Chapter Three
Text from Emma Lee Maxwell:
You’ll never guess what I woke to this morning. Flashing lights and an annoying back-up beeper. The dealership sent a tow truck to repossess my Lexus. Did you know Daddy leased my car? He BOUGHT Tara’s car. Why would he lease mine? What am I going to do? How will I get around? Oh the humanity!
Text from Tara Maxwell:
I need your help thinking of a birthday gift for Callie. Her birthday is next week. What is the perfect gift for the world’s best friend?
“Would you be a love and ask housekeeping to send up more of that Fragonard body wash? It’s to die.” Olivia pops her toweled head through the door connecting her terrace suite to my room, squinting against the bright morning light streaming in through the open curtains. “Then, call room service and order a Bloody Mary with three shots of Tabasco and the greasiest breakfast on the menu. And would you pop down to the gift shop and buy a bottle of ibuprofen and box of Alka-Seltzer?”
“Absolutely.”
“Have you had breakfast yet?”
“I was waiting for you. You asked me to make brunch reservations at La Plage, remember?”
“Did I? When?”
“Last night, when you woke me up.”
“Oh, well,” she says, pressing her fingers against her temple, “I have a crushing hangover. You can order something from room service, if you like, or go to La Plage by yourself.”
“Are you sure?”
“Go,” she says, stumbling into my room and collapsing on my bed. “I am suffering with the Grande Dame flu. Acute chills, headache, and nausea from overexposure to champagne and gin.”
I walk into my bathroom, grab a fresh washcloth from the counter, turn on the cold water, and hold the cloth under the stream. Wringing out the cloth, I walk back to the bed and press it to Olivia’s clammy forehead.
“Ugh!” She groans. “Etienne should be shot.”
“Who?”
“Etienne,” she repeats. “The hotel’s drink wizard. The one who created the Grande Dame. Wasn’t that what your Monsieur X called him? ”
“Emanuele,” I correct. “And he is not my Monsieur X.”
“So you say.” She cracks open an eye and looks at me from beneath the edge of the washcloth, her lips curling in a teasing smile. “Yet, when I came looking for you last night, you were nowhere to be found. Scandaleux.”
“Scan-dah-lou?”
“Scandalous en français.”
“When did you look for me?”
“After the photo shoot.” She closes her eye. “Lana invited me to a club and I came up to see if you wanted to join us.”
“Oh.”
“Oh, indeed! So, where were you?”
“I must have been in the bar. After you left, I ran into Reed Harrington.”
“Try again.”
“What?”
“I went to the bar first. I saw Reed. She said you got a mysterious text and hurried off.” She pulls the washcloth down over her eyes and moans. “You dirty, dirty girl. Did the French catnip do the trick? Has your inner sex-kitty been unleashed?”
Heat flushes my cheeks. I jump up and hurry over to a basket of fruit sitting on my dresser. I take a banana out of the basket, remove half of the peel, and walk back to the bed.
“Here,” I say, handing the banana to Olivia. “Lie on your right side and eat this.”
Olivia throws the washcloth on the floor and rolls onto her right side, squinting up at me.
“Your daddy’s hangover cure?”
I nod my head.
She grabs the banana and takes a bite. “You’re the best,” she says. “I don’t deserve you. You know I love you more than Michael Fassbender, right?”
“What about Bradley Cooper?”
“Definitely.”
“But not more than Cary Grant?”
“Never.”
We laugh. This has been our routine since college. Back then, it was Josh Hartnett and Zac Efron.
Olivia reaches out and grabs my hand. “Say it.”
“Say what?”
“Say you love me back.”
“Lawd, you are so needy.”
Olivia squeezes my hand. “Pleeease?”
“Fine.” I sigh. “I love you.”
“More than Jon Hamm?”
“Absolutely.”
“More than Jake Gyllenhaal?”
“Usually.”
She finishes the banana and hands me the peel, grinning, and I know what she is about to say.
“More than Monsieur X?”
I knew it! I knew she was going to mention Xavier. I grab the banana peel and toss it into the waste can on my way out the door. “I am going to get your ibuprofen and Alka-Seltzer.”
“Wait!”
I turn around. “What?”
“Do you love me more than Monsieur X?”
“Never.”
She bursts out laughing and then grabs her head, moaning in pain. I close the door with a soft click.
* * *
When I return fifteen minutes later, Olivia has crawled back into her own bed and is snoring softly. I tiptoe into her room and deposit the pills, a large bottle of water, and a silk eye mask on her nightstand. I tiptoe out of the room and into the hallway to wait for room service. It arrives seconds later. I sign the bill and carry the tray into Olivia’s room, arranging the Bloody Mary and fluffy omelet with strips of greasy bacon on the table in the sitting room. I tiptoe over to my friend.
“Olivia?” I whisper. “I have your medicine.”
Olivia wakes with a start. “Has room service arrived?”
“Yes. It is in the sitting room.”
“Thank God.”
She throws the covers back and carefully climbs out of bed. We are walking into the sitting room when someone knocks loudly on the suite door. Olivia grabs her head and moans.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
“Make it stop. For the love of George Clooney, make it stop!”
I hurry across the room and open the door.
A valet is holding a large, glossy, white Dior shopping bag with triangles of silvery white tissue paper protruding from the top.
“Bonjour, madame,” he says, thrusting the bag at me. “The concierge instructed me to deliver this to you.”
“Merci,” I say, taking the bag and closing the door.
“What is it?” Olivia calls.
I carry the bag by its silky white rope handles over to the table and hand it to her. “You received a package.”
“Ooo!” Olivia says, clapping her hands. “You know how I love prezzies! I wonder who sent it.”
She tears the tissue out of the bag and throws it in the air, a cyclone of silvery paper swirling around us. A thick white gift card falls at my feet with the tissue paper. I pick the card up and hand it to Olivia. She turns the card over. Her eyes widen and she looks at me with her mouth open.
“What?”
“Here,” she says, handing me the card. “It’s for you.”
I take the card and stare at my name scrawled across the front of the envelope in bold, loopy handwriting. My heart thuds wildly and I press a hand to my chest.
Manderley Maxwell. It definitely says Manderley Maxwell. Sliding my finger inside the back of the envelope, I tear through the thick paper and remove the card.
You came to the South of France with so many wonderful dreams, didn’t you, Cécile? I hope what happened last night hasn’t spoiled them. If it did, I hope this gift will restore your faith in the beauty of my country and the generosity of my people.
X.
P.S. I selected this color because it reminded me of your eyes. If you don’t like it, please visit the Dior boutique beside the hotel and they will make sure you get something you like.
“Well, don’t keep me in suspense!” Olivia cries. “What does the card say? Who sent it? Was it Monsieur X?”
I hand Olivia the card. Her eyes dart back and forth as she reads Xavier’s words. She finishes reading, looks at me, and reads the card again.
“Who is Cécile? What happened last night?”
“I was mugged.”
“What? Where?”
“Near the marina.”
“Oh my God, Mandy!” Olivia says. “You could have been raped or murdered and it would have been all my fault.”
“Your fault? Why?”
She rests her elbows on the table and cradles her forehead in her hands, pushing her palms against her closed eyes.
“I am a crap best friend.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am.” She sniffles. “I have been so caught up in writing and preparing for the Festival, I have turned into a CC Bloom.”
CC Bloom is the lead character in Beaches, the movie we watch when we need a good ugly cry. In the movie, CC Bloom and Hillary Whitney meet when they are young girls. Despite their different backgrounds, they become best friends . . . until CC’s ego pushes them apart. Olivia mimics one of CC’s most hilarious, egotistical scenes.
I laugh softly, because I do not want to hurt Olivia’s feelings, but the truth is, she has been demanding and just a little self-absorbed.
“You haven’t been that bad.”
“Yes, I have! You almost died last night. You could have been shanked and tossed in the bay. Your body would have washed up on the shore and the gendarmes would have called me down to identify you.” She is crying now. “Yes, Officer, that is my best friend, Manderley Maxwell. She was in Cannes because I am a selfish, narcissistic twatwaffle, and if I hadn’t been letting some photographer stroke my ego, I would have been there to save her from the shanking.”
“Ew! That is a disgusting word.”
She looks up, sniffling. “Which word? Shanking?”
I tilt my head and narrow my gaze, giving her my best seriously look.
“Twatwaffle?”
“Olivia!”
“Too graphic?”
“Too revolting.”
“It is rather revolting, isn’t it?” She laughs, brushing the tears from her cheeks. “I heard Alec Elkins use it on set when he was talking about his ex-wife. If he wasn’t such a brilliant actor, I think he would have been thrown out of Hollywood years ago for being a volatile, egotistical, misanthropic ass. Still, I rather like that word—”
“Please don’t say it again!”
She laughs. “I am glad you weren’t hurt last night,” she says, sobering. “I don’t know what I would do without you. Who else could put up with CC but Hillary?”
I reach for her hand across the table, squeezing it. “You’re being too hard on yourself, Olivia.”
“No, I am not,” she says. “You have been so busy helping me launch my writing career, you’ve barely had time to launch your own, let alone deal with the grief of losing your father and aunt. I am sorry, truly. I want you to be happy.”
“What makes you think I am not happy?”
“Puh-leez,” she says, absentmindedly stirring her Bloody Mary with the stalk of celery protruding from the glass. “I am your best friend.”
I remain silent because I don’t want to plaster a false smile on my face and lie to my best friend. I am not happy. I haven’t been happy for years, even before my father’s death. I yearn for something I can’t even name. Freedom. Independence. Adventure. Romance. I don’t know. Something bigger, more rewarding, than administering homeopathic hangover cures and editing someone else’s writing. Even if that someone else is my best friend. I can’t say these things to Olivia, though, not without hurting her feelings. Several seconds pass with Olivia staring glumly at the pulpy red liquid swirling in her glass.
“I promise to be a better friend. I will support you in your writing the way you have supported me. If you want to quit and finish your novel, I will find another assistant. When you finish your book, I will help you find an agent or an editor. I swear.”
“Thank you, Olivia. That means a lot.”
She stops swirling and smiles. “Now,” she says, pushing the Dior bag across the table, “let’s see what you got.”
It takes me a moment to understand what she is saying. I look at the large white bag with the Dior name embossed in gray, a sheer white and gray bow attached to the handle, and my heart skips a beat.
I reach into the bag and remove a lambskin purse the color of leaden skies over a foggy sea, an indefinable, mutable color that is not blue, nor is it gray. A large, iconic silver Dior charm logo is attached to one handle.
“Ooo!” Olivia coos. “That’s the Lady Dior bag in hiver bleu-gris. Jealous.”
Hiver bleu-gris. Winter blue-gray.
I place the purse back in the bag.
“What are you doing?”
“I can’t keep it.”
“What?” Olivia snatches the purse back out of the bag and holds it to her chest as if cradling an infant. “Why not?”
“It’s too lavish.”
“Darling,” she says, thrusting the purse back into my arms, “a gift given from the heart can never be too lavish.”
“So you think I should accept a four-thousand-dollar—”
“Five,” she excitedly interjects. “The Lady Dior medium in lambskin with cannage topstitching is five thousand four hundred dollars!”
“I can’t accept a five-thousand-dollar gift from a stranger,” I say, putting the purse back in the bag again.
Olivia came from a poor family, while I grew up the daughter of an extremely wealthy man and the recipient of a generous trust fund from my momma. I have had designer bags and clothes. They don’t mean as much to me as they do to Olivia. I would trade all of my worldly possessions to spend one more day with my momma and daddy.
“There are two gifts you never return: diamonds and designer handbags, darling.”
I roll my eyes, because I know this is part of Olivia’s urbane-LA-woman shtick.
“You’re killing me here, Manderley. Kill-ing.” She lifts her glass and drains half of her Bloody Mary in a single swallow, wipes her mouth with a napkin, and fixes me with a determined gaze. “Did Scarlett return the hat Rhett bought her in Paris?
“No.”
“Did Vivian return the designer clothes Edward bought her in Pretty Woman?”
“She was a prostitute, Olivia!”
Olivia dismisses my objection with a wave of her manicured hand. “Did Holly Golightly refuse the gifts her many beaus gave her in Breakfast at Tiffany’s?”
“Again, call girl.”
Olivia sighs and rubs her temple with two fingers. “Last time I checked, you are not a call girl, so I don’t think your Monsieur X is using a Dior purse to lure you into an immoral arrangement.”
“You don’t?” I bat my eyelashes and make duck lips with my mouth.
“Be serious, Mandy. You don’t look anything like the high-priced call girls that service the rich and famous here in the South of France.”
“How do you know what high-priced French call girls look like?”
“I saw Priceless!”
“That was a movie, Olivia. Not real life.”
“Movies often mimic real life.”
“Okay,” I say, speaking to her as I would my slightly vapid younger sister, Emma Lee. “But the high-priced call girl in that movie was played by Audrey Tautou, who is stunning. I doubt there are any call girls that beautiful.”
“Exactly!”
I shake my head to clear the cobwebs of confusion spun by Olivia’s ridiculous logic. We have always had vastly different approaches to love and life, but Olivia’s unorthodox approach is one of the reasons she is so precious to me. She challenges me to peek outside of my rigid box. While I come from a place of maybe, if, Olivia comes from a place of yes!
“So you are saying I should model my behavior after two fictional call girls and keep this expensive purse?”
“I’m saying, little Miss Literal”—she points her celery stick at me–“you are searching for a hidden, nefarious motive behind this gift when there might not be one, which, I think, says more about you than him.”
“Meaning?”
“You don’t think you are worthy of extravagant kindnesses, Manderley. Maybe it was losing your mother at a young age or growing up the eldest of three girls, but somewhere down the line you decided you needed to put your wishes last.”
Olivia is right. I do put my wishes last, because that is what my mother did, and all I have ever wanted to be is a strong, silent, pleasing Southern woman. Like my momma.
“There is something else to consider,” Olivia says.
“What’s that?”
“Maybe Xavier is a good guy.” She finishes her Bloody Mary before speaking again. “Maybe your chance encounter on the cliff the other day was the beginning of your happily-ever-after; maybe it was your meet cute.”
My meet cute. Leave it to Olivia to see a potential screenplay in a meaningless encounter. I can hear the trailer voice-over. Sometimes, when you’re standing on the edge of a cliff, you might need Fate to give you a little push. Manderley Maxwell, Xavier No Last Name, in . . . Falling for You.
My stomach growls and I press my hand to my abdomen.
“Was that your stomach or your inner sex-kitten letting out a satisfied meow?” Olivia wiggles her eyebrows.
“My stomach. I am starving.”
“Go to La Plage, have brunch. You will see things more clearly after you eat something.”
“Do you want to join me?”
She pops a piece of bacon in her mouth before stumbling back to her bed. She climbs beneath the covers and snatches the eye mask off the nightstand. “No,” she says, pulling the mask over her head. “I need more time to recover from the Grande Dames.”
“If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
I gather the gift card, Dior bag, and purse, and tiptoe across the suite into my room. I am about to close the connecting door when Olivia’s voice follows me.
“Diamonds and designer handbags, darling.”