Two rolling bags, a tote, and a small clutch with a strap, which counted as functional by any reasonable standard.
Rafe regarded the assembled luggage, shook his head, and said “one bag.”
He went through the large rolling bag with surgical focus, moving items to the bed: both pairs of heels, the silk blouses, the jewelry roll, the backup sunglasses, the dry shampoo, the string bikinis. He kept the basics.
“Those are the Gianvito Rossis,” I said, as the first pair of heels landed on the bed. “I need those for dinners.”
“One pair of flats.”
“One pair of— there are no flats in this bag. These are travel heels, not statement heels. The distinction is important and if you would just hold on for one second—”
He had already moved to the tote. He reached in and came up with the hot pink Jimmy Choos I’d wedged sideways undera scarf — which I had not been attempting to conceal, I had simply packed them in a creative configuration. He held them up alongside the Gianvito Rossis and considered both pairs with the focus of someone making a genuinely important assessment.
He put the hot pink ones in the bag.
He put the Gianvito Rossis on the bed.
I opened my mouth. I closed it. I wasn’t going to say anything about that. I genuinely had no idea what I would say about that.
He closed the bag.
We left at eleven forty-three — I know because I checked his watch when he held the lobby door, since I was operating without my usual infrastructure. The lobby of the Grant Beverly Hills was marble and fresh lilies, the smell of them hitting the moment the elevator opened, and I crossed it in the Zimmermann and my Louboutins because at least I still had those. Armando at the front desk watched me go and clucked his tongue, just once, in what I chose to interpret as solidarity.
Outside, a crew cab sat at the curb — not a town car, not a black Escalade, just a dark truck with actual road dirt on the undercarriage and the look of something that had been everywhere twice. At the top of the steps I glanced back once — forty floors of windows, my ring light still burning somewhere in the upper third — then turned to face the truck.
“You can’t possibly expect me to arrive anywhere in that,” I said.
“We’re not arriving anywhere yet,” he said, and held the passenger door.
I got in.
HE PULLED OFF THE FREEWAYin East LA, which was not the direction of Napa. I read the hand-painted sign in the window and turned to him.
“Why,” I said, “are we at a thrift store?”
“You need different clothes.”
“I have a curated selection, already edited by you personally, currently sitting in a bag in the truck bed.” I gestured behind us. “The truck bed you are walking away from.”
He was already at the door.
I followed him inside because the alternative was sitting alone in a parking lot in East LA in a Zimmermann dress and Louboutins, which was its own kind of problem. The store smelled like industrial detergent and the previous owners of too many things, and I walked through the door in what was rapidly becoming the most overqualified outfit in the zip code and thought: my glam squad is going to require a formal debrief. Possibly grief counseling.
He was already moving through the racks, pulling items with the focus of someone running a checklist only he could see. He held a pair of dark jeans against his forearm, checking the sizing.
“Those are going to be stiff,” I said.
He put them in the basket.
He found a plain navy sweatshirt two racks over — no logo, no text, the color of absolutely nothing — checked the tag, and added it without breaking stride.
“What kind of trip requires a sweatshirt?” I asked. “In May? In California?”
“The part above five thousand feet.”
I absorbed this. Five thousand feet was not a vineyard. Five thousand feet was not a digital detox with a waiting list. What I’d packed — silk blouses, string bikinis, two pairs of heels — was wrong in ways that were becoming very clear very fast, and whatever was in this basket was beginning to add up to something I wasn’t going to enjoy.
He came back from the shoe aisle with hiking boots and crouched at my feet to check the sizing. I had spent forty-five minutes this morning preparing to charm a forgettable corporate handler. The man currently holding my foot in both hands was not the category I had prepared for.
