Sylvie (Sporadic Updates!)

Chapter One: Le Richoux

June 4th, 1998
London, England

The sun filters through the curtains, causing the blonde-haired woman who keeps trying to hide under a mess of pillows, tangled sheets, and a warm down comforter to put a pillow over her eyes. Sneaking a peek at the clock, she notices it says eight in the morning, which is dreadfully early in her mind. Begrudgingly, she remembers it is Thursday and most people have gone to work or are on their way. 

Everything is so white, she thinks to herself, her head pounding as she stumbles to the bathroom, also impeccably white and well-lit. She opens a cabinet, searching for ibuprofen, and is relieved when she finds it. The consequences of a night with Brandy Alexander, the young woman's signature drink, often included waking up in a strange white room hoping to find ibuprofen. The next step was to find clothes and hurry out before the maid arrived. It was a system the girl had perfected over years of experience, but time did not make sunshine at 8 AM any easier. 

On the contrary, it is getting harder and harder to be her with each passing year, something she'd never let the world see. As far as it is concerned, she is indestructible and utterly ageless. She hopes to be remembered that way until the day she dies, and she does not plan on that being anytime soon. 

Looking around the expansive white room, she realises she is not in a hotel at all, but someone's home. It is a very tastefully decorated home at that. Between the pristine whiteness and the fact that there were no obvious signs of life strewn about, she concludes that whoever lived there had a touch of OCD. 

Pinning her messy blonde waves to the top of her head, the girl puts on the clothes lying on the floor---an expensive-looking red dress almost too short to be decent, matching undergarments, and a pair of shoes threatening to drop black sequins all over the OCD home. As she puts her jewelry back on, one thing she is careful not to leave behind, she rubs the smudged makeup from her eyes and lips. It will do until she gets home, and it's not as if she's planning to meet many people between here and there. 

Sylvie remembers that she had a meeting at her favourite bar, Le Richoux. After it ended, she wasn't quite ready to go home. Something about quality drinks and pretty people in a place that still sported dim lighting and paintings on the wall of scenes from the 1920's---well, it causes one drink to turn into three rather easily. Of all the spots in London, the Prohibition-era bar and restaurant called Le Richoux is one of Sylvie's favourites, and she is a fixture there. 

If she were anyone else, with her overly short skirts and bizarre hairpieces and jewellery, she'd be given a cool reception at a place like Le Richoux. For over 120 years, it was the "it" place designed to cater to the upper echelon of society. It s the sort of place people go for special occasions, one wall dedicated to all the couples who'd gotten engaged over a candlelit dinner at the restaurant. Sylvie often smirks at it, wondering how many of those couples actually got married and stayed that way. 

During the day, Le Richoux tolerated the tourists, the bohemians, the students, and other assorted people who just wanted to say they'd been there. Once the sun set, the tradition of elitism could be see clearly. Like many old family-run businesses in London, the owners had gotten wealthy from the pretense of exclusivity. 

Somehow, twenty-four-year-old Sylvie Winslow, with her devious smile and expensive tastes, had managed to slip past the pretense of exclusivity. When she thought of that, she grinned to herself, obviously the self-satisfied sort. 

Sylvie remembers the previous night more clearly as she gets dressed. There was a middle-aged man who worked in finance, one who talked her ear off about the dullest subject imaginable. Once he started buying her drinks and mentioning the various committees he and his wife served on and the causes to which they donated, Sylvie realised that being impolite would burn too many bridges. Instead, she turned on her winning smile, let her hand rest on his knee, and decided to be overly polite.