Too beautiful, even.
Much too beautiful to be true.
Did you believe that? Are you kidding? What were you hoping for? That she would show up the next morning with a bounce in her step and ask someone to call him, and that he—ta-da!—would appear in a shimmering halo before running toward her in slow motion, with pigeons taking flight and the camera circling around them?
Come on, you bunch of sentimental fools. That only happens in the movies, or the kind of books her ex hated. This is real life, unfortunately, and our dreamer of a heroine got short-changed: entrance was prohibited, the doors were closed, and the only cameras were surveillance ones.
Okay. This story was beginning to be ridiculous. None of it was funny at all anymore, and Mathilde Salmon (spread the word) was sick and tired of running after a boy.
The character studies took two minutes.
She sat down on the hood of a car, changed her shoes, took out her makeup kit, tied back her hair, powdered her cheeks, lengthened her eyelashes, lined her lips, dabbed perfume on the back of her neck, and stuffed her jacket into her bike’s luggage rack before heading back up the street, swaying her hips.
Beautiful, sexy, in a hurry, and dripping with money as she was, she ignored concierges, bellboys, receptionists, luggage porters, maids, and clients.
Step aside.
Step aside, little people; you only get in the way.
Walking on a carpet as thick as her nerve, she went down hallways, ignored the questions and other remarks in Russian and English that people addressed to her along the way; arranged an invisible stole around her shoulders, searched for the dining room, dodged a vacuum cleaner, smiled in apology, spied the kitchens, pushed the door open, and collared the first person she saw:
“I need to see Jean-Baptiste immediately. Call him for me, please.”