[2014] Looking for Leon

by Shirley Benton

  “So, do you think we’ll manage to drink the entire bottle between us?” Lindy nodded her head towards the champagne and smiled up at Colm, who was looking around the limo in what looked like complete bemusement. “We can certainly have fun trying!” She extended her arm out towards the bottle.

  “Colm doesn’t drink,” I said flatly. “But that’s all the more for you and me.”

  “Oh.” She yanked her hand back as if the bottle had burned her, and shrank back into the sofa. “Now that you mention it, Colm, I’ve never seen you drink.”

  “We Irish get such a bad name for boozing, but then when we don’t, the whole world seems disappointed,” Colm said. “Or just incredulous.”

  “Something tells me you’re not a man who disappoints the ladies,” Lindy said in a throaty voice that sounded more sick than seductive.

  I had to fight the urge to rummage in my handbag for some spare cough sweets, while Colm stared at her as if she’d totally lost the plot.

  Lindy folded her arms across her chest and looked up at the roof of the car with a sulky expression after his reaction, all thoughts of opening the bottle of champers forgotten when there was only boring old me to share it with. It was probably a good thing – if she was this full-on while sober, there wouldn’t be anything left of Colm after she had alcohol in her – she’d eat him alive. I took pity on him, and decided to veer the conversation onto neutral ground before she thought up some new seduction plan.

  “Tell us more about this website launch today,” I said in a breezy voice.

  Lindy pouted. “What do you want to know? It’s a website. It’s being launched. Today.”

  “But surely there are enough of those people-search websites out there already? What’s the point in launching yet another one?”

  “This isn’t just any old new website being launched by just anyone. The person behind this is Rick Heidlbarge – the guy who created the social-networking site Headspace.”

  “I know who Rick Heidlbarge is,” I snapped. Even the granny who lived down the road from me had seen that fecker on her twenty-something-year-old portable TV with a clothes hanger sticking out of the back of it. He was everywhere these days. A few years ago, he was a poor student who spent his spare time pottering around in his bedroom writing nerdy IT programs. He started Headspace as a college project, then had a light-bulb moment when he saw its potential as a way for people to keep in touch with many others in one handy location. Once the word was out about Headspace, investors were queuing up to pump their money into it. Now, Rick was one of the youngest billionaires in the world, and you couldn’t pick up a paper without seeing his oblong smiley face beaming back at you. I’d be beaming too if I were him, of course.

  “Well, then you’ll know that he’s one guy who has contacts – and who knows a good opportunity when he sees one. Have you ever tried to find anyone on Mantra?”

  “Is that a rhetorical question?” I’d lost count of how many hours I’d spent typing “Leon from Arizona” into Mantra, the world’s biggest search engine, knowing that it was a road to nowhere, but still praying that I’d miraculously find a photo of my Leon. The rest of this miracle involved finding his email address directly below the photo, me emailing him and him happening to be online at that precise moment, resulting in him emailing back a frantic ‘What’s your number? I need to call you!’ message, and ultimately a tear-drenched reunion in the airport.

  “Well, you might not have used Mantra to stalk Leon,” she said haughtily. “There are other search engines out there. And you’d be better off using one of them for a people search – which is where Rick comes in. You see, Mantra has been trying to buy a people-search company for ages – they want to create a partnership with one of them and basically plug the functionality into the Mantra search engine. Problem is, they couldn’t find one to meet their standards. So they approached Rick and asked him to create one.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that. And Rick being Rick, he came back to them with a spec for a people-search site that had a degree of functionality that the competition weren’t anywhere near even dreaming about. This site is going to be huge, Andie. You have no idea how lucky you are that I’ve set this up for you.”

  “Steady on, Lindy. It’s just an invite to a party! It’s not as if the great Bargepole will even know I’m there!”

  “Yes, well, there are opportunities in every situation,” she said.

  She looked a bit flushed. I wondered if she was planning on using this fancy-smanchy party as an opportunity to seduce Colm.

  “You know, I think I’ll open this champagne after all,” she said. “You sure I can’t tempt you out of your good ways?” She lowered her head and did the old staring-up-through-fluttering-eyelashes thing at Colm, obviously prepared to use every trick in the book if she had to.

  “No. I’m fine, thanks.” Colm sounded distracted and vaguely annoyed.

  “Okay, then – have it your way! All the more for me!” She popped the bottle with a practised hand.

  “Andie is in the car too, you know.”

  Lindy flushed again, a much deeper shade this time. “Oh, of course. I just meant . . . that I’d have your share, that’s all. I know how fast Andie drinks – I’ve seen her in action, remember? It’s a pity I won’t be getting to see you in action today, Colm.”

  As she grudgingly poured a glass for me and handed it over, Colm threw his eyes up to heaven behind her back. I winked at him when Lindy wasn’t looking. Boy, he’d really have to watch himself today with her around . . .

  Chapter Fourteen

  The limo pulled up outside the newly opened five-star Lightning Hotel. I’d seen pictures of it everywhere since I first arrived in Vegas, but no image could do this place justice. It was striking, not only because of the silver model of forked lightning on the hotel’s roof that zigzagged its way three-hundred and fifty feet into the air, but because of its sheer scale – the hotel had over 4,500 suites spread over eight acres of prime Vegas land.

  “Isn’t it amazing? I’m soooo happy they’ve chosen this venue for the launch.”

  “It looks like an expensive venue to choose,” Colm said.

  “Oh, yes. Rick likes to make statements in everything he does.”

  “We could all make big statements if we were billionaires.” It was my turn to sound sulky. Lindy’s reverential tone when she spoke about Rick was getting on my nerves. She ignored me, being far too busy jumping out of the limousine without even thanking the driver, much less tipping him, to pay any heed to me. I grudgingly followed her, while Colm searched his pockets for the driver’s tip.

  A group of porters approached us in greeting as we made our way to the lobby. I half-expected them to offer to carry my handbag inside, such was their eagerness to please. Lindy dismissed them with a barely perceptible nod of her head, but I smiled a wide smile and asked them how they were, as if I’d known them for years. They looked discomfited at being asked anything about themselves, and looked at each other as if they were trying to work out how to deal with the situation. I moved on, not wanting to cause any trouble.

  “This way,” Lindy said, indicating a corridor that led to the hotel’s conference rooms. “We’re in the Staccato Room.”

  The corridor was so long that it could have done with an airport-style moving walkway (I made a mental note to look for a suggestions box in Reception later), and the Staccato was at the end of it. Once we entered the room, I blinked in disbelief.

  The Staccato was as big as some counties in Ireland. It was a mammoth banqueting area extending to the right of the entrance. Although a huge crowd of guests was already present, it was so spacious that if you lost someone in here, you might never see them again – which, given my track record, was a very likely possibility. When I looked around to take in all the details, I actually gasped. I’d noticed an aquarium on the wall to the left as soon as I’d entered the room, but when I took a second look, I saw that it extended upwards an
d ran the entire length and breadth of the ceiling, finishing its journey on the room’s opposite wall where another aquarium perfectly mirrored it (although the opposite wall was so far away that I could only just see it). Aquariums were nothing new – Vegas was swimming in them – but the scale of this one would make even the ocean weep. Every time I blinked, something new caught my eye and fought for my attention – the sweeping staircase that led to both indoor and outdoor balconies, the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked a huge lake at the back of the hotel, a tremendous floral arrangement in the centre of the room representing the most beautiful and prevalent flowers from all the continents of the world. A buffet that ran the length of the room in front of the windows was the only touch of normality in what felt like an alternate universe, but even that managed to look tantalising and exotic.

  Waiters criss-crossed my path as they glided around the room, eagerly refilling champagne glasses – but, all of a sudden, the crowds parted and people seemed to melt backwards into the walls. I was having serious suspicions about what was in those champagne bottles until I realised what was going on: our host was coming through. It seemed everyone wanted to lay eyes on the man who’d made so much money at such a young age, as if they were hoping that his good fortune might be infectious if they just saw him in the flesh. The fact that we were going to have to spend God knows how long staring at him up on a podium seemed to have escaped everybody’s awareness.

  Lindy pinched my arm so hard that I suspected her fingers met in the middle.

  “Isn’t he just gorgeous?”

  This, coming from the one that was lusting over Colm a while ago. “Has it been a while, Lindy?”

  “Oh, stop it, you vulgar thing!” Her face glazed over. “He’s something else!”

  I took a long hard look to see if I could work out what she saw in him. Okay, she might have had a point, if he was my type, but he wasn’t. All was fine in the looks department – thick black hair, sallow skin, way taller than average. But nothing turned me off as much as superiority complexes (it was on the pet-hate list), and this guy was looking around the room as if nobody else in it was worthy to be there. Cockiness seeped from him and lay on his shoulders like an invisible veil. It wasn’t all that invisible to me – but I seemed to be the only one who could see it, if the adoring and admiring glances around the room were anything to go by.

  “Fucking tosspot,” Colm whispered in my ear as he pointed his camera in Rick’s direction.

  I turned around and gave Colm the biggest smile I’d ever given him – or perhaps it was the only one, I wasn’t sure. He winked back at me, mirroring the wink I’d sent his way in the limo.

  A huge round of applause went up as Rick made his way up to a jewel-encrusted podium. He greeted the crowd, then instantly launched into a monologue of how great it was that he was launching this site, how it would be the answer to the world’s problems, and how he had just found the cure for cancer. Probably. I don’t know, I stopped listening after he said hello. I went in search of one of those waiters and their hugely inviting trays.

  “It’s times like this that I wish I drank,” Colm said when I returned.

  Rick was meandering on about making your own opportunities and using the gifts God had given you, repeating the same points over and over as if nobody would notice. Someone should have given him the gift of a stopwatch.

  “You will drink by the end of his speech,” I said.

  “And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for . . . I’m ready to announce the winner of our hunt for the Face of People Search. The winner is someone that nobody knew up until recently, but now her name is the one on everyone’s lips. I think she’s shown us that when it comes to finding the one you love, you should use every resource available to you – and trust me, ladies and gentlemen, we’re the best resource of them all. So, without further ado, the lucky lady joining our winning team, and the official Face of People Search, is . . . Ms Andie Appleton!”

  “Yes!” Lindy punched the air.

  “Oh my Gawd, isn’t she that weirdo from Ireland that’s stalking the guy from Arizona?” someone behind me said.

  “Well done, Andie! I’m so proud of you!” Lindy was shrieking.

  I looked around in confusion at everyone gawping at me. “Hold on, there must be some mistake . . .”

  “No, no, no, you’ve won!” muttered Lindy. “Oh wow, what a prize this is!”

  The only prize that I could see was myself – a prize idiot who hadn’t the first clue what was going on. “I didn’t enter this competition!”

  “I enturrd dit for yoo.” It was hard to make out Lindy’s words while she kept a huge smile on her face and spoke through gritted teeth, but I got the gist of it. She’d entered me in this without even asking me!

  “For God’s sake, Lindy! You could have told me!”

  “Come on up, Andie!” Rick flashed a menacing smile at me.

  “I’m grand where I am!” I yelled back at Rick, feeling too blown away by this development to be able to move. What was I supposed to say if I went up on stage?

  A few nervous titters could be heard in the audience. Rick’s face hardened, then he pulled the fakest smile I’ve ever seen out of the bag – it made Lindy’s ones seem amateurish.

  “We’ve got a shy one here, folks!” More nervous titters. “Looks like I’ll have to come down to get you!”

  “No, you’re grand where you are too . . .” My voice was lost amid the sound of clapping as Rick left the podium and stormed down towards me, the crowd parting before him again. He grabbed me and tugged me forward by the arm, with Lindy pushing me from behind like a car that had broken down. It felt like the singing incident all over again as I suddenly found myself standing on the stage.

  “Here she is, everyone – the new Face of People Search! And what a beautiful face! How do you feel?”

  “Like a magician’s assistant,” I said truthfully as I looked down at myself all dolled up in my best dress.

  “Oh, listen to her, folks,” Rick said, poking a finger in my ribs. “She’s already sucking up to the boss! Calling me a magician, indeed!” Titters all round. “But hey, I’ve been called worse! So, Andie, how do you feel about being the winner of our three-month contract? Are you thrilled?”

  I shrugged. “I would have expected a tiara to go with this prize, to be honest.”

  “Isn’t she a riot, guys?” This time, he punched a fist in my ribs, guffawing as he did so. The warnings were getting clearer.

  What I couldn’t believe though was that anyone would take this twat seriously, with his game-show-host-for-the-over-60s style. He might have been clever, rich and good-looking, but he had a charm-deficit that no amount of money could fix.

  And, to make matters worse, it seemed that it was time for part two of The Great Monologue. I stood beside him and smiled triumphantly as faces started to glaze over within the first few minutes. I had a feeling this was a networking event for most of the crowd, and while they wanted to be here because Rick was hot stuff within the social-networking industry, they didn’t necessarily want to hear him spouting on about how he’d capitalised on his breaks and made himself very rich unless he was telling them exactly how they could do it too – which he wasn’t. He was, in a word, boasting, and the crowd clearly wanted to get back to the business of making contacts. Arms extended frantically whenever a waiter passed but Rick was oblivious to the boredom in the room as he waxed lyrical about how great he was, how great his product was and how great the world would be now that it had People Search in it. Families would be reunited, children would be born as a result of lost loves finding each other – hell, the site would surely even put an end to wars all over the world. I felt sorry for Jerry Springer, whose show would surely be defunct and decommissioned after Rick’s product was unleashed on the world and put it to rights.

  It wasn’t long before I’d had enough of standing on the stage beside Rick with absolutely nothing to do and no part to play in proceedings
as he waffled on.

  “Sorry to interrupt, but could I possibly get a chair, Rick? My legs are killing me, standing here for so long.”

  Rick turned his head very, very, very slowly towards me. Now, I wasn’t easily intimidated, having spent so long dealing with Isolde and her strops, but this was one intimidating head-turn. It took so long that I had time to glance down at the audience and note a few looks of fear for my health and safety. It was also long enough to clock a look of pure rage from Lindy, who, no doubt, was furious at me for cocking up all of her hard work with my cheekiness. But I couldn’t help myself – although I knew Rick could potentially be the one who held the key to reuniting me with Leon, it just wasn’t in my nature to allow myself to be treated like an idiot. Rick had invited me up on stage and then blanked me and left me to rot while he talked about himself, and I wasn’t going to let him away with it. Rick gave me the full force of a horrible, hate-filled stare. It only lasted a millisecond before he put on his gameshow-host façade again – but it was long enough to get the message across that he was marking my cards.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for me to take this lovely lady away and let her commence her duties. But before I do, I’d like you all to raise your glasses and toast People Search!”