Dictatorship of the Dress (9780698168305)

by Topper, Jessica

  “And Noah?”

  “He just happened to be sitting next to me, on his way to Vegas.”

  “No, I mean . . . do you see him as the consolation prize, too?”

  I sighed. “Noah turned out to be amazing. He made me see things about myself I don’t think I wanted to see. I was playing the martyr, having to carry my mother’s dress around. But it’s really anger I’ve been carrying. Toward my mother, for being so controlling all my life. And toward Allen. For leaving me.” I felt a new wave of tears threatening to brim, but I blinked them back. “We were supposed to have this great life together.” It came out as a pathetic wail. “He proposed to me when he was in remission. I knew what I was signing up for. But when the cancer came back . . .” Fuck it. The tears forged rivulets toward my chin and I just let Mother Nature take its course. “He broke it off. He said I would make a horrible widow.” I laughed through the hot mess of my tears. “And when he . . . his last word to me was ‘free.’”

  Anita’s eyes were wide and glistening.

  “But Noah’s the prize I can’t have,” I said bitterly. “He’s off to Vegas for his own bachelor party.” It hurt, but I had to be honest with myself. “I was just the pregame warm-up.”

  “I don’t know, Laney.” Anita rubbed her own mug in thought. “I’ve seen my share of Mile-High Club hookups and sleazy business trip behavior, but I truly don’t believe that was Noah’s m.o.”

  “Maybe not. But he said I wasn’t part of the equation.”

  “Well, perhaps he was struggling with his own choices.”

  True. But those late-night texts, spelled out in black-and-white and all caps, canceled out any hope of me factoring into his life.

  We sat in contemplative silence for a while.

  “I don’t tell many people this, but Scary wasn’t the first guy from the band that I, well . . . you know. Hooked up with.” She picked at the worn tweedy fabric of the chair. “And I beat myself up for a long time about it afterward. Call it being in the wrong place at the wrong time; call it lack of foresight, I don’t know. But it ultimately led me to the guy I really wanted to be with. So can I really call it a wrong choice?”

  I mulled that over. My mother had made so many decisions for me while I was growing up, I guess I had just assumed it was because I couldn’t be trusted to make the right ones. But perhaps there were no right or wrong choices . . . only choices themselves. It was easy to wallow in regret rather than to move on and take a new chance, a different choice.

  Anita set her mug down and laid both hands on my knees. “I’m sorry you lost Allen. But I’d feel even sorrier for you if you let the next chance slip away because you can’t let go.”

  She hugged me, and it was more comforting than a tray full of steaming hot, lemon-scented towels any day. “Come on, let’s pull out this sofa and get you some rest. Scary will take us both to the airport tomorrow, after the school bus comes for Holly. I’m on three days, then off two this week.” She carefully hung the dress from the cornice of the bookcase. “Don’t worry, I won’t let you forget it for the final leg of your trip.”

  I smiled and sighed. I was already in a better place in my mind, but knew I still had a ways to go.

  Scary emerged once the coast was clear and the terrifying girl talk was over. “She’s finally asleep.”

  If babies dreamed vividly, I imagined Amelia and that boneless pacifier giraffe happily galloping through a moist and milky rain forest right about now.

  He plopped the baby monitor into his wife’s hand, and she stood on her tiptoes to kiss him on his fuzzy cheek. “You go up. I’ll help with the sofa.”

  “The bedding’s in that cedar chest. I’m just going to rinse the baby’s bottles so they aren’t stinky and then I’ll go up. Bathroom’s right down the hall if you want to freshen up. ’Night, Laney.”

  “Thanks again. Good night.”

  Scary scooped the neat stack of bedding from the cedar chest by the bookcase.

  “What the heck is this?” I asked, pulling out a strange plump thing that appeared to be a question mark–shaped pillow.

  Scary laughed. “That,” he announced, “is a Snoogle. And apparently you have to be at least eight months pregnant to think it’s a comfortable thing to sleep with. I’d leave it in the chest, if I were you.”

  “Enough said.” I dropped it back in, and something familiar on the bookshelf caught my eye. “Aw, she really did frame my drawing!”

  “Totally. Thanks for that, by the way. It totally made Nita’s day . . . and mine.” He winked and maneuvered the pullout with one strong arm.

  We worked in silence, tucking corners and wrestling pillows into their cases.

  “Being a musician is harder than it looks, as you know,” Scary said, smoothing the last blanket in place.

  I nodded, wondering where he was going with that.

  “But being married to one is even harder. I know there are definitely days when she must think, ‘This isn’t what I signed up for.’” He reached to dim the sconces on the wall flanking the couch. Thank goodness he did—I was weepy at the drop of a hat . . . and the flick of a light switch.

  God, what was wrong with me?

  “I think you need to knock Allen off that pedestal.” Scary looked pointedly at me. “Or better yet, off that drum riser.”

  I laughed through the hot mess of my tears. “Easier said than done. He made me promise to always love him, no matter how big of a famous asshole he became.”

  “Yeah, that’s just like a drummer.” Scary chuckled, shaking his head. “We’re such attention whores.”

  He waited until I was under the covers to turn out the other lights. “Anyway, I’m sure you’ll find a way. Good night, Laney Jane.”

  And Scary Scott Thomas left me staring, long into the dark, and wondering how he knew Allen’s nickname for me.

  • • •

  “Who’s the drill bit, Laney Jane?” Allen placed a hand on the concrete block above my head and leaned in, essentially pinning me to the backstage corridor wall.

  “His name’s Gordon, and he’s not a drill bit.” Maybe it had been bad form to bring a date to my ex-boyfriend’s sold out New York City show. But then again . . . “He’s a publicist, actually. For your record label.” Ironically, my date was the one who’d gotten us on the guest list, with VIP passes.

  “Laney, you know I would’ve totally hooked you up with tickets.” Allen planted his other hand on the wall next to my waist, and now I was most definitely pinned. Over his shoulder and down the hall, I spied Gordon across the crowded, smoky greenroom of Roseland Ballroom, taking a hit off a joint and passing it to Paul, Three on a Match’s bassist. We had only gone out a few times, but Gordon’s constant name-dropping and hipster habits were already wearing a bit thin. “All you had to do was ask.”

  I thought all I had to do was tell you. The song he had sent me three years before was on a constant loop in my mind, and I wondered if we’d hear it live that night. But they hadn’t so much as hinted at it in the first half of the show.

  “Goddamn, I wish I could get you somewhere alone, Laney Jane.”

  Set break for the band had turned into Old Home Days; it was our tenth reunion weekend, and at least half of Central Bluff’s graduating class of 2000 had turned out for the show. And now everyone was backstage, clamoring for a chance to talk to the hometown boys done good. There was no chance of being left alone. Funny, though, cornered there by him in the narrow hallway, I felt like we were.

  He snaked his arm around my waist and murmured close, “I really don’t want that tool looking at you like I’m looking at you right now.”

  “Now you know how I feel.” I pouted. “At least there’s only one of him. There’re at least five hundred hot girls out there in the audience, lusting after Three on a Match.”

  “Oh, please.” Allen dropped his hands and plu
nged them modestly into the front pockets of his long black board shorts. Even January in Manhattan didn’t affect his skater-turned-surfer look. “No one looks at the drummer way back there.”

  He looked boyish and adorable, shrugging his ropy bare shoulders. Allen could pull off a Hanes wife beater like nobody’s business. It had been a shock to see his signature golden locks sheared to stubble length, but with his new goatee that eked a path along his chiseled jawline, he was the epitome of cute Cali rocker.

  “You feeling good?” I floundered, not knowing how to ask about his cancer. “Your mom told me, but—”

  “It’s okay. I’m okay. Remission, one full year.” He gave me the thumbs-up. “You look amazing tonight, L.J.”

  God, when was the last time he called me that? Probably not since we were sixteen. El Jay. It always rolled off his tongue so exotically. He pushed my thick curtain of hair off my cheek so he could look me in the eye. “Perfectious.”

  “That’s not even a word,” I scoffed. Allen loved to mangle the English language in an attempt to get laid.

  “It is to me.” His crystal blue eyes roamed hungrily over my bare shoulders as he stationed his hands against the wall above them once more. “It’s you.”

  I had dressed carefully and mindfully, on the off chance that maybe he would catch sight of me at the show, and here we were. The Robin’s jeans that Dani had convinced me to spend way too much money on, with their signature silver-stitched wings perched above my ass, were dynamite. My silky, midnight blue handkerchief top clung in all the right places and dipped enticingly at my cleavage. I felt confident and strong, especially as I slipped under his arm and made to walk away from him.

  “Nice tat. How long have you had that?”

  “Since the last time you acted like an asshole to me.”

  Allen laughed and cartwheeled his lanky arms, trapping me between them on the opposite wall. “You’re right. I’ve been a total asshole since our fifth-year reunion.”

  I was silent, reaching to trace the Mighty Mouse tattoo he really did get inked after I had drawn it that night. His brow puckered and his eyes turned down.

  “I’ve hated myself since slamming the door on you that night at the Meridien Hotel,” he quietly confessed. “And for what I did to you at the Lake Shore Hotel. Hell, you and I need to stay away from hotels.”

  “Get a room, you two! No one wants to be a voyeur to your exhibitionism!”

  Bryan, the band’s lead singer, was breezing by. He had a beer in one hand, along with the unmistakable long half sheet of paper covered with Sharpie marker chicken scratch. It was the night’s set list.

  “Can I look at what you guys are playing tonight?”

  Bryan retracted his arms to T. rex small and waved the set list back and forth. Caged under Allen’s arms, I was just too far away to be able to read it. And when I tried to reach for it, I got a grade school playground “Look with your eyes and not with your hands!”

  Allen plucked the set list from Bryan’s grasp and resumed his lean with me against the wall. The paper stayed infuriatingly out of reach above my head, just like my college acceptance letter had that day on the beach.

  “You butthead. You’re not going to let me see?”

  “He wants it to be a surprise to you, Laney Jane. It’s always about you. He made me change it tonight, because you’re here. When are you going to let us record ‘All You Had to Do’ anyway, Laney?”

  I threw a questioning look at my ex. Allen crumpled the copy of the set list in a death grip. “Bry, go find a groupie to bang or something, why don’t you?”

  “Yeah, right. I’d need more than the five minutes we have left in the break to bang her properly.” Bryan’s laugh echoed as he receded down the corridor.

  Five minutes wasn’t nearly enough time to make things right with Allen.

  But ten years had been much too long.

  “He’s right, Laney Jane. It is always about you. And I make sure everyone knows that, everywhere I go. Every band we tour with, every interview we take, every girl backstage wanting a piece—they all know my heart belongs forever to Laney Jane.”

  “So whose turn is it now?” I gulped.

  “For what?”

  “To hurt the other one. Because currently it’s match point.”

  Allen gave a start, then a slow smile. “It’s no longer match point.” He gave me a sensual, probing kiss that sent every nerve simmering. Once they were open, his eyes met mine. “It’s the flash point.”

  When I wanted characters to tell the truth in my comics, out came the dripping syringe of sodium pentothal. No, no! They’d struggle, before succumbing to the shot. What I wouldn’t give for a little truth serum right now.

  What I got was even better.

  Allen reached for the hem of his undershirt and slowly pulled the thin cotton up and off his frame. I had spent years poring over anatomy books, learning to draw the wide pectoralis major muscles characteristic of any great and powerful superhero, with Allen never far from my mind as I worked. And now his smooth, chiseled bare chest was just inches away from my touch again, like a blank canvas. Except it wasn’t blank. A new tattoo graced his heart center.

  The letters L and J were etched on a banner across the middle of a big, fat, old-school “Sailor Jerry”–style red heart. I loved that the scroll bearing my initials was slightly antiqued like a treasure map, with little nicks and cuts in it, the beating it had taken over time.

  Instead of a traditional arrow through the heart, a syringe was plunged through it on the diagonal. Crystal-clear liquid filled the chamber, and the superfine needle poking through the top had tiny heart-shaped drops coming off it, rather than teardrop shapes.

  “No more tears,” he whispered, touching my cheek.

  “What’s with the needle?”

  You have always been my drug.

  He smiled, pulling his shirt back on. “It’ll make more sense after the show.”

  I needed that shot.

  “Tell me what’s on the set list.”

  “How about Lose the Drill Bit > Your Place > 47th and 9th > Sex Type Thing > Reprise > Encore?” he said cockily.

  “No ‘All You Had to Do’ tonight?”

  “That’s always implied,” he said softly.

  “What did Bryan mean, when will I let you guys record that song?”

  Allen smiled. “Didn’t you ever notice the copyright on that demo I sent you?”

  Backstage guests and VIPs were pouring from the greenroom, eager to get back to their spots before the lights went down. Any moment, Gordon would come looking for me.

  “The music, the lyrics . . . it all belongs to Laney Jane Hudson.”

  He touched his chest as the tour manager came like a cyclone through the hall, hustling everyone out so the band could take the stage once more.

  “Just like my heart.”

  • • •

  Maybe it was my imagination, but the band’s second set was pure fire. I could spy on Allen perfectly from my spot up front, stage left. And I was pretty sure he could see me, too; every time Gordon leaned in to scream something in my ear or to touch me, the drum tempo seemed to speed up.

  “We’ve got a new song for you tonight, courtesy of Mr. Allen Burnsiiiiiiiiiiide!” Bryan crooned melodically into the microphone. At the sound of his name, Allen began a gunka-thunka heavy beat. It sounded like he was hitting the snares and the double-bass drums all in time with the pounding of my heart. “He needs an intervention, New York! He’s got it bad for—the—Love Juice Injection!”

  The trio dove into what would become their biggest hit ever, and even to my virgin ears, I knew it was a keeper, with its funky rhythm and punchy lyrics. All of Roseland was singing along with the chorus by the second time around.

  I’m in need of that Love Juice injection,

  Can’t you feel
my resurrection, baby?

  Your love juice is infectious,

  Pure, uncut, and perfectious

  Love Juice injection,

  Love should never be a weapon,

  Bay-hey-bay-aye-be-e

  I knew the song was about me. Shared initials and all. The girls were clamoring for a piece of Bryan, yanking at his pant legs as he strutted across the stage, but he was merely the vehicle. The Cyrano de Bergerac behind the kit was running the show.

  Three on a Match became many people’s new religion that night. But me, I felt positively born-again. Stretching my wings as I raised my hands in time with the beat, basking in the glow of the spotlights and the five-thousand-watt warmth of the music was pure catharsis.

  Gordon started begging off before the band did their encore. “Come on, Laney. I want to be able to grab a cab before the rush. Plus we’ve got to deal with coat check. Who cares if we miss one song?”

  I did.

  We were toward the back, near the bar, when the band began their signature good-bye. Ever since their inaugural show in Paul’s parents’ backyard, the band would stage dive into the crowd. Bryan, ever the front man, always kicked it off, yelling, “Good night, fuck you!” into the mic and hurling himself into the abyss of arms. If you weren’t really paying attention, it almost sounded like “good night, thank you,” but it wasn’t. Especially if you got a steel-toed boot to the head like Davey Robbins did at the beach party blowout junior year. Paul dove next, and he loved to sail out into the crowd Jesus-style—arms wide, eyes closed—and let the wave carry him.

  “Laney Jane! Where’s Laney Jane?”

  Gordon had been pulling me by the hand as he threaded through the crowd. I froze, turning to peer over the heads. Allen was out from behind the drum kit and had the mic, still clipped to its stand, clutched in both hands.

  “If you’re still out there, Laney Jane . . . will you marry me?”

  The audience roared as Allen took a running leap off the stage, flipped into the air, and was swallowed up by the crowd.