Tailor-Made

by Yolanda Wallace

  Dakota glanced at the clock on a nearby wall. She had arrived at the airport three hours early so she would have plenty of time to navigate the security checkpoint before she made her way to her gate. She would rather while away the hours between now and her scheduled flight time reading a book while she grabbed a bite to eat than getting felt up by a complete stranger.

  A few minutes later, a middle-aged woman with a large mustard stain on her black uniform pants and a good two inches of gray roots peeking out of the part in her dyed-orange hair sauntered over. The last name on her name tag wasn’t visible, but Dakota could see her first name was Evelyn. Evelyn glanced at her, looked past her, and turned back to Officer Warren. “You called for a female passenger pat-down? Where is she?”

  Officer Warren jerked his head in Dakota’s direction.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Evelyn looked Dakota up and down. “Come here for a second, Frank.”

  Evelyn walked a few feet away and waited for Officer Warren to follow her. After he joined her, they began a heated but whispered discussion. Dakota knew she could defuse the situation by saying something to one of the officers so they could hear her voice and realize she truly was biologically female, but she wasn’t in the mood to let either of them off the hook.

  “Fine,” Evelyn said, throwing her hands in the air. “If that’s what the ID says, I guess we have to go with it.” Walking toward Dakota, she snapped the latex gloves on her hands like a proctologist about to perform an exam. “Miss Lane?” She glanced at Dakota’s passport for confirmation. “The scanner indicated an anomaly in your, uh, genital area so I’ve been asked to perform a manual screening. Is that okay with you, or would you prefer a male agent?”

  The passengers who had successfully completed their security screenings stared openly before they made their way to their gates. Most seemed curious, some empathetic, others almost contemptuous. Dakota had grown accustomed to receiving those looks, but she had never learned to like it.

  She wordlessly extended her arms as Evelyn ran the back of a gloved hand up her legs, over her hips, and across her chest. Each time she moved to a different area of Dakota’s body, Evelyn eyed her crotch as if checking to see if she had managed to get a literal rise out of her.

  “Sorry,” Dakota said when she’d had about all she could take, “but you’re not my type.”

  Evelyn pursed her lips and returned Dakota’s ID. “Have a safe flight, ma’am,” she said through clenched teeth. “Next time you have a situation like this, Frank, handle it yourself.”

  Dakota gathered her belongings and headed to the international terminal. Though she had managed to walk away from the uncomfortable encounter with most of her dignity intact, she felt far from triumphant. Such run-ins always left her feeling frustrated. Why did she keep having to prove herself to people? Why couldn’t they accept her for who she—and her ID—said she was and leave it at that?

  After she located her gate, she headed to the bar a few feet away and ordered a vodka tonic. She had vowed to refrain from alcohol until she finished her photo shoot so she wouldn’t undermine all the hard work she had put in at the gym, but she needed something stronger than mineral water to take the edge off.

  “How much do I owe you?” she asked after the bartender placed her drink in front of her.

  “Don’t sweat it. It’s already paid for, compliments of the dude over there.”

  Dakota turned to see Sophie raising a toast in her direction. Sophie was wearing a white oxford shirt under a light gray cashmere sweater. Her sleeves were rolled up, revealing the colorful Olympic rings tattooed on the outside of her right wrist. Dressed the way she was with her hair cut even shorter than normal, she could have easily been mistaken for a butch lesbian or a metrosexual man. The bartender had obviously chosen to go with the latter assumption.

  Dakota grabbed her glass, picked up her carry-on, and joined Sophie on the other end of the bar. “Thanks for the drink.”

  “You looked like you could use it.” Sophie took a sip of her martini and carefully set her glass on the granite bar top. “The incident I witnessed at security. Does that happen to you often?”

  “You saw what went down?”

  Dakota hadn’t seen Sophie in the security area while she was being searched. Seeing someone who could relate to what she was experiencing might have made the situation easier to deal with, but Sophie had an out she didn’t have. Sophie dressed the way she did because she was being paid a great deal of money to do it. Dakota did it not because the money was good but because it felt right.

  “I was a few people behind you in line,” Sophie said. “I started to intervene after the agent I was dealing with waved me through, but I was afraid I would end up doing more harm than good.”

  “That kind of thing never happens to you when you fly?”

  “Occasionally, but not often. It helps having Ruben around to vouch for me. Swimmer’s shoulders or not, no one assumes I’m a man when I’m standing next to one.”

  “Lucky you.” Dakota looked around the bar but didn’t see Sophie’s omnipresent other half anywhere. “Where’s Ruben now?”

  “Home packing his bags. This trip was last-minute, so he wasn’t able to book a seat on the same flight. He’s catching the red-eye tomorrow morning and will be joining us in Belize around noon.”

  “Us?” Dakota almost choked on her drink. She thought she had this gig to herself.

  “Yes. Laird didn’t tell you we’re going to be working the same photo shoots this week?”

  “No, he conveniently forgot to mention it to me.”

  Sophie shrugged. “Everything happened so fast he probably didn’t have time. He gave me a call last night and asked me to fill in for Hunter.”

  “Wait. Hunter has been looking forward to this trip for months. There’s no way he would have dropped out voluntarily. Did he get sick or something?”

  “He probably wishes he had come down with something. Saying he had a bad case of stomach flu would be far less embarrassing than telling the truth.”

  “Which is?”

  “I’m not sure whether to call it dumb luck or a freak accident, but he walked into a utility pole while playing Pokémon Go and broke his nose. Unless you’re doing an ad for boxing gear, no one wants to hire a model with two black eyes. So it looks like you’re stuck with me for the next four days.”

  “I’m looking forward to it.”

  “I’m sure you are,” Sophie said after she ordered another martini.

  “What do you mean?”

  Sophie turned to face her. “Be honest, Dakota. I know you view me as competition.”

  “Of course I do. That’s only natural, considering we’re often up for the same jobs, but that doesn’t mean I dislike you. To be perfectly honest, I thought you were the one who had an issue with me.”

  “I’ve always been cordial to you, haven’t I?”

  “If by cordial, you mean frosty, yes, you have.”

  Sophie flashed a crooked grin that made her look like Brad Pitt during his Thelma and Louise heyday. “I’ve always admired your work. I’m sorry if our relationship hasn’t been as warm as you might like. Perhaps we could remedy that this week.”

  “What do you have in mind?” Dakota asked warily. Sophie was obviously working up to something, but she seemed to have much more in mind than the lunch they had promised to have and had yet to take.

  Sophie slid a pimento-stuffed olive off a swizzle stick with her teeth. “It’s actually Ruben’s idea,” she said between bites. “He’s the marketing genius in our household. He’s come up with a wonderful way to garner both of us some free publicity. All we have to do is upload a few social media posts that make it seem like you and I are sleeping with each other. The media will eat it up. They’ve been painting us as rivals for years and you’ve obviously bought into it as well. This is the perfect way to bury the hatchet, don’t you think?”

  “By pretending to be lovers?”

  “It happens all
the time in Hollywood. Most of the great celebrity romances are created in a publicist’s office. Ask Tom Cruise. On second thought, don’t. He might sue you for defamation. I hear he’s good at that.”

  “He’s had lots of practice. But in case you haven’t noticed, we’re not in Hollywood. And you say this was Ruben’s idea?”

  In Dakota’s opinion, Ruben seemed to view Sophie as something of a pet project. An object of beauty to be sculpted and admired but not necessarily loved. Their partnership often seemed more like a business arrangement than a marriage. Dakota hadn’t been around them often enough to classify their union as devoid of passion, but she didn’t feel much heat emanating from them. As Sophie’s manager, Ruben had a financial stake in her success. Was that the reason he had concocted such a harebrained scheme to gain attention for his client/wife? It had to be. No other explanation made sense. Because if she loved someone enough to marry her, she wouldn’t be trying to convince her to climb in bed with someone else. Figuratively speaking or not.

  “He knows what people will say if the story gains traction,” Sophie said, “but he’s secure enough with himself and our marriage to be able to tune those things out. What do you say? Are you in?”

  “No, count me out.”

  “Why? You’re single, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what’s the problem? I’m not asking you to sleep with me.”

  “Just make it seem like I am.”

  “Exactly. All we have to do is take a few selfies, write a few cleverly worded posts, and wait for everyone to pick up on the hints we drop. The Twitterverse will explode. Think of the attention we’ll receive.”

  “I’m actually thinking of the phone call I’ll get from my parents when they stand in the checkout line at the grocery store and see my face on the cover of some tabloid underneath a headline that says I’m sleeping with someone who’s off-limits. That’s not the kind of attention I want.”

  “You’re an adult, Dakota, not a child. Does your parents’ opinion matter so much to you that you’re unwilling to take a step that might advance your career? If we leverage this the right way, we could wind up with our own reality show.”

  “Are you trying to offer me more incentive or less? Because the idea of having my life documented for public consumption holds zero appeal to me. And the idea of pretending to have an affair with a married woman holds even less.”

  “Any married woman, or just me?”

  “I’d do you in a heartbeat if you were single.”

  Both of them had strong personalities and even stronger drives to be the best. Trying to top each other would be a serious turn-on. Sleeping with the enemy always was. But bedding Sophie was one thrill Dakota would rather not seek. Not as long as Sophie sported a wedding ring.

  “With your reputation, I wouldn’t have thought you’d be such a prude,” Sophie said.

  “Just because my parents and I don’t see eye to eye on some things doesn’t mean I don’t try to live my life in a way that would make them proud of me.”

  “Were they proud when you were photographed boning some random woman in the bathroom of a crowded bar?”

  That hadn’t been one of Dakota’s finest moments. She had been too caught up in the excitement of the moment to pump the brakes when she should have. She didn’t regret that it had happened. Her only regret was that the woman she was with that night had seemed to be more interested in becoming the next Kim Kardashian than she was in her. The sex was memorable, but Dakota could have done without the ensuing fallout. The kind of fallout she could avoid by choosing not to participate in Sophie and Ruben’s ridiculous ruse. “I’ve fought too hard to be true to who I am to jeopardize that now.”

  “But your whole life is based on an illusion. What’s so different about what I’m asking you to do?” Sophie looked at Dakota out of the corner of her eye. “Perhaps you’re not as comfortable with yourself as you pretend to be.”

  Dakota forced herself to appear calm even though she could feel her blood boiling. The last thing she wanted was for someone to whip out their cell phone, record her kicking Sophie’s ass, and sell the footage to TMZ. If she didn’t control her temper, she would give Sophie everything she wanted—and lose everything she had worked so hard to achieve.

  “Unlike you,” she said, struggling to keep her voice even, “I’m not pretending to be someone else. When you look at me, what you see isn’t an illusion. It’s who I am. Thanks for thinking of me, but I’m not willing to compromise my principles for you or anyone else.”

  Sophie held up her hands in surrender. “I didn’t mean to offend you. It’s just the gin talking. I’ve never been able to hold my liquor.”

  “Then do yourself a favor.” Dakota pushed Sophie’s half-empty glass away from her. “Switch to water. You’re far less likely to end up with your foot in your mouth.”

  * * *

  Grace returned from lunch on Friday to find a bright yellow Post-it Note affixed to her computer monitor. She read the note three times, but she couldn’t figure out what it said because Lillie’s handwriting was worse than a doctor’s. Grace’s father had never felt the need to hire a full-time receptionist, so Lillie and Tracy took turns manning the phones. Grace waited for Lillie to finish her current call before she held up the note and said, “What’s happening at two o’clock?”

  “Hart Stephens has to go out of town to host a beauty pageant, so he needs to reschedule his appointment. He called to see if he could come in a day early,” Lillie said as she scribbled something in the appointment book. “I told him you had an opening at two.”

  Hart Stephens was a popular comedian and talk show host who was almost as famous for his flashy suits as he was for his off-color jokes. He didn’t come into the shop often, but when he did it was all hands on deck. Hart was a clotheshorse of the highest order. Even if Grace and her father lost every other client on their roster, Hart’s order alone would be enough to keep the company solvent.

  “Dad’s his regular tailor, but he’s still at the distributor’s checking out fabric samples. Did you let him know Hart’s on the way?”

  “I called him, but there isn’t anything he can do. Even if he’d left the warehouse as soon as I got him on the phone, he wouldn’t have been able to make it back here in time. That means you’re it.”

  Grace glanced at her watch. “I have half an hour to prepare to meet with one of the company’s most lucrative clients. No pressure.”

  “Think of it as practice for when you’re in charge for real instead of in name only.”

  Grace logged into her computer and accessed Hart’s file. “This is still Dad’s company, Lillie, not mine.”

  “Maybe, but who’s bringing in most of the business and doing the majority of the work?”

  Lillie had a point, but Grace didn’t feel the need to belabor it. She didn’t have time to point out the obvious. She needed every possible second to prepare for Hart Stephens’s arrival. “Who was that on the phone?” she asked as she gathered the information she needed for her upcoming meeting.

  “A nice little old lady from Queens.”

  Grace smiled despite her mounting stress. Though she looked a good ten years younger, Lillie was almost seventy. Her definition of “old” changed by the minute. In Lillie’s world, the term could be applied to anyone who was over fifty but less than one hundred. To hear her tell it, anyone who was older than that was already dead; they just didn’t know it yet.

  “Her name’s Ruth Goldstein and she wants to buy her grandson a suit to wear to his bar mitzvah,” Lillie continued. “I told her your father would be happy to meet with them in the morning, but she said she needed to meet with you instead. You know what that means, don’t you?”

  Grace walked over to Lillie’s desk so she could check out the entry in the appointment book. The grandson’s name was either Jonah or Joshua. Grace couldn’t tell which. Lillie had written “transgender boy” next to his name, penciled him in for ten a.m., and e
ntered Dakota’s name in the referral slot.

  “Dakota’s in Belize until Sunday,” Grace said. “Unless she’s working her friends list between photo shoots, I doubt she’s responsible for Mrs. Goldstein’s call.”

  Lillie looked up at her. “Do you keep track of every client’s schedule, or just the ones you think are cute?”

  “I never said I thought Dakota was—”

  “Belize, huh?” Lillie said, not giving Grace a chance to finish her sentence. “Where’s that?”

  “In Central America. It’s a small country bordering Mexico and Guatemala. It’s popular with wedding planners because of its picturesque beaches and relatively low costs.”

  “It sounds pretty.”

  “It is. Check this out. Dakota texted me this last night.” Grace grabbed her phone off her desk and showed Lillie a picture of a pair of palm trees silhouetted against a pastel-colored sky as the bright orange sun slowly sank into the crystal-clear waters of the Caribbean Sea.

  “‘The view from my hotel,’” Lillie said, slowly reading the caption beneath the picture. “‘Don’t you wish you were here?’”

  Each time she looked at the picture, which was often, Grace could almost feel the ocean breeze blowing against her skin. She could practically see herself sipping a piña colada while she lay on a chaise longue and worked on her tan. Hell, yes, she wished she was there. She didn’t know if she wanted to be there with Dakota—they barely knew each other—but traveling with a friend was always more fun than going it alone. What better way to get to know someone than by spending time with them in a country neither of you called home? By the time the trip was over, your friendship would be either cemented or ruined, the resulting memories guaranteed to last a lifetime.

  “It’s pretty, all right,” Lillie said, “but that’s way more water than I can swallow. It sure makes a nice picture, though.” She pulled off her reading glasses and allowed them to dangle from the braided gold chain around her neck. “I had set my mind to retiring at the end of the year, but I might have to stick around for a while. Lately, you never know who’s going to walk through the door next. And I certainly want to be a fly on the wall when your father finds out what you’re up to.”