21 Steps to Happiness (15 page)

“We need to arrange some office space for you. We can share my office in the meantime.”

I look at him and it hurts so much I could cry. How could I do this to him when I know that he is the One? How could I do it
twice?
I'm so…

“It's…not very practical, is it?” I snap.

That's the way it is going to be. I make all the mistakes in our relationship and Nicolas will pay for them.

“Just for the time being and—”

“I cannot work in a shared office. I need to…” What do I need exactly? “I…need privacy.”

He nods. “I'll arrange something.”

And stop being so nice. It drives me nuts.

He gives me a white cardboard box. I open it. It's a cell phone.

“The company will pick up the bills,” he says encouragingly. “But don't go too wild with the calls. We're not that rich yet. The number is on the box.”

“Thank you,” I hiss, drop the phone in my purse and throw the box in the bin.

“We need to be able to contact you all the time. And—” he picks up the box “—the number is on the box.”

“Yes, you said that already.” I snatch the box from him.

I sit in front of his desk.

“I tried to phone you yesterday but you weren't in your room,” he says gently.

I stare at the wall because there is no way I can look at Nicolas.

“I left a few messages for you.”

God, don't I know. The concierge passed them on to me but I just trashed them and then felt more ashamed and enraged.

“So it was you phoning again and again,” I bark. “When I don't pick up the phone, Nicolas, it means that I don't
want
to be disturbed.”

I would jump through the window if we weren't on the first floor and therefore perfectly useless. How maddening!

I look at him again.

You're all I ever wanted, and I'm losing you for a fling with Mr. Wealthy.

I'm so sorry!

“I'm sorry, Nicolas. I'm…so tired…again.”

That's the thing with men. They know that they should forgive everything when we are…well, tired. They know they shouldn't investigate more.

“I don't want our morning to be like this,” Nicolas says.

“What?”

He smiles. “Let's start again. Good morning, Lynn. How are you?”

He caught me by surprise: I smile back. I can't believe it, he made me smile. “I'm good, Nicolas, and what about you?”

“Well, I couldn't be better. Would you care to have breakfast with me?”

“No, Nicolas. I had breakfast already. But a cup of coffee would be nice.”

“A coffee would be nice indeed, Lynn.”

We look at each other. The first one to laugh loses. I crack up first. I have never been good at holding back emotions.

He laughs with me. “That's much better.”

His assistant brings us coffee and passes him a document she has printed for us. Nicolas wants to go through it with me.

It's Muriel B's road map. I look at him. I listen to his voice. He sounds like my English teacher. He explains what's to happen every single day all the way to the show. I'm not too focused. His voice sounds like music. I forget last night. I forget this morning. There is a ray of light that breaks through his office window. I look up from the document and nod. It's just an excuse to stare at him. I wish he would close the folder and say, “Look, let's take my scooter and drive around all day.” Instead, he points at a figure and says, “That's our estimated budget.”

“Yes, yes!”

“Do you want me to go through it with you?”

“Well, listen…”

“I know. It's probably way under what you expected. But that's all we have.”

“It's not what I wanted to talk about, Nicolas. What I wanted to say is…Do you want to take your scooter and go for a ride? We can consider it as apartment scouting, you know, for my relocation to Paris. Does that sound crazy?”

“Oh…No, it doesn't sound crazy, but—”

There is a but.

“We should be meeting Muriel at Fjord—” he looks his watch ‘—about now.”

“Well, another time maybe.”

“Yes, another time.”

 

Instead of a scooter ride, we got Massoud to drive us to the Fjord Agency to select models for the show.

“Prague is everything America isn't. Americans love it,” one of the girls says. I nod and take a bite of my blueberry muffin. The girl tries to be overfriendly with me because I'm part of the selection process.

“You must go to Prague,” she insists. “Promise me that you will go to Prague!”

She sounds like a travel agency.

“I must visit you when I come to New York. I often go to New York.” She laughs. Is she drunk? She swallows her tea nervously. “New York is great.”

She doesn't know what to do with her long, slim arms. Her body language is very disturbing. She is trying to be sexy and intriguing but her lack of confidence is slipping through. How can she lack confidence? She's gorgeous. Next to her, I look like an ugly dwarf. So does Muriel. Not to mention Louise, our booker at Fjord.

Louise is one of the ugliest women I have ever seen. And her job is to manage some of the most beautiful girls in the world.

“Allez les filles! Numéro quinze. Jolanta.”
Louise calls.
“Allez, ma puce! On n'a pas la journée, merde!”

“Oh, that's me. It's my turn,” the girl from Prague says and runs to the casting room. I follow.

Muriel and Nicolas are already in the room when I enter. I sit beside the video camera operated by Louise. The girl from Prague stands against the white wall.

“How old are you?” Muriel asks.

“Sixteen.”

Sixteen? Shouldn't she be in school or something? She brushes away her long hair. She strikes a pose. She is looking at Nicolas.

Just like the other fourteen previous gorgeous creatures that came to sell themselves in the casting room. They couldn't stop looking at him.

Don't you dare think about him!

He is
my
angel!

Grrr!

“Would you turn around?” Muriel asks.

The girl turns around.

“What are your hobbies?”

“I love traveling. And fashion. And going out.” She laughs.

There it is again!

She just smiled at him. What kind of smile was that? Does she wonder what it would be like to kiss him? She's sixteen!

“What do you think?” Nicolas asks me.

“I think exactly the same as you.” Because I'm better suited to you than these teenagers, I finish mentally.

“Can she walk?” Muriel asks Louise.

“She's done a few catwalks already. She's good. Do you want her to walk for you?”

“Please.”

Louise gestures and the girl starts to walk back and forth. Twist. Turn. Pose.

Why not ask her to show her teeth while she's at it?

“She's good,” Nicolas proclaims.

The girl stops walking. She is balancing her long, thin arm in the air, looking at us, the ugly, small potato-women group and the angel, waiting for our decision.

Only we will decide later.

She walks lazily out of the room, as if dragging it out a few extra seconds will increase her chances of getting selected. She stops and turns back to us. “Can I take a muffin home?”

“Of course, darling,” Louise says. “You can take as many muffins as you like. And send in number sixteen. Kristy.”

A tall, athletic girl comes in. She wears a very short skirt, a very tight T-shirt and high leather boots. She looks amazingly beautiful and sexy. And there it is again! She's grinning at Nicolas.

Dirty bitch.

“Hi, I'm Kristy. I'm nineteen and I've been with Fjord for three years,” the girl says with a British accent. She smiles and smiles and smiles at him and he falls for it.

He smiles back!

“Can you walk?” I ask, annoyed.

Everybody turns to me.

“You're very pretty,” Muriel says.

I can't believe she said that. Can you tell a model that she is very pretty? Isn't that…unprofessional or something?

“You're very feminine, I like that,” she goes on. What Muriel means by feminine is that even though the girl is so skinny, she still has a pair of gigantic breasts.

“Very feminine, that's right,” Nicolas confirms.

Look at them!

They are
so
unprofessional.

Especially Nicolas!

Shame on him!

And, by God, I need another muffin.

 

My mind is still browsing through the different Kristys, Jolantas and other Ulrikas when the elevator door opens to Nicolas's floor. It was a long day and I'm ready for the dinner he promised me.

I can't compete with models. I'm a frog and no matter how long you kiss me (ask Hubert) I will not transform into anything else.

I knock on the door. Nicolas opens.

God, you're so damn beautiful.

I'll never get use to it.

If only I could be more like…like them. I wouldn't feel so challenged by you and I could start to see you the way you really are.

I enter the apartment and it smells of…of…

Of saffron. Which reminds me of home.

“I cooked vegetarian,” he says.

I follow him into the kitchen. There are chopped vegetables all over the place. Dirty pots and pans. It's all happening in there.

He grabs a bottle of wine and two glasses. “It's a bottle I've been saving for a long time. And tonight is the night.”

He pours a little splash in each glass and passes me mine. He sniffs it. Shakes it. Makes a big fuss about it.

“Should we make a toast?”

“Yeah, sure.”

What would be an appropriate toast? “To the future and to Muriel B,” I propose.

“No, to you.”

“To me?”

“Yes, to you and to our luck to have you here in Paris.”

“Okay.” I'm about to toast but he stops me.

“Actually, it's the wrong toast. To my luck to have you here in Paris.”

Oh!

We toast and we sip a bit of wine. God, is this how a good red wine is supposed to taste? It really tastes like fungus.

He looks at me with big wide-open eyes. So I swallow this disgusting liquid and say, “Mmm! Very delicious!”

He spits his back in the glass.

“Oh, no! It's so corked,” he says. “I'm so sorry.”

I laugh. “Good, I was scared you would force me to drink the whole bottle. Yuck!”

He takes my glass away. “It's funny. I have been waiting to open this bottle for years. I have waited and desired it and when it finally happens, it's crap. I'm so disappointed.”

“That's the story of my life.”

“How do you mean?”

“Do you believe in destiny?”

“I believe that you make your own destiny. You make your own choices.”

You know, angels can be so naive.

“I believe destiny is free will at work. I'm an existentialist. You know…Sartre?”

“But what about luck?” I ask.

“What about it?”

“Don't you believe in luck?”

“I'm not a superstitious person, no. But I believe in chances, and in taking chances.”

“So this corked wine is not bad luck?”

“Definitely not, it's bad cork, bad storage or bad wine.”

“What about us? Isn't it luck bringing perfect strangers together?”

“Luck has nothing to do with it. People meet and break up all the time. You came to Paris. I was in Paris. It's what you decide to do about it that's important.”

Does he mean that I should blame myself for sleeping with Hubert twice instead of blaming some invisible and destructive superpower? That is so…scary!

He empties the red wine into the sink. All these years of expectation ruined and discarded. Bad luck! I can't stop thinking this way.

The world is run by luck.

You either have bad luck or good luck. Thinking otherwise will only attract bad luck. Considering a world without luck feels like a sin. I touch wood discreetly. I would spit three times on the floor if I didn't think it would get me kicked out of the apartment.