21 Steps to Happiness (23 page)

“Love wears off. We can have everything else but love.”

“It doesn't work like that.”

“Give it a chance.”

We both looked at the young couple on the tennis court. They had stopped playing and they had stopped fighting. She was crying and he was holding her tight in his arms. They hadn't come on the court to play tennis. They'd come to sort out their problems and it looked as if they had succeeded.

I stood up. I knew that we would go nowhere this way. “We shouldn't see each other for a while.”

I'm so bad at breaking up with him. I just can't let go completely.

“You can't keep me away from you.”

“Please, Hubert. You know that we're not going anywhere.”

“I have never been dumped before,” he said again. He was right. It didn't sound obnoxious at all. It sounded desperate and sad.

“I'll see you around,” I whispered like a coward and walked away. That was the last time we saw each other.

 

“No, I don't want to talk to Hubert right now,” I say to Marie. “I'd rather talk to you.”

“You young thing! You're driving our Hubert crazy. I've never seen him this way.”

“Yes, well. That's the way it is. But I'm calling regarding tonight's show.”

“What show?”

There you go.

“Muriel B's.”

“Oh, when is it?”

I'd told her about fifteen times already.

“Tonight, at five. It must be written on your invitation.”

“Tonight? Oh, God, no! I'm busy tonight. I'm going to the Dior party. Bad luck!”

Is there any point in telling her that yesterday she confirmed that she would come? Rather, I say, “Well, Kazo will be there and…” And I tell her the names that Martin wouldn't give me.

“Is that right?” she says, sounding impressed.

No, actually it's not right, so I choose not to answer at all.

“I might arrange some time to see the show then. Really, we wouldn't like to neglect Muriel B, would we? I'll see what I can do. Do you want to talk to Hubert now?”

“Marie, if you'd ask Hubert, he'd tell you that he doesn't want to talk to me.”

“You are so wrong about that!”

“See you tonight, then,” I say and hang up. I hate fashion people.

I look up to see Catherine coming into my office with a beautiful bouquet—small but delightful. “For you,” she says briefly. She'll never forgive me for pushing
her
Nicolas out. The day she realized I was to move into
his
office and she was to work for me, she developed a permanent speech impediment—inability to address me with sentences longer then three words—and called in sick for the rest of the week.

I look at the card, it reads:

I ponder the message.
This time!

If it wasn't so tragic it would be kind of funny.

She probably means she was there for my birth, so I can't complain if she can't make it to the rest of the events that add up to
my life
.

It's not like it's a surprise.

I met up with Jodie a few days ago. Well,
met—
more like crashed into her trajectory. She was on her way to a something-something in Moscow connected to her new perfume. She called me from Charles de Gaulle Airport. She was connecting in Paris and thought it would be
nice
to catch up while she was waiting in the terminal.

“It's a real headache. It will be hours before I can board my next flight. I'm going to kill Nathalie (her PA) over this one.” Please note that she's been killing Nathalie for many, many years over absolutely everything. “Anyway—be fast.”

I was running through the terminal when I caught sight of her. She was sitting on the other side of a glass wall, all alone in her bubble, staring obsessively at a TV screen listing the next departing flights.

I knocked on the wall. She turned. She tapped her watch. Not a lot of time left. She stood and came to the wall. She looked tired and upset.

She said something but she was all moving lips and no sound, so I shook my head and pointed at my ears. She looked around and waved over a security officer like she was calling a waiter in a busy restaurant.

Once they identified who and in what awful mood she was, they arranged a private room for us—one of those tiny cells they normally use to strip-search suspects.

“I received your invitation,” Jodie said. “For Muriel's show. It's very unfortunate.”

“Unfortunate?”

“The date's all wrong. I can't make it. We're launching JB2 that week.”

A satellite?

“My new perfume. I'm all tied up. Anyway, how are you for money?” she asked as she took one of her it'll-fix-it-all envelopes from her purse.

“Wait a minute. How can you not make it?”

She looked awkward, frozen in midmovement, holding an envelope I wouldn't touch.

“Are you going to take it?”

“No.”

She put the envelope back in her purse. “You make it personal, Lynn. It's ridiculous. It's business. I'm launching a product. I'm busy. Point.”

“Oh, that's funny.”

“How's that?”

“I didn't receive
your
invite.”

“What invite?”

“The one for the launch of the perfume.”

“I never…What are you talking about? You never liked being dragged to those things.”

“I'm not eight years old anymore and it's not like you have to bring me to a nightclub and abandon me in a corner because you couldn't find a baby-sitter.”

“Why are we talking about that now? I'll ask Nathalie to send you an invitation, if it's what you want.”

Her phone rang.

“Look. It's probably her,” she said. “I'll tell her.”

“Please, don't pick it up.”

“Why?”

“We're not finished here.”

Oh la la!

“Do you realize I'm too tired to do this right now?”

“Oh, Jodie, trust me, I'm
very, very tired,
too.”

She looked at her cell-phone screen. “Nathalie,” she confirmed, sounding annoyed. “I thought it would be nice to see you, I didn't know you'd make it such a
pain
.”

“It's important for me to have you there, at the show.”

“Even if I wasn't so tied up, I generally never go to other designers' shows.”

“The problem, Jodie, is that it's not just another designer's show. Another graduation ceremony. Another birthday party. The problem is that it's
me
.”

Her phone rang again.

“I'll think about it,” she said, to put an end to the conversation, and took the call.

“Don't think about it, please, just come.”

“Ah! Nathalie!” She stood up. “I am going to kill you this time,” she said on the phone. “Do you have any idea what I'm going through?”

She was about to leave me in this white, sterile cube, when she looked at me over her shoulder and said, “You're becoming very confrontational. Very French! Muriel is having a very bad influence on you.”

 

I'm very French!

Very confrontational.

Ask Jodie!

That's why I stand on the Champs-Elysées right in front of Martin Villiers's agency about to press the intercom even though the plate reads:
CCA—Sur rendez-vous uniquement.
By appointment only.

Obviously I don't have an appointment. He wouldn't even return my call.

I ring.

“Oui?”
the intercom says.

“Delivery for Mr. Martin Villiers,” I say, looking away from the camera lens.

The door buzzes and opens. I take the elevator and walk into the CCA reception area. Oh, but I'm not in yet. The real treasure is behind two monumental wooden doors tightly locked behind the reception desk.

The receptionist, one of those long thin snake all-skin-no-muscles types, looks up from her computer and seems puzzled not to see a courier.

“I have an appointment with Mr. Villiers,” I lie before she has time to press her get-this-woman-out-of-here-right-now button.

“And…you are?”

“Tell Mr. Villiers…”

Tell him what? That I have a gun, his address and a picture of his children in my purse?

“Tell him it's very important.”

She shakes her head as if it was as impossible for her as sprinting up and down the Himalayas. “Mr. Villiers is out of the office,” she says.

Like hell he is! “Can you tell me where I can find him then?”

“I can't give you that information.”

I'm feeling frustrated. “You might get fired over this,” I threaten her.

“No, but I will certainly get fired if I tell you his whereabouts.”

Smart-ass! I'm about to change strategy and start to cry and beg, when the gigantic doors open and the breath is knocked out of my body.

Nicolas!

Even more gorgeous than I remembered.

And not alone.

He is all smiley and touchy-touchy with a tall blond girl, walking out of Villiers's office as if it's a natural thing to do for beautiful, successful people like them. While the toad-kind like me stays at the reception desk begging for an interview with the god of agents!

I want to kill them both.

So that's what he's doing with his days since he resigned from Muriel B, huh? Dating a blond goddess when I spend my life crying at the memories of us.

“What are you doing here?” he asks when he finally notices me.

Well, dying of humiliation, obviously!

I just shrug because I can't manage to get my voice back.

“You remember Clarice,” he says clumsily, pointing at the blond bombshell.

Wait a minute!

I recognize her.

She's not a movie star. She's the beautiful blonde that was flirting with me in Kazo's garden.

“You really should have come to the Gucci Party,” she says with a moue. “It was, like, completely mad.”

“I should have, shouldn't I?”

“We're going down to the Dior breakfast right now. Do you want to come with us?” she asks.

Yeah, that would be great, so I can refill your coffee while you French-kiss Nicolas.

“I don't think it's a good idea,” Nicolas says.

“Oh, but why?” She pouts seductively at him.

“Sorry. Can't, anyway,” I say, trying not to yell.

“We've just signed a deal with Clarice,” Nicolas explains. “She will be the new face of Xu.”

Ah! Does it mean that she has to have sex with you, too?

“So tonight is the big night?” he asks.

“Yeah, I sent you an invitation.”

“I know.”

“Are you coming?”

“I don't think so.”

“Too bad!”

The elevator doors open and Nicolas jumps in dragging Clarice along, happy to have an escape route.

“Wait!” I scream.

“What?” Nicolas holds the elevator door open and stares at me.

“Did you see Villiers in there?” I ask, pointing back at the magic doors.

“Martin? No, he is at the Dior breakfast like abso-
fucking
-lutely everybody!” Clarice says before Nicolas has a chance to pinch her.

 

Clarice manages to get me inside Le Troyen. This girl should get my job. She's everyone's little darling. She even kisses the security hunks.

“This place is very special,” Nicolas says annoyingly.

Since she wanted to invite me and insisted that he come along, he has no choice but to take this ride with me.

It's a sunny day. Le Troyen is like a little white castle slash greenhouse slash wedding cake in the middle of a flowery part of the Champs-Elysées. It's lovely, with blooming roses and hummingbirds.

“It's been open since the French Revolution,” he says. “I think that it's one of the rare restaurants in the world to have three Michelin stars.”

Oh, God almighty! I've stopped caring about the beautiful restaurant setting, and the history of French gastronomy. I'm onto something much bigger. Past the entrance of the white castle slash wedding cake, there is a perfect concentration of international celebrities.