fun.
“So what'll it be, boys? Club 55 for lunch, and a little swimming first?” Charlie pressed, so he could let the captain know their plans.
“Yeah, what the hell, I guess so,” Adam said, rolling his eyes, as his French cell phone rang and he ignored it. He could listen to the message later. He carried only one while in Europe, a vast improvement over the battery of phones and papers he carried in New York. “It's tough work, but someone has to do it.” He grinned.
“Bloody Mary, anyone?” Charlie inquired with feigned innocence, as he signaled to the steward that they'd be leaving. The purser, who'd been standing by, a handsome young man from New Zealand, nodded, then disappeared to tell the captain, and make the lunch reservation. He didn't need to ask anything more. He knew Charlie would want to go ashore for lunch at two-thirty. Most of the time he preferred eating on board, but the scene in St. Tropez was too tempting. And everyone who was anyone went to Club 55 for lunch, just as they went to Spoon these days for dinner.
“Make mine a virgin Bloody Mary,” Gray said as he smiled at the steward. “I thought I'd postpone my trip to rehab for a few days.”
“Make mine hot and spicy, and come to think of it, make mine with tequila,” Adam said with a broad grin as Charlie laughed.
“I'll have a Bellini,” Charlie said—they were peach juice and champagne, and an easy way to start a day of decadence. Charlie had a fondness for Cuban cigars and good champagne. They had a lot of both on board.
All three men sat drinking and relaxing on deck as they motored carefully away from the port, avoiding the many smaller boats and the daily tour boats filled with gawkers who snapped their picture as they drove by. The usual flock of paparazzi were huddled together at the end of the quai, waiting for big yachts to come into port, so they could see who was on board. They followed celebrities on motorbikes, hounding them every step of the way, and they took a last picture of Blue Moon as she sailed away, assuming correctly that the superyacht would be back that night. Most of the time they took photographs of Charlie as he strolled through town, but he rarely if ever gave them fodder for the tabloids. Aside from the immense opulence and size of his yacht, Charlie led a relatively quiet life, and avoided scandal at all costs. He was just a very rich man, traveling with two friends, whom no one reading the tabloids had ever heard about. Even with the stars Adam knew and represented, he always stayed in the background. And Gray Hawk was just a starving artist. They were three bachelors, and devoted friends, out to have some fun for the month of August.
They swam for half an hour before lunch. Afterward, Adam took out one of the Jet Skis to take a tour around the other boats, and work off some of his energy, while Gray slept on the deck, and Charlie smoked one of his Cuban cigars. It was the perfect life. At two-thirty they took the tender to lunch at Club 55. Alain Delon was there, as he often was, Gerard Dépardieu, and Catherine Deneuve, which caused the three friends to discuss her at length. They all agreed that she was still beautiful, despite her age. She was very much Charlie's type, although considerably older than the women he went out with, who more often than not were somewhere in their thirties, or even slightly younger. He rarely went out with women his own age. He left the women in their forties to men in their sixties, or older. And Adam liked them much, much younger.
Gray said he would have been happy with Catherine Deneuve, at any age. He liked women closer to his own age, or even slightly older, although Ms. Deneuve was disqualified in his case, because she looked completely normal and relaxed as she laughed and talked to friends. The woman Gray was looking for, or would have noticed anywhere, would have been crying softly in a corner, or talking between sobs on her cell phone while appearing distraught. The girl Adam had in mind would have been ten years older than his teenage daughter. And he would have had to buy her breast implants and a nose job. The girl of Charlie's dreams would have been