Lost In Pacific Time

Coal Harbour is on the other side of downtown from my gym. As I drive down West Georgia Street I notice how the buildings get taller, shinier, and overall better. I approach the sleek black granite sign with “Welcome to Coal Harbour” etched onto it in big block letters. The sign describes Coal Harbour perfectly: pretentious, elite, and classically contemporary. It’s a far cry from the vibrant and lively Kitsilano. In Kitsilano three million dollar houses sat next to run down apartment buildings. Heck it’s an even further cry from my neighbourhood where the fanciest place is the Starbucks on the corner. I can see Amber’s building from a mile away. It towers over the rest of the equally modern but slightly inferior buildings. As I drive up the hotel the valet takes my car and I walk into the quite contemporary hotel lobby.

I can’t imagine Amber living here especially not with all the abstract art in the lobby. I’d always figured Amber would be living in the other Fairmount Hotel: the Fairmount Vancouver which stood for basically everything Amber liked. I had been there once or twice when Britney had wanted to escape my parents. The Fairmount Vancouver was like a hundred years old and dressed up with mirrors around every corner and there was an Old Hollywood opulence to it, it even had a Louis Vuitton store inside of it and those revolving doors that Amber liked.

I talked to the guy in the lobby and after phoning Amber they gave me a standard hotel room card and told me to swipe it on elevator eleven down the “southwest corridor”. I almost got lost trying to find the “southwest corridor” but I finally found elevator eleven tucked away in a corner, if you hadn’t been looking for it you would’ve thought you found a broom closet. I guessed that this was to make the elevator discreet because whoever could shell out “Pacific Rim Penthouse” money probably wanted privacy. I had to swipe the card several times. First to open the elevator, second to get it to travel up to the penthouse, and third to open the elevator doors.

The elevator doors opened into Amber’s foyer where she sat on the circular white marble table eating a cup of Greek yogurt with her bunny slippered legs dangling.

“Hi Milan you smell clean,” she says hopping off of the table and onto the black and white checkered floors.

“Hey Amber, wow this place looks amazing.” It does, at least what I can see from it, it doesn’t even look like an apartment. It looks like a mansion that belongs in Paris or Monaco although a scaled down mansion.

“Thanks,” Amber looks genuinely happy as she leads me past her kitchen and into her living room which is filled with silver colored things.

I sit down on the couch and Amber sits next to me, her little dogs have decided to climb up onto an arm chair and stare at me.

“Have you decided on a color scheme?” Amber asks pulling out a simple coil bound notebook.

I give her a smirk “Black and yellow”

The look on Amber’s face is priceless. I know that she wants to tell me “no fucking way” that she is going to let her name be attached to a home where the interiors look like a bumble bee exploded inside. Instead she sucks it up and digs around in her leather accordion folder.

“Which one of these do you like best?” she asks pulling out some color swatches.

“I don’t care about the shades and stuff. I just want my home to be reflective of my team.” I reply as I see at least twenty five different shades of yellow appear on the glass coffee table.
Amber pouts like she can’t imagine anyone not finding color schemes as fascinating she does.
_______

“What are you doing?” asks Milan as I climb onto his lap.

“Blindfolding you,” I reply after successfully getting my favourite Hermes scarf around his head.

“I like that we’re getting kinky, Amber but why?”

I roll my eyes “Men are very visual beings. I’ve decided that by blind folding you it will help you keep your focus on what’s at hand. Now which one of these smells better.” I ask holding a various samples of perfume under his nose.

“I like the second one,” he replies and I write that down on my notebook.

“Okay now which one of these do you like better?” I ask pulling out some fabric samples and handing them to Milan.

He runs his mangled hands over each and every one “This one,” he says holding out the sample of black velvet and I slip it into his folder.

After I’ve test almost everything I have in my bag, I agree to Milan’s proposal for lunch and un-blindfold him.

“Do you have anywhere in mind?” he asks as I run around my apartment trying to find my cream colored quilted Marc Jacobs satchel.

“I’ve always wanted to go to Cardero’s” I tell him. It’s not that I’ve never gotten around to it, it’s just that I hate dining alone. Once in a magazine they were encouraging it as a way to try and meet men because it made you look confident and mysterious but every time I did it I always felt like a loser which really did nothing for my confidence. Maybe that’s why I can’t get laid, I’m not confident enough, the only thing I was confident about was my work. My work was everything I wasn’t, I lived vicariously through it. It was eye opening and dazzling, I wasn’t.

“Amber you ready?” Milan asks, scratching Dolce behind the ear. I snap out of myself rambling in my head and look down only to see my purple ostrich Birkin bag in my hands. I guess it could go with my black floral printed Madison Marcus sun dress.

As I ponder which pair of shoes to wear to by the doorway Milan appears next to me, “Wear these ones,” he says pointing to my silver YSL gladiators.

“Why?” I ask turning to watch him put his hands in his pockets “You’re going to break your ankle if you fall down and your wearing those.” He says referring to my six inch black Louboutin pumps.

“Well you’d catch me wouldn’t you?” I ask giving him a smile.
______

Of course I would catch her but it was a rhetorical question so I didn’t feel the need to answer her. I didn’t want her to know. To know that I missed her when clearly she was acting like she’d never left. She gives the doorman a smile as we walk onto the sidewalk.
“It’s lovely today,” Amber says blissfully as she takes in her surroundings.

“I’ve never imagined that you would live here but I guess birds of a feather flock together.” It seems to me that all the cars here are black, white, or grey like the rest of Coal Harbour living here seems to be like living in a black and white photo album.

“I know what you mean,” Amber says squinting to look up at the cloudless blue sky “but I just love waking up every day and seeing the ocean and the trees” she explains “I’m surrounded by nature which I don’t really get to see in LA. There’s too much concrete. What’s Boston like?”

“It’s a lot like here only colder during the winter.” I try to think of other things to add “it snows there. It’s a big sports city.”

“So I’ve heard. Obviously it doesn’t snow in Los Angeles but it rain, a couple days a month. But I miss it. I miss the smell of it and I miss changing my walk to a sprint when the first few drops hit my head.” She says staring at the blue mountains in North Vancouver on the other side of the harbour.

Finally I think of something interesting to tell her. “I have a sandwich named after me at this place in Boston”

Amber wrinkles her button nose. “What’s on it?”

I’ve never been asked that usually girls are impressed simply because I have a sandwich “I don’t know, I’ve never had it.”

Amber smiles at me “I can see you as a sandwich. It’s a very substantial thing with lots of components, intense, and overall large. I don’t think I’m one though”

“Really what kind of food item would you be?” I ask as the hostess gets us our seats.

Amber answers right away, like that’s what she’s been thinking about this whole time when they show her staring at the wall parallel to her on her show “I would be a macaron,” she replies as we take a seat at our table.

Something just doesn’t seem right. “Like those chocolate coconut cookies?”

Amber shakes her head “Those are macaroons, I would be a macaron. You know like those French pastries in all those pastel colors.”

I turn my attention to the menu but Amber continues “Anyway they’re light and can be eaten in two bites, I think the only reason they’re popular is because they look cute. They actually aren’t really that special.”

“I’d always thought you’d be a red velvet cupcake. I mean it’s like one of your favorite things in the world.” I reply scanning the typical waterfront-restaurant menu, which consists of seafood and beef.

“Just because I like them doesn’t mean I want to be one. Red velvet cupcakes are loud, decadent, and comforting” the way Amber says it make it sound like she isn’t any of those things.

“You could be decadent,” I offer, it means delicious right?

Amber looks like she’s trying to suppress a laugh and instantly I know I’m wrong. She pulls out her Blackberry and types in some words and hands her phone to me “Decadent-showing uninhibitedly or immoral self-indulgent behavior.” Says a monotone female voice. And I find myself laughing too.
_____

“Milan- the second-largest city in Italy, the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza, is one of Europe's largest with an estimated population of over 4 million spread over 1,980 km²” says my phone as I pick up my fish taco. Milan’s been playing with built in dictionary.

“They didn’t even say my name right” Milan pouts and I laugh.

“Ambrosia- a substance that tastes or smells delicious” says my phone and I nearly choke on my fish taco. It did not just say that.

“Well at least they got something right,” he says giving me his smirk.

I roll my eyes and take back my phone “How about I go visit your place tomorrow and we can get some more work done your house?”

“Sure,” he says still smirking at me “I’ll pick you up at ten?”

“Ten it is,” I say as Milan hands his credit card to our waitress.