A Dangerous Dress

by Julia Holden

  “If they are not making the film, why would he still be in Paris?” Celestine asked.

  “Because he’s looking for me. He’s stalking me, and he’s planning to wreak some awful vengeance on me for destroying his movie.” Okay that sounds a little overheated, I admit. But seeing him upset me terribly.

  “Let’s go out,” I said to Celestine.

  “You’re joking,” she said. But I guess I didn’t look like I was joking, because then she said, “You’re not joking!”

  You must understand: Celestine goes out pretty much all the time, to fashion parties and artsy parties and who knows what other kind of parties. Since I moved in, she had been hinting around that we should go out to take my mind off things. And every time she hinted, I said thanks, but no. I told her I didn’t want to go, because wherever she was going, I was sure everybody would only speak French, and, as you know, I do not. That was part of the reason. But the main reason was that I was so scarred and traumatized by the whole Gerard-and-Nathalie-and-movie-and-Josh experience, I just did not feel like going to parties.

  Even though I did not tell Celestine the real reason, I’m pretty sure she knew. Because she knows me very very well. So when I said, “Let’s go out,” she was surprised. And delighted. “It will be the best thing for you,” she said.

  At that particular moment, I did not care whether it was the best thing for me. I was just feeling spooked by seeing Josh only a block away, and in case he had tracked me down and planned to knock on our door that evening, I did not want to be home.

  It so happened Celestine was invited to an ultra exclusive private fashion show that night. Actually she was invited to three different ultra exclusive private something-or-others that night, but she thought the fashion show would be the most fun.

  Of course we had to dress perfectly. Which you might think would be complicated and time-consuming given the depth and breadth of Celestine’s closet and the fact that there were two of us. But Celestine and I can tell each other immediately what looks fat and what looks perfect, so we always pick outfits faster when we’re together.

  With my help, she chose a Balenciaga leather jacket that was mostly biker chick with just a dash of S&M, a low-cut Michael Kors tank top, and vintage jeans, which means somebody worked very hard last week to make them look old and shredded. And with her help, I chose an Andrew Marc jacket over a gauzy white Helmut Lang crisscross top and ivory silk skirt. Needless to say we both had to wear radically high heels, which is totally impractical, especially in Paris, where every other street is cobblestones. The impracticality only made doing it more fun. To be even goofier, I wore the Balenciaga stilettos and Celestine wore the Helmut Langs, even though she was wearing the Balenciaga jacket and I was wearing the Lang outfit. Okay maybe that does not sound goofy to you, but it seemed pretty crazy at the time.

  Celestine made a phone call, and a car came and picked us up. It was not exactly a limo, but for Paris it was a pretty big car. “Where is this fashion show thing?” I asked.

  “I have no idea. That’s part of the fun.”

  Another part of the fun was that somebody had shoved a cold bottle of Perrier Jouët into the netting behind the driver’s seat. By the time the car stopped, we had pretty much killed the bottle, and consequently we were in a pretty good mood. Until Celestine looked out the car window.

  “Uh-oh,” she said.

  33

  I did not see anything that looked terribly uh-oh to me.

  The driver had stopped right in the middle of the Pont Neuf. Traffic was piling up behind us. People were honking horns and yelling. But that is all run-of-the-mill in Paris.

  We had stopped next to a little stone plaza. Standing in the plaza was a man wearing all black, including black sunglasses, even though the sun had already set. Like a traffic cop moving in slow motion, he made a sweeping gesture with his arm, steering us out of the car and down a steep flight of stone steps. The steps were not a lot of fun in spike heels. But they led down to a very adorable park, which juts out into the river like the prow of a ship. There are no railings between you and the river, just stone walls that angle down into the green water.

  Alongside the park, several boats were docked. Most of them were for sightseeing tourists. But one boat had a private mooring with its own boarding ramp.

  On the first page of this story, I called this boat a yacht. Which is somewhat, but not entirely, accurate. To explain, I must tell you what Celestine told me about the barges of the Seine.

  One of the things that make the Seine so beautiful and picturesque is the boats that always line its banks. Most of them are very old, and started life as working barges. They are all pretty much the same size, which Celestine said is seventeen feet wide and 128 feet long, so they can fit through the canals that run through France.

  This particular boat may have started life as a barge, but along the way it had developed pretensions toward being a yacht. The decking was gorgeous tan wood waxed to a shine, all the fixtures were polished brass and heavy dark bronze, and the handrail that led downstairs was ebony carved to look and feel like braided rope.

  Celestine gave our names to a man guarding the boarding ramp. She looked a little queasy, which is not how she typically looks when going to a party.

  “Are you afraid of boats?” I asked.

  “Not exactly.”

  We crossed the ramp. On the deck, there was a woman sitting in a chair. She had black hair cut above her shoulders, and she was playing a cello. Not very well, if you ask me. But I suspect her musicianship was not the main point. Because except for the cello, she was completely naked.

  “Wait a minute,” Celestine said. She walked around until she was behind the woman. “I thought so.” Celestine motioned for me to come see. On the woman’s back, somebody had painted two mirror-image S shapes, so she looked like a cello, too.

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “She is Kiki de Montparnasse. It is a famous photograph from the 1920s. By a very great photographer named Man Ray.”

  “Why?” We walked away from the naked woman and climbed downstairs.

  “Who knows? It is a fashion show.”

  The boat’s interior was dimly lit, but there were little spinning spotlights mounted on the ceiling, down the length of the cabin, and they sent beams of blue and purple and pink slashing across the crowd. At one end was a curtained area, then a small stage, and between us and the stage were two galleries of chairs separated by a raised runway. Most of the chairs were filled, but two next to the runway had fuchsia pillows on them. “Those are ours,” Celestine said.

  On the other end of the cabin, the bar was surrounded by a crowd of Beautiful People. The type who populate the party pictures in every glamour magazine you have ever read, who would make you feel inferior even if they weren’t royalty, or heirs, or movie stars, only they are.

  Celestine must have read my mind. “You are the prettiest girl here,” she assured me. It wasn’t true, but hearing her say so made me feel good anyway.

  “Let’s get something to drink,” I proposed.

  She took a long look toward the bar. “You go. I will hold our seats.”

  I thought those fuchsia pillows were doing fine holding our seats without help. And I had a flash of panic at the thought of ordering drinks in a language I do not speak. But something about Celestine’s expression made me just say “Sure.”

  The bartenders were two women. The first was very large, with short gray hair clipped close to her head, and she wore a formless dress that fit her like a burlap sack. The second woman was small and dressed all in black, jacket and trousers.

  “Two martinis?” I asked the big woman.

  “Gertrude,” she said.

  “Gertrude?”

  “Stein.”

  Gertrude Stein—I remembered from Josh’s screenplay. Just what I needed, a reminder of Josh. I looked at the little woman in black. “So you must be Alice Toklas.”

  “Don’t talk to her
,” Gertrude snapped, handing me two drinks. She gave me such a scary look I scurried straight back to the seats. Even though the drinks were plainly not martinis. At least they were big. There was plenty of alcohol in them. And they were free.

  As you have probably guessed, Celestine does not travel with a cash-bar crowd.

  When I got to our seats, Celestine was not there. I spotted her a few feet away, talking with someone who looked like Marlene Dietrich. The person wore a black tuxedo jacket, a black top hat, black high heels, black fishnet stockings, and red lipstick, and had blond hair styled just like Marlene Dietrich’s. Only Marlene Dietrich was a woman. And the person talking to Celestine was not.

  An electronic beat started to pulse through the boat. At the same moment, through the soles of my feet and the seat of my skirt, I felt the engine rev to life, and we began to move. Celestine finished her conversation and sat down next to me. “Who was that?” I asked.

  “Cherie Mouffetard. This show is her new collection. Cherie thought having her show on a boat would be very radical. Only Karl Lagerfeld did it two months ago. She was extremely annoyed, because the boat was already paid for. So she added the theme: famous women in Paris in the 1920s.”

  That explained Kiki de Montparnasse. And Gertrude, and Alice. Even Marlene. But it did not explain everything. “Cherie . . . looks like a man,” I said.

  “She is.” Celestine’s lips kept moving, but I couldn’t hear her anymore because the music kicked in, loud. It was a mix of techno and house and Cole Porter. It is a good thing Cole Porter is dead, because if he was alive, what they did to his music that night surely would have killed him.

  By the way, Cole Porter came from Indiana. I find the fact that somebody so witty and urbane came from Indiana to be quite inexplicable. Then again, my own presence in Paris—at Cherie Mouffetard’s private exclusive fashion show, no less—was pretty inexplicable too. So maybe there is hope for all of us.

  The curtained entrance of the little tent behind the stage parted, and the models started to strut down the catwalk. Actually, strut is the wrong word for the models who came out first. The men came out first, and they did not strut.

  Shawn led the pack. Then Nick, Benn, Stavros, and Christian: Celestine told me their names. They all sulked and glowered and sneered their way down the runway. Their expressions were completely at odds with their classic white tie and tails. I hoped Cherie was not claiming credit for designing those, because the clothes were oh so Fred Astaire, even if the men and boys wearing them were oh so Eminem.

  Watching them, I had the strangest thought: They reminded me of Josh. Which was the last thing I wanted, given that I had gone out that night specifically to avoid him.

  What was so strange, though, was that not one of them actually resembled Josh. They were all tall, at least six feet, and Josh is not. They were all blond-haired and blue-eyed, which Josh is not. They all had cheekbones so sharp that you would cut yourself giving them the old French kiss-kiss, and Josh does not. So why every single one of them reminded me of Josh, I really cannot explain. But they did. It made me more than a little uncomfortable.

  Fortunately, then the women came out. Daria was there, and Eva, and Gisele, and several other women whose faces I knew, and you would too, even if I didn’t know their names and you wouldn’t either. They were wearing the Collection.

  As soon as I saw the Collection, I gulped my entire drink. Here is what I saw: Bias-cut bodices. Necklines scooping low in front and even lower in back. Gypsy girdle sashes. Hemlines cut high in front and lower in back. Instead of silks, the fabrics were twenty-first-century microfibers. Iridescent glass beads were replaced by holographic synthetics. And instead of being knee-length in front and midcalf in back, the hemlines were higher. Much higher. Still, the whole collection screamed Deco Deco Deco—and late 1920s Deco at that.

  The dresses were beautiful. But I hated them. Hated them. Every time a pencil-thin mannequin came strutting down the runway—and mannequin is actually the French word for model, and yes, they strutted—all I could see was my Grandma’s dress.

  So there I was, on a gorgeous boat you could almost fairly call a yacht, sailing on the Seine in Paris, getting an ultra exclusive first look at the most gorgeous clothing you’ve ever seen being modeled by the most gorgeous human beings you’ve ever seen, surrounded by enough Euro-glam to fill a double issue of Vanity Fair. Not to mention Kiki, Gertrude, Alice, and Marlene. And I was totally, hopelessly miserable. All I could think about were the last two things in the world I wanted to think about: Grandma’s dress. And Josh.

  The Collection went on forever, with models who weren’t Josh torturing me, dresses that weren’t Grandma’s torturing me, and the blaring sound system torturing poor Cole Porter. Not to mention so many photographers popping their flashes that I thought my head would explode.

  At least if my head exploded, I would stop thinking about Grandma’s dress and Josh.

  34

  My head did not explode.

  Finally the fashion show ended. Celestine stood up and looked around. She had stayed calm throughout the runway parade. Now, though, a strange expression took possession of her face. I recognized the expression immediately.

  When I was little, my parents bought me a tactile-defensive guinea pig. That means it did not like to be touched. Which is not a good thing if you are a guinea pig. When you reached into its cage, it shrank away and got this desperate look on its little guinea pig face. That was how Celestine looked. “Now you must help me,” she said.

  “Okay.” I would do anything for Celestine, and she knows it.

  “My boyfriend is here.”

  Ah.

  You should understand that, by certain standards, Celestine does not have a boyfriend. And, by certain other standards, she has several. None of this makes me think the slightest bit less of her as either a friend or a human being. But these varying standards do make for some interesting times. Like this party, for example.

  “Shawn,” Celestine said. “He was the first model.”

  “Okay.”

  “And Benn. He was the third model.”

  “Okay.”

  “And Omar.”

  “Which model was he?”

  She scowled. “Omar is not a model. He is a photographer.”

  “Okay.”

  “I did not know the fashion show was on a boat.”

  “I see,” I said. Because I did see. The whole boat was only seventeen feet wide by 128 feet long. Inside was even smaller—maybe twelve feet wide by a hundred feet long. Twelve hundred square feet. Divided by three boyfriends equals four hundred square feet per boyfriend. Which is not a lot of space, if your goal in life is to keep each boyfriend from knowing that the other two exist.

  For a while, things went surprisingly well, aided by the darkness and the crowd. In turn, Celestine found, hugged, and kiss-kissed—but didn’t kiss, if you know what I mean—Shawn, Benn, and Omar, introduced each of them to me, then moved through the crowd without each boyfriend thinking he was being dumped, or avoided, or shuffled like the tunes on an iPod.

  The trouble started when Stavros and Christian cornered Celestine. They didn’t mean to corner her. They just both decided to ask her out at the very same time. Which was a little awkward, but not terribly, because fortunately neither of them had ever actually dated Celestine. Yet.

  But while Stavros and Christian were haggling about who asked first, I spotted Shawn. He was at the front of the boat, which I guess is fore. Then I spotted Omar at the rear of the boat, which is aft. They were both heading toward Celestine, who was in the middle, which presumably is amidships. I didn’t see Benn, but life being what it is, I had no doubt whatsoever that he would arrive at exactly the same time as the other two.

  I squeezed between Stavros and Christian. And, I am not kidding, I whispered in Celestine’s ear, “Abandon ship.”

  I grabbed her hand and pulled. Moving was not easy. We were fighting the crowd, the swaying boat, the high heels,
and the effects of a considerable amount of alcohol. But we were both highly motivated. So in seconds we were up on deck.

  Unfortunately, we were still in the middle of the Seine. And you cannot just step off a moving boat in the middle of a river. “I am so dead,” Celestine lamented.

  Omar poked his head out of the hatch. He hadn’t spotted Celestine yet, but the deck wasn’t crowded, so I had to agree with Celestine: She was so dead.

  Then we sailed past a big green buoy. I do not know a lot about boats or rivers. But my general sense is that buoys exist to tell people in boats that something is coming which they need to steer around. Sure enough, just ahead and to our left was the little park we departed from. I thought the boat was docking, and we could escape—only then I realized we were on the wrong side of the park. We were not stopping, just sailing by. Close by. Close enough to see the glowing tips of the cigarettes in the mouths of the couples who sat at the edge of the park and dangled their feet down the steep stone walls.

  I pushed a woman wearing a jeweled Egyptian bra and skirt and headdress out of my way.

  “Colette as Cleopatra,” Celestine said to me.

  “We’re jumping,” I said to Celestine.

  “What??”

  Left to her own devices, Celestine would have done no such thing. But I did not leave it up to her. When we were as close as we were going to get, I jumped.

  I reached my left hand toward the top of the stone wall that sloped from the park down into the river. I would have reached with both hands, only my right hand was holding on to Celestine. So like it or not, when I jumped, she jumped.

  Fortunately, my left hand caught the edge of the walkway.

  Unfortunately, when Celestine landed on top of me, I lost my grip.

  Fortunately, Celestine managed to clamber up over me and grab onto the walkway.

  Unfortunately, I discovered that Helmut Lang stilettos are extremely pointy, at least when somebody wearing them is clambering over your head.