Chantal nodded her head ever so slightly before responding, “I’m sure the pleasure is all mine.” Her accent was not thick; rather it was just enough to make her seem exotic, different from all the other women he’d met.
Richard asked, “Would you like to order wine or do you prefer a cocktail?”
“I would love a glass of champagne,” she replied.
Richard signaled the waiter and ordered a bottle of the Krug Grande Cuvée. After asking Chantal if she was hungry, he added a plate of local cheeses with fig jam, the petite lobster rolls, and a mezze platter to their order.
Richard had a wonderful time that evening and decided he would send Rachel a bouquet of flowers by way of apology. Clearly, she knew what she was doing and was skilled enough at her work to know when a client wasn’t responding to her structured rules. At nine thirty, Richard put Chantal into a cab before going home himself.
He’d told her he had a lovely evening, but he’d be out of town for the better part of a week. He’d asked if she would like to get together when he got back to the city. She’d said she would.
The Flight
Chapter 23
The earl and countess left for America almost a full week before Pip. They wanted to spend time with Elliot and get to know Mimi and her family before the chaos of the wedding festivities. Pip couldn’t join them as she and Cressida had promised the duchess they’d help finalize everything for the bachelor auction, which was to take place only four days after she returned from the wedding.
Pip cautioned her mother to be nice and to remember that Jeffrey was the only American she was allowed to be mad at. Mimi and her family were sure to be lovely people and they didn’t deserve her misplaced ire.
The week before she left flew by as a hundred last minute crises arose to fill Pip’s every waking moment. The caterer couldn’t get the fish they’d ordered, the DJ took another job, and four of the bachelors backed out after the programs had already been printed. She’d spent all of her time searching for suitable new men to fill the vacancies, then begging the printer to redo the whole job in time for the event. She was exhausted.
By the time Pip finally got to the airport, after being stuck in the worst traffic the M4 had ever seen, she’d missed her flight. The only other one she was able to get a ticket for arrived in Chicago just as Elliot’s rehearsal dinner was starting. She knew she’d never have time to go to the hotel and change, so she made sure to transfer her dress, shoes, and makeup into her carry on. She’d have to perform some magic in the airplane loo.
Pip settled into her seat and immediately closed her eyes. She had eight and a half hours to recover from the previous week, rest her mind, and gird her loins for the upcoming nuptials. It wasn’t the wedding itself she feared. It was a massive room full of strangers, all sure to have messages from their dead loved ones that made her quake in her boots.
A large assemblage of people always increased the odds of communications from the dearly departed. She just hoped she wouldn’t have to deliver any to Mimi or her immediate family. If there weren’t any messages for them, there was a slight chance she might be able to keep her secret under wraps, and not cause them worry about the mental stability of the family Mimi was marrying into.
Pip slept straight through lunch service and didn’t wake until nearly two in the afternoon. She was a bit discombobulated at first, not quite realizing she was onboard a plane. For that reason, when Bertram appeared, she spoke to him as easily as she would have had they been at her home.
“Hello, love,” he greeted. “You look like proper shite.”
She looked up and replied, “How lovely. You look like shite, yourself.” And he did. He was once again wearing the beat up jeans and t-shirt he had on at their first meeting and he seemed much scruffier than normal.
He nodded his head, “It’s the truth you speak, I’m afraid. I’m not at my best at the moment.”
Pip asked, “Saint Peter giving you hell about getting through those pearly gates is he?”
“Something like that,” Bertram replied. “Listen, love, I’m in a bit of pickle and I need your help.”
Pip demanded, “What kind of a pickle could you possibly be in? I mean, you’re already dead, aren’t you? Plus, you seem to be doing the job that’s been asked of you, so how could you have gotten yourself into trouble?”
Bertram sat down on the arm rest across the aisle from her and answered, “Well, that’s the problem. I can’t really tell you about it, yet. I just want you to remember what a nice bloke I’ve been, so when the time comes that I ask for a favor, you’ll be inclined to help me. Okay?”
Pip shrugged her shoulder in reply, “I’ll do my best.” Then she added, “That is, if you remember that I’m going to a wedding where I barely know a soul and I’d appreciate you not having messages for every last person there.”
Bertram responded, “I don’t have any control over that, love. I’ll do my best though, to at least make sure you have some privacy when you need to speak with someone. How’s that?”
Nodding her head, Pip answered, “That would be a good start, thank you.”
The stewardess came by to ask Pip if she was in some kind of distress. And that’s when she realized she’d been carrying on with Bertram like there weren’t two hundred other people sitting within arm’s reach.
Pip started to reply, then stopped, then started and stopped again. She eventually managed, “Yes, I’m quite well, thank you.”
Bertram interrupted her before she could make up some explanation for talking to herself. So instead of pretending she was running lines from a play she was performing, an excuse she’d used in the past, she had to say, “I’m sorry to bother you with this, but your aunt Doreen wants you to know that the ring is in a safety deposit box in Pittsburgh. The key is in a milk glass vase in your mother’s china cabinet, and she really dislikes the man you’re seeing.” She was forced to add, “He’s already married with three children. They live in Cincinnati.”
Needless to say, the stewardess did everything short of parachuting out of the plane to avoid further contact with Pip. But she kept giving her covert glances as if to ascertain how in the world she had so much personal information about her.
The rest of the flight progressed smoothly. She delivered a message to a mother whose child had recently begun to reveal talents like Pips. The child was five and she carried on quite a nice conversation with Bertram while Philippa spoke to her mother. The communication was well received, which made Pip very happy. That poor girl was in for a very different road in life and without at least partial parental support it would be much harder than need be.
An hour outside of Chicago, Pip pulled her carry-on bag out of the overhead. She needed to change clothes for the rehearsal dinner, which was an activity she was not looking forward to. Airplane bathrooms seemed to be shrinking as quickly as the leg room provided in between seats.
When there was no longer a line in front of the loo, Pip made her way up the aisle. Once she locked the door, she was hit with the malodorous effects of an eight hour flight. She tried to breathe as shallowly as possible while she dug through her cosmetic bag to prepare her face. First she took off the remnants of the make-up she’d put on before leaving London. Then she slowly began to reapply the war paint from her arsenal.
A loud knocking caused her to miss her eye with the mascara wand and hit her forehead with it instead. She called out, “I’ll be a couple minutes yet!”
The answer was a louder pounding and a muffling voice calling out, “Lady, this is an emergency. Please, let me in! I’ll try to hurry!”
Pip quickly gathered her supplies together and opened the door. A heavy-set older man pushed her out of the way before she could exit on her own. As a result, she wound up tripping over her own foot and landing in a vacant seat next to an older woman.
Relieved not to be sitting on the stranger’s lap, Pip looked over at the woman who was clearly startled by her new seatmate. The woman conf
ided, “I hate flying. I only went to England to go to my sister’s funeral.”
Pip replied, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Don’t be. She was a bitch.”
Pip didn’t know how to respond to that statement and would have left it alone entirely had Bertram not shown up again. He said, “Tell her Violet is sorry for the way she treated her. Tell her she was just jealous of her.”
Of all the messages Pip had to share, the worst ones were in airplanes. Anywhere else, she could distance herself from the recipients pretty quickly, but not so when hovering eighteen thousand feet above the ground secured in a hermetically sealed canister shooting through the stratosphere.
So she started, “Ma’am, your sister’s name was Violet, right?”
The woman gasped, “How do you know that?”
Pip replied, “She’s here with you and she wants you to know she’s sorry about the way she acted. She says she was jealous of you.”
The old lady looked panicked like she wanted to get away from Pip as quickly as possible when Bertram added on to the message. So Philippa continued, “She was envious that you married the love of your life and she wound up with Easton. She was resentful you had wonderful, loving children, while hers were spoiled and entitled. She was particularly mad about the fact that your mother gave you the family recipes and not her.”
The old lady was positively gob smacked. She looked around as though she was searching for her sister and snapped, “Violet, what in the world are you talking about? You went on like Easton was the King of Sheba, always yammering about how romantic and perfect he was and you were always poking fun at Leonard, calling him my knight in tin armor. How dare you pretend things are different now, just cause you’re dead?”
Pip replied, “She wants you to know she’s truly sorry about all that and that she was just insecure.”
“Fat lot of good that does me now!” the woman declared. “I spent my whole life feeling like I was second fiddle to you. Why in the world would I accept your apology?”
Philippa said, “She wants to know why you went to her funeral if you hated her so much.”
“Because, because I wanted to make sure she was really dead, that’s why!” Then she started to cry and added, “That’s not true. I loved you Violet, I just wish you loved me as much.”
“She says she did and she still does. She said that you left before her solicitor read her will.”
The woman snorted, “’Course I did. It’s not like she was going to leave me anything, so there was no point in hanging around.”
Pip said, “She said that she left you the cameo from your grandmother and she also left you fifty thousand pounds.”
“What? Why in the world would she do that?”
“Because she loves you,” Philippa replied. “She didn’t have the courage to tell you that while she was alive, but she wanted you to know how much you meant to her.”
The man who’d unceremoniously pushed her out of the bathroom opened the door and released a cloud so rank, Pip decided to just go back to her seat and finish changing at the airport. She left the woman with a smile and said, “Please believe her.”
The woman nodded, “I think I do, thank you.”
Chicago
Chapter 24
When the plane landed, Pip disembarked, finished getting ready for Elliot’s rehearsal dinner in the airport bathroom, and retrieved her luggage. She met the driver her father hired for her in baggage claim. His name was Vinnie and he looked like trouble. She was almost tempted to pretend she didn’t see him holding a sign with her name on it. Surely, there were loads of hackneys that would take her to Pipsy. But being she didn’t know exactly how far away Pipsy was, she decided to go ahead and take the ride provided for her.
Vinnie looked Pip up and down like she was the biggest, greasiest, fry-up he’d ever seen and he had a stomach full of alcohol that needed soaking up; in short, like he could eat her in one bite. It wasn’t flattering so much as disturbing. As Vinnie put her bags into the boot of the car, Pip whispered, “Bertram, are you there?”
He showed immediately, “Right here, love.”
“Is this fellow safe to drive with?” she asked.
Her contact replied, “Don’t know. But someone has a message for him.”
“Damn,” she mumbled. “So I have to get in the car with him.”
“Don’t worry, love. I’ll be right here with you.”
“That’s no comfort whatsoever, Bertram. It’s not like there’s anything you can do to help me in the physical world. For instance, you can’t beat him upside the back of the head while I jump out of the car to safety, can you?”
Bertram laughed, “You’d be surprised. I’m really quite helpful when I need to be.”
All Pip wanted to do was get to her brother’s rehearsal dinner before it ended and now it looked like she might have to sort out some trouble first. The whole thing made her decidedly queasy.
When Vinnie got into the car, he gave her a long appreciative look in the rearview mirror and announced, “I know where you’re goin’, so just sit back and enjoy the ride.”
Pip smiled faintly, “Thank you very much.”
The driver grinned lecherously, “I like the way you sound, real classy like. You gotta boyfriend?”
Thinking fast on her feet, Pip replied, “Husband. He’s meeting me here in America.”
“If you gotta husband, why aren’t you traveling together?” Then he added, “And where’s your wedding ring?”
Pip answered, “He had business to attend to and I couldn’t get off of work earlier.” She added, “I lost my ring last month. We haven’t had a chance to get a new one yet.”
Pip sat quietly through most of the trip, only nodding or shaking her head when Bertram said something to her. Finally, they passed a sign for Pipsy, and Bertram instructed, “You’re running out of time, love. You’ve got to tell him now.”
Trembling, Pip released her pent up breath and said, “Erm, Vinnie, is it?”
The driver looked back at her in the mirror and grunted, “Yeah?”
“I know this is going to seem a little odd, but I have a message for you.”
Vinnie pulled off the freeway and slowed at the light at the end of the exit ramp. He slowly reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and kept his hand there. “Yeah, what message is that?”
“It’s from someone calling himself Lefty.”
With that Vinnie turned right onto another road and slammed his foot on the gas like he was trying to pick enough speed up to launch them into space. He sneered, “You don’t got no message from Lefty. Lefty’s dead.” Then he demanded, “Who sent you, bitch?”
Pip held on for dear life and answered, “I know Lefty’s dead, but he still has a message for you.” Taking a deep breath, she asked, “Would you mind slowing down a bit, please?”
Vinnie violently pulled off the road and straight into a parking lot that abutted a forested area. Great, Pip thought, in case he needs to dump my body somewhere. She was so nauseated she felt the bile rise in her throat.
Vinnie demanded, “Who are you and how do you know Lefty?” Then he pulled a gun out of his pocket and pointed it right at her.
Pip cleared her throat and slowly began, “You’re going to need to put the gun down, Vinnie.” She lifted her own hands and said, “As you can see I don’t have any weapons on me and I won’t tell you the message while you’re pointing that thing at me.” She was amazed she had the wherewithal to sound so calm, but she knew if he didn’t put the gun down, she was going to soil herself.
Vinnie lowered the Glock, but still kept his hand around the handle. “Spill it, girlie. Who are you and how do you know Lefty?”
Pip didn’t answer him, instead she asked, “Bertram, could you please put a song in this man’s head?”
Vinnie picked the gun up and pointed it all around the car demanding, “Who’s this Bertram? Where’s he at?”
Pip replied, “Bertram is a
dead friend of mine. I know that’s a bit hard to believe, but he’s going to put a song into your head. Then I’m going to tell you what that song is so you’ll believe me when I relay Lefty’s message.”
Bertram replied, “Smart move, love. Okay, the song’s in.”
Pip said, “Vinnie, don’t hum the song out loud. I want you to believe me when I tell you what it is.”
The driver looked startled and nodded his head that he understood. Pip asked, “Bertram, what’s the name of the song?”
He told her, and she replied, “Really? I’ve never heard that one before.”
“It’s from before your time, love,” he answered.
Vinnie threatened, “Tell me the name of the song already or I’m gonna whack you right here.”
Pip shakily replied, “‘Bad, Bad, LeRoy Brown.’” Then she asked, “Is that right?”
Vinnie yelled, “Jesus Christ, lady, what the fuck?! How’d you do that?”
She answered, “I told you, my friend Bertram did it. Now, can I give you Lefty’s message?”
He nodded his head and answered, “Shit, yeah. I guess, go ahead.”
She started, “First of all, Lefty says to tell you that you can’t whack me just because I look like Lola. Lola was a cheating whore and deserved what she got, but I’m a nice lady from England so leave me alone.”
“How do you know about Lola?” he demanded.
“The same way I knew about ‘Bad, Bad, LeRoy Brown,’” she answered. “Now please, let me finish, I’m already late for where I need to be.”
Vinnie glared at her like she’d be even later if she didn’t convince him she was telling him the truth about being able to talk to Lefty. Pip continued, “He says to tell you the carp is in the trunk of the ’Stang and it’s rotten. Also, your ma gave it up and if you don’t roll over you’re gonna be wearing your street boots in the lake.”
The driver slammed his hand on the steering wheel and swore, “What the fuck, lady? How do you know this stuff?”
Pip replied, “I told you, my friend Bertram is speaking with Lefty right now and passing his words on to me. Listen, Vinnie, that’s all he says. But please, I have no idea what the message means and I can never tell anyone else about the details of a communication meant for another.” She hurried to add, “If I do, I get severely punished.” Then she added, “Now please take me to the restaurant where I’m expected, and hurry, I’m late.”
Kindred Spirits: A Romantic Comedy About Love, Life, and the Afterlife . . . Page 11