by Julia Holden
I looked for Josh in the doorway, but he was gone.
My skin felt hot. Inside, my stomach did a little flip-flop.
Gerard just laughed and put his arm around Nathalie. “So the dress is perfect, yes?”
Nathalie was looking at me in a way I did not care for.
“Yes?” Gerard asked her again.
“Maybe.”
Everybody in the room stopped breathing again.
“What do you mean, ‘maybe’?” Gerard demanded. “The dress is perfect.”
“Maybe,” Nathalie said. “I must wear it first.”
With that, she peeled off her little black T-shirt. She was not wearing anything underneath. Then she unzipped her tight hippy-hugger jeans and stepped out of them. She was not wearing anything underneath them, either.
She raised her arms up and posed. “The dress,” she said. I felt like an idiot. But I did exactly what she wanted. Like I was her personal maid. I positioned the dress over her head and let it slide down onto her body.
“It is perfect,” said Irene.
It was. It fit Nathalie as though it had been made for her, clung to her like it wanted to have sex with her. Which was what all the men in the room wanted. Probably some of the women, too.
“Mirror,” Nathalie said.
There was no mirror in the breakfast room. One wall of the lobby was a big mirror, though. So we all followed Nathalie as she slunk out of the breakfast room and through the lobby to the mirror. Watching her move in it was quite incredible. It was a very dangerous dress.
She looked in the mirror. Posed. Pouted. Posed. Frowned.
Then she turned to Gerard and said, “I hate it.”
I was stunned. Gerard was stunned. I am pretty sure everybody was stunned.
“But why?” Gerard asked. “It is perfect.”
“It is not perfect,” Nathalie said, like it was obvious. “You cannot see my tits.”
Which, by the way, she pronounced teets.
Let me stop right here and be very clear about this. The way that dress clung to her, you most certainly could see her tits. Every curve. Every . . . everything. You could practically watch her heart beat. But if she meant the dress was not transparent . . . well, that’s true. It wasn’t. By the way, if you ask me, this dress was much sexier than if it had been transparent.
Nathalie wasn’t asking me. She wasn’t asking anybody.
“My fans,” Nathalie said. “I cannot disappoint my fans. They must see my teets.”
Gerard Duclos looked at me. “She says her fans must see her teets.” Do not ask me how he said that with a straight face. Incidentally, although I did not know this at the time, I later learned that before being cast in this movie, the only thing Nathalie had ever done was pose for a magazine that is kind of a French version of Maxim. Because it is French, the models wear even less than they do in Maxim. Apparently Nathalie did not want to disappoint the fourteen-year-old boys who bought that magazine and looked at her pictures while they . . . well, you know. Ew.
“I will not wear this dress,” Nathalie said.
“She will not wear it,” Gerard said to me. He looked back at Nathalie.
“Tell her she must find another dress,” Nathalie said to Gerard.
He turned to me. “She says you must—”
“I heard what she said! But she’s wrong. There is no other dress.”
“There must be other dresses,” Gerard said.
“No. Not like she wants. They didn’t make see-through dresses in 1928.”
“What does she know?” Nathalie sneered.
I stood up as tall as I could, which made me a couple of inches taller than Nathalie. I got right up close to her, inches away, and looked down into her pretty little face. “I beg your pardon,” I said. “I know. I am the author of the monograph ‘A Dangerous Dress.’ ”
“She is,” Gerard said.
“Words,” Nathalie said. “Stupid words. Anybody can make up words.”
I wanted to slap her. Instead I said, “I most certainly did not make anything up.”
“Hmph,” said Nathalie.
I looked around for help. Surely someone must see that I was right.
I spotted Irene, and for just a second I caught her glance. Then she turned away. I remembered what Françoise had said about her daughter, and I felt as if a delicate thread between the past and the future had snapped, right before my eyes.
Then I spotted Marty. He looked at me. I gave him my Hoosierest pout.
I guess Marty really did want to be a Hoosier. Because he tapped Gerard on the shoulder, cleared his throat, and said, “Maybe she’s right.”
The room went deathly silent.
Gerard swiveled slowly to face Marty. The top of Marty’s pompadour only came up to Gerard’s nose. Gerard stared down his nose. When he spoke, each word dropped out of his mouth like a stone. “Is . . . it . . . your film?”
“No,” Marty admitted.
“Whose . . . film . . . is it?”
“The director’s film.” Marty recited it by rote, as if it were the Pledge of Allegiance.
“And who . . . is . . . the director?”
“You are.” Marty’s eyes shifted to the floor, and he shuffled back into the crowd.
Gerard turned back to me. “So. You are wrong. You will find another dress. And you must do it quickly.” He smiled. Nastily, I thought. “Because filming begins in the morning.”
This was insane. How could I convince them I was right? Then I knew the answer. “You stay here,” I told Gerard. “I’ll be right back. I’ll show you.” I ran upstairs to my room. I unlocked the door and shoved it open.
On the bed was a single, perfect, long-stemmed, delicate pink rose, and a note. It said:
You are wonderful. Whereas I am a stupid jerk. I
am also very, very sorry. Dinner at La Tour
d’Argent? My treat. (I promise.)
Josh
P.S. I know another spot where the lights are even
prettier.
When I read that last line, all I could think of was Josh kissing me again, and for a second I wanted to drop everything and try to find him. Then I remembered why I came up to the room. Maybe I could still convince them I knew what I was talking about. Maybe Gerard would insist that Nathalie wear the dress. That way they would make Josh’s movie. Otherwise the movie was doomed, because it would be impossible to find another perfect dress by morning.
I opened my mom’s suitcase and took off the white tissue paper.
I walked down the stairs carrying Grandma’s dress. In fact, I took my sweet time coming down those stairs. I had a point to prove, and if it involved making a dramatic entrance, so be it.
Everybody was still waiting in the lobby.
I paraded past Nathalie and held up Grandma’s dress for Gerard. “Here,” I said. “Do you see? This is the dress I wrote about. Look at the fabric.” I slid my hand between the two layers of pearl-blue silk satin. Looking through just one layer of the fabric, you could see my hand. “See? If they wanted it to be transparent, they would have made it with just one layer. But they didn’t. You weren’t supposed to see through it. The dress she wants doesn’t exist.”
As if in slow motion, Nathalie raised her right arm to her left shoulder and took hold of the perfect dress I had found for her. Slowly, sinuously, she removed it, until she was stark naked again.
Then she ripped the dress in two. She let the two halves slip out of her fingers and onto the floor. I felt like I had just watched somebody commit a murder.
The room was totally silent for maybe ten seconds. Maybe a minute. It felt like an hour. Then Nathalie turned to me, pointed at Grandma’s dress, and said, “This dress is pretty.”
I unfroze. “Of course it is,” I said stupidly. I really could not see where she was going.
“I am not talking to you.” She shifted her attention to Gerard. “I like this dress.”
“Don’t you understand?” I asked. “You can’t see
your teets in this, either.”
“But you could,” suggested Irene. “I could cut out the inside layer of the fabric. Then everyone can see everything.”
“Yes.” Nathalie looked awfully pleased with herself. “You cut it. Then I will wear it.”
“No!” I believe I shrieked when I said that. “You can’t cut it,” I told Irene. “You can’t touch it.” Then I turned to face Nathalie again. “And you. You most certainly cannot wear it.” I headed for the stairs. I did not even want my Grandma’s dress in the same room as these people.
“Fine,” Nathalie called after me. “Then there is no dress.”
As I walked past Irene, I stopped. “Your mother says hello,” I said. “She’s very nice. You should call her.” Irene flinched as if I had slapped her. Served her right.
Then I kept walking. I knew they were all looking at me. But I didn’t stop. I just walked up the stairs and didn’t look back.
I knew what it all meant. Nathalie had ruined the dress I found, and I wouldn’t let them destroy Grandma’s dress to suit Nathalie. So there was no dress. They couldn’t shoot the party scene. The schedule would slip. They would lose Kathy Bates. They would lose Elijah. If they lost Elijah, they lost the movie. Elijah Wood, by the way. He was playing young Harold Klein.
I had found a dress. The perfect dress. And none of it mattered, because they weren’t going to make the movie. Josh’s lost cause was finished, even before it started.
All because of me.
25
Once I got to my floor, I ran straight to my room and locked the door behind me. Then I saw that pink rose from Josh, and I burst into tears.
My mom’s suitcase was still open on the bed. I started packing, because I knew I would be leaving soon. I wasn’t sure when they would kick me out, but it wouldn’t be long.
I left a big space in the suitcase and built my little protective wall out of tampon boxes and sanitary-pad packages again. Then I took Grandma’s dress and laid it out, very carefully, on the white tissue paper. I wrapped it and folded it and put it into the suitcase. Finally I zipped the suitcase closed, locked the combination lock, and put the bag near the door.
When I was finished, I realized I was shivering. I had spent all day walking in the pouring rain. I was still running around in wet clothes, and I guess it was catching up to me.
I peeled off the soggy clothes, draped them over a chair, and got an extra blanket from the closet, even though it was May. I pulled the drapes closed, turned off the light, crawled into bed, and wrapped myself as tight as I could in the sheets and blankets. I don’t know what time it was. I shivered and cried in the dark for a while. Finally I fell asleep, although it is hard to sleep well when you know something bad is coming in the morning. If I dreamed, I don’t remember what.
I do remember what woke me. There was a knock on the door. It was still dark. Then I realized I had my head under the covers, so of course it was dark. I pulled off the covers. It was still dark. The clock radio read five thirty. I thought that was awfully early for a visit. But if somebody is firing you and kicking you out of your hotel room, they probably don’t care very much about being polite. I was guessing it was Marty. Poor Marty got all the delightful jobs.
Whoever it was knocked again.
I thought about not answering, until it occurred to me that if they had a key and I didn’t answer, they would open the door anyway. As I mentioned, I was not wearing any clothes, because I had just peeled off my wet things and gotten straight into bed.
So I asked, “Who is it?”
“Gerard,” said Gerard Duclos. Even through the door, I recognized his voice. I was surprised that he had come himself to fire me.
“Just a minute,” I said.
I switched on the little lamp over the bed and found my clothes. My shirt and panties were dry, although my pants were still damp, and my socks and sneakers were sopping wet. I got into my clothes as fast as I could, but I left the socks and sneakers off. And let me tell you, pulling on a pair of wet jeans in a hurry, especially when you are panicking, is not so easy.
“Open the door, please,” said Gerard. So I did.
I have already told you that I recognized the voice as Gerard Duclos’. But that was all I recognized. The man who stepped into my room had a perfect haircut, and was so clean-shaven the skin of his face glowed. He was wearing a very dashing slender pinstriped suit, and a lovely pink button-down shirt open at the collar. I think I even caught a whiff of cologne.
I took another look at his face. I have told you that even with the long hair and that awful overgrown beard, Gerard Duclos could not hide his resemblance to Celestine. Seeing him clean-shaven, I was struck even more by how much he looked like her. He had cut his hair, shaved his beard, and now he looked like something out of the French equivalent of GQ.
I guess I was staring, because he explained. “I have a superstition. The very first movie I made, it is”—and he paused to think—“thirty-three years ago. I was maybe your age. Very poor. All the money I had, I bought film stock and rented a camera. There was no money for clothes or haircuts. And no time. I did everything. I wrote the movie. I was the cameraman. I was the editor. I did not sleep. By the time the movie was finished, I looked . . . the way you saw me.” He smiled a dazzling smile. “That movie was the big success, made me famous, gave me money. So now, every movie, from before production starts until the movie is finished, I do not shave. I do not cut my hair. And I wear the clothes people throw away, the way I did that first time.”
“But ...”
“But this movie is over now. Nathalie has destroyed the dress. You will not give us the other dress. We cannot shoot the scene. The schedule moves. The actors must leave. The movie becomes impossible. There is no movie.” He smiled. “I think I look better like this, yes?”
He was really very handsome, but I was quite preoccupied with other things. “Did you come here to fire me?”
“Of course not.”
“I’m sorry I ruined your movie.”
“I can always make another movie.” He sounded awfully cavalier. Not at all like Josh. Poor Josh. Getting this movie made meant everything to him, and now there was no movie.
There was a perfectly good chair over by the desk, but Gerard sat down on the bed, which brought him very close to me. “You look lovely,” he told me.
I had just woken up. I had terrible sleep breath, and I’m sure I had terrible sleep hair. I was wearing the same clothes I had worn all day yesterday traipsing around in the rain. Consequently, what he just said sounded quite stupid to me. I guess maybe that justifies my answering him by saying something equally stupid. “My pants are wet,” I said.
“Yes they are.” I believe he leered. I say “I believe” because frankly I have not had much experience with men leering. In any event, it was not a smile, not a sneer, and there was a large dose of sex in it. So I think I am correct in saying he leered.
“I couldn’t let them cut up my Grandma’s dress,” I said.
“Of course not.” He scooted himself a little closer to me on the bed.
“I really thought the other dress was perfect,” I said.
“But it was perfect. Don’t you know why Nathalie refused to wear the dress you found? Because you found it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you? I think every girl understands these things. In here,” he said, tapping me on the chest. “Nathalie does not like you because she knows I do like you.”
“That’s silly.”
“Is it? Nathalie has the sex with me. She does not want me to have the sex with you.”
“But you and I aren’t having the sex,” I said.
He moved even closer to me. Any closer and he would be in my lap. “Not yet,” he purred. Then he tried to kiss me.
Even though he had left me very little room to maneuver, I jumped up and scooted away. So his lips probably hit me about at the waist. I suspect I gave him a denim burn across the mouth. A
t least I hope so. Now, though, I had a real problem: I was in the corner of the room. There was no place else for me to go. And Gerard Duclos was quite a lot bigger than me.
Looking back at it, I should have been scared. But I wasn’t. Things were moving too fast. Gerard stood up, putting one hand on one wall and the other hand on the other wall, blocking my way. I was really trapped.
Just then, somebody else knocked on the door. Mind you, it was five forty-five in the morning.
I probably should have yelled “Help” or “Rape” or something, but the fact is, I just said “Yes?” The door swung open.
It was Josh. He saw me. He saw Gerard.
Of course, I saw him too. My heart leaped. Practically somersaulted.
And right then, it was really time for me to say something clever, like “Save me.” But I was so stunned to see him, not to mention thrilled, that for a second I couldn’t say anything at all.
Then I actually did open my mouth to say something. Only before I could, Josh slammed the door shut.
Gerard had seen Josh, too, over his shoulder. He hadn’t moved his arms, though, so I was still stuck in the corner. When Josh slammed the door, Gerard turned back to face me. Now he was leering. This time I am quite positive. He stopped leering, though, because I kicked him. As hard as I could. I aimed for his balls, and judging from how he reacted, I scored a direct hit.
In case you have never seen a man who has actually been kicked in the balls, they behave exactly the way men do in the movies when they are kicked in the balls. They fall onto the floor. Their knees draw up to their chests. And they have trouble breathing for a while. Only in the movies it is just pretend. Here it was entirely real.
The next logical thing would have been for me to call the police. Or the hotel manager. But it is hard to be logical when you are being sexually harassed and then assaulted by your best friend’s father. So here is what I did. I yelled, “Get out of my room!”
He was still lying on the floor gasping, so I got down on my knees and kind of rolled him across the room. I stood up and opened the door, then bent down and shoved him until he was out in the hallway, where he lay on his back, eyes closed, still trying to catch his breath. Finally he opened his eyes and looked at me.
