Chapter 2
Chapter 2
By the time I reach the office, I’ve completely resolved that the only thing to do about the whole Devan thing is to put it behind me, pretend it never happened, and move on to the next guy. I’m telling absolutely no one. It’s far too humiliating.
As I plunk my butt down on my desk chair, I pull up the dating app on my phone and begin to flick through my options. I wonder what the odds are that I’ll meet another guy who’ll kiss me to confirm he’s gay. Oh, and then ask me to go to his brother’s wedding and ask if the barista is straight. My guess is the odds are stacked against it, but with my luck, I simply can’t rule it out.
I surreptitiously peruse the frankly depressing guy options in the app before I give up and place my phone on my desk. I look up at the blue wall and let out a puff of air. Everything in the office is blue, from the walls to the chairs to the floors. I’m “encouraged” to wear blue to the office, too, which really means if I turn up in any other color, my boss, Larissa, may blow a brain valve. And believe me, no one wants that. Larissa needs to keep all the brain valves she’s got.
You see, in the world according to Larissa Monroe, as the color of the sea and sky, blue is the most spiritual, calming, and healing of all the colors in the rainbow. Apparently, if everyone wore the right shade of princess blue, we’d live in a perfectly balanced, harmonious world with no war and no conflict. Nothing but perfect blue happiness.
Do you think she needs some binoculars to see those (blue) flying pigs?
I know, I know. I’m being cynical. Erin, one of my BFFs and fellow No More Bad Dates Pact member keeps telling me to have an open mind when it comes to Larissa’s ideas. Granted, she agrees that many of them are off the charts, bat-crap crazy, but she’s always encouraging me to at least consider the less insane ones.
My attitude is that just because I work for Kool-Aid, doesn’t mean I’ve got to drink the stuff.
Larissa comes breezing into the room. As always, she’s dressed in the same blue of the walls and furniture. With her diminutive frame, you could easily lose her in here but for the fact she has long blonde hair.
I stand up and smooth out my skirt, knowing full well my entire wardrobe probably cost less than the dress she’s wearing today. “Good morning, Larissa.”
“Darcy, darling. How are you?” she asks without pausing for a response as she continues her breezy path into her office.
I collect my tablet, my trusty notebook with the cute Labrador puppy on the cover, and the opened mail from my desk and follow her. Larissa’s office is stunning. A spacious, open-plan room with (blue) balance balls in one corner where she holds her meetings, and a large glass desk where she works, seated on her (blue) chair. We’re twenty-three stories up in downtown Auckland, and her office has the most gorgeous view of the harbor and the volcanic island of Rangitoto beyond.
She drops her (blue) purse, a couple of shopping bags, and her (you guessed it: blue) jacket onto the table and sits down on her chair. No need to tell you what color that is. (Okay, it’s blue in case you weren’t following). I trail behind her like the minion I am, collecting up her items and putting them away as I go.
“Tell me about my morning,” she says as she looks out at the harbor littered with white yachts. Auckland isn’t called the “City of Sails” for nothing.
I press on my tablet and the screen lights up. “Well, first up, you’ve got Therese Saldon from Usu coming in to show you some new stock she’s recently acquired. She mentioned you’d already spoken and that you would be really excited by what she’s got.”
“Oh, that’s the Guatemalan fertility charms.” She claps her hands together like an over-excited seal. “I’m super excited about those. I’ve heard they’re, like, amazing, and anyone who wants to have a baby has got to get one.”
I’m a little more dubious about these types of things.
“Therese will be here in twenty-five minutes. Then you’ve got Jonathan Strangefellow, who needs to talk to you about—”
I stop when I see her waving her hand dismissively in the air. “Cancel him. I don’t like his energy. Or his name. Strangefellow.” She shivers. “Ugh.”
“But, he’s been in the calendar for weeks, Larissa. You’ve already canceled on him three times in the last month.”
She presses her lips into a thin line and crosses her arms defensively, usually my signal to don the parent cap. Which is precisely what I do.
“Larissa, Jonathan is your accountant. You need to talk with him. It’s important for the business.”
This is what happens when you work as a personal assistant to a celebrity. You’ve got to be so many things. Parent, minion, counsellor, friend, punching bag. I do it all. They say Auckland has four seasons in a day, which is nothing compared to how many different people I need to be for Larissa, sometimes within a ten-minute conversation.
Really, I should get paid a lot more than I do.
“Why can’t I have an accountant with a spiritually compelling name? Like Bliss? Or Flower?”
Because accountants are people, not brands of soap?
“Granted, Strangefellow does bring up a certain image of an unusual looking man, but Jonathan is a nice, sensible, traditional name.” Unlike Bliss or Flower.
“I would meet with an accountant called Serenity every day of the week,” she says.
“ Jonathan comes highly recommended by Aroha Jones’s people,” I say, naming a well-known local entrepreneur I know Larissa is impressed with.
“He’s Aroha’s accountant?”
“Mm-hm.”
She pouts, her already plumped-up lips looking like they could be used as flotation devices. Larissa Monroe would have come in very handy on the Titanic. “If I’ve got to,” she grumps. “But you’ve got to be there, too. Promise?”
“I promise. Now,” I pull out the pile of mail, “you’ve got some invitations here to events you may want to attend. I’m thinking it’s a ‘no’ to the opening of the library’s new wing?”
She pulls a face and nods. Reading isn’t one of Larissa’s things.
“And it’s a ‘yes’ to an interview on Good Morning New Zealand ? They want you to speak about how you transitioned from internationally successful actress to online health guru.” I’m quoting them directly here.
She nods enthusiastically. Larissa loves to talk about herself. It’s no secret how she managed the transition. She was a successful, well-loved actress here in New Zealand, starring in everything from the local soap opera to small budget movies before she took on Hollywood in a highly publicized move. Well, highly-publicized here in our little country at the end of the world. I can’t imagine anyone in Hollywood knew who she was before she got there. But that all changed when she landed a role alongside heartthrob Todd Milson in the surprise rom com hit He’s So Not My Type . They fell in love and married, had a genetically blessed daughter they called Monday for reasons unknown (she was born on a Tuesday), and then promptly divorced before the baby even uttered her first word. All very Hollywood.
With the notoriety gained from her and Todd’s hit reality TV show, Mr. Jonathan Strangefellow and I manage to get Larissa to sign off on the company’s annual tax return without her pouting once; and I manage to wrangle with not one but two celebrities who are surrounded by people who never say no to them, and consequently have no clue about the real world. As a result, Todd agrees to have Monday photographed by the magazine, and both parents are happy. Monday? Maybe not so much, but as every celebrity worth their Beverley Hills mansion will tell you, a beautiful child is the very best accessory.
Cynical much?
In the early afternoon, Larissa’s driver pulls the car up outside her newest purchase, the black and white photography gallery, and we climb out into the warm afternoon sun.
“Isn’t this place darling?” she says, pointing at Cozy Cottage High Tea with its red and white striped awnings and large glass windows. “Are you sure I shouldn’t buy it? Because I would love to own this.”
“Absolutely sure. They serve food in there made from not only wheat but dairy products, too.”
“But wheat has gluten in it. Don’t they know that?” She guffaws, her hand over her mouth.
“I’m sure they do.”
“And they use it all the same?”
“Yup.”
“Tell me they use coconut oil at the very least. Please.”
“You know, Larissa, I’m not sure they do.”
“No coconut oil?” Her plump lips form a small “o” at this deeply shocking piece of information.
“And their food has sugar in it,” I add to further put her off. Larissa is famously anti-sugar. She’s even written a book about it. “Lots and lots of sugar.”
“Unrefined, sustainably sourced raw sugar?” she asks hopefully.
I shake my head.
“Agave? Maple? Honey?” she asks hopefully.
Another shake.
Her face is aghast when she asks in a small voice, “Not . . . refined white sugar?”
I give a curt nod. “Plain white sugar. It’s in all their cakes and cookies. Which, of course, is why they are all so completely delicious.”
Larissa’s eyes bulge. “But that’s . . . that’s so last century . It’s positively caveman behavior.”
I might not know my history all that well, but I’m pretty sure that when people used to run around in animal skins with spears, they didn’t eat a whole lot of cakes made with refined white sugar. But then I could be wrong.
It’s right about now my mouth starts watering and I begin to crave one of the Cozy Cottage cakes filled with gluten, dairy, and sugar. All very good things in my “caveman” mind.
Larissa takes my hand in hers and looks earnestly at me. “Thank you, Darcy. I’m glad you shared that with me.”
“I thought you needed to know,” I say in a low, serious voice.
She pulls a set of keys from her purse, waves them in the air, and unlocks the door to the gallery. Once inside, we both look around the large, empty, echoing room. With bright white walls and gray, polished concrete floors, it’s a blank, personality-free canvas. In other words, it looks exactly like an empty gallery.
“Isn’t this place amazing?” Larissa enthuses. “Can you feel it?”
I know better than to reach out and touch a wall. Larissa doesn’t mean to feel it literally. “Yes, I can.” I search my brain for the right Larissa platitude to use. I’ve got a bunch of them, all in notes in my trusty notebook with the cute Labrador puppy on the cover, just in case I need one to pull out at short notice. They’re airy-fairy clap-trap as far as I’m concerned, but hit the right one and Larissa’s super happy. And you know what they say? Happy celebrity, happy life. Or something like that.
“I’m feeling the harmonious interrelationship between textures in this space. It adds to the emotionally satisfying vibe, don’t you think?” Pleased with my gobbledygook, I watch her for her reaction.
“You know, I hadn’t thought about it that way. But you know what, Darcy darling? You’re totally right. The walls and the floor do interrelate.”
That’s right. I think it’s called “construction.”
She moves around the room, giving me her “vision for the space,” and I scribble in my trusty notebook, the one with the cute Labrador puppy on the cover that I take everywhere with me. I bought a stack of them when I saw them in the stationery store so I wouldn’t run out. I’m a sucker for a Labrador puppy. #GoalDog
Some of Larissa’s ideas are sane, some less so. But that’s the way Larissa rolls. And why not? When you’ve got oodles and oodles of cash and no one ever telling you not to do what you want, why not indulge your every whim? Although I do draw the line at her suggestion that we have a family of wallabies wandering the room at exhibition openings, dressed as waiters. I don’t care how avant garde she thinks it will be.
In the end, I’ve got a list the length of Heidi Klum’s legs to organize before we can even open the gallery doors to the public, not to mention having to find a photographer to exhibit their work. This on top of all the other things I do for her every day.
Lucky, lucky me.
As we lock up, Larissa pauses on the sidewalk, her hand on my arm as she gives a furtive glance at Cozy Cottage Café. “Darcy,” she begins in a quiet voice, “do you know if they serve anything that’s gluten-free in there?”
I bite back a smile. It takes a strong person to resist the aroma of a freshly-baked cake from Cozy Cottage Café. “I know there’s a flourless chocolate and raspberry cake that’s very good.”
She almost licks her lips right in front of me. “Flourless, you say? So, no gluten whatsoever?”
I shake my head. “No gluten whatsoever.”
“I follow a strict nutrition regime, which I do entirely for my health, of course.”
“Of course.” It’s got nothing to do with the fact she likes to fit into children’s sized clothing.
“But you know, Darcy, lately I’ve been reading about how occasionally indulging one’s self is in fact extremely beneficial for you as a whole.”
With my most serious and earnest expression in place, I reply, “I think Cozy Cottage Café’s flourless chocolate and raspberry cake is the perfect beneficial indulgence.”
Her face transforms into a look of unbridled glee, and I feel a pang of sadness for her. She spends her life drinking ghastly juices and smoothies, starving herself, sticking to a strict exercise regime, and avoiding all the good things in life. The woman has got to live a little.
“A slice of Cozy Cottage Café’s flourless chocolate and raspberry cake it is.”
I beam back at her. “Come on, then. I’ll treat you to a slice.”