21 Steps to Happiness (6 page)

“I guess you better follow her. And, Lynn…”

“Yes?”

“I'll need a copy of your CV, you know, for Pierre.”

Shit.

“Lynn!” Muriel yells all the way from the reception area.

 

I just want to go back to the hotel, take a last shower and return to the airport to catch the next plane home.

Paris. The city of love. Yeah right. It's the city of people going bonkers!

I'll just tell Jodie I caught the flu.

Or dysentery.

Jodie's so scared of microbes, she'll forgive me for giving up so fast.

I have no idea where we're going. I have to run after Muriel and she makes a point of walking a few steps ahead, but then, all of a sudden, she stops and turns to me.

“I am not just spending my father's money. I have been in this business for five years. I have talent! Everyone says that I have talent. So who are you to talk to me like that?”

I swear, she is about to cry. Just like the silly little teenage girl that she tries not to be.

“Muriel, I don't want to play this game with you, we're both too old.”

“What game?”

“The little-spoiled-girls game.”

“I'm not like this! I'm…I am just so stressed.
Merde, tout va mal!”

She walks away. We're on the run again, only this time I grab her wrist and stop her.

“Things are never as bad as they seem.”

“You're wrong, Confucius! Things are generally much worse.”

Confucius?

I smile at her. I like her. She is wild but I like her. And she smiles back at me. She's cute when she smiles.

“What is there to smile about?” she asks.

“You. You're funny. Confucius!”

“Are you always like this?”

“Like what?” I ask.

“Saying whatever pops into your head?”

Please. She should take a peek in my head! So far, this is nothing.

“You're weird,” she says and resumes the chase, sliding among the tourists and passersby to disappear inside a coffee shop. Only, it's not a coffee shop, and once I follow her into the place I immediately understand a thing or two about Muriel B.

The coffee shop is a tiny secluded bar. It's full of women. Tall women. Short women. Fat women. Thin women. Young. Old. Dark. Blond. Women only.

Muriel is at home in here. She kisses the barmaid on the lips.

“C'est ta nouvelle copine?”
the barmaid asks.

“She thinks you're my girlfriend. Do you think we would be a nice match?” Muriel says, smiling at me over her shoulder.

Oh, God!

“She is not my girlfriend. Lynn is from New York.” She explains to the barmaid.

“Quoi? J'parle pas anglais, moi.”

“Do you mind talking in French, Lynn?”

Shit!

“Non,”
I say.

The barmaid asks me something in French, so I just smile mysteriously. I do a smile that's neither yes nor no. A kind of undecided smile. She asks me again, and looks at Muriel, seeking an explanation.

I decide to say
oui,
and they laugh. I laugh with them. And I nod, of course.

“So? What do you want to drink then?” Muriel asks.

Oh, I see.

“Just a coffee. A trim latte. Something like that.”

The barmaid looks at me as if I had just landed from outer space.

“Donne lui un café.”

That grants me a horrible short-black and a disapproving face. It's 11:30 a.m. Coffee time is over. Muriel orders a
perroquet
. It's like a strange anise cocktail with mint syrup. The barmaid takes the same thing but without the syrup. She doesn't take it
too sweet
.

“Ça fait combien de temps que tu es à Paris?”

“Muriel, we need to talk. In private.” I take her glass and walk to a booth far away from the bar. I want to take her away from the barmaid and all this maddening French language.

She caresses the barmaid's face and comes to sit with me.

“Do you like it in here?” she asks.

Two Japanese girls have just entered. They are dressed in school uniforms, only their skirts are far too short and reveal their underwear. Their faces are covered in colorful makeup. They look like two little porcelain dolls out of an sleazy old man's fantasy.

“The place has character,” I lie. I feel so inappropriate. Hell, I've never been in a place like this before.

Once, with Delia, we went into a sauna parlor, but apparently they didn't even have any real saunas and their masseuses were not really masseuses either. But that was an
accident!

And I don't want to judge anyone. Damn, I just feel very uncomfortable watching girls engaged in passionate kissing at lunchtime.

“Is this your kind of place?”

“Well…”

“See those two Japanese girls?”

I nod. They're sitting right behind us, sharing a pink milk shake with two straws. “Yes, I noticed them.”

“Those two are really sick. They like weird games. They enjoy pain. I played with them last New Year's Eve. I couldn't sit for a week without shrieking.”

She smiles at me.

“Do I shock you?”

“Muriel, I
am
from New York,” I lie again.

In fact, I don't know anyone like Muriel and yes, I am shocked and uneasy. Why did I think that all successful people should be elegant and refined like cheese crackers? Instead, I find myself with crazy young punks and unbalanced teenagers.

“Can we talk about the job? That's why you flew me to Paris, isn't it?”

“American women! Business! Business! Is there anything else that counts but your careers? Business was back there, when we talked to Pierre and you blew it. Now it's time for something else.”

Like kissing sadomasochist lesbian Japanese girls dressed in school uniforms?

“It seems…” I start again.

Oh, just say it, Lynn!

“It seems that Nicolas wasn't too keen on having me in Paris.”

“Nicolas! He has lots of neuroses, that boy. His mind is full of
no, no, no!
My mind is all
yes, yes, yes!
” She laughs like a hyena and the two Japanese girls turn to check what she's drinking and order two of the same.

“I wanted to get a big name from New York,” Muriel continues. “A person that everybody would know in the business. Just like you.”

“Just like me? Muriel, nobody knows me.”

“Your name, Lynn, everybody knows your name. Your name is going to open all the doors. And I spent a fortune getting you here. So now you need to convince me that you were a good investment and that Nicolas was wrong.”

“Wrong?”

“To think you were a waste of our time and money.”

She drinks her
perroquet
with a large smile on her face. She really enjoys toying with me.

“After talking to your brother, it's rather odd that you would try to convince me to stay, Muriel. It looks like you're broke. And by the way, how come he talks with a French accent?”

“He grew up with Dad in Paris. I grew up with Mum, in London. Mum was a model.”

“That's…very nice.”

“No, they're horrible parents.”

“Oh…”

“Lynn, we're not here to discuss my parents. We're here to talk about me! Me! Me! Me! You see, I'm going to take off. I know it. It's my destiny. I am the next Coco Chanel.”

That or locked up in a mental ward.

“I am not a businesswoman. I am an artist. I am crazy. I want to be crazy. And my company should reflect my personality. That's why I need people like you. An American businesswoman with a big name that can help me reach the top.”

“I'm not sure that I'm the person you are looking for, Muriel.”

“Your mother vouched for you. Your mother is a genius.”

I have this picture of Jodie working in her little workshop when she was still unknown and broke. I was very young but I remember her hard face looking down at me, snatching the fabrics away from my hands. “I told you not to touch! You're going to mess everything up again!”

Suddenly, someone's singing a catchy French tune in Muriel's pocket. She fishes out a sleek-looking cell phone. “Nicolas,” she sneers. “Work, work, work!” She throws the phone on the table.

“Aren't you going to answer it?”

“He probably needs me to go back to the office and help him with
something.
” She finishes her
perroquet
shaking her head.

Actually,
I
would love to help Nicolas with something, like…anything. “Let's go back to the office,” I say when the phone is done singing.

“Oh, no! We did enough work for today. Let's go to my place. We can talk some more at my place.”

“What about Nicolas?” I ask, nodding toward the phone as if he was trapped inside and needed immediate attention.

“We'll phone him back. We can meet him at my place. Nicolas loves my place.”

Mmm? Nicolas loves her place. I didn't think of that. Nicolas and Muriel? She has such short hair. That's definitely an advantage over me when taking a ride on his scooter.

 

I love privacy.

Being inside your home is like being inside a safe nest. You close the door and you can recuperate from the mad and stressful goings-on of the real world. Your home is your only chance to get peace and quiet. I love my home.

Muriel is completely different. Her home is like a train station at rush hour. It's full of people from various walks of life, some of them she doesn't even know by name.

Muriel lives in a huge modern flat not too far from the office. I swear, the minute she opened the door, it seemed more busy and hectic inside than on the streets below.

There is this guy from Spain. He wants Muriel to fix a meeting for him with Fjord Model Agency. Muriel met him in a club in Paris and doesn't even remember his name anymore. She told him that she could help him become a model or, eventually, get him a part in a porn film. She introduces him to me as her beautiful Spanish Stallion.

He sleeps on her sofa.

“You are Fjord Agency?” he asks me.

“No, I'm Lynn Blanchett.”

Sprawled out in front of the giant TV screen are the Fat Breeders, a band from London. The whole band is crashing in Muriel's apartment. From the drummer to the backup singers.

According to Muriel, they've been here for two weeks. By the looks of it, they'll never move out.

“Lynn is from New York, she's Jodie Blanchett's daughter,” Muriel presents me proudly.

“Hi,” they say lazily, as if they didn't really give a damn, or were already
so
used to meeting all kinds of
real
celebrities.

In the kitchen, two girls are sharing a frozen yogurt. They look like twins. They both have long blond hair in a tight ponytail and wear identical sweatpants and T-shirts. And, of course, they have bodies to die for.

“You must know Irena and Jacky. They're from New York, too.”

Irena and Jacky are dancers, temporarily making their living in Paris as topless waitresses. Muriel forgot how they came to live in her apartment.

“They've been here forever. I am not even sure they're really gay. They bring all kind of weird men in here. Macho types. They're very, very loose girls.”

In Muriel's bedroom, we need to whisper. Carolina is asleep in her bed. She has just arrived from Nigeria and models for Elite. Carolina is not her real name. Her real name is too hard to pronounce and sounds vaguely like Carolina.

“I like her. We're not very serious about each other yet, but I could fall in love with her. She has the potential to become big. Who knows? She's so young.”

We bend over her like two fairies watching over the little sleeping princess, planning her bright future. Muriel pushes me into her private office.

Only, it's not private—or an office—at all. There is a sofa, clearly being used as a bed, and a horribly messy desk. Seated behind the desk is a very thin man of indefinite age. He's typing on a laptop computer. He finally stops and takes a look at us. We are part of another world to him, like he really can't see us, but merely feels our presence.