“Hey there. Emmy?” Paul placed a few fingers on the top of her hand. “You still with me?”
“Sorry. What were you saying?”
“I was saying that I have to get going. I was supposed to meet some friends at ten, but I, uh, got distracted.” His sheepish smile made her heart skip a beat. “Any other time I’d invite you to come—I’d insist on it—but, well, it’s actually a birthday party for my ex, and I’m not sure she’d be thrilled if I brought…someone. You know?”
The projector in Emmy’s head came to an abrupt stop; the screen showing the two of them laughing as they raided her minibar for more wine was replaced with one where she alone watched the endless loops on CNN International, clad in her holey gray T-shirt, popping those massive French framboises by the fistful.
She managed a smile. “No, no, no. Of course! I totally understand. It would be weird and inconsiderate to show up with another girl. Plus, I’m really feeling the jet lag right now—Christ, it’s hitting me like a ton of bricks. And I have such an early meeting tomorrow, so I wouldn’t be able to go, anyway.” Stop talking! she urged herself. You’re seconds away from telling him all about the horrible ingrown on your bikini line you picked earlier today until it bled and now makes you look like you have herpes. Or the fact that all that coffee followed by all that wine is making your stomach feel a little funky, and while you’re devastatingly disappointed that he’s ditching you right now, you’re relieved that you’ll have a little time alone. Just stop speaking this moment!
Paul motioned to the waiter for their check.
“No, please, let me,” she said, reaching rather forcefully across their tiny table. A remixed Shirley Basset song thumped from the speakers behind them and Emmy was surprised to see how thoroughly the entire lobby had transformed into a dark velvety lair of magnificent people.
“I really am sorry to leave like this, but they’re my oldest friends and it’s been forever….”
“Of course! Don’t worry about a thing.” She had already accepted that she was going upstairs alone. The idea of falling into bed with Paul as part of a promise she made to her friends felt ridiculous. Who was she kidding? It just wasn’t in her nature. Fine for other girls—fantastic, in fact, for people like Adriana—but Emmy just wasn’t made like that. She wanted to know someone, know him in every sense of the word, and sex was something that naturally followed that process, not some impulsive act that took the place of it. Besides, she was here all week. Maybe they could meet again the next day for dinner…. Oh, wait, she had evening meetings the next night. Well, then they’d have to meet for drinks afterward. Start at the hotel, perhaps, because it was the most convenient, and then roam some charming cobblestone streets before ducking into the perfect Parisian bistro for some late-night frites and Coca-Cola Lights. At that point, they would have spent hours and hours together, maybe even kissed under one of those romantic wrought-iron streetlamps—just gently, of course, a soft, whispery thing with no tongue and no pressure to take it further. Yes, that would be ideal.
He walked her to the tiny elevator tucked into a pitch-black corner of the lobby and stepped aside as an exceedingly attractive couple stepped off.
“It was nice to meet you, Em. Emmy. Which do people call you?”
“Both. But my closest friends have always used Em, so I like that.” She gave him her most winning smile.
“Well, uh, I’m headed out in the morning, so I guess this is good-bye.”
“Oh. Really? Where’s home?” She realized she didn’t even know where he lived.
“Not home yet, unfortunately. I’ll be in Geneva for the next two days, and then possibly Zurich, depending.”
“Sounds busy.”
“Yeah, the travel schedule can be intense. But, uh, well, it really was great to meet you.” He paused and grinned. “I said that already, didn’t I?”
Emmy told herself that the lump in her throat was a combination of PMS and jet lag and too much wine, and had absolutely positively nothing to do with Paul. Yet she was afraid she’d cry if she tried to speak, so she merely nodded.
“Get some rest, okay? And don’t let any of the Costes people push you around. Promise?”
She nodded again.
He tipped her face up toward his own and for a second she was quite certain he was going to kiss her. Instead, he looked into her eyes and smiled again. Then he kissed her cheek and turned away.
“Good night, Emmy. Take care of yourself.”
“Good night, Paul. You, too.”
She stepped onto the elevator, and before the doors closed, he was gone.
“Fatty! Fatty! Fatty!” the nasty bird cawed. It had awakened, like a human infant, at five-forty-five that morning—a Saturday!—and refused to go back to sleep. Adriana tried humming to it, feeding it, holding it, playing with it, and, finally, locking it in the guest bathroom with the lights off, but the little winged beast persisted in its verbal barrage.
“Big girl! Big girl! Big girl!” it screeched, its head bobbing up and down like a dashboard dog.
“Now you listen to me, you little fucker,” Adriana hissed, her lips nearly touching the cage’s metal bars. “I am a lot of things—a lot of lousy, crummy things—but fat is not one of them. Do you understand me?”
The bird cocked its head to the side as if he were considering her question. Adriana thought he may have even nodded, and she turned to go back to bed, satisfied. She hadn’t even stepped through the bathroom door when the bird cawed—more quietly this time, she would swear—“Fat girl.”
“You bastard!” she screamed, nearly lunging at the cage. It took every ounce of willpower not to toss the whole thing out the twenty-sixth-floor window. The bird merely looked at her curiously. “Oh my god,” she muttered to herself. “I’m talking to a parrot.”
Adriana had always thought Emmy was overreacting about the bird; it wasn’t until this very moment—when the sleep deprivation really began to set in and her self-esteem hung by a thread—that she understood how damaging it must be to reside with the animal fulltime.
She rooted through the linen closet in search of an oversized towel but eagerly grabbed a Frette fitted sheet when it was the first thing she saw. Tossing it over the cage and tucking its elasticized border snugly underneath, Adriana briefly worried that she might be suffocating it. Deciding she could live with that possible consequence, she drew the bathroom blinds and shut off the lights. Miraculously, the bird remained quiet. It wasn’t until she was safely back under the covers with her cucumber eye mask resecured that she exhaled. Thank god.
She was drifting off when the phone rang, and she was so tired that she actually answered it.
“Adi? Are you still sleeping?” Gilles’s voice, uncharacteristically deep for someone so slight, boomed through the phone.
“We’re not meeting today until one. It’s only ten. Why are you calling me?”
“Well, well, someone’s not a morning person!” he sang, sounding delighted.
“Gilles…”
“Sorry. Look, I have to cancel lunch today. I know I’m a hideous friend, but I got a better offer.”
“A better offer? First the bird calls me fat, and now you’re saying you got a better offer?”
“The bird? What?”
“Forget it. So enlighten me, what constitutes a better offer than chopped salads and Bloody Marys and manicures?”
“Oh, I don’t know…. Maybe, um…let’s see…only the opportunity of a lifetime. Are you ready for this?”
“I’m ready,” Adriana said, working hard to sound highly uninterested.
“The agency called to say that Ricardo got stuck on a shoot in Ibiza and couldn’t make it back for today’s booking.”
“Mmm.” Adriana vaguely remembered that Gilles and Ricardo were sworn competitors, although she tended to think that this vicious competition stemmed more from Gilles than from Ricardo, who, much to Gilles’s chagrin, seemed quite content to accept almost all of the agency’s most prestig
ious assignments. He did most of the big names in Hollywood and his calendar was booked annually for—and a year in advance of—the awards shows. The two men had gone to beauty school together, assisted together at all the Madison Avenue salons, and then, even though both were promoted to the floor at the exact same time, Ricardo had somehow become a superstar.
“Any idea what today’s booking is?” Gilles sounded ready to jump out of his skin.
“Let’s see, what could it be? A photo shoot!” she said with snotty faux enthusiasm.
He ignored her. “Oh, it’s nothing. I’m sure you don’t want to hear what it will be like to do Angelina’s hair on the set of The City Dweller, which just so happens to be the movie they’re calling her sexiest ever. Funny, I was thinking about inviting you to come along and meet everyone, but I’m sure you’d never be into that….”
“Angelina?”
“The one and only.”
“Her sexiest movie ever?”
“They’re saying it makes Mr. and Mrs. Smith look like The Sound of Music.”
Adriana exhaled. “Do you think Brad will be there?”
“Who knows? Anything’s possible. I heard there’s a good chance she’ll have Maddox with her.”
Maddox. An interesting development. As much as Adriana disliked children—especially the shriekers and the ones with runny noses—she’d fallen in love with the entire Brangelina brood. Granted, screams and snot didn’t really come across in the pages of US Weekly, but Adriana was certain these children were different: composed, dignified, possibly even sophisticated. And there was no denying their style. She’d love to see that stylish Cambodian adoptee in person. Pax would be worthwhile, too, but no one—not Zahara nor even Shiloh—would be as rewarding as a Maddox sighting. She bolted upright in bed and began a frantic search through her open closet. What does one wear to a movie set?
“I’m so there!” she squealed, her usually aloof demeanor completely shattered. “Where and when?”
Gilles was kind enough not to laugh. “I thought you might be interested,” he said with deliberate coolness. “Corner of Prince and Mercer in an hour. I’m not sure where the hair and makeup trailers will be parked exactly, but text me when you’re there and I’ll come find you.”
Adriana clicked her phone shut and bolted into the shower. Hesitant to look like she’d made any effort beyond the cursory, she applied a little lemon-scented baby powder to her roots but kept her hair unwashed, resulting in a sexy tumble of waves. She used tinted moisturizer instead of her usual skin-perfecting foundation and rubbed a bit of lip gloss into her cheeks before slicking it across her lips. A quick dab of white shimmer powder in the corners of her eyes—a trick passed down from her mother’s modeling days—and a single coat of brownish-black mascara completed her face. Her wall-mounted magnifying mirror confirmed that not a trace of makeup was detectable, but the outcome left her looking fresh-faced, glowing, and gorgeous.
The outfit took a bit longer. She discarded two sundresses, a belted tunic, and a pair of tight white pants before finding the winner: perfectly worn skinny Levi’s that literally lifted and displayed her ass, topped with two barely-there racerback tanks layered one over the other and finished with this season’s Chloe buckle flats. Her skin, permanently tan from both genes and months spent on the beaches of Rio, literally popped against the white cotton tank tops, and her hair spilled down over her shoulders. She added a mismatched bunch of gold bangles to one bronzed wrist and chose a pair of small, understated gold knot earrings to finish the look. Forty-five minutes after hanging up with Gilles, Adriana tiptoed past the guest bathroom toward the front door, loathe to wake the sleeping bird.
“Arghwahhhhhhh!”
She heard flapping and another screech—indiscernible in content but oddly mournful in nature—followed by more frantic flapping. Christ, she thought as she opened the bathroom door. It sounds like he’s dying in there.
“You cannot die right now,” she addressed the sheet-draped cage. “At least have the courtesy to wait until after I meet Maddox. Better yet, wait for Emmy. I have no idea what to do with a dead bird.”
Silence. Then, a positively sorrowful cry. She’d never heard anything like it before, but the misery of it made her shiver with fear.
Adriana jumped forward and tore the sheet from the cage, desperate to quiet the suffering animal. “What is it, Otis?” she crooned through the bars. “Are you sick?”
It wasn’t until Otis cocked his head in that telltale—and perfectly healthy—way that Adriana knew she’d been had. She’d made it out of the bathroom and halfway through the foyer before Otis belted out “Fat Girl!” in triplicate, stopping only to cackle between calls.
“Go ahead and die, you winged rodent. I hope it’s long and slow and very painful. I’ll dance on your miserable birdie grave.” The whole situation was enraging! Just because Emmy felt too guilty to sell or murder the damn bird should not mean that others had to endure its abuse. What are you supposed to say when your best friend calls the night before her trip, panicked that her vet no longer boards birds in his kennel? Any remotely rational person would say exactly what Adriana had said—namely, that if she couldn’t wear it, eat it, or accessorize with it, she wasn’t interested—but Emmy’s sheer panic had eventually worn her down. She swore that Otis was relatively low maintenance and that with the exception of a few moody outbursts, Adriana probably wouldn’t even notice he was there. Yeah, not notice. That’s why she was standing in the elevator, wondering if her hips looked a bit wider these days. Or why she was about to trek the twenty blocks downtown rather than take a cab, because clearly she needed the exercise. Fucking buzzard.
Her heart rate was elevated from a combination of physical exertion and excitement by the time she arrived, and she felt a little sticky from sweat, but the dampness gave Adriana a sheen that heightened her beauty. Not a few passing men wondered if she’d just rolled out of bed after a morning of lovemaking; the others wondered what it would be like to join her.
Gilles appeared moments after she texted him. He noticed a group of PAs standing outside one of the trailers watching them, so he grabbed Adriana’s hips, pushed his pelvis against hers, and kissed her full on the mouth. “Damn, girl, you’re gorgeous,” he announced. “Almost makes me wish I were straight.”
“Yes, querido, me, too. I’d marry you in a second. In fact, if I haven’t found myself a husband in the next year, will you marry me?”
“Tempting, I have to say. Commit to one person for the rest of my life and a woman at that? Just castrate me now.”
“Wait, I think I’m onto something. We’d have a completely open relationship, of course—you’d be welcome to sleep with anyone you like—but we could go to parties and family stuff together and still have our own separate lives. We’d be the new Will and Grace. I think it sounds fantastic.”
“Yes, Adi dear, but what, may I ask, is in it for me? You forget, I do all of those things now without being married….”
“What’s in it for you? Hmm,” Adriana pressed her forefinger to her lips and pretended to think. “Let’s see. Oh, I don’t know…unrestricted access to my unlimited trust fund, perhaps? Would that work?”
Gilles dropped to one denim-glad knee and brought her hand to his lips. “Adriana de Souza, will you marry me?”
She laughed and pulled him up. “One year, querido. I’ve got one year to find myself a proper husband—and by proper, I mean one who wants to have sex with me—and if not, you and I are getting hitched. Sound good?”
“I’m hard right now, I swear I am. Just say it again: trust fund.”
He led her halfway down Prince Street before breaking the news that there would be no Angelina introductions that day.
“Tell me you’re kidding. I got up and showered and dressed at ten A.M., for chrissake. Is Maddox at least here with a nanny?”
“Sorry, honey. But I am scheduled to do Paul Rudd in twenty minutes, and you’re welcome to come sit in.”
Adriana sniffed. “He’s cute, I guess.”
“And, if you’re a good girl, I might even let you stay for the early-evening shoot—”
“Thanks, but no thanks. I’m going out with that finance guy.”
“Oh, that finance guy. Got it. Well, as super-fun as that sounds, they’re shooting a scene tonight with Tyra…a lingerie scene…and there’s talk that Naomi might join her….”
“Shut up.”
“Not kidding.”
“When?”
“It’s called for seven at Sky Studios. There’ll probably be drinks afterward.”
Adriana slowly exhaled and looked at Gilles. “I’m in.”
“Given.” He pulled open the door on a Haddad’s trailer and waited for Adriana to step ahead. A teenage girl she didn’t recognize sat patiently in one of four chairs, back to the lit mirror, as a pudgy female stylist wrestled a round brush through the girl’s thick waves. The other three chairs appeared recently vacated, still littered with Mason Pearson brushes, T3 ionic hairdryers, and every Kérastase product sold in North America.
“Gilles, they pushed up the call time by a half hour because Tobias needs to get out of here early,” the stylist called out over the drone of the blowdryer. “I’m handling everything here, so why don’t you head to the location for touch-ups?”