Shopping for a Billionaire's Wife (19 page)

“And what spa treatment can we get?” Mom asks, looking around the hot spring like it’s a Rainforest Cafe and she’s searching for the animals hidden in the trees. “We’d love a massage like the one Amanda’s receiving.”

“Hmm,” is all Lüq says, still not even looking once at Mom. 

Mom looks at Pam. Then Lüq. Then Amanda.

By the time she gets to me, her eyes are hard. Determined.

Convicted.

I know that look. It’s the same expression she had when I came home from eighth grade one day and told her Mr. Humphries, my gym teacher, had announced to everyone that I was sitting out gym because of “female problems.” It’s the same look she had on her face when some bozo at Tyler’s day care tried to tell Carol he had oppositional defiant disorder—at the age of eighteen months—and that he was “disrespectful” for not sitting still for their forty-five minute circle time. Mom had that look on her face the night a very drunk Todd called and chewed Carol out for filing child support papers and threatened to counter-file for full custody of children he hadn’t seen in over a year. 

It’s also the same look she had on her face at my wedding two days ago, when I screamed at her for inviting Jessica Coffin to my wedding. 

You know. That topic we’ve avoided discussing until tonight, at dinner?

Lüq is so busted. 

“Do you know who she is?” Mom points to me.

Oh, God.

“Shannon Jacoby,” Lüq says softly. “Mr. Declan McCormick’s betrothed.”

Betrothed
. The word sounds like
queen
in his strangely mesmerizing accent.

Mom’s thrown off by his acknowledgement. “Yes, that’s who she is, but do you realize what that means?”

“It means she loves him.”

Mom frowns and digs her heels in. She’s trying to use power to bully Lüq into giving me attention she feels I “deserve” because of who I sleep with, and it’s clear Lüq doesn’t buy into those social rules.

“Of course, she loves him!” Mom snaps. “Mr. McCormick is your boss!” 

“That seems to be very important to you,” Lüq whispers. 

Mom’s eyes go round.

And Declan is, indeed, my betrothed, but I think I just fell in love with Lüq, too. I wonder if hu has dinner plans for tonight, because if not, I want hu right there as my guest of honor.

“It’s—well, it should be important to you!” Mom huffs.

“Is that important to you?”

“Is
what
important to me?”

“That I find the same issues important that
you
find important, dear.”

“Well—I—but—but these are universal! You
should
worry about your boss. He’s the reason you have a job! And if you want to keep your job, you’re nice to the boss’s wife.”

“What if I don’t worry about losing my job?”

“Everyone worries about losing their job!”

“You seem to have a strong need to assume that what applies to you applies to everyone else’s internal state.” Lüq nods as hu says this, leaning in with concern, touching Mom’s shoulder in an act of graceful solidarity, like Oprah comforting a crying refugee who is about to win a car or an elliptical machine and doesn’t know it yet.

“Maybe some ocean water infused with amniotic fluid will help,” I hiss.

“Ocean water?” Pam replies, Lüq still holding her hand. Lüq has Pam’s palm, stroking the thumb joint with hu’s index finger, and hu’s other hand is on my mother. “Is that why Amanda’s so buoyant? Must be the salt water.”

“You know,” Mom says, giving Pam the side-eye. She’s up to something. “The ocean is so salty because of whales.”

What?

Pam gives Mom an indulgent look. Lüq tilts hu’s head, while Amanda just floats.

“Really?” Pam prompts.

“Yes,” Mom gushes. “I read this in a science magazine.”

Translation: Mom clicked on someone’s Facebook link and read a half-baked mashup from a website devoted to getting as many views as possible to generate ad money for the owner.

“When whales ejaculate, they produce something like four hundred gallons of sperm!” Mom gushes.

“I’m guessing the female whales don’t have to deal with the age-old ‘spit or swallow’ problem,” I mutter.

“But,” Mom says pointedly, ignoring me, “most of it doesn’t make it into the woman whale.” 

Okay, now. “Woman whale?”

“Really?” Pam says, obviously aware that my mom is full of utter crap, but playing along for fun. “You mean, women whales don’t have vaginas that hold four hundred gallons?”

Mom pauses and puts on her thinking face. “That’s a great question! I don’t know. How much volume can a whale’s vagina hold?”

“This is fascinating,” Lüq says.”Gagai! Evangi! Come here! We are in the temple of learning.” 

We’re in the temple of bullshit.

“Well,” Pam starts, as if she knows the answer to that scintillating question, “the average whale is about a hundred feet long. Human females are about five feet tall. So, I’d guess the ratio is twenty to one.”

Mom does math in her head. “How much does a female vagina hold? In terms of liquid?”

“About six hundred milliliters,” Lüq answers instantly. 

“That’s twenty ounces or so,” Pam adds.

“Then,” Mom says seriously, as if we’re working at Draper Labs and our complex volume calculations are going to help rescue Matt Damon from Mars, “there is no way a woman whale has a vagina that holds four hundred gallons of whale sperm, like I said. And,” she adds with a dramatic flourish, her voice rising as Evangi and Gagai gather with Elle, “that is why the ocean is so salty. That buoyancy in the hot spring here at the spa comes from whale sperm.”

“Are our clients going to get pregnant with baby whales?” Gagai screams.

Pam and I facepalm simultaneously.

I swear Amanda and I were switched at birth. Seriously.

“No,” Mom says, shaking her head as if Gagai were the stupidest person on earth. “Of course not.”

“Whew,” Gagai says, playing with the chain at the end of her eye jewelry. Pam does a double take and gives me a look. I shrug.

“The amniotic fluid in the spa comes from women who are already pregnant, so it neutralizes the sperm,” Mom adds emphatically.

As you can imagine, Mom was of tremendous help when I worked on my AP Biology homework in high school.

“How did you know the volume limit of the average vagina?” Pam asks Lüq as Evangi and Gagai chat eagerly with Mom in a conversation that would make the owner of Snopes.com choose an icepick lobotomy. 

“I must know for the vajacials,” hu explains.

I suddenly realize that Pam has been discussing vaginas and sperm and has not fainted. Not even a blush. She’s conversing as if this isn’t a source of embarrassment or anxiety, and I tuck that piece of information away—again—for a future conversation with Amanda.

Who now calls out, “I don’t want to get pregnant by a whale. Andrew would be jealous.”

What the hell is in that wheatgrass juice shot?

“I am afraid to ask this,” I start. I pause. I take two deep breaths as Lüq gives me a closed-mouth smile and waits patiently. Finally, I spit it out.

“What is a vajacial?”

“It is a facial for your vagina.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

“Are you always so fearful about new experiences?” Lüq asks.

“Only when they involve having strangers at a spa exfoliate my hoo-haw.” 

Mom’s sex talk antennae pick up the word “hoo-haw” and she comes over to us.

“
Non, non, non
!” Lüq assures me. “We do not exfoliate the sacred rose petals of the garden, the entry gates to the finest lotus flower that is the jewel of your womanhood!” 

Lüq should get a time machine, transport himself to 1983, and write for Harlequin. 

“Do you use cucumbers, too?” Mom asks.

Lüq’s eyes get really wide. 

Pam finally blushes.

“The vajacial involves a steam bath for the rose petals—” 

“STEAM?” I can’t help it. I scream, because my delicate rose petals are about as interested in coming into contact with steam as they were in touching hot wax, which is to say, NOT. I’m more likely to let my mother be my birthing coach one day than I am to let someone steam my va-jay-jay. You steam broccoli. You steam carrots. When you steam rose petals, they curl up and die.

Nope.

Amanda startles in her womb bath and flips over, her thin piece of silk falling off, and now she’s topless, bobbing in the water, and it looks like her mouth’s open and—

Gag.

She comes up, grasping the silk across her chest, spitting furiously. “I just drank whale sperm!”

“I hear it has plenty of protein,” Mom says, trying to be helpful. 

“None of this is true! That’s not how this works, Mom. That’s not how any of this works! The ocean is not salty because of massive amounts of whale ejaculate, and people who get massages in this amniotic ocean water bath aren’t protected from pregnancy because of pregnancy hormones in the womb juice!”

“It is the vajacials that protect women from pregnancy, right?” Elle asks sweetly.

“It’s basic biology that protects them!” I fume. “Wait.” I look at Amanda. “Did you actually have a vajacial?”

Gagai is helping Amanda into a thin bathrobe the color of celery. “Yes,” she mutters.

“And did it transport you into a past life where you could see your inner vaginal self?”

“No. But I think my cervix smells like sandalwood now, and I pulled a muscle in my inner thigh from squatting for so long.” 

“Squatting? You squat?”

“Yeah. Over the steam bath machine.”

“This sounds worse than childbirth!” Not that I would know, but... 

SPLASH!

Mom has put on some thin, silk outfit like the one Amanda wears, and jumped into the hot spring womb juice. She dips her head under, like a dolphin, and comes up in the swirling clouds of mist that dot the water’s surface.

“This feels amazing!”

“But won’t she get pregnant?” Elle asks, her lower lip trembling. “She didn’t do the vajacial.” 

Pam slips her arm around my shoulders, a gesture that is less maternal and more in solidarity over the fact that we are actively experiencing the Dunning-Kruger Effect in real time.

“She has already gone through menopause,” Pam says seriously, “so she can’t get pregnant.”

“Whew,” Elle says, her hand splayed across collarbones that poke out like doorknobs. 

“Your daughter is a hero,” Lüq tells Pam as Mom floats on her back in the water, Evangi gliding into the zero-entry pool and holding a flotation pillow under Mom’s head. “Have you seen the video on YouTube of her rescue of that poor little puppy?” 

“Yes,” Pam says as Gagai brings her a cup of something greenish and frothy. Pam eyes it like it might be poison.

“Green tea latte infused with bee pollen and anti-aging RNAs,” Gagai explains, as if she ordered a double half-caf skim mocha at Starbucks.

“No ground placenta?” Pam jokes, leaning down for a tentative sip.

“Just one moment. I will add some,” Gagai says.

“No, no! I’m fine. Thanks,” Pam balks.

“Where’s Spritzy?” I ask, not because I care, but because I want to talk about anything but whale sperm and breast milk. 

“With James. He took him for a walk and to the pet spa.”

“There’s a
pet spa
here?” 

“I was as surprised as you, Shannon, but...” She makes a face I know well. “He insisted.”

“I hope poor Spritzy doesn’t get a doggy vajacial,” I mutter.

“It doesn’t matter,” she whispers back. “Spritzy is a boy, so he can’t get pregnant from the whale sperm.”

I give Pam a fist bump. I freaking
love
Pam.

“Jordan Montelcini is an ass!” Lüq exclaims, anger dissolving across his features like a liquid rubber mask designed by CGI experts. 

The
non sequitur
makes Mom startle, just like Amanda moments ago, and flop on her belly in the water, coming up sputtering.

“Ew! You swallowed!” Amanda calls out from her perch across the room, where she’s receiving a pedicure from Elle.

“I always swallow!” Mom replies.

“TMI, MOM!”

“I need to sit down,” Pam says, going slack against me, her dead weight hard to get over to a chair where I can dump her off so she can handle her case of the vapors.

“What’s wrong with Jordan Montelcini?” Mom asks. 

“Who is Jordan Montelcini?” me and Pam call out.

“AN ASS!” Amanda and Lüq shout at the same time. 

“Darling!” Lüq says, arms opening. Amanda leaps up into the air and glides across into hu’s arms. They hug. The universe melts. “I knew we were soulmates in another lifetime. How else would the energy of the cosmos know to bring me to your video, and you to my spa?” 

“How did you find the video?” Amanda asks, her voice muffled by hu’s muumuu.

“I received a Google Alert for Jordan.”

We all frown. Stalking doesn’t gel with the whole serenity act Lüq has going here. 

“I was a floral designer in my last life.”

“Did you learn that from a psychic?”

“No,” Lüq says, confused. “My last life. You know. The 2000s. I attended hair and esthetician school in early 2010 and here we are. But Jordan.” Hu glowers. “Jordan and Mama Montelcini were my nemeses.”

“Floral designers are
that
competitive?” I say with a smile.

Lüq frowns. 

The sun dies.

“I do not joke about this,” he says, clapping his hands, an action which makes Gagai, Evangi and Elle all bustle out of the room. In the distance, I hear what sounds like an espresso machine and frother working furiously, as Lüq invites us to move to a sunken pit.  

1974 drank way too much, did some Angel Dust, and threw up in this depression in the ground, with crazy avocado green, adobe orange, and cigarette-yellow all imprinted with the iconic LOVE work of art, the floor covered in shag carpeting so long it might as well be dreadlocks.

We all sit, and Lüq pulls out a vaping machine. A whiff of vanilla fills the air.

“Do you mind?” hu asks. “I am trying to cut the tobacco, but this....”

We all assure hu it’s fine. Evangi, Gagai and Elle return with coffees.

Actual
coffees. Not tea disguised as coffee, or frothed placenta flavored with chicory and deception.