Page 11 of The B!tch is Bad

Maybe my move distracted her, for she slickly changed the topic. “And why are you single? Pippa told me you came from Silicon Valley. To be able to buy a spread like this, why . . . “

I leaned forward, my elbows on the bar. “What woman in her right mind wouldn’t hit on this, right?” I managed to embarrass her a little—she seemed to redden, and glanced down at my hands. I felt bad for making her squirm. “No, I’m too hard-working. Never had time for anyone. I’d take two women to a party and they’d expect the world from me.”

When she looked back to me, her face had changed. Her tiny sphinx’s eyes flashed with mystery. It was like looking through desert waves to a mirage, visible but indistinct. “Then why are you so interested in me?”

I stopped breathing. Fuck. Had someone told her I’d acquired the DeStory painting? God forbid she see where I hung it.

But I was smooth. I hadn’t been in the high stakes cloud world for nothing. I leaned on one elbow, taking a slight sip of my upscale wine. It was like her direct question had reminded me how lavish I lived. “I was thinking of hiring a personal sommelier.”

Now that really stumped her. She was back to the peaches-and-cream girl with the pouty lips. “Sommelier?”

“Yeah, to assess my cellar, develop a plan.”

“A plan?”

“Wine for my everyday drinking, aging, investment. You’re running the office for Pippa. You must do similar things. Arrange parties?” I prompted her.

“Why yes, I coordinate between all the bands, the entertainment, the details of the catered events, but I hardly know enough about wine to develop any plan.”

I shrugged. “It was just a thought. The current guy doing that, I want him to spend more time elsewhere, communicating with the field staff.” Yeah. I wanted Oliver out in the field, farther from me.

And Patience closer to me.

Her nose wrinkled. “Yeah. You’ve got that Oliver Klozov guy. He seems kind of full of himself.”

“Yeah, a real know-it-all. Only I’m suspicious he doesn’t know a fraction what he pretends to. But people like his corny stories and jokes. He’s hardworking. I know the former owner liked him or he wouldn’t have kept him, but he’s spread too thin. It’d be nice to have another person to layer between the two of us.”

I loved her laugh, a sound of experience and innocence melting together. “So I’m just a wedge then? Well, I’ve been worse. I’m flattered, really flattered you’d think I’d be good enough for a position like that.”

“You’re incredibly personable. That’s required. Someone who can go with the flow. But you’re happy where you are. Seems like a great place to work.”

She jerked her shoulders into a shrug. “I am. And I have issues.”

I frowned. Was she a trans? Was I in love with a he? Then I realized I didn’t want to be in love with her. Not yet. So I was gruff. “Issues?”

“Well, you saw me grabbing a bottle of pills from Santiago Slayer.”

“Yes. Figured you needed some antibiotics or something.”

“Not really. It was an antidepressant.”

I was so relieved her problem was only depression, I took a hearty gulp of the Tiny Dancer and poured Patience some more. Maybe to encourage her to talk. Almost everyone I’d known in San Jose and later in the film and record business had some sort of sore spot that needed buoying up with medication.

“I’ve had it my whole life. There’s a hole in my head where things fall out. Then my bad memory is a side effect of the medications I take to manage anxiety, and so on. Pippa tolerates this, because I guess she’s been there too.”

“Hey. Tell me one person in Silicon Valley who doesn’t take some kind of meds.”

She was determined to convince me she was unfit. “The anxiety gets better or worse with no real consistency, so I can’t figure out what sets it off. When I was little I thought it’d go away when I became a successful model. Then when I was a successful model I gave up all hope.”

Again I leaned on the bar, but this time I did dare touch my fingertips to hers as they lay limply on the granite. “That’s why you have a cellphone with a calendar. No forgetting anything then.”

“I’d hide in closets and books. Mostly just in the loneliest place to be, which is in myself, but it’s the safest, you know?”

Like a never-ending loop, my brain flashed back to the most dramatic moment of my theatrical life, Chloe naked in my kitchen. She even had some kind of fucking nipple clamps on, if I dared remember. “Yes. Sometimes hiding inside yourself is safest.”

This—or the wine—seemed to spur her on. “Sometimes terror at leaving the bathroom made me miss meetings, modeling appointments. Like I’m looking everywhere for my hat, but it’s on my head. Or I can’t find the gin, but it’s already in my stomach.”

I had to think. Could I really deal with a sommelier who had these memory problems? “Do you have any hope of getting off the meds?” I lifted my jaw to indicate we should go out the back slider. The owner had created a flanking outdoor kitchen where guests could circulate—if I ever had any. Patience was my first, other than Oliver, but he didn’t count.