21 Steps to Happiness (20 page)

When I reach the street, everybody is gone.

I shout. “Nicolas!”

I wait.

I shout again because, well, it radiates from me.

“Nicolas!”

“Ça suffit!”
one of the bouncers yells at me.
“Il est parti, votre Nicolas.”

“Il est parti?”
I repeat word for word.

“
Parti
. Gone. Zouf!”

“Zouf?”

My love has zoufed away.

 

Nothing has gone as planned. Not with Hubert. Not with Nicolas. Might as well try the last person on my list. I ring the doorbell.

“What do you want?” Carolina spits. She's still sore for not making it to the Riviera with us.

“Hi,” I say, as if it was normal for me to come to their apartment at daybreak. “I need to see Muriel.”

“She sleeps.” She closes the door with no further ceremony.

I ring again and again and again.

She reopens.
“Mais t'es folle, toi!”

“I need to see Muriel. Er…
besoin
Muriel.”

“You want to wake up Muriel? Okay!” She lets me in. “
Elle va te tuer.
Ha ha ha!”

She's actually eager to see what Muriel's going to do to me once I've dragged her out of bed.

Muriel lies on top of the bed still wearing the clothes she had on in Mean Ray, cuddling the bedcover around her. I approach. Oops, I stepped on something crisp and noisy. There are a few sheets of paper spread on the floor. I pick one up. It's…sketches. A woman with a huge spider over her head. She must have drawn it just before crashing.

Carolina drops her silk kimono, and, completely nude, slips back into bed.

“Muriel?” I try.

Muriel mumbles, turns and dives deeper into the bedcover. Not available. Sorry.

“Muriel? It's me, Lynn.” I approach, give her a tap on the shoulder and step back carefully. “Muriel? Come on!”

“She's going to kill you,” Carolina murmurs like she's been there before.

I take my cell phone and speed-dial Muriel.

Her cell phone rings. She has it on her. She's not really awake but she looks for her phone instinctively. She finds it and still with her eyes tightly shut yells “What!”

“Muriel, it's me, Lynn,” I say in the phone.

“What?”

“Muriel, I'm standing just beside you. Wake up, please.”

“What?”

“Open your eyes, for Crissake!”

She does. I'm there. With my cell phone making a two-meters-distance call.

She doesn't need any more information. She throws her cell phone at me. “What the fuck are you doing here?” she yells.

“I told her,” Carolina clears herself.

“Xavier Urbain offered me a job.”

“What?”

“He offered me more money than you could ever afford. But I'm going to reject his offer.”

I'm not sure she understood anything I just said. She fights with the bedcover and grabs her alarm clock. “Do you know what time it is?”

“Muriel, I have decided not to work for you, either.”

She slams the alarm clock back on her bedside table.

“I lied to you, Muriel.”

“What?”

“I lied to everyone. I'm not the person you think I am.”

She looks around. She's trying to get a better feel for where she is. She turns to Carolina. “Did you let her in?”

Carolina just shoves the duvet over her head.

“Did you hear what I just said?”

“Lynn, are you on drugs?”

“Listen to me…I can't do the job! I'm not like Jodie! I'm nothing like her. I'm nobody. I lie! I lie all the time! I have no idea what I'm doing here. I'm NOBODY!”

Silence.

“You did coke, didn't you?”

“Listen to me! I didn't do any drugs! I'm just not the kind of person you expected.”

“Can we discuss this later, when you calm down and I've had some fucking sleep?”

“Muriel, I can't do this job. I'm going back to New York.”

She breathes deeply. “Leaving?”

“Yes.”

“Leaving me?”

I want to say something self-deprecating so she won't regret losing me, but I'm far too busy fighting back tears.

“Leaving me, huh? Okay, then!” Muriel pulls the duvet away from Carolina and kicks her butt quite rudely. “You, out! Now!”

“But…It's not my fault! I told her not to wake you up!”

“Out! Out! Out!”

Carolina mumbles something about me being such a troublemaker, picks up her kimono and flashes me her butt on her way out.

“And close the door!”

“I'm going to sleep with Irena and Jacky!” Carolina threatens and slams the door.

“You, in!” Muriel orders, opening the duvet for me.

“I don't think—”

“In, I said.”

I hesitantly sit down on the edge of the bed. She pushes me down until I lie beside her.

She throws the duvet over us. It's completely dark under there. I almost jump out when her voice breaks the silence.

“Lynn?”

I can't find my voice to respond.

“Are you crying?”

“No, I'm not crying,” I lie.

“I don't care who you are and who you think you're not,” she whispers. Her voice is so low, it's like little raindrops on wood. “Yesterday.”

“Yesterday?”

“You know,
there
.” Muriel is referring to the villa. I can't believe it really was only yesterday we were there.

“I would give everything to be back there, in your arms,” Muriel continues. “Only it won't be the same. Because it was…
there
. You understand?”

Silence. I don't know what to say.

“Why did you do it?”

“You were breaking all the freaking windows!” I sniff and wipe my eyes. “You were sad.”

“No one ever bothered before.”

“I didn't want you to be sad,” is all I can reply.

“Lynn, you can't leave now. I need you, Lynn.”

“Oh, stop, please! I just want to go home!”

“Lynn?”

“What?”

“It's about Nicolas, isn't it?”

“My God, Muriel! What have I done?”

“We'll fix it, love.” Her hand has found mine. “Don't worry about Nicolas. He'll forgive you.”

G
ood God, great creator of
things,
evaporate me and let me flee through the ventilation system!

Here we are, in his office.

I'm so ashamed. Muriel dragged me in and wants me to tell Nicolas about my meeting with Urbain. And that's what I'm trying to do with a throat so tight words hurt. What I really want to do is jump at his feet and beg for forgiveness.

I gather enough guts to look at him. He doesn't appear to be listening. He is analyzing the sky, the white colors of the walls, the smoothness of the desk. Anything to avoid looking at me.

“First, there's the Fran Wellish situation, and now this,” Muriel comments.

“The Fran Wellish situation?” I ask.

“We invited the bitch to Paris, paid for everything, and yesterday she went to Xavier Urbain! That's why she disappeared. Don't you see it? It's a war! And the fat bastard is winning it! Nicolas, for Chrissake!”

Her tattoos are turning from black to red.

“I've met with Xavier Urbain, too,” Nicolas says coldly. “He offered me a position.”

This is just too much for Muriel. She sits silently on the floor and waits for him to say more.

“The condition was that I would resign from Muriel B on the spot,” he continues. “I was also supposed to stop any sort of further contact with you.”

“Why didn't you say anything?” She's still trying to sound tough, but she's lost her steam.

“I was actually considering their offer.”

“You bastard!” Okay, some of the steam is back.

“I had decided to stay with you anyway,” he says and turns to me. “I liked our team. I believed in us. I trusted…
us
. But now…”

“I'm so sorry, Nicolas,” I mutter.

Muriel claps his hands and brings us away from last night's mayhem, back into her office. “You listen to me, you two. I don't care who's screwing who. This is a business not a dating service!” She turns to Nicolas. “We started this together, Nicolas, and we're going to finish it together. You got that?”

Nicolas just shrugs, eases back and resumes staring at the gray sky like a keen meteorologist.

“I need to talk with him, alone,” Muriel tells me. She looks as if she's going to say something nice, but instead adds, “And Lynn, if you try to get on a plane and leave me, I will find you. And I will kill you.”

 

Out in the workshop I see Marc and I walk up to him. “Marc, I'm so sorry about last night.”

“Sorry for what?”

“Don't you remember? In Mean Ray?”

“Did I go to Mean Ray?
Oh la la,
I don't remember a thing.”

I fill him in on how he met Marion.

He screams.

“Did I behave?”

“You were very…enthusiastic.”

“A-ah! Keen-o! I'll never drink again! I'm going to join a convent and become a nun.”

Nun? Marc?

He points at Muriel's office. “It's very electric this morning. What's going on?”

“They're discussing my future with the company.”

“Oh, I see. Money talks.” He put his finger across his mouth and invites us not to talk about it. “Dirty talk.”

I nod and look at the fabric he is working on. It's some sort of a metallic web with trapped silver pearls.

“What are you doing?”

He grabs a few drawings lying at the side of his table.

“It came in this morning. It's the wedding dress. See, it's like a spiderweb.”

I recognize them. They are the sketches that were lying around Muriel's bed.

“Muriel, she is different. She doesn't work with a simple drawing. She makes different sketches. She lets you visualize the dress from different angles. So you don't just see it. You feel it.”

He turns the pages and the dress comes alive in my mind. He's right. Muriel has drawn the different sketches to give you a full mental picture of the piece.

“Isn't the design a bit morbid for a wedding?”

He stops and looks at me as if steam were coming out my ears.

“It's symbolic, don't you get it? The bride has caught herself a husband. And he's going to bring her money. See the silver pearls? That's the money. It's symbolic. It's simply genius.”

“I see it now. It's very cynical.”

“You want cynical, look at the hat.”

The hat is a huge black spider holding the web that has captured the bride with its legs.

“So the bride is not the spider,” I say. “The spider is the institution of marriage and the victim is the bride, who has been seduced by the pearls.”

The dress is like a Polaroid of Muriel's mind. It's clever and truly beautiful, in a dark sort of way.

“Hmm, I guess you're right.” Marc looks up.

There're some roar and commotion coming from Nicolas's office. I guess the forgiveness business isn't going down that well after all.

 

It's five o'clock. This has been the longest day in my life. I had absolutely nothing to do all day but make sure that the clock was progressing one minute at a time and wait for Nicolas or Muriel to call me back into his office.

They've been locked in there all day just yelling and yelling at each other.

Catherine was running in and out, bringing food, water, coffee and documents. I wish she was wearing a helmet, for safety measures.

The door opens at last. Muriel steps out and looks at me. She appears exhausted. Disheveled. I stand. I take a few steps toward her. “Oh, Lynn, not now!” she breathes and walks away.

But…

Nicolas comes to the door and waves for me. You! In my office! Now!

He closes the door behind us.

“Nicolas, I'm sorry for all the trouble I brought on you,” I start.

“Yes, you said that already. Please sit down.”

I'm back at school sitting in the principal's office after skipping class.

“Muriel wants to offer you the position of public relations executive assistant.”

“Assistant?” What happened to consultant?

He pushes a little folder in front of me. I lift it from his desk. It's strangely light.

“You can return it to Catherine or Muriel,” he says, “once you have read it and signed each page. It's in English.”

I open the folder and look through the shortest contract in the history of employment. It's written on four single pages.

“You'll be on a trial period for the next three months. During that period Muriel can choose to terminate the contract without notice.”

“Nicolas, it doesn't need to be like this.”

He had prepared a notepad with each point and ticks them as he goes. “She wants to propose a salary of thirty thousand euros per year.”

“Are you just going to talk to your notepad or talk to me?”

“We will help you find an apartment. We will help you to obtain a work permit and we can help you open a bank account.”

He ticks “apartment,” “work permit” and “bank account” on the pad. I reach over the desk and push the pad away from him.

“Will you listen to me?” I'm trying hard not to scream.

He looks up at me. I can sense how much he hates me now.

“I made a mistake, Nicolas.”

“You sure did. Any questions? About the contract, I mean.”

“Do you really hate me?”

He finally closes his pad. He doesn't need any time to think about it. The answer is there ready in his heart, and he says it. “I don't care about you anymore.”

“It can't be like this, Nicolas, not if we're going to work together.”

“We're not going to work together. I don't want to see you. I don't want to hear about you. I don't want to have anything to do with you.”

Did you hear that? It was the sound of my breaking heart.

“I've quit,” he says. “And Muriel has accepted my resignation.”

 

I'm just going to walk until I find the Seine then throw myself into it.

What happened to
“He will forgive you—I'll fix it”?

I'm starving. If you want to lose ten pounds, don't start any crazy low-carb diet. Like I said before. Just come to work in France. It's slimming.

I find a falafel stand and take my order to a nearby table. I open the contract folder. I read the first lines and then slam it shut again.

What's the point of going back to the office, anyway?

Nicolas is gone.

He hates me!

I've finished my falafel and it sits in my stomach like a lump. Things are really hard to digest today.

 

Call me paranoid, but I'm hesitating before asking for the card key to my room. You don't put assistants in these kinds of hotels. I picture Nicolas phoning the desk clerk and asking him to cancel my suite and throw me and my things onto the street. Assistants should deal with their own accommodation.

“You have a message, Miss Blanchett.”

The desk clerk hands me my card key and a little envelope. I open it and the note says, “Hi. Hubert.”

“Anything else,” I ask, hoping that there would be something more comforting then just “Hi.”

“No, that's it, Mademoiselle Blanchett.”

I drag myself to the elevator. I'm worn out. I categorically refuse to think. It's a survival thing. I know that the minute I start to think, I will crumble and collapse. I just take one step at a time, and keep breathing in and out.

I open the door to my room and I have to clap a hand over my mouth not to scream. First, I thought that somebody was standing in the middle of the room. But it's not human, it's flowers. Right there, beside my bed. It's beautiful. It's one of those designer compositions. Like a beautiful tall white tree. I can't believe it.

“You must think that I am the tackiest person in the world.”

Oh, it's the man that was scared of tacky.

I turn to see Hubert standing in the corridor right behind me. “How did you…”

“You're not happy to see me?”

I'm not sure yet, so I say, “I'm not sure yet.”

“I tried to contact you today, but…apparently you were busy.”

I recall my day watching the clock at Muriel B and counting the seconds. “I had a weird day today.”

“Because of last night?”

“Because of me. Because of Muriel. Because of everything.”

He points at his flower tree. “I didn't know how to do that. I'm not used to the running-after-the-girl game.”

“Nobody asked you to run after me,” I say and hear how unkind my voice sounds.

“There's something real happening between us. You can't lie about it forever.”

You know what I really need now? I really need to fall into his arms. I could cry on his shoulder and feel secure again. I could forget everything about Muriel B and Nicolas and just accept being one of Hubert's girls and getting a choice of cars or apartments later.

Argh!

“We had too many Bloody Marys and too much champagne, Hubert.”

“Give me a chance, Lynn.”

“Hubert, you're a nice man. I really mean that. But…” I look at the contract. “I need to think about it.”

“About what?”

“About us.”

“What is there to think about?”

“That's exactly my point.”

He puts his hand deep in his pockets and walks back into the corridor. “I don't want this to sound shallow, but I've never been dumped before.”

“I'm not dumping you,” I say like a coward, because that's exactly what I should be doing. “I just need some time for myself.”

“Well, when you're done thinking about us…”

“I'll phone you.”

“Yeah, I know.”

 

I just came out of the shower. I'm not in anybody's arms but I have slid into a thick fresh bathrobe. That's as good as it will get tonight.

I sit in the middle of my king-size bed and look at the contract folder before me.

I pick up the phone.

I dial and listen to the very familiar ring tone.

“Bill Blanchett.”

“Hi, Dad, it's Lynn.”

“Oh, Lynn, finally! I was beginning to worry. When are you coming back?”

“I was actually calling to talk to you about that, Dad.”