Dictatorship of the Dress (9780698168305)

by Topper, Jessica

  “I guess it makes sense, then, that you try to make traveling as hassle free as possible. Airplane seat assignments, translation devices, car service apps. Is this the one that made you the gazillion dollars?” she queried.

  “I never said a gazillion,” I mumbled, shifting in the seat, which was growing warmer by the minute. “A solid six figures, maybe. But no, it was a different app.”

  Laney squirmed and fiddled with the buttons. “Wow, there’s a fine line between warming your butt and feeling like you wet your pants.”

  I laughed; her quirky, honest opinions were such a turn-on.

  “So . . .” She sidled closer and leaned on my shoulder. “Which app was it?”

  “It’s not that important.” I made to slide my phone into my jacket pocket, but her fingers were lightning fast.

  “Come on, show me.”

  She tapped my display but couldn’t find a way off the main screen.

  I pried the phone from her hands. “I don’t let the ladies touch my app on the first date,” I joked.

  “Oh, God, you’re calling that our first date? If so, I want a do-over.” She reached across my lap and swatted at the phone while I held it at arm’s length. “I’m just going to touch them all,” she threatened.

  God, would it be so wrong to kiss her? Hell, it would be so easy right now. Her body was twisted toward me, her arm flailing across me in pursuit of the phone. All I had to do was reach behind her back with my free hand and pull her close. I could imagine the softness of her hair as I wove my hand through it, to the back of her neck, and—

  “Fartrillion? Is that what I think it is?”

  Talk about a mood killer. I surrendered my phone to her with a sigh. “Yes, and yes. That’s the one.”

  “You designed a fart app?” she sputtered.

  “I’m not proud of it.”

  “Oh, come on. Why not?” She was all up in my apps now, zooming around. “Where’s the volume control?”

  “It’s so silly. It makes zero sense why that thing is a best seller and all my other ideas . . .” Laney giggled as a particularly rude noise burst from my phone. “It’s like pissing in the wind,” I finished.

  “Oh, come on. Lighten up.” To drive her point home, she hit the Squealer, the highest-pitched sample on the screen.

  “Now you know why I never went to any of my class reunions. Can you imagine; I’d spend the entire evening fending off ‘dude, pull my finger’ jokes from all the jocks,” I muttered.

  “Matter-Eater Lad. Codpiece. Arm-Fall-Off-Boy. Granted, those were all DC. But Marvel has had some doozies, too. Asbestos Lady. Whizzer. Squirrel Girl.”

  “Your point?”

  “Every successful enterprise has a few prototypes they aren’t proud of. And there is no accounting for taste when it comes to the buyers’ market. That’s all,” she said simply. She set my phone down on my thigh and wasn’t quick in taking her hand away. “Just keep doing what you love.”

  I reached as though I wanted to take possession of the phone, but got her hand in the process. “Thanks.” I gave it a gentle squeeze as I threaded my fingers through hers. She had artist’s hands, for sure. Her nails were bare and close clipped, unlike Sloane’s impeccably lacquered talons. And I could feel a bump on her index finger from where she had gripped her pencil all those years.

  “You’re welcome,” she said sweetly. “Why are you laughing?”

  “So I guess coffee is your kryptonite, then?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “It turns you human again.”

  Laney grimaced. “Kryptonite never made Superman human. It merely made him lose his powers. He became weak.”

  “Oh.” I hesitated. “True.”

  “Unless you equate being human with powerlessness?”

  Sloane came to mind, as did the meeting I had had the previous morning with her father. “We all have our weak moments, that’s for sure.” It was a nonanswer at best; the topic hit me in a sore spot between my head and my heart.

  She studied me for a moment. I felt heat blossom in my belly and radiate upward. Instead of pressing me for further explanation, thankfully she changed the subject.

  “I still can’t believe you got me into that dress.” She shook her head, chuckling in disbelief.

  “Yeah, usually guys try to get girls out of their dresses. I’m so not normal.”

  “Eh.” Laney bit her lip to fight back a smile and cocked her head. “Normal’s overrated.”

  “Totally.”

  For the first time in my life, I wished for Chicago traffic to stand still. I’m talking bumper-to-bumper gridlock traffic, clogging every major artery of the city. Anything that would keep her hand in mine, on my knee, indefinitely.

  No such luck.

  “Uh-oh.” Laney dipped into her bag and came up with her phone. “I’m getting a text message, and it’s way too early for Hawaii to be up.” Her text alert sounded like an elephant trumpeting. Or maybe it was Godzilla roaring. “Shit. I don’t believe this!” She tilted the phone to me. “My flight is delayed indefinitely. The airline is claiming ‘systemwide computer problems.’ Yet their text alert system is working just fine. Great. I’m screwed. Why me?”

  “If it’s systemwide, it’s got to be affecting the entire country,” I mused.

  I knew a bit about the industry from developing the seat assignment app, and I knew that an airline’s computer system was its intricate brains. Not only was it responsible for bookings and reservations, but it also managed online check-ins, ticketing, boarding pass printing, and bag tracking. Whatever was wrong with it, it didn’t sound like a quick fix.

  “How about you?” she asked.

  Laney’s mom had rebooked her onto a different airline. I thumbed through my e-mails to locate my new Windwest confirmation and clicked through to the flight’s status. “Still on time.”

  “Well, whatever. I’ll just camp out at the gate. This hotel lobby coffee is burning a hole through my gut. I’ll eat something there and wait it out, I guess. Get some work sketches done.”

  The thought of getting on a plane to sunny Vegas and leaving Laney to eat a greasy airport breakfast, with just her sketchpad and that damned garment bag to keep her company, depressed me to no end.

  She had moved away from me, her elbow propped on the door’s armrest and her chin in her palm, gazing out at the icy gray Chicago landscape as it whizzed by. In another few minutes, the vast flat expanse of O’Hare Airport would come into view.

  The tune to “O Sole Mio” echoed in my head. Now or never, dude . . .

  I lowered the privacy partition.

  “Hey, Ruel. Hang a left up here and jump on the Skyway.”

  “You got it, boss.”

  “But the sign for the airport is pointing that way,” Laney exclaimed.

  “I know. But we’ve got time to catch the best breakfast in Chi-Town.”

  Noah

  CANDY GIRL

  “Noah!” Laney protested. “The last thing I want is for you to miss your flight after the hassle you had yesterday. And think of your Vegas spreadsheet!”

  “We left extra-early to catch your flight, and my flight was still a good hour later than yours,” I reminded her. “There’s room for food on the agenda.”

  “Oh, and I am sure you have just the app to locate it, right?” she teased.

  “Actually, I don’t need an app. Chicago was city number eight of nine that I lived in for a time. Ruel, we’re taking the next exit. Then make the first right, okay?”

  It had been at least a year since I had been to Jughead’s Diner, but it had been an institution in my old River North neighborhood, so I assumed it was still there. And I knew it was the absolutely perfect place to bring a girl like Laney. Sure enough, my heart leaped when the twenty-four-hour blinking sign, shaped like a crown
beanie, came into sight, and I heard Laney gasp in recognition.

  “Oh, my God! Like Jughead Jones, from the old Archie comic?”

  “Yep.”

  “How perfect; he was always obsessed with food.” Laney was totally geeking out, and she was so cute. “I’ll keel over if Pop Tate is working behind the counter.”

  “Doubt it. The place has been owned and operated by some sort of lesbian cooperative since the eighties. I’ve never seen a guy working there, come to think of it.”

  Laney was out the door before Ruel had managed to put the car in park, and she stood with her hands on her hips, staring up at the place.

  “Sure you don’t want to just grab an Italian Beef down the street at Portillo’s instead?” I teased.

  “No way.”

  The diner’s small, boxy building was unassuming from the outside, but I knew she would flip out over the interior, as well as the food. Jughead’s breakfast menu was the stuff of legend, as evidenced by the crowds.

  “Can we keep you on the clock, Ruel? I think it might be a bit of a wait.”

  “I’ve got no problem with that. As long as you bring me back one of their famous chocolate bacon milk shakes, man.”

  “Deal.”

  Laney hesitated when I held the diner’s heavy door for her. “Should we bring our stuff in?”

  I realized that, other than our dance fever stint at the hotel bar, this was probably the farthest she had been from her mother’s dress since she’d embarked on her trip. I didn’t think it would hurt to distance herself from it for a little while, physically and emotionally.

  “This place is hole-in-the-wall tiny. We’re better off leaving it in the car. It’ll keep.”

  Laney saw what I meant the minute we stepped inside. “Wow. Just . . . wow.”

  The tiny foyer was a roving landscape of Pez dispensers, hundreds and hundreds of them; every kind of character you could think of lined the wall-to-wall shelves. Above our heads was an AstroTurf field of tiny green plastic army men, glued upside down to the ceiling. Several couples and young families hovered in the vestibule, waiting for available tables.

  “There’re so many kids here. I bet schools are closed because of the storm,” Laney observed.

  “I’ve got room at the counter now, but a booth could be about a fifteen-minute wait,” the hostess said.

  “We’ll wait for a booth,” I said, reaching for my phone.

  The Windwest page was still up on my screen, my flight, ironically, still on time. For once in your life, a voice inside me screamed, grab life by the balls. Squeeze from the middle of the tube!

  Fuck it. I clicked on “change flight” and chose the nonstop leaving at 4:45 P.M., before glancing up guiltily. I needn’t have worried; Laney was no longer next to me. I spied her kneeling in the corner where several brightly colored pillows and stacks of books and magazines kept children and adults alike cozy and occupied. She and a little girl, probably around six or seven years old, were busy coloring and gabbing away, while the girl’s parents pored over a menu nearby.

  “Would you look at that,” I said, shaking my head upon approach. “Now my flight is delayed.”

  “Ugh, really? Chicago is, like, purgatory or something!” Laney lifted her gaze toward me, and I saw brightness in it, reminiscent of my first encounter with her.

  She had been camped out on the floor that time, too, at the gate back in LaGuardia. And she had been sketching then, as well. I’d stolen several glances at her while she worked, until she caught me. I knew all about “being in the zone” when you were doing something you loved, but Laney brought it to a whole other level. Laney brought it to life.

  “At least there are colored pencils in purgatory,” I observed, giving my trouser legs a tug at the knees before squatting down next to Laney and her new friend. The purse I had likened earlier to a leather motorcycle jacket turned out to be a magical bag full of cool writing tools, as Laney pulled out one after the other.

  I turned to the little girl. “Whatcha got there?”

  “It’s a bunny,” she said, holding up her drawing and making it hop across the low coffee table before her. Laney had done a quick pen-and-ink sketch of a cute and fluffy bunny for her, and the girl had colored its fur a trippy rainbow of colors. “He’s hopping through the snow to find his friends.”

  “This is Samantha,” Laney supplied. “Are you done with that one, honey?”

  “Yes. His name is Bruce. He’s my friend, and he’s allllllll done.”

  “Cool, don’t forget to sign your name. All good artists sign their names at the bottom of their creations,” Laney said. “This is my friend Noah. And he’s—”

  Something had caught her eye behind me. I turned and saw a magazine rack lining the wall. Oh, for the love of Pete.

  “He’s one of ‘Thirty under Thirty’?” Laney finished, hopping up and reaching for the dated TechnoByte magazine. She grinned, dancing the tattered cover back and forth between her fingertips in front of me.

  “Hmm, they really need to update their magazine collection around here.”

  “Stop with the modesty! You didn’t tell me you were the poster boy for”—she tilted the magazine so she could read the title—“TechnoByte magazine. But it makes total sense, Tech-Boy.”

  She brazenly tucked it into her bag.

  “You’re stealing it?”

  “I need something to read on the plane.”

  “Laney, will you sign my picture, too?” the girl asked shyly.

  “Of course I will, Sam-I-Am.”

  “Hey,” the little girl exclaimed in wide wonder, “my uncle calls me that! Did they have Dr. Seuss when you were little?”

  “Sure did,” Laney replied, sending a wink my way. “Green Eggs and Ham was my very favorite, too. Think it’s on the menu here?”

  “If it’s not, it should be,” I murmured.

  Samantha scrawled her name in the top right corner. She took extra care with her M, but Laney waited patiently. When it was her turn, she rotated the paper to the left and signed it parallel to the rabbit’s upturned foot.

  “Noah, party of two!”

  “That’s us.” Laney shifted from her cross-legged position up to her knees. “’Bye, Sam-I-Am, have a great breakfast. I hope Bruce finds his friends.” She handed the girl a new sketch to color. It showed three happy bunny faces, hiding in the crook of a fallen log. Although it was a monochromatic sketch, Laney had looped what appeared to be large overhangs of snow along the log. But where the bunnies sat, it looked warm and safe and cozy.

  “Thank you, Laney! Mommy, Mommy, do you have my crayons?”

  I held out a hand to Laney and pulled her to standing. Smiling, she crammed her drawing materials back into her magic bag and we followed the hostess to our booth built for two.

  The counter would have been fine to sit at, but I knew each of the booths held a theme, displayed in old comics pressed flat under the glass tabletop. I could recall every one of my meals here during graduate school simply by which table I had landed in: Peanuts, Richie Rich, Millie the Model—they were mostly older nostalgia comics, but there were more modern superhero comics as well.

  Laney spread her fingers wide and flat in wonder. “Cheryl Blossom!” she breathed, as if she were greeting an old friend. “I haven’t thought of her in years.”

  I pushed my menu aside and glanced down at the strips containing a buxom, smiling redhead. Sheesh, she looked like a caricature of the very girl sitting before me! It had been a long time since I’d gotten turned on just by looking at a drawing. I comforted myself with the fact that it was the likeness sending my mind into overdrive. And the fact that Laney’s feet, still clad in my sneakers, were bumping against my ankles under the small table.

  “Good morning, you two.” Our waitress, a petite brunette with a rose tattoo snaking around her neck, gave us a k
nowing smile, as if she were in on some secret with us. “Coffee?”

  “Please,” I said gratefully.

  “Actually, I’ll have a root beer float,” Laney said. “Two straws.” She turned to me after the waitress left. “Seriously. Best hangover cure ever. You’ll see.”

  We proceeded to order; my mouth had been watering for their crème brûlée French toast since we had pulled up in front of the place. Laney opted for the “Eighteen-Wheeler” breakfast, complete with three eggs scrambled, two pancakes, bacon, hash browns, toast, and a side of grits.

  “Carb overload.” She grinned. “Perfect for a cross-country flight. Maybe I’ll sleep through the whole thing.”

  “Hey, I thought you were saving that for the flight,” I protested, as she pulled out the magazine with my cover story and smoothed the pages out.

  “Can’t read it on board if I’m sleeping, now, can I?”

  She was merciless.

  “‘Profiles on thirty of the most successful young innovators in the industry today,’” she read aloud. “Noah, this is seriously cool.”

  I glanced her way to see if she was joking, but she was totally absorbed in my half-page feature. “It’s not exactly accurate anymore. I’m no longer under thirty.”

  “Is this accurate?” she asked, pointing at the box that showed my net worth in bold, blocky numbers.

  “Um, yeah.”

  She let out a whistle. “That explains first class, then.”

  I had to laugh; I had said the same thing to her over our sushi lunch, back at the airport, when I learned the name on her bridal dress bag meant “pampered.”

  “You should be proud; this is a big accomplishment.”

  “Oh, I am.” I had worked hard to get where I was by age twenty-nine. The number was not lost on me, thinking back to Allen Burnside’s Wiki page. “I can’t take full credit for landing the cover story, though. That was Sloane’s doing. I think she knew the publicist or someone.”

  “That was nice of her,” Laney commented.

  “Yeah. She can be nice sometimes.” It was supposed to be a joke, but it fell somewhat flat. “Sloane’s not a monster, Laney. Sorry if I made it seem that way last night.”