Twelve Germaine
Twelve
Germaine
2018
Germaine places a carefully manicured nail between her teeth as she examines the layout of the lobby. She bites slightly before stopping herself, folding her arms across her chest instead and frowning. If her mother sees her with a bitten nail, Germaine might as well die.
“Why are the orchids orange?” she says to the harried-looking woman standing next to her in a sharply pressed black suit, holding a clipboard. “I thought I specifically said blue.”
“You did say blue,” the woman says, her voice taut like she’s trying not to raise it. “But then we learned that someone else bought out our vendor’s stock of blue, so you said orange would be okay. If you recall, Miss St. Germaine-Chang.”
Germaine puts her nail back in her mouth. “We’re not going for okay , Melati. We are going for haute. Pristine. Immaculate. Try again for blue. Let’s go to the fountain.”
Germaine walks briskly to the center of the high-arched atrium lobby, which is filled with foliage, marble statuary, and natural light. She’s followed by Melati, the manager of this new St. Germaine-Chang boutique hotel, and half a dozen stewards. The fountain, ordered from Milan, is a particular point of pride, with intricately carved stonework that boasts five tiers of bowls that spill water in uniform curtains down to the bubbling pool below. It’s enormous. There are schools of iridescent gourami fish in the lowermost level, their scales flashing in the light.
“How many fish did we put in here?” Germaine asks.
“One hundred and fifty,” says Melati.
“Let’s do three hundred. No—two seventy-five.”
Melati scribbles a note and hurries after Germaine, who is strutting for the courtyard.
Germaine sighs as she notes the off-center art books on one of the marble café tables, and decides that the gamelan music playing from a speaker somewhere is a touch too loud. The music is important—it’s Germaine’s favorite part. She’s begun contracting with local musicians in each region of her family’s empire to create bespoke soundtracks for the hotels. It’s gotten great press, and it brings an added dimension to the boutique hotel’s design.
Germaine turns and touches a finger to her ear. “It should be an atmosphere, not a school band concert.”
“I’m so sorry, Miss St. Germaine-Chang,” Melati says. “Banyu!” she hisses behind her, miming turning the volume down.
Germaine doesn’t have time for apologies. The linen curtains on the cabanas aren’t tied evenly; the bottles of shampoo in the bathrooms should be Moroccanoil, not the generic brand. In one king suite, she smells the musty scent of dust.
“All rooms were cleaned this morning before your arrival, Miss St. Germaine-Chang,” Melati assures her.
“I swear I smell it.” Germaine wrinkles her nose. “Like the back stairwell of an old building.”
Melati very subtly sucks her teeth and orders the staff down on the floor to inspect under the four-poster bed, the velvet-upholstered chairs. Someone procures a hand duster from somewhere, running it carefully over each surface.
“This is the thing,” Germaine says aloud, to no one in particular. “It can’t just look good on Instagram. It has to be good—perfect, in fact—in real life.”
Social media has turned into quite the customer-feedback machine. While Germaine’s family hasn’t experienced much more than the standard slate of positive and negative reviews, some of their competitors have seen serious PR damage from patrons slamming them via the “expectations vs. reality” trend. One hotel was brought particularly low when the gorgeous “aquarium” they publicized so widely was little more than a fish tank in person.
Germaine will make sure that doesn’t happen to her family’s empire. It is her job to guarantee that everything is flawless and exactly as advertised—or better. Under her purview, not a single customer will moan on social media. Particularly not this new boutique spot in Bali.
She has carved out this niche for herself in the family business for three main reasons: one, she’s good at it, having been trained her entire life to be a picky, bossy princess who knows what she wants. Two, it gets her away from her parents and brothers while keeping onside with them. Family dinner at the penthouse? Sorry, she has to be in Venice to inspect the new hotel. An afternoon charity tea with Céline? Nope. Germaine is meeting with the design team for the renovation in London. She can completely avoid them while demonstrating how hard she’s working for their benefit—it’s perfect. And the funding for her lifestyle continues to flow.
And three, it’s stopped them from trying to marry her off to some hotel heir in Taiwan, or has at least put that master plan on hold for now. Both Giles and Gregoire are married and have babies, the ultimate heirs to the empire. When they’re together, Germaine feigns interest in her little nephews. They’re cute, sure. In a sticky, loud kind of way. But their main function, in Germaine’s eyes, is that the grandchildren distract Terence and Céline and make them forget to nag and criticize their only daughter. Their unmarried daughter.
Germaine still does not want to get married. Maintaining her status as her own single woman is fulfillment enough. When Germaine was young, she thought that success meant being an entertainer, appearing on TV, getting the paparazzi to follow her around and the magazines to write features on everything she wore, bought, ate, and drank.
But when her parents yanked her back to New York a short three years after her Blast Off! contract and offers for any work outside the family business dried up, Germaine was just back to her old life: poor little rich girl.
She catches a glimpse of her reflection in one of the wall-length gilded mirrors in the hall. She’s in her thirties now, still looking great, of course. Unlike Miranda, whose life is one long spring break where she keeps baking herself to a crisp in the sun, Germaine takes care of her skin. She exercises and drinks green tea, gets red-light therapy and gua sha treatments and acupuncture. The 3AM Girls feel like another lifetime now. Germaine is a moderate drinker these days and is the first to leave a party instead of being the last to arrive.
And she is focused on this job that has given her much of the independence and purpose she wants—not all of it, but close enough. As a bonus, it distracted her from Sicily’s spiraling life, which was Germaine’s fault. Completely. Germaine even had some of her hair fall out when she heard about Sicily’s institutionalization. She wanted to run to her, admit that she’d started Hugo on this terrible trajectory, but what would that have solved?
So she kept her head down and her mouth shut and contemplated fabric swatches in Milan while her friend suffered, like the garbage person she was.
This hotel was supposed to open in April, at the start of the dry season, but there was a red-tape issue with permits, and everything got delayed. This opening has been long anticipated and very widely marketed, and Germaine wants to make sure that the guests are stunned.
Especially two guests in particular: her parents.
They are set to arrive the next day, after Germaine has done one more painstaking loop with Melati, fixed what can be fixed on this timeline, and resigned herself to the rest. Everything must be as perfect as physically possible.
Germaine’s breakfast is rushed. She picks at her red rice porridge while running through to-do lists in her head. Returning to her suite, she changes into a fresh blouse, something cream and drapey and cowl necked, paired with tailored soft-brushed tweed pants. She accessorizes with pearls, small ones, not overly stated. Suede kitten heels. She wants to be elegant but pared back, professional. The blowout she got the day before is at its perfect, effortless peak, and her nails are remanicured, unbitten.
Germaine tries to adjust her face so that it displays an expression of unbothered, reserved confidence as she watches the cars pull up, although her heart is thrashing in her chest. She’s nervous about this property but very proud of the work she’s done on it, and hopes that—for once—Terence and Céline might give her some praise. However grudging.
But as she watches them alight from the first chauffeur-driven car, she looks behind them and sees that they’ve brought a surprise in the next car. And the next car after that.
Germaine walks down the grand staircase and puts on her best PR-appearance smile, since it works better for hiding her irritation.
“There she is!” Terence smiles, putting on a good show for a couple of nearby journalists, who have arrived early for the opening.
“Darling.” Céline nods.
“So glad you made it safely!” Germaine greets her parents, along with their snooty daughters-in-law, two noisy grandchildren, and a total of four bossy nannies that have come with no warning whatsoever.
“And what a lovely surprise,” Germaine exclaims, kissing her mother on both cheeks. “Elizabeth, Aalia, hello!”
“I knew you wouldn’t mind,” Céline says. “New York has just been so dreary and cold, they had to get away.”
“Absolutely. I’m very excited for you all to see the place.” Germaine beams and ushers them all inside; bellhops are already transporting their many, many pieces of luggage from the cars.
“The grand lobby,” Germaine notes, gesturing at the opulent room filled with topiary, secluded sitting nooks, and an adjacent coffee bar. The smell of espresso blends with spiced sandalwood, and the gamelan, though still a touch too loud in Germaine’s opinion, melds pleasantly with the bubbling of the fountain.
“Cozy,” Terence says. Céline says nothing.
As the family heads to see the pool, Germaine signals to Melati.
“Make up my suite for Elizabeth,” she hisses to the manager. “As fast as you can.”
“But, miss, where should I put your things?”
“It doesn’t matter—pack them into my office. Put a cot in there. We won’t have enough suites otherwise; the rest are booked.”
“Right away.” Melati does a little nod of her head and gives Germaine a look that might be sympathy, but she isn’t sure before the woman runs off.
Germaine hurries to rejoin the party. Her mother is inspecting one of the cabana curtains, feeling it between her fingers, just like Germaine knew she would.
“Belgian flax?” she asks when Germaine approaches.
“French,” Germaine says, nodding.
Céline raises her eyebrows just slightly, but not in a bad way. Even this very minimal reaction sends warmth through Germaine’s body.
“Well,” Terence says, signaling he’s seen all he needs to. Aalia has her arms crossed, unimpressed; Elizabeth is rebuttoning her son’s polo that he keeps unbuttoning.
“Oh!” Céline says, like she just remembered something, and the sly look on her face is unsettling. “We do have one more surprise guest.”
“Oh?” Germaine laughs. “They never cease, do they?”
“He’s just a ways behind us because he had to stop downtown on some business. But we convinced Eddie Chou to join us—you remember Eddie, I’m sure.”
Germaine feels the warmth dissipate into a chill. It seems to her that the whole courtyard has been paused, creating a vacuum void of sound.
“Eddie?” she says when she finds her voice. It sounds to her a long way off. “He’s—he’s here?”
“He will be,” Terence says. No one seems to notice the change in her demeanor. “We told him about all the work you were doing, and he was interested in seeing a new property. We were glad he accepted the invitation.”
Germaine nods and makes a vague gesture, trying to get them upstairs, up to the rooms. She does remember Eddie, the boy wonder of real estate who’s made a killing in Dubai, Macau, and Los Angeles.
Their families had always been friendly with each other, but it wasn’t until Germaine was home for the holidays in the three years between the end of Kidz Klub and the beginning of her permanent New York stay that she and Eddie finally struck up a conversation.
Germaine had some flings out in LA, just harmless rebellion, but she had been surprised to find herself completely besotted with Eddie. He felt just as hedonic and dangerous as the West Coast guys, but he understood her. Germaine and Eddie? They were cut from the same cloth, born of wealth and high society—and equally high expectations.
For this reason, they kept everything a sworn secret from their parents.
Slipping away from the New Year’s party at different times, so as not to be noticed; using the phones of their house staffs to communicate; even planning a secret Valentine’s trip to Houston. They kept their long-distance relationship on the down-low when Germaine returned to LA. Miranda and Sicily got only hints—it was that high of a clearance level. Germaine and Eddie didn’t want to take any chances.
Eddie’s not a boy anymore and not quite a mogul, though he has the arrogance of one. Germaine does not find it hard to guess her parents’ ulterior motives for bringing him here.
“I’m going to check on dinner while you get settled, all right?” Germaine calls brightly after them. “Take your time!”
Germaine can’t see him. She doesn’t want to. She breaks away from the group and hurries back through the lobby, going for a side staircase that leads to her office. Maybe she can invent some emergency at one of the other properties or fake food poisoning. Maybe—
Too late.
“St. Germaine-Chang!” His voice booms across the lobby.
She turns. PR smile.
What she remembers most about Eddie is their final weekend together, stolen in Aspen while Miranda was on the audition circuit and Sicily was busy with family. It was the weekend she realized that he filmed them in bed—and not for the first time.
“What is that?” she’d said, startling him when she came out of the bathroom, finding him fiddling with something.
“Nothing. Pager,” he said. But she’d already seen it. A camcorder, small as a handheld radio—placed in the pocket of his bag on the hotel chair, by the looks of it.
“Were you—were—?” She couldn’t get her mouth to form the question.
He looked sheepish for just a moment, and then recovered. “Oh, come on. Everyone does it. You should take it as a compliment, you know.”
The guys in LA would have said the same thing. Germaine had hesitated, unsure. “What do you do with it?”
He smirked. “Watch it. Reminisce.”
“Sorry, Eddie, I just—I don’t think I want to be filmed.”
Her infatuation with him had made her soft. She would have socked a different man in the face. But they had been vulnerable together; they’d talked late into the night, complained about their parents, shared stories about their grandmothers and their culture. She thought it was different.
She was wrong.
“Okay, it’s okay, baby.” He approached her, embraced her. “You’ll get used to it. All the guys say I’m the luckiest—”
That, at least, was when she stiffened and pushed him away. “The guys? You—Eddie. You’ve never shown these to anyone, right?”
Instead of sheepish, he looked annoyed. “Don’t get huffy with me. It’s just what guys do.”
“Oh, no. No. Eddie, please, tell me you didn’t—that you’ll never again—”
He dropped his arms and all pretense of trying to placate her. “Calm down. Jesus. It’s not like I distributed the tapes beyond my inner circle.”
His fucking inner circle. Him and all his idiot finance friends who acted like they were forming the New World Order. Germaine had indulged all his talk, his obsessive excitement about real estate and investing—she’d even thought it was endearing. Until that moment, when she knew that all those creeps had seen her naked.
The love went out of her like a switch was flipped. She sat down on the bed.
“You’ll regret it,” she said, her voice low and cracked. “I’ll make you regret it.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Um, okay. And I’ll make you regret that . If you ever bad-mouth me, or say anything to my family. Because, you know. I think I have the upper hand here.”
And he left her there in the hotel.
“Eddie!” Germaine forces her feet forward across the lobby, one after another, to meet him at the door. He’s got his hair slicked back and a suit that doesn’t fit him quite as well as it’s supposed to; he’s still figuring out new money. She can smell his cologne from across the room.
“How are you doing, sweetheart?” he says, going in for a hug that she tries and fails to turn into a handshake.
Maybe he’s changed. Teenage years were ancient history; maybe he’s grown and forgotten the finer details of their relationship.
“Fine, Eddie,” Germaine says, stepping back as briskly as she can. “Just fine.”
“You know,” he says in a low voice, leaning in with a wink. “I still have our home video, if you’re ever interested in making the sequel.”
Germaine feels the world crumble around her.