Green Tea Won't Help You Now! (18 page)

"Sebastián Farley-Mendoza."

"Ah, yes," he drawled. "So would I. I have such fond memories of him in the stables... two young men in their prime... two mallets and the heat of passionate rivalry..."

"
Wie bitte!?
"

He cackled. "Don't worry, Buttercup. Titia's the only one in the family who ever had the dubious pleasure of shagging the bastard. Come along, Tish, Gus has arrived and he brought something that'll make your eyeballs pop."

The main house was built on top of a hill breaking off into a cliff. Below, the water was deep enough for the yachts to anchor. In the 1960s, my grandfather had a boardwalk built that lead out to the deeper parts. Modern floating berths had been added to accommodate Myrtle and other larger vessels. We were expecting several biggies to moor there over Christmas.

A gleaming black arrow was berthed next to Myrtle.
 

I have to admit, it was the first time I could actually feel excitement again.
 

Gus the yacht designer—who probably had a surname, which was not, "The Yacht Designer", but which was unknown to humanity—was my brother's business partner. When Ryan had stopped being a venture capitalist he had become a boat manufacturer and Gus was his designer. He was the most daring of his kind and always complained about the lack of pioneering spirit among the super rich. Fortunately, he himself was not of small means either. His family was an old colonialist rum dynasty from the Bahamas. (I shall not say anything but
Come on over...
). He and my brother met at Harvard almost twenty years ago. I had first encountered him on Capri, shortly before I went to Berlin.

"It's the Nonsuch. She came from Hamburg with Myrtle on the carrier," Ryan explained proudly.
 

They had invested in a semi-submersible carrier ship the year before, in order to ship their mostly restored historical yachts to the well-to-do buyers all over the globe. When the carrier was not needed, it was used for third party yacht transport and made—as Ryan would put it—
a hefty profit
.

"She's the fastest super-yacht in the world. We built her in a cooperation with the Hamburg shipyard and Gus will show her off to the community later this season. After New Year's, he's going to take her up to Fort Lauderdale via every marina in the Caribbean. Come on, let's go check her out."

A winding path led down to the boardwalk.

The closer I got to the Nonsuch, the more spectacular and futuristic she seemed. In my judgement, she was about ninety feet long and flat as a fluke. The command bridge was a very slight, aerodynamic elevation, making the boat look like a formula one car.
 

Gus awaited us on the jetty next to her. He used an app on his smartphone and a gangway melted out of the sheer, ceramic skin.
 

"Seventy knots," he called.
 

Gus was tall and his hair was a dark shade of blond. He had grey-blue eyes and an elegant face, was absolutely handsome and one-hundred per cent my type. Strangely enough, I had never fancied him.
 

"Wow." Seventy knots is eighty miles per hours. For a super yacht it is almost unheard of. They normally have maximum speed of twenty knots and they hardly ever travel faster than twelve.

"Look." He pushed his touchscreen again.
 

The top deck folded itself into the sides and made way for a wooden deck.
 

"Wow." I repeated.

Ryan smirked complacently.

"Watch." Again Gus pushed. Now the wooden deck shifted and a jacuzzi, as well as four deck chairs, and a table with benches rose to the surface.

"You two are totally bonkers!"

"Come on, get in. She has three cabins and a lounge."

Laughing for the first time in three weeks I embarked the Nonsuch. She was the ultimate gadget.
 

"You should have called her
The Flora
."

"Why?" Ryan asked.

"Because Gus is going to
floor
every girl between here and Key West. They'll throw themselves against her shell, naked, and Gus can watch them slide down from the inside."

"Or open up, if he wants one to fall directly into his bed because..." Ryan pushed his own touchscreen and again the floor shifted. This time it opened and revealed the master bedroom underneath.

"Oh, it's shocking," I squealed.

Gus laughed. "Your not so wrong, Titia. I stopped over in Nassau two days ago and there was a charter group from the Netherlands moored next to me. The sugar daddies on board got really upset because their ladies threatened to desert them."

"What about the bird from Boston, she not in the picture anymore?" Ryan inquired in his elliptic way. "Tish? You alright?"

The bit of joy I felt was drained from me by the words
charter
and
Nassau
.

"Yes. No. Sorry, I'm being stupid. A little dizzy spell. I think I'm going up."

"You haven't seen the lounge yet," Gus protested.

"Fine, pet, you run along. Tell Marguerita Gus has arrived." Ryan gave his friend a meaningful look I was not supposed to notice.

"Will do," I mumbled and hurried away towards the island.
 

I ran into the forest and cried.

Twenty-Six

Christmas was upon us and with it the guests who were distributed within the big house and the four guest cottages. Only the very elderly among them preferred their own yachts because they,
"can't sleep in any other bed
". Gus slept on the Nonsuch.

There were Jude's parents, my sister and her husband Laurent, with his parents. Our father, our ninety-five-year-old great-aunt Clothilda, her best friend, the recently widowed one-hundred-and-one year-old Giordana Vanderhart (quote: "I don't understand why I'm not dying, my husbands always do, the last one was hardly eighty. I think I'm finally going to try blowfish. If it kills me, what does it matter?"), Lilly's two brothers and one sister as well as their parents and respective partners and children, Nicky, Nicky's Indian yogi pal Karta with wife and three kids and finally, Jude's second best friend, Tina, and her parents. I am sure I am forgetting someone. Ah, yes. Gus's mother and her new husband Stavros, who was a Greek shipping magnate, as well as Gus's brother Toby and his Jamaican wife Dorsey, and their three-year-old twin boys. Notably absent but not missed: my mother.
 

 
I called Drake in the morning of the 24
^th
and asked him whether his parcel had arrived. He said yes and he would have a caipirinha party with me when I came back with the rum I had sent. He in turn asked me, how I did and informed me of my garden's well-being. Nothing new there. It's just a garden, there are plants, you water them. End of story. (If my mother would hear me now. An English lady who does not love gardening.
Incroyable!
)

Since we were a group of mixed nationalities with varying Christmas customs, we opted for a German Christmas Eve and a British/American Christmas Day. It translates to feasting and drinking and unwrapping gifts on two occasions rather than one.
 

The children became unruly by Boxing Day. Too much excitement and too much chocolate had taken their toll on them. I personally had lived through the celebrations in a state of indifference. New Year's Eve went right over my head. I was not feeling much in general anymore. Until...
 

...until the 2nd of January, not long after breakfast.
 

Many of our guests had left that morning and others were preparing to.

"
Nein! Das ist doch meins!
- No! But that's mine!" cried Birka, one of the German children. She was about five and furious at her little brother, who was a rowdy two-year old. He held her pink plastic shovel hostage.

Her brother was of a different opinion and he voiced it vehemently, if inexpertly. "
Is ni dein! Is ni dein
!"

I had a flashback of another little boy shouting
"Bird's on time! Bird's on time!"

A jolt ran through me and I shot up.

Tina, who had been reading Vogue on the beach bed next to me, jumped as well.
 

"Spider?" She gasped in terror.

"Stop being hysterical," Gus commented from a few beach beds away.
 

"No," I mumbled, "I need to go inside."

"Hunkslide?" Tina asked.

For those among you who do not know Tina yet: she is the most outspoken, dirty-minded and fast-witted person of this or any other time. It is all the more confusing because she is this tiny woman with flowing hazelnut hair and large turquoise eyes.

"Yes," I whispered, "I need to go inside. I need to check something on the internet."
 

"Want me to come with you?"

"No, no. I'll be fine."

"Let me know if you should want me... Maybe I can get Gus the Gigolo to give you a massage later." She performed an exaggerated wink and, in spite of myself, I had to giggle.
 

"Good Gad," the same Gus spat. "You're toxic, Tina, just toxic."
 

Gus-the-Gigolo and Toxic-Tina. They would never get along.

I hastened to the house and upstairs into my room where I had left my phone.

I typed UNICORN MOON YACHT ITINERARY into the browser.

The connection was slow and I paced the room with a pounding heart. Finally the website showed me what I was looking for. I stormed out of the room again. I needed Gus-the-Gigolo. But not for a massage.

"Gus!" I shouted.
 

All eyes were on me as I ran towards the beach.

"Gus, I need you."

"If that's so, I might as well do you the honour..." He smiled and looked up at me from underneath his straw hat.

"I need the Nonsuch. I need to go to Tartuga."

"Tartuga?"

"Tartuga!" cried my sister Camille. "Tartuga is the only place you DON'T want to go."

"Yes, I do want to go. I have to go. I have to go now or I'll miss him!"

"Why would you want to miss Kyle? Nobody misses Kyle."

"NOT KYLE! I GIVE A FUCK ABOUT KYLE!"

"It's three-hundred miles to Tartuga," Gus said bewildered.

"Yes! I know, that's why I need you to take me! It's out of helicopter range! The Nonsuch can make it until tonight."

"Yeah, if you want to pay a fortune for fuel..."

"I WANT TO PAY A FORTUNE FOR FUEL! PLEASE! HURRY!"

Ryan and Jude returned from...wherever they had been. Tamzin was with her grandparents the last time I checked.

"What's all the commotion about?" Ryan demanded with a very happy smile on his face while his wife seemed pretty smug.

"Our sister wants to go to Tartuga," Camille bristled. "I can't think what has stung her to suddenly go back to the wanker."

"What wanker?"

"Kyle."

"I DON'T WANT TO GO TO KYLE!" I screamed as loudly as I could. "I WANT TO GO TO ALEX!"

Nobody said a word.
 

"I don't think that's a good idea," Ryan finally broke the silence. "Kyle's bound to be there. He always is this time of year, they sell from there. Seriously, pet."

"NOW! OR HE'LL BE GONE! HIS CRUISE ENDS TOMORROW!"
 

Jude shrugged. "If she insists..."

"You can't command Gus to follow your orders like this," Ryan said.

Gus shrugged as well. "If she really wants to go, I can take her."

"I REALLY WANT TO GO! FAST!"

"You should not go alone," Jude suggested. "Someone must go with you."

"She's not alone, she's with me," said Gus.

"I mean somebody normal. I mean somebody with sense. I mean somebody who actually understands her."

"Why, do you think I don't?"

"I mean a WOMAN."
 

"Ah."

"Do you want
me
to come?" my sister inquired.

"God no."

"I can't come," Lilly said. "I will be ovulating in two hours and I want to have another baby."
 

Nobody even lifted an eyebrow, Lilly was Lilly.

"I can't come either," Jude said.

"I can always come," Tina said.

"Yes, we know..." Gus moaned in exasperation.

"No, I'm serious." Tina got up. "I'm coming."

"Kyle's bound to pounce on the Nonsuch," Camille declared in high dudgeon.

Gus got up too. "Let him. What boat's your lover on?"

"Unicorn Moon."

He grimaced. "Ugly pot. It's going to take us five hours to Tartuga, so we better hurry."

Twenty-Eight

I spent most of our high speed trip huddled on a sofa - clad in a thin blouse dress and my ski jacket (yes, I know it's bloody silly) - in the lounge, with my face in my hands. We were forced to remain indoors due to the speed.

Tina was lounging next to me, with a few more Vogues, Elles and Harper's Bazaars. She worked for a large cosmetics company, you know the one, the blue one, and she scanned the magazines for their own advertisements and those of her competitors. "Isabelle de Chantreuse at Jorasse is such a bitch, look how they copied our Serendipity serum with their AgeEpiphany serum!"

I looked up.

"Titia," she accused. "You can't wrinkle your face like this if you want to conquer the man of your dreams! Come with me."

She marched me into the cabin she had claimed and opened her beauty case. It was a "who's who" of high-end cosmetics.

"With compliments from my employer. Research, you understand."

"I understand."

"Wash you face with water."

I did. She dabbed at me with a towel. Consequently, she rubbed my face with several pads saturated with acidic liquids.

I looked at myself in the mirror. "I'm bright red!"

"It'll go away."

She was correct. An hour later my skin was as sheer and as fresh as a baby's buttocks (ze Germans say it like this). I should have trusted her. Nobody is as well maintained as Tina.
 

We remained in the cabin and watched the second season of Sex and The City on Tina's tablet, although I did not properly watch it, I mainly stared ahead into oblivion.