James woke up at seven o’clock Saturday morning and stumbled downstairs for some coffee. Jackson had already consumed half the pot and was most likely out in his shed, working on a new painting. He would expect breakfast before James departed for the airport, but luckily Milla had a sausage and cheese casserole in the freezer that only required defrosting. After turning the oven on, James finished his first cup of coffee, took a warm shower, and dressed in a gray wool sweater and a pair of jeans. He then threw on his coat and walked out to the shed, his breath puffing from his mouth like smoke from a steam engine.
“I’m coming in!” James shouted as he knocked twice on the shed door. He opened it just in time to see Jackson throw a drop cloth over his latest work.
“Isn’t that going to smudge the paint?” James asked in concern.
Jackson waved a dry brush near James’s face. “Ain’t no paint on there yet.”
“Well, come on in and get some breakfast casserole. That’ll get your creative juices flowing.”
Jackson frowned. “My juices are just fine. I decided that I’m gonna paint Milla’s sister. Only problem is I don’t know what a diva’s hands look like close up, so I gotta wait to see her in the flesh, while she’s makin’ one of her famous cakes.”
James checked his watch. “Well, shortly after lunchtime you’ll have a celebrity in your life.”
“That’ll make two of them, then, if I’m includin’ you,” Jackson murmured as he closed the shed door.
“What’s that, Pop?” James asked.
“Nothin’. You’d best get goin’. There’s gonna be a snow today, and them mountain roads are gonna be a mess. The state’s not prepared for an early snow. I know that for a fact ’cause the mayor said they weren’t loadin’ the trucks up with sand ’til after Christmas.”
Glancing up at the scattering of thin clouds in an otherwise blue sky, James eyed his father in disbelief. “You think we’re getting snow today?”
“ I don’t need to think. I know ’cause that hound down the road hollered at the moon all night long. That mutt’s been alive for twenty years, and every time he sets up that kinda racket durin’ a cold night, we get snow the next day. And not some dustin’ either. We’ll get ’least an inch.” Jackson shook his head, his mouth forming a fractional grin. “Damn dog’s never been wrong once.”
“Amazing.” James decided to humor his father. “I’d better hit the road then, Pop. I just hope Paulette’s flight beats out the storm.”
After filling a travel mug with coffee, James headed north toward Washington-Dulles. Milla had left her sister’s flight information on the kitchen table along with a note warning that Paulette might not be traveling alone. James tossed the paper on the Bronco’s passenger seat, cranked up the heat, popped in the latest Clive Cussler audio book, and spent the next two hours contentedly lost in one of Dirk Pitt’s grandiose adventures.
Five miles away from the airport, James began to wish he possessed even the smallest amount of Pitt’s inventiveness and daring. If so, he might have discovered a way to circumvent the stand-still traffic looming ahead. After spending ten agonizing minutes bathed in the spotlight of a blinking arrow sign set up by the Virginia Department of Transportation, James knew that he was going to be late fetching Paulette.
Over the next thirty minutes, the traffic inched forward as three lanes were forced to converge into one. James tried to ignore the forward progression of his clock radio as he craned his neck to see if there was any end to the clogged roadway.
“This is where a high-tech guy would be searching for alternative routes on his GPS system,” he muttered and switched off the audio book. He couldn’t concentrate on Dirk’s romantic interlude and was suddenly irritated by the fact that Cussler’s hero had been shot three times but still had no difficulty in scaling a cliff or scooping a hundred-and-twenty-pound woman into his arms and carrying her up seven flights of stairs.
As James’s anxiety mounted, he longed for something to chew on, but all he had stored within the center console was a blue and purple candy cane presented to him by the Salvation Army volunteer outside of the grocery store. Peeling back the wrapper, James sniffed the candy cane suspiciously.
“What happened to red and white?” he demanded of the confection, and then he took a small bite. He tasted sugared blueberries and tart raspberries coated beneath of smooth layer of cream. The sweetness immediately alleviated some of his tension, but when he pulled up to the curb outside of the Continental Airlines gate and saw a woman in her late sixties with a blunt cut of snow-white hair pacing angrily back and forth while hollering into her cell phone, his agitation was renewed.
James slammed the Bronco into park, leapt from the car, and waved at Paulette. He recognized her immediately because Milla had informed him that Paulette closely resembled Meryl Streep’s character in the movie The Devil Wears Prada . The displeased woman surrounded by a small mountain of Louis Vuitton luggage had a slim figure, well-tailored clothing, and a pair of narrowed, angry eyes.
“Paulette?” James extended his hand as the older woman snapped her phone closed and bared a row of white but rather pointy teeth.
“Where the hell have you been?” she snarled at James. “I have been standing outside for fifteen minutes.” She gestured at her shoes. “Do these heels look comfortable to you?”
James didn’t know whether he was more surprised by her hostile tone or the fact that Milla’s sister wore black stiletto boots and was enveloped in what appeared to be a fox-hair fur coat. As she swiveled to bark orders at a pale, reed-thin young woman with slumped shoulders and white-blonde hair, James noticed a rather flattened fox head on Paulette’s left shoulder and a bushy tail draped across her right.
“Willow!” Paulette shouted. “Get the luggage into this heap with wheels and let’s get going! The pollution from the jet fuel is going to clog my pores! My hair is already a wreck from standing out here. I hope no one of significance recognizes me!” And with that, the Diva of Dough wrenched open the Bronco’s rear door and settled herself inside.
James turned to the young woman, his mouth agape. “Is she for real?”
“’Fraid so. I’m Willow Singletary, Ms. Martine’s assistant.” She smiled weakly. “Don’t take her personally. She always gets strung out when she travels. She thinks New York City is the center of the world, and that the second she leaves it, she’ll be forced to live in a mud hut and scavenge for her own food.” She picked up two suitcases and shuffled toward the truck. With a lowered voice, she added, “She doesn’t get much better than this though. It’s why I go through two packs of cigarettes a day.”
Relieved that there would be at least one friendly passenger in his truck, James helped Willow load the enormous suitcases into his Bronco. From her position in the back seat, Paulette directed the stacking of her luggage and then, apparently satisfied that everything had been stowed to her specifications, opened her cell phone and began to discuss future television show ideas with her producer. Her loud and animated chatter lasted for over an hour and a half. Unused to such a consistent barrage of noise, James stole glances at Paulette in the rearview mirror and longed to drown out her nasal voice with a dose of Clive Cussler.
Eventually, James began to make quiet small-talk with Willow and learned that she had been Paulette’s assistant for the past three years and that her job requirements included, but were not limited to, seeing to the Diva’s travel arrangements, answering fan mail, editing her cookbooks, handling all the personal phone calls Paulette deemed unimportant, and fetching her non-fat, no foam vanilla lattes from Starbucks whenever the Diva required a caffeine fix.