A Dangerous Dress

by Julia Holden

  Josh poured us both some more Chianti. He clinked my glass and took a big drink. “Everybody’s flying in. Kathy Bates is already here.” Then his eyes opened wide. He looked like a kid opening presents. I adored his enthusiasm. I could just tell he was the sweetest man. “Kirk Douglas is coming. Kirk Douglas is in my movie. How cool is that?”

  I knew right away that Kirk Douglas must be playing old Harold Klein. Which was absolutely perfect. And by the way: Oh. My. God. I know he is an old man, but I love Kirk Douglas. Did you see him when he got that special Oscar? I cried.

  “As soon as Kirk Douglas attached to the project, all these big names came running,” Josh said. “Jude Law is playing Scott Fitzgerald. Can you believe it?” He still had that endearing little-boy look on his face. He was not obnoxious or arrogant at all. He was smart and humble and, as I may have mentioned, very attractive, and I found myself wondering how I could have thought anything bad about him at that cash machine. In fact, he seemed quite perfect. “They’re all doing it for scale.” He was still talking about the movie. “That’s, like, next to nothing. Which is a good thing, because the budget is next to nothing. In fact, if it weren’t for that obnoxious slut, the movie wouldn’t be getting made at all.”

  Slut? I knew he must’ve been talking about Nathalie. Totally independently, he and I had formed the exact same opinion of her. Our minds worked alike. We were compatible in every respect. Destiny—and magic—were very clearly at work here.

  That was when the Chianti ran out. We talked about getting another bottle, but I wanted to get an early start the next day. I said maybe we should stop drinking. Then I looked at him. He looked at me. Both of us just looked at each other. Then he smiled. An intimate smile. An I-want-to-get-to-know-you-very-well-starting-right-this-minute smile. It was the perfect smile. Suddenly I felt so warm, my fingertips started to sweat.

  We switched to drinking grappa.

  We also shared a tiramisu. And let me tell you. If you think you have eaten tiramisu, like at the Olive Garden? You have not.

  Even in the middle of what was rapidly turning into the most romantic night of my life, I reminded myself that I was in Paris on business. I had to find a dress. So I steered the conversation back to the body that would wear it. “What obnoxious slut?”

  “Nathalie Gauloise. She’s this . . . actress.” Josh said the word as though it pained him to say it. “She’s this little French . . . well, bitch.” I giggled. “She is. She’s the director’s girlfriend. She’s probably the only reason he’s doing the movie. The thing is, in France the TV networks subsidize the movie industry, so it’s cheaper to make a French movie. The studio in LA figured out they can qualify if one of the stars is from here, and she’ll say a bunch of her lines in French.”

  Okay that part was not all that conducive to romance. But you have to remember, Josh was a recovering lawyer.

  Right about then a piece of tiramisu fell off my fork and onto the table. Perhaps all that Chianti and grappa had made me a little sloppy. Whatever the reason, I did something I pretty much never do: I picked up the piece I dropped. Picked it off the table with my fingers. Intending to put it right into my mouth, because it was too sinfully good to waste.

  It never got to my mouth. Josh reached over and took hold of my wrist. Which stopped me cold. For just a second I thought, Oh no, my manners are so bad, I have offended him. Silly me. Gently, but still firmly, Josh pulled my wrist toward him. Until my hand was right in front of his mouth. Then he ate the tiramisu out of my hand.

  Then he licked my fingers.

  Ooooooooooh.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  18

  Here is how perfect Josh Thomas was that night.

  We did not go running off to his hotel room. Or my hotel room. Or anybody’s hotel room. Even though—and I am being terribly honest with you here—if he had asked me to, I think there is an extremely good chance I would have.

  But he didn’t ask. Even though he was interested. A girl can tell. He just wasn’t going to rush. And not rushing is, in my opinion, the most perfect thing a man can do under such fairy-tale circumstances. I mean, the prince did not even try to kiss Cinderella at the ball.

  So not only did we not rush, we strolled. Along the Seine river. We just walked along, on that very same broad sidewalk where only eight hours earlier I had seen all those happy couples walking and smiling and holding hands. Do not ask me what kind of romantic time warp exists in Paris, because how could it possibly have been only eight hours? Eight hours, and forever ago. Now, together with Josh, I was one of those couples.

  His hand even fit perfectly with mine.

  The night sky wasn’t black, not even when we walked past the endlessly long, endlessly lovely Musée d’Orsay, where the huge illuminated clocks told Parisians it was five to eleven. No, the Paris sky was a deep purple blue, a color I’d certainly never seen in Indiana.

  We had already passed three bridges, all bright and noisy with traffic. Now, though, we came to a narrow, pedestrians-only bridge, which was quiet and dark.

  “Come on,” Josh said.

  As we reached the midpoint of the bridge, a sightseeing barge crowded with tourists glided below. The barge’s spotlights seeped up through the spaces in the bridge’s wooden planking, and for a few seconds the whole span seemed to glow under our feet. Then the barge passed, and we were in darkness again.

  Josh stopped walking. So I stopped, too. “Wait,” he said. I waited.

  Then he kissed me.

  Oh my.

  I have had many first kisses. My first first kiss was Bobby Sterbavy. Up in the balcony of the old Hoosier Theatre on One Hundred and Nineteenth Street. And he really should have done something with that gum. But every boy you have ever kissed the first time is a first kiss. And I have had my share.

  But I never had a first kiss like when Josh Thomas kissed me that night on the Pont Solférino in Paris.

  Part of it is just that Josh is a very good kisser. Better. Excellent. That is not an opinion, it is a fact. Josh knew exactly how to kiss me. And the wonderful thing was, the way he kissed told me exactly how to kiss him back.

  We kissed for quite a long time. It is simply amazing that I did not melt right through the bridge into the river.

  Finally we stopped kissing and I opened my eyes.

  I saw fireworks. I mean, the sky was literally sparkling, like a thousand tiny silent fireworks flashing and dancing just for me. “The sky is sparkling,” I said.

  “I know,” he said.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “The Tower,” Josh said.

  “What?”

  “The Eiffel Tower,” he said. “After dark it sparkles like that every hour on the hour for about ten minutes.”

  I looked at the lights, and he was right: The sparkles were very clearly in the shape of the top of the Tower.

  Up to that point, the kiss plus the sparkles added up to the single most wonderful moment in my entire life.

  “I wanted to kiss you at the perfect time, in the perfect place,” he said. “So you’d open your eyes and see”—he pointed at the sparkling Tower—“that.”

  My first thought was, How wonderful of him. How romantic.

  Unfortunately, my first thought was interrupted by my second thought, which was: Hmmm. He knew the schedule. He timed it on purpose.

  Which made me wonder how many other girls he had kissed on this very spot, just before the lights on the Tower began to dance.

  I thought maybe we would head back now, but Josh said no, he wanted to take me to one of his favorite places in the whole world. I tried not to think about who the last Miss Fireworks had been. Between the restaurant and this bridge, his judgment had been pretty good so far. Besides, I much preferred to focus on my first thought than my second. So I said “Sure.”

  We stepped off the bridge and onto the Right Bank. Then we walked through a park. There were tall hedges and enormous bushes of flowers. The smell was so sweet
that I thought for a minute this was the place Josh was taking me. But we kept walking, out of the garden, across a busy avenue, and two blocks farther.

  Suddenly a plaza opened up in front of us. It was as if someone had cleared an entire city block except for one lonely column right in the middle, then lined the sides of the empty square with the longest, grandest uninterrupted facade I had ever seen. Josh told me this was the Place Vendôme, home of Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Boucheron, and Giorgio Armani.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “My favorite bar,” Josh said.

  Hmph. Did he take every Miss Fireworks to his favorite bar? That would be an awfully good reason not to go. Plus I still had that whole dress issue to deal with in the morning.

  “You’ll love it,” Josh said, giving my hand a squeeze. I thought about the way we had kissed, and, at least for the moment, all my doubts faded away.

  Josh’s favorite bar is at the Hotel Ritz. Which, in case you don’t know, is where the word ritzy comes from. Walking into the Ritz was like walking back into another century. And I don’t mean the one six years ago. A century with lots of money. Pretty good taste, too. I liked everything about the place, from the old revolving door to the bellboy with his round little hat.

  The bar was called, of all things, the Bar Hemingway. I thought that was fairly ironic, given that Hemingway is the villain of Josh’s screenplay. Anyway, I guess when the allies liberated Paris in World War II, Ernest Hemingway himself liberated the Hotel Ritz. Or at least the wine cellar. So they renamed the bar for him.

  That’s what the bartender told us. His name is Colin, and he is the nicest man. Not to mention that by global consensus he is the world’s best bartender. He is particularly famous for mixing the perfect drink to fit the mood of you and your companion. I must say he read us pretty well. He made us something he called a Lemon Charlie, which doesn’t sound all that alluring, except the name is actually from a liqueur called Limoncello something or other. There is also some very special vodka in it. So we are not talking about a lightweight drink.

  Josh and I sat down in heavy old leather armchairs, and Colin brought us our drinks and set them on a round leather-topped table. The walls were old wood paneling, and there were black-and-white photos all around, and books on shelves. It felt more like a library than a bar.

  A library full of famous and important people. Everybody was somebody. There was a model I recognized, although I have never known her name, so I am not cheating by not telling you. And two men in the corner arguing, who Josh said were from the New York Times and the Herald Tribune. And some old man Colin said was France’s minister of something or other. Those sorts of people. And us.

  Josh and Colin traded a few Hemingway trivia questions, on which they were both quite expert, and I tried to eavesdrop on the French minister, who was clearly trying to hit on the model even though she must have been a third his age. Then Colin went back to the bar and left Josh and me alone.

  We just sat, and—oh my gosh—held hands, and talked. I seem to recall that everything he said was fascinating, witty, and romantic, but for the life of me I can’t remember a word. Perhaps because of how much alcohol we had consumed, how attractive Josh was, and how perfectly my hand fit in his. Anyway we sat for a while, talking about I don’t know what, coughing at the New York Times guy’s cigar smoke, and drinking our Lemon Charlies. All four of them. Four total, that is. Two each. The whole time, I barely thought about the last Miss Fireworks.

  Incidentally, the Bar Hemingway at the Ritz may be Josh’s favorite bar in the world, but it is not the kind of place you could drink at every night. At least I could not. Because the drinks cost twenty-three euros. Which, I know from the exchange rate lesson Josh gave me, is twenty-nine dollars. Each.

  At some point, Josh started to chuckle.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  “Nothing. I’m just . . . happy. Ecstatic. Everything is working out. I’m here with you. And they’re making my movie.”

  He was really sounding overconfident about the movie thing, given that I hadn’t found a dress yet. I tried to bring him back down to earth, just a little. “The movie isn’t that big a deal, is it? I mean, if this one doesn’t work out, you can always write another one.”

  “You don’t understand,” he said. “Till now, it’s like I was cursed. I’ve had five scripts optioned. Every time, the producer and the studio swore it would get made. And every time . . . nothing. I told you about the last one. Three days before the start of principal photography.” Then he shook off the memory like a dog shaking off water. “Not this time, though. This one is absolutely, positively going to happen. Guaranteed. Starting day after tomorrow.”

  “If . . .” I said. It just popped out. I swear the fact that I couldn’t stop wondering about who the last Miss Fireworks had been had nothing to do with it.

  Josh went pale. He took hold of both my hands. “If what?”

  “If they find the dress.”

  “What dress?”

  How dense could he be? “The dress. Catherine’s diaphanous beaded dress. The grown-up, sexual, dangerous dress they don’t have yet. The dress Gerard Duclos won’t shoot the climactic party scene without. The dress they flew in some girl all the way from Bumfuck to find.”

  Josh stared at me like I was the Angel of Death. When he spoke, I could barely hear him. “What are you talking about?”

  Ohmygod.

  He didn’t know.

  19

  I drank the rest of my Lemon Charlie in one gulp. At that moment, I think I knew exactly how old Hap Kirland felt, the minute before his train ran off the tracks. “Never mind,” I said.

  “What do you mean, ‘never mind’? How do you know all these things?”

  I probably should’ve kept my mouth shut, but I couldn’t. “I’m the girl they flew in all the way from Bumfuck to find your dress.”

  Josh let go of my hands. “No you’re not.”

  “Yes I am.”

  He stood up and backed away slowly, as if I was contagious. “It’s happening again,” he muttered. “They’re not going to make my movie. All because of you.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. You did this. You. You turned me into a lost cause.”

  Help me Saint Jude.

  Perhaps Saint Jude was not listening at that precise moment. Although it is not fair of me to pin it on Saint Jude. Josh is the one who did it. Maybe if he hadn’t drunk all that wine and grappa and those Lemon Charlies he wouldn’t have done what he did next. Maybe if George Clooney hadn’t called a foul on the cinematographer just three days before the start of principal photography Josh wouldn’t have done it. But here is what he did.

  Colin walked over with the check. He looked at Josh questioningly. Josh looked at the check, then at me. He said to Colin, “She’s buying.” Then he walked out.

  I stood up. I wanted to run after Josh.

  Only there was Colin, with the check. He is a very nice man, but a check is a check.

  “Did you see what he did?” I asked Colin.

  He nodded. “Filthy brute,” he said. It was really quite nice of him to take my side.

  “He is not!” I said. “He’s just . . . upset.” I sat back down. Then I stood up. And sat down again. I didn’t know what to do. At the exact special perfect romantic moment, I was supposed to tell Josh that I was in Paris to find the dress for his movie because I fell in love with his script on page one. He was supposed to hug me, I was supposed to hug him back, then there would be all the tingly stuff. Only I told him at the exact awful horrible moment, in the worst possible way. And it was even worse, because he left me with the check. Which just lay there on the table. Mocking me.

  Okay checks do not mock you. Not even when an almost-perfect moment goes drastically catastrophically wrong. But if checks could mock, this one would have.

  I closed my eyes. I am pretty sure I would not have cried with my eyes open. But not absolutely sure. Anyway I counted.
To ten. Twenty. Thirty. I opened my eyes. Josh was still gone. The mocking check was still there.

  I had single-handedly shattered Josh’s dream. He thought he was cursed, and I was now officially his high priestess of doom. And any man superstitious enough to still wear a stupid Houston Astros cap after twenty years would undoubtedly never forgive his high priestess of doom.

  But I could try. I could find him, apologize, and tell him I would find the perfect dress so they would make his movie after all.

  I realized I was wasting time sitting there. I stood up. At least I had my wallet with me. The bad news was that the check was for ninety-six euros. I had the hundred euros I got from the cash machine, but I didn’t want to leave myself with only four euros. I also had my MasterCard, which I was sure had enough room on it. Pretty sure. Depending on the exchange rate.

  I put the MasterCard away and took out my ATM card. Which is also a Visa card that draws money from my checking account. I have my paychecks direct-deposited, so I knew there was enough money in there.

  Incidentally, my checking account is not at Independence Savings. Which makes Uncle John mad, but it’s his own fault, because he refuses to put in ATM machines. So I opened my checking account at Bank of America, and they were happy to give me a Visa ATM card.

  I handed Colin my card. He swiped it. The receipt chugged out: approved. No problem.

  I ran out of the bar, and out of the hotel, but Josh was nowhere in sight.

  Right there on the empty street, I made myself a promise. Not something silly like an Astros cap either. I promised myself I was going to find that dress. The right dress, the perfect dress. No matter what. I was going to save Josh Thomas’s lost cause. I was going to become his guardian angel, not his kiss of death. I was going to hand the dress to him and say “Here, now they can make your movie.”

  Then I was going to slap him for sticking me with the check like that.