Foreign Exposure

by Lauren Mechling

  As for B-Dog, I don’t have a clue. I haven’t heard from him all summer. Sorry I can’t be more helpful.

  OK, gotta go if I’m going to make this mountain biking workshop on the Hudson River, but I’m dead serious about what I said: Let me know if you need anything.

  Sam your man

  Buttercup Belle

  BY THE END OF MY FIRST WEEKEND south of the river, I was an old Peckham hand. The neighborhood’s layout was easier to grasp than other parts of London, and my new neighbors were chatty and warm—particularly Tom and Lester, the two old men who seemed to be permanently glued to the bench outside The Rose & Crown pub.

  Though the sugar-addicted Cassidy spawn woke me insanely early every morning, I still felt happy and energized. My “pep” even drew comment from Colleen’s mother, Jackie, who was usually too absorbed in the goings-on in Ambridge, the fictitious village where The Archers was set, to notice much else.

  I slept fitfully Sunday night, probably because I dreaded crossing paths with Anthony at A-ha! the next day. But at the office Monday morning, he was as playful as ever, as if my phone call Friday morning had never happened. He made silly faces at me whenever he passed my cubicle and I was on the phone, and made me shriek when he sneaked up behind me to press an ice-cold water bottle against my neck. By the end of the day, I’d concluded he didn’t think anything strange had passed between us, and I’d completely forgiven him his inhospitality. What had I been thinking, making such a suggestion in the first place? I’d been so forward, so American. Ian, when he’d heard the story over the weekend, had laughed and said, “The boy fancies you, clear as a bell. Wants to maintain an air of mystery, that’s all.”

  For the rest of the week, everyone at A-ha! worked feverishly on preparations for the BAMYs issue. Some reporters had been assigned to find out what the stars would be wearing in order to put together a “Dress Like a Diva” spread. Nicholas was working on a feature about the judging committee, and had been granted access to all their meetings. Anthony agreed to help me with my big assignment—the Jacquetta Schloss scoop I had been ordered to obtain—and volunteered to introduce me to his former classmate at the ceremony. Knowing how much Charlie and Rebecca were counting on the story, I accepted the offer gratefully.

  Friday morning, I arrived at Canary Wharf to find the A-ha! offices practically empty. Charlie Lappin had given his staff the day off, for primping purposes. I’d shown up only to pick up the dress Rebecca had left for me. Though I’d given her all my measurements, I had serious misgivings about the deputy editor’s taste, given her preference for skimpy getups that were age-inappropriate even for me. And if, as I suspected, Rebecca wasn’t wild about me, she might choose to take out her aggression in the form of a hideous costume.

  But when I unzipped the garment bag Rebecca had draped over Penny’s chair, I pulled out a magnificent gown straight out of an old Marilyn Monroe movie. It was butter-colored satin, with a low-cut back and a series of fabric flaps that tied in back. Wow. Maybe Rebecca didn’t have it in for me after all. There had to be a catch—maybe she’d intentionally chosen a dress that was too small for me.

  The surrounding cubicles were empty, so I crouched down to find out. I had just tugged the dress over my hips—success!—when the voice of Charlie Lappin crowed “Hell-o-o-o-o!” over the cubicle wall. Thanking God I’d left my wrap dress on underneath, I shot up and greeted my boss with crimson cheeks.

  “Practicing for tonight?” Charlie said, chuckling. “You look perfectly splendid, but if you don’t mind my saying, I’d lose the extra layer if I were you. I believe the point is to see some skin.”

  As I stood there feeling compromised in my unzipped, double-dressed state, Charlie launched into a description of the BBC documentary he’d watched at the gym that morning. “Brilliant bloke,” he said of the Spanish chef profiled on the show. “He used to be a surgeon and now he uses his medical instruments in the kitchen. He doesn’t make a single dish without the help of a syringe. Must be loads easier to operate when your patient’s already dead—no cries of protest, ha! Anyway, do tell Pippa how much I enjoyed it.”

  I nodded slowly, deciding to save the story about my being evicted for another occasion. Once Charlie had spun back toward his office, I checked my e-mail, reviewing the digital pictures various loved ones had sent me over the summer: Pia looking ridiculously glamorous reading an Italian edition of The Valley of the Dolls on a teak deck chair; Viv barely able to wrap her tiny arms around an immense tub of popcorn; Quinn and Dad sitting on our stoop on Barrow Street, raising their Snapple bottles to the camera. And last but not least, my pal Sam winking from beneath his fedora and twirling an unlit cigar between index and middle finger. Not for the first time, I looked closely at this picture, fascinated. Was it the stark lighting, or the dashing costume, or the effect of his new mountain biking habit, that made my gangly carrot-top friend look so different? He seemed older, more confident—almost, dare I say it, attractive.

  I shook my head rapidly and switched off the computer. There was no time for such speculations, not with just eight hours left to figure out how to tie the dress’s baffling network of flaps.

  Battleship Down

  THE BAMYS TRADITIONALLY TOOK PLACE in the Royal Albert Hall, a Victorian building so baroque and fabulous that Alfred Hitchcock featured it in not one but two movies. But at last year’s ceremony, the drummer from Eternal Radish clogged the pipe organ with chewing gum, and the BAMYs had not been invited to return. The less impressive site of this year’s event was the Royal Horticultural Halls, a convention center rented mostly for gardening shows and charity jumble sales.

  When Ian and I first got there, it was still light outside, and uncomfortably hot, but the nominees and their entourages were dressed to the nines in Swarovski-encrusted tuxedoes and breathtaking couture gowns. I silently thanked Rebecca Bridgewater for choosing such a wonderful dress, and Colleen Cassidy for braiding a silk gardenia into my hair.

  Ian snapped away at the red carpet scene, and I watched the procession by his side. “Hey,” I whispered at one point, directing Ian’s attention to a muscular black-haired woman working her way toward the entrance. “Didn’t she already go inside five minutes ago?”

  “An old trick, that one is,” Ian said. He drew a paper towel out of one of his many pockets and wiped it across his forehead. “They pop out the back door, then come round and make a second entrance, just on the off chance we missed them the first time round. You know who that one is?” Ian pointed to a brunette with harsh cheekbones and liquid blue eyes.

  When I told Ian I’d never seen the woman before, he nodded with satisfaction. “Expect not,” he said. “She doesn’t leave her flat too often these days. That’s Anna Engbert, that is. She had a bit of a fling with Charlie Lappin several years back—I always pitied the poor lass after that one. He broke her heart, he did.”

  “No way—Charlie Lappin, a heartbreaker? I can’t imagine anyone taking him serious—”

  “Put yourself in the shoes of a young actress and the editor of A-ha! might seem a bit more appealing.”

  “Where is Charlie, by the way? I saw him this morning.”

  “You didn’t hear? He’s avoiding public events.”

  “Charlie Lappin avoiding public events? But he’s the most—”

  “Social bugger you’ve ever met? Don’t I know it.” Ian changed flashes. “It was some image consultant’s crap idea. I give it a week.”

  “If that,” Anthony said from behind us. He was wearing red suspenders under his tuxedo and socks to match. After complimenting me on my “smart frock,” he told me he’d just seen Jacquetta Schloss inside. “Shall we?” he asked, extending his arm.

  I was thrilled to be trotting up the red carpet with Anthony, but as soon as we entered the main hall, which was swarming with people, he disentangled himself from me. He parked me by a potted palm and told me to stay put. “I’ll come find you the moment I see Jacquetta again,” he said.

  I waite
d there like a fool, refusing to budge from my spot in case I missed Anthony. He didn’t return until the curtain was raised and the boy band Make It broke into their latest single. “I don’t know where Jacquetta buggered off to,” he said. “But not to worry, we’ve still loads of time—I’ll fetch you after dinner.”

  And with that we separated. While Anthony had been selected to sit at the A-ha! table, I, like most of the lowlier staffers, had to stand upstairs in the “overflow” area. On my way there, I walked right past Sophie, not recognizing her until she called out my name. She looked gorgeous in a red off-the-shoulder dress and a simple pearl necklace. Her hair, usually multicolored, was a uniform shade of brown and set in a chignon.

  “Soph!” I cried. “You look stunning!”

  “Oh, shush,” she said, blushing the color of her dress.

  “What’s your assignment tonight?” I asked. At the office, Sophie mostly wrote capsule reviews of unauthorized celebrity biographies and sidebars about beauty trends.

  “You mean why was I dispatched to an event with living and breathing people?” she replied sardonically. “No doubt there were extra tickets, but to Rebecca Bridgewater’s credit, she did try to make me feel important. Said I’m emergency backup, meaning if anybody catches on fire, I’ll be here to collect quotes from onlookers. And you? Oh!” She ducked as a crane attached to a camera swooped perilously close to her head.

  “Nice save,” I said, and we started to walk upstairs. “Well, if all goes to plan, Anthony’s going to introduce me to Jacquetta Schloss, and I’m supposed to trick her into making some meaningless statement that Charlie can twist into a scandalous confession.”

  “Charlie? Twist words?” Sophie widened her eyes in fake surprise. “Impossible!”

  When we got upstairs, Sophie installed herself by the balcony to watch the ceremony, leaving me to wander on my own. While the first-class ticket holders were feasting on a four-course meal in the main auditorium, the rest of us had to make do with old-fashioned popcorn machines. Each machine popped a different flavor, and I kept busy tasting the wide selection. “This one’s interesting,” I said, presenting Sophie with my best find yet—chocolate. “Sweet and salty at the same time.”

  “Plech.” Sophie spit it out into a napkin. But when she looked up at me, her eyes were wide and shining. “Mimi, isn’t this just marvelous? Have you ever seen such a spectacular event?”

  Looking down at the stage, which was illuminated by little arrows of blue neon, I shrugged in uncertain agreement. “Yeah, it’s great,” I said. It didn’t feel right, telling Sophie how disappointed I was by the BAMYs. For all its spaceship sound effects and cutting-edge lighting whirligigs, the event felt a little drab, less inspiring even than last semester’s dance at Baldwin.

  “Ghastly of the magazine to put you up here,” Anthony said, coming up behind us and sticking his hand into the bag of popcorn. “Whose idea was this, popcorn for the media circus?” he asked, and as Sophie had he spit out the bite. “You should be outraged!”

  “We’re fine,” Sophie said politely, smoothing her hair and smiling wide. As I watched the color rise to her cheeks again, I realized that she, too, must have a crush on Anthony, and I felt stupid for not having noticed it before.

  “Sorry to intrude,” he said. “Just had a Jacquetta update. She’s at table eight, and I told her there’s somebody I’d like her to meet. So you’ll come down for dessert and we’ll make a bit of magic, yeah?”

  Before I could respond, he gave the gardenia in my hair a tweak and skittered off, leaving Sophie and me to exchange embarrassed looks. When the servers finally came out to clear everybody’s dinner plates, I said goodbye to Sophie and headed down the stairs.

  Anthony was slouched between Decca and a woman I’d never seen before. He was playing with an empty wineglass, dangling it upside down by its stem; a few red drops had rolled onto the tablecloth. At my approach, he got up somewhat unsteadily and once again-told me to stay put. But this time, he acted fast. Just a few minutes later, he returned arm in arm with Jacquetta Schloss.

  London’s favorite pop singer was dressed like a bumblebee, in a black and yellow gown that made her look puffier than in pictures. But she was also more beautiful, with clear green eyes and dimples that cut deep into her cheeks, like fishhooks.

  “Right,” Anthony said, careening back into his chair and nodding up at me. “Jacqs, it’s my pleasure to introduce you to Mimi Schulman. Mimi’s a colleague of mine from across the pond, and she doesn’t know you from a bar of soap. But she’s been assigned to cover you for our BAMYs issue, so if you’d be so kind”—he paused to feed himself chocolate cake with his fingers—“as to throw the dog a bone, I’d be much indebted to you.”

  I felt my throat constrict and cheeks turn red. I didn’t say anything. Had Anthony just called me a dog? In front of Jacquetta Schloss?

  But Jacquetta simply smiled at me kindly before telling Anthony, “Careful! You’re dropping chocolate crumbs everywhere.” She turned to me and offered me her free hand; the other was gripping a martini glass. “It’s a real pleasure to meet you, Mimi—I’d be happy to chat for a bit. Let’s go back to the bar, shall we? I’m desperate for another drink.”

  The bartender made a big display of welcoming back his “favorite customer.” With a wink, he asked if she’d be having another cosmopolitan. “And make it stiff, Frank,” Jacquetta said, then twirled around on her barstool to focus on me. Though she was one of Britain’s biggest superstars, the singer impressed me with a fresh, nearly self-mocking quality. She thought nothing of hiking up her pantyhose in front of me, and when she laughed, she threw back her head to reveal enormous nostrils. If she weren’t famous, I thought, we could be almost friends.

  “I’m famished,” she said, glugging down her cocktail. “All they served at this dinner were wretched little steaks. They’re so miserly at these functions.”

  When I told her about the old-fashioned popcorn machines, Jacquetta’s eyes bulged like a pair of green Ping-Pong balls and she begged me to take her upstairs. I brought her to a back corner of the upper level, where the pickle and chocolate popcorns were side by side. “What a stupendous idea,” Jacquetta said through a mouthful of pickle popcorn. “Mmph, absolutely delicious.” She laughed as she wiped her forearm across her mouth. “You must think I’m such a pig.”

  “No, not at—” I was about to boast of my own impressive appetite when a tall mustached man burst through the crowd, heading straight for us. “What are you doing?” he cried to Jacquetta, snatching away her martini glass. “Not in the first three months! My God, have you gone completely round the twist?”

  Jacquetta looked at the man, her expression horrified. Then, almost under her breath, she hissed, “Relax, would you? It’s just cranberry juice.”

  Now it was the man’s turn to look horrified. “Oh, right then,” he said hurriedly, handing the drink back to Jacquetta. “Sorry about that.”

  “But I thought you were having a cos—” With a jolt, I cut myself off. The first three months—what did that mean? And then it clicked. Jacquetta had made a great show of downing her cosmos, hadn’t she? When I was younger, my mom’s friend Freida, who had her first baby at age forty-three, used to drink iced tea in a beer mug so people wouldn’t guess she was pregnant until, as she put it later, “I’m out of the danger zone.”

  Was Jacquetta Schloss doing the same thing, and for the same reason? Had she arranged a show with the bartender she was so chummy with?

  “Mimi,” she said, “I’d like you to meet my manager, Desmond.” She glared hard at the mustached, and now ashen, man. “Des, Mimi is from A-ha! magazine. She’s interviewing me for the next issue, trying to dig up a bit of”—she coughed—“dirt. Shouldn’t be too hard now, should it?”

  The man went from dun to red to purple to a strange shade of eggplant. I could nearly hear him wheeze. “Jolly good, carry on,” he squeaked. “I’m a bit tired tonight, so I’ll just be toddling off.”

  A
fter the interruption from Desmond, Jacquetta and I tried, and failed, to revive our pleasant conversation. My accidental discovery of her secret showed on my face, and it was with a marked strain that she answered my subsequent questions about the house she’d just purchased in Islington. But it wasn’t until I thanked her for her time that she widened her eyes and gazed pleadingly at me. “I beg you, do be kind to me,” she said. “I can’t bear to be in the tabs again, not about this. Not yet. I’m horribly stressed as it is; it’d be simply too much.”

  I told her I’d do my best, though I had no idea what I meant by that.

  Back downstairs, I found a spectacleless Anthony wrapping up an interview with Dina Taz-Dellingpole, a socialite who had her own Dress to Impress television show. “Hey, where are your glasses?” I asked. “Can you see all right?”

  “Where are your glasses? Where are your glasses? Where are your glasses?” Anthony parroted drunkenly. “She loves fussing, this one,” he told Dina. “My glasses are . . . around here somewhere. But more to the point, Dina was telling me about her boyfriend’s pornography addiction, so if you don’t mind.”

  “Actually,” Dina said, “I said calligraphy.”

  “Right.” Anthony nodded and scribbled into his notebook.

  “So,” he asked me afterward, “learn anything juicy, did you?” We were seated next to each other at an abandoned table.

  “Um . . .” I bit down on my lip and blinked hard. A vision of “Jacquetta Preggers!” headlines scrolled through my head. Here was my big chance to immortalize myself in A-ha! magazine history—in the history of all celebrity journalism. But for some mysterious reason I couldn’t bring myself to do it, not now, with my colleague and would-be confidant so besotted and incoherent. It would be a waste of such a potentially huge moment. “She loves pickle-flavored popcorn,” I told him at last.