Icy Pretty Love

by L. A. Rose

  The French air is cool and damp, like stepping into one of those mist booths they have at fairs. All around me, people in black trot to their respective funerals—I mean, work. There’s an inordinate number of little dogs. Fresh bakery smells are coming from a little store on the corner, so I stop and eat my way through something like a giant hamburger with fluffy pastry instead of buns and light, cloudlike cream instead of a patty.

  I am going to get so fat, and it’s going to be beautiful.

  Armed with my new Assworth credit card, I storm the nearest grocery store. Fresh eggs, mushrooms, garlic, chives, red peppers…I load up with everything I’m capable of carrying. On my way back, I hit the bakery again and pick up two fresh baguettes. Then I pass a cheese store and buy two big, expensive domes of goat cheese and fresh farm milk. By the time I make it back to the apartment building, I’m staggering. Baldy starts sweating when he sees me.

  “Do you need any help with that, miss?”

  “Oh no, I’m fine, this is just how I get my exercise,” I gasp, but then one bag plummets off the top. Baldy lunges to catch it.

  Together we manage to lug my massive quantities of food into the elevator and then to my door. Luckily enough, Cohen still isn’t home. Was he kidnapped or something? Some bad guy planning to ransom him for millions? Will I have to step up as the intrepid girl detective to rescue him? I’d probably start untying him and he’d turn his nose up at my lack of Girl Scout knot abilities.

  As soon as Baldy and I tip all the food onto the living room carpet, we both take a panting break. It’s a bonding experience.

  “You should know that we do not usually allow your type into this establishment,” he says. Zis eztablishment. So much for bonding.

  I bristle. “My type?”

  “Your type.”

  “And what type is that?” I’m going to make him say it. Force the ugly word through his pursed lips.

  But he slips right past it. “As it happens, the Ashworths are particularly valuable patrons of ours and we are inclined to allow them their eccentricities.”

  So now I’m just one of Cohen’s eccentricities, like his papers and his empty fridge.

  “All I hope is that you keep in mind that this is an exception. If you come here to visit someone else, you will be turned away,” he finishes.

  “Yeah? Well, I couldn’t be paid to stay in your frilly ass apartment building if I had a choice about it,” I snarl.

  His eyebrows shoot up so high I nearly expect them to pop onto his bald scalp. “You are being kept here under duress?”

  “No, not exactly…”

  “Then I would venture to say that you could, in fact, be paid to stay here.”

  We glare at each other for minute.

  “I have to go. I have eggs,” I say.

  “And one would hope you are very careful with them.”

  It’s not until I’ve slammed the door that I realize he was warning me against getting pregnant. By the time I throw it open and yell, “Almost as careful as you should have been with your hair follicles!” he’s already gone. Stupid baldy baldface baldman.

  I cook off my anger, just like I’ve always done when I’ve been able to afford ingredients. I dice fruit, fry bread, sizzle bacon, and make the world’s most elaborate cheese-and-mushroom omelet. Everything smells too good for me to stay mad.

  Odd that he bothered me so much. I’m used to judgment. Maybe now, with my new life so close I can smell it on the breeze, judgment burns a little deeper.

  I check the time. Ten a.m. Still no Cohen. Maybe he really did make a run for it, in which case I’ll have to eat all this food by myself. What a shame.

  Bored, I toss myself backwards over the couch and text the only name I haven’t deleted from my phone.

  RG: I’ve made a preposterous amount of breakfast and have no one to share it with. What are your opinions on mushroom omelets?

  Sam: You again.

  RG: You’d be surprised how little that tells me about your opinions on mushroom omelets.

  Sam: You’re cooking?

  RG: Yes, I am an adult. Adults cook. Why does that surprise you?

  Sam: I assumed you were thirteen at the oldest.

  RG: I choose to take that as a compliment in the sense that people will assume I’m thirty when I’m forty.

  Sam: Did you really just invite me, a total stranger, to come and eat an omelet with you?

  RG: If I’m left to my own devices, I’ll eat the entire thing by myself and it won’t be pretty.

  Sam: I could be a deranged killer.

  RG: This omelet is the true deranged killer.

  RG: And nah. You’d be pretending to be nice in order to lure me in.

  Sam: So you find nice people more suspicious than jerks.

  RG: When it comes to men, yes. All men are jerks and I prefer the ones who are straightforward about it.

  Sam: You want to share an omelet with a jerk.

  RG: At least you’re not a boring jerk! ;)

  RG: Awww come on, don’t stop responding.

  RG: I’m lonelyyyyy and boredddd and I don’t have a single person in this whole country to talk to.

  I’m about to start calling him Elbert again when the door swings open. I jolt upright and end up flopping sideways off the couch onto the floor.

  “You have lovely shoes,” I say to the black leather oxfords I’ve come face-to-face with.

  A voice tight with barely-constrained anger: “You touched my papers?”

  “I cleaned,” I correct, rolling over and getting to my feet. He’s already in the living room, inspecting—and consequently destroying—the neat stacks I’ve made.

  “They’re all out of order. I told you not to touch my things.”

  “Order?” I cry. “In what world did that tornado of paperwork constitute order?”

  “In my world.” He turns to face me. He’s still in the clothes he wore yesterday, though they’re rumpled now. His skin is tinged with pallor and dark circles cup his eyes. Even through all that, he’s still devastatingly handsome, which is not something I want to be noticing.

  “Where were you last night?” If I’m going to play a fiancé, I might as well go whole hog.

  He rubs his eyes and snaps, “None of your business. You do not touch my things, do you understand?”

  He’s taken a step toward me, and before I realize it, I flinch away from him. He stops. All the fight leaks out of him.

  “I don’t want you wincing like that every time I come near you,” he says.

  “Conditioned response. I’m not going to apologize for it.”

  This time he’s the one who winces, if only barely. Is it possible my words chipped him? The effect is gone in half a second. “I will not hit you. I will not touch you. That I can promise.”

  “Hitting and touching aren’t necessarily the same thing,” I say, probing. Does he mean what I think he does?

  “You can be confident that I won’t do either. In return, you’ll leave my papers alone. Deal?”

  No sex, then. Dream words from a client paying me as much as he is, but my stomach gives a funny little spasm. Takes me a second to realize it’s—of all damn things—disappointment. What the hell? I haven’t been attracted to a client in God knows how long. My body must be joking.

  Wait a minute. No interest in easy sex? So anti-relationship his father has to hire a fake fiancé? Out all night and secretive about it?

  There’s only one conclusion to make.

  He’s gay!

  Yes! Score! Last time I had a closeted gay guy as a client, it was great. His friends had hired me. I got paid to eat ice cream, talk hair care, and watch Will & Grace on the hotel floor all night.

  No wonder Cohen’s so crabby. Daddy Assworth doesn’t seem like the accepting type. What this guy needs is a friend he can confide in. And I’m nothing if not good at filling roles.

  He’s still waiting on my agreement, hand out and ready to shake. I grab it and pull him to the dining table in
stead. “I hope you like food. And lots of it.”

  “I have work to do,” he mutters and tries to leave, but I find his shoulders and plant him in a chair. His eyebrows arch higher and higher instead as I bring out the omelet, the pastries, the fruit, the juice.

  “You’ve taken full advantage of the room service, I see.”

  “Nope! I made all this,” I say brightly, pouring him a towering glass of fresh orange juice. “And I’m glad I did, because you look like you could use a pick me up.”

  He hunts for words. “You didn’t have to do all this.”

  “When I’m sad or angry, I cook out my feelings. The sadder or angrier, the better things taste. Try it!”

  He puts down his fork before he takes a bite. “Did someone upset you?”

  “No. I mean, the doorman said a couple things. But it’s not a big deal. He’s probably still mourning his hair loss.”

  “I’ll have a word with him,” he says, and then seems to remember that he’s supposed to resent my presence here, because his face hardens. It softens almost immediately after the first bite.

  I prop my face up with my elbows on the table. “So are your tastebuds dancing the tango or the waltz?”

  “It’s been a long time since anyone cooked me something,” he says at last.

  My heart twinges. Huh. “I know what that’s like. My dad ran off when I was a kid and my mom worked nights and slept days, so I did all the cooking at home. That’s how I got so good. I had a lot of feelings as a teenager and if I hadn’t cooked, I probably would have jumped off a cliff.” I laugh. “But when someone cooks for you, it’s the nicest way to say you love them. You get to taste it in every bite.”

  He stares at me. I backtrack. “Not that I love you! I love a lot of things, but all of them are food. And I’m not a cannibal.” Although you do look damn tasty.

  Shut up, brain!

  His mouth twitches like a laugh is trying to slip out of there. Come on, laugh! You can do it! But he forces it down, like his face is a club with a strict bouncer and all positive emotions are under twenty-one. Eighteen in France, actually.

  He stands up, having regained control of his face. “I’ll be doing work in my office today. Don’t bother me.”

  So much for my charm winning him over. But that was just the first skirmish. When it comes to making friends, I’ve never lost the war.

  “We’ll be going out to dinner for the first time tonight, with someone I need to impress,” he says, and grimaces like he’d rather have hot coals shoved up his butt. Funnily enough, that wouldn’t be the weirdest thing I’ve ever been requested to shove up a client’s butt.

  “Take my card out today and buy something nice,” he says, blissfully unaware of my less-than-delightful thoughts. “And modest. Any price, it doesn’t matter to me. Actually, buy several nice things. Get it all out of the way.”

  “I love an all-expenses-paid shopping spree as much as the next girl who grew up dirt poor, but won’t it be an issue that I don’t speak French?”

  He considers this for a moment. Then, finally, the ghost of a smile works its way across his face. “I’ll send an escort with you. Go wait in the lobby and he’ll meet you there.”

  And I can’t help but notice that he takes the rest of the omelet with him into his study.

  Ten minutes later, I’m in the lobby, sitting on a marble bench and swinging my feet, wearing the single outfit I brought from my old life.

  I text Sam a couple more times, but he doesn’t respond. I should probably leave him alone, but he’s just as cranky as Cohen. Maybe he’ll be the key to figuring out my grouchy fake-fiancé.

  They’re so similar that I pried Cohen’s phone number out of him, just to be sure, but it’s different from Sam’s. What they really have in common is how exasperated I make them. Which is not, to be fair, a rare affliction.

  Baldy is sitting behind the lobby desk, on the phone with someone. Whatever they’re telling him is not making him happy. His scalp is creased and his “yes, sir’s” are even more clipped than usual. Finally he hangs up and mops his forehead with a handkerchief before coming towards me.

  “Hey, don’t get mad, I’m not sitting here tarnishing the perfection of zis eztablishment for no reason,” I say defensively. “I’m waiting for my shopping buddy. Er, chaperone.”

  He sighs such a deep sigh that it must have originated from three miles under the earth. “Well, miss, you have found him.”

  “Where?” I peer over his shoulder. “Are you hiding him? Is he a midget in your pocket?”

  This time his sigh rattles the ground. “No, miss. I will be your escort today.”

  I suddenly understand Cohen’s ghost of a smile. This is his way of punishing Baldy for upsetting me. The ice man has a sense of humor after all.

  “We are going to have a great day!” I throw my arm over Baldy’s shoulders, who shivers like I doused him in kerosene. “It’s you and me, Baldy—er, I mean Retard.”

  “Renard,” he says through gritted teeth.

  “Renard! Of course, Renard. You probably think that was on purpose, but it was an honest mistake. All my mistakes are honest. Hey, after we go shopping let’s get our hair done! Oops, wait.”

  He turns his face skyward and mutters what sounds suspiciously like a prayer.

  “God can’t save you now,” I say cheerfully. “You’re driving, right?”

  While Baldy drives me to the fanciest mall in Paris, as per my request, I enlighten him on my life. I tell him all about the parrot I had when I was ten during my horror movie phase, about how it learned to make the Grudge noise, escaped through my window, made a nest in my neighbor’s tree, and made her think she was being haunted. I tell him about the time I went to the beach as a fourth grader and thought I’d found a human skull, though it turned out to be just a weirdly-shaped lump of coral.

  “All captivating stories,” he says with the air of someone who has an unrelenting urge to hang himself. “Did anything happen in your life past the age of puberty, I must ask?”

  I draw my knees up to my chest and watch Paris rush by through the window. “Nothing that makes a funny story.”

  He steals a look at me, but I don’t meet his eyes. Eventually he finds a secret parking space as only a Parisian native could, and opens the door on my side. No matter how much disdain he has for me, he’s still got that Jeeves-esque gentlemanliness.

  “We’ll have to pick out something soon so you can change out of those…clothes.” He wrinkles his nose as if he’s not sure what I’m wearing qualifies.

  “Hey! This is my favorite mesh top.”

  “Is that what you call it?” he asks delicately. “I thought you put on some fish netting you found at a seafood market.”

  He leads me to a building with glass doors, behind a ton of middle-aged Chinese tourists waiting for their bus. Everything in the window display is white—a geometrical white skirt, a gauzy white fairy dress, a glistening pair of white heels. Someone didn’t get the funeral memo. The display pumps out ethereal music as the clothes shimmer behind rotating strips of white crepe paper.

  “You don’t find shit like that at a mall in America,” I say, jabbing my thumb at it.

  He nods at me to follow him. “You won’t find any of this ‘shit’ in America.”

  Thees sheet. I giggle, but it strangles in my throat as we step through the glass door and I see the inside of the building.

  “Welcome,” he says, “to the Galleries Lafayette.”

  It’s like the holy offspring of a department store and the Louvre. We’re in the purse section, and orderly cubicles with endless wall displays of designer bags stand in rows over the polished floor, where polished people stand, selling and buying. The floors are set up like rings. I rush to the edge and look up. Above me, rings of floors arch upward, each crowded with shoppers. The ceiling looks like it belongs in a famous European church, not a mall, with its painted fresco and stunning architecture.

  “Is this a famous Parisian
landmark that some jerk with too much money decided to convert into a mall?” I ask Baldy, stunned.

  He shakes his head. “It was built for zees purpose.”

  I wander for the next hour, totally quiet as I take everything in. It really is more like an art gallery than a mall. The clothes are more beautiful than I knew clothes could be, each piece more intricate than the next. I run my fingers over a silk sleeve sewn like a butterfly’s wing, a skirt that seems to be made out of air, a scarf as soft and comforting as a cloud.

  “It’s like a beautiful dream,” I say after ten solid minutes of not speaking.

  Baldy smiles despite himself. “I thought bringing you here might inspire some silence. As it turns out, you’re more pleasant when you’re impressed.”

  I’m too happy to even make a hair joke.

  It’s all too beautiful, too different from the darkness and dirtiness I’m used to. I’m timid for the first time. I touch clothes, rub their softness between my fingers, but I can’t bring myself to try anything on or even ask the price. Surely anything so beautiful and delicate would crumble when it touched someone like me.

  After a while, Baldy takes pity on me and pulls an intricate lace dress off the hanger. “If I may suggest this, miss.”

  I brush it off with a laugh. “That wouldn’t suit me.”

  “You’re not you anymore, if young Mr. Ashworth has explained the situation to me correctly.” He hands me the dress. “You’re Georgette Montgomery.”

  Georgette Montgomery. I keep forgetting. Her name is fresh and clean, like new spring leaves. I want to slip into her, let her erase everything terrible about Rae. I take the dress.

  In the changing room, I have to take three deep breaths before I can bear to look at myself in the mirror. The girl staring back at me is delicate and frail. The dress hides her scars, the way her shoulders slope. She’s big-eyed innocence. She’s Georgette Montgomery.