The décor inside is unlike anything I have ever seen in a plane. The walls have oak panels running across them, and there are about eight plush seats, all arranged so that they face one another. Another compartment is boarded off. The lighting is a warm white – or what they consider warm white, seeing that it’s actually yellow.
Three hostesses are standing by at attention, and the lead one – a pretty blue-eyed blonde who raises my suspicions – greet us.
“Good evening, your highness. Good evening, Ms. Turner.”
Oh, so she knows my name.
“Good evening, Arabella. And will you can the ‘your highness’ crap? I can’t abide that when my father isn’t around.”
Really?
The blonde sizes me up fleetingly, and beams as if to say ‘I have to be nice to you even if I don’t want to, and he’ll dump you after tonight faster than you can flush that diamond choker down the chute’.
“Please, make yourself comfortable.” Alex indicates a seat.
I do. He seats himself across a table, facing me.
“Strap in,” he says. “We’re taking off soon.”
It seems strange to strap myself in with a seatbelt when I’m wearing such Oscar party clothing. Alex is solicitous.
“Are you cold?”
“No.”
“There are pashmina shawls onboard if you need them. Arabella can pick out one for you.”
“It’s OK.” I’m pretty warm and flushed all over actually. It’s the excitement and anxiety of it all, even though I’m trying to remain calm and ice princess cool. And failing miserably. I don’t even know what’s a ‘pashmina’.
We take off, Alex gazing at me all the way. Once we are up in the air and the seatbelt sign is switched off, Arabella emerges from the other compartment.
“Dinner will be served,” she says brightly, handing me and Alex menus on an embossed cream cards. “Take your time to look through and I’ll be right back.”
I wonder if she’s expecting a huge tip at the end.
I peruse the menu. It’s one of those menus with five or six courses that will make you feel stuffed just reading it. I’m used to those menus, of course – from the other end of serving them.
For the main course, I apparently have a choice between:
Roast Lamb Provencale with julienned baby potatoes
Duck terrine with aubergines and baby carrots
Alaskan halibut in béarnaise sauce
I’m not really hungry. My stomach is in one of its spin cycles. Alex’s brilliant eyes are disconcerting, especially when he won’t stop looking at me.
“Do I have a smudge on my cheek?” I say, touching my right one.
“No.” He laughs. “I’m making you uncomfortable, aren’t I? It’s just that I can’t get over how good you look.”
“You mean I didn’t look good before?”
“No, you looked pretty damn good to me. It’s just that now you look – ” he waves a hand “ – different. Like you belong on the cover of some society magazine.”
Arabella comes in with the starters. Oh yeah, there are three starters in all. A soup served in a fashionable teacup. Lobster bisque of some sort, with a splotch of cream in it – done in the shape of a spade.
“And do you like girls like that?” I say, thinking of Tatiana.
“No. Hell, no.” He laughs. “I merely thought you would like dressing up as one for a change.”
“What makes you think that?”
“A hunch that you would like to try something different.”
He isn’t far off, though he is being presumptuous. But try as I may, I can’t be mad at Alex. He’s too good-looking, too intense, and he radiates an aura of authority in an ‘I know what you secretly like and I’m dishing it out to you whether you protest or not’ manner.
The soup is followed by smoked salmon fashioned to look like a flower. We fence and chat, finding out bits and pieces about each other. I already know a bit about him from what I read on the Internet. So he went to Eton in England, and then to Harvard.
“Why anthropology?” I ask.
Somehow, I can’t get myself to relax. My stomach is in knots, and I’m finding it difficult to digest the salmon in the soup that is already swirling around in my guts. The food is extremely delicious, of course, but the unknowable factor of this man – along with my surreal surroundings – makes me feel as if I’m tethered very close to a live electrical wire that is whipping back and forth.
“I like studying different peoples, especially when they as far away from my environment as they can possibly be.” He’s sitting back affably, sipping his vodka on ice. Me, I need a stiffer drink than the tomato juice I’m having.