“I’m sorry, miss. This limo is reserved. I’m going to have to ask you to please exit the vehicle. I can call you a cab...”
“Is this a joke?” I asked laughing.
The limo driver, a man I had gotten to know extremely well in the last two years, stared back at me in utter shock. His mouth fell open, and a second later, he reached for his phone.
A second after that, my own phone began to ring.
I extracted it from my purse in surprise, then gazed up through the partition. “Is this some sort of joke about it being a stretch limo? Because I know you can hear me just fine—”
“Abigail?!”
I froze in place, watching as he swiveled around so far, he almost fell out of his chair. As far as I knew, the man had been clean and sober for the last fifteen years. Unless he’d had some sort of relapse in the forty minutes since I’d called him, there was something bigger going on.
“Yeah—who were you expecting?” I studied him carefully, unsure as to what exactly I should say. “Are you okay, Bob? Did something—”
“I’m sorry,” he choked in a raspy voice. A flush of embarrassment reddened his cheeks, but he still seemed completely unable to take his eyes off me. “I’m so sorry, I just...I honestly didn’t recognize you. I thought some strange woman had just climbed into my car.”
I didn’t know whether to take that as a slight or a compliment. In the end, I settled for another of my famous jokes. (These always went over rather well, I thought.)
“And your first thought was to call me? Bob—I’m flattered.” I ignored the exasperated look on his face as he rolled up the partition. “Rest assured, I will protect you with my life. No matter how many strange women come out of the—”
By that point, the partition was up, and I had to settle for laughing alone.
I tried to keep track of where we were going, pressing my face against the window like an impatient child. But either Bobby didn’t know exactly how to get there, or Nick had instructed him to take the most circuitous route known to man.
About twenty minutes later, after we’d passed the same billboard three different times, I scrambled up to the front of the car, and banged on the divider. It rolled down only an inch.
“You’re not going to tell any more jokes, are you?”
My eyes narrowed.
“You’re not simply impersonating my driver, are you? You know, at some point, we’ll either have to park or refuel. That sarcasm counts as a joke, by the way.”
He chuckled, taking the same left turn he’d taken a dozen times before.
“You’re certainly impatient, considering where you’re going and all. I would have thought you’d be dying to stall.”
A host of sudden nerves tightened my stomach, but at the same time, I sensed a golden opportunity.
“Yeah, well...I’ve kind of come round to it—if you know what I mean.” I folded my arms on top of the glass, trying to look as innocent as possible. “What about you, Bobby? How do you feel about it? Will you be coming inside as well?”
He needed only to glance at my face, to figure out my plan.
“I don’t think so!” He chuckled again. “If Nick wanted it to be a surprise, then I’m damn sure keeping it that way. I know better than to mess with his plans.”
“But Bob,” I whined, draping my arms entreatingly over the glass, “that’s the point—you do know Nick’s plans. He’s fucking crazy! You have to give me some kind of clue as to what I’m walking into here.”
“Nope. Not a chance.”
He was firm, but I’d been reprogrammed by the PR mavens who came before me, so that I was literally incapable of knowing how to back down.
“Is it a concert? A Turkish dance class? Oh my gosh—it’s not another naked art show, is it? Because I honestly don’t know if I can handle seeing even one more pair of—”
“We’re here.”
Before I could even work myself up into a rant, the limo pulled to the side of the curb and a valet immediately opened the door. It was only then that I realized why we’d taken such a nonsensical route getting there. Half the city had apparently been re-routed to this giant stadium.
It was the cream of the crop in terms of New York’s finest. Actors, athletes, politicians, rock stars. There were a couple foreign dignitaries thrown in, but to be honest, I was having trouble making out specific faces given the fact that they were literally bathed in camera-light.