I’m going to regret this. Sympathy for the rich. A new low. “You said you had tickets?” I sigh.
She gives me a tearymmhm.
“And they aren’t friends and family garage passes, or Paddock Club?”
A teary, negativemmhm.
“Okay. Do you want to watch the race together?”
Imogen blinks, a tear dripping from her long eyelashes. “Really?”
“No, Mei, and no talking to anyone else on the team. And—” I pull out another tissue. “We are dating, Bernard and I. So I’ll need to tell him that we know each other through industry stuff.”
“Oh.” Imogen takes the tissue, folding it between her manicured fingers. “Do you think… the ring…?”
“Do I think he’s going to give your ring to me?” I finish for her, smiling. “No. You were with him for a long time. I’ll be gone in two months, if that. I think he’s just an asshole with worms in his brain, and the worms said he could hurt a woman if he did this.”
Imogen giggles. “I thought about selling it.”
“You should.”
“It seemed like a hassle.”
“Yeah, it would be.”
“Do you want to see it?”
I can picture it. Imogen is a chip off the Grace Kelly block. Probably a platinum band, with an ethically sourced, emerald-cut doorknocker of a diamond. “No thank you.”
Imogen’s tickets are in a grandstand near a particularly treacherous-looking bend in the Suzuka Circuit, and I debate asking her if she purchased them herself, now, or if being engaged to a driver got you random seat privileges for life. Sort of like how retired flight attendants can fly on stand-by for free.
“I’ve never really—” Imogen grabs the metal stairway railing up the grandstand. “Um, sat outherebefore. So, my apologies if it isn’t—” She smiles at a couple she almost decapitated with her bag. “Nice.”
“This is wonderful.”
I’d used some of the truth to smooth things over with Mei. “She’s grieving, and he’d texted her,” had been my explanation. And Mei’s slim shoulders had bobbed in relief, her lips curving into a quick, grateful smile that’d tugged at my heart strings in a bad, jarring way. “Thank God you’re here, Cat,” she’d said. “Seriously. Thank you.”
“Always here to help the team,” I’d said.
We have time to kill before the race starts, nothing interesting in front of us besides grass, an empty stretch of gray racetrack, and a barrier lined with yellow and red tire advertising, in that order. Imogen’s sipping on a Coke I brought her, not unlike a very beautiful bobbleheaded doll in her Chanel, but she isn’t crying anymore, either. So, baby steps.
I’m going to have to talk to her. That’s part of attending a sporting event together, isn’t it? God. Small talk with a client. This is so not something I do.
“How is the season going?” I ask. “Ballet. You all are busy right now, because it’s spring, right?”
She lowers her Coke, smiling. “Oh yeah. Fall and winter are crazier, though.”
“Anything good coming up?”
“BesidesThe Nutcracker?”
“Besides that.”
She thinks for a minute, humming absently. “We’re doingGisellethis fall, but I don’t think I’m going to go for it.”
“Why’s that?”
“Oh, it’s kind of sad.”
