Bliss Page 9

  Before long, she realized the limo was headed toward a white building that towered over all the others around it. Its roof was a golden, gleaming dome. She recognized the structure from Hangover III and her pretrip googling as the Tower Club, one of the architectural jewels of the city. The limo pulled to a stop at the hotel’s curb. The driver said, “You go up. Mr. Charlie wait for you.”

  “Up there?” she asked.

  He bowed and said, “Sky Bar.”

  She couldn’t go to the most expensive club in Bangkok looking like cat puke. “I need to change.” Her suitcase was in the limo trunk.

  “Okay,” said the driver, nodding, not moving.

  “My lug-gage,” she spoke slowly.

  He smiled and bowed. “Okay.”

  She rolled her eyes and banged the trunk door with the palm of her hand, then pantomimed carrying a suitcase. Sometimes Leandra hated how entitled she should be, but if she didn’t fend for herself no one else would. The driver finally got it, and opened the trunk. She rummaged through her new things for a no-label silk shirtdress in electric blue and strappy sandals—nowhere near her usual standards, but they’d have to do—and her new makeup kit. After half an hour in the backseat, she was presentable.

  The driver liked her quick change. “Okay!” he said.

  Idiot, she thought, turning on her heel and leaving him on the street. A woman in a traditional one-shoulder Thai red dress bowed at her as she entered the soft-lit lobby. “How do you get to the top floor?” she asked.

  The woman took her to a private elevator, ushered her in, and used a key card to access the button that said “Sky Bar.” Then she stepped out of the elevator backward, bowing. The door closed and Leandra was whisked sixty-eight stories up, to the top. As she exited the elevator, the golden dome loomed on the other side of the roof between her and a candlelit expanse of tables and chairs.

  She walked through the restaurant, scanning the faces for a fat American banker. She got all the way to the end of the roof, where a circular bar glowed pink, then blue, then green, the three bartenders in the center mixing neon yellow and purple cocktails. Bangkok was a shimmering blanket of diamonds spread out below her. Three days at sea level were more than enough. She preferred to be here, at the apex of the Southeast Asian universe.

  Sometimes, destination kicked journey’s ass.

  “Leandra?”

  She turned and saw a slim, sexy, nattily dressed man in a gray suit at the bar, beaming at her with unabashed joy.

  “Charlie?” Couldn’t be.

  He wrapped her in a hug. She melted into it. The guy’s chest was hard as oak, and it’d been awhile since someone looked that happy to see her. “I’m so relieved you got here safely,” he said.

  “Thanks to you,” she said, giving him her wide-eyed my-hero blink.

  “Sit down,” he said, gesturing to a stool at the bar. While he ordered them drinks, she checked out his bod. Excellent shoulders. Nice, hard ass. She could seriously chow down on it.

  The bartender brought over her drink, a concoction called a Hangovertini. He raised his glass of what appeared to be orange juice, and said, “To your safe landing.” They toasted and drank.

  “Beautiful spot,” she said. “We’re so high up.”

  “It’s a status thing in Bangkok. The higher the better. Whoever builds the highest hotel, with the highest bar, wins. The latest thing is the highest swimming pool.”

  “It is such a rush to look down on all the little people,” she said, a mischievous, snotty glint in her eye. Charlie seemed confused. Oops. He didn’t approve of classist humor. “I mean, they’re just so small down there! Like ants.”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “So,” Leandra purred, “when did we last see each other? Five years ago?”

  “Four,” he said. “I’d just graduated from Columbia Business School. I didn’t want to go to that party, but my mom insisted. And then you walked into the room. You were a high school senior, visiting New York with your parents. I stared at you all night. Hope I didn’t seem threatening.”

  He’d been as threatening as a bowl of raw dough. “You look different,” she observed.

  “I was a bit heavier then,” he said. “I transferred here two years ago for work, and got into Muay Thai.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s like Thai karate. I started taking classes, and the pounds just fell off.”

  “You lost weight beating people up?”

  “It’s a discipline, lots of training and mental sharpness. I compete on the lowest amateur level. You fight with every body part, fists, shins, elbows. You should see the pros go at it; they’re like killer spiders. It’s brutal.”

  That sounded like something she’d pay not to see. But if this sport turned Charlie into a hottie, it couldn’t be all bad. She sipped her drink and studied him over her glass, so glad she made the quick change in the limo before she came up. “Tell me more about how you use every body part,” she said.

  * * *

  Three drinks later, Leandra was sitting on Charlie’s lap, taking a selfie. “I’m sending this to my mom so she knows we hooked up. I mean, met up.”

  He tensed beneath her. “Or hooked up.”

  “The night is young, and so are we.”

  “And rich,” he added, much to her delight. “Don’t forget that.”

  How could Leandra forget that?

  “So, when you battle some guy, do you just tear his head off? Is there blood? Do they mop up between rounds?”

  “You amaze me,” he said, gazing at her worshipfully (as he damn well should). “A lot of girls are turned off by the combat stuff.”

  “Are you kidding? It’s only the coolest thing in the world!” Leandra had less than zero interest in contact sports. Sophia and Demi had dragged her to a few hockey games under duress. Boxing? She’d attend a match to sit in a VIP box with an open bar and free unlimited shrimp cocktail, and only if she were fucking the winner.

  He turned serious for a second, and then confessed, “You were my inspiration to change, you know. I really wanted to talk to you at that party, but I was afraid you’d blow me off because of how I looked.”

  “Not true,” she said. She would have blown him off for how he dressed, too.

  “I thought of you a lot over the years as this gorgeous girl who got away. You’re even more gorgeous tonight, by the way. Considering what you’d been through, I thought you’d show up in a T-shirt and flip-flops.”

  “I always try to look my best, even on the plane,” she said. “It’s just common courtesy.”

  “You probably look flawless when you wake up.”

  “Only one way to find out,” she said.

  Leandra did pause, briefly, to weigh her options. Jumping into bed with Nick was what got her into this mess in the first place. But Charlie wasn’t a stranger. Their mothers were friends. She didn’t owe him anything more than a hearty “thanks,” some light flirtation, and a heartfelt promise to repay his kindness. Or, she could dig in a little deeper. He was hot and loaded, and he spoke Thai. She was in Bangkok and in need of a place to stay, some walk-around money, and a translator.

  He asked, “Are you serious?”

  “Tell me more about the highest pool in Bangkok. Is it part of a hotel, like this bar? Can anyone go see it?”

  “No, not everyone,” he said.

  “Oh.”

  “But we can. My bank keeps a suite at the Rama Grand for international clients. Give me five minutes to see if it’s occupied.” He took out his phone.

  “I’ll run to the ladies’,” she said, hopping off his lap.

  In the bathroom, she took off her panties and threw them in the garbage. She could’ve pulled the classic move of walking back to Charlie and putting them in his hand. But her undies were cheap and awful, not fit for his eyes. Better to wear nothing and give Charlie a very pleasant surprise. Leandra guessed it’d take him approximately fifteen minutes—the length of time to get down the eleva
tor and into the limo—to find out.

  It actually took three. As soon as the elevator doors closed, he went for it, gasping when he touched bare skin. Between the sixty-eighth and fifty-third floors, she knew she had this guy in the palm of her hand.

  Since then, Leandra had been living in a two-thousand-square-foot suite at the Rama Grand, pampering herself by day, and lavishing sexual goodies on Charlie by night. His boss was cool about letting Charlie’s out-of-town guest stay for the first week of her time in town. But at the top of week two, Charlie came home with bad news.

  “A British client arrives tomorrow,” he told her while they snuggled in the afterglow. “We have to leave.”

  “But it’s our home,” she pouted. “This is where we first fell in…”

  Charlie’s eyes burned into hers. “In what?”

  She blushed, embarrassed for him. “Fell in love,” she whispered, and slowly lifted her eyes from his chest to his lips.

  An hour later, Charlie put his AmEx Platinum card on file at the front desk, and Leandra moved her rapidly expanding wardrobe into the identical suite next door, where she’d been loving life, and “loving” Charlie, for nine days. She wasn’t exactly sure what it cost to stay in the suite. But price wasn’t her concern. As long as she made Charlie happy, he’d keep her comfortable.

  At noon, Leandra left the pool, and met her favorite masseuse for her daily Swedish rub. She tried a Thai massage, but it was like being twisted into a pretzel, not a sensual pleasure at all. When her rub was over, the masseuse bowed out of the room, and Leandra settled in for her afternoon nap. It’d be hours before the limo arrived to take her to whatever restaurant Charlie picked for them tonight.

  Just as she was nodding off, the suite door opened, and Charlie appeared in the bedroom. Finding her naked in bed, he sighed and smiled dreamily at her. “This is what I want to see every day for the rest of my life when I come home,” he said.

  Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, she thought. To distract him from sentimentality, she patted the bed. “Come on in,” she said.

  “I wish I could. But we have to check out in an hour.”

  She bolted upright. “What?”

  “My AmEx is maxed out.”

  “It’s Platinum!”

  “The limit is thirty thousand per month.”

  Had she drained him of that much? In only two weeks? Oh, well. They’d just have to bridge the gap for the next two weeks until his AmEx was good again.

  “Do you have another card?” she asked.

  “I don’t,” he said. “But that doesn’t matter. I’ve sorted it all out. The Thai people are pretty conservative, so they don’t let unmarried people share rental apartments. So I bought us a house! A colleague at work was transferred back to New York, and he needed to sell quickly. Furniture, dishes, cooking and cleaning stuff, everything. We closed this morning and it’s ready for us to move in.”

  Leandra blanched. Move into a house? With dishes and pots and pans, and act like some boring married couple? “Leave here? Where we fell in…”

  “And move into our first real home, where we’ll start the rest of our lives together.” He jumped on the bed and gathered her up in his arms. “Are you as happy as I am?”

  “Holy fuck,” she said. Even people on The Bachelor didn’t fall in love this quickly.

  “I know! Our dreams are coming true.”

  7

  what if i pretend to give a shit?

  Demi sat at their usual table at Opus, her back to the door, with her friends. Shortly after ordering their first round, Sarah’s eyes got wide, and then she ducked low in her chair and hid her face with a hand over her eyes. “Don’t look,” she said. “James just walked in.”

  Demi’s spine turned to ice. She froze in place, and didn’t dare twist around. Eve and Jo snapped their heads to look, and then bent low over their wine.

  Jo said, “He looks good. Who’s that girl he’s with? She’s a fucking eleven.” A strangled whimper nearly escaped Demi’s lips, but she held it in.

  “He’s getting closer,” whispered Eve.

  “Like ten steps away,” said Jo, her voice rising.

  It was happening, now. Demi had been dreading her first post-breakup encounter with James. She’d been preparing for it, too, trying to build self-esteem via mirror selfie. Humiliating to admit. Demi also posted a hundred pictures on Instagram in the last month. In every one, she looked like she was having the time of her life, going out every night, closing the place, raising a glass. She posted pics of her pregame primping, with duck face, and artful shots of cocktail glasses lined up on the bar, group shots of all her pals with their heads pressed together, a pose Sarah called “The Lice Spreader.” Demi did love a good head lilt. According to her social media postings, Demi was having the time of her life, and looking great doing it.

  It might’ve come off as “trying too hard.” Demi didn’t give two shits. It made her feel better, for now.

  The objective of her post-breakup social campaign was to make James see what he was missing. Her “I don’t need you!” Instagram feed would show him that (1) she didn’t miss him, (2) her life was more fun now than it ever was when they were together, and (3) if he hadn’t been a cheating, lying douche, he would still be part of her fabulous life (that his parting gift was still funding). Demi posted nightly selfies with hot guys, including cryptic captions, subtle stuff like “You have my [heart emoticon]!” Should he feel jealous about them, good. Should she feel embarrassed about them? No. Eventually? Hell, yes.

  Her secret objective (which she admitted only in her heart of hearts and would have denied if tortured) was to lure him back to her. She’d made it easy for him to find her, always going to the same place, at around the same time, enabling locations. She checked daily; James was defs still following her online. But he hadn’t yet followed her in real life. Until now.

  “He’s right behind you,” whispered Sarah, glancing at the space over Demi’s head.

  Demi took a big swallow of liquid courage, put on a smile, and turned around to face … no one. No James, no one at all. She turned back to her friends, who were now laughing hysterically.

  “You got me,” said Demi graciously, casually, of the group joke on her. Inside, she was livid.

  “You should have seen your face!” said Sarah. “It was priceless. You nearly shit yourself.”

  “I nearly bolted!” she said. “He’s the last person on Earth I’d want to walk in here tonight.”

  “Oh, please,” said Jo.

  Demi said, “Okay, you’re right. He’s the second to last.”

  “Who’s the last?” asked Eve.

  “My boss.”

  Maya had been furious with Demi about the permit thing. Demi couldn’t blame her. Turned out, Maya had been such a nag about Demi getting the alcohol permit that day for a reason. To be valid, it had to be issued twenty-one days prior to the event. So when Demi showed up the next morning bright and early, crack o’ dawn, to get it, it was a day too late. If Maya had made that painfully clear, Demi wouldn’t have put it off. But she and Catherine had gotten to talking. One Bailey’s and coffee turned into two, and then it was too late. Maya straightened it out, greasing a few wheels. She started triple checking Demi’s call log, reading emails and counting expenses to the penny. It was humiliating.

  After lunch today, Demi had come back to the office to find Maya sitting in her chair. “This has got to stop.”

  “I’ll be on time from now on.”

  “You’re making my job harder. I’m not going to pay you to screw things up anymore.”

  Demi should have seen it coming. The ice had been getting thinner, and thinner. Then crackkkk. It happened. She was getting fired.

  Maya got on with it. “It’s not only how hungover you are every day, or how slobby and lazy that makes you. You don’t really care about First @ Second. You don’t! It’s obvious. Your apathy pisses me off, and anger is draining.”

  “What if I pretend to
give a shit?” Demi asked, grinning.

  It was supposed to be funny! A little jest to lighten the mood. But Maya’s face turned to stone. There was no point in apologizing or begging for another chance. The horse had left the barn. Demi collected her personal things—not much, surprisingly, considering her years of service. Maya watching her like a hawk, like she’d swipe a precious stapler. It was unnecessary and insulting. Demi drove right home to the death trap, and baked a quiche with Catherine, so the day wasn’t a total loss.

  Maya was right about the constant hangovers. They were making Demi a bit slow on the uptake. With a margarita in her hand, she thought, Tomorrow, I’m not drinking at all. She had to detox, clean out her system of alcohol, negativity, and reunion fantasies about James. Enough with the heartbreak and grieving. She used it as an excuse to get wasted and suck at work. It wasn’t James she grieved for, but the routine of their lives together. She’d organized her life and thoughts around him. With him gone, Demi didn’t know what to do with herself. Without her job, such as it was, she lost the only thing that gave her life structure.

  To Sarah, Demi corrected herself. “My ex-boss.”

  “You’re really racking up the exes lately,” said Eve.

  It was true, but who the fuck was Eve to say that? The implication was that Demi’s life was falling apart. It was fine for Demi to make jokes about it. But her friends should be trying to lift her spirits, not make her feel worse.

  “I’m getting another drink,” said Demi.

  “Get me one, too,” said Sarah.

  “Fuck off. Get your own.”

  “We were just kidding.”

  “And I’m just leaving, no big deal.” Demi pushed away from the table. She could tell Sarah was relieved to see her go. She was halfway to the bar, and she knew they were already talking behind her back, saying what a sensitive, prissy bitch she was being. They could talk about her all night. She had no intention of going back to their table.