21 Steps to Happiness (26 page)

“Well…we could just…walk, then.”

“I don't want a last glass, I want a last talk.” I stop and look at him.

“You're not going to dump me again. You dump me every time we meet.”

I smile, turn my back to him and look at the sea. “Hubert, I like you. I think you're a nice man. You're rich. You're gorgeous. You're charming and you can give a woman all she ever dreamed for.”

I turn back to him and put my hands on his arms. I want his full attention. I look him straight in the eye. “I don't want a relationship without love. I want the real thing. I want the fireworks. The sparks! You see, the last chapter of the guide was the most important one.”

“What guide?”

Hubert is everything I used to want before I came to Paris. He is the symbol of a life I desired so much, but one that doesn't make sense to me anymore. Success doesn't bring happiness. Only love does.

“Hubert, could you spend the rest of your life with a woman who didn't love you?”

“Lynn, we could be very—”

“Answer me.”

“I want to be with you.”

“Answer the question.”

“I like being with you very much.”

“Okay, I'm going.” I'm too frustrated with this whole night to argue.

“Wait! How can you expect me to answer such a question?”

“Try.”

He thinks about it. He opens his mouth. He is about to lie, I know it. He knows it. He wants to say that he could spend his entire life with a woman who doesn't love him but it doesn't come out. Even Hubert Barclay, the media guru, the king of words, cannot lie about love.

I give him back his jacket and kiss him softly on the cheek.

“So that's it?” he says softly.

“Yes, that's it.”

I start to walk back to the party.

“Lynn,” he calls. I turn to look at him one last time. He's all alone on the sidewalk. “Would you send me a copy of this damned book you keep talking about?”

I nod and turn my back to him.

Forever.

“A
re you sure you know what you're doing?” Muriel asks.

We walk quickly toward my gate.

Of course I'm sure, that's why we walk so quickly. So I can make it on the next plane to Paris. I'm on a mission!

“The guy must have developed an allergic reaction to you by now.”

Oh, Muriel, you don't know anything about Step #21, the most important of all the steps. You wouldn't understand.

I throw my Adidas bag on the X-ray machine, kiss her briefly on the cheek and say, “Wish me luck.”

“Trust me, girl. You'll need more than luck. More like a fish net, chains and a couple of padlocks.”

Okay, okay, very funny.

I need something to straighten me up before I get on the plane, so I walk to a bar and ask for a mini bottle of champagne—oh, no, make it two.

They're so tiny.

I can do this! I was made to do this! It's just that I needed to know about Step #21. After that, everything became clear.

The champagne works its magic. I take my cell phone and speed-dial his number.

“Bonjour, vous êtes sur le répondeur automatique de Nicolas Bouchez…BIP!”

Just spit out what you have to say to his voice mail, Lynn.

“Hi, Nicolas…It's Lynn here. I'm in the Nice airport.” I lift my champagne glass. “Drinking champagne.”

What are you talking about?

“Sorry, that's not why I'm calling. I'm calling because…”

I love you.

I want you.

I need you.

“I'm flying back to Paris. Because…I want to see you. You see, I thought about everything that's happened. And…oh, my flight is boarding now, so…well…what I wanted to say was that…that…I love you. I can't imagine myself without you. Oh, if you didn't hear what I just said, I just said that I love you, right, and…Oh, God!”

I hang up.

Look at me, I'm trembling. I wish I was mute and living in a box somewhere in the middle of Antarctica.

 

A short flight later, I'm back in Paris wondering what the hell I'm doing. Once you know about Step #21, you don't get much choice but to work your ass off to get the one thing you really need.

I went to his apartment but it was empty.

So, now I stand in front of the new Xu store in Saint Germain.

Life didn't turn out to be the way I expected it to be. I spent my childhood hiding in Jodie's room, thinking that one day my prince would come and free me. And, well, now I'm the one attacking the dark castle of the Evil Xu to free my prince.

Cell phone in hand, I stare at the windows above the Xu store to see if I'll see him stand and answer my call.

I repeat in my head what I need to say this time.

I won't sound confused and insane.

Loud and clear: Nicolas, we were meant to be. Please drop everything and come down and kiss me!

Second ring.

Here goes nothing!

There's a click and I'm sent to his voice mail again. Did he see my name on his cell-phone screen and block me out?

“Hi, Nicolas…It's me! Again! Ha, ha, ha!”

There's so much noise in the street. I find a sort of retreat in a small passageway.

“I'm in Paris now. I want to see you. No, I actually need to see you. It's about…what I said before. It's about us. It's—”

Shit!

I've been disconnected. I didn't have time to tell him what's really important in the story of us. I dial again and a female voice tells me that his voice mail is full.

I hate modern life! Why can't we communicate with long romantic letters soaked in tears and perfume anymore?

I cross the street and enter the dark castle of the Evil Xu. I rocket like a torpedo to a long micro-thin shop attendant with far too much bright red lipstick.

“I'm looking for Monsieur Nicolas Bouchez.”

“Who?”

“He works here?”

“No, I don't think so. We don't have any male staff in the store.”

“I mean, he works in the offices, upstairs.”

“Oh, let me check for you.” She picks up her phone and exchanges a few words in French. “Did you say Nicolas Mouchet?”

“Bouchez!”

She speaks more French. “Oh, Monsieur Bouchez is away.”

Yeah, right! Like they haven't done this to me before.

“So…I need to see Fran Wellish.”

Gosh, what you have to do to get a chance to talk face-to-face with the guy you love.

“And you are…?”

“Lynn Blanchett, from Muriel B.”

In under a minute I'm ushered upstairs.

“Here you are! What a coincidence! It's the return of the prodigal daughter!”

Xavier Urbain stands on the landing, waiting for me. “I knew it. I told Chloe. You're a miracle worker. Look what you've done for Muriel. Brilliant! You're a genius! A genius!”

I'm not going to say thank-you or anything, not after the models business. So I spit out, “Yeah, sure” briefly. “But I'm here to—”

“I know! I know! Come, she's here and dying to see you.”

Who? Fran Wellish?

“I'm going to phone Muriel, you know. I should have phoned her earlier but I was waiting for you two kids to take the first step. Now I'll make the next one.”

“So you like Muriel now?”

“What do you mean? I've always liked her. She's a genius! Ha, ha, ha!”

Muriel B isn't the little spoiled brat anymore. If you can't kill it, I guess you have to live with it.

“Here she is.” He points at an office door. “She only talks about you. Lynn this Lynn that. She's giving us headaches. She's
so
proud of you.”

Proud of me? Fran Wellish? But…we never met.

“I really came for Nicolas Bouchez,” I say.

Xavier lifts an eyebrow. “Nicolas? What about him? You're not trying to snatch him back, are you?”

“It's a personal matter.”

“Ah! Personal! You youngsters! Like rabbits, really!”

Okay, he's starting to get on my nerves. “I need to see Nicolas. Now!”

“Nicolas took the day off. Now that I think about it, he mentioned something about a personal matter, too.”

I'm about to ask when he's due back, but Xavier opens the door and pushes me in.

“Hello, dear.”

She puts aside a Xu brochure and lifts herself up from the sofa. Jodie.

“What are you doing here?” I hear myself say.

“I phoned Muriel. She said you might come here.”

“I'll leave you two. I'm going to phone Muriel! She's a genius! Ha, ha, ha!” Xavier closes the door on us.

It was a trap! Now Jodie is going to ask me to join the dark side and cut off one of my hands.

“You're here to see me?” I ask her.

“Sure.”

Here we go again. Lately, nothing she does fits the person I believe to be my mother. There was the visit to the Riviera, the worried phone call to Dad, and now her presence at Xu, claiming she came to see me.

“No, not
sure,
” I snap. “You came to see Fran, didn't you?”

“Fran used to work for me, dear.”

“I know.” I look around. “And this is her office, and…that's why you're here, you came to see
her!
Not me!”

She takes her shades off. She has such lovely eyes, it's a pity she hides them most of the time.

“I came to congratulate you.”

“For what?”

“The show, dear, the show! What else?”

Jodie?

Congratulating me?

For something I did?

“Do you have plans for tonight?” she asks. “I need to talk to you.”

Okay, it's official, I've lost my mind and I'm imagining all this.

“About what?”

“I did some thinking. Moscow had a weird effect on me. Something about the weather.”

I'm about to say, sorry, no time to discuss Moscow's weather, I'm busy fixing my life, when a stylish woman enters the office.

“Ah, Fran!” Jodie says. “This is Lynn, my daughter.”

 

After our introduction, Fran suggested we all have lunch together, and sent Jodie and I to wait across the street in her apartment, where we are now. Jodie opens a cupboard, looking for tea, and I sit at the bar and watch her going through Fran's stuff utterly confused.

She finds a pot. She puts it under the tap. Oh! She jumps when water springs out. She looks so lost, this tiny woman, my mother.

I come behind her, take the pot from her hand. “Let me do that.”

“Thank you,” she says, relieved.

She walks into the living room.

“Shitty taste,
new money,
” she says, looking around and standing in the middle of the apartment, like she couldn't touch anything or sit anywhere. “I hope your flat looks nothing like this.”

My flat? We don't get the kind of money to rent places like this at Muriel B. My flat looks more like a cupboard with a bed and a bidet. “My place is more
real.
”

“Real,”
she repeats, amused. “I guess that means small and dirty.”

She looks through the window. Fran has a direct view of the Xu store.

“A real leech, this Urbain,” she says matter-of-factly. “Fran has as little flair as she has taste.”

I set two cups of tea on the bar.

“Now, Muriel and you are another story.”

“Muriel and me?”

“Her earlier work. It was interesting but unfinished, messy, confused, going in all directions at once, just as if she was rushing toward or away from something. You came, and her collection becomes…together.”

Jodie sees things differently than you and me. Where we see style, she sees sense. You talk garments, she means life.

“We've worked a lot. We've…improved,” I say, trying to bring us back to earth.

“Yes, improved. That's right.”

She breathes uneasily. First, I thought it was the petit bourgeois setting that makes her so uncomfortable, but then she says, “I had a terrible time in Moscow. Terrible!”

“More flight problems?”

“No, because of you!”

“Me?”

“Last time we met, you were so
troubled!
”

“I was stressed, forget about it.”

“No, I…I spent lots of time alone in my hotel room. I was thinking…I thought about what you said. You said you were tired of me and—”

“There's no need to do that, Jodie. You're bad at some things and great at others. I've accepted it. Let's move on.”

“Right. Right,” she says. “Well…”

She closes her eyes. When she opens them she stares straight at me. I need to escape her gaze, so I look down. Her hand is going toward mine clumsily. She's like a virgin coming to bed—awkward and shy. And I know she feels very embarrassed to take her daughter's hand like that in a stranger's apartment. But she must have decided that something needed to be done, sometime late at night while overlooking Moscow from her hotel room thinking,
shit, is this my life
? This
is what I did to myself? That's how I've wasted all that love, for some fucking garments and a scent!

And I don't feel warm.

I don't feel good.

There's no happiness honeying down my spine.

I feel rage. We've missed out on so much.

I'm ashamed to be this horrible person scared to death when it comes to holding her mother's hand.

I look at it.

There it is, in her hand, locked. My left arm is paralyzed. I freaking wish she'd say something so my life would stop flashing in front of me, and I'd stop looking for a precedent, a moment in my existence where she was holding my hand just like now. Or walking me to school? Singing a lullaby? Baking a fucking cake? Even just warming up a meal! But all I see is her telling me
not to touch the fabric, not to touch this, not to touch that for Christ sake
and
what a pain I am
and how
she can't wait for William to pick me up so she can resume working
. And now she's holding my hand because the weather was crap in Moscow and she was alone in her hotel room and had an epiphany while watching cable TV.