseils until that amount has doubled. Fact is, she’ll have to hire another writer or put a spin on her service. The more readers means the higher the price she can charge to companies seeking advertisement slots. So she’ll do anything to boost the number of eyes on Conseils .
Besides, I don’t want to leave the magazine. Not yet anyway. There’s still so much more to write, to film. Plus, if I leave her high and dry now, I’d only be tainting my Young Soarers application with a flaky work ethic.
I raise my head, seeing where Solange had hung a poster that Howie had gifted her: an illustrated world map with Continental’s logo prominently stretching across the bottom banner.
“Très bien. Je suis d’accord,” I say without an ounce of hesitation. Solange and I reciprocate smiles. One invasive little article can’t hurt all that Conseils has become, I hope.
* * *
“You look sad,” Josie says, picking up some blush from my makeup collection strewn out on the living room floor tile. “Let’s fix that.” She swirls a brush over my cheeks, dabbing many, many layers of rosy powder. What I get for agreeing to play salon with her and Milo.
Milo toys with a few scrunchies, wrapping them around his earlobes.
“Now what’ll we do with this,” he says, flinging my hair from side to side.
Normally, I’d be hesitant to do anything with them that may cause Angela to raise a brow. But with her and Howie in the home office, fully invested in concocting a collaboration between Continental and Lavergne Designs, I’m out of the direct line of fire at least for a little while and out of sight, unless she’s fixed cameras in the Renaissance tapestry hanging on the wall, maybe in the lute player’s eyes. In that case, there’s no escape route from the caricature the little ones are making me out to be.
I’d figured Angela’s spy had immediately divulged to her what a nutcase I appeared to be after they witnessed the macaron chase. But nothing yet. No French police escorting me to border control. It might have something to do with the fact that I haven’t spoken to Jamie in a few days, not after Angela threatened my job and future reputation if she sees us alone together again.
Milo tugs my hair, stretching my scalp, but I stay quiet, marinating in the transpiring events August has brought so far. It’s been half a week since I talked to Emi, when she left me in Nice at the primary school. Technically, it’s only been a day since I’ve seen her. She was mulling about the Cave when Manon and I were on our way back from Solange’s editorial meeting yesterday. The shop door was propped open, and I could see her stocking bottles of merlot along the shelves. Her face cooled at the sight of me, and she promptly marched to the entrance and kicked the door stopper out of its place, letting it slam shut.
As angry as she may be, I’m entirely grateful to her. So far, there hasn’t been any inkling that my little crush on Jamie has left her lips. And with Jamie and Nick away at negotiations for real estate acreage in Belgium, he hasn’t been around at all. Still, I can’t help but wonder if he’ll prolong the trip because he somehow knows that I’ve come down with a silly little case of feelings.
My phone buzzes from inside my backpack. I ask Josie to grab the bag from the couch. She dramatizes her tug on the strap.
“Do you carry rocks in here?”
Just tri-lingual Greek philosophy books I drunkenly buy for a twenty-six-year-old dreamboat I’ve been harboring feelings for because love triangles aren’t just for the movies.
“Yes,” I say.
I haven’t decided if I’ll give it to him or if it’ll be a random souvenir I lug back to America.
The text is from Mom. She says good luck on my Young Soarers application, knowing that I’ll be submitting within the week.
I type back, Thanks. I hope it turns out well. Maybe this time next year, I’ll be moving on to my second rotation. My insides churn seconds after I send the text because there’s not an ounce of excitement funneling through me as I think of the program. But I rationalize it as getting too attached to èze. Who wouldn’t be sad to leave a city so easy to fall in love with?
I don’t have expectations for when I’m talking with Mom, but there are certain things that I’m not looking for. And her reply is one of them. And making a real income! She adds a winking emoticon. My stomach tenses. Apparently, if I’m not working in corporate America, then I must be doing something wrong. She’s one to talk. She works for the government! Jamie said it best. People only know the versions of success they’ve seen in their life.
I respond with a bland and simple Yeah to Mom, even though it twists the wrench further into my abdomen.
Josie peppers my eyelids with the darkest shade of purple on the shadow palette. I’m either gonna come out mimicking Liza Minelli or Dracula. My money’s on the latter.
“You are looking so good,” Josie reassures me.
Milo fervently agrees, tightening the two ponytails sticking out of the top of my head.
“Like a queen!” he says.
An airy chortle diffuses behind me, the haughty note to it telling me it’s one person. But I didn’t hear her clacking heels attacking the hallway tile. I turn my head ever so slightly to see Angela, covering her mouth, trying to contain herself. She swipes her Hermès neck scarf and waves it in the air as she catches her breath from the intensifying cackles.
“Mon Dieu,” she says breathlessly.
A rock sinks in my stomach, realizing Howie must only be a few steps behind. Playing salon in the living room had seemed like a foolproof idea when Angela firmly requested that there be no interruptions during their lengthy business meeting.
I stand quickly, abandoning my “salon chair” pillow on the ground. The bathroom door is in sight, but Howie rolls up behind Angela. At least he keeps it contained, avoiding eye contact and sucking in his lips.
Merde.
I stuff my arms across my chest and smile nervously. “Kids,” I say, shrugging my shoulders.
“Oh, Howard,” Angela says, through the last of her chortles. “What was it I came in here for again?” She composes herself as Howie tugs on the flaps of his blazer.
“Le party,” he exclaims, lifting his arms around his puffy belly.
“Ah oui. La fête,” Angela says. “Kat, we will have a launch party for the Lavergne-Continental collection. And I need you to assist our party planner.”
“Me?” Thank goodness for the thirty layers of blush.
Angela sighs, placing her hands on her hips. “Oui, Kat. Tu. Do you think we have time to run our businesses and plan a party by Saturday?”
“Saturday?” Lovely. Less than seventy-two hours.
“It’ll be marvelous,” Howie reassures me, resting his hand on my arm. “If you can help pull off a Chessley?—”
Angela clears her throat.
“And Lavergne party, you’re going to be the cream of the crop with the Young Soarers admissions. I just know it.” He gives a wink. “Not that you aren’t already.”
A deep breath sweeps through my lungs. Milo tugs at my leg and holds up sparkly butterfly clips, and I sit down to let him finish decorating my hair.
“Okay then. Bien,” I assure them.
Howie claps, and Angela—apparently no longer amused with my ridiculous hair and makeup—gives a terse nod and makes her way back to the office, beckoning her new colleague to follow with a finger snap over her head.
The dread of them seeing me in embarrassing states has become more and more palatable as the occurrences seem to only increase. However, I now have to top off my portfolio with “assistant to luxury event planner,” and the closest I’ve ever been to that was organizing a group trip to a Celtic’s game for fifty half-drunk college kids in student programming.
I got this.
I think.