Apart at the Seams

by Melissa Ford

  “Exactly,” I agree. “Ethan doesn’t really get how much pressure I’m under. There are a million people who would love to work for Davis & Howe, and there are others at work who would love a chance to show their design skills and take on this project if I can’t balance it all.” I suddenly worry that I sound as if I can’t handle it, and that this message will somehow trickle back inadvertently to Davis & Howe. “I can. I mean, I can balance it all. I like being this busy.”

  Noah smiles easily. “Me, too. And that’s what annoyed Ellie most of all. I like my BlackBerry going off at all hours, and I like Saturdays at Volt. Do you know what I always think about when I’m working on the weekend? I’m not worrying about what I’m giving up; I’m just thinking about how cool it is that I’m holding these skeleton scripts. That I’m holding Monday night’s episode, and if I don’t do my job and get it ready on time, we’ll have to roll a rerun. That’s a lot of power, right? The ability to leave David Lear wordless, at least for one night before they replace my ass? I know how the week is going to unfold. I know the nightly guests and the special sketches and the music videos. Everyone in New York City is waiting to find that stuff out when they turn on their television Monday night, but I have it all in front of me.”

  “Can I peek?” I tease, my hand moving toward the top script. He pulls it closer to him and grins. It does feel powerful when he puts it that way, the fate of our evening television time in his hands.

  “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

  I shake my head and take a step back toward my table. “I guess we’ll both have to leave it a mystery. I’ll see you later this week with the drawings. I’m coming by the studio so you can choose. I better get back to work if I want to have something to show.”

  I can tell he’s watching me as I walk back to my table, slide into my seat, take out my colored pencils and sketchpad, and get to work.

  EARLY MONDAY morning, I practically dance out of Nigel’s office, my sketchpad in hand. I showed my new drawings to Francesca the moment I got to work, and she told me they were finally ready for Nigel Howe’s critical eye. She accompanied me to his office where I explained the inspiration for my fire-themed designs; the flame-shaped skirts with flickering tops in hues of red, orange, and yellow working together to create a visual conflagration.

  “You had already staked out water for the spring line,” I told Nigel, complimenting his interpretation of the Mediterranean Sea, “so I had to go with a different element. I wanted the clothes to convey that the Nightly is on fire this award season.”

  Nigel didn’t say anything for a few moments, chewing thoughtfully on the end of his very expensive-looking pen. I looked up at the CFDA Fashion Awards that Nigel displays on a special shelf by his window so the statues can properly reflect the light and draw the eye. It works—the light’s reflection. I can’t stop being dazzled by the idea of winning one of my own, of being honored at the CFDA Fashion Awards. I’m so completely lost in writing my acceptance speech in my head that I almost miss Nigel nodding. “Let’s show this to the Nightly team as soon as possible. Arianna, you’ll arrange that with Julie? You can grab two samplehands to help you with the toiles. And don’t forget to also get me those fringe samples today.”

  I feel energized as I set my coffee on a side table to keep it away from any fabric and get to work emailing Julie Courtland, arranging the fringe samples, and gently working loose the threads of a hem. My entire body is buzzing, as if my organs are happily humming some tuneless pop song while they go about breathing and pumping blood and digesting for me. When I check my email again, there’s a note from Julie asking me to swing by the studio a little before noon to catch up with the staff at the tail end of their lunchtime meeting. Just enough time to complete the fabric button samples that Francesca needs for embellishing the whimsical grey taffeta floor-length skirt she is currently inside, only her legs visible as they trail underneath the hemline.

  Tabitha eyes me as I stretch the silk over the metal disc. “You’re in a good mood today.”

  “I like being productive,” I comment. “Plus it helps that Nigel thought my sketches were divine.” I say the last word in Nigel’s pompous British accent, dropping the volume so no one can overhear.

  “Does that mean we’re going out for a celebratory lunch?” she asks.

  “I can’t.” The irony of success is that there is no time to celebrate it. My fingers slip over a length of satin cord, braiding it into a tight ball that I affix to a metal backing. “I have to go to the studio and meet with Julie so they can choose their outfits and I can get started.”

  Tabitha cocks one eyebrow and looks at me; she’s good at that, giving me a face that speaks volumes even though it’s saying nothing clearly: does she not believe me that I don’t have time for lunch, is she impressed, is she jealous? Francesca slides out from under the taffeta skirt and beckons Tabitha over, ending our conversation, which secretly fills me with relief. I’m able to dash a quick checkmark on the clipboard, turn in my button samples, and grab my things to head over to the studio, splurging on a cab to get there.

  Julie takes me through security at the staff entrance and up the dingy stairs toward the writer’s conference room. They’re mid-meeting, feet pressed up against the coffee table in front of the sofa in order to better balance piles of paper on their laps. All their eyes are trained on the guy facing the window, obviously deep in thought, his shoulders in a familiar hunch that I’ve seen on television for years. In an instant, I am completely tongue-tied over being in the same room as David Lear.

  “What if we didn’t mention it at all?” he finally asks, turning around and startling slightly when he notices me standing with Julie.

  “We could take it out entirely,” Noah agrees, dragging a pen across the script.

  “This is the designer, right? We’re done here, so I’ll let you guys get to your stuff.” He smiles awkwardly and shifts past me. I fight an overwhelming urge to turn around and watch him walk back to his office.

  Julie takes my sketchpad and sinks down into a chair covered in nubby, pea-green fabric, and the writers gather around her as if she’s a librarian about to read them a story. Except, instead of turning the pages toward them, arcing them around a semi-circle so everyone can see, she pretty much ignores them, flipping back and forth between the pages and either agreeing or disagreeing with the names I listed next to each outfit as a possibility.

  “The way I see it,” I explain, “is that there are really three option sets that work together, and it’s a matter of everyone choosing from within the same set. From there we can talk about fabrics and colors and length.”

  We spend the next hour talking through the designs while I take notes. It’s difficult because everyone wants to talk at once; even the guys who don’t seem to have much fashion sense at all in the day-to-day world. Noah offers to go last, waiting patiently for everyone else to rattle off their small tweaks to the designs while Julie fingers the fabric swatches I brought as examples. Finally, I close my notebook as people file out of the room on their way to lunch, feeling completely spent as if I’ve climbed Mount Everest wearing high heels.

  Julie looks at her watch and glances at Noah. “Could you walk Arianna downstairs? I have to meet with David about the Armani suit. It’s a disaster.”

  “No problem,” Noah says.

  I pack up my bag, slinging it over my shoulder, wondering how uncool it would be to ask to actually meet David Lear. I have a camera on my phone; all I’d want is a quick picture that I could show to Rachel.

  “So now I’m regretting not showing you the scripts on Saturday,” he says, holding open the door. “I could have seen your drawings two days early.”

  “True. And by now the weekly guest list is probably up online so you’ve lost whatever leverage you had in all those papers. I guess it’s a wash.”

  I look longi
ngly down the hallway where David Lear’s office must be. All the doors are shut. I enter the stairwell after Noah chivalrously stands aside for me again.

  “I love it, by the way. My suit. Especially the velvet panels. I’m going to be rubbing my lapels all night.”

  “That will look great. Up there, on national television, stroking . . .” I let my voice trail off, mortified at the words that popped into my head. Noah laughs and opens the back door to the sidewalk, stepping outside with me.

  “Walk up to Hell’s Kitchen with me, and we’ll get ice cream to celebrate your first designs.”

  “I don’t know,” I say, fiddling with the strap on my bag. “I should probably get back to the loft and get started. I have hours of work ahead of me.”

  “Who turns down ice cream when it’s this hot out? That’s the one good thing about being an adult; you can have dessert for lunch.”

  “I’ve never thought about that.”

  “You’ve never had ice cream for lunch? My God, Quinn.” He looks at me in mock disgust. “I promise, it will be quick. We’ll run in, grab ice cream, clink our plastic bowls together as a congratulations, and shovel it in so quickly we get brain freeze. Come on, you can’t have something this big happen to you and not mark it in some way.”

  I bite my lip and fall in step with him toward Hell’s Kitchen without agreeing or begging off, somewhere in social limbo where I could be walking back to the subway just as much as I could be going out to celebrate my morning. I could probably spare a half hour if I took a cab back to the loft.

  “I know Hell’s Kitchen isn’t exactly the most festive neighborhood in Manhattan. Blame David for moving the studio out here. But there really is this great gelateria a few blocks up that makes the most amazing stracciatella.”

  “I don’t know what that is,” I admit.

  “It’s chocolate-chip gelato.”

  “Then why not just say ‘chocolate-chip gelato’?” I point out.

  “Because I like the precise word,” he tells me.

  “Because you’re a show-off,” I tease. “A verbal show-off. What’s the untranslatable word for someone who purposefully chooses the most obscure word?”

  “The most perfect word,” Noah corrects. “I think the term you’re looking for is blowhard.”

  I purse my lips, trying not to laugh, and feel my body relax as we fall into step with one another. Just one quick dish of ice cream, and I’ll head back to the loft.

  “Anyway, it’s not really chocolate chip. The word ‘stracciato’ means ‘torn apart.’ So the name refers to how the chocolate is incorporated into the gelato batter, drizzling in melted chocolate as you churn the gelato so that it gets torn apart and spread throughout the finished product. It’s sort of more like chocolate moments than chocolate chips. Anyway, I just like to use the correct term when I know the correct term.”

  “It seems like you always know the correct term,” I comment. “One of the perks of being a writer.”

  He pauses outside a narrow ice cream store squeezed between two other restaurants as if they’ve trapped it in a hug. “Or if stracciatella isn’t your thing, the hazelnut is good, too. You seem like a hazelnut type.”

  “I wasn’t aware that there was a hazelnut type,” I say. I look over the selections and end up with white chocolate, which I thought was vanilla. I take out my wallet to pay, but Noah knocks my hand aside.

  “This is on me. We’re celebrating you.”

  “Oh no, let me get it,” I insist. I’m about to tell him that it makes me uncomfortable, but that assumes that he likes me or sees this as some sort of date. While I’m cringing, he slips a twenty-dollar bill to the man behind the cash register.

  “I promise you that I can afford it. David pays us pretty well.”

  “Well . . . thank you,” I say, stepping aside to wait while he takes his change.

  We eat while we walk, my gelato fighting to melt back into liquid custard in the cup before I can eat it; rewinding. “So what happens next? You just go back to your studio and sew up a bunch of material? I really have no clue how clothes are made.”

  “Well, when I get back, I’ll start on the toiles. Essentially, I’m making a fake dress or suit to make sure the design works and make any changes while the stakes are lower. I’ll create and cut the pattern, and then I’ll have some samplehands help me stitch it. Then we bring it back to you guys to try on and go from there.”

  “Can you make anything? Obviously you can do dresses and suits. How about really stylish sweatpants?”

  I nod my head, dotting at my mouth with the napkin and hoping I don’t have lipstick on my teeth.

  “Swimsuits? Do you know how to make a swimsuit?”

  “Yeah, the process is similar. I mean, Davis & Howe doesn’t design bikinis, but we could.”

  “Wedding dresses? Do you know how to make one of those huge, white monstrosities?”

  “It’s all the same idea; a lot of material, a little bit of material. Why? Do you have a wedding coming up?”

  “Me? Uh, no. I don’t plan on ever getting married.”

  It’s not as if I haven’t met plenty of other people who share the sentiment, but I’m always surprised when someone agrees that they’re not into the concept of marriage; not now and not ever. It’s like finding another person who’s left-handed, or who speaks your obscure language, especially in a culture that seems obsessed with the idea of weddings. There are no magazines at the grocery store giving on-going marital advice, but there is a section dedicated to periodicals that cover this single day in a person’s life; giving them ideas on cakes and dresses and party favors.

  “I’m not either,” I tell him. I regret it immediately after I say it, as if saying it aloud is disloyal to Ethan. But the moment the words are out of my mouth, I feel a strange sense of relief. I can’t talk about it with Ethan, and I certainly can’t talk about it with Rachel. I can feel Noah looking at me askance while he takes a bite of gelato.

  “So, what’s your reason?” Noah asks.

  I chew my lip, trying to think of a better answer than the one I’ve given Ethan. “Have you ever had something you know you want without even knowing why you want it?”

  “Sure,” Noah agrees.

  “Well, marriage is the opposite for me. I know I don’t want it without even knowing why I don’t want it. It just doesn’t . . . fit. What about you? Why aren’t you getting married?”

  “I asked you because I hoped you’d have a good answer I could steal,” Noah admits. “I don’t really have a reason more than what you’ve said. That I don’t believe there is one person out there that I’m destined to be with, and if I don’t believe that, it sort of follows that I don’t believe one person would be the perfect person to spend eternity with.”

  “Yes,” I say, as if that single word is the period at the end of a long sentence. “That is exactly it. I mean, we don’t expect people to keep one car or one job or one home throughout their life. And yet we expect them to commit to this one person forever and grow with them as they change.”

  “And if you can’t change, then you just settle with misery or go through the pain of a divorce.”

  “My best friend went through a divorce last year,” I comment. “She’s now getting remarried to the same guy.”

  “That’s funny,” Noah responds.

  I nod. “It sort of is. I like my life neat.”

  “Me, too,” he agrees.

  By the time we near my subway stop, I notice that we have fallen into step with one another like soldiers, our feet hitting the pavement at the very same time.

  I CALL ETHAN from the loft, telling him that I’ll be a bit longer. At the beginning of the day, I was filled with energy. But now, my head is bowed over my worktable as everyone else at the loft floats away to their evening plans.


  “What about dinner?” Ethan asks me. My stomach rumbles in response. Not counting the granola bar I wolfed down on my way to work, the only thing I’ve consumed today is coffee and gelato.

  “Can I meet you at the Shake Shack?” I ask, rubbing my forehead. I know he’ll say yes; Ethan loves greasy burgers and fries. I can hear him sigh on the other end of the line.

  “Sure,” he agrees. “Let’s go out to dinner.”

  I work for another half hour, carefully cutting out the material for one of the jackets even though it’s just a mock-up. I want even my toiles to be perfect; for Nigel to see the care I bring to even the throwaway elements of design. I pack up at the last possible second, feeling squeezed because I didn’t get enough done. But Ethan and Beckett have to eat.

  I’m inwardly kicking myself for losing over a half hour in the middle of my day. I shouldn’t have gone out for gelato. I have seven toiles to make by next week; seven people to dress before the Emmys. If I screw this up, my career is done before it even gets started. If I knock this out of the park, I can launch my own line by the time Beckett hits kindergarten. He’ll be in school all day, I won’t have to pay for day care, and I’ll be my own boss. It’s too perfect to risk.

  I get out at Madison Square Park and immediately spot them in the crowd of tourists and New Yorkers grabbing dinner outside. Ethan appeases a whining Beckett by swinging him upside down, pretending to drop him, and then catching him at the last second. Beckett shrieks out a string of happy sounds. He rights him as I walk over, as if worried that he’s doing something wrong. I give them each a kiss. “You guys look like you’re having fun.”

  “Fun alternating with toddleresque cranky and hungry,” he comments. “I think Beckett was ready to eat me if you didn’t come soon.”

  “You should have ordered without me,” I insist, pulling out a container of Cheerios from the diaper bag slung over Ethan’s shoulder as we get in line.