Finding It (13 page)

“I am just finishing my piece on last night’s Brava party and will send it to you soon.” I cross my fingers in a childish effort to cancel out my lie. “It’s fab, really fab!”

“Yes, yes.” Big Boss Lady switches the call to speakerphone. “I have Rawlings here. He has a few questions for you.”

This can’t be good. Rawlings is head of HR.

“Good Morning, Miss Grant.”

“Mr. Rawlings. How are you?”

“I’ll get right to it, Miss Grant.” Rawlings must be leaning over the speaker because his voice suddenly explodes out of my iPhone. “Your position as a travel columnist involves a certain amount of risk, and is, at times, physically demanding. How confident are you in your ability to continue meeting those demands?”

I knew it! I am being sacked, shit-canned, fired, given the axe, made redundant. Big Boss Lady—Louanne—probably thinks I am cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. Sane, credible journalists avoid arrest—except for those barking mad reporters who sneak into communist countries—and they definitely don’t have their names bandied about by gossip columnists like Steven “Rancid Turd” Schpiel.

“I am quite capable of performing my duties. Nothing’s changed. I swear!”

The pause in conversation stretches. Papers rustle. Big Boss Lady’s ubiquitous gold Tiffany bangles clank together as if she’s waving her hand or writing. Finally, Rawlings clears his throat.

“Are you quite certain? We do not expect you to put your health, or the health of your unborn child, at risk. No story is worth—”

“Jesus, Mary and—” I exhale all of the air from my lungs in one violent burst. “Thank you for your concern, Mr. Rawlings, Ms. Collins-London—”

“Louanne, dear.”

“Louanne, I am not pregnant.”

Another pregnant pause. Eek! I inwardly cringe at my poor word choice.

“I. Am. Not. Pregnant.” I am trying to hold it together, keep it professional, but my voice cracks and tears fill my eyes. “You have to believe me. Please.”

“We believe you, Vivia.” Louanne takes the call off speakerphone. “Steven Schpiel’s assistant called here asking for confirmation about your pregnancy. I told Rawlings the story was bunk, that my girl is far too clever to get herself into such a messy situation.”

My spine turns to jelly and I sink back against desk chair. Louanne Collins-London called me her girl. She called me her girl and said she believes me.

“Thank you,” I sniffle.

“Nonsense,” Louanne says. “Now, let’s talk about your next assignment.”

“Okay.”

“I am sending you to Scotland. I want you to explore Edinburgh for offbeat tourist attractions. Don’t give me two thousand words on the castle or tartan weavers. Give me the Vivia perspective. Think young and quirky. Can you do that?”

“Absolutely.”

“After that, you’ll be heading to a working sheep farm in the Highlands.”

“A sheep farm?”

“That’s right. A sheep farm.”

Louanne’s other line rings and she puts me on hold. What the bloody hell am I going to do on a sheep farm? Sheer those little wooly boogers? Milk them? Do they milk sheep? Sweet lamb chops! I just hope Louanne doesn’t expect me to slaughter a sheep.

“Vivia? Are you still on the line?”

“Yes.”

“Apparently, girlfriend vacations to working farms are en vogue thing among the twenty-five to forty-five female demographic. Cattle ranches. Goat Farms. Working in a vineyard. Who knew?”

“It’s not the Ritz.”

Louanne chuckles. “No, it is not.”

“Is that it?”

“I realize this is short notice, but do you think any of your girlfriends might be able to join you on the farm?”

“Shearing sheep?”

“Yes.”

I imagine sleek Pantsuit Poppy standing in a pile of sheep shit and snort. Something tells me Miss Worthington Boutique Hotels would politely decline my invitation to the sheep soiree. If Fanny hadn’t called me self-absorbed, I would ask her to catch the redeye and help me rustle up some little lambs. Now, I am afraid she would take my invitation as an implication that her life wasn’t as important as mine.

“I don’t think so.”

“Well,” Louanne says. “If you change your mind and think of someone you would like to join you on the farm, send me a text and I’ll have Travel make the arrangements.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I type “sheep farm attire” into my web browser. “How long will I be working the farm?”

“Eight days.”

Eight days?
Shearing sheep and shoveling shit? Is she serious? I guess every assignment can’t be champagne and Boujis.

Louanne taps her keyboard, and I wonder if she is searching the net for appropriate sheep shearing attire too.

“Is that all?”

“No, I have one other assignment.”

“Please don’t say you want me to join a fishing vessel. I hate fish, unless they’re battered, fried, and served with extra salt.”

Louanne is silent.

“Louanne?”

“Sorry. I was just thinking, your fishing vessel story has some merit.”

I sputter. Just because I am on a first name basis with Big Boss Lady doesn’t mean she’s ready for my back-sass.

“I am kidding, Vivia.” Louanne’s other line rings again. “Listen, dear, I have to take this call. I don’t have time to brief you on the other story, so I’ll send you an e-mail with the details. Gotta go.”

She hangs up. I stare at my computer screen, at the images of women wearing plaid wool jackets and dark jeans tucked into shiny rain boots. I am thankful to have a boss as supportive as Louanne Collins-London and an amazing job that allows me to write and travel the world, but I can’t help feeling blue. In the last twenty-four hours, I’ve lost the love of my life, argued with my best friend, and had an unflattering pap-snapped photo posted all over the Internet. The entire world thinks I am a celebrity groupie carrying Bishop Raine’s lovechild. Okay, maybe not the entire world, but at least half.

After Nathan dumped me, I worried I would become a shriveled old spinster, shuffling around in my housecoat and slippers, mumbling song lyrics to my herd of stray cats. Landing the
GoGirl!
gig and a hot French boyfriend chased the fear away—or so I thought.

My old fear never really went away. Like a stalker lurking in the shadows, it waited for my most vulnerable moment to strike.

I envision a lonely future
sans
love,
sans
children,
sans
rescue poodles. Someday soon, my
GoGirl!
readers will grow up. They will stop reading my ridiculous column about my ridiculous exploits. Vivia Grant will stop being a trending topic.

Oh my God! I am a living Tweet—humorous and relevant only until someone more entertaining comes along.

Getting Knocked Up

By the time I write and submit
A Right Royal Cock-up: How to get arrested and knocked up in London in twenty four hours or less
, my Brava/Boujis article, I have finished the third bottle of Thatchers and listened to my entire “When I Am Blue” playlist…twice.

It’s only seven o’clock and I am a mess. Mascara rings my eyes, I smell like fish and chips, and I am stupid weepy drunk.

I should take a shower and sleep off my weepy hang-over, but I don’t always do the best things. Instead, I drunk-dial Luc…repeatedly.

“
Bon
Shwah
, Lukie-Pookie.” I fall back on the bed, holding the phone to my ear. The scent of Luc’s sultry cologne clings to his pillow. “It’s me, Vivia, again. Just wanted to say goodnight. So, goodnight.”

I hang up.

I dial him again just to listen to his voice-mail message. Hearing his deep, sexy voice makes me miss him. My throat tightens. I am wailing like a child before he utters
au revoir
.

“Luc. Luc. Luc?” I don’t know what I want to say so I repeat his name until something comes to me. “I am sorry, Luc. Really sorry.
Je suis desolée
, Luc.”

As soon as I hang up, I think about how pathetic that last message sounded. So, I dial him again.

“This is the last time I will call you. I promise. I just wanted to shay—” I pause because my tongue feels thick, my eyelids heavy. I yawn, rest my head on the desk and close my eyes. “—I’m just so tired…”

My phone beeps in my ear and I wake with a start.

“Luc?”

A confused moment passes before I realize the beep signified the end of my message. I dozed off and Luc’s voicemail disconnected me.

“How ironic.”

I dozed off and Luc’s voicemail disconnected me. That could be a metaphor for what’s been happening in my life. I dozed off, became complacent in my relationships, and now my boyfriend won’t talk to me and my best friend is disappointed in me.

I toss my phone aside, bury my face in Luc’s pillow, and sob. Great, loud, racking sobs, dredged from the darkest, most wounded places in my soul, places I thought healed. In my head, I play snippets of the sad break-up songs on my “For When I Am Blue” playlist. Snippets that speak of heartbreak and surviving by the grace of God. Snippets of Adele, Christina Perri, Toni Braxton, and Katy Perry.

I should follow the advice of my sisters in suffering: pick myself up, put one foot in front of the other, and go on, but right now lifting my head from the pillow feels like more effort than I could possibly manage.

I almost don’t hear the wailing guitar riff that is my ringtone.

“Luc?”

“Fanny.”

“Fannnnnyyyy!” I sit up and hug my knees. “I miss you so much, Fanny. You are my best, best, best friend and I miss you. I made a cock-up of my life again. Luc won’t talk to me. Everyone thinks my muffin top is a baby bump. I have to go to a Scottish sheep farm and shovel shit. And I am drunk.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Yes, I am.”

“What’s going on, Vivian? Have you been cheating on Luc with Bishop Raine? Are you pregnant?”

Fanny asking such a preposterous question is painful proof of the yawning gap between us. When I lived in San Francisco, we saw each other almost every day and shared all of our secrets. Back then, Fanny never needed to ask what was happening in my life because she lived it with me—the cool, calm cosmopolitan Ethel to my Lucy.

Fanny listens to the rambling, weepy, over-dramatic narrative of the blackest moment in my
histoire d'amour tragique
without interjecting. When I finally finish speaking, she lets out a low, long whistle.

“You were right about one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“You,
ma chérie
, have royally cocked-up your life.”

“Again.”

“It
is
becoming a trend.”

My gaze drifts to the blue velvet ring box on the nightstand. “He was going to ask me to marry him.”

“I know,” Fanny whispers. “He booked a suite at L’Hotel.”

The opulent L’Hotel is one of the most famous hotels in the world. Oscar Wilde, Princess Grace and Prince Rainier of Monaco, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor have stayed in the hotel. L’Hotel has a long history as a setting for romantic rendezvous.

“L’Hotel?” It hurts to breath. “I didn’t know.”

“That’s not all.”

Of course that’s not all. Luc, grand romantic gestures Luc, would have planned a breathtakingly romantic weekend to celebrate our engagement. I can’t resist picking at the scab.

“What else, Fanny?”

“Are you sure you want to know?”

“Yes.”

Fanny hesitates.

“Tell me, please.”

“He contacted the artists who created Le Mur Des Je T’aime and got them to agree to paint a special temporary message on the wall that reads, ‘Marry me, Vivia.’”

A raw sob bursts from my lips. Le Mur Des Je T’aime, a wall in the 18th arrondissement created by two artists and emblazoned with the words “I love you” in 250 different languages, has become a meeting place for Parisian lovers. I wrote an article about it for the magazine.

Fanny waits until my pathetic sob simmers to barely audible weeping.

“
Je suis desolée, ma chérie
.”

“What am I going to do, Fanny?” I swipe my runny nose with the back of my hand. “How can I fix this?”

Fanny is silent for a long time. Finally, she says, “You might not be able to fix this one, Vivian. French men are late to commit, but when they finally do, it’s deeply and completely.”

That’s my girl. Brutally blunt Fanny.

“He might have been able to forgive and forget if you were just a fuck buddy, but he chose you to be his wife, the mother of his future children.” Her French accent is thick as she explains the nuances of the French male psyche. “French men have liberal views when it comes to affairs, but they are consummate traditionalists when it comes to marriage. They fall into bed with many, but love only one.”

“So what are you saying? I should give up? Write our relationship off as a lost cause?”

I grab a fistful of Kleenex from the box on the nightstand and twist them into a rope.

“Are you ready to make a grand gesture?”

“Absolutely!”

“Are you ready to give up your job and brushing elbows with the celebrities to settle down with Luc?”

“Rubbing.”

“What?”

“It’s rubbing elbows with celebrities, not brushing elbows.”

“Whatever.” Fanny snaps. “Just answer the question. Are you ready to quit your job, fly to France, and beg Luc to forgive you?”

“Beg Luc’s forgiveness? For what?” I crush the Kleenex in the palm of my hand. “I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t cheat on him. It was a kiss, Fanny, one stupid over-in-a-flash kiss, that meant nothing. Nuh-thing.”

“To you.”

“What?”

“It meant nothing to you, but that kiss wasn’t ‘nuh-thing’ to Luc,” she says, mimicking me. “A world-famous comedian with a reputation as a lothario shoved his tongue down your throat...in public.”

“So what are you saying?” I begin shredding the Kleenex to bits. “Is this, like, some strange French sexual custom? You can cheat as long as it is not in public or with someone who is socially inferior? If Bishop had pulled me into some dark private supply room and stuck his tongue down my throat, would it have been okay then?”

“Probably not.”

I swipe the Kleenex bits onto the ground and press the palms of my hands to my eyes.

“What are you saying then? I don’t understand.”