Ana leafed through the pile of papers in a last ditch attempt to locate the crisp white envelope she had received the other day, cursing under her breath when it wasn’t there. Where the hell have I put it, she thought angrily. Unless she found it, she couldn’t actually finish organising her current client’s Very Important Wedding.
She didn’t think the already bigger-than-Ben-Hur wedding could get anymore ridiculous, but she had been wrong.
“Almas caviar,” Sofia had announced when Ana last met with the future bride, current bridezilla. “That’s what our Wedding meal is missing.”
(No really, she actually said wedding as though it had a capital ‘W’ all the time).
Ana’s mouth had, literally, dropped open. Almas caviar was one of the most – no, make that the most – expensive caviar in the world. And that was saying a lot, because caviar ain’t cheap to begin with. Originating from Iran, the only outlet you could buy it from was in London. It came in solid gold tins and retailed for just under the thirty-thousand dollar mark.
Per tin.
When Ana had mentioned this small fact, Sofia had looked at her as though she were from another planet.
“So?”
“Well,” Ana had begun, wondering how to tactfully put it. “As I’ve mentioned before, your deposit is supposed to cover most of the expenses, but I don’t think it will…”
Sofia put her hand up to stop her. “Here,” she said opening her Hermes crocodile skin Birken bag and pulling out a crisp white envelope. “I had a duplicate made for you.”
Ana peered inside the envelope to see an American Express Centurion card.
“I’ve authorised you on the account,” Sofia said, as if giving a stranger your Amex ‘black card’ was completely au fait. “So we can stop all the silly chit chat about money, hm?”
Ana fumed inwardly. She thought she had been very restrained about the ridiculous costs associated with this wedding (small w). The only other time she had brought it up was when Sofia had requested that unicorns pull her carriage to the church. “Can’t we just buy some white horses and stick horns on them?” she had said when Ana gently broke it to her that unicorns were, in fact, fictional animals. Ana didn’t think the animal cruelty angle would really resonate, so she tried the expense argument instead. That obviously had just about as little impact.
“Now, it’s for Wedding purposes only,” Sofia had cooed, wagging her finger at Ana and then tapping the envelope with a perfectly manicured nail. “No personal expenses please.”
Ana fumed some more and clenched her fist around the envelope. She hadn’t got to this point in her career without being a consummate professional (most of the time), and the mere suggestion that she would be otherwise made her blood boil.
“Of course not,” she managed to say, offering a simpering smile.
But now – in a blatant display of unprofessionalism – she had lost the stupid card, so she couldn’t order the stupid caviar. Why it was even her problem to start with was a point of contention, but the chef that Sofia was having flown in from New York to cater the Wedding was almost as temperamental as his client and was refusing to have anything to do with the ordering of difficult ingredients. Ana wondered monetarily whether he would agree to the appetiser of truffle custard with lobster and caviar being made without the final ingredient.
She suspected not.
“You OK, hon?” Tom asked as he rushed into the study, clutching a briefcase in one hand and a piece of toast in the other. His usual work uniform of jeans and t-shirt had been replaced today by a shirt and suit.
“You haven’t seen a white envelope lying around have you?” Ana asked.
Tom shook his head, only half listening. “Can’t say I have,” he said, sifting through the same pile of papers Ana had only minutes earlier. “You don’t know where the competition proposal document is, do you?”
Tom had been working for months on this proposal and was pitching it this morning to the potential client. If he pulled it off, it could be one of the biggest, most exciting projects that his firm had worked on. Not to mention quite a coup for a small Aussie architecture firm to win the honour of working on such a visible international project.
Ana frowned and shook her head. It was pointless asking Tom if he’d seen anything when he was in this state.
“Must have left it at the office,” he said to himself before planting a quick kiss on Ana’s cheek and running out the door. “Good luck finding the contract,” he shouted back.
“Envelope,” Ana shouted after him. “It’s an envelope with…”
The slam of the front door resonated loudly throughout the apartment.
***
By 8:30am, Tom’s office looked as though a whirlwind had swept through it. Papers had been thrown on the floor in a desperate attempt to find the missing document. If only his stupid laptop hadn’t decided to have a heart attack last night, he could just print another one. The ‘heart attack’ had been caused by the accidental spilling of tea all over it just before he went to bed. He managed to save the proposal document from getting splashed, but couldn’t save the computer and, of course, had forgotten to back up said document. He was an architect damn it, not a backing-things-up tech person. He stuck his head out of the office to see if anyone else was around yet and had seen it. Sarah had just arrived and was shrugging her coat off, a tray with two coffees held precariously in one hand. She smiled as soon as she saw Tom.
“I thought you might need this,” she said, handing one of the take-away cups to him. “Double shot.”
“You’re a mind reader,” he said, taking a welcome sip of hot coffee.
“Everything organised for the meeting?”
Tom half-nodded. “I just need to find the proposal document.”
“You’ve lost it?”
“Er…maybe.”
“Can’t you just print another one?”
“I would,” Tom groaned, “But my computer carked it last night”.
Sarah raised an eyebrow. “Carked it?”
He could sense another lecture about why everything should be backed up in multiple locations.
“Never mind,” he said with a wave of his hand. “It has to be around here somewhere.”
After another thirty minutes of them both searching his office, it was still nowhere to be seen. He threw his hands in the air, promptly knocking over a glass of water all over his desk.
“Great,” he muttered, furious with himself. First a cup of tea over his laptop and now…
“Under the sink!” he shouted. “It must be under the sink!”
When he spilled the tea last night, he had swooped in and picked up the document, then dashed to the cupboard under the sink for paper towels to mop up the tea.
He picked up his phone and called Ana. He was hoping that she could stop past home and then drop it at the office. When there was no answer he left a message, asking her to call him back urgently. He checked his watch. The clients were due in 30 minutes. He could get home and back in 45 if he rushed. Someone else could keep them busy for a few minutes.
“I’ve got my car here,” said Sarah lightly. “Want me to go and get it?”
He almost hugged her in relief.
***
Sarah unlocked the door to Tom’s house and called out, in case Ana had come home. She’d been there before a couple of times, so she knew her way around. Sure enough, the proposal document was under the sink, looking as crisp and new as it had done yesterday. She was about the walk back out the front door, but stopped. She’d managed to get here in record time. Tom wouldn’t be expecting her back for another twenty minutes at least.
Very slowly she pushed open the door to Tom and Ana’s bedroom. She quietly opened a chest of drawers and sifted through Ana’s clothes, pulling out a black lace underwear set and held it up. It looked expensive. That must be what Tom likes, she thought to herself, imagining him peeling the delicate lace of her own body, not Ana’s. She took a photo of the label with her phone.
She picked up one of Ana’s perfume bottles, spraying the scent liberally on herself, before noticing the plain white envelope poking out from underneath Ana’s jewelry box. Carefully, she prised it open and looked inside.
An American Express black card.
Sarah whistled under her breath. How on earth did Ana have one of these? Not recognising the name on it, she took out her phone and photographed each side of the card before placing it back in the envelope and leaving the room as she found it.
***
“Sorry I missed your call earlier this morning,” Ana said, as she took out her earrings and put them on her chest of drawers. It had been another long and frantic day and she hadn’t got home until after 9pm. “What was so important?”
“It was nothing,” Tom said, stretching out on the bed, exhausted after his own long but – he thought – successful day. He had already decided that he didn’t need to tell Ana about Sarah going to the house. That was a fight that could easily be avoided.
“Oh my God,” Ana said suddenly, seeing the white envelope. “That’s where I put it.”
“What?” Tom mumbled sleepily.
“Just the card that the lady who….” She looked over at Tom. His eyes were closed and his breathing rhythmic. She smiled to herself. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. And it really didn’t anymore.
Card found.
Disaster averted.
She felt lighter and more relaxed than she had done in days. She peeled back the covers and climbed in next to Tom. All was right with the world once again.
