Bliss (19 page)

And that was it. The PA showed her out of the room and said, “Your car is waiting to take you to the airport.”

She was shown to her car, which was exactly where she'd left it on the circular driveway of the office building. Leslie's car was also idling at the curb. Would it give her an edge, going second? Who knows.

On the ride back to LAX, Sophia called Agnes, who picked up on the first ring. “I crushed it,” she said.

“I expect nothing less,” said Agnes.

“I was only in the room for ten minutes, max. Is that a good sign or a bad sign?”

“Impossible to say. They might have loved what they saw, and one bite of perfect was enough.”

“It just seemed really short.” Now that it was all over and she couldn't do anything to change the test, she slammed the door on doubt. It wasn't welcomed.

“I've already emailed the producer to say thanks and that you felt really positive about it. All we can do now is wait.”

“What's your vibe? If you were a witch and you pulled a ‘yes' or ‘no' out of thin air?” Sophia asked, grasping for anything.

Agnes laughed. “I wish I were a witch! All I've got are the chin hairs. Just hang in there, Sophia. We might get some feedback before you land.”

Sophia was at the gate for her flight with plenty of time to sit and stew. About a half hour into her wait, she spotted Leslie in line at the Starbucks. She shrank down in her chair and raised her magazine to hide her face. Now that the test was over, Leslie might want to call truce and talk about it. Sophia would rather die. It'd be awkward and strained, like chatting the morning after a one-night stand when all you wanted was to put on your pants and get the hell out of there.

Following her rival's movements, Sophia tried to suss out Leslie's mood, elated, deflated, what? She seemed normal, wandering through the newsstand, sipping her coffee, looking at her phone every thirty seconds, just like Sophia. Agnes hadn't called or texted yet, but, judging from Leslie's constant screen check, neither had her agent.

They were probably on the same flight. When the call to board was announced, Leslie didn't seem to care and barely looked up from her phone. Sophia sprang out of her seat like she'd been jolted with a cattle prod. Agnes said they might have an answer by the time she got off the plane, so Sophia couldn't get on it fast enough. Hovering at the rope line, she shifted from foot to foot until her row was called.

The stewardess took her boarding pass and put it under the scanner. Sophia had already started down the ramp.

“One moment, Ms. Marcus,” said the flight attendant.

“Something wrong?” she asked.

The woman beamed at her. “Not at all. You've been upgraded to first class. Here's your new boarding pass.”

What the fuck?
An upgrade? What was going on here? It had to be a mistake, but she wasn't about to protest. She took her new paper, and walked down the ramp, convinced they were going to change their minds.

The stewardess checked her pass, and directed her to her seat in row two. This wasn't a seat. It was a pod with side panels for privacy, a table, a cabinet with noise-canceling headphones, bottles of water, a snack assortment, and a leather tote bag stuffed with amenities. The TV screen was twice as big as in coach. Playing with the controls, she discovered she could make the seat recline flat, like a bed.

She'd never flown first class before. She'd never done
anything
first class before.

A bit embarrassed by her good fortune, she watched the economy passengers file past her seat, looked enviously at her, just as she always did on her way back to coach. She tried to shrink into her pod, make herself a bit invisible, convinced that, at any second, the stewardess was going to come and send her back there, where she really belonged.

“You,” said a voice over her. Oh, shit, that was fast!

She looked up. It was Leslie.

“Hi,” said Sophia.

Leslie stared at her, her pretty mouth in an O. She looked at her boarding pass, and then back at Sophia. Her features hardened. She said, “Shit,” and then trudged on down the aisle toward the back of the plane.

Sophia immediately started texting Agnes. “I got an upgrade. The other girl didn't. WHAT DOES IT MEAN??”

Right as she hit send, her phone pinged. A text came in from Agnes. It was only three words, the most beautiful words in the English (or any) language: “You got it!!”

Hands shaking, heart thundering, Sophia buzzed all over, like her blood was electrified.

“Excuse me, you have to put your phone in airport mode now,” said a roving stewardess with a silver tray. “Would you like a glass of champagne?”

“Yes, please,” Sophia croaked, taking a glass and downing it in a gulp.

“Thirsty!” said the woman. “If you'd like, I can bring you a bottle.”

“Yes, please!”

“Would you prefer lobster or filet mignon for your dinner? Or, if you're hungry, you can have both.”

“Both please!”

The stewardess just laughed. “You got it,” she said, repeating the three most glorious words in any language. Sophia wanted to scream and run up and down the plane aisle! That would probably get her arrested.
FUCKING PINCH ME!!!
she screamed in her head.

From a sandwich in a box to champagne and lobster on a silver tray. This was her life now, at least for the next five hours, and possibly a lot longer.

Sophia couldn't help feeling a bit sorry for Leslie. But then they brought around warm cookies fresh out of the oven, and she thought about chocolate instead.

 

12

nothing looks pretty on a bitch

Leandra kissed Charlie on the side of his neck and purred, “You are the sexiest man I've ever met.”

He returned it with a cheek peck. “The driver might see us.”

Improper. That was the implication. Leandra leaned back on the leather limo seat, but held tightly to his hand. “You're exactly right, Charles. A time and a place for everything.”

She'd taken to calling him Charles—with a British accent—while they were in London. That was the only change in the dynamic of their relationship. Charlie worked all day, and usually had dinner with clients. When he got back to their suite at the Connaught Hotel in Mayfair, he expected Leandra to be waiting for him, warm and toasty, ready to bounce around their king-size bed for an hour and then stroke his manly chest hair while chanting “I love you” until he drifted off to dreamland.

Barf.

Truly. Leandra bit her lip, and never complained. Charlie's affection seemed real. He'd fallen in love with the devoted, selfless wifey she pretended to be. She spent her afternoons in London shopping for banker's wife outfits, and having her hair and nails tended to. She'd let herself get coarse in Thailand. For the London look, she needed an overhaul. Mildred, her English stylist, gave her a brow shaping that literally changed her life. “Eyebrows should be sisters, not twins,” said Mildred. She plucked one arch slightly higher than the other, and it had completely altered Leandra's face, like adding a secret ingredient to a stew. Her strawberry blond hair was brightened to platinum, and straightened permanently using a Brazilian treatment that, she read, was part formaldehyde. She'd soaked her head in embalming fluid. Worth it! She looked as sleek and sophisticated as all the gorgeous specimens she saw walking around Soho.

In the limo, Charles checked his Rolex. “Where are we going, exactly?”

“Raffles,” she said. “A club in Chelsea. Some girls told me about a party there tonight.”

“What girls?”

She shrugged. “Just some people I met while shopping.”

Actually, she'd overheard—one might say
eavesdropped
—Blinky and Shaggy (seriously, that was what they called each other) talking about it in the fitting rooms at Yves St. Laurent on Sloane Street. They were shiny and sparkling human jewels, poreless pale skin and gleaming long, skinny baby giraffe legs.

“I thought you went to the Tower of London today,” he asked. “Didn't Beatrice set you up with a private Beefeater tour?”

Beatrice was Charles's assistant at the bank. He'd been asking her to arrange tours and expeditions for Leandra all week, but she had no intention of being dragged through medieval piles with some banger-breathed old man, no matter how cool his hat was. “I overslept,” she said. “I'm going to do some sightseeing tomorrow. Maybe you can get away, and come with me?”

“I'd love to,” he said. “But Mr. Yamamoto…”

His client, the man he'd been called to London to see, was a Japanese master of the universe. He kept Charles at his beck and call. Leandra would have loved to complain and whine about it, but she reminded herself that nothing looked pretty on a bitch.

“I'm just worried about your health,” she said sweetly. “You work so hard.”

“I'm exhausted,” he agreed. Her rules—no nagging, no whining—did not apply to him. “Let's have an early night, okay?”

It was their third night in London, and the first time they'd actually gone out together. She intended to party until dawn, even if Charles was fagged (meaning tired; Blinky and Shaggy's dressing room conversation had been quite an education) in the morning.

Leandra's look tonight was classy-cum-trashy, aka
clashy
: a super-short lamé dress with a high neckline—Joan of Arc on top; a Playboy Bunny below. Given the choice of highlighting her ass or her boobs (both splendid), Leandra always chose butt. Most men, including Charles, gravitated to the ass like a rat to cheese. Boobs could be mesmerizing. But a butt gave men Big Ben boners.

“I'm serious, Lee,” he said, using his hateful nickname for her. “I have a meeting at eight.”

If one put a gun to her head, Leandra could not tell you what Charles did all day at work, or what these millions of meetings were about. The details—his job title, his responsibilities—were irrelevant to her. All she needed to know was that their expenses were covered—including the room at the Connaught, all their meals, and the car and driver. Her walking-around money, which she was burning through like the Great Fire of 1666, was out of (his) pocket. One night, when she wanted a double helping of pounds, she licked his hands like a cat, and he went crazy on her in bed. Men were so predictably perverted.

The limo rolled to a stop in front of a black awning with the word “Raffles” on it. The club was the watering hole for young London's titled entitled upper class. If you weren't stunning and superrich, you couldn't get in. Leandra had been worried about being turned away at the door, but she was prepared. The limo would help. So did her dress, and the faux fur shawl and Louboutins. Charles's Tom Ford suit and bratty expression put the icing on the scone. It all added up to give them a “don't you know who I am?” wealthy American image. The bouncer would have to let them in, or live in fear that he'd turned away VIPs.

He wasn't much of a bouncer. In Canada, the bigger the bouncer the better. But the Raffles gatekeeper was a slim fop in a skinny suit with a Union Jack pattern. He preened like a cat, running his slender fingers through shoulder-length brown hair. “Hello, luvs,” he said as Leandra and Charlie walked up to the velvet rope.

“Hi,” said Leandra, on the edge of friendly and frosty.

“Can I help you?” asked the bouncer. “Do you need directions or something?”

Charles sighed. “We'd like to go inside.” He pointed at the club door impatiently.

“So sorry! We're having a private party tonight.”

Shit. “Yes, we know. It's Wubby Trumell's twenty-first birthday,” she said. “Blinky invited us.”

“Did she?”

“We're friends of hers from New York.”

He smiled. “Welcome, friends from New York. Blinky's already inside. Cheers!”

In they went. Charles leaned down to mutter in Leandra's ear. “We're crashing a party? Really? We could be back at the Connaught in bed.”

Yes, well, Leandra had had enough of rolling around in bed with Charles. He was still making up for all his quasi-virginal years of masturbating to her memory. The sex was fine. But he insisted on talking about it during the act. “Does this feel good? Tell me it feels good,” over and over again, like, every thrust. Once, when a little tipsy, she said, “It'll feel better if you
shut up
,” and he went as soft as a rotten banana.

The Raffles entrance was dark except for blue and green tube lights embedded on the black hallway floor and walls, like walking down a tunnel into a spaceship. The hallway opened into a cavernous open room, with flashing green and blue lights, pulsing along the walls and up columns in the middle of the dance floor to the beat of the music. Only a few people were standing on the dance floor—beautifully turned out, with six-inch stilettos and halter dresses—but none were dancing. Most of the party people were congregating around the bar or in small cliques in the sunken couch pits. For a club this size, it was strange to see so few people inside. She'd hoped to slip in and then be obscured in the crowd. The gathering was too small, with no place to hide.