Apart at the Seams

by Melissa Ford

What had I sent him? Only the highlights: Beckett threw up, and I’m home with him. Not exactly a direct request for help. Even if he had listened to the voice message, he would have had to intuit that I needed his help since I didn’t actually come out and ask him to come home so I could work. Maybe I am terrible at asking for help, but it certainly isn’t because I need to prove anything. I’ve already shown I can do it by myself.

  “Well, you’re home now. I would really love it if you took care of the clothes and did something about dinner. And . . . uh . . . when Beckett gets up . . .”

  “Go work,” Ethan tells me, giving me a kiss. “Go sew. I’ve got this, Ari.”

  I bend back over my work, confused. Maybe if things were better defined, we’d know our cues; we’d have a shorthand when these sort of things happened. This is nice, having someone else in the apartment to lean on. I can see a sliver of Ethan through the bathroom door as he wrings out the clothes, whistling, as if there is nothing he wants to be doing more than cleaning up vomit-drenched shirts.

  ETHAN WATCHES Beckett in the morning as I race over to the loft to drop off work for my samplehands and gather up more supplies. While I’m there, I manage to complete two tasks off of Francesca’s rapidly growing checklist which emolliates her for the time being. She isn’t thrilled that I’m ducking out again to tend to Beckett, but at least she sees that I’m getting something accomplished from the apartment.

  When I get back, Ethan goes to pick up one of his cameras that’s in the shop and teach his afternoon class while I entertain a sick and cranky Beckett with block towers until he goes down for a nap. Like Clark Kent spinning into Superman’s clothes, I dive back to the table while he’s still babbling over the baby monitor and start cutting out the lapels on Noah’s jacket.

  Almost as if Noah’s brain is somehow connected to my scissors, my phone buzzes with a text message. We had a cancellation for Thursday’s show. Want to watch a taping and get a better sense of the Nightly behind the scenes? Go to the Nightly in the middle of the day when I have this much work to get done?

  I don’t have time to type anything back because Beckett begins wailing. He has once again thrown up on himself, coating the crib sheets and spraying the wall. And he’s blown out his diaper to boot. I pause for a moment, my hands over my mouth, watching the rest of my afternoon fly away from me, and then I scoop up my son and carry him into the bathroom to get him cleaned up.

  By the time Ethan comes home, Beckett is in full meltdown mode since he’s skipped his nap, and I’ve had two clothing changes. I feel like a zombie, sitting on the floor and staring at nothing while Beckett destroys my block tower.

  “Bad day at the office?” Ethan asks.

  “He waited until you were out of the apartment to completely lose it,” I say dryly.

  “No, Little Man, you totally missed my directions. You were supposed to give your mother a break.”

  I smile weakly and motion up toward the half-finished suit jacket pattern on our table. “So I didn’t actually get anything done. Ethan, I’m totally screwed. How am I going to get this all done in time? It’s not as if I can get an extension. The Emmys have an air date.”

  “Okay,” Ethan says, sinking down on the floor next to me. “Think for a second. Do you really have no chance of hitting this deadline, or is this just your anxiety talking?”

  I silently consider this for a moment. Will I really not be able to get it done on time, or does it just feel that way since I’ve been pulled in too many directions this week? Despite all the lost hours, I’m mostly on-schedule, and I could always trickle more of the grunt work down to my samplehands, placing a heavier burden on their shoulders. I’m clearly home again tomorrow if Beckett is still throwing up, but if I stay up tonight and plow through the rest of this jacket, I could do another drop off in the morning at the loft and leave the samplehands to stitch the toiles.

  “It’s maybe anxiety. If I can work the rest of the night.”

  “The rest of the night?” Ethan asks, looking a little crestfallen. He quickly recovers as if he has given himself an internal lecture. “Sure, the rest of the night. You have to do what you have to do. I’ll take Beckett. You finish your work. Maybe we’ll even have time this weekend to relax, right?”

  “Maybe,” I say vaguely.

  “You can get started. I got it from here.”

  Except that “getting it” seems to be standing in the kitchen and fixing himself a snack. He’s spreading mustard on a slice of bread when he realizes that I haven’t moved, and he raises his eyebrows as if to indicate that time is wasting. I give him the sweetest smile I can muster considering the day I’ve had.

  “I’m just waiting for you to be able to sit down here. He’s sort of clingy right now. If I get up and walk to the table, he’s going to howl.”

  To prove my point, I stand up and Beckett starts to pathetically whimper. Ethan sets down his knife and walks over to scoop up Beckett, moving back into the kitchen to make his sandwich one-handed by the sink. “Beckett is just going to help me make this and then we’re going to build a time-consuming building for him to smash.”

  I start collecting up my things, moving them into the bedroom so I can close the door behind me and concentrate. One jacket. That’s all I need to finish. Maybe cut out the fabric for the second one if I have time. Beckett ignores me now that he has Ethan’s undivided attention.

  My phone buzzes again, and I check it as I sweep up the tiny discarded ends of thread and dump them in the garbage can. I can feel my arms tense as I cringe at the interruption. It’s another message from Noah telling me that he needs a decision about the ticket. I’ve been putting him off all day. I want to go so badly, but it obviously isn’t working in my life this week. I sigh and click from the screen, determined to get myself set up to work before I write him back.

  “You look as if Francesca just dumped more work on your plate,” Ethan comments.

  I shake my head. “It’s just that guy from the Nightly. Someone canceled and they have a free ticket for Thursday’s taping. Who knows when he’ll be able to get one again.”

  “I don’t understand. Why aren’t you taking it?”

  I look over at Ethan, who is shoving his sandwich in his mouth with one hand while he builds a base out of thick yellow blocks with the other. “Really? Remember that thing called work?”

  “Beckett is still sick, so you were going to stay home anyway. I don’t have a class to teach. Why don’t you go down to the studio for the taping? I’ll stay with Beckett, and if it gets back to Francesca at all, just tell her that you were there doing something for the Nightly outfits.”

  I am frozen, as if he’s just suggested that we should shred the toiles and use their fabric remains as confetti. He mirrors my shocked expression, and then starts laughing. “Ari, you have to live. It can’t just all be work. And really, this is work since you’re designing their outfits. You need to have creative experiences in order to remain creative. Go. Enjoy yourself. You deserve it after the last two days. We will be fine here.”

  “But what about Fashion Week? And the outfits?”

  Ethan has a solution for everything, waving his hand as if work were inconsequential, some tiny detail that will fall into place. “You’ll wake up early and put in a few hours. Knowing you, you’ll stay up late tonight. Just don’t work over the weekend, okay? I need to see you, too.”

  I’m smiling to myself when I duck into our bedroom to work, his bad influence rubbing off on me as I text back Noah to tell him that I’d love to see the show.

  ETHAN DISAPPEARS for a few hours the next morning, surfacing only when I’m seconds away from texting Noah to tell him that I won’t be able to come after all. “Sorry,” he says as I snatch my purse off the table. “I forgot I had to help Gael with this crazy shoot in Central Park for this guy’s album cover.”

  “No p
roblem,” I lie hurriedly, racing out the door and hailing a cab so I can make the filming in time. I’ve taken more taxis since I started dating Ethan than I did in all my years in New York combined. I hate running late.

  When I get to the studio, Noah ducks outside to greet me so I don’t have to wait in line. As is, the line stretches way down the block, people leaning against the building or sitting on the sidewalk, reading stuff off their phones or chatting in small groups. They watch us curiously. Noah is obviously someone semi-important since he has a staff security card swinging from his neck. Which makes me feel important, too.

  The walkie-talkie clipped to Noah’s hip crackles to life, a woman’s voice asking a garbled question that mixes with the street noise. “Come on,” he says, leading me up to the security guard at the main door instead of the side door I entered last time. “Do you have that paper ticket I emailed you?”

  I dig it out of my back pocket and present it to the guard, trying to look nonchalant even though I’m skipping around on the inside as I glance at the letters “VIP ticket” across the top. The guard is obviously used to seeing complete nobodies walk in with the VIP ticket—or else he simply doesn’t care about celebrities—because he barely pays attention to me as Noah leads me toward the security machine.

  “So I only have about three minutes before I have to get back to getting ready for the show. I thought I could drop you off in the studio, and then I’ll pick you up at the very end. Sound good? Just stay in your seat for a moment when the set starts emptying out.”

  There’s a frenetic energy wafting off his skin, a familiar pulse that follows us during Fashion Week, though I assume he lives like this Monday through Thursday before every taping. We cross through the large kitchen area Julie Courtland showed me on my first visit. I can see the various green rooms down the hall, but he turns right and takes me the back way onto the set, the same entrance guests use that spills out right near the fake news table where David Lear delivers his monologue and interviews. A few security guards look up when I enter and shuffle to attention, but slouch again once it’s clear that I’m no one important.

  “Hey, Grayson,” Noah calls out to one of the guards, pointing me toward the very first chair in the VIP row. “I’m going to leave Arianna in here while I get things ready. She’s cool. She’s making our outfits for the Emmys.”

  “She’s not going to rush the set?” Grayson jokes. “Take a chunk of the desk?”

  “No room in my purse,” I deadpan, taking a seat.

  “You’re alright,” Grayson states, as if his opinion is the deciding factor in my fate. Noah rushes out of the room, reminding me to stay seated when the show is over.

  The set is cold, hyper-air-conditioned, and I shiver despite the sweater Noah counseled me to bring in his email. Maybe they need it this cold to keep everyone awake and clapping for warmth. I try to read a book, but I am so dumbfounded to be on the set I see on my television each night that I read the same paragraph three times before I give up.

  The doors open abruptly and a small group of other VIPs start walking in and filling in the seats around me. All the other very important people are not very important at all. There are no movie stars or models or politicians. Just other people with connections to the cast and crew who either live in the area or are in town on a trip and have swung by the studio as if it’s take-your-cousin-sort-of-to-work day. Some of them chat with one another, casually trying to figure out how they also scored VIP tickets. People keep glancing my way, wondering who I am that I got the first seat, a yard or two behind the guest chair on the stage.

  The rest of the studio fills with the regular ticket holders, until every single chair is accounted for, the room buzzing like an enormous, multiheaded insect. We don’t have to wait long because a comedian comes through the passageway I used and starts to warm up the crowd. He certainly isn’t as funny as David Lear, but he tells us that we’re going to practice laughing because the microphones above our heads need us to over-laugh in order to catch the sound. I glance over at Noah, who blusters into the room and slides into a vacant chair at the producer’s table in the break between two risers of seats. He’s focused on the script, marking up pages with a pencil and showing them to the man seated next to him who either nods or shakes his head in response. I suddenly want to be the best laugher, a professional-grade laugher, a noticeable laugher who enhances the show. I force myself to chuckle at the comedian, loudly, looking over at Noah who flicks his eyes toward me and smiles at what he perceives to be my extreme enjoyment.

  The comedian gives us a few more protocol notes, telling us to stand when David Lear enters, and then the background music changes, and suddenly, the host is walking onto the set and I touch my chest, as if reminding my heart to keep beating because I am acutely aware of his nearness. It feels like that moment on Monday when he turned around in the room. David walks around the perimeter of the room, pausing to shake various people’s hands or talk to them for a moment while the music picks up. What the hell is wrong with me? I’m never like this with celebrities, and yet whenever I look over at David Lear I feel my entire body thudding as if my heart has overtaken every cell in my body.

  Somehow I know, even while he’s still a set of risers away, that I’m going to be one of the lucky ones who connects with the host. And sure enough, when David passes Noah’s table, Noah sets down his pencil as if it is time to politely pay attention, and moments later, David Lear is standing in front of me, offering out his hand and saying, “Hey, Arianna, great work on the outfits. They look wonderful. Everyone is excited.”

  Before I can say anything, he walks in front of his set and starts addressing the audience, taking questions while the camera crew sets up all the shots. I’m so flustered that I can barely follow what he’s saying. David Lear loves the outfits. David Lear loves my designs.

  He thanks us for being such a great audience, and then ducks behind the desk to get started. I am distracted, overwhelmed by the noise and the lights and Carter Anderson walking out to do a bit on calorie labeling in fast-food restaurants and finally the guest, Neil Patrick Harris. I can only see Neil’s back, and I don’t know where to look: whether to stare at the darting on the back of his shirt or look directly into David Lear’s eyes over Neil’s shoulder. I opt for watching David Lear, and I can see David’s eyes flicker to my face even though he keeps his concentration on the interview. I wonder if he’ll hire me personally after I’m done with the Emmy outfits to design something for his wife. Or himself. David, David, who are you wearing? It’s an original Arianna Quinn.

  And then, it’s over, and I feel a bit of a letdown; deflating. I stay in my seat while David Lear and Neil Patrick Harris are led through the back of the set and the audience vacates out the door on the other side of the theater. I am shivering, as if the air-conditioning has inflamed my nervous system, and I have a sudden longing to be in bed with Ethan and my sketchpad.

  Noah slips away from the producer’s table and walks against the crowd to get to me. “You look like an icicle. A lemon popsicle. An Arisicle.”

  “I’m freezing,” I tell him.

  “I told you that the studio is cold. I have a space heater in my office for people who crystalize during a taping. Here, come up with me.”

  He takes me through the back passage, and I glance longingly down the hall at the green room. “How long does the guest stay?”

  “Neil? He’s already gone,” Noah says, taking the stairs two at a time. I jog to keep up. “Do you want to meet him?”

  “Do you know him?”

  “Sort of. We have friends in common. He normally lives in Los Angeles, but he keeps a place in the city and he has come to Fred before.”

  “Um . . . who is Fred?” I ask, following him into his office, where he rolls out an actual space heater and turns it on. I hold my hands up to it, trying to warm up, which is ridiculous since it’s late J
uly. “Has anyone ever thought to turn down the air-conditioning in there?”

  “Answering your second question first, yes, we fight about it all the time. But this is the optimal temperature to keep everyone awake and moving. The last thing the audience wants to see is a sweaty David Lear. Or a sluggish one. You’d actually be shocked at how much we’re fighting the lights and cameras from making the room feel like the equator.”

  “Your energy bills must be incredible,” I comment.

  “I have no clue. And it’s what is Fred. Fred is our non-poker poker night. We used to have a monthly poker game, just a bunch of writers and actors and . . . I don’t know. Interesting New Yorkers. At some point, we all got bored with poker and no one wanted to play. But we still wanted to hang out once a month because it was a great way to collect gossip and jobs. So we redubbed the night Fred, and now it’s just an excuse to get together, drink beer, debate reality television. I got this job because of Fred.”

  “Really? How?”

  “I was writing for another television show. And someone brought Carter Anderson, so we started talking. I came by the studio to sort of meet everyone. And then I was poached.”

  “Poached?”

  “Courted away from one writing job and deposited here.”

  “It must be nice to be in demand,” I comment.

  “It’s nice to work. I made sure to pass along my old job. It’s like the food cycle of writers. The bigger fish gets a new job and leaves the smaller fish his old coral haunts.”

  “So you’re the big fish,” I say, pulling my fingers back a few centimeters so they don’t accidentally get burned.

  He blushes. His skin actually reddens, from his cheeks down to his neck, the trail of pink skin disappearing under his grey cashmere sweater. He doesn’t look at me, but he shrugs. “Anyway, maybe you’ll come to our next Fred.”

  “When is it?” I ask, knowing full well that whenever it is, wherever it is, I’ll be there if I’m invited. I’m not going to turn down an opportunity to rub elbows with people like Neil Patrick Harris and Carter Anderson. Making friends with a few celebrities that will wear your clothes and become a walking advertisement for your brand is priceless for any designer, but especially for someone just starting out.