Chapter 11 My Case, My Rules #2
“I don’t know. He’s wealthy, he’s ordering martinis, he’s got an accent. This is a James Bond bit. Doing a bit, by definition, is basic. Being yourself isn’t a viable option?”
“I saw you allow four girls to take a group selfie with you and a chicken wing. Was that not a bit?”
“I was trying to sell chicken. What was Seat F trying to sell you?”
Sasha gasped. “I hired you to find him. Not to insult him.”
Sasha didn’t want him to poke holes in her fantasy.
It had become a ritual for her, waking up and dreaming about where he was in the world, and if he was looking for her.
All day long, she’d force herself to remember the details of his face, his voice, the way he helped calm her fears on the flight.
She spent so much of the day renewing her faith in this dream.
The last thing she wanted was to be made a mockery of. Did Wes think she was a fool?
He’d embarrassed her. But she’d try to defuse it with a little joke.
“Jealousy’s an interesting color on you,” she teased.
“You think I’m jealous?”
“Most women you speak to are dying of thirst in your presence,” she said in a lightly mocking tone. “But I’m a woman, and my attention’s elsewhere. I know you’re not used to this.”
The silence on the other end told her that he wasn’t amused.
“That’s a wild presumption. Go to sleep, you’re delirious.”
The next morning, Sasha broke Wes’s rules. She showed up at Seraphina, while her detective was working his magic.
She couldn’t help but be curious! After an unproductive lunch with an agent at Wilhelmina Models, she set off on an “exposure” walk, roaming aimlessly around Midtown.
She wondered how Wes was faring, checking out Seraphina stores.
He told her he’d start around 1:00 p.m., and it was 2:00 p.m., now.
The flagship Seraphina was only a ten-minute walk across town. What if he was there, right now?
Wes said he worked alone, and she respected that.
But she was dying of curiosity. She was desperate to know if Seat F had been looking for her, too!
So she dipped into a souvenir store and bought cheap sunglasses, a headscarf, and a fedora.
Paired with her trench coat (it had been raining that morning), she looked like the perfect spy.
Ten minutes later, she slunk into the store, with her head tipped slightly downward.
Immediately, she was hit with a gust of fragrance.
Where would Wes be? she wondered. He might’ve already visited and left, but she hoped not.
Stealthily, she hung around the blush aisle for a while, pretending to browse, but listening for Wes’s voice.
A salesgirl asked her fifteen times if she wanted a tester strip, a makeover, anything.
To get her off her back, she kept adding products into her basket.
There’s no way I could afford all this stuff, she thought. Her basket was so heavy, it was practically cutting into her arm. The longer she browsed, the dumber she felt. Quietly, she tiptoed over to Shampoo, and busied herself reading the back of the bottles.
“Hello, sir, can I help you find something?”
“Hey there! Yes, I’m looking for a gift for my, uh . . . my girl. My girlfriend.”
Sasha’s eyes widened behind her glasses. She scanned the store, and her eyes landed on the back of Wes’s head. At least she thought it was him. He looked like an anonymous preppy in Dickies, a striped shirt, and Ray-Bans.
“Girlfriend gifts are my specialty,” said the salesgirl, a busty, peanut-skinned woman with chestnut ringlets. “You stumbled a bit on ‘my girl,’ is it a new thing?”
With a nervous laugh, Wes scratched the back of his neck. “It shows, huh? I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“But you came to the right person! I’m Tilly.”
On-assignment-at-Seraphina Wes was a sight to see. Awkward, flustered. He had none of Wes’s usual easy confidence. He was a tall, dimpled cutie who wanted to impress his new love.
“I don’t know anything about this stuff. She mentioned liking, uh, Fenton eyeshadow pellets? Or is it pendants? I don’t . . .”
Tilly the salesgirl giggled.
“Am I saying it wrong?” How did Wes make himself blush through his rich, walnut-brown skin? Damn, he was an actor. He bit his bottom lip, eyes flashing down at Tilly.
“Fenty eyeshadow palettes. Your girlfriend has good taste.” Her eyes quickly scanned Wes, head to toe. “In more ways than one.”
Sasha narrowed her eyes behind her shades. Okay, that was out of line. Wes just said he was in a new relationship, and this girl was eye-fucking him? Is girl’s-girling a lost art? Granted, this whole act was a lie, but Tilly didn’t know that.
He let out an aw-shucks chuckle. “Come on, now. You don’t have to gas me up. I know you make a commission.”
She wriggled her nose cutely. “Can your girlfriend fight?”
Sasha’s spine went straight. What kind of saleswoman threw herself mercilessly at her customers? Things had changed a lot in retail since sixteen-year-old Sasha worked at Express.
“My girlfriend doesn’t have a reason to fight. I only have eyes for her.” He bit his lip sweetly. His dimple flashed. Somehow, he got his eyes to shine with earnest sweetness.
“I’m dying, your love for her is too cute,” exclaimed Tilly. “The Fenty palettes are over here. Follow me.”
Sasha gulped, realizing they were headed to the aisle diagonal from her. She burrowed deeper into her trench coat.
Tilly handed Wes a few metallic-gold palettes and his face brightened. “These are pretty. Wow, okay. I’ll take them.”
“Cool, I can ring you up, right here.” Tilly pulled a scanner out of her apron pocket.
“I have a dumb question. Is this a unique gift? Like, are other boyfriends coming in here with the same idea?”
“Funny you say that. A couple days ago, a customer bought up all the palettes in our SoHo store. Apparently, he did the same thing at the Tribeca location.”
Sasha gasped. Accidentally, she squeezed a body lotion too tight.
She felt like she was floating. Her lids shuttered closed, in shock.
Seat F was looking for her. He remembered the flight the same way she did.
She’d felt so stupid, so gullible, that she was having this one-sided relationship with a drunken memory.
But now, there was proof. He felt the same way about her.
And he was looking for her, too. Not only that, but he was also risking looking like a creep in the process.
“Wanna hear something funny?” Tilly looked both ways, and then Sasha saw her click off the power on her headset. She lowered her voice, and said, “The SoHo manager is one of my homegirls. She said he was buying palettes for . . . get this . . . a girl he vibed with on a plane.”
“Like a Missed Connection thing,” he said. Which, coincidentally, was the same thing he’d said to Sasha when she first described Seat F.
“Anyway, on the flight, she mentioned loving these palettes. And he remembered.”
“Damn, that’s romantic. This guy’s making me look bad.” Wes was wide-eyed.
Sasha hunched down in her trench, trying to mask her smile. She was on Seat F’s mind, the way he’d been on hers. He remembered every detail of their conversation. Relief flooded her. And excitement.
Ever since the flight, Sasha had been second-guessing her memory.
Had she blown Seat F out of proportion? Was he some sort of waking dream, brought on by altitude, anxiety, and Xanax?
Now, she knew that she hadn’t dreamed him up.
And they were having parallel experiences.
Just like her, he’d held on to clues from their conversation and was using them to track her down.
It was sweepingly romantic. And affirming.
It was blessed relief, knowing she wasn’t delusional. Confused? Yes. Conflicted? Certainly. But she wasn’t delusional.
“But there’s more. This woman told him she works at Seraphina in New York.
So he asked if I knew her. You see the vision, right?
” She tapped her temple. “I think he’s sending her a message.
Think about it—what if she’s looking for him, too?
If she’s really a Seraphina employee, she’ll hear about the mysterious guy who’s buying her favorite stuff and asking about her. ”
Sasha’s mouth dropped a little. Never in her life had anyone made such a dashing gesture for her. She felt light and swoony, like she was floating away on romance.
“It’s like when the romantic poets communicated through erotic sonnets, or whatever.”
(Okay, but hearing Wes say the word “erotic” momentarily dysregulated Sasha’s brain.)
“Have you tried to find her on an employee database, or something?” he asked.
Tilly shook her head. “How can I, without her name? Anyway, Seraphina can’t release employee info to customers.”
“Hmm,” he said, chewing on the inside of his mouth. “Looking at this dude a different way, this could be considered psycho behavior. Chasing a woman down at her job?”
“You’d think, right? But my girl said he didn’t give weirdo. He gave ‘wealthy corporate daddy.’ I trust her. We’re both from the Bronx. We can sense weirdo energy from ten blocks away,” she said.
Sasha wanted to yell, HE’S NOT SHADY, HE’S MY MAN.
“. . . but, just to cover her bases,” continued Tilly, “when my homegirl found out he was visiting several stores, she put him on our internal watch list.”
Wes nodded with interest. “Like a Seraphina Citizens App, with his photo next to ‘possible creep’?”
“No, just his name. Beyond that, I’m not sure how it works. Only managers have access, and I’m still in training,” she whispered. “You didn’t hear me say that.”
Omigod. Omigod. Sasha was mere feet away from a person who knew a person who knew Seat F’s name.
Her heart was thundering wildly in her chest, so powerfully, it felt like they could hear her, two aisles over.
Wes was so close to unlocking this whole thing.
The mystery of Seat F, the constant wondering, the anguish.
Sasha’s chaotic pursuit was almost over.