“The purple is a really good complement to your skin,” I assure Tommy.
“Okay, so I’ll get the purple swirl and . . . the blue diamonds and . . . I really can’t live without the one that looks like an animal print. ROWR” He does a lion impression complete with claw-hands.
“Three different fabrics?” I chew my bottom lip worriedly. “That’s not going to be cheap.” Fortunately, I don’t have to fret about the cost of the textiles I’m selecting for Sloane. I’ve got her gold AmEx, and she told me to charge as much as I needed to . . . within reason.
“Well, how much fabric do I need to make a sarong?”
“That depends on the length. Do you want your sarong to be long, like a few inches above the ankle? Or short, like right below the knee?”
“Duh, I can’t deprive people of the pleasure of seeing these beauties, can I?” He sweeps his hand up and down his legs, which are on display in his thigh-hugging striped shorts.
His legs are impressively toned thanks to all the riding he does around town on his “urban bike,” aka a neon green Mongoose he bought from some guy in the park for seventy-five dollars.
“Two yards should be enough for a short sarong then. How much is this–” I flip over the white price tag hanging from the bolt of blue diamond fabric. “Oh my!” I’m shocked by the numbers I see; they’re even higher than I imagined.
“What?” Tommy looks down at the tag in my hand. “Thirty-four ninety-nine a yard! You’ve got to be shittin’ me! Was this material colored with the crushed wings of endangered blue butterflies from the rainforest or something? Are the others this expensive?” He starts turning over price tags. Unfortunately, the least expensive fabric in the bunch is still more than thirty dollars a yard. “This sucks!” Tommy pouts.
I’m just about to suggest a Plan B when my cell rings. I reach down and pull the phone from my ladybug purse. Adorable, right? Now that I’m into this whole gardening thing, I couldn’t resist the bag when I spotted it in The Paisley Peacock’s front window. Tommy’s friend, Sasha, used her employee discount when she rang up the purse for me, so it was a steal!
Seeing Sloane’s name on my phone’s display, I answer, “Hey, sis. Give me a sec,” then remove the cell from my ear and tell Tommy, “Go up to the fourth floor. That’s where they keep the discounted remnants. You should be able to find something sarong-worthy at a more reasonable price there.”
Tommy blows me a kiss, and he’s off, leaving behind all his pricey fabrics, which someone else will have to return to their proper places upstairs.
Getting back to my call, I say, “Good timing. I was just about to pick out the main fabric for your dress. How do you feel about salmon?”
“It’s not bad, with a dill sauce.”
“I’m talking about the color, not the fish, silly. I found this lovely silk that’s salmon–”
“I told you, ‘NO PINK!’”
“But this salmon’s more orangey than pink. Really, Sloane, I think it would look quite striking–”
“Any color but pink.”
“Chartreuse it is then.” I can’t help but smirk. It’s fun to tease my tightly wound sister sometimes.
“Don’t make me disown you.”
“You know I’m kidding. Neither one of us could pull off chartreuse. So, cobalt blue or amethyst – what’s your preference?”
She sighs, sounding very put upon. “Honestly, I don’t care. You choose.”
Sloane is deferring to me? I can’t remember the last time that happened. Oh, wait, yes, I can. It was 1996, our freshman year of high school. Mom sent us to Fantastic Sams to get our hair cut for school pictures. Sloane just wanted a trim, but I had my heart set on getting “The Rachel,” that cute, bouncy shag popularized by Jennifer Aniston on Friends. I told Sloane she should get the same ‘do, because it would make her look “more mature.” For some reason, she listened to me and ten inches later (five off each of our heads), we had a bunch of hard-to-manage layers hanging in our faces. What looked so amazing on Jennifer was just sad on the two of us since our hair didn’t have the same volume and thickness as hers. I had to listen to Sloane complain about growing out those layers for the next year. Finally, a chance at redemption! I will select the right fabric and make my sister a dress so breathtakingly beautiful that jaws will drop when she walks into that grand ballroom!
“I’m going with the voided velvet,” I state resolutely. “The fabric is exquisite, and it’s more visually interesting, too. Oh, I’m so excited about this!” I wave over an employee who’s wearing a black apron covered in a whimsical strawberry print with red-and-white polka dot straps. She approaches the cutting table with a smile, and I point to the bolt of purple fabric, then hold up three fingers, indicating the number of yards I want, and make a scissors-cutting motion. She understands and gets to work on filling my order.
“You are going to love the style of this dress,” I promise Sloane. “The fashion of this time period really flattered slender women who weren’t particularly . . .,” I drop my voice to a whisper, “. . . busty. Thank goodness the first Stanfield Hotel didn’t open twenty years earlier or it would have been the Gibson Girl era when hourglass figures were all the rage and you’d need to pad your rear and your chest to get the right silhouette. Speaking of the right silhouette, I don’t suppose you own a . . . corset?” I say the word in a hushed tone and look around furtively, concerned that the gray-haired ladies might still be within hearing range.
The only response I get is dead silence.
“Sloane?”
Nothing. Was our call disconnected?
“Sloane!” I say her name more emphatically.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m here. I was just comparing numbers from two different reports and found a discrepancy.”
“So, you didn’t hear a word I said about silhouettes or the appropriate undergarments for this dress you’ll be wearing to the gala?” The aproned girl hands me my three yards of voided velvet and I mouth the words, “Thank you,” before placing the fabric in my shopping basket along with the vintage lace threaded with silver that I got earlier. Okay, I know Sloane forbade me to use lace on this dress, but I can’t be true to the time period and not incorporate it. Lace was hot back in 1914; all the chic ladies were wearing it. And once Sloane sees this delicate ivory lace with its hint of shimmer paired with the luxe velvet, I’m confident she’ll approve. And if she doesn’t, it’ll be too late to change, so she’ll have to embrace my creative vision anyway.
“I heard, but I’d rather discuss men, not lingerie.”
“You want to talk about Josh?” I ask as I head down the aisle of fabrics in search of a silk satin that’s the perfect shade of violet for the bandeau waist of Sloane’s gown.
“What? No! Why would I want to talk about him? I’ve got that situation totally under control. You’re the one who’s about to careen off the road into another relationship ditch. Gav told me you’ve been spending a lot of time with Bradley, that botanist I hired to take care of Lovey’s roses.”
“It’s Brody, not Bradley.” Seeing several columns of purple fabrics in the row opposite me, I cross between two cutting tables. “And I wouldn’t say that we’ve been spending a lot of time together; we’ve gone on a couple, okay . . . maybe three or four, walks in the park. I’m just trying to be there for him as a friend; that’s all.” I pull some of the velvet out of my shopping basket and hold it up to a fabric called “African violet,” but decide it doesn’t really pop next to the amethyst. “Brody’s going through a difficult time. He came home from a business trip a few months ago and discovered that his wife had packed up all her stuff and moved out without even discussing it with him first. Can you imagine? He tries to hide it, but I can tell he’s really hurt and confused about what happened. Poor man.”
“Oh, geez,” Sloane grumbles.
“Why are you ‘Oh, geez’-ing me?”
“You like the guy, and he’s still hung up on his wife.”
“I didn’t say
I liked him!” I protest a bit too vehemently. “What makes you think he’s still hung up on his wife?” A fabric designated “vivid violet” catches my eye, distracting me from Sloane’s answer. Unfortunately, when I try matching it with the velvet, the color looks bright and gaudy in comparison. Perfect for an anime-style costume; totally wrong for an early twentieth-century evening dress. Ooooo, an anime-style costume! That’s a great idea for Halloween. I’ll have to file that away for October.
“. . . don’t get closure; they become fixated. That’s why flower guy drones on and about his runaway wife when he’s with you.”
“I wouldn’t classify Brody’s comments about Justine as droning. I was the one who encouraged him to open up about the divorce because I thought it was unhealthy for him to keep all those negative feelings bottled up. I’m pretty sure that talking it out with me has helped Brody. He did say I was a good listener.”
“That’s what every man you get mixed up with says. They see how kind and compassionate you are and think it’s okay to dump their problems in your lap. It’s all about them. ‘Boo hoo – my ex treated me so badly. I don’t know if I can ever love again.’ ‘How can the cops suspect arson? Like I’d burn down my own pizzeria just because business was bad and I was in default on several bank loans.’ ‘That girl tricked me into sleeping with her. The baby’s probably not even mine.’”
Sloane always makes my exes sound so awful; I feel like I have to defend them. “For the record, no charges were ever filed against Dom in relation to that fire.” I did hear that he got into trouble with the law recently because he was involved in some kind of gambling ring, but Sloane doesn’t need to know that now, does she? “And a DNA test proved that Lola’s daughter wasn’t Marcus’s; the baby daddy turned out to be his younger brother, Luke.”
“Charming.” An eye roll is implied by her tone.
“Okay, so his family dynamic is a little weird . . .” Even I can’t deny that since both of Marcus’s brothers and his father hit on me at one time or another while we were dating. The Revkin men don’t really seem to grasp the concept of boundaries. “But Marcus wasn’t, isn’t, a bad guy. He didn’t want to be unfaithful to me; he did it because he was struggling with a serious issue.”
“Can’t-keep-it-in-his-pants-itis? Yeah, I’ve heard that that’s incurable.”
I frown because this plum fabric I thought might work from a distance looks like boring, old eggplant up-close, also because my sister is being insensitive. “You shouldn’t joke about this. Marcus’s cheating was a compulsion that caused him a lot of pain. He realized it was a problem, so he’s getting treatment now.”
“And how do you know about this alleged treatment?”
“Uh . . .” I don’t really want to answer that question because I know Sloane will have a conniption. My eyes dart around nervously, and that’s when I notice the ideal shade of violet way up at the top of a column that’s several feet to my right. Even if I stand on my tiptoes, there’s no way I can reach that bolt of fabric and I don’t see any aproned employees who aren’t already busy with customers. So, I grab one of the movable ladders and slide it down the row.
“I’m waiting!” Sloane says impatiently as I’m setting my shopping basket down on the floor in preparation for my climb.
“For what?” I’m stepping on the first rung of the ladder, trying to figure out how I can ascend it while holding my cell phone in one hand. Will that even be safe? Maybe I should hang up. That would be one way for me to avoid continuing this conversation with Sloane.
“For you to tell me how you know about this treatment Marcus is supposedly getting. Have you been in contact with him?”
“Well . . .” I could lie, but I’m really bad at that, which is why I always ended up with non-speaking roles in all my high school plays. Ms. Sullivan, the drama teacher, said that I never made her believe I was the characters I was attempting to bring to life. All right, so I won’t make up a story or ignore the question. I’ll just own that I’ve been in touch with Marcus recently. It’s not a big deal. “He texted a few times to say he was sorry for what he’d done to me and to let me know he was working on his issues.”
“And you used your head for once and didn’t respond to these texts, right?”
I stop on the fifth rung of the ladder and stretch out my hand, thinking I can reach the fabric I want from this position. “Not responding would have been rude, don’t you think?”
“Willa!” she admonishes so loudly that it startles me and I almost lose my balance, which was precarious to begin with since I have all my weight on one foot. Grabbing on to the ladder with both hands, I try to steady myself and drop my phone in the process. I hear it hit something on the way down and wince. Looking back over my shoulder, I expect to see the device lying in a million pieces on the carpet below, but surprisingly, it’s sitting safely atop the fabric in my shopping basket. PHEW I’m very attached to my Nokia, even if it is almost four years old and hopelessly outdated. Sloane’s always offering to buy me one of those crazy expensive iPhones with all the bells and whistles, which is what she has, but I don’t like the idea of having a cell phone that’s smarter than– Oh no, Sloane! She probably thinks I hung up on her since our chat ended so abruptly.
I hurry down the ladder and retrieve the phone from my shopping basket, then do a quick check for any damage. No cracks or wonkiness on the screen, so I think I’m good. I bring the phone up to my ear to see if by any chance my sister’s still there and find that she’s in the midst of delivering an impassioned monologue on my gullibility, completely oblivious to the fact that I haven’t been listening to her.
“. . . learn your lesson and stop letting men take advantage of you.”
“I don’t think I let men take advantage–”
“Hey, I found some great stuff upstairs,” Tommy interrupts, sauntering up to me with a bunch of fabric remnants in a shopping basket. “But I’m twenty-five dollars short. You have cash on you, right?” He holds out his hand and wiggles his fingers.
“I think so.” I get my wallet out of my purse and check the money compartment. “Looks like all I have are two twenties,” I tell him as I extract the bills with Andrew Jackson’s face on them. I’m going to need some of this cash for bus fare tomorrow as I have appointments all over town (a shih tzu with separation anxiety in Chinatown, a furniture-destroying calico in Castro, and a guinea pig who’s suddenly become a biter in Telegraph Hill – I’ve never tried communicating with one of those little whiskery furballs before, so that should be an interesting experiment).
“That’ll do.” Tommy plucks the money out of my hand. “Hurry up with whatever you’re doing here and meet me at the register in a few. I’ve got a date with Manuel at nine, and you know I need my prep time.”
As he dashes away, it occurs to me that I probably should have said something to Tommy about bringing back the change, but I’m sure that was implied when he took the cash. It’s not like he’d pocket the extra fifteen dollars. Of course, he might spend it if he sees something fun, like a button tree or an ice cream cone scissor holder, on the way to the regis–
“You even let the gay ones take advantage of you,” Sloane quips, reminding me that I’m still on the phone with her.
“He’ll pay me back,” I say, with more confidence than I feel.
“Sure, and Brody’s going to quit singing the blues about his bitchy ex and realize how wonderful you are, then the two of you can skip off into the sunset together with your adorable dogs.”
“You never know . . .”
“I do know. No matter how much you want it to be, life isn’t a Hallmark movie, Willa. So, don’t set yourself up for disappointment with a guy who’s not even divorced yet, okay? I don’t want to see you get your heart trampled by another jerk.”
I smile. Sloane might be bossy and even a little judgmental at times (okay, all the time), but that’s just her way of showing she cares and I really do appreciate her looking out for me. “It’s sweet of
you to be concerned, but you don’t have to worry. I’ve got my eyes wide open as far as Brody’s concerned. I know he’s going through a period of transition at the moment and I just want to provide whatever support I can. And he’s not a jerk. He’s smart, and interesting, and he feels things really deep–”
“Oh, geez.”
“What now?”
“You’re hopeless. I’m going back to my numbers. They make more sense.”
“You do that. I need to get this satin . . .” Seeing the girl in the strawberry apron bustle by, I mouth the word, “Help,” and point up at the violet fabric I almost broke my neck (and my phone) trying to get.
The officious sales associate scurries to my side and is about to climb on the ladder when I whisper, “Are there any silk flowers up in notions that are the right shade of purple to work with that satin up there, or do you think I’d be better off making my own flower from the fabric?”
“I told you, ‘NO FLOWERS!’” I can hear my sister screech from the other end of the line. Oops, guess I wasn’t speaking softly enough.
“Trust me,” I say and hang up.
Not that I trusted Sloane when she was trying to give me advice about the Brody situation, but that’s different. I know what I’m doing when it comes to fashion while Sloane, despite her claims to the contrary, has yet to prove that she’s any kind of an expert on men.
Chapter 17
(Willa)
“Oh, wow!” I exclaim, once again breathing in the scent of the apricot-colored bloom beneath my nose. “This smells just like licorice! Is that true of all roses that are floribunda?”
Twin Piques Page 17
