Chapter One

"You couldn't possibly have!" Was the astonished gasp that met her absent remark, that perhaps she would accept the date after all with the magnetic young man from the beach at Monte Carlo who had such remarkable deep golden eyes. Tonight was her night off, after all, and he had been courteous and engaging, if a little aloof.

Sakura's employer stared at her with open-mouthed shock, stunned into a miraculous silence that was part surprise, and part. . . dismay? Sakura blinked uneasily as Tanekawa Sayuri forgot for once to stare down her nose at anything worth less than a multi-million trust fund. Working as a personal assistant was not in the least as glamorous as the agency had portrayed it, and meeting famous people did not quite compensate for having to cater to their ephemeral whims and self-centered attitudes, too. But the daughter of a small-town college professor could not simply exist in leisure; she had to work hard to simply exist.

"I'm sorry, Tanekawa-sama, but he isn't involved elsewhere, is he?" Oh yes, she had learned to cater to the mannerisms of the wealthy, too. Asking if he was dating or in a relationship would have been tasteless to the extreme, and the one thing Sayuri abhorred above all else was one who was tasteless and/or vulgar. Putting excessive emphasis on the word involved would have been tasteless, and maybe vulgar on top of it, so Sakura was careful to emphasize it slightly but enough to be noticed to the tutored ear. Those two words were some of Sayuri's favorites, condemning them upon anyone who deviated ever so slightly from the accepted norm of the elites. And her condemnation, was quite frankly put, a social death sentence.

Sayuri was staring at a corner of the 16 foot gold-leaf Louis the Sixteenth style ceiling as if it were the most fascinating piece of architecture in the entire world, although she had probably stared at the same corner every time Sakura uttered even a word that discomfited her sense of social norms. It was something she especially hated, too, when people made "scenes" or made themselves otherwise "conspicuous." Sakura hated it too, because she always got that politely vague uncomfortable look that said the person wearing the look was kindly pretending her faux pas had not just happened in the previous moment, but being kind was obviously simply good manners and they were patiently bearing with her until she could acquire some better manners herself, dammit. Well, the dammit was her addition. But then they would give her another look, one that she would translate as "why and how could you possibly be so irreproachably socially retarded that you have to make me give you this look (which forces me to be vulgar, how dare you) so you know that what you did was a mistake?"

"Well he's here alone, just for some fun and oh, you know." The "you know" was accompanied by a hand wave that implied he was not involved with anyone anywhere in the world and was here simply for some short-lived amusement, and with that it was Sayuri's implication that Sakura was the "you know," the short-lived amusement. She was still staring at the corner of the ceiling so that Sakura would have ample time to digest the fact that she would make herself "conspicuous" by assuming she was going on a formal date with someone who perhaps did not mean it as such, and would probably use her because he was not looking for a relationship so Sakura might make a "scene" or be "conspicuous" and thereby embarrass her employer.

Sakura was heartily sick of all of this subliminal message business, and tired of reading implications that could convey the information of a novel when it was implied with only a short sentence. She should have quit long ago, had it not been for the promise that they were headed to Monte Carlo and the beautiful beaches, the fanciful architecture, and the sparkling glamour. But if she wanted to make a fool of herself with someone so much above her, whose business was that? Even before the self-directed question was formed, however, she knew the answer: everyone.

"Well you know he's young." Sayuri paused delicately to have the volume of this information sink in and finally looked in her direction with her startling dark eyes, but no more than a few seconds. Because it would have been tasteless to stare inappropriately. There, that was her third favorite word, "inappropriate." By young, Sayuri meant that he was not looking for a relationship, and Sakura was pretty presumptuous to read anything into it, or to hope for anything from it.

"Oh I totally noticed. But thanks." Sakura smiled thinly at her employer. Sayuri nodded as if she expected no less from her, that Sakura of all of the personal assistants was most adept at reading these conversations. It was funny, really, that she had once been laughably clueless. Under Sayuri's tutelage, that went in a hurry, when she said harmless things that were greeted with dead silence, or when people avoided her simply because she had waved at the inopportune moment. But still, it felt like a foreign language that she still didn't understand the nuances of.

"Great! Alright then, I'll need you at the pool only until about four, then maybe you can find something to do tonight. See you in a few."

Sakura nodded and smiled.

With that, Sayuri breezed out, looking visibly relieved that her silly personal assistant hadn't committed a faux-pas and, and that she had confirmed that Sakura was absolutely not going to go out on any such date.

Watching her perfect blond hair sway gently out, Sakura mused that Sayuri didn't really mean harm, she was just aghast that anyone should do so many things that made this certain set of people uncomfortable. And many things made these people uncomfortable: saying the word "money" or "cash," mentioning anything remotely positive about themselves, even when pressed, and discussing status quo. These were as incomprehensible to her has she was to Sayuri, but Sayuri was on her side, at least. It was strange how the arbitrary rules could rule all of the wealthy in every corner of the world, even those with nothing in common and no desire to have anything in common with each other.

Wow, was that long-winded and unnecessary or what? But this story is really a social commentary more than anything else, even though it is based on the novel "Rebecca." Social commentary, remember that guys.

In my heart I share the same mindset as Sayuri, because I can say that I have been stared down because of my lack of trust-funds, although it would have been vulgar to be too open about it. But I grew up among people, to whom saying the word "money" was unfathomably awful, and discussing "the way things are" was a horribly uncomfortable thing. I didn't realize what sort of society I lived in until I went to college, where people actually mentioned positive things about themselves and didn't fear that they were being boastful, and discussed race. The only time a teacher attempted to discuss race in my high school, I remember, he was met with stony silence. Mentioning it even was completely tasteless. And you see? Those words of Sayuri's are mine, too. I don't know what that says about me. . .

Next chapter will come some of this mystery guy's friends and his personal habits. . . take a wild stab at who that might be, hmm. . . Know that I base all of his friends exactly off of my own, and they are a hell of a bunch, including the one that wrecks his BMW convertible and gets the same one, but new, express-delivered within the week, because he couldn't live without one. The same goes for the girl and her diamond-studded escape to Madrid, and all of the characters. Those are my friends without any changes whatsoever. I hope you will laugh a little at how over the top they can be, sometimes. "Too much" is another favorite phrase of mine and I will have to use that excessively too. Happy reading!