“You okay to go to lunch?” Wendy asks.
I nod. “It’ll do me good to get off the boat.”
Curiously, Camille is unable to find a single pill or patch for motion sickness anywhere on the boat, but I am not to be deterred. I steel my resolve and board the tender, praying I don’t throw up on the choppy ride to the beach club.
Vinny slides onto the bench seat next to me, watching me like a hawk. The vibration of the motor is almost worse than the bumping up and down, but if I lean slightly over the side and trail my fingers in the water just so, focusing on the coolness of the sea, I can hold on. Vinny leans into me, sweating in his black blazer. The stench of his perspiration singes my nostrils and tugs at the bile in my throat. He keeps his gaze trained on the horizon as he murmurs, “You should know, Emmanuelle was fired because she stole a necklace, not because she was pretty.”
Every nerve in my body jolts to attention. I steal a glance at him, thankful my big dark glasses hide my eyes. But his lumpy countenance is inscrutable, his eyes also hidden behind a pair of shades. On the other side of him, Bernard mutters something I can’t hear over the alarm bells ringing in my head, and Vinny turns his attention to him, leaving me wondering whether I imagined the entire exchange.
No. I may be nauseous, but I’m not crazy. It was a warning: he’s reading my emails. Jesus. In my mind I thumb back through every email I’ve sent and received from the hardwired computers. Nothing too nefarious, I think. I’ve been careful. But still…
We lurch onto the shore, and Dre and Hugo drag the boat out of the surf and hand us down onto the sand. I’m so unsettled, I hardly notice the transparent turquoise water and golden beach. I can’t take in the perfect temperature of the breeze or the laughter of vacationers playing in the sand and water.
My sandals in hand, I take a few steps into the sea, soaking my feet in the refreshing water, my focus on the skyline. If Vinny’s reading my emails, who else is? John? Summer? How stupid of me. I should have known. And now I do. No more emails from the hardwired computers, clearly.
“Come on, Belle.” Wendy’s damn fingernails on my arm. I recoil.
“Sorry,” I say. “Not feeling well.”
I want to strip off my dress, dive under the water, and let it consume me. Let the surf wash away my memory, forget I ever met Summer, forget this fucked-up trip, forget Eric, forget everything. Instead I reluctantly turn and follow Wendy across the sand, through the maze of blue and white umbrellas and loungers, past the heavy tables in the shade, into the indoor reception area that feels strangely like a hunting lodge, and straight out the front door, where we’re dumped into a dusty parking lot.
The sun beats down mercilessly, the breeze that was so cooling on the beach side nowhere to be found. Vinny’s revelation on the tender has just made my seasickness worse. How long can it last? Surely the rocking will stop now that we’re on land. I’d google it, but I can’t imagine focusing on my phone.
Vinny and Bernard indicate that we should sit on a bench in front of the restaurant, and we exchange confused glances. “But there’s a bar inside, and I think I saw a ninety-nine-year-old in a wheelchair!” Rhonda exclaims.
Everyone but me titters. I’m too busy trying to stop the ground from moving before my eyes to pretend to think this is funny.
“Mom!” Brittani cries. “That’s impossible. You can’t have a wheelchair in the sand!”
“Okay, maybe it was a walker. I can’t be sure.”
“You need to stay together,” Bernard instructs us. Or is it Vinny? I can’t determine the difference in their voices while staring at the sandy shale.
“We can stay together at the bar,” Wendy offers him with a wink. “Aren’t you thirsty? I’ll buy ya a drink.”
“Mr. Lyons said wait here, so we wait here,” he says. “You can sit on the bench.”
The slick green wood of the bench is hot to the touch, but sitting at least grounds me somewhat. We wait in sweltering silence as chauffeured cars deposit occupants armed with beach bags, hats, and sunglasses. I wish I’d brought a freaking hat. Even Wendy can’t hide her annoyance.
“This is ridiculous,” she whispers to me, shading her face with one hand and gathering her hair off her neck with the other. “I’m sweating, and I don’t need any more sun. I’m getting darker than my foundation.”
“I have to pee,” Brittani says.
Vinny sighs. “Okay. You can go two at a time. But come right back. We need to all be together when they arrive.”
Brittani grabs her mother’s hand, and they dash inside. My insides rumble. Oh God. This is not the place to be sick. In the event Brittani and Rhonda ever return (which I highly doubt), I know the bathroom will be full of old ladies powdering their noses and socialites doing cocaine, so I scan the area for a better option. To my left is the beach—no good. But to my right…Who knows what lurks around the ther side of the building, but it has to be better than my other options.
Amythest sees me searching and whispers, “I got ya,” as she helps me to my feet.
“She doesn’t feel well,” she says as we stumble past Bernard and Vinny.
Bernard blocks our path with his hulking frame. “Wait for the others to return and you can go next.”
Amythest looks up at him without fear, clearly someone who has had her fair share of encounters with bouncers. “Move or she’s gonna spew on you.” She pushes past him, dragging me with her.
The thirty feet between us and the corner of the building are the Sahara. I grip her hand like it’s a life raft and let her guide me to what I can only hope is a puking oasis. We round the corner of the building to find a false green wall that hides the trash. The smell pushes me over the top, and I dive behind the nearest bin and retch.
“Oh God,” Amythest says. “I’m sorry…I can’t…the smell.”
After she leaves, I proceed to empty what is left of the contents of my stomach into the dirt behind the rotting waste of the rich. At one point a young busboy throws a bag into the bin and spies me there on my knees, but he doesn’t say anything. Nor, apparently, does he alert anyone, because I am left to vomit in peace.
When I have sufficiently drained the swamp, I dust myself off and hobble around to the other side of the trash bins in an attempt to find somewhere more pleasant to sit and pull myself together before returning to my crystal cage. The dirt driveway empties into a delivery area with a ramp up to a loading dock, where the busboy leans against the wall, smoking a cigarette. He sees me emerge and extracts a fresh bottle of water from his back pocket, holding it out to me. I gratefully take it from him and wash my mouth out, afraid to swallow the water for fear of waking the beast in my stomach. “Merci,” I say.
“Un moment.” He disappears through a cracked door, returning after a few moments with an ice-cold towel.
He finishes his cigarette as I thoroughly wipe myself down and hand it back to him. “Merci beaucoup.”
He takes a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket and offers me one, but I decline. “Tu es mon sauveur,” I say.
He nods and goes inside, and I return to the bench, wishing I had a toothbrush but otherwise feeling better. Rhonda and Brittani have not returned and Vinny is gone, but the rest of the group is still there, wilting in the sun. They look up at me expectantly.
“You okay?” Wendy ventures, handing me a piece of spearmint gum, which I gratefully put in my mouth.
I nod. “I’m just seasick. Yay.”
Claire pats my arm, and I take a seat between her and Amythest.
“What time is it?” I ask.
“Almost two,” Wendy says.
“They’re an hour late,” Amythest adds.
“They will be here any minute,” Bernard says.
As if on cue, a silver convertible Ferrari pulls up in a cloud of dust, and Bernard waves us all to our feet.
Amythest remains sitting, doing something on her phone. Bernard grabs her by the arm and jerks her to her feet, causing her to drop her bejeweled
phone on the ground. She wrests her arm away from him, and I pick up the phone and hand it to her.
Summer emerges from the car looking fresh in a white sundress and giant sunglasses and unties the blue flowered scarf from her hair while she waits for John to come around to her side and take her hand. He’s in a linen suit and sunglasses, and as they come toward us, I recognize the glasses he’s wearing. They’re the pair I found under Amythest’s bed yesterday.
Realization washes over me like a cold shower. If I were a loyal friend, I would be outraged, but it’s all I can do to keep from laughing. Here’s Summer, acting like she’s to the manor born and we’re her ladies-in-waiting, when right under her nose, a younger woman has easily seduced her sugar daddy. But then, what can she possibly expect? The man who sleeps with a woman thirty-six years younger behind his wife’s back will sleep with one forty-three years younger behind his mistress’s.
And then Summer’s air-kissing me and we are filing inside, the dark of the vestibule such a contrast to the bright sun that I can hardly see two feet in front of me. As I step out onto the shaded dining patio, the sea breeze caresses my skin and leaves me feeling instantly ten times better. Chill lounge music thrums under the sound of the waves, and waiters in green polo shirts bustle between tables crowded with a dizzying array of well-to-do French families on vacation, Russian billionaires and their entourages, Greek shipping magnates conducting business meetings—just a usual August afternoon on the Riviera.
We have a corner table with a view of the sea, our dining companions apparently the richest people in some country I’ve heard of but couldn’t place on a map. Latvia? Lithuania? I don’t know, and I really don’t care. Looking at them, you’d think they were perhaps a Midwestern high school football coach and his wife. They’re middle-aged, average white people you could meet five times and still not remember. Alas, I will never know anything else about them, as they are seated with Summer and John at the better end of the table, and I am seated at the opposite end with their two teenage sons, bodyguard, and nanny.
One of the sons is probably sixteen, and I never get a clear look at him before he dashes for the beach with friends whose parents are installed at a neighboring table. The younger son, who I’m guessing is the painful age of thirteen, sits next to his nanny on my left and gives me a weak smile before permanently turning his acne-pocked cheek toward his gaming device. To my right is their bodyguard, a large man in a black suit who I am told does not speak English. It seems to me that he should be closer to his employers and facing the action to be worth a damn in a crisis, but I guess this is not an area of high alert. Regardless, I’m glad I don’t have to worry about making conversation with either of them. All I want is to make it through lunch with as little interaction as possible and get back to the boat, where I can take a nap. I could seriously put my face down on the table and snooze right now. I can’t fathom eating.
Brittani and Rhonda have been husband-hunting at the bar for the past hour, and when Vinny escorts them back to the table, they are already on the downhill of a slippery slope, giggling all the way. Their jovial state does not escape Summer, who deftly steers them down to my end of the table, as far away from the Latvians as possible. I steel myself for an hours-long installment of “Brittani and Rhonda Do Europe” as Amythest takes the seat across from me.
Amythest, my violet-eyed best friend. And to think I was initially annoyed I had to room with her. Now I am thrilled I don’t have to room with anyone else.
The waitress sets a shot of vodka in front of each of us, a gift from our dining companions. The man says something about how they drink it in their country for good fortune and that this bottle is two hundred years old. That can’t be right. I’m probably seated too far away to hear properly. At any rate, everyone, including the thirteen-year-old, takes the shot. I need a shot of vodka like I need a shot to the head, but I see Summer’s eyes slide to me and I toss it back, just to prove to her that I’m totally fine, regardless of whatever the hell kind of pill she gave me this morning.
My stomach immediately revolts, but my mind smooths out nicely. Mind over matter. Mind over matter. Mind over…Nope.
I stand, my eyes scanning the back of the restaurant for the exit to the bathroom. Amythest starts around the table to escort me, but Wendy steps in and grabs my hand, leading me across the restaurant. The din of conversation, plates, music, and waves all grows to an unbearable roar in my ears; my head spins. Keep it together, Belle! Keep it together.
I put one foot in front of the other, forcing myself to breathe deeply, all the while tightly gripping Wendy’s hand as she leads me through the strangely dark bar and out the back door, down a shrub-walled path covered by a trellis. Why did I drink that vodka? What was I thinking? Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
“Are the bathrooms on the moon?” I grumble.
“They’re really locker rooms. They serve the people using the beach club, too,” Wendy explains, pushing open the door.
It’s all cool white marble inside, and somehow miraculously I’m not throwing up. I feel like I might, but I’m not. I lean against the wall in the handicapped stall, my head in my hands, breathing slowly, while Wendy strokes my head.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have taken that shot.”
“Yeah, that was dumb,” she says with a little laugh. “It’s okay. It’s not your fault. Once we get you some Dramamine, you’ll be a lot better.”
“I have Dramamine!” comes a high, British-accented voice from the adjoining stall. “I’m sorry for eavesdropping, but I turn green at the sight of a boat. It’s the absolute worst!”
“You’re an angel!” I say.
A pale hand with perfectly manicured bright-blue nails appears under the stall with what looks like a little round Band-Aid.
“It’s a patch,” she says. “Just put it on your neck; it’ll fix you right up.”
“Thank you so much,” Wendy says, taking the patch.
She opens it and hands it to me. Too sick to turn down drugs from random strangers in bathrooms right now, I place it on my neck. The toilet next to us flushes. “Good luck,” the voice says.
“Bless you!” I call after her.
“You think you’re gonna be okay now?” Wendy asks. “We should get back to the table before Summer thinks we’ve run off.”
I nod. “I figure her thinking we’ve run off is probably better than me hurling all over the table.”
“I had no idea you got so nauseous,” she says.
“Me neither. But then, I’ve never spent a week on a boat before.”
“Those things are supposed to work wonders, though.”
I don’t know if it’s psychosomatic, but even as she says it, I am starting to feel better. The walls have stopped shifting. I can feel my feet on the floor. I step out of the stall, and the world doesn’t crumble.
I splash my face with cold water and blot it dry with a hand towel while Wendy touches up her face and fixes her hair. Once she’s satisfied with her own appearance, she turns her attention to me. “We’ve gotta get some color back into you.”
She fishes in her makeup bag, coming up with five different lipsticks, none of which she deems appropriate for my skin tone, then finally locates a translucent rose stain she says will have to do. I obediently dab my lips and cheeks with it. “Not bad,” she says, spritzing me with perfume.
I pop a mint in my mouth as we exit the ladies’ room, grateful I’m finally beginning to crave a piece of the fresh-baked bread I saw at other people’s tables.
“You know who that was that saved your ass?” Wendy whispers as we stride arm in arm up the pathway that connects the restrooms to the restaurant. “Tamara von Klein. Duchess of Austria? I think it’s Austria. But she was raised in England, clearly.”
“How on earth did you know that?”
“I know these things.”
“But we didn’t even see her.”
She shrugs. “I saw her go in the bathroom ahead of us and not
iced her nails.”
I push open the heavy door to the bar, blinking as my eyes adjust to the dimness of the wood-paneled room. Velvet drapes block most of the light, and lurid oil paintings of wild animals tearing one another to shreds hang on the dark-green wallpaper. “Why is it so dark in here?” I ask.
I meant it as a rhetorical question, but of course Wendy knows the answer. “This restaurant has been here a hundred years, and the bar has always been the same. It’s famous.”
My eyes land on John, standing at the elaborately carved mahogany bar, in conversation with a tall, dark-haired man. Both have their backs to us.
As we approach, John slaps the man on the back and walks away without spotting us. The man turns. My heart stops.
It’s Dylan.
I haven’t seen him in more than a year, but he looks just the same: rakishly handsome in an impeccably wrinkled white button-down and faded red shorts, his skin sun-kissed, his dark hair tousled. He gives the air of belonging in this place and seems relaxed—far more relaxed than I’d have assumed someone who’d just lost his brother might be.
Neither of us moves for a moment, both caught off guard. And then he breaks into a smile and approaches, his arms outstretched. He wraps me up in a hug as Wendy looks on, amused.
“I didn’t think I was going to get to see you,” he says as we separate.
“Yeah. Small world,” I agree, my surprise robbing me of anything more interesting to say. “This is Dylan,” I explain to Wendy.
“I remember.” She smiles. “Sort of. Thank you for rescuing me at that fairy party.”
“No problem.”
“What brings you here?” I ask.
A wry smile plays around his lips. “Same thing as you, I suppose.”
“Lunch!” Wendy interjects brightly.
He seems less excited to see me than I might have expected, the easy rapport we had last time we met now strained. But then, he’s been through hell since the last time I saw him.
“How do you know John?” Wendy asks him.
He shifts his weight and runs his fingers through his hair, clearing his throat. “We—uh, we work together.”
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