Lavender Haze

Chapter 5

I've never been this nervous before meeting a client. Not even my very first one, when I was still working under mom's management. But when I make my way to Soho, where I'm meeting River and Mila, I feel like a giant spotlight has been placed over my head and I'm like Jim Carrey in The Truman Show, everyone aware of what's going on but me. It's crazy, because if anything, I know more than River right now, who doesn't remember we've fornicated at his cousin's wedding two summers ago. And I certainly hope that memory stays locked away at least until the wedding day. After that, I might write him a letter myself recounting the experience we shared and explaining in length what a self-absorbed asshole he is for ever forgetting it.

I'm meeting River and Mila at the bar of the St. James Hotel (care to guess who owns it?). The doorman, clad in an posh-looking grey uniform, opens the heavy door for me and, on oddly unstable legs, I cross the threshold, accompanied by an ominous gust of wind.

Everything inside St. James screams lux, comfort, money. Even the quality of air is better (not hard when every surface of New York is soaked in urine). I'm surprised I don't get charged just for encroaching in this foreign territory that the St. James Hotel in Soho is. I think I expected some opulence, some over-the-top decadent décor, like what you find in sultans' palaces in the Emirates, pompous, extravagant pieces of furniture the price of the GDP of a small, forgotten country. But everything looks modern and slick in the hall of the St. James Hotel. White walls and charcoal-coloured couches, potted greenery to spruce up the otherwise colourless room. The paintings on the walls remind me of the Rorschach blots of ink used in psychoanalysis to establish if you're a psychopath (what I see in the pictures are a soaring moth, two people high-fiving each other, a scary minotaur, and, lastly, a woman's body, the line of her spine and the curves of her butt cheeks nearly pornographic in my mind's eye). Before I've taken my third step into the hotel lobby, I'm met by a man in a brown suit and white button-down, an easy smile on his face.

"Miss Clarke?" He asks.

I whip my eyes away from the made-up image of the naked woman. "Yes?"

"I'm Westley. Mr. St. James and Miss Bauman are waiting for you. Right this way, please."

My cheeks flame. I check my watch just to make sure I'm not late, but I'm here twenty-two minutes earlier than our scheduled meeting. I exhale in relief and follow Westley to the hotel bar.

Unlike the lobby, the bar is plucked right out of a man-only club house of the mid-twenties. Dark mahogany wooden panels at the walls and chandeliers with dim lightbulbs for an atmospheric result. It's fairly easy to spot Mila and River, even in the bustling room. They are sitting at a table by the window, spines so strait it must hurt, Mila's thighs elegantly pressed on the forest-green velveteen chair, chatting to each other, even if they are both staring at their respective phones.

I let Westley usher me to the happy couple's table. They both rise to their feet as they see me approach, River's hand migrating to his fiancée's back, and for a moment, I think I see him smile, but it also might be my head playing games. I haven't exactly had a full night of sleep, preferring instead to binge on information on River, gobbling down anything I could find online, even mere, baseless, juicy gossip, like his presumed preference for tall, blond, Valkyrie-looking women.

"Can I get you a drink, Miss Clarke?" Westley asks once I've been safely delivered to my destination.

"She'll have a decaf. That's what you were drinking last time we met, am I right?" I'd say River St. James is an attentive, detail-observing man if it wasn't that he fucked me once and promptly forgotten about it.

"Coming right up," Westley says, before I can amend my order and ask for a bucket of scotch instead. Now that he is gone, the awkward factor skyrockets to unprecedented highs.