Green Tea Won't Help You Now! (3 page)

Oh and by the by, my grandfather
is
the Duke of Heresford, but there is no better lie than the truth. I learnt that a long time ago.

Four

"Go down on your knees and bend over... relax in the child position for five breaths..."
 

I followed my own instructions, but I did not relax. I could not have been more electrified had I taken a needle and pushed it into the power plug. Images of a certain naked Viking warrior bearing down on me in this very stance had me buzzing all over. Clearly, my erogenous zones were vengeful for three years of disabuse and took it out on me with a zest. Inconveniently, my erogenous zones happened to cover my entire skin.

Alas, some turn off was provided by Drake's exaggerated breathing right behind me. He prides himself on the most resounding Ujjayi-Pranayama in LA. For those of you not familiar with this breathing technique: it is a means to focus your mind away from your thoughts by making your breath audible. It also helps to enrich your body with oxygen. To achieve the rushing noise you must narrow your throat. If done correctly, your breathing sounds like the ocean. In Drake's case it rather sounded like an AmTrack Express in a tunnel... but if it helped him in his practice, it was fine with me, although I had some doubts about his motives.
 

"Now come up slowly and through the plank move into the down dog, then jump to the front of your mat and come up breathing in."

In the mirror, I saw the group behind me raise their arms and put their hands together in front of their chests.
 

"Everybody grab a blanket and cosy up for Shavasana, the final relaxation."

I went to the stereo and played the soft meditation music I used for the final minutes of my classes. While my students lay still on their backs, I went into the tiny downstairs kitchen and prepared a large pot of green tea for everybody to share.
 

"Trixie, I don't know what it is, but you're radiant." Drake gave me his best, bleached smile and his wrinkles wrinkled becomingly. He brushed his hand through his wavy, silvery hair and struck a pose that could say either
I'm a Greek statue
or
I need a new knee, I can't keep any weight on it
.

"Thank you, Drake."

"Is it the new Yin yoga you've told us about yesterday? I feel a vibe coming from you..."

"Oh? Do you. Well... Would you like some tea?"

"I love your tea."

"Aha... why don't you enjoy it? I have to make a call." I hurried away with the telephone in my hand, making fake noises of greeting and exaltation. It is not that I would not like Drake, it is just that I cannot help breaking out into laughter whenever he tries to chat me up, which is more or less every day. I do not want to make him feel bad, you see.
 

In that very instant I also wanted everybody to just leave, leave, leave! I needed to prepare for my date with the God of Downhill, who would hopefully skewer me with his mighty pole!

With agonising slowness, my students shouldered their yoga mats and left one by one, each willing to give a summary to me about how relaxed they felt and how grateful they were to me for providing that same relaxation. "Yes, yes, yes... relaxed...Totally.. Great. See you, Martha, see you, Jody...Thanks. How lovely! Super! Until tomorrow! Until next week!"

As soon as everybody was gone I let out a scream of relief and shot up the stairs to my private abode. I tore off my shirt and my sweat pants and hurled them into a corner or other. With a pounding heart I stormed into the bathroom and ran the shower. I shaved my legs and other significant bits as accurately as my shaky hands would permit and shampooed and conditioned my hair with the thoroughness I deemed suitable. Between those applications I repeatedly had to catch my breath. I was so sexed up, you see. I gather that was how fourteen-year old boys must feel when they find a Hustler's magazine. Hormones out of control!

I browsed through my wardrobe for a dinner dress. With a shock I realised I could wear none of them. Most of them were hellishly expensive designer gowns, outdated, yes, but they betrayed their quality because the materials were way too fine and little emblems on buttons or zippers revealed their maker.

Now, what
could
I wear? Something simple, perhaps? A summer dress, maybe? I could finally make use of the white cotton dress I had bought at a tiny boutique a few blocks away, where two young women - who pretended not to be born rich - offered their self-made fashion for what I would call
bargain prices
.
 

Living by the ocean all year round had given me a nice, solid tan. As you can imagine, my complexion is quite dark anyway, thanks to my father's Argentine genes. White is a colour I can always pull off. But what if I fiddled about with my food or spilled some beverage all over myself? Bugger, I really had forgotten how stressful dating could be! Just because some bloke had icy blue eyes and was a head taller than me... God, he would feel so good draped all over me...

"Oh, shut up, brain!"
 

Fortunately, I had bought that same cotton dress in burgundy as well. I slipped into it and checked myself critically in the mirror. Yes, it would do. I applied a bottle of lipgloss and a truckload of mascara. No eye shadow or rouge. I did not need anything else, thanks to my natural colouring. My brows had a great natural shape, too. I seriously can not thank my mother often enough for having the sense not to marry another washed out English peer, but a handsome South American to freshen up the DNA. One only needed to look at my cousins Fionulla and Aubretia to see how the wrong choice of spouse might affect your children's destiny forever. If you ever saw a horse crossed with a poodle...Well, I cannot claim to be as strikingly beautiful as my brother Ryan, who brings everybody to their knees and also possesses this suave Old Harrovian
je ne sais quoi
. But I think I have at least an advantage over my sister Camille, who is simply a female version of my father - rather square - whereas I have inherited my mothers softer features and her pouty mouth. Oh dash it all, I really can not stick to a story if my life depended on it. Sorry!
 

Anyway. I thought I looked sexy, but natural with just the right amount of,
"I'm your Earth Goddess, plough my field of plenty"
, appeal. Jove, I was sure he could plough like the gold medallist he was.

I looked out of the window. The sun had gone down already. What time was it? Was I late, as usual? Where was my phone to tell me? Probably in my bed. I pushed away the linen clad covers and found the missing object half buried under a pillow. Oh bother, did I actually have to make my bed? Tidy up? If Alex took me home later, he would be coming in here, would he not? We could always decide to go to his place, of course, but that would seem far less spontaneous and rather premeditated. Grrr! Damn the purgatorial pitfalls of dating!
 

I had to calm myself. My students might have been relaxed down to their last nerve after ninety minutes of flow yoga, but I was not.
 

With my best pair of dark brown leather sandals in one hand, I jogged down the winding staircase into the studio. I unrolled a mat and went into a down dog, from there I lowered myself into a dolphin. The pressure on my arms felt good, but it was not enough to calm my nerves. I needed something more complete. Therefore, I went into a headstand and closed my eyes. A cool brush of air touched my buttocks as the dress came down over my head.
 

I breathed deeply.
 

Yes... I felt much better. But I could do with a stronger stretch.
 

I spread my legs wide until my feet touched the ground left and right of me. I breathed in, held, stretched my legs even wider until it really hurt, breathed out again, stretched... I bent each knee in change, breathed in, held, breathed out, stretched—
 

"Hello? Trixie, is that you?" Alexander Silverston's voice was resounding right next to me.

"Wh—uck," I croaked and tried to jump up, which is not so easy when you are standing on your head with your legs spread, your panties up and you are entangled in a cotton dress. It ended with me somehow rolling over my shoulder and clambering to my feet, furiously pushing the dress down.

"How did you get in here?" I demanded, outraged.
 

Boy, he looked good. He wore a light blue shirt and slim chinos.
 

"Sorry, I'm a bit early, but the door was open and there's also a sign by the door that says
open
so I concluded the studio was, well, open. That looked really difficult what you just did."

I was trying to regain control over my breath, as you can well imagine, and I was blushing terribly. At least I could blame that condition on standing on my head for a significant amount of time. "Yes, well... it's not difficult for me, but I suppose it does look quite challenging to the uninitiated. It relaxes me, in fact."

"Wow, I don't want to know what you do if you want some action."

I swallowed a roguish comment. He just had a very graphic teaser of what he surely wanted to inspect much more closely later in the evening and I did not need to tease him any further. From the way he was looking at me, I could vividly picture the movie rolling behind those sapphirine orbs. I had watched it all day long myself.

"I go running on the beach."

"Hey, I can do that. But I'm sure with a little practise, I could do the splits standing on my head, too."

"I'm sure you could..."

"Are you ready? Will you be wearing shoes?"

I smiled, regaining my stance. I wanted to seduce this man, remember? I used to be quite good at it back in the day and he was a morsel I did not want to miss. "Will I need them?"

"I don't know. I made a reservation at La Spiaggia. Been there before?"

"No, cool." I could honestly say. La Spiaggia was a relatively new, organic pizzeria in Malibu Beach, where the stars went if they wanted to eat without the eager lenses of the paparazzi on them. Since I had come to Venice as Trixie Beaumont, I had not indulged in the good life and chi chi restaurants anymore. It was highly unlikely I would meet anybody there who knew the old Laetitia Corvera-Fabergé of Rolls Royces and helicopters. The Euro-Caribbean crowd is very different from the So-Cal crowd. My former jet-set friends never bothered with the West Coast but I used to come to LA with my father when he sold polo ponies in Beverly Hills and fell head over heels in love with it. Great problem of mine, I used to fall head over heels in love all the time. By the way, thinking of my father, guess whom I had forgotten to call?

Alex smiled. "Great. I was afraid you might not eat carbs... only chew leaves."

I shook my head. "No, I may eat one pizza per moon cycle. But you're right, on even days I drink unpasteurized milk of holy cows and on uneven days I eat sautéd kale."

"Great, it keeps you looking fresh."

"To imagine I'm not a day over seventy." I grabbed my purse and effortlessly slipped into my sandals. If you had spent most of your young adult life on yachts where shoes are an absolute, "no-no", you would have become a master in the art of shoe-slipping too.

"I think our ride will please you then."
 

We walked out of the studio and there it stood: a red 1960s Cadillac convertible. Oh no... Did he want to impress me with his cars? A Jaguar this morning, a Cadillac tonight? How cute.

"I thought it might suit you. You could be the star from a sixties movie."

Bitch, you are so on,
I thought, and I wondered whether we could do it in the backseat. I calculated that I should not eat too much pizza or I would have a hard time later on. Burping can be quite a turn off.
 

"Thank you..."

"You're welcome." He held the door open for me and I sat down on the white leather seat.

"So, Alexander, do you live in Malibu?"

He started the engines. "No, I live on Mulholland Drive. Hollywood Hills."

I hurrayed in appreciation. "Gosh, you have this city's best view."

"Yes. It's amazing. From my living room, I can see the Pacific on one side and downtown Los Angeles on the other."

"How sensational!" The images in my head gained a whole new quality. I visualised our bodies entwined before a glittering skyline.

"Absolutely. Of course it's not as exciting as Venice up there. "

We pulled onto the coastal highway. The traffic was not too bad, it would take us about half an hour to make it to La Spiaggia.

"Venice is magical," I agreed. "California is such a blessed land and Venice is the most blessed spot of them all. I think there must be an energetic junction."

"Most likely the Ring of Fire. One day all the positive energy will blow us into the sky."

I chortled.
Just wait who is going to blow who into the sky tonight...

"Might be, but it also has to do with feeling protected by the giant ocean in front of you and the giant continent in your back. It's like living in a gigantic, soft cotton ball. I also think I love Venice so much because it reminds me of Buenos Aires."

"Buenos Aires? Are you from Argentina?"

Oh, blah! I really had to be more careful with what I said!

"My family is, but I grew up in the UK."

"How come?"

Because my mum, the Lady Cynthia, daughter of the richest peer in Britain, met my father, captain of the Argentine national polo team and heir to a horse breeding empire and they decided to get married and honeymoon on a mega-yacht...?

"My father went there for work."

"What does he do for a living?"

He owns close to three-hundred polo ponies and sells them to the superrich all over the planet...?

"He's a travelling salesmen for Argentine specialties."

"Retired now?"

"No..."

"Damn, is it the same in England? People have to work and work until they're eighty. If I weren't successful at what I do, my parents would still be drudging on. They used to own a small hotel by Lake Tahoe. Now they live on a ranch."