Finding It (7 page)

Carolena frowns.“Yes, would you?”

“Are you kidding? I would love to buy this dress. I would wear it for the rest of my life—to the grocery store and the gym and my wedding—or at least until all the beads fell off. Only…”

“Only?”

“Only…” I reach under my armpit to feel for a price tag, but can’t find one. It’s probably so expensive—one of those, if you have to ask, you can’t afford it dresses. “I am not sure I can afford it.”

“Oh, biscuits!” Carolena waves her hand like she’s brushing crumpet crumbs from the tea table. “You look brilliant! I wager you feel fairly brilliant, too. Please say you will take the dress?”

I do a mental balancing of my checking and savings account. If I dip into my travel contingency fund and forgo
pain au chocolat
for a year, I might be able to afford my Gatsby-esque gown.

“It depends.”

“On what?”

“On the price.” Ain’t no shame in admitting the truth. No fronting. I am a Grant, not a Rockefeller. “I can’t afford a two thousand dollar dress.”

Carolena glances over her shoulder and moves closer, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. She confesses one of her customers purchased the dress and returned it.

“She said some of the beads came off in her hand.” Carolena rolls her eyes. “Absolute rubbish.”

“Why do you think she returned it?”

“I sold the same dress to her cousin’s wife. The two don’t get on, you see.”

I didn’t see. If my cousin’s wife wanted this dress, I would risk life and limb wrestling her for it. My cousin’s wife is five-foot-four and weighs one hundred and ninety eight pounds, so I would literally be risking life and limb.

“Couldn’t you have refused the return?”

“I could have, but she is an important customer.” She widens her eyes and lowers her chin, as if the gesture conveys more than her words. “An extremely important customer.”

“The kind of customer with loads of connections?”

“The sort of customer with a sterling antecedent.”

“A royal?”

Carolena closes her eyes and turns away.

“Tell me, Carolena. Did a royal wear this dress? I am going to die. You have to tell me. Please?”

She opens her eyes and fixes me with an implacable stare—a stare that says, “You can toss me in the tower and threaten me with the rack, but I shan’t answer your inquisition.”

My mind whirls as I try to imagine which royal princess or duchess or highborn lady slipped into my slinky shimmy gown.

“I can’t sell a gown in my store now that has been worn. I was going to sell it to a vintage boutique in Notting Hill, but maybe we could strike a bargain?”

“What sort of bargain?”

Who am I kidding? I would give her my virginity for this dress. That is, if I hadn’t already given my virginity to Leo Crandall, Travis Trunnell, and Nathan Edwards. Yes, I told more than one man he took my virginity. Just call me the perpetual virgin.

“Buy the shoes, and I will sell you the dress seventy percent off.”

I assume the dress costs as much as the hippie habit and mentally calculate thirty percent of two thousand three hundred and thirty five dollars. I suck at math, but even I can know the number is big, too big for my budget.

“That’s super generous, Carolena, but if this gown costs as much as the Alexander McQueen, I won’t be able to afford it.”

“It doesn’t cost as much as the Alexander.”

“How much?

“Since the Louboutins are last season and the dress has been worn, how about I sell them to you for…”

Carolena’s words turned to Charlie Brown adult drone shortly after she said Louboutins. Jesus, Mary, and Gianni Versace! Louboutins are crazy expensive. Carolena obviously mistook my plastic spork for a silver spoon.

“Vivia?” She waves her hand in front of my face. “Hello, Vivia? Are you away with the fairies?”

“Sorry? How much for the dress and shoes?”

“Two hundred and seventy five pounds.”

It’s a little over four hundred and twenty five dollars. That’s two pairs of Ugg boots, a pair of skinny jeans, and a couple orders of Mr. Foo’s Spicy Chicken and Noodles plus tax. Or one hundred and eighty
pain au chocolats
from my favorite Parisian patisserie.

“That must be one deep discount.”

“Do we have a deal?”

One hundred and eighty days without my morning
pain au chocolat
in exchange for the sexiest, slinkiest, most mesmerizing dress I’ve ever shimmied in and a pair of Louboutins? Yeah, that’s a deal I think I can make.

“Abso-bloody-lutely,” I say, borrowing a Poppy-ism.

French Kissing in the UK

Carolena was wrong. Boujis isn’t posh. It’s über-posh. The club is the nocturnal playground for the beautiful creatures inhabiting an exclusive netherworld of privilege and pedigree. Millionaire playboys, anorexic supermodels, golden-haired heiresses, bored bluebloods, and megawatt celebrities gather nightly to mingle and mate to an electropop soundtrack. Celestial bodies floating in a neon cloud tinged with perspiration and Chanel No. 5.

As befits Poppy’s noble lineage, we arrived late and took a place in the VIP lounge—a long leather banquette situated beneath a wall of tiny light bulbs flashing Boujis in turquoise, purple, and hot pink. She ordered two bottles of Veuve Clicquot and introduced me to her crew of countesses, celebs, and CEOs, before a gorgeous blond with a Rugby player’s honed body led her to the dance floor.

I am sweating-balls nervous. The VIP lounge in an über-posh London nightclub is so not my scene. I am just plain old Vivia Perpetua Grant. Ugg-wearing, Groupon-using, Vivia. I haven’t had silicone implanted in my breasts or Botox injected in my face. My sisters jiggle and my forehead moves when I smile.

The savages smell my fear. Two emaciated brunettes seated to my right keep eyeing my last-season Louboutins and fixing me with tight smiles.

They move in for the kill before I can escape to the bathroom.

I liberally lubricate my rusty courage with Poppy’s expensive champagne. By the time I have finished my flute, I am feeling smooth, mellow, and as entitled to be chilling in the VIP lounge as any other member of Poppy’s privileged posse.

“The Parisian is insane, isn’t he?” says the brunette with slicked back hair. She looks like one of rhythmless models in the old Robert Palmer “Addicted to Love” video. “He is barking mad.”

“Excuse me?”

“Martin.”

I stare blankly. Apparently, I am supposed to know mad Martin.

“Martin,” the second brunette repeats. “Solveig.”

“I’m sorry. Who is Martin Solveig?”

“The DJ.”

Her unspoken “duh” hangs heavy in the electropop charged air.

“Oh, yeah,” I say, shrugging. “He’s great.”

I want to say,
“He’s an awesome DJ, but it’s a shame he’s spinning monotonous electropop with an uninspired, pretentious Eurotrash backbeat.”

But I don’t.

“What do you think of what he’s doing to Röyksopp and Robyn?”

“Who?”

They exchange looks.

“That song”—the Robert Palmer brunette points at the speaker above our heads—“is by the band Röyksopp and Robyn.”

“What do you think of the way he is mixing Röyksopp and Robyn with an old Blondie song?”

The rolled eyes and outraged little exhalations tell me they don’t really care what I have to say about Milksop and Robin.

“Honestly?” I say, a little drunk.

They both nod like bitchy twin bobbleheads.

“I hate electropop. Immensely. I would rather listen to Ronnie Radke sing “The Drug in Me is You,” or Josh Todd sing “Crazy Bitch,” or Austin Carlile sing the Teletubby theme song. Rock. Classic rock. Metal. Post-hardcore. That’s my kind of music. Not this seizure-inducing series of synthesized lines mixed with electronic drum beats and cold, dead robotic vocals. This is the ambient sound in a Star Wars flick. It’s mindless, soulless.”

“Here! Here! Heed the words of wisdom ushered forth from the lips of the beautiful, albeit brash, American,” says a warbling voice that is more Mockney than Cockney, an affected upper-middle class British accent that one might expect from a cheeky street urchin with posh pretentions.

I squint, hoping to put a face with the voice, but can’t see through the neon-tinted smoke machine haze. Out of the darkness comes a tall tattooed familiar form.

It’s Bishop.
Freaking
. Raine.

Hair teased and sprayed to resemble a cockatoo, eyeliner smudged around his eyes as if applied by a prepubescent Emo girl. Paisley silk shirt unbuttoned to his navel, half tucked into nut-hugging black leather pants. He’s rebel rocker-cum-Jesus. And he’s crazy sexy.

“You are an American?” he asks.

“California Girl.”

The bobbleheads gasp at my inadvertent Kitty Kat reference, because Bishop dated the singer early in his career and the pair engaged in a tabloid war after their breakup. Bishop stares at me, stony-faced.

“You know what they say about California girls?” I shouldn’t reference Kitty Kat’s song again, but some wicked inner demon is prodding me with his pitchfork. I always blather when I am nervous, and having Bishop Raine’s sexy smoldering eyeliner-ringed gaze fixed on me is making me very, very nervous. Not because he is a celebrity, but because he’s really cute. “California girls are unforgettable.”

Nobody laughs. The bobblehead bitches turn away from me. Someone coughs. Everyone avoids making eye contact. Finally, Bishop laughs.

“So I’ve been told.”

He barely takes a breath before launching into a monologue about electropop.

“Electropop is a reflection of society’s ennui. It’s indicative of a larger problem within our culture; our inability to emote, to connect, due, in large part, to social media.”

Bishop has a frenetic energy, speed talking, shooting words at me like bullets from a machine gun. It’s exhilarating.

“It is pervasive, encroaching, disjointing, transforming us from free-thinking, autonomous individuals into blind, self-destructive lemmings, too ignorant to realize what is happening and too lazy to thwart it.”

This leather clad Rasputin with kohl-smudged eyes and eighties glam rock hair has completely enthralled Poppy’s posse. Even the bobblehead bitches are nodding and murmuring with cult-like rapture. I dig Bishop’s bohemian chic ramblings, not because he’s a celebrity, but because I genuinely dig people brave enough to be different and intelligent enough to translate their motives for being different. Nevertheless, I am not enraptured.

“What bullshit!”

Bishop makes a rolling motion with his hand, indicating he would like me to proceed with my scintillating rebuttal.

“I don’t believe social media is responsible for society’s downfall any more than I believe the president spends his spare time parting the Red Sea.”

“Wha’?” Bishop slides onto the booth beside me, leaning his lanky body in close, nudging the bobbleheads away. “You don’t believe the American Messiah spends his free time performing miracles?”

“Not unless you consider perfecting his golf drive a miracle.”

“Ooo, lookee here,” he squeals, black eyes flashing. “We have ourselves a rare and endangered beast: a jaded conservative.”

“Hardly!” I snort.

“You’re not a jaded conservative, then?”

“Jaded? A little. Conservative?” I tip more champagne into my flute, toss it back, and fix Mister Bishop Sexy Raine with my naughtiest expression. “Only out of the bedroom.”

He chuckles.

What the Jesus, Mary, and Gyrating Stripper am I doing? Am I really flirting with Kitty Kat’s ex-boyfriend?

Poppy arrives, glowing and breathless.

“Bishop, darling,” she says, pressing a kiss to his whiskered cheek. “How are you? Have you been introduced to my friend Vivia?”

Bishop’s lips turn up in a mischievous grin. “No, actually, not formally.”

“Bishop, this is my soon to be dear friend, Vivia Grant.” Poppy leans against the banquette, inadvertently giving the entire posse a peek down the front of her silky black jumper. “Vivia is from San Francisco.”

“So, Vivia from San Francisco, what are you doing on this side of the pond?” Bishop asks. “What brings you to Londontown? A butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker?”

“Vivia is a magazine writer,” Poppy says. “A brilliant writer, in fact.”

“Really?” Bishop leans forward. “How splendid! Did you feel that palpable shift in the atmosphere? Vivia from San Francisco just elevated the IQ level of the room. Perhaps this evening won’t be an endless parade of vapid nitwits ensconced in ignorance and glitter.”

As if on cue, two beautiful blond barmaids wearing little more than British and American flag pasties on their nipples approach. The one wearing the American flag pasties holds a smartphone.

Bishop ignores them.

British Flag Pasties clears her throat. Bishop looks at the barmaids. The barmaids burst into piercing squeals.

“Yeah, I know.” Bishop fixes them with a toothy grin. “I feel it too.”

I snort.

“Um, Mister Raine,” American Flag Pasties says in a breathy Marilyn Monroe-esque voice. “Can we take your photograph for the Boujis Blog?”

“For the blog, you say?”

American Flag Pasties giggles again, and the tassels hanging from her nipples sway back and forth. British Flag Pasties flutters her glitter-encrusted false eyelashes.

“Well then,” Bishop says, leaping to his feet, “of course you may take a snappy. Anything for art.”

He grabs my hand and pulls me up to stand beside him.

“You may steal my soul with your smartphone device, but only if Vivia Grant is also in the photo.”

British Flag Pasties flutters her bovine falsies at Bishop again, but I can tell she’s pissed. If there were a thought bubble hovering over her head right now, it would read, “Ohmygod, like, we only take snappies of, like, famous people.”

American Flag Pasties hands her smartphone to Poppy before positioning herself beside me, lips pursed duck-like, hand on hip, breasts thrust forward. British Flag Pasties drapes herself over Bishop.

“On three,” Poppy says, her voice barely carrying over the ear-throbbing electropop. “One…two…three…”

Poppy pushes the button and a bright flash of light momentarily blinds us. She hands the phone back to American Flag Pasties.