by Julia Holden
And so what if a prom—and not even my own prom at that—was arguably a pretty frivolous occasion for wearing such a holy, powerful dress. The more I thought about it, the more it felt to me like the stars and the moon and the planets had all aligned perfectly, all for me, and it was as if they were spelling out a message for me in the sky, and it said WEAR THE DRESS.
So I showered, shaved all the relevant places, put on antiperspirant, plucked a couple of eyebrow hairs I didn’t like the look of, fixed my hair, fixed it again, spent too much time picking makeup, spent even more time picking shoes, brushed my teeth, flossed, mouthwashed, went to the bathroom about six times because I needed to be as skinny as possible, did thirty ab crunches okay twenty, and tried to do ten push-ups to give my arms and shoulders some definition but I’m sorry, push-ups are made for boys not girls. Then I went to the bathroom again, and put on perfume. Then I thought for two or three seconds about putting on panty hose, but no way. First, it was too hot and humid. Second, bare legs would be much more dangerous, especially under that skirt which you may remember is extremely sheer. Third and most important, I absolutely positively had to wear my thong, the one that fate had sent back with the dress.
Finally I couldn’t think of anything else to do. Nothing else to avoid the moment of truth, when either the dress would fit or it wouldn’t fit. I put it on.
It fit. Like it had been made for me. Perfectly. Thank you Jesus.
Which was perhaps a little hypocritical of me, because I am not the most devout religious person, notwithstanding all the hard work by my grade school nuns. But thank you anyway.
And thank you Grandma.
And oh, yeah. Thank you, Josh. So very, very much.
I walked down the stairs to the living room. When I came into sight, my mom and dad gasped. So I kind of figured I was doing something right.
Just then there was a knock at the door. “Go back upstairs,” said my mom.
“Why?”
“Because you’re supposed to keep boys waiting,” she said. “Especially for a prom. It’s traditional.” She was quite right. It is traditional. You may even remember, when I had dinner with Reed at the Tribeca Grand, I kept him waiting. Always keep men waiting, I said.
“No,” I said. I guess always actually means except when it feels right not to. I walked to the door and opened it.
Josh gasped. So I definitely figured I was doing something right.
I did not gasp. But almost. He was gorgeous. I mean handsome, sophisticated, sexy. He was wearing the most perfect tuxedo you have ever seen. Black of course. Notch lapels. Three-button jacket. White shirt. Black bow tie—hand-tied, I might add—perfect and classic, and much better in my opinion than one of those trendy straight ties. He looked amazing. I don’t know if there is anything more perfect-looking than a man in a tuxedo. Okay Jude Law in a tuxedo. Maybe Josh Thomas was no Jude Law, but right now he was awfully close, let me tell you.
“You look . . . perfect,” he said. Which by the way is absolutely the right thing for a man to say to a woman under these circumstances. Or frankly under any circumstances.
“You’re wearing Armani,” I said. Which was not as good as what he said. But I knew precisely what clothes he was wearing. A month ago I was selling those exact same clothes.
“That’s right.”
“Why did you have your tuxedo with you?”
“I didn’t. I just bought it. In Chicago.”
“It fits perfectly,” I said. Which it did. Which made no sense. Because a tuxedo off the rack never fits perfectly. Not even an Armani tuxedo. It has to be altered.
“I had it altered,” he said.
“That’s impossible,” I said. Remember, I know how long it takes to do alterations.
“You got a passport in three hours,” he said.
“Less.”
“Exactly.” Then he shrugged. “Okay, I paid extra.” I bet he did.
Josh took something out from behind his back. It was a corsage. The wrist kind.
“You’re kidding,” I said.
“You can’t go to the prom without a corsage,” he said.
“It’s not my prom.” Maybe those were the words that came out of my mouth. But that was not how I felt. I felt like this was the most special, most important night of my life.
I almost started to cry. But I willed myself not to. I was not about to ruin my makeup.
He held out his arm. I slipped my hand under his elbow. We walked down the stairs and to the curb. Where he had a stretch waiting. Not a stretch limousine. Not exactly, anyway.
It was a white stretch Hummer.
60
“It’s a Hummer,” I said.
“All the regular limos are booked up. On account of this being prom season.”
“It’s a Hummer,” I said.
“It was the best I could do on short notice.”
The driver unfolded a chrome stepladder. Josh helped me step up into the long back seat. Then he climbed in after me. The driver folded the stepladder and closed the door.
“Besides,” Josh said, “they’re made in Indiana.”
That is when I kissed him. To hell with my makeup.
It is a very short drive from my parents’ house to Reinhardt’s restaurant. But for the entire length of the drive, we did not talk about Hummers. Or anything else, for that matter.
When we got to Reinhardt’s I did my best to fix my makeup. There was a mirror in the back seat. I don’t know if all stretch limos have a mirror, but the stretch Hummer did.
We climbed down the stepladder. The parking lot was full. There were a bunch of rented limousines, mostly black, several white, and one that was a hideous shade of pink. Then there were the usual Indiana high school cars, sagging old beater Trans Ams and Mustangs that senior boys had tried and failed to polish into presentable. But at least they had tried.
Josh offered me his arm again. “Shall we?”
“Wait,” I said. I had an idea. “Do TV shows have UPMs?” UPM is a unit production manager. You remember that.
“Sure,” he said. “I think so.”
“Do executive producers get to hire UPMs?”
“I guess,” he said. “Why?”
“Because,” I said. “We can hire Marty the UPM. He wants to be reborn as a Hoosier. He can move to Kirland. He can work half time on our TV show, and half time for Uncle John. That way I can do the show.”
Josh frowned. “It’s a crazy idea. I read your book, remember? You said Marty would be reborn as a Hoosier the day Nick Timko came home to Kirland. Meaning never.”
“It’s the only idea I’ve got.” I tried to smile. “It might work.”
“What about your uncle?”
“My uncle might like Marty.”
Josh tried to smile back. I could tell he wanted to be encouraging, even though he didn’t believe it. “I should have thought of that,” he said.
“But you didn’t,” I said. “So I guess I cannot trust you to do my show without me.”
“I guess not,” he said. “Ready for the prom?”
“Wait,” I said. I had another idea. “Do TV shows have fashion consultants?”
“Sure,” he said. “Costume designers, anyway.” Then he figured out where I was going. As I told you, Josh is a pretty smart guy. “But I’m not sure somebody with Celestine’s fashion credentials is necessarily the perfect costume designer for a show about Kirland, Indiana.”
“Oh.” I guess I looked disappointed.
“Although she did spend a year at Purdue,” Josh said.
I brightened up. “Plus she always loved wearing my boring Midwestern clothes,” I said.
Josh smiled. “Ask her to come for a vacation. We’ll see what we can figure out.”
I tried to picture Celestine on the loose in Kirland. Boilermaker boys, watch out.
“Thank you,” I said to Josh. Then I kissed him again. Only very carefully this time. Because I really didn’t want to have to keep fixing my makeup.
When I finished kissing him, he said, “Okay, ready?”
“Wait.” If Josh was getting tired of my ideas, it didn’t show. He was looking at me like I was the most interesting person on the planet. “Survivor doesn’t have writers, does it?”
“No,” Josh said.
“But somebody created Survivor, right?”
“Sure.”
“Do you think the person who created Survivor is rich?”
Josh laughed. Then he held up both hands. “Okay.”
“Okay, it can be a reality show?” I asked.
“Okay, I’ll think about it,” he said.
“Okay,” I said to Josh, and I hooked my hand under his arm. “Let’s go.”
“Wait,” Josh said.
He stepped back and gave me a long look, from the top of my head to the soles of my feet. Which made me instantly self-conscious. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said. “Absolutely nothing. You’re perfect.” At which I relaxed. Because a guy cannot do much better than to tell you that you are perfect. “I just had an idea. If we did a reality show—”
Now he had my absolute undivided attention.
“—maybe we could do something about your dress. Like a contest. Whoever can figure out how your Grandma got it wins. It must be a great story.”
As I have told you, ever since I inherited it, I have been dying to know how Grandma got the dress. But I couldn’t figure it out. “I researched it,” I said. “I couldn’t find the answer.”
“You weren’t competing for a million dollars,” he said.
Which was true.
“If my Grandma’s dress is on the show, does that mean I have to be on it, too?”
Josh shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably. You’re part of the story.”
Hmm. Notwithstanding my brush with TV stardom on Fox News—or perhaps because of it—I was pretty sure I did not want to be part of anybody’s primetime lineup.
I think Josh read my mind. Because he immediately said, “Maybe it doesn’t have to be about your Grandma’s dress. There must be other dangerous dresses out there. And other stories. Maybe we could go looking for the best dangerous-dress story.”
Wow. I don’t know about you, but I would watch a TV show full of dangerous-dress stories. “Will the network buy that kind of show?”
Josh smiled. “We won’t know until we ask them.” Then he gave me a perfect tiny little kiss on the lips.
“Okay,” I said. “Now let’s go to the prom.”
61
We walked in.
Reinhardt’s restaurant is a huge place. If every seat was filled, it would probably hold ten percent of the population of Kirland, Indiana. Do not ask me what made old Mr. Reinhardt such an optimist to think that one in ten Kirlanders (which if you think about it is a much more dignified term than Bumfuckers) would show up at his restaurant every night. Most nights, there are an awful lot of empty seats. But it is the perfect size for high school proms. Which probably explains why the Kent prom is never held anywhere else.
The place was overflowing with color: colored balloons, colored streamers, and miles of colored tissue paper. I suppose the decorations for every prom are colorful, but this was like somebody put a giant Spiral Art in the middle of the floor, turned it on high, then dumped out the entire contents of Joe Vajda’s paint store and let everything fly everywhere.
Looking around that vast color-stained room, a new thought occurred to me. New, as in, a thought that I am absolutely sure had never occurred to me, ever, in my entire life. I wondered, What would the Kent high school prom at Reinhardt’s restaurant look like on TV?
I’m not sure if Josh read my mind, but he looked around, too. “Nice,” he said.
A big banner at one end of the room said THE COLORS OF YOUR LIFE, which explained the overstimulated decorations. Obviously that was the theme of the prom. Every prom has a theme. Not just in Kirland. In America. I believe it is a federal law. I tried to think what song “the colors of your life” is from. Because in Kirland the theme is always a song lyric. And I did not recognize the lyric. Right away I felt old. Only twenty-five, and I was already so out of touch that I didn’t know what song the prom theme came from.
As Josh and I walked across the floor, I got a better look at the banner. In the bottom right corner, it said FROM “INVISIBLE,” BY CLAY AIKEN. Clay Aiken, as in American Idol. I guess Kirland is a very Clay Aiken kind of place. But I didn’t feel so bad anymore about not recognizing the lyric. Actually I felt kind of relieved.
Walking across the room made me remember my own prom. Everybody and their dates were color-coordinated. If the boy wore a powder-blue tuxedo, the girl wore a powder-blue dress. If the girl insisted on wearing a magenta gown, well then, her boyfriend was obligated to find magenta formal wear. For reasons I cannot explain, almost nobody wore black or white. I got stuck wearing brown. To match a boy I didn’t even like. The brown dress is yet another aspect of my prom that was undistinguished. But that is neither here nor there. Looking around, I saw that color-coordination was still the rule. For some reason, that made me happy.
Then I wondered if prom dates across the country color-coordinate. And if TV audiences would find this interesting. I bet they would. In fact, suddenly, everything about Kirland struck me as considerably more interesting than it had ever been before.
Okay not everything. At that moment, Mrs. Zuback walked up to me. She was my Social Studies teacher in the tenth and eleventh grades. She was not interesting in the tenth grade. She was even less interesting in the eleventh grade. And even seen through executive-producer eyes, she was still not interesting.
She recognized me. “Jane?”
“Hello, Mrs. Zuback,” I said.
She seemed puzzled. “Not your prom, is it?”
“No.”
“Oh.” Then she looked at me. “Nice dress,” she said, and walked away.
Well, even if she was not interesting, she got credit for noticing my dress. Although how could she not? I looked around at the seniors and their dates. Suffice it to say that among all the lilacs and mauves and taupes and limes and burnt siennas, nobody was wearing a dress like mine.
I wondered how many compliments I would get. A lot, I was sure. I was not being immodest. On the contrary, I think I am a pretty modest person, and ordinarily I do not expect to attract much attention. But this was not ordinarily. I was wearing my Grandma’s dress. Which, if I have done my job at all in writing this story, you understand by now is a dress the likes of which no one living in Kirland, Indiana has ever seen, excluding of course my immediate family. It is also, as I hope I have conveyed to you, a grown-up, sexual, dangerous dress. Just like it says in Josh’s screenplay. Even Scarlett Johansson dressed up for the Oscars would not look better than I looked in Grandma’s dress.
Okay maybe she would look a little prettier. Because I think Scarlett Johansson is prettier than me. But I don’t care whose dress she wears to the Oscars, even if it is from Mister Giorgio Armani himself, it could not look any better than the dress I had on.
No offense, Mister Armani.
In any event, I’m quite sure nobody at the Roger Wells Kent senior prom ever saw such a dress. Much less me in such a dress. Much less me in such a dress accompanied by very very handsome Josh Thomas, who was wearing, as I said, an incredibly dashing tuxedo (which if you are curious in French is le smoking) and shirt (la chemise) and bow tie (le papillon), all by, as I said, Mister Giorgio Armani. So I was certain we would attract attention.
Only we didn’t. Because you are not going to believe who was there, getting all the attention.
Nick Timko.
Nick Timko.
Cousin Mary’s Nick Timko. Nick Timko who got all sticky with Tina Kaminski at their senior prom twenty years ago, Nick who broke Mary’s heart and ran away and played baseball and never came back. That Nick Timko. Only now when people talk obsessively about Nick Timko—which, as I told you in the very first chapter, people
still do—they can’t say he never came back. Hell has frozen over. Pigs have flown. Nick Timko has come home.
Suddenly my idea about Marty the UPM did not seem crazy at all. Suddenly I knew that my uncle really would like Marty.
I looked at Josh. “I can do the show. I really can.”
He could tell I was serious. He gave me a huge hug.
In the middle of the hug, somebody tapped me on my shoulder. “That’ll be enough of that,” said a voice I remembered. I unwrapped myself from Josh and turned around. Mr. Demjanich, the high school principal, had his arms crossed and was looking at me disapprovingly. Then he recognized me. “Miss Stuart?”
I said, “Yes.”
He said, “Not your prom, is it?”
I said, “No.”
He said, “You’re chaperoning.”
I said, “Yes.”
He said, “Nice dress.” Then he told me about Nick Timko.
I already told you that Dave Stankowski died. And that Dave was the baseball coach at Kent forever, which means of course that he was Nick’s coach. Somehow Nick heard. He came back for the funeral. And I guess twenty minutes in the major leagues and twenty years in the minors is enough for anybody. At least it was enough for Nick. I mean, he’s got to be, what, thirty-eight years old? Although I must say, he looks awfully good for thirty-eight.
Even if I didn’t tell Josh that.
But anyway, apparently Nick is staying. He’s taking Dave Stankowski’s job coaching the baseball team. He’s also going to teach math. And as his very first official duty as an employee of Roger Wells Kent High School, he is chaperoning the senior prom.
Which is more than a little ironic, if you think about it.
I wonder if my cousin Mary knows yet.
I wonder if my Uncle John knows yet.
All of a sudden, because of Nick, things with Josh are just the littlest extra bit more complicated.
Do not get me wrong. Even though Nick is still a very handsome man, my interest in him is purely professional. Nick Timko moving back home is very possibly the single most interesting thing that has happened in Kirland. Not recently. Ever.
Imagine that somebody hired you to make a TV show about Amelia Earhart. Who as you probably know was a famous aviatrix. Which by the way has always sounded like a dirty word to me even though it isn’t. Anyway she went off on some historic flight, then she disappeared and was never heard from again.
