Fleur De Lies (6 page)

“I don’t think so.” She gave me a dismissive look. “Sounds like a bunch of liberal fiction to me.”

Dawna furrowed her brow. “Is fiction the one that’s real or make believe? I can never remember.”

“Why don’t you look it up in your thesaurus?” droned Virginia.

“
Ewww-weee
!” Krystal grabbed the edge of the table. “Can y’all feel that?” She suddenly looked a little woozy. “We’re pickin’ up speed. You know what that means?”

“We’re going faster?” asked Jackie.

“It means I better pop a pill before I embarrass myself.”

Too late for that.

“Krystal can get motion sick just standin’ in one place,” Bobbi explained, “so she’s gotta take some honkin’ big pills to help her walk without hurlin’. Don’t ya, sugah?”

Krystal mined her pocketbook for a plastic pill container, flipped open the top, and popped a softgel the size of a dum dum bullet into her mouth, washing it down with a gulp of water.

“How come my motion sickness pills don’t look like yours?”
asked Woody. He removed a foil blister pack from his shirt pocket and slapped it on the table. “Mine look more like baby aspirin. Am I getting ripped off ? I keep telling the druggist I need something stronger, but he keeps selling me the same damn pills. Airplane turbulence really does me in, even after I’ve chewed a couple of the things. And the older I get, the worse it gets. If the river gets choppy, I’ll probably be holed up in my cabin ’til Paris.”

“I buy all my drugs at the vitamin shop, hon, so I never have to deal with druggists giving me the wrong pills. I scan the shelves, read the labels, decide what I need, and buy it in economy-size, tamper-proof bottles. You wanna know the best thing for my kind of motion sickness? Ginger. In thousand-gram caplets.”

“You don’t consult your physician?” marveled Woody. “You just go out and buy it over the counter?”

“I never buy it over the counter, hon. I always use the self-checkout lane because it’s usually a lot faster.”

Virginia let out a pained groan accompanied by an impatient look around the room. “
Where
is the wine steward?” She stuck her bejeweled hand in the air and snapped her fingers. “You there!”

A man in black tie, tux, and red cummerbund hurried over to
our table. “Mesdames, messieurs, I welcome you aboard the
Renoir
. I am Patrice, and it is my pleasure to serve you this evening. You will allow me to show you our wine list?”

“It’s about time,” huffed Virginia. “Yes, you can show me your wine
l
ist. But trust me, if this is an example of the poor service we can
expect to receive for the rest of the trip, I guarantee you’ll soon be looking for new employment.”

“
Oui
, madame.
Pardonne
.” He placed a long, narrow placard in her hands. “You would like to order for the table?”

She slid her rhinestone glasses onto her face. “I’m going to order for myself. The rest of them can take care of themselves. And I’m thinking that a fine Chateau Mouton Rothchild would do quite nicely this evening.”

While Virginia dithered over vintage year and blend, Victor
folded
his hands on the table and smiled. “So, my lovelies, tell me about your home visit. Did you dazzle your host family?”

Dawna bounced gleefully in her chair, causing her bustier to plunge
toward wardrobe malfunction territory. “We welcomed three new Mona Michelle converts into the fold! Bobbi and Krystal and me had sample products with us, so we—”

“—convinced our hostess that we could erase years from her face with our concealer gel and foundation,” chirped Krystal.

“So we did freaking
amazing
makeovers for her and her two daughters,” Bobbi enthused. “By the time we finished, they—”

“—were beggin’ us to sell them our entire line of daywear products,” gushed Dawna. “We left a few samples with them, Victor, but if you really want to make a killing, you gotta—”

“—create an international arm of Mona Michelle!” cried Bobbi.

Jackie came to attention beside me, shooting an adoring look at the blondes before preening like a starlet expecting to be named best actress in a foreign film.

Victor nodded his pleasure. “Personal initiative and enthusiasm for the product, ladies.
This
is why we lead the industry in sales. Your performance continues to exceed my expectations.”

“Hey, Patricia.” Woody waved his menu at the steward. “One of our entrees is listed here as ‘Poison Grille.’ I’ve got two questions for you. Number one: What kind of poison is it? And number two: How do I know it won’t kill me?”

Patrice threw a nervous look in Woody’s direction. “Poison,
monsieur
?
No, no. That cannot be.
Excusé moi
, madame. Just for a moment.”

“I haven’t finished with you yet,” snapped Virginia as Patrice circled the table to assist Woody.

Victor smiled at his bevy of beauties. “Don’t be modest, ladies. I know great ideas need a spark to ignite them. Which one of you was the spark who envisioned the makeovers?”

“I did!” echoed the three blondes in near perfect unison.

Jackie stared at them aghast, her jaw falling with the speed of an excavator dropping its clam bucket.

“All three of you came up with the idea?” asked Victor.

They braved whiplash as they took sudden measure of each other.
“We kinda … brainstormed,” cooed Bobbi. “Idn’t that right, girls?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Dawna agreed. “When we were checkin’ out that cute
little seaside town, that’s exactly what we were doin’. Brainstormin’ and shoppin’.”

Oh, sure. Like they could multitask at such an advanced level.

“And that’s when it happened,” declared Krystal. “
Zzzzt
! The three
of us got zapped by the very same idea at the very same time. It was almost like … like a religious experience.”

A pilgrimage to Lourdes was a religious experience. What the girls
were peddling as gospel was an outright lie. I kicked Jackie under the table.

“A printing error,”
tsked
Patrice as he hovered over Woody’s should
er. “Not Poison Grille.
Poisson
Grille. Fish, not poison—a delicious pan-fried tilapia with reduced tomato and white wine sauce, presented on carrot mousseline and saffron rice.” He poised his pencil over his order pad. “Is that your selection, monsieur?”

“Gimme a burger and fries, with extra ketchup. I’m a real ketch-
up guy.”

Virginia glared at him, her eyes narrowing to slivers. “Exactly where do you think you are? The food court at your local mall?” She motioned to Patrice. “Would you kindly explain the purity of French cuisine to Mr. Jolly?”

“No burgers, monsieur. No fries. But we prepare seven mouthwatering flavors of tomato-based sauce to suit your individual taste.” He ranged a look around the table. “Other questions? Yes? No?”

“I’ve got one.” Woody twisted his head around to look up at Patrice. “What kind of end-of-life planning have you done, son? What are you? Thirty-five? Forty? You know, it’s never too early to start making arrangements for that inevitable day when—”

“I have a question.” Jackie leaned forward and braced her forearms on the table. Jaw hard and nostrils flared, she lasered a squinty look at the blondes. “Why am I remembering that the idea thingie happened a whole lot differently?”

Krystal flashed a coy smile. “You must be misrememberin’, sugah.”

“Am not.”

“You
have
to be misrememberin’,” Bobbi agreed. She crushed the brim of her hat and cocked it at a perkier angle. “As I recollect, you weren’t even there.”

“Was so!”

Dawna gasped. “Are you tryin’ to take credit for
our
idea? Now that’s just plain disappointin’. Are y’all as disappointed in Jackie as I am, girls?”

How did the saying go? If you can’t dispute the facts, attack the messenger?

“Given that my own memory tends to be a bit faulty,” Victor
blurted out, “I think you ladies are being much too harsh on Jackie. None of us remember events in exactly the same way.”

“I’m remembering that no one has taken my drink order yet,” fussed Virginia.

“
Pardonne
, madame!” Patrice hurried back to her side, leaving Woody to puzzle over the menu himself.

“It doesn’t matter who thought of the idea,” conceded Victor.
“Shall we call it a group effort? What interests me more are the results of the makeovers.” He graced Jackie with an avuncular smile. “Why don’t you tell me which products proved to be the most popular with your client.”

“She didn’t have a client,” Krystal answered for her.

Victor frowned. “And why was that?”

“She was too busy taking pictures to bother,” Bobbi spoke up.

Jackie let out an indignant breath. “That is
so
not true.”

Victor calmed the waters with a palms-down gesture, a technique frequently employed by policemen when mediating domestic altercations, and travelers when expelling air from plastic zipper bags. His tone grew inquisitive. “So if you weren’t performing a makeover, what
were
you doing?”

A whisper of uncertainty crept into Jackie’s voice. “Well … I was taking pictures, but—”

“Told y’all,” mocked Bobbi.

“I wasn’t taking them for myself. I was taking them for someone else.
Another guest asked me to shoot some photos of her and her gentleman friend so she could post them in the Summer Getaway
section of her Legion of Mary newsletter, so I was being a Good
Samaritan.”

Legion of Mary newsletter?
Unh-oh
. She was talking about Nana and George. I hoped the photos hadn’t turned out too well because there was no way Nana would ever sneak pictures of George past the Legion’s editorial board. The newsletter only published “Catholic” content, and for eight decades now George had been a flaming Lutheran. It was too bad Lutherans and Catholics couldn’t find common ground that would allow them to celebrate their similarities rather than their differences, because other than the nagging issue of the Pope, I really wasn’t sure what separated the two. Well, other than five hundred years of bloody religious strife and dissention.

“And furthermore,” Jackie ranted on, “if the three of you hadn’t hogged all the females in the host family, no one would have asked me to snap photos for a religious publication that’s read by no one other than a handful of saintly octogenarians with pre-dementia and degenerative eye disease!”

Dawna’s lips twitched with amusement. “I hate to tell ya, darlin’, but whinin’ is really unbecomin’ to a lady. Idn’t that right, girls?”

If this was the blondes’ idea of “singing Jackie’s praises” to Victor, Jackie might have to rethink the whole sister thing.

Victor sighed. “Could we set the drama aside for the moment, ladies? I’ve come to a decision that I’d like to share with you.”

The girls exchanged breathless looks with each other, but it was apparent from their expressions that they didn’t know if they were going to be on the receiving end of a compliment or a reprimand.

“I’m very impressed with the initiative you showed today, no matter
whose idea it was originally, so as a token of my appreciation, I’m going to add a small bonus to the perks we’ve already provided you. Shall we say, a cash award?”

Virginia whipped her head around, her eyes skewering him. “Exactly what
do you think you’re up to?”

“I’m being spontaneous.”

“No, what you’re
being
is ridiculous. The board hasn’t authorized you to hand out cash awards at your own whim.”

“They don’t need to. I brought my checkbook.”

“Excuse me?” An angry vein popped out on her forehead. “You’re making plans to write out checks to your prima donnas from
our
personal account?”

“Yes. That’s exactly what I’m planning to do.”

“I absolutely forbid it.”

“It’s going to happen, my pet, so I advise you to spare me the
histrionics. Excellence should be rewarded, and I happen to be in a
position where I can reward it as much as I like.”

“Not with
my
money, you can’t.”

He fixed her with the same look dragons sport before they incinerate fairytale villages. “
Whose
money?”

Her bravado cracked beneath his gaze, causing her to shrink like a genie being sucked back into her bottle. Lips compressed in an angry
slash, chest heaving, she jutted her chin in the air and snapped her head away from him.

“Now, what was I saying?” He grinned, looking immensely proud of himself. “Ah, yes. Does twenty-five thousand dollars sound like a fair amount, ladies?”

Shrieks. Squeals. Hands clapping.

“This is absurd,” sniped Virginia. Rising to her feet, she crumpled her napkin into a ball and threw it on the table. “I’m leaving.” As Patrice scrambled to pull her chair out, she delivered her parting shot to her husband’s face. “I hope it fills you with great pleasure to know you ruin everything you touch, Victor.”

“Shall I have a tray delivered to your cabin, madame?” Patrice called after her.

“No! I’ve lost my appetite.”

“Pay no attention to Virginia,” Victor soothed in an amused tone. “I don’t.”

“Can you get back to the part about the money?” urged Krystal. “Are you givin’ out twenty-five thousand dollars apiece?”

Victor shook his head. “I plan to make out only one check.”

“
Aww
.” Bobbi shot him a hangdog look. “You’re gonna make us share?”

“Not at all. The check will go to only one of you.”

“Which one?” coaxed Dawna.

“I want to be fair, so I’m not going to rely on partiality or guesswork. The four of you have the highest sales of our entire workforce, but only one of you is at the top of the sales ladder. I’ll be presenting the check to that individual.”