Diplomatic Immunity

by Brodi Ashton

  “And then the ambassador comes in, and he’s all, ‘That urn was priceless!’ And the security guy whispers something in his ear. And then the ambassador stops yelling and says, ‘Perhaps we should all adjourn to the drawing room.’ Then he tells his assistant to get me a cool cloth, and before we leave the room, Raf tells his guard to ‘get rid of that’ and points to my dumb-ass boyfriend.” She laughed at the memory, as if Raf had simply helped her carry her books one day. “Then he says, ‘I can hurt him more if you want.’”

  “What did you say?” I asked.

  “Well, what if you had the chance to teach an older guy that smacking younger girls is not okay?”

  “Hmmm,” I said, twirling a fry in the air. “I wouldn’t ask for permanent damage, but I’d definitely maim a little.”

  She clicked her tongue. “I guess that’s where you and I are pas compatible. You’re nicer.”

  And that kind of left me speechless for a minute. So I changed the subject. “Why do you think Raf does the things he does?”

  Giselle took a sip of her sparkling water. “You mean the fighting?”

  “And scaling national monuments and breaking wrists and such.”

  “I don’t know. I think that’s why he likes being around me. I don’t ask why.”

  We ate the rest of our food in silence, and I thanked the universe when the bell rang.

  Raf found me afterward. “How did it go with Giselle?”

  “Fine. We’re . . .” I paused, trying to figure out how to finish that sentence. We weren’t exactly friends. So I said, “We’re friendly. Now. A little. She told me about how you guys became friends.”

  “Oh, yeah. The plane. That story is epic.”

  “Wait, what plane?”

  “Wait, what story did she tell you?” Raf looked confused.

  “About a college boyfriend?”

  “Ah. Yeah. That one is epic too.”

  “What’s the story about the plane?”

  The late bell rang.

  “I’ll have to tell you later. But it involves Giselle taking her dad’s plane, because she was halfway through her piloting course, but she froze when it came time to land. So I stepped in.”

  “You knew how to land it?”

  “No. But I saw it in a movie once.”

  I rubbed my forehead.

  “Don’t hurt yourself, Pip.”

  I nodded.

  “So what’s the verdict on tonight?”

  “I’m working at the Yogurt Shop until nine.”

  “Okay, we’ll pick you up there.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “The embassy.”

  “Won’t your dad be there?”

  “Nope. He’s out of town. Nine o’clock?”

  I must have looked wary, because he pressed on.

  “C’mon, Pip. I promise I’ll tell you all my secrets.”

  I couldn’t resist that.

  Maybe I should’ve felt a little guilty about meeting Raf to get his secrets, but the fact that I was still being hidden from his dad helped make up for it. At ten minutes to nine, I sang my last song for tips—“Story of My Life,” where we added “yogurt” after the line “and time is frozen”—and during the middle of it, Raf walked through the door, looking like he’d gotten lost on the way to a GQ photo shoot.

  He smiled as I hit my big finish. Charlotte wasn’t working tonight, thank goodness.

  Then he reached into his pocket and produced a twenty-dollar bill. “Where’s the tip jar?”

  My other coworker, Seth, looked hungrily at the bill, but I said, “Uh, we’re closed. Seth, this is Raf. Raf, Seth.”

  The two of them did that ’sup nod with their heads as I untied the back of my apron. Then I followed Raf outside and straight into a limo.

  “You didn’t tell me you sang,” he said.

  “I don’t.”

  “What do you mean? You have a beautiful voice.” His lips trembled.

  “The people with the good voices don’t get nearly the tips I do,” I said.

  “So they are pity tips?”

  “Hey, it works.”

  The limo pulled into the drive of the Spanish embassy, and when we got out, Raf tried to take my hand, but I shoved it into my jacket pocket. I could justify holding his hand when there was streaming water nearby, but now it felt wrong, because of his girlfriend.

  Raf frowned.

  I looked up at the ornate building. “This is a nice view, but I’ve seen it before.”

  “This is not the view I was talking about.”

  We went inside and Raf whisked me up a set of stairs, then another set of stairs and then a smaller set of stairs. I only had time to think about how I was slightly out of shape for a moment before we went through a metal door that opened to the roof of the embassy.

  And the best view of Washington, DC, I’d ever seen. From the rooftop, there was a clear view of the cross-shaped Mall, with the Capitol building on one end, all the way to the Washington Monument in the middle, and the Lincoln Memorial on the other end. Finishing the cross were the White House on the north and the Jefferson Memorial on the south.

  Raf led me to a couple of lounge chairs, not the cheap plastic kind you find at a hotel swimming pool but the more expensive ones that felt like they were made of velvet but could weather any . . . weather.

  He pushed two of them together, and it didn’t seem like any words were needed with a view like this. We flopped down into the chairs and gazed at the lit-up Mall. Soft French jazz floated through the air from hidden speakers somewhere. “La Vie en Rose,” I thought. Somebody in a black uniform came through the door and walked over to us with a bottle and two glasses. He poured the pink sparkly stuff and set it down on a table next to us and left without saying anything else.

  “What do you think, Pip?” Raf said.

  “I think I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  He pointed toward the west. “If you squint hard, you can see Iwo Jima.”

  I squinted into the distance and could barely make out the statue of the six marines who raised the American flag during the Second World War.

  “Somebody once told me that if you look closely, there’s an extra leg in that statue,” I said, taking a sip of sangria.

  Raf chuckled. “Maybe when we get a better look, we’ll count.”

  He placed his hand, palm up, in the space between us. And I just stared at it.

  “How is Michael?” Raf said.

  “He’s good.”

  “I really like him.” He smiled. “My favorite part was when we were in your kitchen and he was telling me how he can’t wait to ‘make someone.’”

  I nodded, feeling a little warm from the inside out. One of the uniforms had brought us a blanket, protecting us from the chill in the air.

  “Yeah, I love the way his brain works,” I said. We were quiet for a moment and I looked at his hand again and didn’t take it. “Can I ask you something?”

  “You can ask me anything. Free pass.”

  “Hmm. What to do with a free pass. Gotten any black eyes lately?” I said.

  “Nope,” Raf said.

  “Scaled any monuments?”

  “Nope.”

  “Broken any laws?”

  “Not today.”

  “Why did you punch that guy at the party?”

  This made him pause. “He was a jerk to Alejandro. Years ago, when Al was at Chiswick. He was partly right when he said it was ancient history, but that didn’t mean I wanted him in my house.”

  I nodded. “So you punched him.”

  “He had it coming. For years.” He shifted so he was facing me. “Does this stuff scare you?”

  I thought for a moment of the blood on his face that night and the image of him falling from the pillar at the monument. “A little.”

  “When I was a boy, I went to this boarding school, and I would hang out with this one kid Mark, who was bigger and tougher than me. And we got into a fair amount of trouble. This o
ne time, we broke a window at school, and I got caught, and the headmistress took a stick and rapped my knuckles.”

  “They can still do that?”

  “It’s a boarding school. They get away with a lot of shit. So my knuckles were swollen and I kept complaining to Mark about how much they hurt. And suddenly he winds up and punches me in my gut.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. But then, as I’m doubled over and trying to catch my breath, he’s all, ‘Bet you don’t feel your knuckles now.’ And he was right.”

  He poured himself another drink.

  “You look for danger so you don’t feel the pain that’s already there?”

  He shrugged. “It’s a way to cope,” he said.

  “It’s a stupid way to cope.”

  He turned to me. “Why?”

  “Because sure, pain can be masked by greater pain, but other feelings will be masked as well. Like joy and peace. And love. And I think it would be stupid to mask those.”

  He smiled. Wide.

  “Why are you smiling? I just said you’re stupid.”

  “It’s one of my favorite things about you. You’re not scared to say what you really think. Remember that time in the hallway when you didn’t hold back about how much you disapproved of my lifestyle?”

  My cold cheeks went warm. “Uh, yeah. I said I was sorry.”

  “That was the first time I thought, it hurt, but for a moment I could focus on that pain and forget about other pain.”

  “So, you’re saying my words to you were like a punch in the gut?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Hmm. How do I have any friends?”

  He laughed. “I keep telling people to give you a chance. I say, ‘Be friends with Pip. She’s like a fist to the gut.’”

  I smiled and then we lay there in silence for a while. Somehow, in the time since we’d started talking, the bottle of sangria was empty, and my insides were warm and gooey.

  “What are you going to do after you graduate?” I said. “Join the sangria business?”

  He took a sip before answering. “My father is on the board of directors at IE Law School in Spain. So after I graduate, I’ll go there. Study law. Get into politics.”

  “Sounds like your dad has it all planned out.”

  He frowned and nodded. “He does.”

  “What about chemistry?” I said.

  “What about it?”

  “You love it.”

  He sighed and looked up at the sky. “I want to study chemistry, which would be useful in the sangria business, because I have some ideas, but my dad would never go for it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it doesn’t involve ruling Spain.”

  “So? It’s your life.”

  “But it’s his money.”

  “Are you afraid of making it on your own?” There went my filter.

  Raf frowned. “Tell me something, Pip. Do you save any harsh truths for yourself? Or just for others?”

  “I probably share my harsh truths with others so I don’t have to look at my own.”

  “What are some harsh truths of yours, Pipper Baird? Good grades. Columbia bound. Will probably one day save the world through journalism. What are your harsh truths?”

  I thought for a moment. “Sometimes when I’m doing homework, I have the air-conditioning on and a space heater at my feet. At the same time.”

  Raf nodded. “Global warming be damned. What else?”

  I thought for a moment more. “Sometimes I’m jealous of Michael, because he doesn’t have to pretend to be anyone.”

  Raf smiled. “These are things that just make you even more likable.”

  I blushed.

  “Tell me the real stuff. The harshest truth.”

  I don’t know if it was the drink or the night or what, but I started talking.

  “I lie. I have no hesitation lying to get a story. And I don’t feel bad about it.” He stayed quiet and watched me as I fidgeted with the edge of the blanket. “And I wonder why I don’t feel bad about it. Does that scare you?” I said.

  “Do you lie to me?” he said.

  Crap. “No,” I said, and I could taste the lie in my mouth.

  “You don’t scare me, Pip,” he said.

  “My mouth can run away with me.”

  “I love staring at your mouth. Even when it’s calling me stupid.”

  There was that warm gooey feeling again. He was sucking me in. I shook my head because . . . Giselle’s face.

  “Wait. What are you doing?” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, why am I here and not Giselle? You can’t tell me it’s because she hates rooftops. Or views.”

  “Nope. She hates heights.”

  “No, she doesn’t!” My outburst was louder than I’d meant it to be. Maybe I cared about why I was here and she wasn’t more than I’d thought. I wanted him to have a good reason why I was here and she wasn’t, and I wanted it to have to do with Raf’s feelings.

  He turned toward me in his lounge chair. “The truth is, I like you. You are ambitious and hilarious and quirky, and I can’t get over the fact that you talk to paintings, and you have this daredevil streak that you work really hard to keep hidden—”

  “I’m not a daredevil. I’d never even had detention until that first day of school.”

  He leaned closer. “You let me show you the back side of water, and I know you were scared of falling yet you went over the edge. Don’t tell me you’re not a daredevil.”

  “Falling is not my biggest fear.”

  “What is your biggest fear?”

  I looked away and back to the lights twinkling in the city. I took a deep breath. “A crazed man with a gun to my head ranks pretty high. Being caught in an avalanche. Topping the list, though, is probably mayonnaise that’s been left out of the fridge for too long.”

  “Huh?”

  “You have no idea what the little things growing inside it can do to the human body.”

  He laughed.

  “Yeah, you think it’s funny now, until you have to live with your colon in a bag attached to your hip.”

  “Ew.”

  Mental note: if you’re hoping for the possibility of romance, don’t bring up bagged colons attached to hips.

  “See, this is what I mean,” he said. “Who says that? Moreover, who looks cute while saying that?”

  Never mind about the mental note.

  “You think I’m cute?”

  And that’s when he leaned forward and his lips were close to my lips and my heart was all aflutter and then Giselle’s face was in my head again.

  I put my hand on his chest. “No.”

  “What?”

  “I know it’s not a word you hear very often, but no.”

  He looked confused. “It seems like I hear it from you all the time.”

  “Do you think that just because your dad cheats . . .” My voice trailed off as Raf’s face fell. I couldn’t believe I’d taken something he’d shared like that and thrown it at him.

  “I have to go.” I sprang from the lounge chair, throwing the blanket to the side, and even though my head was a little bit woozy, I quickly made my way to the rooftop door and then every time I saw a staircase, I went down, farther and farther, until I found the opulent entryway.

  By this time, Raf had almost caught up. “Wait, Pip, it’s not what you think!”

  “I doubt that she would say that,” I said over my shoulder.

  Just as I reached for the handle of the entrance, the door swung open and in walked Raf’s dad.

  “Papa,” Raf said, obviously surprised, and not in a good way.

  “Hello . . . Pipper, was it?” His dad frowned.

  Raf stopped trying to prevent me from leaving, and that’s when I knew I really had to get out of there.

  I blew through the front door and said to the driver waiting by the town car, “Take me home. Now and fast.”

  31

  My pare
nts were waiting for me in the kitchen when I got home. They hadn’t waited up for me in a long time. I started to worry.

  “Hey, Pipe,” my dad said.

  My mom kept her gaze on the table.

  “What’s going on?”

  “How was your date?” Dad said.

  I looked at him skeptically. “That’s not why you both stayed up, is it? To ask me how my date was?”

  My dad sighed and rested his head in the palm of his hand. “We need to talk to you about something.”

  My mom raised her head.

  “You probably know how our finances have been tight.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Well, we’re behind on the mortgage. Our salaries haven’t been able to keep up with our debt. And it’s getting to the point where they’re going to have to foreclose. Which means moving.”

  “Moving where?” I said.

  My mom looked at my dad. “Cleveland,” he said.

  I felt a stab to my heart. “Ohio? What’s in Cleveland?”

  “A new job,” my dad said. “And a lower cost of living.”

  “When would this happen?”

  My parents exchanged looks. “Soon,” my dad said.

  I took a few deep breaths. “I would have to leave Chiswick,” I said. Not a question.

  My dad nodded.

  “How can we stay?” I said.

  “I’m not sure we can,” my dad said.

  “Chiswick is my future. I can’t give it up.” I closed my eyes for a moment and then opened them. “How can we stay here until the end of the year?”

  My dad looked at my mom again, and suddenly I knew.

  “You need to drain my savings.”

  “We are not going to do that,” my mom said.

  I tilted my head. “You need to drain the money that was earmarked for my college tuition.”

  My dad shook his head. “It would buy us some time with the bank, but it’s not enough to make a significant dent in our money troubles.”

  “I know.” It wasn’t enough to make a dent in my tuition, let alone a dent in my parents’ debt. “How long have you known about this?”

  They were quiet for a long moment before my dad answered, “A while. We’ve tried everything.”

  “What about Gramma Weeza?”

  “She lives on social security,” my dad said.

  “But what if I lived with her?”