Amanda's Guide to Love (26 page)

“Will you come with me?” He took
her hand in his. “Las Vegas is an amazing place. It’s like nothing you’ve ever
seen before.”

“Are you crazy? I’m struggling to
keep my bank account in the black.”

“Is that your only objection?” His
eyes lit up. “It’s not a problem at all. I make enough money to cover all our
expenses and pay your mortgage while you’re traveling.”

“You’re insane.”

“Quite the contrary, I’m rational.”

She shook her head. “I’m not a
parasite.”

“Amanda, it’s just money—”

“I don’t mean it only in the
financial sense.” She wrung her hands. “I need to have goals of my own. I need
to be productive, feel useful . . . I’m too much of an achiever
for a life of leisure.”

He nodded, the hopeful sparkle
leaving his eyes.

“Besides,” she
delivered the coup de grâce, “I love my apartment. I love Paris. I’m one of
those sedentary folks who need a home with walls and a roof. And a designer
couch.”

* * *

Four pairs of tiny, black-pearl
eyes stared at Amanda’s naked body as if it were totally fine. From her height,
she couldn’t distinguish each individual eye, but since she’d read the spider
book, she knew Christophe had eight of them.

“I’m afraid you got the wrong idea,
buddy,” she said, squirting shower gel onto her sea sponge. “I’m willing to let
you crash in my bathroom for a while, and we can chat and all that, but I’m
not
OK with you checking me out like this.”

Christophe didn’t react.

“It’s inappropriate,” Amanda said.
“The fact that you’re naked, too, doesn’t authorize you to ogle me. This is
not
a nudist bathroom—it’s a
private
bathroom. I don’t like sharing this
space with other people. Or arachnids.”

She closed her eyes to shampoo her
hair, and her thoughts went to Kes’s guide.
We count on your cooperation,
it had requested. Amanda smiled. Wasn’t she the most cooperative reader in the
world? Over the last couple of days, she’d been treating her orchid like a
princess and talking to Christophe whenever he showed up in her bathroom.

Which was often.

Maybe he was lonely, the poor
devil. Maybe the lady spiders kept rejecting him. Another possibility was that
he preferred human females to his own kind. Or maybe he was just different from
all other spiders—an outsider by choice, a unique specimen that enjoyed living
by his own rules, in limbo between two worlds.

Like Kes.

As she stepped out of the tub, her
buzzer went off. Amanda threw on her white bathrobe and hurried to the door.

The same courier as last time
handed her a small cardboard box.

She tore it open as soon as she
shut the door. The box contained a typed page and a gorgeous hand-painted silk
scarf. A little too classic for her taste, but beautiful nonetheless.

She began to read the
letter.

A
Woman’s Guide to Love, Part II

Introduction
: In ideal circumstances, we would
recommend that you practice on plants and animals for at least three months
before graduating to humans. But the circumstances being what they are, we
suggest you move on to your next subject: your mother.

Rationale
: It’s common knowledge that
mother-daughter relationships are never simple (same as between fathers and
sons). We’ll spare you the psychological underpinnings of this phenomenon and
assume your relationship skews toward the “complicated” end of the range.

Instructions
:

1. Accept your mother’s dinner
invitation.

2. Tell her she matters and give
her the scarf, letting her assume you bought it.

3. Tell her that all she achieves
with her “tough love” approach is upsetting and alienating you. Provide three
or four concrete examples.

4. Go home and wait for the penny
to drop.

Bonus
points
: Here’s an
additional challenge for you: if you find the courage to tell your mother you
love her, a certain Gitan will tell his parents the same thing. For the first
time in his life.

~ ~ ~

As
always, we count on your goodwill and cooperation.

Stay
tuned for Part III!

Amanda folded the page and stared
at the pattern on the scarf for a good quarter of an hour.

Then she picked up the
phone and dialed Vivienne.

* * *

The doorbell rang at seven, and
Amanda let her mother in.

Vivienne could’ve just waited for
her in the car, seeing as she was driving Amanda to a restaurant in Saint-Cloud.
Oh well, at least she’d had the courtesy to ring the bell this time.

What was the fun in trespassing
when you were expected, anyway?

“I need to wash my hands,” Vivienne
offered, stepping inside.

Her real agenda was, of course, to
conduct a quick inspection of the premises. She did this all the time, and it
annoyed Amanda to no end.

But, strangely, not tonight.

Vivienne headed to the
bathroom—after all, it had been her excuse for coming up—and a moment later,
Amanda heard her scream.

Oh no.

She must have seen the spider.

Amanda sprinted inside, imagining
the worst. But, luckily, Vivienne was too squeamish to make use of one of her
expensive shoes.

Amanda smiled.

Like mother, like daughter.

“Do you have an insect repellent?”
Vivienne asked, pointing at the spider.

“Maman, meet Christophe, my
roommate. He’s harmless.”

Vivienne’s mouth fell open for a
split second before she collected herself. “The reservation is for seven
forty-five, so we need to go. We’ll talk about this later.”

Amanda followed her out the door,
noting that her mother must have been truly distraught not to finish her
inspection.

They drove to Saint-Cloud in
silence.

At the restaurant, they ordered
their dishes and spent some time studying the silverware.

“You’re too isolated and lonely,”
Vivienne announced.

Amanda lifted her eyes from her
fork. “Why would you say that?”

“Why? You called a spider in your
bathroom ‘Christophe’ as if it were your pet.” Vivienne peered into her
daughter’s eyes. “I remember those books—you adored them when you were little.”

“I did.” Amanda held her mother’s
gaze. “Maybe he
is
my pet.”

Vivienne shook her head. “You’re
headed for a breakdown, Amanda. I’m going to find you a good therapist.”

“I don’t need a therapist. I need—”
Amanda took a deep breath. “Your sympathy and understanding.”

The older woman’s mouth fell open
again, this time for a few long moments. Amanda struggled to suppress a
satisfied grin. Vivienne controlled her facial expressions like a pro, so
provoking her into two mouth gapes in one hour was an undeniable achievement.
And a good sign.

“I knew you wouldn’t want a
therapist,” Vivienne finally said, “but I could’ve never imagined, not even in
my wildest dreams, that you’d want my sympathy instead. You’re so proud and so . . .
dismissive of me.”

“You’re wrong. I’m neither. I’m
just trying to protect myself because the things you say hurt too much.”

And that was when Vivienne’s jaw
dropped for the third time.

They spent the rest of the evening
discovering each other’s unsuspected vulnerabilities and pledging to try to
handle things better in the future. Over dessert, Amanda gave her mother Kes’s
gift without revealing its provenance.

Eyes glistening, Vivienne insisted
it was the most beautiful scarf she’d ever seen.

“Ma chérie,” she said as she
stopped the car in front of Amanda’s building. “I love you more than anything . . .
All I want is for you to succeed in this rat race called life.”

“I know, Maman.” Amanda opened the
car door and began to climb out. Then she stopped and turned to Vivienne. “I
love you, too. We’ll figure it out.”

I hope
, she added silently as she closed
the door.

Even if they didn’t, she thought
while running up the stairs, they had just opened up to each other in a way
they’d never done before. It would stay with them, no matter what.

When she reached her landing, she
was startled to see Kes sitting on the steps leading to the upper floor with a
book in his hands and a smile in his eyes.

“I was too restless,” he explained.

She grinned. “Well, you just saved
us twenty minutes of sleep. So, well done.”

She unlocked the door and let both
of them in.

“How did it go?” He followed her
into the kitchen.

“Tea? Wine? Beer?”

“Just water, please.”

She poured them both some water and
sat down across from him, grinning.

He gulped his glass down. “So?”

“It went well. Better than I
could’ve imagined.”

“Really?” Relief was palpable in
his voice.

“Why do you sound so surprised?”
she teased. “I thought you knew what you were doing when you sent me part two
of your guide. I thought it was based on the insights you’d gleaned from your
psychology books.”

“It is. But you can never be sure.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “I was worried your dinner might go wrong, and
then your relationship would deteriorate, and it would all be my fault.”

“I see.” She gave him a playful
look. “Then you’ll be happy to hear I’ve also earned your bonus points.”

His eyes widened. “You did?”

She nodded, feeling incongruously
smug.

“Wow.” He put his elbows on the
table and encased his face with his hands. “So now I’ll have to tell my parents
I love them.”

She reached over and put her hand
over one of his. “Looks like you will. And no shortcuts, please.”

He gave her a pleading look. “They’ll
decide I’m even weirder than they thought.”

She shrugged. “Not my problem.”

“I’ll go see them tomorrow.”

Tomorrow?

Amanda panicked. Did he really have
to act on his promises so quickly? She had only a week left to enjoy his
company until he went off to Vegas.

Unless . . . he
cancelled his trip.

Should she ask him to stay, like
he’d asked her to go away with him?

He’d probably refuse, just as she
had done. After all, traveling from casino to casino was how he made a living.
More than that—it was his way of life . . .

“My folks are in Lyon these days,”
Kes said. “It’s just two hours by train. I’ll be at your place at midnight.”

Good
.

She exhaled in relief and caught
him staring at her in a funny way.

He took her hand and held it in
his.

“You know what the last part of
your ‘Guide to Love’ will be about, don’t you?” he asked, his voice deep.

She did.

She dreaded it.

And, God help her, she looked
forward to it.

“Let’s see . . .”
She tapped the side of her glass, feigning intense mental activity. “We started
off with a plant, then a spider, then my mother . . . What’s the
next life-form on the evolutionary ladder? The most advanced organism . . .
Hmm . . . Wait, I know—it’s Kes Moreno!”

He chuckled. “Mock it all you want,
but can you deny you’ve followed all my instructions so far to a T?”

No, she couldn’t deny it.

“I’m just humoring you,” she said
with the most offhand shrug she could manage. “For fun.”

“Fine by me.” He mimicked her
shrug. “As long as you continue following my instructions.”

She drank from her glass,
formulating the question she’d wanted to ask ever since his unexpected
declaration. Not that it mattered all that much or would change anything, but
she wanted to know anyway.

“What do you see in me?”

He startled and looked her over. “Where
shall I begin?”

“I’m serious, Kes. Why do you think
you’re in love with me?”

His brow wrinkled in feigned
bewilderment. “Beats me. You’re so utterly unattractive.”

She blew her cheeks out, growing
impatient. “Please stop deflecting my legitimate questions with nonsensical
replies. I really want to know. I
need
to know.”

He searched her eyes. “O-oo-k-aay . . .”

“I can understand why you want to
sleep with me.”

“Why’s that?”