I wake to incessant knocking. I roll over, the bed sinking and shifting from the many fluffy comforters piled atop it. Seriously, I've never been engulfed by so much fluff in my entire life. The white blankets are huge and thick, yet impossibly light. Clouds would be an accurate description, as would souffle pancakes.
The pillow is just as soft, and, for lack of a better word, pillowy. It cradles my head so that my skull feels weightless. I feel like I've melted into a puddle of satin luxury. Is this better than a resort, even if I'm kind of being held here against my will by a crazy merman prince? Probably. If this is what royalty can buy, then maybe I should start looking for a Prince Charming after all.
Not Prince Tewen. He might be "prince," but stalkerish and kidnapping behavior is not charming.
"Jessi, are you decent?" a voice calls out. I realize that the knocking has continued through my reverie.
"Yeah, yeah." I'm still in the black dress from yesterday. It was either that or nothing, and I refused to take any chances of someone venturing in my room. Besides, it's just weird.
The door opens, and Right-scar enters with a steaming, light-tan mug shaped like a shell. "You drink coffee?"
"I do this morning." Exhaustion fogs the corners of my mind. We didn't return to the yacht until after midnight, and based on the pale light streaming through the window, it can't be much past dawn.
"We leave in five minutes," Right-scar says. "We have bagels for the road. I'm sure the prince will want to get an early start on things once we pick him up, starting with your car."
Right-scar shuts the door as he leaves. I climb from the sea of covers and wriggle my dress down to mid-thigh. I don't even need to look in the floor-length mirror to know that it's wrinkles, or to guess that makeup is smudged on my face. At least I always keep makeup remover in my purse. I spend the next three minutes wiping the vestiges of mascara and foundation away, then applying some concealer and eyeshadow to hide my dark circles.
I don't look my best. But "person trying to hide that they're a mess" beats "person who looks like a mess."
It's only a five minute walk down the road. The wooden shack looks a little less sketchy now that shadows no longer cluster around it. At the same time, there's little room to hide the trash littered outside, the splintering wood forming the shop's walls, and the hole in the roof.
The front entrance flings open, and the door flies off its hinges, crashing to the ground. "You're here!" Madame Sourbelle exclaims. "Prince Tewen is all ready."
My eyes refuse to peel away from the abandoned door until I'm inside the shop and it's out of sight. Two stands by the dust-coated front desk on human legs. He still wears the vest from before, but it's overtop a red wetsuit. We'll have to do something about that.
"He's all ready for pickup," Madame Sourbelle chirps, motioning to her handiwork.
"Right-scar just called in a cab this morning. We'll use that to get a rental car," Left-scar tells Two.
"And my car," I chime in. Left-scar just side-eyes me.
"Excellent." Two waves to Madame Sourbelle. "Thanks for the legs."
"Anytime!"
Outside, a yellow taxi waits. I climb in the backseat with Two and Right-scar while Left-scar takes the front seat, who navigates back to the boardwalk. The Scar-twins still don't believe that I brought them to the right place last night. Over the next ten minutes, I finish my coffee and a blueberry bagel with honey walnut smear. The cab pulls up to the same boardwalk I was at yesterday. Even if we went to the wrong boardwalk last night, that doesn't change the fact that my car is nowhere to be found, and neither is the ATM.
"Should we go to the police?" I ask. "How long do you think it will take for them to recover a stolen car?"
The driver rolls her head around to face me. "The cops around here? You'd be better off putting up a lost car poster."
"Great," I sigh. I brush a sagging curl from my face and lean against the door.
"Did you have a parking pass?" the driver asks.
"No. I just parked in the five minute..." Oh shoot. The driver faces me once more, a concerned look on her face. "They towed my car, didn't they?"
She purses her lips. "Shall I drive you to the impounded car lot?"
"Please."
The car pulls away from the boardwalk, and we shoot down the road.
"So what's on the agenda today?" Two asks.
"Well, we're going to have to buy you a suit. And manners—" I cough. "I mean, we should rehearse for a luncheon. Since you're going to one."
My eyes stray to the shops whizzing by. Burger joints and pizza parlors, souvenir shops and fishing rentals. This isn't the optimal place for the kind of training Two needs. He also needs some proper clothes. If he walked into a formal event in a wetsuit, he'd be thrown out.
We fly past a boutique with a mannequin displaying a floral maxi dress. I sigh, propping my elbow on the door. Saltport isn't large enough for our needs. Whenever I purchase new clothes for a client, we normally go shopping online or in Nalta, the nearest city. I guess that will be our next stop after we get my car back.
The cab pulls into a dirt parking lot crowded with cars. The spacing is so tight, we slow to a crawl so we don't scrape the sides of them. Going about ten miles per hour, the cab eases up to a green garage. A man sits on a plastic desk outside, a laptop at his side.
"How much will it be?" I ask.
"One-fifty," the driver replies.
I glance at the hundred dollar bill in my purse. I never thought I'd need to break such a large amount of money before.
"Got change for a hundred?" I ask, holding it up.
The woman blinks at me. "It's one-hundred and fifty dollars."
My cheeks flush. Right, of course. Taxis are expensive. One dollar and fifty cents is a totally unrealistic price that I should've known was unreasonable. I grab another bill from my purse and hand it to the driver.
"Keep the change."
My entourage and I step onto dusty gravel, and the taxi meanders away. The sun warms my shoulders and legs after being blasted with air conditioning. It feels good, helps brighten my mood and boost my optimism.
The man sitting on the desk eyes us over his cellphone. A blue-checkered flannel shirt covers his arms, even though the morning rays hit him like a spotlight. The chrome on the pickup truck behind him blinds my eyes, and I angle myself away from the glint, getting a full view of the greasy mullet descending in back of his head. Seriously, who has a mullet these days? Looks like he's in need of a life makeover. I resist the urge to whip out a business card.
Then again, I must ask myself if I actually want to work with someone like this.
"Hello," I begin. No response. He's a more desperate cause than I realized. "I... I believe my car might've been towed yesterday."
"Might've." The man, we'll call him "Blue-flannel," doesn't look up. His jaw works, then a pink bubble inflates over his mouth.
"So... how do I get it back?"
Slowly, laboriously, Blue-flannel drags his gaze to the computer. "License plate?" I recite it for him. Blue-flannel scrolls down for a second. Yup, towed yesterday."
"Okay. So how do I get it back?"
"That's gonna cost you a fee."
Lucky me; I came prepared. "How much?" Talking to this guy is like pulling teeth.
"Two-hundred twenty-five."
"Got change for three-hundred?" I hold up the bills. When the man shakes his head, I sigh and just hand them all over. "Keep the change. Where's my car?"
"I'm gonna need to see some licensing and identification. Insurance. Proof of ownership."
Now he tells me. I show him my driver's license, but he insists on seeing insurance and proof of ownership documents. Even if I drove all the way home, I'm not sure if I'd be able to find the sales information on such short notice. And when I try to tell him that the insurance documents are in my car, he refuses to let me retrieve them.
"Sorry, lady. Gotta see the right documents before anything else can happen."
I sigh, my head dropping forward. I quickly lift it again, biting my lip against the tears collecting in my eyes. In my peripheral, I catch Two staring at me, eyebrows clenched together.
"Let me get this straight," Two says. "You're not giving back the car?"
"Like I just said, gotta see the proper information first."
"But that's not right," Two protests. "This is completely unreasonable. You can't expect her to have this stuff on her."
"Then she can go home and get it."
"We don't have time for that. Now quit messing around and give her the car." Blue-flannel just shakes his head and returns to his phone. Anger reddens Two's face. "As Prince Tewen of Aqualan, I order you to release Jessi's car!"
Blue-flannel's head snaps up. "'Scuse me?"
"You heard me. Do not disobey me, peasant!"
Blue-flannel's incredulous gaze swivels between us. "This dude serious?"
"He is a prince..." I say.
"Oh come on, how gullible do you think I am?" Blue-flannel folds his arms. "Now quit with the shenanigans. Either you show the papers or get lost. I've got things to do."
I can't imagine that there's much business going on in that tiny screen he's staring at, but I can't argue. If he won't release the car, then he won't release it. There's not much to do...
"Wait." I pull a stack of bills from my bag. "What if I give you this?" Blue-flannel looks up. It takes a second to process, and then his eyes widen.
"Seriously?" he asks.
"Of course. Look, I'm the car's owner. I can show you the insurance statement in the car. It's just in the glove compartment. But please just release my car. It's not even my fault that it was towed." I give a pointed look in Two's direction.
The man stares at the money for a moment, then grabs it, shoving the bills into his back pockets. A few flutter to the ground, but he doesn't seem to notice. He hops off the desk, pulling up his jeans.
"Follow me."
Who knew money could be so handy?