Page 95 of The Cruiser
ChapterThirty-Three
VANDANA
By the timethe elevator dumps me onto the ground floor, I’m a bawling, bikinied hot mess. The concierge, flabbergasted at the sight of me stumbling across the lobby, leaps to his feet
“Mademoiselle! Est-ce que ça va?”
“No,” I yell, shoving the front door open. “Whatever you asked, the answer is no.”
I power along the walkway onto the street, half-blind with fat tears. It’s too overwhelming to process. CNN, all the talk shows on which I’ll be the joke of the day. Worldwide coverage of our naked asses. I, of all people, know there is no privacy anymore. One of our biggest clients, the CEO of a company everyone knows, got raked over the coals six months ago for a morning skinny dip. With his wife of twenty years. At their remote lakeside cabin. He was devastated with how his closest allies dropped him like a hot potato. Blamed me for not controlling the story. I clench my fists, nails digging into the soft flesh of my palm. That whole scenario sank my spirits and ever since, I haven’t had my head in the game.
Shitty shit!
Vaughn is going to kill me.
“Hey babeeee.”
A car whizzes past, some loser giving me a hubba-hubba out the window. I flip him the finger and Morgan’s right, of course. Walking the streets of Monaco in a bikini is very déclassé.
But at least I’m wearing something.
I reeled out of Morgan’s apartment with my travel bag still in the Chiron, but screw it. I don’t need a bag full of tainted memories. I don’t want to see Morgan ever again. I want to pretend none of this happened.
I want to go home.
Head down, I march as fast as I can. Passing pedestrians give me long looks and wide berths. I dare them to say anything, happy to start a fight. But knowing my luck, I’ll be squealed on and arrested by one of those cartoon cops. The ones standing on Monaco’s streets in short-sleeved white shirts and fancy pants.
They don’t even know how to do real police here.
Fake, spit-shined Monaco, where the sun shines every day, relentless and bright.
Like now.
I dig out my Dior sunglasses, grateful to hide behind something. Save for the odd car roaring past, it’s disturbingly quiet, the slap of my flip flops carrying far and wide. I wish I had my Nikes because the farther I get away from Morgan’s, the more I realize how far the hotel is. Rush hour, it if exists in Utopia, will start soon, and I don’t need any more exposure. At the next apartment alcove, I dig out my phone and Google taxis. Call the first company on the short list. The dispatcher asks the question of the day: where am I?
Hell if I know.
There are no flipping street signs. Visible ones, anyway.
“Hold on,” I say, moving further down the block. I squint up at a small plaque carved in a tiny gothic font on the side of the building. “I’m on Boulevard de Jardin Exotique. Close to…” I squint at an awning stretched over the café patio across the street. “The Azur Bar and…” Spinning around to see what’s behind me, my voice deflates. “A Volvo dealership.”
I hate Volvos.
“Ah, oui,” the woman says. “Ten to fifteen minutes, madame.”
Fifteen minutes? This place needs Uber, big time.
Whatever.
I’ll just be right here, with the coffee drinkers across the street wordlessly admiring me. For some coverage, I position my straw bag over my torso.
Nothing to see, people. Nothing to see.
Only an unmitigated fuck-up that we’ll lose clients over.
Sex scandals are for reality TV stars, Hollywood girls famous for being famous. June and Flynn and I poked fun at the last one, some bottle-blonde ditz who later blamed her drug-addled boyfriend for selling the footage for cash. We sat on my couch laughing at the TV, righteous with our glasses of Chardonnay.
That will never be us, we crowed.
