Epilogue

"I'm not sending them away," I told Mr. Goethe over the phone, keeping my eyes on Sofia as she stirred the ice in her Pepsi.

"Very well," the man agreed with a barely audible sigh, but we didn't have the best connection either.

"Yeah?" I raised my eyebrows.

"It's your decision," he said, "but if anything should ever come out, Cindy..."

"I know," I said quickly, happy that I didn't have to argue with him. "Wolfgang and Eva understand."

"I'm sure they do," Mr. Goethe replied. "How's your trip?"

"Horrible," I shrugged into the phone. "We're in..."

"Dubai," Sofia told me.

" ... Dubai right now," I continued. "We've got three hours until the flight for Johannesburg."

"I know," my agent and manager actually chuckled. I never understood Mr. Goethe's sense of humor ... if he even had one.

"They won't let us leave the airport," I sighed.

"Good," he said. "I'll see you when you get to Paris. Let me speak with Sofia now."

"Yeah, yeah..." I held the phone out for my assistant. Mr. Goethe wasn't big on saying goodbye.

I picked up Sofia's glass and started chewing her ice while she played with her netbook organizer thing, the small computer that ran my life. I hated that machine. We were sitting in the Lufthansa VIP lounge, the official airline of Cindy, it seemed to me, and they all looked about the same. I couldn't tell one airport from another, seriously, and I just wanted the journey to be over with. Tahiti to South Africa was a very long trip.

"I'm going for a walk," I decided and Sofia narrowed her eyes as I stood up.

"Don't go too far," she said, sounding like my mother and raising her arm with a little wave towards Wolfgang and Eva.

They'd been sitting at the bar, drinking water and watching over me. In public, when we traveled, that's how they did it. We weren't friends then, at least not obviously, they were my bodyguards and kept a deceptive distance. I understood the need for it, the requirement to maintain appearances as much as anything else, but loving them like I did ... Sometimes I just wished we could hold hands and laugh and have fun the way we so often did in private.

"I want to do some shopping," I told them. "Maybe I can find a camel for Mr. Goethe."

"A camel?" Eva narrowed her brilliant blue eyes, not getting my joke at all, and I giggled at her.

"I'm kidding," I said. "We really need to work on your English."

"We should work on your German," Wolfgang offered me with a smile of his own.

"Ja, mach spracken mein Deutsch!" I giggled, thinking I screwed that up, but my two angels just grinned at each other.

Eva stayed close to me while Wolfgang sort of hovered around. There were numerous Duty Free stores and small restaurants we could visit without leaving the security of the boarding gates area. The place was crowded with travelers of course, and most of them doubtless recognized me despite my big sunglasses, an old Rolling Stones t-shirt, and a pair of acid washed jeans. Having huge pictures of myself in illuminated advertisements mounted on the walls didn't help.

"Do I really look like that?" I asked with a wry giggle as we passed a Fendi poster featuring life-sized me trying to hail a cab in rainy London.

"Oh yes," Eva replied, but she was busy watching the people staring at me.

"I don't even know what they're trying to sell," I sighed and picked a store selling umbrellas and neck ties. "Let's go in here."

A few people tried to approach me, looking for autographs or maybe just to say hello, maybe to slap me for being beautiful, who knows? People are crazy and unpredictable and that's why I needed Wolfgang as he'd intercept them before they got too close, turning them away politely, delaying them until I'd passed. If someone got past him, Eva would be a little less friendly, but nobody would be hurt, none of my would-be admirers were angry; my two angels had become very good at their job and besides, they were so attractive anyway. Who could resist Wolfgang's polite charm or Eva's striking sexuality?

I shopped for an hour without buying anything and all in all, it was a day like any other.

"The dress is made from 9,560 diamonds with a total weight of 34, 560 carats," Mr. Zimmer smiled at me as we walked through the De Beers offices in downtown Johannesburg.

"Is it going to be heavy?" I wondered, glancing over my shoulder to see Sofia walking behind us with Mr. Zimmer's assistant, a certain Ms. Didier.

"A carat is 200 milligrams, so..." the man shrugged, " ... less than seven kilos. About fifteen of your American pounds."

"That's all?" I smiled at him. "I thought it would be heavier than that."

"That's a lot of diamonds, Cindy," Mr. Zimmer told me seriously. "The finest quality. We spent over two years selecting each one, cutting and polishing..."

"A hundred million dollar dress," I nodded, but in truth I found it impossible to imagine such a thing.

"The most beautiful dress in the world," he said, "and now we have the most beautiful woman in the world to wear it."

"What? Eva Herzigova is here?" I asked him with a laugh and the poor man looked confused for a second.

"Cindy!" Sofia giggled.

"I kinda have a thing for her," I shrugged, but that was the truth and I wouldn't have minded dressing Herzigova in diamonds.

"Oh," Mr. Zimmer smiled politely. "I see."

I guessed South African diamond merchants were a lot like Swiss bankers when it came to humor and I had the feeling this would be a long couple days. Wolfgang and Eva had delivered me from the hotel and I'd given them the rest of the day off basically. De Beers provided their own security and didn't need or want my bodyguards at the shoot which was being done on the rooftop of all places.

Apparently they'd spent a lot of money transforming the helicopter pad atop the thirty-seven story building into a lush Garden of Eden or something. Believe me, after more than a year in the fashion business, that didn't seem very odd to me at all. I'd seen stranger things happen in the name of capitalism.

We rode an elevator to the top floor and Mr. Zimmer kindly ushered us into a spacious office that must have belonged to someone important ... but not too important. All the furniture had been removed to make room for a makeup station, a small wardrobe and changing area, although I'd have little need of that probably. The dress would be the only thing I wore for most of the morning and it came with four very large men carrying machine guns and dressed in black uniforms like they were in a war movie or something. The hand grenades seemed a little over the top to me.

They rolled it into the room as I sat in my chair, suffering through Wedell Nim's gossip. He was a complete fag and probably the best makeup guy in the world. Seriously. Wedell was a superstar and it just went to show how serious these diamond guys were. But Wedell wouldn't shut-up either and he knew everything about everyone, so of course he had a lot to talk about. I wondered what he told people about me.

" ... and you know, Cindy, once Lindsey starts drinking, she's on her knees for the first hard cock that comes along and ... Oh!" Wedell blinked at the big steel box, a safe about seven feet high and three feet square in the other directions.

A man drove it on some sort of electric cart, like a very low riding hand truck sort of thing. Four other men surrounded it, armed like I said, and looking decidedly dangerous to me. Wedell too apparently and he'd finally stopped talking. They barely glanced at me and that seemed a little unusual, considering I wore nothing but a pink bathrobe, a silk one, courtesy of Wedell. I suppose that just proves how professional those guys really were and maybe it should have made me feel better, but in truth I hadn't really thought about all those diamonds being valuable. I wondered if they'd shoot me if I decided I needed to run to the bathroom in the middle of the photo session.

"That's a serious closet," I said, taking a bottle of water from Sofia and she just nodded.

They parked the safe against the wall and by the time they were ready to open it, that large office seemed full of people. I mean, aside from Nim, Sofia, and me, there was Mr. Zimmer and his assistant, the four guards, two De Beers vice presidents of marketing whose names I'd forgotten immediately, and another assistant running coffee and tea for them. An exotic woman named Victoria something or other represented the French advertising agency that organized the campaign, and her assistant turned out to be a very handsome man named Klaus. Another guy, Mr. Jannfeld, was pacing nervously. He'd designed the dress and would help get it on and off me, and ... was that everyone? I couldn't tell, but I didn't really feel like getting naked in front of all those people, you know?