The Lion's Den(52)
“I have to pee,” Brittani says.
Vinny sighs. “Okay. You can go two at a time. But come right back. We need to all be together when they arrive.”
Brittani grabs her mother’s hand, and they dash inside. My insides rumble. Oh God. This is not the place to be sick. In the event Brittani and Rhonda ever return (which I highly doubt), I know the bathroom will be full of old ladies powdering their noses and socialites doing cocaine, so I scan the area for a better option. To my left is the beach—no good. But to my right…Who knows what lurks around the ther side of the building, but it has to be better than my other options.
Amythest sees me searching and whispers, “I got ya,” as she helps me to my feet.
“She doesn’t feel well,” she says as we stumble past Bernard and Vinny.
Bernard blocks our path with his hulking frame. “Wait for the others to return and you can go next.”
Amythest looks up at him without fear, clearly someone who has had her fair share of encounters with bouncers. “Move or she’s gonna spew on you.” She pushes past him, dragging me with her.
The thirty feet between us and the corner of the building are the Sahara. I grip her hand like it’s a life raft and let her guide me to what I can only hope is a puking oasis. We round the corner of the building to find a false green wall that hides the trash. The smell pushes me over the top, and I dive behind the nearest bin and retch.
“Oh God,” Amythest says. “I’m sorry…I can’t…the smell.”
After she leaves, I proceed to empty what is left of the contents of my stomach into the dirt behind the rotting waste of the rich. At one point a young busboy throws a bag into the bin and spies me there on my knees, but he doesn’t say anything. Nor, apparently, does he alert anyone, because I am left to vomit in peace.
When I have sufficiently drained the swamp, I dust myself off and hobble around to the other side of the trash bins in an attempt to find somewhere more pleasant to sit and pull myself together before returning to my crystal cage. The dirt driveway empties into a delivery area with a ramp up to a loading dock, where the busboy leans against the wall, smoking a cigarette. He sees me emerge and extracts a fresh bottle of water from his back pocket, holding it out to me. I gratefully take it from him and wash my mouth out, afraid to swallow the water for fear of waking the beast in my stomach. “Merci,” I say.
“Un moment.” He disappears through a cracked door, returning after a few moments with an ice-cold towel.
He finishes his cigarette as I thoroughly wipe myself down and hand it back to him. “Merci beaucoup.”
He takes a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket and offers me one, but I decline. “Tu es mon sauveur,” I say.
He nods and goes inside, and I return to the bench, wishing I had a toothbrush but otherwise feeling better. Rhonda and Brittani have not returned and Vinny is gone, but the rest of the group is still there, wilting in the sun. They look up at me expectantly.
“You okay?” Wendy ventures, handing me a piece of spearmint gum, which I gratefully put in my mouth.
I nod. “I’m just seasick. Yay.”
Claire pats my arm, and I take a seat between her and Amythest.
“What time is it?” I ask.
“Almost two,” Wendy says.
“They’re an hour late,” Amythest adds.
“They will be here any minute,” Bernard says.
As if on cue, a silver convertible Ferrari pulls up in a cloud of dust, and Bernard waves us all to our feet.
Amythest remains sitting, doing something on her phone. Bernard grabs her by the arm and jerks her to her feet, causing her to drop her bejeweled phone on the ground. She wrests her arm away from him, and I pick up the phone and hand it to her.
Summer emerges from the car looking fresh in a white sundress and giant sunglasses and unties the blue flowered scarf from her hair while she waits for John to come around to her side and take her hand. He’s in a linen suit and sunglasses, and as they come toward us, I recognize the glasses he’s wearing. They’re the pair I found under Amythest’s bed yesterday.
Realization washes over me like a cold shower. If I were a loyal friend, I would be outraged, but it’s all I can do to keep from laughing. Here’s Summer, acting like she’s to the manor born and we’re her ladies-in-waiting, when right under her nose, a younger woman has easily seduced her sugar daddy. But then, what can she possibly expect? The man who sleeps with a woman thirty-six years younger behind his wife’s back will sleep with one forty-three years younger behind his mistress’s.
And then Summer’s air-kissing me and we are filing inside, the dark of the vestibule such a contrast to the bright sun that I can hardly see two feet in front of me. As I step out onto the shaded dining patio, the sea breeze caresses my skin and leaves me feeling instantly ten times better. Chill lounge music thrums under the sound of the waves, and waiters in green polo shirts bustle between tables crowded with a dizzying array of well-to-do French families on vacation, Russian billionaires and their entourages, Greek shipping magnates conducting business meetings—just a usual August afternoon on the Riviera.
We have a corner table with a view of the sea, our dining companions apparently the richest people in some country I’ve heard of but couldn’t place on a map. Latvia? Lithuania? I don’t know, and I really don’t care. Looking at them, you’d think they were perhaps a Midwestern high school football coach and his wife. They’re middle-aged, average white people you could meet five times and still not remember. Alas, I will never know anything else about them, as they are seated with Summer and John at the better end of the table, and I am seated at the opposite end with their two teenage sons, bodyguard, and nanny.