One Night in Monaco

by Blair Babylon

  “And you’ll stay here in Paris? You won’t go wandering off back to Monaco, right, Emperor Maximus?” Arthur asked Maxence, using one of their school nicknames from long ago. Max had gotten his growth spurt before the rest of them, sprouting up to six-feet-four and towering over the rest of their class for half a year.

  Max swirled the whiskey in his glass, the ice clinking on the crystal. “Yeah, I will. I only have a week before I have to pack up and go back. It’ll be pleasant to live here for a few days before it’s back to roughing it.”

  “Back to Africa?” Casimir asked, smiling at his friend.

  “Probably, but there have been some rumblings about a short-term assignment elsewhere. The decision will be made soon.” A quick flinch of his dark eyebrows probably meant something, but they were too mellow to give him the third degree. “But I’ll stay here in Paris for the week.”

  “You could stay with us in California,” Casimir ventured. “You have a week. You could stay for five days before you had to turn around.”

  Maxence shrugged. “It’s pretty far for just a week.”

  “Or London,” Arthur told Max. “Come on up and drink some warm beer with me for a week. Ruckus misses you.”

  Maxence smiled a little but demurred again.

  “Fine, you stay here, then. And eat,” Arthur told him, gesturing at him with his highball glass. “You’ve lost weight.”

  It was true, Casimir mused. Maxence’s face looked gaunt again. The last time he’d shown up in California looking skinny like that, Roxanne had “cooked Southern for him.” Casimir had tucked in the cornbread, fried chicken, mashed potatoes, cake, pies, and all the “fixins’” and wondered just what he’d have to do to get her to “cook Southern” for him on a regular basis. It had been divine.

  Maxence nodded. “I’ll eat. I’m in Paris. Of course, I’ll eat.”

  Casimir said, “You can call us when something happens, you know. You don’t have to disappear and have Pierre send out a BOLO for you.”

  Max nodded. “I know.”

  “You can call us when you just want to talk.”

  He nodded again. “I know.”

  “But you didn’t this time.”

  Maxence was trying not to frown again. “There’s a lot going on, especially with Uncle Rainier in the hospital. I want to be far away from there when he passes. I want to be incommunicado, beyond cell phones or radio signals or carrier pigeons. That’s when things will get ugly.”

  Casimir and Arthur nodded. Max was right. He would be safer if he bolted until things were settled.

  Billions of dollars were at stake. Even normal people would kill for billions of dollars. Some of Max’s saner relatives would probably lose their minds.

  There was no telling what a psychopath like Pierre would do.

  And Pierre wasn’t the only stone-cold killer in Maxence’s family, Caz knew. One of his uncles—well, that was another story.

  They sipped their drinks and reminisced for a few hours until the bellhops informed them that the cars had arrived, and then Casimir and Arthur had to leave Maxence there.

  Roxanne and Gen met them in the lobby. Both of them were giggly.

  Casimir asked Rox, “Did you have a good time?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Roxanne said. “We went to the Buddha Bar and had a great time. I had sushi, and Gen had eggplant and tofu. It was fantastic. And the cocktails were great.”

  Arthur raised one eyebrow at Gen.

  She mock-frowned at him. “I had mocktails, you worrywart. Raspberry puree and soda water. It probably had vitamin C and antioxidants.”

  “The Buddha Bar,” Maxence mused. “I haven’t been there in ages. Maybe I’ll have a drink there before I crawl into bed.”

  God, Casimir hoped Maxence was going to be all right.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The Buddha Bar, Paris

  Dree

  Strobe lights flashed, revealing the walls and dark ceiling far above the dancing crowd. The bright bursts glared on the enormous, gilded Buddha looming over the nightclub.

  Syncopated dance music blared from speakers bolted to the walls around the DJ’s loft on the second floor. Decadent scents filled the air: ginger and roasting meats from the restaurant, fresh wine and liquor, smoke that clung to clothes, and the faint zing of horny adults flirting with each other, trying to get laid.

  Andrea “Dree” Clark stepped around and between people as she made her way through the crowd. Someone’s foot caught hers, and she stumbled. She grabbed a tall chair to steady herself and began apologizing to everyone around her and the universe in general.

  A pretty woman patted Dree’s arm and said something in a language Dree didn’t know, so Dree smiled back and said, “Okay, okay.” The woman turned back to the man she was talking to, who grinned at her.

  The long plane flight and lack of real sleep for almost two days were weighing on Dree’s legs and making her woozy. The music’s beat thumped in her chest.

  Dree sat on a tall bar chair and ordered a bottom-shelf gin and tonic, the cheapest drink on the menu. The bartender slid the squat glass over the polished wood to her and smiled as he took her few euros before he turned to the other customers who were shouting drink orders at him.

  After yesterday’s panicked dash to the Phoenix airport, she’d wound up in Paris, France for the first time in her life.

  Paris.

  Dree had never visited anywhere in Europe or even been outside the United States, but she’d always wanted to have a drink at the famous Buddha Bar ever since she’d seen it on Sex and the City. She’d watched a few episodes of the show at a friend’s house in high school. Dree’s parents would never have allowed her to watch anything like that, and they hadn’t been able to afford cable, anyway. Nobody gets rich in subsistence sheep ranching.

  Truth be told, as Dree glanced at the dark walls and clusters of booths, the Buddha Bar looked like a high-end P.F. Chang’s, right down to the red and gold upholstery, black-lacquered wood, and horse statues. That two-story Buddha idol was a lot bigger than the ones at the mall, though.

  The similarity to the mall restaurant was just the smallest letdown, but Dree was in Paris. No matter what else was happening in her life, no matter what would happen tomorrow or next week or how she was going to survive in Paris with almost no money, she was going to sit in the Buddha Bar and savor this drink tonight.

  This five-day trip to France was supposed to have been her boyfriend’s grand, romantic gesture. Francis had booked the plane tickets and the B&B a month ago with her credit card, told her to get her passport ready, and winked at her.

  He’d asked whether she liked square-cut or princess-cut diamond rings better and tied a string around her ring finger of her left hand, judging its size.

  Instead, she was alone in France, broke and pissed as hell that Francis fucking-asshole Senft had stolen every last cent she’d ever had. He had emptied her bank accounts and even secretly sold her car that she’d paid off before she’d ever met him.

  She refused to think about it. She refused to think about him. Every time Francis’s blue eyes and handsome face rose in her mind, she wanted to bash herself in her forehead with her gin and tonic because she was stupid, stupid, stupid.

  Her stupid body vibrated with anger.

  She’d been a trusting little hick, and he’d swindled her of everything she owned.

  The acrid gin numbed her tongue and scorched her throat.

  Dammit, she was going to sit here and have her Buddha-Bar drink.

  And then, well, Dree might do something crazy.

  The craziest thing she’d ever done was to move from rural New Mexico to urban Phoenix to attend college to be a nurse.

  Maybe she should try something even more crazy than that.

  Dree swung her legs as she sat on the tall chair under the gaze of the enormous, cross-legged Buddha that dominated the room. The tiny gold lampshades on the wrought iron chandeliers looked like flying-wish paper lanterns floatin
g around it.

  Thumping music drove the Parisians to scream their conversations and dance in the aisles.

  Perfume and alcohol drifted in the air.

  Around her, people spoke the languages of the world. Dree heard a lot of French, of course, because she was in Paris, plus snatches of German, Spanish, and other languages from all over.

  Ones that sounded like Arabic.

  Ones that sounded like nothing she’d ever heard before.

  And two women speaking English.

  English that was accented from the South or West of the US.

  Down-home English.

  Okay, hearing down-home English in the middle of the Buddha Bar in Paris was weird.

  The two young women sitting next to her at the bar peppering their speech with y’alls and too many verbs.

  Dree couldn’t help herself. She needed to talk to somebody to get her mind off of how quickly her entire life had gone to Hell, so she leaned over and asked them, “Y’all from the States?”

  The two women laughed, leaning back and sloshing their drinks.

  The little brunette said, “Yep! I’m Roxanne, and this-here’s Gen. How do you do?” She stuck out her hand to shake.

  Dree grinned at them and shook their hands. “I’m Dree Clark, from New Mexico.” Originally. “Where’re y’all from?”

  “Georgia!” Roxanne said. “But my husband and I live in L.A. Gen-here is from Texas, but she and her husband live in London. He’s from England.”

  “That’s so cool!” Dree said, smiling and pretending to sip her gin and tonic to make it last longer. “I’ve never been to London. This is my first time in Paris. This is my first time anywhere outside of New Mexico and Arizona.”

  “Then you’re just getting started!” Gen said. She was a honey-brunette and was sipping a tall, fruity-looking drink. Dree hoped it was non-alcoholic because Gen was visibly round with middle-late pregnancy. Dree refrained from asking Gen about her drink because Dree wasn’t on duty and didn’t have to be a finger-wagging nurse every minute of her life.

  Still, after they got to talking, Dree was relieved when Gen ordered, “Another one of these raspberry spritzer mocktail-thingies. No booze.” Dree thanked every saint that had ever ascended to heaven because she’d seen the horrific effects of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome on babies in the NICU and pediatric emergency room where she worked.

  Roxanne asked Dree, “So, are you traveling with friends, or your parents, or somebody?”

  “Nope. Just me.” Dree didn’t elaborate.

  “Oh, did you come to Europe to ‘find yourself?’” Roxanne made air quotes with her fingers. Her pale pink manicure was pretty.

  Dree tried to laugh. “More like to lose myself.”

  “Making a change in your life?” Roxanne asked her.

  Dree sucked in a deep breath to yell over the music. “Yeah. Some changes. Some pretty big changes.”

  Roxanne stirred her drink, something pale in a martini glass that looked like it might be a lemon drop. “What kind of changes?”

  Dree fluffed her bobbed, blond hair. “Well, I cut my hair yesterday. It used to be down to my waist.”

  Long hairs trailed over her knuckles. She’d missed a few when she’d hacked at her hair with surgical scissors in the hospital bathroom. She broke a too-long strand between her knuckles to hide it.

  Roxanne cracked up, her laughter barely audible over the electric guitar music thrumming in the air. “A woman who cuts her hair is about to change her life!”

  “Yes! I mean, Lord, I hope so.” Something had to change. “So, where should I go while I’m in Paris? What should I do?”

  “Oh, you should see the usual places,” Gen said, waving her hand dismissively.

  Dree didn’t have enough money for admission fees for the usual places. “Okay, cool, but what else should I do?”

  Roxanne frowned quizzically, like she was stymied by the question. “How long are you going to be here?”

  “Five days,” Dree said, projecting her voice over the loud music. “After that, I’m not sure when or how I’ll be able to travel for fun again, but maybe someday. Tell me where I should go.”

  “Sounds like you’re making a bucket list!” Roxanne yelled as the music cranked up again.

  Dree nodded, and the idea caught fire in her head. “Yeah, a bucket list!”

  “Okay,” Gen said, leaning in and gesturing with her pink mocktail, “you should go to the Louvre, of course. And some of the other museums.”

  “And small dive bars!” Roxanne said. “All of them!”

  “And go out to fun places like the Buddha Bar!” Gen shouted, waving her hand at the laughing crowd and flashing lights surrounding them. “And go dancing at nightclubs! And meet lots of people and date lots of guys and live your life!”

  “Oh my God, yes!” Roxanne yelled. “I’ve got a toddler now, and wow, your life changes so much when you have kids. The diapers, and the snot all over the place like an amoebic snot monster attacked your house, and the wailing and sobbing because she wants all her food to be in exactly one-inch cubes and bright blue.” Roxanne’s eyes widened, and she bit her lower lip as she turned back to her pregnant friend, Gen. “I mean, it’s great. I wouldn’t change anything for the world. Really. She’s my heart and my soul and my whole life. You’ll love being a mother.” Back to Dree, and she said in a lower voice, “But I wish I’d danced on a few more bars and played more beer pong and traveled more, first. Have you eaten? We have a table for supper.”

  “Oh, I shouldn’t.” Dree couldn’t afford to eat supper at the Buddha Bar. Even her one drink had been too much of a splurge. “I’m on a tight budget. It was nice meeting you!”

  “Come on!” Roxanne yelled, linking her arm with Dree’s. “Let me buy you supper, my newest, most-bestest friend. Gen and me, our husbands have too much money. I’ve wanted to meet new friends and take them out to supper and buy things for people like this my whole life!”

  And so, in the spirit of granting Roxanne’s wish to take newly met friends out to supper at expensive restaurants, Dree went with them to the dining section and ate sushi with Roxanne, who also kept buying more drinks.

  Lord, she prayed that Roxanne and Gen weren’t going to dine-and-dash and stick her with the bill. Dree didn’t have nearly enough money to pay for it.

  Pregnant Gen, of course, stuck to properly cooked food and fruit spritzers and thus observed with clear eyes the fools that Roxanne and Dree were making of themselves.

  After supper but while they were still drinking, Gen produced a pen from her purse and grabbed a paper napkin, and the three of them drew up an extensive bucket list for Dree that sounded an awful lot like Gen and Roxanne were reliving or reimagining their single lives.

  After they wrote down things Dree should do in Paris, they listed other places Dree should travel to and things they should do there: Thailand, Brazil, Belize, South Africa, India, Mauritius, Peru, Morocco, London, Amsterdam, Monaco, and Nepal.

  Nepal sounded good. It sounded pure, like you would never meet a guy who stole everything you owned from you there. All Dree’s possessions now fit in the one small duffel bag she’d left in the B&B. She was wearing her only nice dress, which had been in her locker at the hospital before she’d run.

  Roxanne wove drunkenly in her seat, and she tapped Dree’s arm. “You and I should do shots.”

  Dree flinched. “Oh, I couldn’t.” She couldn’t afford to.

  Roxanne grabbed the waitress as she walked by. “Two tequila shots, the good stuff. Top shelf. No, make it four shots.”

  Even though Dree’s liver was sturdy from nursing school and everything that had come after, she was getting tipsy. “I shouldn’t.”

  “My treat!” Roxanne yelled over the crowd’s clamor. “Come on, let’s do shots! Shots! Shots! Shots!”

  The four guys at the next table took up the chant, “Shots! Shots! Shots!” laughing their asses off the whole time.

  Gen encouraged Dree to say yes wh
ile she laughed at her.

  That should have tipped Dree off. Any time a sober person encourages you to drink more, there are only bad intentions behind it.

  The waitress placed a tray with the four tiny drinks on the table between them.

  Perfectly sober Gen was still laughing while Dree ogled the shot glasses in fear. Gen said, “Oh, Lord. It is so much fun to watch you two make utter idiots of yourselves. Why didn’t I take up sobriety as a hobby earlier? Go ahead. Bottoms up, y’all.”

  Roxanne pointed to the shot glasses. “Yep, bottoms up, Dree.”

  Dree said, “Geez, Roxanne. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to get some ass.”

  Roxanne laughed. “Nope, way worse. I’m a working mother of a toddler, and I’m living vicariously through you. I expect a full report about your wonderful week and all the fantastic things you did in your life afterward. I’ll give you my number.”

  “I don’t even have a phone,” Dree admitted. “It wouldn’t work in Europe, so I left it at my hotel.”

  “Our paths will cross again!” Roxanne shouted and flopped around in the booth to hug Dree. “The universe and all the angels would not permit so much awesomeness to never happen again. Goddammit.”

  “What?” Gen asked her, then looked down at her phone, which was buzzing and jittering sideways on the table. “Dang. The old ball-and-chains must be ready to go to the airport.”

  Roxanne said to Gen, “Balls and chain. It’s totally backward. ‘Balls and chain’ sounds much more like a husband than a wife. Balls.” She made a swinging motion with her arm. “Chain.”

  “Totally,” Gen said, laughing at her drunk friend.

  Roxanne retrieved her credit card from the waitress, who had run it through a little machine on the table. She waved her finger in a circle over the table, encompassing the food and drinks that had cost more money than Dree had to her name. Her huge diamond ring glittered in the light from the chandeliers. “All this is covered, right, sugar? Including the shots?”

  The waitress nodded, bored by the drunk Americans.