At Any Price

Chapter Seven

The week dragged on and I muddled through hospital shifts and blog posts and studying a little more grudgingly than I had before. The dream of Amsterdam was a distant memory, like the glitter falling off a cheap knockoff souvenir brought back as a memento of an otherworldly vacation. I’d only been out of the country for forty-eight hours, including travel—but I knew I wanted to go back, and very soon.

I continued taking the birth control pills and bought a few back copies of Cosmo to read up on their “great sex” articles, all the while realizing how ridiculous it was to use pop culture as sex education. Until the trip to Holland, I’d never been concerned with having to please a partner. But now, I was determined to make him feel as good as he had made me feel in those few moments when we had been kissing and touching.

Two days before the dinner party, a box arrived from the Netherlands. I opened it up to find all three gowns that were hanging in the wardrobe in my room in Amsterdam. I gasped. The card inside said only, Wear one of these Friday.

Since he’d already seen me in the breathtaking black, I chose the long crème-colored one. It had a halter top that looped around my neck and it, too, was backless. This dress, though long, felt like it exposed me more and I couldn’t explain why. It was an extremely feminine dress, with a full, creased skirt of gauzy material—the kind that Marilyn Monroe wore when her dress famously blew upward over the air grate in Some Like it Hot.

There were also matching shoes for this dress and the selection of lingerie. Since a bra was again not possible, I selected a tiny pair of lace white panties and left everything else in the box.

My landlady, Lupe, came up with Alex and together they tried to pry my secrets out of me while they worked my hair into an elegant updo.

At one point Alex whispered to me that her sister had seen my mystery guy too, and labeled him “totally yummy.”

I agreed with her. I had tasted him. And he was, indeed, delectable. But there was a dark edge that I had no idea how to describe. Like the bitter cocoa powder sprinkled on the outside of a rich chocolate truffle. Perhaps it just brought nuance to his flavor. Or maybe it threatened to ruin an otherwise scrumptious dish.

As the week had worn on, I couldn’t stop thinking about that bullying story. For it to have been so severe, so brutal as to merit a lawsuit, multiple arrests and a couple of write-ups in the paper made it serious in the extreme. My heart went out to him. I was unable to even imagine what that must have been like.

Except I could. After my assault, I’d feared the possibility of being bullied if I stood up and spoke out for myself. I’d never found the courage to do it.

I examined myself in the mirror, avoiding my own eyes and that whispered word at the back of my thoughts that sounded a lot like coward.

With the dress, the updo and the careful application of makeup, I’d spent more time on my appearance that night than I usually spent getting ready for three days in a row combined. I studied myself in the cracked full-length mirror on the back of my front door for the full effect. I looked like an old-time movie star. I twirled around again and again, watching the skirt spin up around my hips and giggling like a little girl.

I almost fell over when someone knocked. Adam’s driver stood at the door. And he walked me to the town car, opening the door. It was four thirty in the afternoon and in spite of that, the 55 freeway was clear going southbound. We sped down the carpool lane and I watched the relentless parade of expensive hotels, billboards and mile-high palm trees speed by. The northbound side of the freeway was, of course another story, as it always was at this time of day. Cars were packed end-to-end and moving inches at a time.

I was grateful that wasn’t us, because I didn’t want to be late for the big night. I watched carefully as the driver headed straight down the freeway until its very end. So my guess about Adam living in Balboa was right—either on the island itself or the equally impressive peninsula.

A thin finger of land stretching across the harbor, encapsulating the opulent Newport Bay, Balboa housed the county’s glitziest homes and their wealthy inhabitants. I wondered why the driver was heading down the peninsula instead of approaching the island from the north, where there was a bridge. From this side, he would have to take the tiny ferry across to Balboa Island and there was often a long line at this time of day.

But blocks before the turn-off for the ferry, the driver hung a left and headed toward the bay. I was now completely perplexed as to where his house was, unless he lived in the middle of the bay.

And then the driver parked on a tiny street near a small walkway that led to what appeared to be the smallest island I had ever seen.