A Dangerous Dress

by Julia Holden

  “Uh-huh?”

  “I don’t know your name.”

  He stopped again. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right. I’m Josh.” He shook my hand. He had a nice handshake. Solid. Not too hard, but definitely not too soft either. Just right.

  “I’m Jane,” I said.

  We kept walking. We turned down a quiet block with not a restaurant in sight. I started to think maybe Josh didn’t actually know where he was going. Then there it was, an adorable little place, kind of tucked back from the street.

  The hostess kissed Josh on both cheeks and said, “Buona sera, Signore Tomahs.” She seated us, then came back thirty seconds later with big glasses of champagne, or whatever it is that real Italian restaurants serve that looks and tastes just like champagne.

  Josh set his baseball cap on the table. It was my first chance to take a good look at him, so I did. I told you that he had nice hair. But now, without the hat, I could see that his hair was really nice: sandy brown, the perfect length, with a little bit of a wave that I bet just happens without his working on it. Which is totally unfair, given how much time I have to spend on mine.

  I also told you his eyes were attractive. But what color were they? Green, maybe. Or blue. But not exactly. Hmm. Josh was the first person I ever met where I couldn’t figure out the color of his eyes. Eyes tell you a lot. And he had the eyes of a very complex, intriguing person.

  “What?” Josh asked all of a sudden.

  “I didn’t say anything,” I said.

  “You were looking at me,” he said.

  “No I wasn’t,” I said.

  “Yes you were,” he said.

  Well of course I was, but I didn’t want to admit it. So I said, “No, I was looking at”—I glanced around—“your hat.”

  “My hat,” he said. Skeptically.

  The waiter arrived. He was a friendly young man in a white shirt and black pants, and he had an Italian accent that I bet even Italian girls would think was sexy. If I hadn’t been with Josh, I am positive I would have flirted with him.

  I was trying to decide whether I had formed a wrong first impression of Josh. He really had been obnoxious with the cash machine thing. Then again, he’d saved me money. Now he had taken me to this lovely restaurant, and he was being very nice. He offered to let me pick the wine, and only chose it after I insisted. He also helped me with the menu. He suggested we share a buffalo mozzarella appetizer, risotto with black truffles for him, and for me something called pappardelle ai funghi, which he said was a wonderful pasta with wild mushrooms. Although it is really unfortunate that the Italian word for mushrooms is funghi, because, well, funghi is . . . fungus. Ew.

  After the waiter left, Josh smiled at me. He had a very nice smile. A real-person smile. I smiled back.

  “So,” Josh said.

  “So,” I said.

  “My hat,” Josh said.

  Oops. I thought he forgot. I had to say something about the hat. It was black, with a white H over a gold star. I tried to think of an H city with a baseball team. “Houston?” I asked.

  “Astros,” he said. “Very good.”

  “Texas,” I said.

  “The Houston Astros are undeniably from Texas,” he said.

  “I meant you,” I said. Although I certainly didn’t hear an accent.

  “No,” he said.

  “But you’re a Houston Astros fan,” I said.

  “No,” he said.

  “I’m confused,” I said.

  Josh leaned close to me. Even though he was confusing me, I liked him leaning close. He lowered his voice. “Let me tell you,” he said, “about the worst night of my life.”

  16

  That may not sound like a promising subject for conversation on a first date. But I was intrigued. Plus it didn’t hurt that Josh was so cute and intelligent.

  Okay, maybe it wasn’t officially a date. He did not ask me to dinner, I asked him. But this was turning into a date. Which was just fine.

  “October fifteenth, 1986.” Josh said it so ominously that I half expected him to say “A date which will live in infamy,” but he didn’t.

  “You must have been . . .”

  “Nine years old.”

  Oh, great, I thought. I was about to hear some deeply disturbing story of childhood trauma that would keep me up at night.

  “National League championship series. Game six.” Josh said. “The Astros and the Mets.”

  Whew. We were going to talk about baseball, not child abuse. I could handle baseball.

  “I thought you weren’t an Astros fan,” I said. I wanted him to see I was paying attention.

  “I’m not,” he said. “But I was then. I grew up in Bridgeport, Connecticut.”

  “Connecticut doesn’t have a baseball team,” I said. I am not a huge baseball fan, but I know a little. If a girl wants to go on dates, or at least if she wants to go on second dates, she’d better know a little about baseball. And football. Basketball. Hockey. NASCAR. Beach volleyball. Australian rugby. Thanks a lot, ESPN2.

  Anyway, I think Josh liked that I knew Connecticut doesn’t have a baseball team. “Exactly,” he said. “So you had to pick a team from someplace else. Where I grew up, pretty much everybody picked the Yankees.”

  “But you picked the Astros,” I said.

  “Looking back, I can’t imagine why. They had the worst uniforms in the history of baseball. They had AstroTurf, for God’s sake. But I thought they were cool.” He shrugged. “I guess I have this character flaw. Something about rooting for the underdog. The Astros never won the World Series. Back then, they had never even won the pennant.”

  “They sound like the Cubs,” I said. “Do they have a curse?” In case you don’t know, the Chicago Cubs have a curse involving a billy goat. Which seems like an odd thing to have a curse about, but that is neither here nor there.

  “No curse,” Josh said. “Nothing supernatural or glamorous. They just never won.” He got this little-boy look in his eyes. “Only 1986 is different. The Astros win the National League West. They’re playing the New York Mets for the pennant. The Mets are up three games to two, but the last two games are in Houston, in the Astrodome. And Tony Scott is pitching game seven. Tony Scott owns the Mets. So if they can win game six, the pennant is a lock.”

  Maybe it was the jet lag. Or the Chianti. Or the fact that I am genuinely just not all that interested in baseball. But the more he talked about this very important baseball game, the more my eyes started to swim.

  “Bottom of the fourteenth, it’s like magic: The Astros tie it.”

  I willed myself to pay attention. Because through the haze, I could sense that Josh was getting to the point that really mattered to him.

  “So when the Mets score three more in the top of the sixteenth, it’s okay. Because we’re going to win. I’m positive. And sure enough, bottom of the sixteenth, Houston scores two. We’ve got the tying run on first. The winning run at the plate. Jesse Orosco is on the mound for the Mets. Kevin Bass is at bat for the Astros. Two outs. And the count goes full, three and two.”

  Honestly, I did not come all the way to Paris to listen to a guy talk about baseball—no matter how cute and complex and kissable he was. But Josh wanted me to care, so I tried. As hard as I could. Only I wished he would please get to the point.

  “Bass strikes out. The Astros lose. The Mets go to the World Series.”

  “Oh,” I said. I hoped I sounded really disappointed. “So what about the hat?”

  “When the Astros lost that game, I promised myself I’d wear the cap until they won the World Series. I was a kid. I figured they’d win it the next year. I didn’t know I’d still be wearing it twenty years later.”

  “But you’re not a fan anymore.”

  He shrugged. Wistfully. “I grew up. Went away to college. Law school. Moved to New York. Baseball didn’t seem to matter as much. Plus there were the strikes. Salaries. Steroids. Eventually it didn’t feel like the same game I loved when I was nine years
old.”

  “But why do you still wear the hat?”

  Josh looked me right in the eye. Do not ask me why, but when he spoke, I had the very distinct feeling that he was talking about more than baseball. “I made a promise,” he said. “That has to count for something. Don’t you think so?”

  “Yes,” I said. “When you say you’re going to do something, you should do it.”

  “Besides,” Josh said, “I think somebody has to stick up for lost causes.” He looked at the Astros cap and shook his head. “No matter how lost they are.”

  I had an idea. “Have you tried Saint Jude?”

  “What?”

  “Saint Jude. You could light a candle.” Josh looked at me blankly. “Saint Jude is the patron saint of lost causes.” My grade school nuns would’ve been proud. Not that I necessarily believe in that stuff. But if the Astros had never won the World Series, it wouldn’t hurt for Josh to light a candle to Saint Jude, would it?

  “I’m not Catholic,” Josh said.

  “Oh.” I tried to remember whether that mattered or not. I wasn’t sure. “I don’t think that matters,” I said. I wanted to be encouraging. Plus it really shouldn’t matter. In my opinion.

  Right about then the food came. And let me tell you, it was amazing. Josh was absolutely right: I had never eaten real Italian food before.

  “Anyway,” Josh said, somewhere near the end of the buffalo mozzarella—which by the way means the cheese is made from buffalo milk, not that it comes from Buffalo, New York—“if I were going to ask Saint Jude to help me with a lost cause, I wouldn’t waste it on the Astros.”

  “But then you could stop wearing that hat,” I said. Let’s face it: Keeping your promises is terribly important, but it was a real pity for him to cover up such nice hair.

  “That’s true,” he said. “But I could ask for something that means even more to me.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like getting my movie made.”

  17

  I almost dropped my fork. Which would’ve been a shame, because those wild mushrooms were unimaginably delicious, even if they were funghi. But the point is, did you ever see in the movies where somebody has a flashback to ten different scenes in two seconds, and all of a sudden they put the pieces together and figure something out? I had one of those moments.

  Flash. I meet a man in my hotel, which is full of Movie People for my movie.

  Flash. We’re on the street, and he tells me his name. “I’m Josh,” he says.

  Flash. I start to read the screenplay Elliot Schiffter sent to me. The bottom of the cover page says Copyright J. Thomas.

  Flash. Josh and I walk into the restaurant. The hostess kisses his cheeks and says “Buona sera, Signore Tomahs.” Tomahs must be how an Italian person says Thomas.

  Flash. Josh says maybe he’ll ask Saint Jude for something that really means a lot to him. “Like getting my movie made,” he says.

  Flash.

  First name, J. Last name, Thomas. J. Thomas. Josh Thomas. Who wrote The Importance of Beating Ernest.

  My movie was Josh’s movie.

  Only wait a second. “You said you went to law school,” I said.

  “That’s right,” Josh said.

  “So . . . are you a lawyer?” I asked.

  “Well, yes,” he said.

  No no no! That was the wrong answer. He had to be a writer, not a lawyer. People who have those flash moments in the movies and put all the pieces together never get it wrong.

  “Actually,” he said, “I’m kind of a recovering lawyer.” He took another drink of Chianti. “These days, I’m really more of a . . . screenwriter.”

  Yes yes yes! He was the right Josh Thomas. The man who wrote the screenplay that had brought me to Paris. The wonderful, funny, romantic screenplay I loved. I had come all the way from Kirland, Indiana to Paris, France, and who wound up saving me from a hostile exchange rate and taking me to dinner at the most adorable, authentic Italian restaurant but screenwriter Josh Thomas. It was an incredible coincidence. Except as I have told you, I am not much of a believer in coincidence. Coincidence or not, though, the romantic potential of the whole encounter seemed, well . . . unlimited.

  Suddenly I saw him in a whole new light. I had already started to like him quite a bit. But now he practically glowed. I wondered what to say next. Because I did not want to say the wrong thing to this handsome, romantic, glowing man.

  I decided not to let on that I had any idea who he was, or that I had anything to do with the movie. Although I had to control myself, because my first impulse was to tell him how much I loved his screenplay, and that I was going to find the perfect dress so Gerard Duclos could film the climactic party scene and make the movie.

  The reason I did not tell Josh those things is quite simple: I was really starting to like him. And I sensed that he might feel the same way about me. Maybe it was fate, or karma—or magic, I thought, remembering Grandma’s dress. Whatever it was, it was a completely new feeling for me, and I wanted to make it last. So I figured, Let me save this for that very magical moment of the evening, when I would know the time was right. Then I’d say, “We have something very special in common.” And when I told him, he’d say, “That’s wonderful!” He would be so grateful I was helping his movie, he’d give me a big hug, maybe even a kiss, and of course I’d kiss him back, and after that . . . Well, just thinking about it made me tingly.

  It was too early to tell him. It might be a nice moment, but not the moment. That’s why, when Josh told me he was a screenwriter, I just said, “Really?”

  “Really. Although if you ask my mother, she’s hoping this is temporary. She says, ‘You’ll get it out of your system.’ Like it’s the flu. She says writers starve, and people in the movie business are bums.”

  “Do writers starve?” Well excuse me, but I was curious. Because the clothes he was wearing were pretty nice. Expensive nice. John Varvatos, maybe. Nice shoes, too. Most guys don’t bother spending the money on nice shoes. Let me also say this: I would not date a man solely because he makes a lot of money. On the other hand, if he is already a man I wanted to date, the fact that he makes a lot of money certainly wouldn’t be a deal breaker.

  “Starve? Not so far. You would not believe how much producers and movie studios will pay just to option a script.” I guess I looked blank, because he explained. “ ‘Optioning’ means they pay you just for the right to decide whether to make a movie. If they actually go ahead and make it, they pay you a whole lot more.”

  “So you get paid for writing movies that nobody makes?”

  “Ouch,” he said.

  The last thing I wanted to do was be mean to this very special, creative, romantic man, who I was liking more every minute. But I guess maybe it came out that way.

  Anyway, he said, “Yes. You can make a very good living writing movies that nobody makes. Only you don’t feel like you’re really a writer until you get your first movie made. At least, I don’t. And you wouldn’t believe the stupid reasons movies don’t get made.” He winced, and I got the feeling I had opened an old wound. “My last script came within three days of the start of principal photography. Three days.”

  “What happened?”

  “The director read the script.”

  “Hadn’t he already read it?”

  Josh looked at me like I was from Mars. Or Venus. Anyway, some other planet. “Of course not.”

  “So . . . when he read it, I guess he didn’t like it?”

  “Are you kidding? He loved it. In fact, he told the studio it was so good, they had to dump the guy who was supposed to star, and give it to George Clooney.”

  “So . . . I guess George Clooney didn’t like it?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. He cleared his schedule immediately. In fact, George thought it was so good, he told the studio to double the budget.”

  “So . . . I guess the studio wouldn’t do it?”

  “Are you nuts? They won’t offend George Clooney. They wrote
a check on the spot.”

  I was so confused. None of this sounded like a reason a movie wouldn’t get made. “So . . . what happened?”

  “They had a bigger budget, so they hired a new cinematographer. A buddy of George’s. They play basketball at George’s villa. Anyway, three days before they start filming, George and the guys are playing three-on-three. George steps on his friend’s foot. The cinematographer calls a foul. George says, ‘That’s no foul. I stepped on your foot; it was an accident, and even if it was on purpose, don’t be such a wuss.’ The cinematographer says, ‘I’m no wuss, but even if I am, at least I’m no pretty-boy prima donna.’ To which George says, ‘Oh yeah, well, if I’m a pretty-boy prima donna, then you’re fired!’ To which the cinematographer says, ‘You can’t fire me; I quit!’ ”

  “So . . . no cinematographer, no movie.”

  Josh scowled at me. “No no no. Those two guys have been friends forever. They calmed down, poured a couple of single malts, lit up a couple of Cohibas, and agreed they weren’t going to let any stupid movie spoil their friendship. They both quit. End of movie.”

  I felt like I had just witnessed a train wreck. I felt so bad for Josh. “That’s incredible. I mean, that all those things would go wrong.”

  “Nothing incredible about it. Stuff like that happens all the time. It’s a miracle anybody’s movie ever does get made.” Then a smile crept over his face. A very attractive smile, I might add. “But this time it’s my turn. That’s why I’m in Paris. They’re making my movie.”

  “So that’s why you’re staying at that hotel,” I said.

  “I’m not,” he said. “I’m a couple of blocks away, in this great little four-star I read about in the New York Times. I can’t believe they’re putting all that talent in a three-star hotel.”

  “But everybody working on the movie is staying there. Why aren’t you?”

  He shrugged. “I’m not exactly . . . working on the movie. Movie studios don’t pay writers to watch their scripts get made. I’m here in Paris on my own dime. But I’ve waited a long time for this. I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

  He looked awfully happy for a guy whose movie wouldn’t get made if the girl from Bumfuck—namely me—couldn’t find the perfect dress. I guessed he was trying to be optimistic.