was not about to ask Mr. Benz for help or, worse, let him see that she was setting out for the party with the back of her dress undone. She would have to find a sympathetic partygoer to discreetly help her.
So she adjusted her cape to better hide her back, pasted on a smile, and said, “Shall we go?”
When they emerged on First and East Forty-Second, the agreed-upon meeting place for maximumly efficient extraction, Torkel was there shaking his head and speaking urgently into his phone.
Torkel was usually the epitome of cool. A man of few words and no outward emotions, he let his big, beefy muscles and his mirrored sunglasses—oh, she’d had such a crush on him when she was a teenager!—speak for him.
Usually.
Today he snapped, “Consider yourself fired,” into the phone, curse-whispered, “So ein Schmarrn!” to himself, and turned to them with a grim expression.
Seeing any expression on Torkel’s face was such a novelty, it distracted Marie for a moment.
“The car isn’t coming,” he said.
“I beg your pardon?” Mr. Benz’s neutral-on-the-surface-of-things tone was now shading into alarm.
“It broke down.”
Mr. Benz blinked a few times. “Pardon me?”
“It broke down.”
“The car isn’t coming?” Goodness. Mr. Benz rarely emphasized one syllable over another. This must be his version of panic. If Marie hadn’t been sharing in that sentiment, she would have been amused. “It wasn’t supposed to go anywhere,” Mr. Benz went on. “It was supposed to wait for us and meet us here when I texted, which I just did.”
Oh, he had emphasized four words there!
Marie felt badly. Torkel would be taking this to heart. He’d chosen the car service because, after extensive research and interviewing, he had determined it could best accommodate their security protocol. He had swept the car and conducted extensive background checks on their driver.
“Our vehicle is currently broken down on the Queensboro Bridge.” A vein bulged in Torkel’s neck. “Apparently drivers on UN detail congregate at the home of the Costa Rican ambassador while they’re waiting to pick up.”
“All right,” Marie said. They didn’t have time to waste. “It’s not the end of the world. No one’s dead.”
“This was why the speech—” Mr. Benz cut himself off. He’d been going to say, This was why the speech was a bad idea. A frivolous indulgence. But of course he wouldn’t actually say it.
He might be right, though. Not about it being frivolous, but about Marie’s prioritizing it over the meeting with Gregory.
“I’ve ordered another car,” Torkel said.
Marie shook her head. “We don’t have time for that. We’ll summon a taxi.”
Mr. Benz gasped. Torkel growled.
She extended her arm out in the direction of the street before the inevitable volley of objections could be launched. She had never attempted to hail a taxi before, but that was how they always did it on Sex and the City. She started waving her arm around for good measure.
She could feel the disapproval radiating from both men. She didn’t pull rank very often. She usually let them . . . handle her. It was their job, after all.
But it wouldn’t be their job to tell her father that she had missed the boat—literally, though she was familiar with the American idiom—and with it her only chance to talk to Philip Gregory.
No, that would be her job.
She lifted her chin and tried to make the face her mother always used to when Grand-mère came to their apartment for tea. Recalled her mother saying, If you want someone to listen to you, don’t yell. Yelling signals desperation. Speak quietly but firmly. Assume you will be heard.
All those dancing lessons might have been for naught, but some of her training had stuck.
Marie also remembered her mother hugging her, grabbing the remote control, and cuddling up next to her to watch some “deliciously dreadful American TV” after Grand-mère left.
She lifted her chin. “Gentleman. We are getting a taxi. There will be no further discussion.”
She missed Maman so very much.
“So, even though they started out at odds on the project, it’s interesting that the final plan was a combination of their visions. Now, I’m not sure how happy Niemeyer was about that. He may have just given up and let Le Corbusier have his way.”
“Superinteresting,” Gabby said.
Leo was executing a complicated U-turn to put them in the direction of home, so he couldn’t check her out in the mirror, but he could hear the eye roll in her tone. He decided to lean in, to further antagonize her in the hopes of getting her to laugh.