Queen of Babble (17 page)

“Not this time,” Chaz says, wrapping an arm around my shoulders to give me a quick welcoming hug.

As he does so, he whispers, “Is there anybody back in England that I have to beat up? Because, with God as my witness, I’ll go over there and kick his scrawny naked ass for you. Just say the word.”

“No,” I assure him, laughing a little painfully. “It’s okay. Really. It’s as much my fault as it is his. I should have listened to you. You were right. You’re always right.”

“Not always,” Chaz says, dropping his arm. “It’s just that the times I’m wrong don’t register in your memory with as much clarity as the times I’m right. Still, go right ahead thinking I’m always right if you want to.”

“Cut it out, Chaz,” Shari says. “Who cares about what happened in England, anyway? She’s here now.

It’s okay if she stays, right, Luke?”

“I don’t know,” Luke says teasingly. “Can she pull her weight? We don’t need any more slackers around here. We’ve already got this one.” He slaps Chaz on the shoulder.

“Hey,” Chaz says, “I’m helping out. I’m testing all the alcohol for purity and freshness before Luke’s mom gets here.”

Shari shakes her head at her boyfriend and says, “You’re insufferable.” To Luke, she says, “Lizzie’s superhandy. Well, with a needle. If you’ve got any seamstressy stuff to do…”

Luke seems surprised to learn that I can actually sew. Most people are. It’s not something many people know how to do anymore.

“I just might,” he says. “I’ll check with, ahem, Mom when she gets here tomorrow. But right now I think we have more pressing concerns—helping Chaz with the alcohol testing.”

“This way, ladies,” Chaz says, indicating, with a courtly bow, the path to the outdoor bar he’s apparently set up, “and gentleman.”

Shari and I follow the guys into the cool, slightly damp grass. As we get closer to the low stone wall, I glance over it and see the valley stretched below, the river—just as Chaz promised—winking in the moonlight like a long, silver snake. It is so beautiful my throat catches. I feel as if I am in a daze. Or a dream.

And I am not the only one.

“I can’t believe this,” Shari whispers, still hanging on to my arm. “What happened? I know I was pretty drunk last time I talked to you, but I thought you said you were going to try to work things out with Andy.”

“Yeah,” I whisper back. “Well, I did try. But then I found out—well, it’s a long story. I’ll tell you sometime when”—I nod my head in Luke and Chaz’s direction—“they’renot around.”

Although of course Luke already knows most of it.

Well, okay. All of it.

And I do meanall.

“Was it bad?” Shari asks, concern creasing her pretty face. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I assure her. “Really. I wasn’t before, but…” I glance in Luke’s direction again. “Well, I had a very sympathetic shoulder to cry on.”

Shari’s dark-eyed gaze follows mine. I see her eyebrows go up beneath her curly bangs. I wonder what she’s thinking. Not, I hope,Oh, poor little Lizzie, in love with a guy so out of her league.

Because I’m not. In love with him, I mean.

But all she says is, “Well, I’m glad about that. So your heart’s not broken?”

“You know,” I say thoughtfully, “I don’t think it is. A little bruised, is all. Is it really all right that I’m here?

What’s Chaz talking about, Luke’s mom coming tomorrow?”

Shari grimaces. “Luke’s mom and dad are getting divorced, but apparently she—Mrs. de Villiers—promised her niece a long time ago that she could get married at Mirac. So she—Mrs. de Villiers, I mean—is arriving tomorrow, with her sister, the niece, the groom—the whole family. It should be a helluva party. Especially considering Luke’s parents are barely speaking, and he’s caught up in the middle of the whole thing. According to Chaz, Luke’s mom is some kind of battle-ax.”

I wince, remembering Dominique’s warning about Luke needing to get the brush along the driveway cleared before his mom’s arrival.

“So they won’t want me here,” I whisper, to make sure Luke doesn’t overhear us. I saythey, but I mean Luke, of course. “I mean, I don’t want to crash—”

“Lizzie, it’stotally okay,” Shari says. “This place is huge, and there’s plenty of room. Even with Luke’s entire extended family here, there are rooms to spare. And there’ll be plenty to do. It’s actually good you’re here. We could use the help. Apparently this niece—Luke’s cousin, Vicky—is some kind of Texas socialite. She already browbeat Luke into making the trip to Paris and back just to pick up her dress from the fancy Parisian seamstress who made it, and she’s not even here yet. Plus, she’s apparently invited half of Houston for this wedding, including her brother’s garage band, who just got some kind of recording contract and are supposed to be the Next Hot Thing. So it’s not exactly going to be intimate.”

“Oh,” I say. “Well, good. Because I really couldn’t think what else to do other than come here. I couldn’t go home—”

“Of course you couldn’t,” Shari says, sounding horrified. “Your sisters would have had a field day!”

“I know,” I say. “So I just figured…well, you’d said it was okay to come here—”

“I’m so glad you did. I mean, look at the two of them.” She nods toward her boyfriend and Luke, who’ve drifted over to one of the wrought-iron tables and are mixing up some kind of concoction in
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fluted champagne glasses. “They’re like long-lost twins. All they do is yak, yak, yak about everything under the sun—Nietzsche, Tiger Woods, beer, the probability of coincident birth dates, the good old days at prep school. I’ve been feeling like a total third wheel.” She puts her arm around me. “But now I’ve got my own friend to yak with.”

“Well,” I say with a grin, “you know I’m always good for a bit of yaking. But what about Luke’s girlfriend, Dominique? You can’t yak with her?”

Shari makes a face. “Sure. If you want to yak about Dominique.”

“Oh,” I say. “I sort of got the idea, what with the flip-flops.”

“Really?” Shari looks interested. She’s always valued my fashion analyses. “They give you a bad vibe?”

“No,” I say hastily. “Nothing like that. Just sort of like she’s trying too hard. But then she’s Canadian. I think my radar is off when it comes to foreigners.”

Shari winces. “You mean Andy? Yeah, well, I always did wonder what you saw in him. But you’re not wrong about Dominique. Those flip-flops? They’re Manolo Blahniks.”

“No!” Manolo Blahnik flip-flops, I know from myVogue perusing, can cost upward of six hundred dollars. “Gosh. I always wondered who bought them—”

“Hey, you two.” Chaz strolls across the moonlit grass toward us. “No shirking your duties. There’s alcohol to inspect.”

“Hang on.” Luke is one step behind him. “I’ve got their first test subjects here.” He hands each of us a champagne flute filled with sparkling liquid. “Kir royales,” he says, “with champagne made right here at Mirac.”

I don’t know what a kir royale is, but I’m game to try one. Dominique reappears and lays claim to a glass as well.

“What shall we drink to?” she asks, raising her glass.

“How about,” Luke says, “to strangers meeting on a train.”

I smile at him across the few feet of grass separating us.

“Sounds good to me,” I say, and clink glasses with everyone. Then I take a sip.

It is like drinking liquid gold. The mingled flavors of berry, sunlight, and champagne dance on my tongue.

Kir royale turns out to be champagne with a sort of liqueur in it—cassis, Shari explains, which is a type of berry.

“Nowyou explain something to me,” Shari says when she’s through with her cassis commentary.

“Hmm?” I am pretty fairly convinced by now that this is all just a dream from which I’m going to wake up eventually. But until that moment, I plan on enjoying myself. “What’s that?”

“What did Luke mean with that toast? Strangers on a train and all that?”

“Oh.” I glance over at him, where he’s laughing with Chaz. “I don’t know. Nothing.”

Shari narrows her eyes at me. “Don’t you nothing me, Lizzie. Spill. What happened on that train?”

“Nothing!” I cry, laughing a little myself. “Well, I mean, I was upset—you know, about Andy. And I cried a bit. But like I said…he was very sympathetic.”

Shari just shakes her head. “There’s more to this story. Something you aren’t telling me. I know it.”

“There’s not,” I assure her.

“Well,” Shari says, “if there is, I know I’ll find out eventually. You’ve never kept a secret in your life.”

I just smile at her. There are a couple of secrets I’ve managed to keep from her so far. And I don’t plan on spilling them anytime soon.

But all I say is, “Really, Shari. Nothing happened.”

Which is, basically, the truth.

A little while later, I stroll toward the low stone wall and stand there, trying to take it all in—the valley; the moon rising over the roof of the château across from ours; the starry night sky; the crickets; the sweet smell of some kind of night-blooming flower.

It’s too much. It’s all too much. To go from that horrible little office in the Job Centre to this, all in one day…

Beside me, Luke, who has somehow managed to break away from Chaz and Dominique for a minute, asks softly, “Better now?”

“Getting there,” I reply, smiling up at him. “I can’t thank you enough for letting me stay here. And thanks for…you know. Not telling them. Anything.”

He looks genuinely surprised. “Of course,” he says. “What else are friends for?”

Friends. So that’s what we are.

And somehow, there in the moonlight? That’s more than enough.

The Romantic movement of the 1820s brought back a yearning for narrow-waisted heroines like the ones in the novels of Sir Walter Scott (the Dan Brown of his day—though Sir Walter would not have dared dress a French heroine in a big sweater and black leggings, as Mr. Brown did poor Sophie Neveu inThe Da Vinci Code ), and corsets gained popularity while skirts became wider. So beloved was Sir Walter that a brief craze for tartan overtook a few of the less sensible ladies of the time, though thankfully they soon realized the error of their ways.

History of Fashion

SENIOR THESIS BY ELIZABETH NICHOLS

13

I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.

—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862),

U.S. philosopher, author, and naturalist

When I wake up the following morning, I look around the tiny, low-ceilinged room I’m in, with its bright white walls and dark wood rafters, in confusion. The curtains—cream-colored, with large pink roses splotched on them—are drawn across the room’s single window, so I can’t see outside. For a second I can’t remember where I am—whose bedroom, or even whatcountry .

Then I see the old-fashioned door, with its latch you press down on instead of turn—like the latch to a garden gate—and I realize I’m at Château Mirac. In one of the dozen attic bedrooms—which, in the château’s glory days, housed the serving staff—and which now house Shari, Chaz, and myself—not to mention Jean-Luc and his girlfriend, Dominique.

That’s because the château’s formal bedrooms, below us, are reserved for the wedding party—and guests—that are due to arrive this afternoon. While renting out the main house, Luke’s father—whom Shari refers to as Monsieur de Villiers—stays in a small thatched-roofed cottage near the outbuildings, where he keeps the oak casks of his wine before it’s ready for bottling. Shari told me last night, as we climbed the seemingly hundreds of stairs to our rooms after four—or was it five?—more kir royales, that birds regularly nest in the thatch and have to be chased away lest their waste eat through the roof.

Somehow a thatched roof will never seem picturesque to me again.

After blinking groggily at the cracks in the ceiling above, I realize what’s wakened me. Someone is knocking on the door.

“Lizzie,” I hear Shari say, “are you up yet? It’s noon. What are you going to do, sleep all day?”

I throw back the duvet and rush to the door to hurl it open. Shari is standing there in a bikini and a sarong holding two enormous, steaming mugs. Her hair, which is normally dark and curly, is looking enormous, a sure sign that it’s hot outside.

“Is it really noon?” I ask, freaking out that I slept so long and wondering if people—okay, Luke—are going to think I’m a rude slacker.

“Five after,” Shari says. “I hope you brought a swimsuit. We’ve got to try to catch as many rays as we can before Luke’s mom and her guests arrive and we have to start setting things up for the meals and wine tastings. That only gives us about four hours. But first”—she thrusts one of the steaming mugs at me—“cappuccino. Lots of aspartame, just the way you like it.”

“Oh,” I say appreciatively as the milky steam bathes my face. “You are a lifesaver.”

“I know,” Shari says, and comes into the room to make herself comfortable on the end of my rumpled bed. “Now. I want to know everything that happened with Andy. And with Luke, on the train. So spill.”

I do, settling in beside her. Well, I don’t tell hereverything, of course. I’ve still never told her the truth
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about my thesis, and I’m definitely never telling her about the blow job. Of course, I told a total stranger on a train about both. But somehow that was much easier than telling my best friend, who would, I know, only disapprove of both—especially the latter. I mean, a blow job, without reciprocation, is the height of antifeminism.

“So,” Shari says when I’m through, “you and Andy are really over.”

“Definitely,” I say, sipping the last of my delicious cappuccino.

“You told him that. You told him it’s over.”

“Totally,” I say. Didn’t I? I think I did.

“Lizzie.” Shari gives me a hard look. “I know how much you hate confrontation. Did youreally tell him it’s over?”

“I told him I need to be alone,” I say…realizing, a little belatedly, that that’s not the same thing as telling someone it’s over.

Still, Andy got the message. Iknow he did.

But just in case, maybe I won’t pick up if he calls again.