Dieter was riding shotgun, having retrieved two black duffel bags from the luggage space under the plane and climbing into the front seat of her SUV. She wished that he had chosen another SUV and was relieved that he hadn’t.
The caravan headed toward the hotel where the wedding was to take place in a few days.
A few days.
Which meant that Flicka and her admins needed to make perhaps five hundred phone calls in the next few hours.
She tapped a number into her phone, calling the next person on the mostly white spreadsheet, though red and green blocks scattered down the long, long list. Another name on the shared document turned green, and the initials MK appeared beside it, meaning that Maria Konner had contacted that prospective wedding guest and gotten an affirmative RSVP.
Flicka’s phone rang loudly in the rolling SUV, while the Swiss sun poured down on summer-green mountains and sparkled on the lake they were driving past. She held the phone flat on her palm with the speaker on so she wouldn’t have it smashed against her face for hours. Phone sweat made her break out.
Christine Grimaldi answered Flicka’s call. “Flicka,baby!Are you back in Monaco yet?”
“Nope, I’m in Switzerland. Wulfie’s wedding isonfor this weekend, Saturday late afternoon, in Montreux. Can you come?”
“Absolutely!”
“Excellent.” Flicka turned Christine’s square green on the spreadsheet. “And can you provide the entertainment at the reception?”
“What?”
“Because wejustrescheduled this wedding, we don’t have any entertainment for the reception. We could play that Bach violin sonata that we worked on in upper school.”
“So we’re going toput on a show?”
“Yes, we’re going toput on a show!”That was one of their favorite phrases to scream together after a Judy Garland marathon over one weekend in the dorms.
“Oh, I suppose, then. Anything for you, Flicka,baby.I’ll work on it before I leave.”
Flicka saved the spreadsheet, started a new document calledReception Conscripts,and added Christine’s name and hers to it.
She called the next number on the spreadsheet without actually consulting the laptop. She knew all the phone numbers anyway, no matter what she pretended to people.
Georgie Johnson answered her call, “Hello?”
Flicka kept her voice perfectly calm, belying the frantic panic churning in her gut at how many damned phone calls she needed to make. “Wulfram and Rae’s wedding is scheduled for this weekend, Saturday late afternoon, in Montreux, Switzerland. Details will follow by email soon. Rae said to tell you that your attendance is ‘requested and required.’ That commoner is getting the hang of this princess thing astonishingly quickly.”
Georgie dithered for a few moments, citing her prior commitment to play contemporary music with Alexandre Grimaldi’s “rock band” in Rome that particular night.
Flicka rolled her eyes. Georgie shouldn’t be hanging out with Alexandre Grimaldi, anyway. She replied with perfectly logical arguments that Georgie should get her butt to Montreux and finally ended with, “So you’ll be there?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think I can,” Georgie waffled.
“I’ll put you down as a definite yes, then,” Flicka said, frowning. On the spreadsheet, she filled Georgie’s square in with green.
It shouldn’t be so damned difficult to get people to attend the wedding of the season. Flicka’s wedding in the spring had been the wedding of the year, of course, perhaps the decade, but Wulfie’s hurry-up-quickie wedding was certainly important.
Georgie’s voice shouted through the phone, “Seriously, Flicka!”
“You can’t do that to Rae. Her health is so fragile. They still haven’t told me what’s going on with her,” she lied, because propriety. “I’m so worried.”
“No matter what it is, I’ll bet that your brother has gotten her the best care possible.”
“That’s certainly true, even if he had to kidnap the world’s foremost specialist in whatever-it-is.” Flicka stared at the front seat where Dieter and Luca were ignoring her. “Dieter would do that for Wulfie, too. I think Dieter is gay for him.”
Dieter, sitting in the front seat, turned halfway around when she said that. He glared into the rear of the car at her, one dark blond eyebrow lowered over his angry gray eyes, though the sarcasm in the glare was apparent to Flicka. He knew she was messing with him and was playing along.
The driver, Luca Wyss, snickered.
