The It Girl(43)
“Just one,” April said seriously. “Pinkie swear. And I know the perfect place to take you.”
* * *
SOME FORTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER, HANNAH found herself wearing her new Chantecaille lipstick and a pair of borrowed heels, balanced on a stool in a private members’ bar that she had never even noticed, with a Bellini in her hand that she didn’t remember ordering. As April chatted away about Valentine’s Day balls and the dress she was ordering from London, Hannah took a gulp of the cocktail and felt the alcohol filtering through her blood, giving everything a distant, unreal quality, as if she were looking down on herself from a great height. It wasn’t just the drink, though, she knew. Every day she spent with April she felt increasingly dissociated from her old self, the gulf between this gilded existence and humdrum Dodsworth gaping wider and wider until it seemed that no train could bridge it.
“Smile,” April instructed, and held up her iPhone high above the bar, angling her head towards Hannah’s with a provocative little pout that made her lips look like two plump red cherries. Hannah smiled—and the camera clicked, and then April was uploading the picture to an app on her phone, with the caption It’s a Shirley Temple, Daddy, promise kiss emoji
“That is definitely not a Shirley Temple,” Hannah said, pointing at the Bellini in April’s left hand. “It doesn’t even look like one.”
“No, but my father doesn’t look at my Instagram, so it all cancels out,” April said, rather sourly. Hannah looked at her curiously as she sat there, swinging one leg and scrolling down her feed, a frown between her finely plucked brows. She was never quite sure how much April’s poor-little-rich-girl act was just that—an act. On the one hand, she hadn’t witnessed any evidence of April’s parents at all—the closest thing she had seen to a parental figure was Harry, the minder/bodyguard who had accompanied April to Pelham that very first day. On the other, that was true of lots of people at college. Some parents had done a swift drop and run. Others had hung around for a few hours, making indulgent conversation, before being shooed away. And many students, particularly the international ones, had arrived without any parental escort at all. April wasn’t alone in that.
“What about your mother?” Hannah asked now, with the sensation of treading on rather thin ice, unsure how deep the water was beneath her feet. She knew that April had a mother, because she had referred to her in passing once or twice—but there was something about the tone April used in discussing the topic that warned Hannah that there were complicated emotions beneath the surface, quite different from Hannah’s own mix of affectionate exasperation with Jill.
“Oh, she’s a professional fuckup,” April said. She took a swizzle stick off the bar and stirred her Bellini thoughtfully. “You know, Prozac before lunch, Stoli after. Little Vicodin chaser before bed.”
“Stoli?” Hannah echoed, puzzled, and April rolled her eyes.
“Vodka, darling. You’re such a little provincial.”
Hannah said nothing. April probably meant it as a dig, albeit an affectionate one, but it was true, she was provincial, and she wasn’t ashamed of that. That wasn’t the reason for her silence. It was more that she didn’t know what to say, faced with this unexpected slew of information. Did April want sympathy? Or just a breezy agreement?
“Can I get you two ladies another cocktail?” The bartender broke the silence, pushing a little dish of olives towards them. He was dressed in a crisp white shirt and black waistcoat, and his accent was Spanish, or perhaps Portuguese, Hannah wasn’t sure. He was extremely handsome, and she was not surprised when April put away her phone and rested both elbows on the bar, giving the man a good view of her cleavage in a sheer white silk top.
“What are you offering?” she asked, a hint of a purr in her voice.
“What do you like?” the bartender countered, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “For you ladies, I could make something special.”
“What do you think, Hannah?” April asked, turning to her, and Hannah suppressed a guilty thought of her essay waiting unwritten at home, and the effect of not just one but two cocktails on an empty stomach.
“Well… I did say just one, but… I guess I could stay for one more. But then I have to get back.”
“Just one, then,” April said with a slightly theatrical sigh. “So we’d better make it count. Make us…” She skewered an olive on a cocktail stick and put it to her lips, twirling it gently against her teeth with mesmerizing slowness as she thought. “Make us… Oh, I know, make us a Vesper. You know, like in Casino Royale.”
“Excellent choice,” the bartender said, and he turned, pulling three bottles off the rack behind the bar with a theatrical flourish, spinning one in the air before pouring a long stream of clear alcohol into the shaker.
When the drinks were finally mixed, the bartender strained the cold liquid into two tall brimming martini glasses, and picked up a sliver of lemon zest. Very, very carefully he pinched it over the left-hand glass, spritzing the oil from the zest across the surface of the drink in a little iridescent cloud. Then he dropped in the rind and repeated the action with the right. Finally, he slid the glasses slowly across the bar, the cloudy white liquid trembling at the meniscus.
“Aquí tenéis,” he said, and gave April a little bow. “A drink named after a beautiful woman, for two beautiful women.”