Guillaume shrugged and looked a bit uncomfortable. “I don’t know. You just haven’t been yourself today. And you looked upset on the train.”
I was startled. “Thanks,” I said, forcing another confident smile. “But I’m fine. Really.”
“Are you sure?” He looked genuinely concerned. I didn’t know what to make of him.
“Yes, I’m sure,” I said. I was getting uncomfortable.
Guillaume looked at me for a long time. “You know, I’m not such a bad guy,” he said. “I mean, I know I can be a bother sometimes. But I’m not so bad underneath.”
Where was he going with this? “I know,” I said, my heart hammering a little.
“I just mean—” He paused. “Well, if there’s anything you want to talk about, you can talk to me.”
I think my jaw actually dropped. How could this be the same person I’d performed a death-defying duet with while hanging from a rope strung between two buildings just last week? How could this be the same guy who kept twenty-eight hundred euros in his briefs, just in case?
“Um, well, thank you,” I said. “That’s . . . really nice of you.”
“Yeah, well.” Guillaume shrugged and glanced away. “Anyhow, try to feel better. About whatever it is.”
“Thank you,” I said, still in partial shock. Guillaume gave me an awkward little hug and a peck on each cheek and closed the door to his suite.
I stood in the hallway for a long time wondering what had just happened.
Six hours later, Poppy and I had briefed a staff of twenty assistants, most of them from a British temp agency specializing in media and public relations. They would all be providing various functions at the cocktail reception that was due to begin in half an hour. A blond girl named Willow and a brunette named Melixa, for example, had been stationed in the lobby to help streamline media checkin. Two brunettes who looked as if they could have been sisters were upstairs in the media suite, handing out press packs, while two guys were manning the small continental buffet of fruits, pastries, sodas, water, and coffee that sat in the adjoining suite. A girl named Gillian was working as a sort of page, running back and forth between the lobby, the media suites, and the ballroom, alerting Poppy and me to any problems. (So far, knock wood, there hadn’t been anything more serious than an entertainment writer from the New York Daily News being put in a room with two double beds when she had requested a king.) And several of the assistants were running around backstage in the reception room, making sure that everything was all set for Guillaume’s performance tonight.
“I’m really nervous,” Poppy said as the two of us settled into seats at the checkin table outside the reception room. In ten minutes, TV and print journalists would begin arriving for the opening-night cocktail party, which would culminate in a surprise three-song set from Guillaume. He’d open, of course, with his hit single, and he’d also be debuting two other songs, including my favorite, “La Nuit,” a haunting ballad about unrequited love, sung half in English, half in French.
“Me, too,” I admitted, rifling through the stack of papers in front of me until I emerged with tonight’s media list. Most of the journalists on the two-day junket had arrived tonight, and although I knew that some would skip the reception in favor of wandering around London (not realizing, of course, that Guillaume would play), I figured that 90 percent of our reporters would be there, which added up to just over a hundred guests.
Poppy and I were both wearing black cocktail dresses, something we had debated about for some time last week while shopping at the Galeries Lafayette. I’d said we should wear suits in keeping with our roles as the business leaders of the evening. Poppy had rolled her eyes at me and said that it was a cocktail party, and we should dress accordingly.
“More than half of the journalists we’re inviting are men,” Poppy had reminded me with a wink. “There’s nothing wrong with giving them something to look at while Guillaume sings his love songs, yeah?”
By seven thirty, nearly all of the journalists we’d invited had checked in at our table, where Poppy and I welcomed them warmly, made sure they had everything they needed, and then sent them inside to a room whose decor Poppy had been planning for months.
The reception room was lined with enormous photos of Guillaume in various outfits and poses, interspersed with blown-up Riche album covers. The lights were dim, and disco balls dangling high above cast sparks of light that almost looked like falling snowflakes around the room. Poppy had even taken care of ordering aromatherapy scents to be piped in, so the vague smell of French lavender permeated everything.
“Are you ready to go in?” Poppy asked me at seven forty-five, folding in half her list of checked-in journalists and putting it in her handbag. We hadn’t had an arrival in ten minutes, and inside, we could hear enough conversation and laughter to know that the party was in full swing.