“You broke us up last night, Pearl. Not me. You. You broke my heart. You made it clear that our two orange halves will have to go their own separate ways.”
“No! That’s not what I want at all!”
“You can say what you like, baby, but actions speak louder than words. You made your choice when you escaped out of that toilet window last night, leaving a waiting jet and a waiting fiancé like two pieces of discarded trash. Not to mention the reverend in Vegas, and a special surprise I had planned after our wedding.”
“What surprise?”
“It doesn’t matter now, it’s water under the bridge, it’s the past.”
The past? No, this can’t be happening!
He tilted my head back and kissed me. He pressed his lips firmly on my mouth and I opened it, craving his tongue, desperate for him, his taste, his everything. I wrapped my arms around his back and held him as close as was feasibly possible. Tears were burning in my eyes; my heart felt as if it was ablaze. Our kiss got deeper, more ravenous. Tingles danced in my groin, my panties were slick. I needed him. I needed him inside me, our bodies to be one. I needed for us to make love. “Please, Alexandre, give me another chance,” I breathed into his mouth.
He pulled me off him slowly but with a firm grip. “No.”
“Is that all you can say? No?”
He stepped backwards, but stopped and said, “Bye, Pearl. Keep that Mercedes by the way. I bought it for you, bought it from the rental company, I figured you needed a car. They’ll be in touch. Later today you’ll receive a package from me. A new handbag, cell phone and other stuff. The diamond ring is yours to keep. And I’ve bought you a covered parking space around the corner from your apartment in Manhattan so you won’t have to move the Mercedes all the time when they do street cleaning—you know, otherwise you’ll end up with millions of parking tickets. Oh yes, I got you a pretty condo near Cap d’Antibes, overlooking the Mediterranean, not far from where we stayed at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc; the deeds are in your name. In case you fancy a vacation now and then. You’ll love it. It comes with a parking spot, too, because the royal blue Porsche that you drove that lives in my house in Provence? She’s yours now—drive her with care. I’ll have her delivered there.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Is this all a joke?
But he continued on in a monotone, hardly stopping for breath. “Oh, and of course your Jim Dine and everything you’ve left at my apartment, your clothes and books and stuff, I’m having delivered to your new place on the Upper East Side. I’m renting somewhere for you because of your apartment being sublet. If you prefer it, let me know and I’ll buy it for you. Oh yes, and HookedUp Enterprises? I’ve done a sweet deal with Natalie. Sweet for her, that is, not me. You and she will be partners, fifty/fifty. I thought you’d be more comfortable that way. I know how you feel about Hollywood and the movie business, so you can get back to doing what you’re truly good at: documentaries. My lawyers will send all the paperwork to you. You decide if the business idea appeals or not.”
I was speechless, my jaw dropped, my eyes stung with tears about to flood out at any moment. He had this all planned out. Spent the day organizing everything to buy me off! He was breaking up with me and giving me a “divorce” settlement, all in one go. There was no going back now, he was serious. I started sobbing. I thought about Rex; no more walks in the park with him. My life, as I knew it, was over.
I’ve lost Alexandre forever.
A voice from above shouted into the garden, “What the fuck is going on down there? What have you done to my sister?” It was Anthony leaning out of his living room window, glowering at Alexandre. But Alexandre ignored him.
“Bye Pearl, take care.” Alexandre squeezed my hand and walked off with purpose, as if he couldn’t get away from me fast enough. The fact that he had been so generous, when he didn’t have to be, made it all so much worse. I collapsed on the lawn and rolled into a fetal position, howling with painful tears as if someone had stabbed me in the heart.
Because someone just had.
ALEXANDRE
I WAITED FOR PEARL in Anthony’s back yard. She came into the garden, her hair wet; she’d obviously been for a swim. She looked so beautiful, in a bedraggled sort of way, her blonde hair loose over her shoulders, her eye makeup smudged. She looked as tired as I felt. I took her by surprise, as if she hadn’t expected me. What did she think? That I wouldn’t find her? I wanted to hug her there and then, take her in my arms, but my voice of reason kicked in and told me that I needed to stick to my plan. Make her come to me. Don’t suffocate her. Give her time to sort out her fucked-up state of mind.
She stuttered, “Alexandre, I—I’m . . . I’m sorry, I didn’t know what I was doing last night.”
My lips tipped into a crooked, ironic smile, and I took a step back. My pride kicked in. “Oh yes, you did, Pearl. You seemed to know exactly what you were doing.”
“I—I had . . . no, I had no choice—”
We spoke. I chided her, let her know in no uncertain terms the gravity of what she’d done, and that for every action there was a consequence. I was tempted to laugh, call a truce; the whole drama was risible, but I stayed proud, immovable; I needed to drum it home to her how much she had hurt and belittled me. I gazed into her innocent blue eyes. Those eyes that had ripped my heart out. “Did that mean nothing to you? The fact that I wanted to marry you?” I could read the panic on her face.
She lifted up her arms and let them fall in an exasperated thump either side of her hips. “I still want to marry you, I still—”
“Don’t you get it, Pearl? It’s too late for that now,” I lied.
She scraped her fingers through her wet hair and then covered her mouth with her hand. It was sinking in: the idea that she could lose me forever. Her pain was palpable. Good. It shows that she still loves me. But she was teetering on the edge—the edge of indecision. She could have gone either way. Rejection was quivering on her lips—she still wasn’t ready to commit to me a hundred percent, and was using Sophie as an excuse. I needed all of her, every last percent. She was still obsessing about my sister, and if I admitted that I’d known what Laura had done and that I’d listened to her voicemail, then I would have had to reveal the whole story of what had happened in London. This wasn’t the time.
Sometimes in life you make dumb choices. And in that moment, everything I said, everything I did, was unforgivable.
So when Pearl brought up the subject of Laura’s phone call, I pretended that she must have misinterpreted what Laura had said. Because if Pearl knew what Laura’s motives were—that Laura still wanted me—it might make her run from me for good. I couldn’t risk that. Panicking, I told her that I’d lost her handbag with her phone and credit cards inside. That I’d reported it stolen. The fact that either of us could have listened to Laura’s messages without the phone itself didn’t seem to register with Pearl. Perhaps she was in too much shock.
If I could do things over again, I would not have said what I said. But I did.
Coldhearted.
Bastard.
These were the words to describe me in that instant. Did I subconsciously want Pearl to suffer? Live the agony that I had undergone the night before? Know the stab of abandonment? Feel the desolation of knowing you have lost your other half? Perhaps I did. Because the more I spoke, the more immersed I became in my fabrication of the truth. Perhaps I thought that Pearl’s pain was proof of her love for me. Knowing that she gave a shit about me gave me hope for our future.
The words that came out of my mouth showed that I wasn’t going to let her off easily. No, she’d need to earn me back.
“You know what, Pearl? I’m done,” I said, my eyes sharpened flints. “What you did to me last night pushed me to my fucking limit. You demonstrated, loud and clear, that you don’t want me and that you’re using Sophie as an excuse to run from me.”
Pearl’s mouth was an O. Her blue eyes round with disbelief. She stood there, shaking, her lips
trembling. “I love you, Alexandre. Please, please let’s work this out.”
“Work what out?” And here, I really did mean what I said. I was fed up with this Sophie nonsense—Pearl thinking that Sophie was capable of murder, not believing that she wanted to make amends. She hated Sophie’s guts long before the Laura message, and Sophie really had been trying. I went on, “Work what out, Pearl? As long as Sophie’s breathing you won’t let up. I can’t have a relationship with someone who hates my sister, especially when she and I are in business together.”
My monologue continued as I explained to Pearl why Sophie was not her enemy, and culminating with a balm for her wound, I said, “Come here, chérie, and give me one last kiss before saying goodbye.” It was if an actor were speaking, not me, and I, the onlooker, from the wings—the audience watching the performance. I was observing a coldblooded, callous bastard, who was calculating every move—treating Pearl like an acquisition, not a human being. I knew what I was doing. I was a billionaire businessman and I always got what I wanted. And I wanted Pearl . . .
To be unequivocally mine.
This was my way of going about it.
“You’re breaking up with me?” she whimpered.
“No, Pearl. It was your choice. You broke us up last night. You broke my heart in two.”
“That’s not what I want . . . at all!”
I continued my performance. “Say what you like, baby, but actions speak louder than words. Nobody should have to go what I went through. You discarded me like a piece of trash, leaving a waiting jet and a waiting fiancé while you climbed out of a fucking toilet window, like a six year-old playing hide-and-seek. Not to mention the reverend in Vegas, and the surprise I had planned for us after our wedding.”
Her eyes lit up. “What surprise?” Ha! I’d piqued her interest. Good.
“It’s the past now, baby. Water under the bridge.” I leaned down and kissed her. A passionate, sexual kiss with my hand gripping her ass—to let her know what she’d be missing. I drew her against my thumping heart, and opened her lips teasingly with my tongue, probing, lingering—my cock coming alive with every stroke of my tongue on hers. (I’d piqued her interest—she’d ‘peaked’ mine.) She yielded to me and then, after I knew I had her attention, I pulled back. If she’d been smart, she would have known my speech was bullshit and that no man can kiss a woman like that when he’s not head over heels in love. Not to mention the rock in my jeans.
“Give me another chance,” she creaked out, tears spilling from her eyes.
I drew her closer and whispered in her ear, “No.” Then I gave her another speech about all the gifts she’d be getting from me: the Mercedes, an apartment in Cap d’Antibes, the Porsche, a new apartment that I’d be renting for her, and HookedUp Enterprises itself. The list went on. Academic, because I knew we’d be sharing all these things in the future anyway. I had no doubt in my mind that she would be my wife. I wasn’t going to give up on her—of course not—but she needed to pine for me. Needed to feel what life was going to be without me for a while.
My last words were, “Bye Pearl, baby. Look after yourself.” I walked away, not looking behind.
Fuck, I was being a bastard.
But it was the only way to win her back for good.
THE BASTARD GENE
PEARL
THE ONLY GOOD thing that came of this black hole in my life was my rekindled relationship with Anthony. We were closer than we had ever been, even before our mother died. He had made a complete turnaround. We talked things through: the anger, the guilt, the blame on both sides about John. I clung to Ant like never before.
Right now he was my lifeline.
I stayed on several more days with him in San Francisco, moping about his apartment mainly, nursing my wounds. Alexandre only called once, to check a delivery had arrived: a beautiful, red, Hermès Birkin handbag, replete with gift vouchers for Neiman Marcus and Barneys (“to replace makeup or anything lost – about time you had a bag that suited you,” his note said), a new Smartphone, and the keys to my new apartment. After making sure the number was going through okay, he hung up. He was polite but matter-of-fact, as if I meant nothing to him at all.
I wailed for hours, cradling my designer bag like a dog with a bone—a sad reminder of what a fool I’d been to crawl through that ladies’ room window. Surely I could have done things differently? No wonder he’d had enough. Normal people don’t escape through toilet windows. Normal people don’t behave the way I had done.
A Birkin: all those times I’d been going about with my over-sized bag and now, finally, this one was perfect. Still big enough to fit everything I needed inside, but so stylish and chic. The perfect pocketbook named after the Francophile British actress, Jane Birkin, who fell in love with the sexy French singer, Serge Gainsbourg. It brought back with nostalgia the moment when Je T’aime . . . Moi Non Plus was playing, after Alexandre had dressed up as a fireman and just before he asked me to marry him.
He’d sent me the perfect purse at a price, not because of how expensive those bags were, but the price of unhappiness: a continual aide memoire of the fool that was me, Pearl Robinson. Ms. Pearl Robinson. I held the Birkin close to me and started crying again. How I wished I could turn back time. He’d wanted to make me Pearl Chevalier, and all I could do was run.
I knew then that I could not possibly accept any of these “pay-off” gifts. I called to say I wanted to give everything back, but he never picked up.
JUST WHEN I THOUGHT the world couldn’t get worse, Hurricane Sandy struck. Entire coastal stretches along the east side of the country were destroyed, five million without power, and the death toll rising daily. Scores of people died in New York City alone, more than in any other previous natural disaster to have occurred there.
It quickly shook me out of my self-pity, realizing that I was one of the lucky ones in the world. Natalie, not so. Her aunt was a victim of the superstorm’s wrath. She lived in Queens, in a neighborhood that was first ravaged by flood waters, before a raging fire burned everything to the ground leaving nothing but a pile of ashes, debris of wrecked cars and dead trees reflected in the oily, knee-deep water.
Natalie was broken-hearted. I thought of what Alexandre had said a couple of weeks earlier, when we’d been talking about choices we make in life, and he said something like: “Maybe Natalie’s had a relatively lucky life. Perhaps she’s never been a victim of circumstance or ever had to battle with personal demons.”
Poor Natalie, she certainly was a victim of circumstance now and would be haunted by demons for the rest of her life.
When Bruce arrived back from visiting his parents, I knew it was time to leave. I had options. Go back to New York and settle into my new apartment, the one Alexandre had organized for me. Luckily, the Upper East Side was still in working order, not the case for some other parts of Manhattan, where the storm had wreaked havoc. I had only seen photos of the apartment, a stunning two bedroom, pre-war co-op, just around the corner from where my place was (which I’d sublet for another ten months and couldn’t break the contract). Alexandre offered to buy the new one for me if I liked it. I couldn’t even imagine the cost, but a lot, and I didn’t feel comfortable with all these “gifts” he was showering me with. I wanted to return them: a condo in the South of France, two incredible cars, a parking space in the city. Things which reminded me of him, reminded me that I’d played it all wrong, that I’d screwed up yet again. Things which I didn’t deserve.
Another option for me was to drive across America. I had to take the Mercedes to New York so I thought I might as well make a trip out of it.
At one point Daisy said that she and Amy would come too, because Johnny was on business in Phoenix, but then it was cancelled so she changed her mind. A ten-day drive just with me on my own didn’t appeal at all, especially with the way I was feeling.
I had spoken to Natalie several times and she advised me to stay away from New York, just for now. Meanwhile, all she wanted to do was s
pend time with her family.
The third option was to visit my father in Kauai, which is what I decided to do.
That’s right, Alexandre did call a second time, but only briefly, to ask what arrangements I had for the Mercedes and if I was planning to take it back to New York. I told him I didn’t want the car, but he was adamant I keep it. He came up with a plan. Elodie and a friend of hers could fly to San Francisco, pick it up, and deliver it to New York for me. They’d drive across the country, very carefully, with utmost respect for the car. I considered it his car anyway; his money had paid for it. Elodie and her friend could stay with Anthony and Bruce for a couple of nights before setting off on a sightseeing trip of a lifetime.
It was a strange sensation to be talking to Alexandre as if we were a divorced couple, when we’d never even gotten married in the first place. I longed for his calls, I soaked up any excuse to communicate with him, but at the same time, it was so painful. Hearing his melodic voice, remembering everything we had. The only thing I could think of to ease that pain was to get away. As always, my defense mechanism in action:
Run as far as you can . . . away from the person or thing you love most.
That’s when I made up my mind to go to Kauai.
ALEXANDRE
MONEY AND POWER had been my obsessions for many years, working around the clock to make HookedUp what it quickly became.
Now I had an obsession of a different nature: Pearl.
Every minute of every day I wanted to be with her. Hold her. Make love to her, although she still probably wasn’t ready for that, after all those nightmares about the college rapists. All the more reason for me to give her time to heal herself, to step away from her; for her to spend a while with her brother and father. She’d told me she was going to Hawaii to visit her dad.
Hooked Up: Book 2 Page 39