Lauren Weisberger - Chasing Harry Winston

“Refurbished? Six seats? Reliable? That’s the best fucking adjective these people can come up with and we’re entrusting our lives to them?” Emmy was about three minutes from ditching this whole godforsaken idea and getting on the next flight back to New York.

Leigh wasn’t finished. “Hold on, look, here’s a picture.” Stapled to the back of the schedule was a surprisingly high-quality print of an airplane. A very colorful airplane. Almost fluorescent, actually. Leigh passed it to Adriana, who waved her hands in disgust and lit a cigarette. She inhaled deeply and handed the cigarette to Leigh, who reached for it instinctively before remembering she was no longer a smoker.

Adriana exhaled. “Don’t show me that. Please! There is no conceivable, imaginable, acceptable excuse why a plane needs to look like a Pucci dress!” She glanced at the picture again, then inhaled and moaned simultaneously. “Oh god, it’s a prop plane. I won’t fly prop planes. I can’t fly prop planes.”

“Oh, you most certainly will,” Leigh sang. “We’re even going to let you decide which one. Divi/Pucci flies at six, and Bonaire Express-that’s the one that looks like a Jackson Pollock painting, in case you were confused-has a flight at six-twenty. Which do you prefer?”

Adriana whimpered. Emmy looked at Leigh and rolled her eyes.

Adriana dug through her wallet and handed Leigh her American Express Platinum card. “Book whichever one you think gives us the best chance of surviving. I’m going to find us something to drink.”

Having bought three tickets using an indecipherable combination of guilders, dollars, and traveler’s checks, since the airline didn’t accept credit cards, Emmy and Leigh looked for a place to sit down. Hato Airport, it seemed, didn’t have much in the way of amenities, and seats were no exception. It was a dusty, open-air structure that, against all likelihood, offered not one square inch of shade from the brutal midday sun. Too exhausted to continue looking, the girls returned to the stretch of pavement where they’d sat before, an area that could have been a sidewalk or a tarmac or a parking lot. They had just collapsed atop her suitcase when Adriana, clutching a plastic bag and appearing triumphant, flopped down beside them.

Emmy grabbed the bag from her hands. “I’ve never needed water so bad in my life. Please say you bought more than one?” Inside the bag was only a single glass bottle of electric blue liquid. “You got Gatorade instead of water?”

“Not Gatorade, querida . Blue curaçao. Mmm. Doesn’t that look delicious?” Adriana removed her ankle-wrap ballet flats to reveal a pale pink pedicure and tucked the bottom of her tank top under the band of her bra. Even though she’d seen Adriana’s tight tummy and love handle-free sides a million times, Emmy couldn’t stop staring. Adriana politely pretended not to notice. She nodded toward the bottle. “Local special. We should get started right away if we plan to be obliterated by takeoff.”

Leigh took the bottle from Emmy. “It says here that blue curaçao is a sweet blue liqueur made from the dried peel of bitter oranges and that it’s used to add color to cocktails,” she read from the label.

“Yeah, so?” Adriana asked, massaging a dime-sized drop of Hawaiian Tropic oil onto her already golden shoulders.

“So? So it’s really just food coloring with alcohol in it. We can’t drink this.”

“Really? I can.” Adriana unscrewed the cap and took a long gulp.

Emmy sighed. “No water? I’d kill for some water.”

“Of course there’s no water. I covered the entire airport. The only little shop was boarded up-permanently, it appears-with a sign that says NO. I saw something that might have been a bar at one point but could’ve also been customs, and an area that was designated as a restaurant but looked like downtown Baghdad. There was, however, a folding card table near the Divi Divi gate staffed by a kind gentleman who claimed he was duty-free. He had about ten cartons of something called Richmond Ultra-Lights, a few crushed bars of Toblerone, and a bottle each of Jim Beam and this. I chose this.” She handed Emmy the bottle. “Oh, come on, Em. Relax a little. It’s a vacation!”

Emmy took the bottle, stared at it, and took a swig. It tasted like liquid Splenda with a kick. She drank again.

Adriana smiled, proud as a parent at a sixth-grade talent show. “That’s the spirit! Leigh, sweetheart, take a nip. There you go… Now, girls, I have a little present for you.”

Leigh forced herself to swallow and shuddered. “I know that look. Please tell me you didn’t smuggle in something truly illegal. If this ”-she waved her hands expansively-“is the international airport, can you imagine what the prison looks like?”

Undeterred, Adriana pulled a red and white container shaped like a large pill capsule from her jeans pocket. She twisted off the cap and shook out three tablets. One disappeared down her throat. She handed one to each of her friends.

“Mommy’s little helper,” she sang.

“Valium? Since when do you take Valium?”

“When? Since we decided to fly on an aircraft that looks like a Six Flags ride.”

Well, that was all the convincing Emmy needed. She swallowed the little round pill and washed it down with some blue curaçao. She watched Leigh do the same and then everything once again got soft around the edges.

An hour passed, and then another. Emmy opened her eyes first. Her calves were a splotchy salmon color and there were six empty beer cans on the ground. Vaguely she recalled being approached by a man who wore a cooler suspended from his neck. He didn’t have any water, either, but he was selling cans of beer called, suspiciously, Amstel Bright. At the time it had seemed like a good idea, but the beer and the blue curaçao and the Valium combined with hundred-plus-degree heat and no water was probably not the wisest move.

“Adriana, wake up. Leigh? I think it’s time to board.”

Leigh opened an eye without moving a muscle and looked up with surprising clarity. “Where are we?”

“Come on, we need to move. The only thing worse than getting on that plane is sleeping here tonight.”

That seemed to motivate everyone. They managed to hobble, all together, in the right direction.

“Wow, great security here,” Leigh mumbled, as the girls weaved their way toward a chalkboard that read DIVI DIVI, 6:00 P.M. “I just adore airports that don’t inconvenience you with X-ray machines and metal detectors.”

They boarded the six-seater with little drama, earning only one strange look from the pilot when he saw Adriana down the last of the blue curaçao and promptly pass out against the window. The flight wasn’t particularly terrifying, although Emmy applauded with her fellow travelers when the wheels touched down. Naturally, their planned car and driver were nowhere to be found at Bonaire’s Flamingo Airport, and Adriana’s hardback cosmetic case had somehow vanished during the twenty-minute ride, but everyone seemed beyond caring.

“It makes for light traveling, this whole lose-a-bag-per-flight deal,” Adriana said and shrugged.

By the time they climbed out of the taxi at the hotel, they had been awake for nearly twenty-four hours, had gotten drunk, sobered up, lost two bags, and flown an airline that sounded like a nursery rhyme from an airport that surely couldn’t have passed even the most lenient FAA inspection. Blessedly, the resort looked every bit as elegant and peaceful as it did in Duncan’s dossier, and Emmy thought she might kiss the check-in guy when he upgraded them to a two-bedroom suite. Leigh had already collapsed, fully dressed, on the bed in the smaller bedroom, and Adriana looked like she was about to do the same, but Emmy was determined to take a bath before passing out.