Eight
"Oh, wow!" the woman with the curly brown hair cried when she beheld Myrtle. Her husband, who was tall and blond and had tennis player's calves, waved at us. We were looking down at them from the upper deck.
The gangway was rolled out.
"Shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes, SHOES!" I called. Did the woman really think to board Myrtle wearing heels?
"Sorry, I keep forgetting!" she shouted.
The couple was followed by two children, both girls, no older than six and by two young women, both plain and on the plump side, no older than twenty-one.
"Do they have two nannies for two kids?"
"Thank God." Ryan waved back at them.
I ogled him furtively. He wore turned up linen trousers and a light white shirt, top buttons open. I presently expected a photo crew to show up and shoot an after-shave commercial with him. You know, Davidoff White Ocean Breeze or Hugo Boss Sail Away Men.
"How nice they're in Sardinia just when you are."
"Not a coincidence."
"Did we come here to meet them?"
"No, the other way round."
They showed up about a minute later, accompanied by Dan who also acted as our butler.
"Ryan, what a yacht, what a yacht!" The woman stretched her arms out and soundly kissed him on both cheeks.
"Marvellous, hello Patricia."
"How are you? Good to see you." Mark and Ryan shook hands.
"This is Jude."
I shook both their hands.
"First timer, never met one of Ryan's girlfriends before, right, Trish?"
"Yes… Wow, you look like Scarlett Johansson, has anybody ever told you?" Patricia beamed at me. Then she impatiently beckoned the children to come forward. "These are Talulah and Theodora." She did not bother to introduce the nannies. "Do you think we could find somewhere for them to play? They brought everything they need."
I do not look like Scarlett Johansson either. Maybe it was the outfit. I wore a striped, blue and white t-shirt dress, rather on the tight side and pretty short. I was also barefooted and my hair was in a ponytail which might perhaps have created a "Vicky Christina Barcelona" effect.
Dan took it upon himself to accommodate the children.
"Is there anything special we can have prepared for them?" I asked Patricia when we walked over to the bar. "I don't think our dinner will be appealing to them."
"The kids? Why, I don't know…"
"Spaghetti maybe or French fries?"
"Yeah," she looked at me as if I were an alien. "The nannies will know."
"I'll send somebody to ask." Weird, I thought, why does she not know what her own children liked to eat?
Dan had now taken on the role of barkeeper and handed out Pernod and Campari-Soda for aperitifs.
"When did you get here?" I inquired of Patricia who was glancing around and looked somewhat harassed.
"Last week. We rented a villa near Porto Rotondo."
"How lovely. We went by Porto Rotondo today."
"Yes, I bet it is, but I can hardly appreciate it. The kids, you know."
"Of course."
I scrutinised her more closely. She was in her mid-thirties, I guessed, although her immobile face indicated the use of Botox. She was smaller than I was and very, very thin. I would even go so far as to say she looked emaciated. She wore white trousers, a white blouse with a braided leather belt and chunky diamonds on every available extremity. Though not on her toes, I think.
"Honey, to be honest with you, I'm exhausted."
"Young children can be a challenge, I imagine."
"They are! And the nannies are just as hard to please! You wouldn't think it, I mean, I pay them to make my life a little easier but in the end all they do is ask things. I really don't understand why we had to bring the children at all but Mark insisted."
"We don't mind, they may use the pool if they want."
"God, no. I'm happy if I don't have to see or hear them for a few hours. No, I wasn't talking about bringing them here to you, but why bring them to Sardinia at all? They could have stayed at Mark's parents' house with the nannies. But Mark wouldn't hear of it. Well, he's not the one who has all the work! He's always in the office! He doesn't know what's going on!" Patricia obviously needed somebody to pour her heart out to.
"I see. I hear your husband works on Wall Street."
"Yes, the whole week. While I spend my time on Long Island…"
"What's your profession?"
"I'm sorry?"
"What do you do for work?"
"Me? Honey, when would I work, with the house and two kids to take care of?"
"Did you hire the nannies for this trip only?"
"No, no. They're there all the time. They're live-in nannies."
"Oh. Ah."
"Where did you go before Sardinia?" Mark sat next to me at the dinner table but he was talking to Ryan.
"Barcelona, Saint-Tropez, now here."
"And are you happy? Is she what you expected her to be?"
For an instant I thought he was talking about me and from the look on Ryan's face I deduced he had thought the same.
"Myrtle? Yes, she's fantastic. They vamped her up to seventeen knots, can you believe it?"
"Wow…" Patricia said vacantly.
"That's what I call travelling in style," Mark declared.
"Absolutely," Patricia chimed in. "You must take us on a tour later on."
"Certainly, Patricia."
The starter was served. A bouillabaisse.
Patricia ostentatiously ate one spoon full of soup. "Mmh, the soup is totally delicious, do you have a French chef?"
"No, he's from the Philippines."
"I see." She seemed disappointed. She put her spoon down, but I do not think it was because she did not like Joshua's excellent cooking, but because she simply did not eat. Ever.
"He was the sous-chef on the Queen Mary before." I felt I had to defend Joshua's credentials.
"Wow…"
"Hey, Ryan, did you hear about Martin Sanderson? He sold out completely and bought a farm somewhere in Montana. Breeds cattle. Can you imagine? Said he never wanted to see Wall Street again."
"Sounds appealing to me."
"He's just living off the land, Tania Zuckermann told me," Patricia added. "I think they call it the 'new leanness' or something. Cut off all the superfluous. I wished we could afford it too."
"Don't believe my wife. She can't live without her mink coats."
Patricia smiled at me as if she had been caught with her fingers in the cooky jar. "Mark! Don't tell them what a naughty girl I am…"
Mark went on. "But Ryan here's certainly heading there, you have reduced your portfolio quite a bit over the past eighteen months and don't you lie to me and tell me you haven't."
"I've been focusing on the Asian markets."
I laughed. "I corroborate."
"Sure? I've been on the phone to Leroy two weeks ago and he said you had gone slower in Asia too."
"I was busy with Myrtle. A ship like this does not restore itself."
"She'll be a winner on the charter market."
Ryan and I looked at each other in horror. "She won't be chartered out."
"No? Would be a pity, I just wanted to ask you what you charged for a week. Half a million should do the trick."
"You can charter my sister's ship for a third. She's over there, can you see? The Sirius Black."
Patricia turned her head. "Wow… that one looks amazing too…"
The second course was served. Quails with truffles and mangold.
"We have this amazing idea to fund hydraulic fracking. It's an absolute winner, no doubt about it. The shares coming out of this will be bang on for everybody who joins in and I'm talking up to fifteen percent. It's a whole new industry and people want it, you know, they're asking me about it, Mark, they say, where can we invest in fracking, risk-free, no worries? I'm telling them, I'm already pulling something up. Did you read the memo I sent you?"
"I did."
"So, are you in?"
"I would have to let my experts look in on it. Right now I'm on holiday, Mark. Would you like red wine with the quails? Dan, could you fetch the Floriano, please?"
"It's in your private vault, Sir."
"Ah yes. I'll go get it." He got up and strolled away.
"How beautiful this town is," Patricia observed.
"Charming," I said vaguely.
"I hear the beaches in the South are so great."
"Is this your first time in Sardinia?"
"Yes…" Patricia replied. She exchanged a tense glance with her husband.
He cleared his throat. "Yes, we think it's splendid, the sea is so blue, you think it's photoshopped." Suddenly he leaned over and whispered to me. "Listen, Jude… This fracking fund is very close to my heart. Do you think you could try to find out from where the wind blows with Ryan, maybe? You could drop me a hint some time soon, within the next few days, I'll leave you my card when we go, and don't you worry I'll make it worth your while. Say, twenty grand?"
I sat motionless.
"You don't have to say anything. Ah, here he comes! Now, let's taste this Floriano of yours!"
"My brother-in-law makes it, it's completely free from pesticides, you can drown yourself in it and feel born again the next day."
"Wow…"
"Fantastic! Just what we need!"
I could not believe what had just happened. Had this man really offered to pay me twenty-thousand dollars to tell him what Ryan thought about his fracking fund?
"Wine, Buttercup?"
"Hm?" I was still distracted.
Ryan's eyebrows drew together. He sensed something was off.
I looked up at him in a silent plead.
"Buttercup," Patricia trilled. "That's so sweet, where does it come from?"
"It's from a song."
"How romantic! How did you guys meet?"
"Jude went to school with my sister. We've known each other for over twelve years."
Next to me, Mark choked on his quail. Patricia dropped her fork but instantly recovered. "Oh, how wonderful! Have you been together all this time? We never knew…"
"No, she would have been too young, but I still had a bad crush on her. She played the cello. I didn't stand a chance. I had always hoped I might see her again one day, so when I did run into her, I pounced on her like a tiger."
"How darling!" Patricia exclaimed. She was obviously trying to repair the damage her husband had done by mistaking me for a mayfly when in fact I was his quarry's dream girl. At least in tonight's fiction.
"Yes, it was rather miraculous."
I still felt a bit off and decided it would be better if I went to my cabin to recover for a few minutes. I shoved my chair back.
"Will you excuse me for a moment, I'd like to powder my nose."
Whenever I speak to Americans I use whatever euphemism comes to my mind when I actually want to say I am going to the toilet. It's a tour guide habit.
"Please! Feel free to use mine! It's great stuff." Patricia took a box from her purse and held it out to me.
"I'm sorry?"
"Didn't you say you'd—"
"No…," I muttered. "I only need to pee."
I left the upper deck and descended the stairs to the cabin level.
Ryan caught up with me when I had nearly reached my door.
"Wait. Jude, wait. What happened? Do you really need to pee or is something the matter?"
I gazed at him. Then I had to giggle. "No, I just wanted to catch my breath. He tried to bribe me… he offered me twenty-thousand dollars if I reported your opinion about his fund to him."
"Only twenty? You should have asked forty."
I shoved him gently. "Fuck off! Are they what you call friends? She's a jittery coke nose and he's a conniving asshole!"
"I play golf with him occasionally. I'm sorry, I should've warned you, he really is a wanker. I just didn't think he'd try anything right under my nose. Not with my girlfriend."
"Look what she wanted to put under my nose! Has he done it before?"
Do not worry, dear reader, I caught the 'girlfriend' all right.
"He does it all the time. Boodles everybody he can get a hold of. Caddies, gardeners, cleaning ladies…"
I grunted. "You said you wanted to go to the Med because you wanted to meet your friends. We haven't met a single friend of yours yet. Tell me Ryan, do you have any friends? For example, who's your best friend?"
"I have two best friends."
"Yes?"
"Great friends."
"Where are they?"
"Right here."
"They are?"
"Yes…"
I felt his hands crawl under my dress. They went up and up until they covered my breasts.
"They've been looking at me all evening from across the table. They wanted me to know they needed to be squeezed and fondled and massaged… and nuzzled…"
"Did they?"
"Yes. They told me they needed it before dessert."
"I understand."
"They also promised their proprietress could do something about this." He pressed his hips against mine.
"Oh dear, it's an emergency! I believe we must act without hesitation!"
"We must."
And we did.
Yes, we had a quickie in the corridor. So what? It was his boat!
Nine
"Ryan, darling." A sophisticated, flat chested, beautiful brunette came striding towards us and for a moment I considered to send her overboard with an improvised kung-fu kick. "Hello, you must be Jude. Amazing! You really are the cello girl, how lovely you're here. I was at St. Cecil's too!"
It was Ryan's sister, Camille, of course. Who else should it be, welcoming him as a guest on her own yacht? I needed to get my jealousy under control.
I am jealous by nature. Not the kitchen-knife-murdering type of jealous, just the normal, planning-the-kitchen-knife-murder-and-then-not-doing-it type.
"Thank you for the invitation, what a nice boat you have here."
"Are you taking the mickey? I've been shooting poisonous arrows over to the Myrtle since this morning. She makes us all grow pale with envy. You must think I'm living on a toilet."
It was good to be with people who spoke my own language. I had not completely recovered from Mark and Patricia yet. They had said their good-byes after hurriedly eating their dessert and picking up their children. Thank God.
"Thanks, Millie," Ryan embraced her. Her husband, Laurent, who was a Swiss banker - as in, he owned the bank - also welcomed us most warmly.
"Bienvenue. Je suis enchanté."
"Merci beaucoup." I said and complimented him on his wine.
"Yes, I have a lovely little vineyard near Lake Geneva. You must come one day with Ryan."
One day… My future with Ryan was a very vague thing to me. I did not dare to think about it. So I said the one thing anybody would say in such a situation. "Oh, of course, with pleasure!"
"Ah, here comes Giordana," Camille called and waved at an old lady approaching the stern. When she stepped into the light I took hold of Ryan's arm, I was so startled. She was a tiny woman with thin wrinkled arms and an unsteady gait but her face belonged to a forty year old porn star with mumps.
"Giordana Vanderhart," Ryan breathed into my ear. "Canadian. She was one of my granny's best friends, in the days of Jackie O., if you get my meaning."
"Wow, she must be nearly a hundred."
"Yes, she is, ninety-eight! She's married to a plastic surgeon twenty years her junior."
"Which makes him seventy-eight."
"You really are a wunderkind."
"Hush."
Giordana Vanderhart had finally reached us.
"Oh, Ryan!" she tittered. "Oh, you are so handsome! Are you his girlfriend? He looks so much like his grandfather. He played polo when I was young and it's so funny because my friend Beatrix Clearmont had a crush on him but he was not interested. He had
a wife in Argentine already! Beatrix ended up being the Duchess of Heresford and thirty years later their children got married, isn't it a funny story?"
"Absolutely!"
"Yes, Giordana, how could we forget." Ryan kissed her puffed up cheek. "Is Robert not coming?"
"No, no, he's sleeping at this time of the night, he's really getting old. He's lost his eyesight by almost eighty percent, didn't you know?"
"No. I hadn't heard he had retired."
"No,no, he still operates."
"I see." Ryan's fingers dug into my arm. He was rightly afraid I was going to topple over in spasms of laughter. "Well, Giordy, I have to show Jude my old ship. We'll get together later, rightie?"
"Sure, sure."
He dragged me along and pulled me into a dark room where we both broke into tears of mirth and silently clung to one another.
"I can't go back out there," I sniffled after a while. "I must be totally smeared with mascara."
"You're not wearing any."
"Am I not?"
"No, why would you? You're gorgeous."
The butterflies, the butterflies, they were all over me.
"I usually do when I go to a party, why did I forget?"
"Because we shagged in the jacuzzi to celebrate Mark and Patricia's departure."
"Do we ever do anything else?"
"I hope not."
"Where are we anyway?"
"The gym."
"Is there a light?"
He switched it on.
"Thank God, there's a mirror." I fished my mascara from my purse and also applied a pink lipgloss I had bought in Saint-Tropez.
Whatever Ryan said, certain standards were to be upheld.
"Do you have to use the stuff? I find it hard to wash off my jock."
"I see you're having great expectations."
"If I were up to it, I'd do you twenty times a day, darling. You should've tried me at St. Cecil's twelve years ago instead of the French teacher, when I was still in my prime."
"I was fifteen when I first played in a Christmas concert. I had not even kissed Michel."
"You're telling me only a cello separated me from your virginal flesh? I could have been the one to invade your fortress?"
Billionaire on Board Page 13
