Green Tea Won't Help You Now! (16 page)

Alex grew instantly pale. "I'm sorry?"

"I had a text from Laetitia herself this afternoon."

Alex did not say anything. His fingers dug into my shoulder.
 

"Sorry man, I know you thought we could be supporting you in the first year and see how things went, but I can't do anything about it."

"Can I tell you something, Jacob? Honestly? Maybe it's for the best. I really don't want to depend on the intoxicated damsel for another day."

Jacob said nothing only cleared his throat. "You'll be fine. The brand is solid. We're hearing a lot of good things. You won't be needing us."

"Let's pray you're right or I might as well find her and strangle her."

Jacob did some more throat clearing. "We have a fund to manage here, she wants the cash to go directly into it."

"These billionaires who think they can clear their consciences with their fucking fonds... Thanks for the heads up, man."

"You're welcome. I'll definitely buy into your business with my private money, don't you doubt it. I heard even Ryan might do so."

"He should beat some sense into his degenerate sister."

"She's a grown up. Does what she pleases. Always has, always will."

"I could not care less. Listen, Jacob, I know it's late where you are, you probably want to go to bed and I have a beautiful woman with me, so I think we both have better things to do right now than practice Kabbalah over the habits of an idiotic heiress. Have a good night."

I rolled onto my stomach and buried my face in the pillow to muffle my sobs.
 

I felt him shift and I heard him put his glasses down on the bedside table. His hand came to rest on my behind, but soon it slipped further down. His mouth was close to my ear. "I need to clear my head. Care to participate?"

He never knew my cries were not those of lust.

Twenty-Two

"Is the hotel ok?"

"Yes, it's fine."

"And did you have a good flight?"

"Yes, but I've been flying back and forth two times a week for the last two months and you never asked about my flights. Why now?"

"I'm nervous."

"There's no need for you to be more nervous than I am."

I bit into a fingernail. "Are you sure you can be back on Thursday already?"

"Yes, I am. Calm down, babe. Stand on your head or stick your toes into your ears. Whatever works for you."

"Alex?"

"Yes, Beatrix?"

"Would you be able to get away next weekend or the weekend after, before I go to England?" I had made up my mind to tell him before we would not see each other for fifteen days on end. It needed to be out in the open. I had worked out a plan.
 

"Maybe we could go to the desert."

"You mean before you set off into the cold, humid English winter?"

"There are lovely oasis resorts. Can't we?"

"You're getting a taste for the highlife, I see."

"We don't have to.

"No, no, babe. Of course we'll go, sure. — I wish you were here with me, you know? It's so christmassy here already. Makes me want to hibernate with a nice, warm, short-haired brunette."

"Call me when it's over, okay?"

"I'll call you when the stock exchange closes. 1.30 pm in LA."

"Yes. Will you be able to sleep?"

"If you sing me a lullaby... where are you?"

"In the studio. I'm disinfecting the mats."

"Couldn't you invent something a little more enticing?"

"I was about to go into the tub."

"Run."

I slept very little. At 5 am I turned on the business channel to watch Hard Pack go public. They showed Alex all the time, interviewing him about his business, about his career, about the future in sports technology; they showed footings from his races, him climbing onto several pedestals, being awarded with gold medals for downhill, slalom and Super G, raising his skis into the air and even a clip from his ice-cream commercial.
 

He was on live TV, expressing his gratitude into the microphones. He thanked his employees for overcoming a time of hardship, thanked his partners Wells&Higgins finances and especially Corvera-Fabergé Investments for the great partnership up to this day. I smiled proudly until I realised he was not talking about me, at least not knowingly.

I taught my morning class, went to be asked if I was Natalie Portman at the Starbucks and returned to the studio with a vanilla soy latte.

He called as he had promised, shortly after 1.30 pm. He sounded a little shaken, but happy.

"It went fine. We went up enough points to call it a success."

"I'm so happy for you."

I heard him swallow. Good heavens, was he crying? "Alex?"

"I'm just so relieved."

"Yes."

"I love you..."

"Right, Alex."

"I mean it, I do, I want to— you're the only one I want to be with right now. I'm thinking of taking the next flight out."

"No, you mustn't. You have to celebrate with your people. Won't your friend Mark be there too?"

"Yes, yes. They're all here. My guys have booked a restaurant and table dancers and an oil tanker full of champagne."

"You go to your party, then you'll sleep and tomorrow you'll be back here and we can celebrate on our own."

He did not say anything.

"Come on, it's all falling off you now, that's always an anti-climax. You're the boss, go out there and let them have you for the night."

"Yes... okay."

"I'm going to hang up now and you're going to have fun."

"Fine. Good bye."

"Bye."

I was not as composed as I pretended to be. I had terrible forebodings and visions throughout the day about him dancing with extremely agile strippers and supermodels, licking champagne of their endless legs and marrying one or several of them in the frenzy of success.

I read in a yoga magazine before going to bed and checked my phone for a few times, but I received no further communications. I shook my pillows, lay my head and fell asleep. The alarm would go off at 6 am, after all.

The alarm did go off at 6 am. I checked my phone. Nothing. I grinned. Somebody would be having a hangover. I showered briefly, tucked on my yoga pants and shirt, put the kettle on and went to the door to collect the newspaper. I opened it and froze.

Alex sat leaning against the brick wall, next to the sign he had taken down (still there two months later), unshaven and in his best Armani suit.

He looked up at me with red, swollen eyes.
 

"Hello, Laetitia."

Twenty-Three

"No." My voice stuck in my throat.
 

I knelt down beside him and reached for him.

"Don't touch me!" he spat.

I tried to speak but my lungs and my heart were in a cramp.

"Don't you dare touch me!"

"Alex," I wept.

"How could you lie to me like that?" He wiped his face. There were tears in his eyes. "Oh God, when I think of all the things I said to you."

"No," I wailed. "I—I—" I found nothing to say, there was a blank in my head.

"Wanna know how I found out?"

"No," I gasped, "No."

"Imagine..." His voice was shaking. "There I stand at my own party, lord of the manor, and this guy walks up to me... Ryan Corvera-
Fabergé.
" He pronounced my family name with the utmost disdain. "Fa-ber-gé! He walks up to me, all grace and smiles and congratulates me and I start thinking, somehow, I like this fellow, somehow, I don't know why, there's something about the man I never noticed before, something I really like. He tells me he bought, how did he put it,
a hefty pack of shares
." He imitated Ryan's haughty drawl quite expertly. "I say to him,
feel free to join into the party, it's all on the house
. But he shakes his hand and says
afraid not, old chum, family duties. Just wanted to drop by and congratulate you.
And do you know what he does next? He lifts his left hand and looks at his wrist watch. It's a Patek Philippe Triple Date Chronograph and something about the guy's hand strikes me as familiar. An insane idea comes into my mind. Oh, sure, I blame it on the stress and the champagne, but, hey, what does it matter? So I say
Is it true what I hear, did you have a baby?
And he smiles at me and says
Yes, I did, that is, my wife did! We had a girl in September!
My head starts spinning but there's one thing more I manage to ask.
What's her name
? I ask and he says
TAMZIN!
" He almost choked on the name. "It gets better, you'll see, I was beyond anything. So I say,
I met your sister Laetitia in LA
and he says
Tish? Did she tell you who she was?
I say
Yes, she did. I know everything. Yoga and Polo...
He says
Ha, oh dear, I hope you're not the poor chap whose car was attacked by our cousin Amanda with an earring because she thought Titia was at it with Sebastián again, at least that's how my father saw it.
I say,
No, that must have been some other idiot
and he says
Good for you, gotta go. Have a blast!"

I rolled myself into a ball and covered my ears, but I still heard every word he said.
 

He sobbed, "How you must have laughed at me, about my house and my cars. I wanted to impress you. I wanted to show you what I had made for myself, I wanted to show you what I could give you. Was it funny to know I depended on you? To know you had already fucked up my business once and now I was grovelling at your feet, worshipping the ground you walked on? You could have bought me out any moment, you could have destroyed me with a phone call... I came here every weekend only to see you. Six hours on a plane, back and forth, only because I wanted to be with you and you played this role of the self-made, self-respecting yoga teacher and you told me you didn't want to sleep with me because you were not ready, while you made an appointment with your polo playing long-time lover. I was standing right next to you! And then you even go and tell your family about it, and they laugh their heads off about the stupid oaf who tapped blindly into your honey trap."

"No, Alex, no, listen to me," I pleaded.
 

"I don't want to hear another word from you. I brought you to my parent's home, you mocked them too. How can anybody be so depraved?"

"I wanted to tell you," I cried.

"When? You had every opportunity. After you told me how your father sold Argentine specialties? Or when you told me how your carpenter brother married your school friend? After you told me you had been to Cuba backpacking, when in reality you were sniffing coke with empty-headed snobs on your mega-yacht? When I told you how damn sorry I was for— for this?" He hit his fist against the wooden sign and it fell to the ground with a loud crash. "When I told you I loved you?"

I began to hyperventilate.
 

"Why don't you have a drink? Maybe it'll help you feel better now that you've been found out." He struggled to his feet. I grabbed his leg.

"Don't touch me." He tore himself free and staggered to the Jaguar. I had not even noticed it was there. "I hope I will never have to see you again. Why don't you just call that private jet of yours and leave the country." He got into the car and was gone.

"Trixie? Trixie? What happened? What did the guy do to you?" It was a familiar voice. A hand was feeling my pulse. I blinked through my tears and saw Drake Siriakis kneeling beside me.

"You never come for the morning lesson," I whispered.

"Krishna, what happened to you? Let me help you!"

I broke into loud sobs.
 

Drake took me from beneath my arms and lifted me to my feet. He brought me into the studio, closed the door and turned the, "open/closed", sign to "closed."

I sank down again and curled up into the foetal position, shaking uncontrollably.
 

"Trixie." Drake was by my side with a glass of water in his hand. "Did you take drugs?"

I was unable to reply but I must have indicated I had not taken any drugs.

"Did he strike you?"

Again I must have replied in the negative.

"Is there anybody I can call? Family, friends?"

"Ryan..."
 

He looked around found my phone on the counter. "It's password protected, you must enter the code Trixie, come on."

He made me sit upright and held the touchscreen out to me. I punched the code.

Drake went through my numbers.

"There are many Ryan numbers."

I raised my thumb.

"Top?"

I gurgled. "Yes."

Drake dialled and waited. "Yes, hello, this is Drake Siriakis. I'm a friend of Trixie's. I was hoping I could speak to Ryan. — No? Oh good, so you will know what to do. She seems to have suffered some sort of breakdown."

Jude's voice was so shrill I could hear it from the ground. "Do NOT give her alcohol or ANY medication, do you understand?"

"Yes. How should I proceed?"

She must have asked to be put through to me. He held the phone to my ear.

"Tish, darling? Do you hear me?" Jude spoke softly to me.

I sobbed.

"Titia, can you tell me what happened? Did you have a backslide?"

I yapped. "I— He- he knows. H-he's gone!"

Blessed be my otherwise inconsiderate brother for having married a woman of superior intelligence and empathy. Jude, though unaware of the actual circumstances, understood right away.

"Do you think this will pass? Will he come back?"

"N-no."

"Alright—RYAN!" I could hear her stomping through the house, probably the New York apartment. "He's in the shower, I'm going to send him to come and pick you up right away. We were leaving for Pink Pebble's today but it can wait until tomorrow. The Gulfstream's already fuelled. — RYAN!"

"What the fuck's going on for you to scream like a harpy?" Judging by the echo she had entered the bathroom.

"Get out, get dressed, go to La Guardia, fly to LA, pick up your sister and bring her here."

"Poppy Jude, are you out of your... Hey!" She must have thrown something at him. Most likely a towel.

"Do it!"