This must be Mavis.
“Sorry. I was takin’ a bit of a nap. Did you need somethin’ then, luv?”
“Yes, please. Could you show us how to use the phone? We can’t get it to work.”
“You won’t.” She unwrapped a Caramello. “That phone’s broken.”
“Well, can we use yours then?” Mary Jo asked.
Mavis gave a regretful shake of her burgundy head. “Sorry, luv. Nigel keeps it locked up at night.” She scowled. “’e don’t want no one running up the bill.”
“But what if there’s an emergency?” I ran my fingers through my hair.
“Then I push this buzzer under the counter to wake ’im up and ’e makes the call.” Her Bordeaux-penciled eyebrows lifted. “Is this an emergency, then?”
Yes. A fashion emergency.
“Not exactly.” Mary Jo shot her a winning smile. “But it is important. My friend has the wrong luggage, and we need to call the airport.”
Mavis jerked her head toward the exit. “Phone box down the corner.”
Well, finally. For all the help it was.
The airline couldn’t do anything over the phone. We’d have to schlep all the way back out to Heathrow tomorrow to turn in the large mystery man’s suitcase and hopefully retrieve mine at the same time.
Racing to the red phone box without our coats, we’d gotten chilled, but by the time we reached our fifty-ninth stair, we’d more than warmed up. I know they say that women don’t sweat, but “glisten”— but “they” would be wrong. Sticky sweat was now trickling down my back and underarms.
Peeling off my ripe sweater, I washed it out in the ancient sink and laid it on the radiator to dry overnight. I really needed a bath too, but I just didn’t have the energy. Instead, I just did a fast face scrub and quick swipe under my arms before I donned my pajamas, which fortunately had been in the small bag. I slipped between the sheets just as Mary Jo began to snore lightly.
It could be worse, you know, I told myself. You still have your Manolos—good thing you wore them on the plane. And you’ll still be seeing the man of your dreams tomorrow night. At last . . .
Images of Alex’s surprised face . . . his arms open wide . . . and our subsequent, inevitable, unforgettable kiss played through my mind in a continual loop as I fell asleep.
Drying my sweater on the radiator had been a good idea, really—except that sometime during the night, the radiator turned off. So when I went to dress after showering—don’t even get me started on the ineffectual shower—
Remember it’s all part of the traveling adventure. It’s all part of the adventure . . .
—my thick sweater, though no longer dripping wet, was still damp.
Very damp.
“Good thing I didn’t wash my jeans,” I grumbled, grabbing my blow dryer and aiming it at my now-very-heavy black V-neck.
Mary Jo’s stomach emitted its familiar loud rumble. “Pheebs, you’re welcome to wear one of my shirts. I know I’m not the fashion plate you are, but it’s just to breakfast and out to the airport, then you can change into your clothes.”
She held up her two turtlenecks. “Take your pick.” Then she grinned. “Unless of course you’d rather wear my sweatshirt?”
I took one look at the horses galloping across the front of her olive-drab sweatshirt and opted for the lesser of two evils.
Even though yellow always makes me look washed-out.
“Beans for breakfast?” Mary Jo looked askance at the full plate set before her. “I feel like I’m in a western. Only thing missing is the campfire and tin coffeepot.”
“Remember; when in Rome . . .” But even I had to admit that our traditional English breakfast of fried eggs, bacon, sausage, mushrooms, beans, toast, and fried tomato (or as they say, “to-mah-to”) was a bit daunting.
“What is this?” she hissed, poking at the round red blob on her plate. “It looks like a blood clot.”
“Shh. Remember Fried Green Tomatoes? This is just a grilled red tomato cut in half rather than sliced thin.” I pushed up the yellow turtleneck’s too-long sleeves and looked down at my overflowing plate. And they say Americans do everything big . . .
The streaky bacon was a revelation—delicious and more like ham or Canadian bacon. And the eggs and toast were equally as good. But when I cut into my tomato, it bled all over the plate.
“Thanks, MJ.”
I gulped my tea, which was perfection.
No one can make a cup of tea like the Brits. Steaming hot—no little metal pitcher full of tepid water there—full-bodied, and rich. With milk and sugar, of course.
MJ had allowed me to coax her away from her normal morning coffee, but she balked at “milky” tea.
“I like my tea plain.”
“C’mon. Have you ever tried it this way? When in England . . .”
She scowled and took a cautious sip. “Hmmm. This is pretty good.”
When we rolled out of the dining room twenty minutes later, we agreed that the next day we’d forego the full breakfast in favor of toast and yogurt. And maybe a little fresh fruit.
Careful to mind the gap, we headed back to Heathrow to make the suitcase swap. I pulled my leather jacket close to hide as much of the baggy yellow turtleneck as possible, happy I wouldn’t be wearing it much longer.
An hour later, I wasn’t as happy.
My suitcase was nowhere to be found. Today of all days, when I’d at long last be seeing Alex.
My lip quivered, but before I managed to go into major meltdown mode, the baggage guy said hastily, “Don’t worry, luv. Check back tomorrow. It’ll most likely show up by then—maybe even later today.” He handed me a piece of paper with a number to call.
“This was not how I planned to spend my first day in London,” I whined to Mary Jo as we rode the Underground back into the city.
“I know. But stuff happens.” She took a deep breath. “So let’s go shopping and get you some clothes.”
I stared at her. “You hate to shop.”
She grimaced. “I know. But what’s the alternative?”
The alternative was for history-buff Mary Jo to visit the British Museum while I shopped. We’d meet back up at the hotel in two hours and start our first official day of sightseeing together.
“Are you sure, Pheebs?” She tried not to look too excited.
“It will be a sacrifice. Missing all those Egyptian artifacts and old rocks and stuff in favor of racks and racks of brand-new clothes. But it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make for the good of our vacation.”
An hour later, I stood in line at a Debenham’s register with three pairs of pants, some cute T-shirts, a kicky little jean jacket, two sweaters, a classic black turtleneck—that fit—and a gorgeous scarlet silk blouse.
Just wait ’til Alex sees me tonight in my smart trousers, silk blouse, leather jacket, and Manolos. It will be like when Rick first sees Ilsa. He’ll only have eyes for me . . . The “As Times Goes By” melody began to play in my head.
A clipped English voice snapped me from my Casablanca fantasy. “Sorry. Your card has been declined.”
“Excuse me?”
She repeated, “Your card has been declined.”
The blood rushed to my face. Behind me in line, someone tapped her foot.
“Sorry.” Cheeks flaming, I fumbled in my wallet. “I gave you the wrong card.” I yanked out my Visa and handed it to the salesclerk with an apologetic smile. Then I pretended an absorbed interest in a scarf display off to one side.
“This one’s been rejected too.”
“Do you take ATM?” Please God.
“Of course.”
I punched in my pin number and studied my French manicure. “Declined” flashed across the pin pad. I hit clear and tried again, flashing another apologetic smile to the women lined up behind me. “Sorry, I think I typed in the wrong number. Won’t be a minute.”
“Declined” flashed again.
“Perhaps you’d prefer to pay cash?” the clipped voi
ce said.
Cash? I did some quick mental calculations. MJ and I had withdrawn forty pounds apiece from the airport ATM. With dinner, the tube, candy, the Internet café . . . I may be hopeless at math, but even I could figure out that the twenty-odd pounds remaining wasn’t enough.
“Uh, no, that’s okay.” I slunk out of the store.
What is wrong with my ATM? It worked fine last night. I know my balance was getting low, but my paycheck was deposited today.
Or was it?
A sick feeling washed over me. Before I’d left on vacation, I’d finally gotten around to closing out my Cleveland checking account and opening a new account in nearby Lodi. And I’d filled out the paperwork to have my Bulletin paycheck deposited directly into my new bank. I’d planned to drop off the paperwork at the bank before I left. But in the rush of the trip, I now realized, I’d forgotten to do it. In my mind’s eye I could see the bank envelope still on the right-hand corner of my desk at work.
Idiot. Stupid, irresponsible idiot.
Feeling lightheaded, I ducked into a Wimpy’s restroom and checked my money belt, hidden beneath Mary Jo’s turtleneck: twenty-seven pounds and some change.
I asked the pockmarked teen behind the counter for directions to the nearest Internet café, where I shot off an urgent appeal to Gordon to rush my paperwork to the bank—“without telling Mom, please.”
Wouldn’t want to worry her. She already thinks I’m scatterbrained, always going around with my head in the clouds and—
So did Mary Jo.
MJ! What am I going to tell her?
Tell her the truth, my reasonable self urged. You goofed up. She’s your friend. She’ll understand. Goes with the whole spiritual-giant territory . . .
Nope. Too humiliating, my embarrassed spiritual-loser self argued. I won’t say anything. Won’t need to. By tomorrow, Lord willing, my cash-flow problems should be solved.
Just need to make it through today.
But at this point, Phil’s big-bucks job offer was looking awfully tempting. If I took it, I wouldn’t be living paycheck to paycheck and finding myself in this kind of predicament.
Once I had paid for my Internet time, I was down to less than twenty-five pounds. And still with nothing to wear tonight. No way was I going to meet Alex in Mary Jo’s baggy yellow turtleneck. Not after all this time.
I gazing longingly in dazzling store window after store window. And as I continued to wander in an abject daze, all of a sudden a smaller, much-less-dazzling window hove into view.
A charity shop?
I peered inside the thrift store window and saw racks of clothing. Not exactly my normal shopping territory, but it would have to do.
Before MJ and I set off sightseeing, we put our heads together and agreed to forego the bunch of men in white wigs in Parliament and visit Westminster Abbey instead.
I’d seen the Abbey before on TV—who could forget Princess Diana’s funeral, with the heartrending white envelope on the royal casket that simply said “Mummy”? But television couldn’t prepare me for the wonder and majesty of the real thing.
The gorgeous stained glass absolutely took my breath away, but it was the floor that really captured my interest. “Check out all these dead people we’re walking on, MJ.” A former obit writer, I was fascinated by the wealth of material at my Manolo-shod feet. We walked over and around—with me being especially careful in my skinny heels—the graves of such notables as Oliver Cromwell, Charles Darwin, and David Livingstone of Stanley and Livingstone fame.
Then we made our way to Poet’s Corner, where I was brought up short to see all the great writers memorialized there: Charles Dickens, T. S. Eliot, Lewis Carroll, Jane Austen, and the Brontë sisters. Even Wordsworth, my daffodil poet!
“I’ll bet none of them wrote about emus or investment portfolios,”
I whispered to MJ, who was walking around in a daze. “Such exalted company—makes me want to rush right back to our hotel room and start working on the great American novel.”
Or at least one little story, which could later be the basis for the great American novel.
Mary Jo fidgeted. “Can you hold that thought for a while, Ms. Novelist Wannabe? I really need to find a bathroom.”
“You mean loo.”
“Loo, schmoo. I don’t care what they call it as long as they have one.”
They didn’t. We searched and searched and finally asked a guide, who informed us, “The Abbey is an ancient building, so there are no public lavatories inside.”
She did, however, direct us to a public lavatory across the street where MJ could take care of business. We emerged from the loo ready to resume our sightseeing—except now it was pouring down rain, and neither one of us had brought an umbrella.
There was no help for it; we would have to hail one of the cool black London taxis that look like a holdover from some thirties black-and- white movie. With any luck, we’d get a driver who looked like Cary Grant or Peter O’Toole. Or maybe Clive Owen.
What we got was Simon Cowell with a cockney accent. And without the wit.
Once the acerbic cabbie dropped us off at Trafalgar Square, I dragged Mary Jo to the National Gallery, where I feasted on Renoirs, Monets, and Van Goghs. But my fidgeting friend wanted to feast on something that would stick to her physical ribs a bit more—and my feet were beginning to throb again. So after an hour, I sighed. “All right, you Philistine, let’s go get some lunch.” One of the gallery guards recommended the nearby café in the Crypt below a church called St. Martin’s in the Field.
“Lunch in a crypt?” MJ said. “That’s a bit macabre.”
“I see dead people,” I parroted Haley Joel Osment.
But tonight at long last I’m going to see one of my favorite live ones.
I tore into my sandwich with lip-smacking relish.
MJ looked at me in surprise that evening as we got dressed for the big surprise. I kept my same pair of black jeans on but also donned a red Christian Dior sweater. “Is that all you bought on your shopping spree today? I figured you’d buy out the store.”
“Nope.” I tossed my head. “I’m going with the less-is-more approach while I’m here.”
Her eyebrows knit together. Then her face cleared, and she gave me a searching look. “Phoebe, do you need money?”
“No!” I answered a little too quickly.
Lord, please forgive me for that little white one and the one I’m about to tell now. “Actually, I was remembering how awful it was getting all my luggage on the train when we first arrived. If I go and buy a bunch more clothes now and then the airport finds my bag, where in the world would I put them?” I shuddered. “The last thing I want to do is add another suitcase to the mix.”
She looked at me in delighted amazement. “Wow. I think you’re getting logical in your old age, Pheebs.”
We settled into our seats, and I pulled my leather jacket closer to conceal the small rip at the bottom of my beautiful new thrift-store sweater. I picked up the opera glasses Cordelia had given us, eager to catch a surreptitious glimpse of my Alex. Delia had told me where they’d be sitting—in their family box on the other side of the theater—so there’d be no chance of our running into him until after the play.
Where is he? I can’t find him! My heart clenched, then relaxed. “There he is,” I whispered to Mary Jo. “Adorable as ever—he’s gotten a haircut, though. And those must be his parents behind him, and there’s Delia sitting next to her dad. But wait—who’s that?” I gripped the glasses tighter. “She wasn’t in the family portrait.”
“Who?” MJ picked up her pair of opera glasses.
“The gorgeous blonde who keeps clutching his arm.” At that moment, said gorgeous blonde whispered something in his ear and Alex threw back his head and laughed.
I lowered my glasses, feeling sick. “He did that with me too.”
“Does he have another sister?”
“No, just Delia.”
“Well maybe it’s a cousin or som
ething. Don’t jump to conclusions, Pheebs.”
My stomach unclenched, and my face brightened. Note to self:Relax. Breathe. And listen to wise friend. Remember, back in Barley you assumed Cordelia was Alex’s girlfriend. So rein in the neuroses already.
When the curtain began to fall, I whispered to Mary Jo, “Okay, let’s book it. We don’t want to miss them.” Hurrying to the other side of the theater, we affected a casual stance on the far side of the curtain outside their box.
Delia appeared first and gave us a big wink, followed by her parents, who didn’t notice us, and finally Alex and . . . that woman. Seeing the too-gorgeous and way-too-skinny blonde with her arm linked through Alex’s made me hesitate and wonder if I was doing the right thing.
But it was too late now.
I nodded to Mary Jo, who began to hum “As Time Goes By.” Then I took a deep breath and said in my best Bogie voice, “Of all the theaters, in all the towns, in all the world, you walked into mine . . .”
[chapter ten]
Surprise Attack
alex dropped the blonde’s arm and spun around, his gorgeous, kissable mouth hanging open.
“Care to buy a vowel?” I teased.
“Phoebe! Mary Jo! What are you doing here?”
Coming to see you, you big goof. So why aren’t we in a lip-lock yet?
Down, passion girl. My cold-shower voice of reason held me in check. You don’t want your first kiss to be in front of his parents, do you?
Well, maybe not . . . But he could at least run up and take me in his arms.
“Surprised?”
“Surprised? I’m gobsmacked!”
“Gob what?” Mary Jo moved in to give Alex a friendly hug.
He returned her hug and laughed. “Sorry. There goes my English. Gobsmacked—stunned.” Then he turned to me and gave me a hug as well.
Just a hug? And second in line? This is so not what I had in mind.
Remember about jumping to conclusions . . .
“. . . to see you,” Alex was saying. A line creased his forehead. “H-how, when did you get here? Is everything all right?”
Dreaming in Technicolor Page 11
