by Amy Brent
“SHE’S PREGNANT AND YOU’RE IN LOVE!?”
Maybe they just seemed louder because the buzz of the room had died down to an absolute tomb-like silence. I kept my gaze riveted on the ballroom corner. I had to, because I felt thousands of eyes like little beetles settle on my back. If I turned to face them, they would eat me alive.
“You can’t be my son. I never would’ve raised my son to be such a bloody fool! This whole thing reeks of Henry, and yet you’re the one involved? I knew that filthy model was no good the minute I laid eyes on her. Models have no class and Americans even less.”
Her shriek lowered to a reasonable pitch, although I was sure whatever she was saying was still not all rainbows and roses.
This time, it was Charles who raised his voice. “I will not just abandon her and my child, Mother. I don’t care what you threaten me with. Do your worst.”
Those words were as good as a stake in my heart. I staggered back a few paces. My gaze flicked to his father, who couldn’t even look at me. Over his shoulder, even Henry and Liza were eyeing me with stricken faces. Liza took one tentative step forward, but I shook my head.
I staggered back, then away. No way was I going to let anyone else be brought down because of me, whether it was Charles or Liza.
I ran back the way I had so hopefully been conveyed. My heels smacked against the marble floor like gunshots from the firing range of public opinion that had already erupted against me. I ran, and I ran, and I ran.
All the while, those beetles of stares were there, settling, waiting for just the slightest accidental glance so they could suck my blood and empty me.
I stumbled. Then I fell. I left behind one of my high-heeled shoes, the Louboutins I had practiced walking in for hours since they were so high.
Next thing I knew, I was through the doorway and outside.
The sky was an impassive navy blue and had no idea what had happened, though my whole body was riddled with it, with mountains of goose bumps and choking ivy of shivers.
I still didn’t stop running. I was barefoot now, one shoe on the pavement in front of the palace, the other shoe somewhere inside. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. All I knew was that I had to leave.
Chapter 23
Charles
I drilled my fingers against the leather seat. Beside me, Mario looked as tense as I was. I hadn’t told him anything, just given him the address I needed him to get me to ASAP. The way his Adam’s apple was throbbing, I thought he understood.
Right now, this was do or die.
I didn’t have to wonder what Heidi would do when I got to her flat. It would probably be déjà vu of the last time I’d arrived unannounced. Hopefully anyway. As much as she had resisted talking to me and agreeing with what I’d said last time, she had eventually come around. She had to come around again this time, didn’t she?
My jaw tightened as I dismissed the notion of anything else. Mother was not going to ruin this for me. She was not going to ruin what I knew more every day was the right thing to do. I wasn’t sure in what capacity or how I would even pull it off, but I knew what I would choose for Heidi if it came down to it.
When I’d returned to the ballroom seconds after Mother had made every threat in the book, Heidi had been a distant wraithlike figure. All the guests’ noses had finally descended into their rightful places as their eyes remained trembling saucers and their lips curled from the ghost they’d seen. The ghost had left one shoe toppled over, sadly emblematic of all my hopes for that unfortunate night.
The limo stopped, and I got out. All that wouldn’t matter soon enough. All I had to do was get Heidi to listen to me. I shifted the bouquet of roses from one hand to the other. For some reason, these roses represented the preservation of our relationship to me. Maybe I just liked to think that I could control this too.
Going up the old rickety elevator to their flat was like déjà vu too. It occurred to me that maybe I was too late already. Maybe Heidi had somehow booked a last-minute flight out of here. Maybe I’d be confronted once again with her ghost.
The thought caused me to tighten my grip on the paper-wrapped stems of the roses. There were two of them for the two amazing months we’d spent together. Initially I’d gone full speed ahead with sixty roses, but as it turned out, they weren’t as easy to carry as you’d think.
Anyway, now here I was.
After my curt knock, there was silence. Two more curt knocks brought Liza to the door. She almost looked like she was the one who’d been publicly humiliated at the ball. The Daily Mail had taken the story in its eager jaws and ran full throttle with it. They’d somehow managed to capture a terrible picture of poor Heidi sprinting for dear life out of the palace, then later interviewed an anonymous informant who’d been on the scene. I was pretty sure it was my Aunt Hilda taking revenge for Henry breaking her antique vase on a family visit a few years back.
Liza looked at me with an expression that was neither surprised nor friendly.
“You know I can’t, Charles.”
Her voice sounded with certainty we both knew she didn’t have. Not yet. I held the door open with my palm.
“And you know I can’t leave here until I talk to her.”
Liza gathered herself to her full height, her lips knotting into a determined squiggle.
“Let him in,” a familiar and tired voice said from inside.
Liza paused as if she were thinking better of it. Then, with a step back, she mutely let me pass.
Heidi was sitting on her orange couch, staring off at nothing in particular. The sight floored me.
Liza lingered, but Heidi said, “Give us a minute, please.”
These words were as emotionless as the others had been as if she didn’t really care whether her friend eavesdropped and commented or left.
Luckily, Liza left, although I would’ve said what I had to say in front of anyone it took to get Heidi to listen to me.
“You know why I’m here, Heidi.”
I sat beside her, so close that we were almost touching. Almost.
No response. A glance over found her body had settled into the lines of the couch easily, as if part of her hoped to become a part of it.
“And you know why I can’t agree to stay.”
Her words contained all the quiet certainty I’d feared so much.
Seizing her hand impulsively, I declared, “You don’t understand. I don’t care what Mother says. I—”
“I do,” Heidi said simply.
As her face crumpled, I saw the truth of her words. In my hand, hers felt like a hard-boiled egg, like there were nothing alive or vibrant inside the shell.
“Heidi…”
She shook her head firmly.
“That is the queen you’re talking about, Charles. Your mother is the queen, and even if she weren’t, knowing both your parents would not only be against us but hate me—”
“Not both my parents,” I said quietly. “Anyway, you didn’t even hear what I came here to say.”
She only nodded, like she knew it wouldn’t make any difference. My words were just words to her now, inconvenient things she could fold up and shove in her pocket so she wouldn’t have to look at them.
Before I could speak, however, she said, “I’ve decided what I want to do, though. I’m going to tell everyone it was just a false alarm, that I was just an American girl looking to make headlines and that I’m very sorry.”
There was a single warble in her throat as she said “sorry.” It sent me flinging my arms around her.
“Don’t you dare.”
Heidi’s limbs were so cold and stiff, it didn’t feel like they were Heidi’s at all.
“We both know it’s best,” she said decisively.
“We certainly do not!”
My voice was more forceful than I had intended, almost like Mother’s, except what I was suggesting was as far from what she had demanded I do as humanly possible.
“Damn the press, damn my title, and damn my bl
oody mother,” I said heatedly, squeezing her hand as if it could pump her back into believing in us. “I’m not abandoning my own flesh and blood and the first girl I’ve liked since…”
With a single wrench, she threw her body to the other side of the couch. “Don’t,” she pleaded. “Please, just don’t.”
Her sad voice wasn’t one about to cave. It was one that knew the futility of further argument.
“Just give me a few days, will you? A few days to see if I can even make the first steps toward fixing this.”
“There is no fixing this.”
Her pitched voice contained all of the rage I hadn’t heard up until now.
“Just a few days,” I repeated more forcefully.
She said nothing. Part of me wanted to stay, to hear her say she would wait, give me the few days I needed and deserved. But I figured the frown on her face was as good as an acceptance as I was going to get. The longer I stayed here, the worse we were fighting. Better to leave when I was ahead.
When I stood to leave, her whole body seemed to sigh with relief. I paused for a minute, hovering over her.
Powerlessness tore at me from all sides. There were so many things I wanted to do, and yet instinctively, I knew couldn’t. I would only make things worse. I wanted to seize her in my arms, twirl her around, and give her a kiss for the grand finale. I wanted to hold her so tightly in my arms that she could feel how supported she was, feel it radiating from her every pore. I wanted to kiss into every inch of her skin the knowledge that I wasn’t going to abandon her, not ever.
Heidi would’ve come around to that. Heidi would’ve understood.
But the hunched-over woman in front of me, the one Mother, the tabloids, and these horrible, horrible circumstances had created, she was not Heidi. There was no reasoning with that woman at all.
All there was left to do was leave, so I did.
Chapter 24
Heidi
On the block before the old building, a bush broke into chatter before I passed by it. Little sparrows were adeptly concealed amid the shrubs’ gnarled thorns. They squeaked gleefully in their unseen condition, until now. Now they were stone-cold silent.
Shivering, I moved on.
I approached the old factory that had been converted to a setting for photo shoots. There was a nippiness to the air, something of a physical warning. My stomach was swirling with either my or baby’s nerves; I couldn’t tell. I’d successfully avoided going to the doctor for the past few weeks, but I would have to sooner or later.
Whatever my body was alerting me to, it wasn’t good, but I had to know. Although instinct told me what I was doing was fruitless, even damning, I had to go in to work. I had to see what my clients would say.
Sure, I had read and reread the Daily Mail article until my retinas were burning, but I had to know myself. I had to see it on the faces of the people I worked with, see and know without the slightest shadow of a doubt that my career as I knew it was 100 percent, 1,000 percent, 1,000,000 percent over.
Inside, the receptionist was busily typing away. Only guests were instructed to check in with her anyway, so I glided on in. Once I was a few steps into the room, I heard her call behind me. “Wait!”
But it was too late. The nightmare had begun. Everyone in the room was staring at me, but not directly at me. Their awkward gaping stares were fixed an inch above my head, down at my elbow, at the floor and the general proximity of my feet. Their looks said it all, but I was rooted to the spot. It was as if I were some insect trapped in formaldehyde for them to watch its dying spasms.
Someone grabbed my arm, and I was hustled out of the room and back toward the door.
It was hardly surprising to see it was Ron. He let go of my arm and looked at me as if I were a corpse reanimated. In a way, I guessed I was.
“You actually came.”
I managed a shaky nod and tried my hand at cracking a smile. “I did. This is that big Zara shoot, right?”
Ron nodded and then shook his head. Leaning in, he hissed, “Heidi, you know you can’t be here.”
“Why not?” I asked, although really, we both knew the answer already. But I wanted to hear him say it. I wanted to see his face as he said it.
Ron shifted from one foot to the other. If his face wasn’t so Botoxed, maybe I would’ve seen more traces of emotion. Or maybe not. He was just doing his job after all.
Shaking his head, he finally said, “The latest scandal went viral. Even the news stations in the States picked it up. I’ve been calling all over the place just to see, but…” He shook his head again, his glazed-over eyes finally meeting mine. “No one will work with you, Heidi.”
“No one,” I repeated to myself.
Ron gave one more nod.
“No one.”
We stood there for a minute, eyeing each other as if we were in a play and it was the other’s turn to say their lines, only each one thought it was the other’s turn. As it turned out, it was mine.
“So…”
“Of course I’ll give you a great reference for future jobs”—Ron’s entire body came back to life with frenetic energy, as if he finally found a solution that had been staring us both in the face all along—“in another sphere than the modeling world, of course. You might even have a shot.”
He flashed me his most convincing, pearly white smile, and that was the final dagger in my heart. Ron was the king of understatement. If he was saying my career as a model was dead, then it had been buried in the ground for days now.
Ron glanced at his watch, his face assuming a “sorry” expression.
“But I do have to go. We have to coach the new girl who—” He waved his hand, probably realizing that informing me about the inconveniences of the model who was replacing me wouldn’t be in the best taste. “Good luck, you hear?”
I only nodded before my legs took me out the door and to the expressionless spread of blue sky. I retraced my steps past the chattering bush that I now realized was laughing. They had known all along. Even the sparrows were laughing at me.
And yet, everything that had happened still seemed as though I had to be making some sort of terrible mistake. This nightmare was just that: a bad dream I was bound to wake up from at any point.
I adjusted my big sun hat to block my face. Luckily, I’d escaped unnoticed up until now, but I didn’t want to risk things.
My mind scanned through every possibility open to me. It wasn’t like I could just rest on my laurels and go retire on the beach for the rest of my life. Most of my money, on the advice of Ron, had been reinvested into my business, into promoting me as a model and getting me the best shots and the best clothes so I could go to the best events. I had very little in the way of savings. I probably had around the same amount saved that I did back in college. Not to mention I had a baby on the way, and babies weren’t cheap.
I closed my eyes. My mind clicked through every acquaintance and friend I had, every person who could potentially pull in a favor and give me another job or two if it came to it. But every time I tried thinking of anyone, all I saw was that glazed look in Ron’s eyes, as if he wasn’t even talking to me, Heidi, his client who he’d worked with for years now. It was as if I were already a walking skeleton.
Finally, my mind stopped at the last possible option.
My upper lip curled in distaste. Federico Ferrari had an impressive name but a less-than-impressive demeanor. He had a silky smooth way of talking and was well known as slimy in his business dealings. At one point, he had actually gone down on his knees to beg me to work with him. Although they did say he paid well.
The corners of my lips turned back down. Had I fallen so far so fast? My lips sealed together in determination. I needed to do this. I needed another ad campaign to show the world I wasn’t dead and I refused to be silenced. I didn’t care who would do that. Whoever would agree to work with me would fit the bill perfectly—Federico Ferrari or anyone.
I found a bench and had to scan through my phone
for a good twenty minutes to find his number. I hadn’t saved it. The only record I had of it was a call he had annoyed me with a few months back.
It was his personal cell, apparently, so at least I wouldn’t have to deal with the aggravation and difficulty of getting through a stubborn secretary.
He picked up on the first ring.
“Yes?”
My throat closed up at the sound of his accented voice.
“Hey, Federico,” I managed with my best rendition of someone who was actually happy to be talking to him.
“Who is this?” the voice said with suspicion.
I gulped. Hadn’t Federico said he had saved my phone number in some special place and that he would be ready whenever I chose to call?
“It’s Heidi…”
Dial tone.
I hadn’t even noticed that I’d stood up during the call until my shaky legs brought me back down. Federico Ferrari, the man so slimy I hadn’t deigned to even consider the thought of working with him, had turned me down in the most insulting manner possible.
That was it. That was my last chance, and it had been thrown in the trash.
Like where I was now. As the sun shone out from the clouds above me, it occurred to me that this wasn’t home to me. Home was home, the United States of America, the only home I’d ever known and ever would.
I’d come here with big dreams, and I’d leave with a big crater where my career had been. It was unfortunate about Charles, but he’d understand. He was just locked in this good prince narrative; he didn’t actually want me.
--
“You can’t leave just like that.”
Liza’s words were less than convincing, especially considering she was parked on the kitchen floor eating a doughnut. Out of sugar-frosted lips, she repeated, “Seriously, Heidi. You can’t just run off like that. It’s not fair to Charles.”
“Have you heard a word I’ve been saying?” I demanded. “My life is over. My career is over, and I can’t go anywhere without wearing the biggest, ugliest hat I have and sunglasses that are more like a mask in order to avoid being recognized. There’s nothing left for me here now.”