Finding It (18 page)

“Well, at times, you can be”—I lift my hand and make a pinching gesture, leaving barely an inch of space between my thumb and index finger—“just a teensy, weensy snobby.”

“Nice, Vivian,” Fanny fumes. “Nice! Way to have my back.”

“That is not fair!” I let my hand fall to my lap and swivel back around to stare out the front window. “I always have your back, Fanny.”

“Not this time.”

“
C’est des conneries
!” I swivel back around and stare into her flashing brown eyes. She looks surprised by my correct usage and pronunciation of the French oath. “That’s right, sister. I can
parle
a few curse words, too.”

We stare at each other—engaging in a classic game of “who will look away first.” To keep the peace, I am usually the one who submits, yields, gracefully concedes victory of minor skirmishes. For this reason, Fanny thinks I am a pushover. She thinks I fear confrontation. She is
très, très
wrong. I choose to avoid minor skirmishes, preferring to save my firepower for the big battles. Fanny questioning my loyalty is escalating this into a big battle.

Fanny glances out the window and back at me. The confrontation-loving French girl just bowed her head and handed me her sword. A rare occurrence, indeed. Something is definitely up with my best friend. Bowing her head and yielding her sword is not in her nature. Also, although she’s never been a “glass half full” kinda girl, her negativity this trip has reached new heights. It’s like she is determined to make this trip a miserable experience.

If I didn’t know better, I would think Fanny is jealous…of me. But that’s ridiculous, isn’t it? Fanny is beautiful, sophisticated, confident, and rich. Why would she be jealous of me? The notion is too ridiculous to entertain.

“One of the best things about our friendship is that we tell each other the truth.” I reach out and give her knee a quick squeeze. “Has that changed?”

“No.” She exhales and her shoulders slump. “And the truth is you think I am a snob?”

I am proceeding gently because I have never seen my battle-ready friend look so defeated.

“Sometimes.”

“Why didn’t you ever say it before? Why tell me now—” She darts a glance at Poppy and I know what she is thinking: Why tell me now,
in front of a stranger
?

“Because you asked.”

I don’t tell her that she’s been particularly snobbish this trip, or that she becomes extremely combative when someone offers her constructive criticism. I also wonder if my reluctance to call Fanny on her bullshit stems from my pathological tendency to varnish the unpleasant things in my life in a rosy hue. This possibility frustrates me, because it would mean I am still struggling with issues I struggled with when I lied to my ex-fiancé about being a virgin.
Keep it real, Vivia
.

“What else do you think, Vivian? Really think?”

“I think you’re a caring, generous, supportive human being, but you’re not perfect. Everyone has flaws, even the French.” I pause to let my compliment sink in. “You can be snobby sometimes. I never told you that before because I have just accepted it as part of who you are—a small part of who you are—just as I know you accept that I am a verbose, scattered, frizzy-haired redhead.”

Fanny glances at Poppy again and presses her lips together. I know what Fanny is thinking. It’s like she wrote her thoughts in a bubble suspended over her head. She wants to apologize for stealing my sunshine, but doesn’t want to appear weak in front of her foe.

I squeeze her knee in encouragement before turning back around in my seat. Several minutes pass with only the BMW’s softly purring engine breaking the silence.

“I am sorry if I have been negative—”

I don’t know if she intended her apology just for me or as a white flag to end the Great British-French War. So, I wait.

“And I am sorry I called your boots stupid. They’re not stupid. They’re actually really cute, and you work them, girl.”

“Yes, I do!”

Poppy chuckles. “Yes, you do.”

We slip into a slightly more comfortable silence because there’s still a big, fat elephant in the car.

One of my friends needs to apologize. If forced to bet, I don’t know if I would place my money on France or England. I never understood how the two countries could have engaged in a war that lasted one hundred years. I get it now.

In retrospect, I should have considered the possibility that bringing two stubborn, slightly-controlling Type A’s together would result in an end of the armistice. Bonjour, Mademoiselle Immovable Object, meet Lady Irresistible Force.

The tension in the BMW is still thick enough to cut with one of Fanny’s Swarovski crystal-encrusted nail files. I want to say something to lighten the mood, but what? I wish I could text Jean-Luc. He’s a born diplomat, adept at smoothing ruffled feathers.

Just thinking of my handsome, sweet French
lovah
makes my heart ache in places I’ve never ached in before.

I pull out my iPhone and check it for messages. No new voicemail messages, even though the little tower symbol in the right hand corner tells me I am getting a signal. I open my e-mail, hoping—praying—for an e-mail from Luc. Nothing.

The silence is killing me. Kill. Ing. Me. So I play the pathetic anti-feminist woman Gloria Steinem has written volumes about: the clingy, submissive, overly-dependent female.

Text to Jean-Luc de Caumont:

I have never missed you more than I do right now. Tell me what I can do to win your forgiveness and I swear I will do it. Je t’aime.

Do you hear that hissing? It’s the sound of me tossing water on a bonfire of burning bras. Soon, I will be quitting my job to bake cookies for Luc’s colleagues, mend the holes in his socks, and cook him hearty meals in my new crock pot.

Does committing to spend your life with one person mean you have to give up your soul?

I press a hand to the place between my breasts where Jean-Luc’s engagement ring hangs from a chain. The morning I left London, before Poppy picked me up at the Rubens, I took a taxi to a jewelry store near Waterloo Station and purchased a thick white gold box chain. Wearing Luc’s engagement ring on my hand didn’t feel right—wouldn’t feel right unless he was the one to slip it on my finger—but I still wanted it near me as a tangible symbol of my commitment to him.

I screwed up—big time—but I will do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, to prove my love and devotion to Luc.

I just hope “whatever it takes” doesn’t mean spending an eternity sending unrequited, groveling texts.

I am beginning to think it’s going to take a miracle to earn Luc’s forgiveness. With all of the wars, tsunamis, school shootings, and Hollywood sex scandals, Jesus is working overtime in the Miracle Dispensing Department. I doubt he has time for my silly prayers.

Jonesing for a Geezer

Praise Jesus! Miracles do happen.

Poppy is deftly navigating the BMW around a traffic circle on the outskirts of Inverness when she breaks her silent standoff with Fanny with an apology.

“I am sorry for calling you Napoleon,” she says, looking in the rearview mirror at Fanny. “It was brutally unfair of me.”

“It was,” Fanny agrees.

I spin around in my seat and shoot her a give-the-girl-a-break look, but she ignores me and focuses on Poppy’s rearview mirror.

“Though, I probably would have done the same thing if I were trapped in a car with a boorish, hostile little person.” Fanny smiles one of her genuinely dazzling smiles.

I exhale.

Huzzah! Field Marshall Lord Wellington has subdued
Le Petit Empereur
! Ascend the belfries. Sound the bells. We have a truce!

“Shall we begin again, then?”

“
Oui
!”

Poppy switches lanes and the BMW races past a sign marking the entrance to the Inverness Coast Guard Helicopter Search and Rescue Station.

“Did you see that?” I lean forward and watch the coast guard sign become a small black dot in the passenger side mirror. “Do you know what we just passed?”

“No,” Fanny says. “What?”

Poppy looks in her rearview mirror and taps her brakes.

“We just passed a coast guard base.”

“So?” Poppy frowns at me, pushing the gas again.

“So”—I look at Poppy and waggle my eyebrows—“I wonder if the coasties are as cute as Ashton Kutcher in
The Guardian
?”

“What is a coastie?” Fanny asks.

“Guardsmen,” Poppy corrects. “They’re called guardsmen, not coasties.”

“What is a coastie?” Fanny repeats.

I flip my visor down and look at Fanny in the lighted mirror. “A member of the Coast Guard. Haven’t you seen
The Guardian
with Ashton Kutcher?”

“
Non
.”

“What?”

Poppy and I look at each other with horrified expressions. Though we haven’t been friends for long, we somehow manage to tune into the same frequency and begin sending each other a flurry of telepathic messages.

Is she serious?

You tell me, she’s your best friend.

She hasn’t seen The Guardian?

Is that even possible?

Hasn’t every post-pubescent woman in the free world ogled—er, watched—Ashton Kutcher play a brash young recruit in the action-adventure drama about a small band of highly skilled Coast Guard rescue swimmers selflessly risking life and limb to save souls adrift on a ferocious sea?

We can’t allow one of our own to stumble around, alone in the dark. We have to show her the light.

“Oh, this situation
tragique
must be remedied as soon as possible,
ma cher amie
.” I flip the visor back up, pull out my iPhone, and check to see if
The Guardian
is available online. “Voila!
The Guardian
is available for download on iTunes and instant streaming on Amazon. We are watching it tonight.”

“You’re serious?”

“Completely!” Poppy says.

“It’s that good?”

“Fuck to the yeah!” I slip my iPhone back into my pocket. “Let’s put it this way. I would leap naked into the frigid black waters of the North Sea if I thought one of those guardsmen at the Inverness Station was half as sexy as Ashton Kutcher in
The Guardian
.”

We all laugh.

I am so happy I can’t stop from clicking my Wellies together. This is the way girl trips are supposed to roll. Laughing. Bonding. Talking about hot men. Traveling Pants moments.

Poppy and Fanny have dropped their swords, and, while they’re not exactly bosom buddies, they are making an effort to get along. Do you hear that
wahhhhhhhhh
? That would be a celestial choir singing.

My phone blings, and I wonder if Jesus is sprinkling a little more miracle dust over my life. If He can soften one French heart, He can soften two, right?

I hold my breath and mentally cross all of my fingers and toes as I pull my iPhone out of my pocket again and open my e-mail application. I have a new e-mail, but it’s not from Luc. It’s from Big Boss Lady. I feel like someone plunged a dagger in my heart and is twisting and pushing it slowly, deeper. The air leaks from my lips in one long, defeated exhalation. I push past the pain and read the e-mail.

TO: Vivia Perpetua Grant

FROM: Louanne Collins-London

SUBJ: Assignment

Vivia,

Your Bishop Raine piece was hilarious. That was quite a get! Well done.

I know you will deliver an equally splendid piece about your visit to MacFarlane Sheep Farm. Mr. MacFarlane provided us with a wonderful press packet of his farm, but please be sure to take some photographs of the women in your group learning how to shear sheep. Naturally, you will need to have them sign the standard photo consent release forms.

Next week, you head to Glasgow to interview the principal actors in
A Strange Case
, a cinematic adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
. The director has forced everyone connected with the picture to sign a confidentiality agreement. He’s keeping his casting choices hush-hush.

Your POC at Film City Studios in Glasgow is Tiernan Dawson. Check in with him at nine o’clock on the morning of the first at their press office, 401 Govan Road (T: 0141 445 7244).

All the best,

Louanne Collins-London

Managing Editor

GoGirl!
Magazine

Fanny reaches forward and squeezes my shoulder.

“
Est-il de Jean-Luc
?”

“No.”

I hand my phone to Fanny to let her read Big Boss Lady’s e-mail because I can’t speak. Disappointment has clogged my throat. Fanny has had my phone for only seconds before she lets out an eardrum piercing squeal.

“Oh. My. God!”

“What?” Poppy hits the brakes. “What’s wrong?”

“Sorry!” Fanny’s voice is girlishly high. She giggles and squeals again before reading the e-mail to Poppy.

“So?”

“So,” Fanny says. “Everyone has been talking about
A Strange Case
. I don’t even follow pop culture – not like Vivia, anyway – and I’ve heard the rumors about the gigantic budget, the Oscar-winning director, and the battalion of actors vying for the lead role.”

“Oooo!” Poppy turns to look at me. “Maybe you’ll get to interview David Tennant.”

“Or Zac Efron,” Fanny pipes in. “Zac freaking Efron!”

“Zac Schmack.” Poppy takes her hand off the steering wheel and flicks her wrist as if shooing an annoying fly. “Did you miss the part about David Tennant?”

“David who?”

“Doctor Who.”

“Who is Doctor Who?”

“Who is Doctor Who?” Poppy looks at me with her mouth hanging open. “Cor! Are you sure your best friend is from France and not some antediluvian island? How can she not know about David Tennant?”

I shrug. “I don’t know who David Tennant is, either.”

“I am gobsmacked.” Poppy slaps a hand to her forehead. “You must know about Doctor Who. Your mum is British.”

Poppy’s mention of my mum unearths the wispiest ghost of a memory of visiting my grandparents at their home outside Manchester and watching strange television shows on their old Zenith while eating butter cookies with raspberry jam filling.