7
I woke up in a vast tangle of 400-thread-count white cotton sheets, a feather from a down comforter stuck to my lower lip. My mouth was cottony and filled with my parched, swollen tongue, and a hundred marbles pinged themselves against the walls of my skull. I opened an eye and squinted into the bright daylight.
I was in a hotel room. I picked my head off the pillow gingerly and gazed dazedly at my surroundings. It wasn’t my room. It wasn’t Isla’s room, either. A floor-to-ceiling window looked out across the Strip, and I flinched at the sunlight that glinted off the various highly-polished surfaces. An enormous flat-screen TV stared at me with its blank black eye. I noticed a pile of clothes thrown haphazardly across an armchair. A blue button-down shirt. A brown leather belt. A pair of jeans.
Oh God.
I lifted the covers and looked down at my body. I was wearing an oversized gray cotton T-shirt featuring a bright orange bull’s skull and the word LONGHORNS written across the chest. I shoved a hand down into the sheets and felt a wave of relief: I was still wearing underwear.
I heard noises coming from the next room. A toilet flushed and a shower turned on. A man cleared his throat and I leaped out of bed like a startled wild animal.
‘Shit,’ I whispered to myself. I searched the room for my things. My bag was shoved in a corner next to a pair of men’s sneakers – ‘SHIT!’ – and my clothes were in a tangle next to the coat rack. I pulled on Isla’s dress and shoved my aching feet into my heels, all the while trying to distract myself from the increasingly urgent need to throw up. The man in the next room started to sing, a deep, warbling bass. I heard the shower turn off just as I shut the door behind me.
I stared at my reflection in the mirrored cocoon of the elevator. It wasn’t pretty. Dark smudges encircled my bloodshot eyes, and my hair sprang in unruly tufts from the top of my head. I’d say I looked like a prostitute, but I suspected prostitutes were better groomed. In truth, I looked like what I was: a thirty-one-year-old woman who’d just woken up from a bender in a strange man’s hotel room.
The thought was too much for my delicate stomach, and my throat burned with bile. How could I have let this happen? Regardless of what had been happening with us, I loved Christopher. He was the man I was destined to spend my life with! And yet apparently half a bottle of bourbon was all it took to get me into bed with another man.
I fumbled around in my purse until I remembered that Isla had confiscated my phone. This was all her fault, really. She’d been the one to drag us to that stupid bar and pour liquor down my throat like it was going out of style. A vague memory of her pushing a glass of water in my hands surfaced, but I pushed it away. So what if she’d given me a glass of water? She’d still got me into this mess.
I charged through the marble-floored lobby, ignoring the smirks and arched eyebrows and heading straight for the taxi rank. ‘The Paris Hotel, please,’ I told the driver in my most dignified voice. The driver looked at me in the rear-view mirror. ‘Lady, it’s not worth the fare,’ he said, and pointed across the street to where the Eiffel Tower loomed over us.
‘Oh,’ I said, opening the door and climbing out with as much dignity as I could muster. ‘Thank you.’
I had no way of telling what time it was, but I knew it must be close to midday – the sun was so hot it made the pavement sing. I crossed the street and walked through the foyer and into the elevator and down the hallway and opened the door to the suite, where I found Isla, ashen-faced, with her ear pressed to her telephone. ‘Hang on, she’s just walked through the door,’ she said, before hanging up and tossing the phone across the room. ‘Oh, thank God!’ she shouted, charging towards me and gathering me up in her arms. ‘I’ve been so worried about you!’
I extricated myself and folded my arms across my chest. ‘I hope you’re happy,’ I said.
‘Are you fucking kidding me? I’ve been going out of my mind here! I was just on the phone to the police to report you as a missing person! Are you okay? What the hell happened to you?’
‘You mean you don’t know?’
‘Of course I don’t know! One minute you were talking to that guy, and then the next minute, I turn around and you’re both gone!’
‘What guy?’
She looked at me closely. ‘The guy from the casino.’ I blinked at her. ‘You know, the blond guy with all the pockets?’ she prompted. My mind remained stubbornly blank. ‘You really don’t remember?’
I shook my head.
‘He showed up with his friends and they bought us a round of drinks. Remember? One of them was wearing that sheepskin jacket and we were all calling him Lamb Chop?’
I shook my head again. My brain was in place-holder mode. ‘We’re experiencing technical difficulties. Normal programming will resume shortly.’ At least I hoped it would.
‘Well, you and the blond guy with the pockets were totally loving each other.’ She caught the look on my face and frowned. ‘Not like that. It’s not like you were making out or anything – I wouldn’t have let you do that. You were just having fun, that’s all. It was nice to see. Until you pulled a disappearing act on me, and then it sucked.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I ran out of the bar and looked for you, of course. His friends did too – they were calling him and calling him, but he didn’t pick up. That’s a lie – he picked up once, yelled something about you two going to see Elvis, and then the phone cut out.’
I couldn’t believe any of it. Me and the pockets guy loving each other? Us running away together? The Elvis bit was the weirdest part. I hate Elvis.
‘So where were you?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘but I woke up in a hotel room that wasn’t mine. I’m guessing it was his.’
She let out a low whistle. ‘Do you think you two …?’ She made a circle with her thumb and forefinger and poked her other forefinger through it.
‘OH GOD!’ I wailed. And then, sheepishly, ‘I don’t know.’ The admission made me wince.
She threw an arm around me. ‘Oh, honey.’
A thought occurred to me, and a fresh wave of panic washed over me. ‘What time is it?’
She checked her phone. ‘Quarter to three.’
‘Oh my God!’ I leaped to my feet. ‘My flight is in two hours!’
‘Shit! Okay, don’t panic. You get in the shower, I’ll pack your stuff.’
‘I don’t have time to take a shower!’
She shot me a look. ‘I’m saying this because I’m your friend. You do not want to travel looking like you do now. They will escort your ass off the plane for the fumes alone.’
We drove to the airport at breakneck speed, Isla leaving a chorus of honks and curses in her wake as she screeched into the departures lot. ‘You’ve got an hour and fifteen,’ Isla said, peering at the dashboard clock. ‘You might have to throw some elbows going though security, but you should be fine.’
‘Thanks.’ I opened the car door, but couldn’t bring myself to get out. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said finally.
‘For what?’
‘For ruining this vacation by moping around the whole time and then disappearing with a stranger on our last night together! What do you mean, for what?’
‘Jenny, stop. I had a great time! Anytime I get to spend with you is great time, even if you’re moping or shitfaced on bourbon. Honest.’
I nodded. ‘I love you, you know.’
She reached across the armrest and pulled me in for a hug. ‘I love you, too. Now you better bust your ass or you’re going to miss your plane.’
I thought about what might be waiting for me at the other end of the flight. ‘Would that be such a bad thing?’
‘Well, not for me, because it would mean I could kidnap you and bring you back to New York with me. But I don’t think it would be great for you.’
‘I really fucked up, didn’t I?’
‘No, you didn’t. Whatever happened last night, just forget about it. It doesn’t matter. It’s Vegas – nothing that happens here counts.’
‘I don’t think Christopher would think that way.’
‘Well, Christopher doesn’t need to know about it. Anyway, you guys have bigger fish to fry than some drunken night out in Las Vegas.’
I nodded.
‘Just keep an open mind. Whatever happens when you get off the plane, remember that you have a choice. I know you want to believe that everything’s set in stone, but it really isn’t. You’re in charge of what happens in your life. Now go!’ she said, shooing me out of the car. ‘Call me when you land, okay?’
‘Okay.’ I pulled my suitcase out of the back seat of the car and made one final check that I had my passport. ‘Thanks, friend.’
‘Anytime,’ she said, and then with a blown kiss and a rev of the engine, she peeled out of the parking lot, leaving the faint smell of burned rubber in her wake.
I braced myself as I headed into the airport. The fluorescent lights, the smell of industrial floor polish, the endless lines snaking away from the check-in desks: none of them did my hangover any favors. I walked up to a woman in a Delta uniform who was standing at the end of the rope maze. ‘I’m on the 16:55 to London,’ I said. ‘Am I screwed?’
She looked up at the clock and back at me. ‘Almost, but not quite. Do you definitely need to check that?’
I looked down at my little wheeled suitcase. ‘I have liquids in here.’
‘How badly do you need those liquids?’ She saw me hesitate – my Kérastase! – and folded her arms across her chest. ‘Let me rephrase that. Do you need those liquids so bad you’re willing to miss your flight and pay for another one?’
I tossed the liquids. I gave the woman in the Delta uniform the Kérastase and she told me to ask for Duane when I got to security. ‘Tell him Tina sent you,’ she said. ‘He’ll speed you right through.’
As I pushed my way through the crowds, I was quietly grateful I was in America – where such pushing was frowned upon but not forbidden – rather than England, where queuing is an ancient and sacred art. Sure, a couple of people called me an asshole, or yelled at me as I squeezed by, but no one shook their heads and tutted. It was the tutting I dreaded the most.
There was a sprint finish down the people-mover, and I twice clipped my Achilles with my wheeled suitcase, but I made it just before the gate closed. People whistled as I hurried, shamefaced, down the crowded aisle and took my seat. Middle of the row, back of the plane, right next to the bathroom. I rooted through my bag, found a Xanax, and closed my eyes.
When I woke up, we were circling London, the gray mist clearing just enough for me to spot the Thames snaking its dark way through the city below.
I was home. At least it was home for now.