A Dangerous Dress

by Julia Holden

  I would not have guessed Sasha was a Rodgers and Hart fan. What with the nose rings and all. But it turned out she also had a grandma who used to stack wonderful old records on the turntable of her old cabinet stereo. Perhaps her grandma was partial to Benny Goodman and mine was partial to Artie Shaw, but they both loved Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. So when I said “Bewitched Bothered and Bewildered,” Sasha’s face lit up, and her eyes got teary. “There is only one place for you to go,” she concluded.

  Once I knew where I was going, for a moment I felt overwhelmed with sadness at having lost Grandma’s dress, because this would have been the perfect occasion to wear it. But I made myself get over it. I was about to vault from obscurity to stardom, and I was doing it without Grandma’s dress. I guessed I wasn’t cursed after all. I would find my power in another outfit—and I knew exactly which one.

  It was one of my gifts from Celestine, of course, a Narciso Rodriguez stretch cashmere suit, all in black except with a white stripe down each sleeve. The sleeves were three-quarter length and the skirt went to midcalf. The skintight jacket had a long zipper down the front, which was fairly provocative, considering that I was wearing absolutely nothing underneath it, and the skirt fit my hips like there was no skirt there at all, just my hips.

  I put on a pair of black Vuitton pumps, also from Celestine, and looked in the mirror. The stylish creature I saw there looked classic, timeless, sophisticated, and very, very sexy. Dangerous, even. And she was me. I looked like a star.

  Sasha the concierge almost wept for joy when she saw me. She said it was the perfect outfit for going to see Michael Feinstein, who, according to her, is simply the most wonderful cabaret singer on the planet. She told me the nice people at Fox News were taking care of the sixty-dollar cover charge and my bar tab, then she escorted me out to the Hummer. The driver took me to the very posh-looking Regency Hotel, and told me he would be waiting when the show let out.

  I was seated at a perfect little table, all by myself. I didn’t have a date, and I didn’t care. I was wearing a perfect outfit. I was about to hear the perfect cabaret singer perform the perfect old songs my Grandma and I both always loved. I was in a perfect, expensive setting, surrounded by perfect, expensive people. I ordered myself a perfect martini, even if I don’t particularly care for gin, and drank half of it right down as proof of my sophistication.

  Then Michael Feinstein sat down at the piano, and started to play and sing. He was handsome and elegant, and when he sang his voice was to your ears what silk feels like against your bare skin.

  So this is New York, I thought. I absolutely, positively belong here.

  I drank the rest of my perfect martini and ordered another one. The perfect waiter brought it out immediately. Michael Feinstein was just segueing from “Embraceable You” to “But Not for Me.” Something about the song made me think of Josh Thomas. Not for me, indeed. I raised my martini glass, made a silent toast, and drank down half of the second martini.

  I still had my glass raised when I noticed a man sitting across the room. He was quite a lot older than me, probably forty. He wore frameless glasses and a very expensive-looking suit. He was looking right at me, smiling, and he had his own glass raised, as if joining in my toast. Which I thought was rather presumptuous of him, since it was my own private toast, not his. I downed the rest of my drink, set my glass on the table, and looked away. Fortunately, Michael Feinstein started to sing “They Can’t Take That Away from Me,” so I quickly forgot about the man in the suit.

  At least, until the waiter approached and whispered, “The gentleman would like to buy you a drink.” The man in the suit gave me a little wave with his fingers.

  “No thank you.” You would think that in New York, a girl could enjoy Michael Feinstein without having to fend off unwanted advances from much older men. Yuck. I turned my attention back to the song, and tried to reconnect with the perfection of the moment.

  The perfection only lasted about thirty seconds. That was how long it took the man in the suit to march across the room and park himself in front of me. I guess he thought I was going to ask him to sit down, but I didn’t, so he just stood there, blocking my view.

  “I bought you a drink,” he announced pointlessly. He was holding a tall tropical-drink glass filled with something slushy and red. I wondered, Who orders frozen fruity drinks in such a sophisticated setting?

  “No thank you.” I was repeating myself. I leaned to one side, trying to look past the man, hoping he would figure out quickly that he wasn’t wanted. He didn’t budge.

  “Excuse me, sir,” said an elegantly dressed woman at the table behind mine. “We can’t see.”

  “I’m talking to the young lady,” he said.

  “No he’s not,” I assured the woman.

  “C’mon, buddy,” complained a man at the next table.

  “Buzz off,” said the expensive suit.

  “Down in front, asshole,” croaked an extremely distinguished-looking older gentleman.

  I guess that got my unwelcome suitor’s attention. He whipped around to find the source of the insult. Unfortunately for me, he apparently forgot he was holding a big tall fruity frozen drink. When he whipped around, he splashed it all over my perfect sophisticated Narciso Rodriguez outfit.

  It was a strawberry margarita, in case you were wondering. Most of it landed in my lap, but enough splattered onto my left arm that what had been a white stripe was now bright berry red.

  Needless to say, my perfect moment was shattered. Suddenly my biggest concerns were getting out of my margarita-drenched outfit and getting it into the hands of a cleaning professional before the suit was ruined forever. Both of which meant I had to get back to the hotel as fast as possible. So I got up and headed for the door. On my way there, I swear I saw Michael Feinstein cast me a sympathetic glance.

  I wished I didn’t have to leave. Because he was wonderful. Better than wonderful: He was perfect. But I was soaked, and sticky, and I could feel the stain setting in with every second that passed.

  I reached the door, but the tuxedoed maître d’ blocked my way. “Excuse me, miss.”

  I figured he was going to offer to pay for my ruined outfit. So I said, “I’ll just have the hotel send you the dry-cleaning bill.”

  “Did our waiter spill the drink on you?”

  “No.”

  “Then I hardly see how it’s our responsibility.” He handed me a black folder. The type that restaurants use to give you the check. “But this is your responsibility.”

  I looked at it. Sixty dollars for the cover charge. Plus the two drinks, which were not as expensive as the Lemon Charlies at the Ritz, but still plenty expensive. Plus tax.

  “I guess you haven’t heard. Fox News is paying my bill.”

  He hadn’t heard.

  At my urging, he called my hotel. Sasha was gone for the night, and nobody there knew anything about it. I thought about calling Reed, but realized I didn’t have his number with me, and besides, he was off on a crisis. I didn’t have time to think about that, though, because I was having my own crisis. I did a quick inventory in my head: cash, none; Visa ATM card, frozen; MasterCard, credit limit exceeded.

  “I guess you’re going to have to trust me,” I said.

  “No, I’m not.” The maître d’ scowled, then looked over his shoulder, probably searching for the burly enforcer who would haul me off to the kitchen to wash $97.43 worth of dishes.

  That is when I made a break for it.

  48

  I sprinted out of the cabaret, clattered across the stone floor of the lobby, and spun through the revolving door to the sidewalk. I glanced right, then left, but the Fox News Hummer was nowhere to be seen.

  “Stop!” I looked behind me and saw the maître d’ approaching on the run.

  I bolted toward the corner, saw that the light was green, ran across the street as fast as I could, and kept running when I got to the other side. You might not think it is possible to run very fast in Vuitton
high heels, but when you are highly motivated, I guess anything is possible. When I looked over my shoulder, I saw that the maître d’ had given up chasing me after half a block.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have been running and looking over my shoulder at the same time. The two martinis probably didn’t help, either. Whatever the reason, though, all of a sudden I was falling. I landed on my butt and skidded across the concrete pavement. Ouch.

  Several people saw me fall. Nobody helped me up. “Thanks a lot,” I said to no one in particular. Painfully, I stood up.

  And immediately almost fell again. The heel of my right shoe had broken clean off. “Shit.” I weighed my options—walk the streets of New York barefoot, or deal with a four-and-a-half-inch height differential. Reluctantly, I took off the other shoe. Then I rubbed the point of impact on my butt, and found that the sidewalk had scuffed a hole in my skirt. A big hole. “Shit fuck.” Pardon my French.

  I walked to the corner and found myself at the intersection of Lexington Avenue and Sixty-first Street. Which meant absolutely nothing to me. I knew from the Hummer ride to the Regency Hotel that we had traveled quite a distance, probably several miles, but I had no idea how to get back to the Tribeca Grand.

  A very old woman walking a very old poodle tottered toward me. “Excuse me,” I said. “How do I get to Tribeca?”

  “Take the subway!” she shouted, and kept walking. I don’t know if she shouted because she was hard of hearing, or just mean.

  “Where’s the subway?” I called toward the woman’s back. She never stopped, just pointed behind her.

  I tried to find a bright side to my situation. It wasn’t easy. “Could be worse,” I finally said out loud. “Could be raining.”

  That is when it started to rain.

  Correction: That is when it started to pour.

  Just like Paris. Although at least there I had an umbrella. I wondered if I was destined to get poured on in big cities for the rest of my life.

  Maybe it’s Grandma’s dress, I thought. Maybe I really am cursed.

  Cursed or not, I couldn’t just stand there, so I started walking. I walked seven blocks, all the way to Sixty-eighth Street. They were short blocks, but by the time I reached the subway station I was utterly soaked. I must have looked like a drowned rat: a bruised, shoe-less, margarita-stained, butt-scuffed drowned rat.

  I found an entrance marked DOWNTOWN, and hobbled down the stairs. I spotted the token booth, and wondered for an instant what I was going to use to pay for the fare. Maybe, just maybe, my credit card had enough room for a two-dollar charge. I needn’t have wondered, though, because the booth was empty.

  I think that is when I started to cry.

  “Excuse me.” I jumped at the voice behind me. I turned around and found myself face-to-face with a very dirty homeless man. Actually, he looked quite a bit like Gerard Duclos had, the first time I saw him. “I think you need this more than I do.” The man handed me a yellow plastic card that said METROCARD. He even showed me how to swipe it through the reader and push through the turnstile. When I was through, I tried to hand it back to him between the bars. “Keep it,” he said. “You may need it.”

  Oh God I hope not. “Thank you.” I sniffled.

  I shivered alone on the platform for fifteen minutes that felt like forever. Finally a train with a big green number six on the front roared into the station. The doors dinged open and I stepped inside. There were only a few riders, but the nearest ones took a look at me and scooted to the farthest reaches of the subway car.

  I wasn’t at all sure where I was going. Finally, though, the train barreled into a station where CANAL STREET was spelled out on the walls in black-and-white tiles. I remembered that I had crossed Canal Street to get to Soho, so I dashed out of the train and up the stairs.

  Needless to say, it was still raining.

  After being totally ignored by the first six people I asked for directions, a nice young man with multiple facial piercings told me how to find the Tribeca Grand. I limped to the hotel and dripped my way across the lobby. The black-attired woman behind the front desk looked at me with amazement.

  “Do not even ask,” I warned, and marched straight to the elevator.

  Up in my room, I peeled off the Narciso Rodriguez suit. It was a total loss. I tossed it into the trash. Then I did my best to scrub the scum of New York off my poor feet. I toweled down, bundled myself into the plushy white bathrobe, crawled into bed, and turned off the light.

  I thought about everything I had lost in the past week. Grandma’s dress, of course, but so much more. The dangerous Narciso Rodriguez suit and Vuitton pumps that Celestine had given me. Two jobs—probably three, if you counted Uncle John. My credit rating. And Josh.

  As for Reed, and Fox News, who was I kidding? I was Miss Nobody from nowhere. Bertie Thorn already didn’t like me. Once Reed got to know me, he probably wouldn’t like me, either. And plainly, New York hated me.

  My problem wasn’t a curse imposed by the fashion gods. My problem was me. I had been deluding myself. I was never going to be a star. I was never going to be anything.

  At that moment, I felt more alone than I ever have in my entire life. I wished I was back in my lumpy old bed in Kirland, Indiana.

  I sobbed myself to sleep.

  49

  That night, while I slept, I was not visited by my Grandma’s ghost.

  I tell you that because the fact is, a lot of people in Kirland actually believe in ghosts. People who are otherwise quite ordinary and sane, even including some members of my immediate family who I will not name to spare them the potential embarrassment. But when people in Kirland dream about a dead person, they inevitably swear it was a ghost.

  I harbor no such illusions. I simply dreamed about Grandma.

  She was sitting at the foot of my bed, right there in the Tribeca Grand. She looked around and said, “Nice room.”

  “You can see!” It was a big deal, because as I told you, Grandma was legally blind for years and years before she died.

  “Stop changing the subject,” Grandma commanded. “The subject is you.”

  I figured she was talking about what I had done. “I’m sorry I lost your dress.”

  “Don’t worry about the dress. Good dresses take care of themselves. Especially the dangerous ones.” She smiled, as if remembering something naughty.

  “I just feel like everything is falling apart.”

  “Oh, no.” She shook her head wisely. “Everything is coming together. You just have to let it happen.” Then she frowned. “But first you have to stop worrying so much about every little thing. I found this dress. I lost that dress. Josh kissed me. Reed didn’t kiss me. Those are all details. Quit fretting about the details, and get on with living.”

  “But what if I make a mistake?”

  “You’ve made lots of mistakes.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “Well, you have. But you’re supposed to make mistakes. You’re young. You have to take chances. Don’t you remember that paper you wrote? All those things you hoped my dangerous dress and I did?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, we did them all.” She laughed out loud. “And then some. Made mistakes, too. Some real doozies. But looking back, the differences between the right choices and the wrong choices don’t seem to matter much. The point is that it was all an adventure. My adventure. I lived it. And I wouldn’t change a thing.” She stood up. “Now it’s your turn.”

  “My turn?”

  “Why do you think I left you the dress? You’ve always been raring to go—you just needed a kick in the pants to get you started. And you’ve done fine so far. Only you can’t stop halfway. It’s all out there waiting for you. So quit feeling sorry for yourself and get on with it!”

  At that moment, a fire truck screamed by on the street outside the hotel, waking me up. And, of course, Grandma wasn’t there at all. It was just a dream.

  Don’t you think?

  Even though I had fallen as
leep at the very bottom of the pit of despair, I woke up feeling great. My confidence was back. I would win Reed’s heart, Bertie’s confidence, and Fox’s viewers. My butt wasn’t even sore where I had landed on it.

  So, dream or ghost, thanks, Grandma.

  I had room service send up a yummy waffle with fresh strawberries and whipped cream I just knew somebody actually whipped that morning, instead of squirting it out of a can. And a big pot of coffee. While I ate, I turned on the TV and went looking for Fox News. I figured I still had time to do a little quick research. When I switched to the channel the directory told me was Fox News, though, I found a Simpsons rerun. Which was actually pretty engaging, and put me in an even better mood.

  When I arrived at the studio, I was sent back to the room where I’d met Bertie Thorn the day before. Bertie was alone, without Reed. I thought she was wearing a different suit, but I had to look twice to be sure. And her hair and makeup were exactly the same, like she stamped herself out of a mold every morning.

  I was about to ask about Reed when he walked in. He was smiling broadly, and he gave me a hug. An ambiguous hug, somewhere in between a producer hug and a boyfriend hug. Then I noticed Bertie glaring at Reed. He noticed her too, and the hug turned entirely professional. Thanks a lot, Bertie.

  “How’s my star?” Reed asked, still flashing his Labrador grin.

  Okay reminding me about that star thing was probably a pretty good move on his part. Because I kind of softened up. I might’ve even giggled a little when I said, “Fine.”

  “Good,” he said. Then he sat down, and as soon as he was in his chair he was all business. “You’ve already met Bertie.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “She’s my associate producer,” he said.

  “She told me,” I said.

  “Bertie is short for Roberta,” he said, “but never call her that.” He and Bertie laughed like there was some joke I wasn’t in on. It hadn’t sounded so funny when Bertie said the same thing the day before.

  “I won’t call her that,” I said. “So how’s your crisis?”