Apart at the Seams

by Melissa Ford

  NIGEL ORDERS me a car service to take over the seven completed toiles on Thursday, possibly because I can barely see straight, having gotten under three hours of sleep each night this week or because he wants to protect his investment. The toiles, that is, not me. Either way, I’m totally happy to sink back in a semi-clean Lincoln Town Car and close my eyes while the driver lurches across Manhattan.

  The writers will try on their custom-made clothes; I’ll make any adjustments; and then Dave, Ophelia, and I will start on the actual pieces on Monday. I set aside Friday and the weekend to get caught up on Fashion Week work. Forget Tabitha’s advice to slow down. By not sleeping all week, I finally feel on top of things.

  I could never fall asleep in a New York taxi—the smell alone turns my stomach, though it’s the Bluetooth cell phone conversation floating back from the driver’s seat that removes any ounce of relaxation—but this town car is different. The car quietly hums, lulling me to sleep until I hear the driver clear his throat to break the silence. We’ve pulled up outside the studio, and he’s taken pity on me since when my eyes fly open, I see Julie Courtland’s fist inches away from the closed window, about to rap and wake me up. My body screams at me to let it rest, but I haul myself up, discreetly wiping a dot of drool from the corner of my mouth. I hand Julie the suits while I take the dresses upstairs.

  “Out late partying?” Julie asks.

  I stare at the back of her head, wondering what world she lives in where her first guess is a wild party instead of a late night at work. “Sure, something like that.”

  I meet with all of the writers, except for Noah, in their conference room. Someone has cleared a space and set up a small platform from the costume shop as well as a full-length mirror. One of the women swoons that she’s happy enough to wear the toile and doesn’t need the final dress, and one of the men remarks that he’s definitely going to get laid at an after party. “This outfit plus holding an Emmy statue equals definite hookup,” he informs me, turning slowly so I can examine how the hem of his pant leg rests over his shoes.

  “Jeremy, aren’t you bringing your mother that night?” Bee asks, admiring her buttery yellow gown—cut to her size—in the mirror.

  I’m too tired to fully enjoy experiencing people wearing my designs for the very first time, unless I count design school, and I don’t. I feel guilty wishing everyone would hurry up so I can go home and crash, but I promise myself that I’ll take the actual Emmy night to fully soak in the moment.

  Finally everyone takes off their outfit and returns to their regular clothes while Julie neatly hangs them back in their garment bags. “One left,” she comments, “and that’s the head writer, Noah.”

  Noah is waiting for a phone call in his office, so he asks if we can meet in his space since the phone doesn’t stretch down the hall. “I should have given the guy my cell,” he says apologetically while Julie sets up the mirror and platform, and then disappears back to the conference room to guard the other toiles with the ferocity of the security team at a boy-band concert. She actually sounds a little crazed when I hear her snap at one of the writers in the hallway that no, you can’t look at your dress one last time.

  “It’s no problem,” I yawn. “You’re my last one, and the car service isn’t picking me up until I signal him.”

  “You must be exhausted,” he says sympathetically. “Er . . . do I just strip down?”

  He already has his sweater off and half of his shirt unbuttoned before I realize what he said. I bolt upward, suddenly awake. “Oh, I’ll go out. Just let me know when you’re done.”

  I go into the hallway, firmly closing the door behind me, and stare at a framed map depicting the best exits out of the building in the event of a fire. I can hear Noah shuffling around, dropping his jeans onto the floor and hopping a few times as he pulls up the black dress pants. I try to push the image of Noah half-naked out of my head.

  “Ready!” he calls out and I reenter the room. He’s standing on the platform in the outfit and Batman-themed socks, and I start laughing, pointing at his feet.

  “I’m laughing with you, not at you. How am I supposed to see how the hem rests if you’re not wearing the shoes you’re planning to wear that night?”

  “Crap,” Noah says, looking down at his socks. “I even wrote that note to the others to remind them to bring their shoes today. Hold on, I’m going to go borrow a pair.”

  I look around the room, still laughing to myself as he goes to track down a pair of shoes. The bottom shelf of his bookcase is covered with stacks of old scripts. Tucked in between a dictionary and thesaurus is an open box of Triscuits. There’s memorabilia, clearly from past guests, such as a guitar signed by all the members of Green Day or an orange whisk signed by Mario Batali. But I lean in to examine the framed photographs; not the ones where he’s standing with various celebrities or smearing cake on a headlocked Carter Anderson’s face, but a winter scene of a petite brunette woman ice skating with a sweater-clad Noah in Bryant Park.

  “David lent me his,” Noah says, walking into the room. I straighten up quickly and move to my sewing kit feeling as if I’ve been caught going through his drawers.

  “You’re wearing David Lear’s shoes?” I comment.

  “They’re big. But I can fill them.”

  I roll my eyes and kneel down on the floor, tugging on the ends of his pants. The clothes magically fill out his skinny frame, making him look slightly sturdier than he appears in his usual thin sweaters and jeans. I wonder if he’s still sick.

  “So how good do you feel, seeing all of your creations done?” he asks while I work.

  I yawn again, feeling as if the edges of the room are fuzzy. I just need to get through the next hour, and then I can go home and curl up on the sofa in my pajamas and watch bad television while I cuddle with Beckett. “Well, I’m not done. These are just the toiles, a practice outfit. You know . . . a mock-up. I still have to make them again using the actual fabric and do all the tiny touches like the beadwork.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “Too long,” I comment. “I mean, don’t worry. I’ll get it done before the Emmys.”

  “I wasn’t worried,” Noah smiles. “You seem like the type who comes through—who cares about the finished product so much that she’d even work on the weekend in a coffeehouse.”

  “That’s me,” I say, slipping a needle carefully near the waistband. “Dependable Arianna.”

  “So do you think you’ll have time to come to Fred?”

  I had been hoping that he’d bring it up again since it seemed gauche to invite myself. I’ve been thinking of nothing else. I don’t have enough time to design something and make it from scratch, but there are plenty of pieces that I’ve had my hand in hanging in my closet, discarded toiles that I’ve finished and embellished like the pants I wore the day I met Noah in the dry cleaners. I’ll wear something fantastic, get a stack of quick business cards made, and maybe secure a celebrity outfit for a high-profile event that I’ll make gratis to get my name out there. I pretend to be thinking. “What was Fred again?”

  “Our non-poker poker night.”

  “Right . . . Sure, I’d love to come. Can I bring a friend?”

  I think about Rachel for a moment, my go-to for all invites that I score and vice versa, but I pause for a moment, realizing it would be a huge opportunity for Tabitha. I mean, sure Rachel would love to meet celebrities for the gossip factor, but Tabitha would owe me if I brought her to this. Maybe she’d even help me out with a bit of my work to ensure that we have enough time to head out from the loft so close to Fashion Week.

  “Absolutely. Bring a friend.”

  I finish with Noah, and he kicks off David Lear’s Edward Green black shoes and sinks down on the slightly seedy sofa that looks as if it was salvaged from someone’s 1970s basement. I slowly start packing up my things,
snapping shut my straight pins box and dropping it at the bottom of my kit. I’ll have to bring all the toiles back to Davis & Howe and then walk home. Maybe I’ll ask the car service if I could tip him extra to snag a ride back to my apartment, too.

  “You know, I may have forgotten shoes, but I wore my favorite socks today for you,” Noah comments.

  “They’re lovely,” I promise him. “Am I supposed to be impressed by a comic book sock collection?”

  “Please, not just comic book characters. I have violet argyles and brown stripes and bright red wool ones.”

  “So is it some sort of fetish?”

  “No, it’s not some sort of fetish. Get your mind out of the gutter, Quinn. I don’t know, people just started buying them for me when I got sick. I guess sets of pajamas were too expensive, and they wanted to save the flowers for the funeral.”

  “So . . . are you being purposefully or accidentally vague?” I ask, perhaps a little rudely in my exhaustion. There’s something about the informality of the end of a long workday—the end of a long workweek—and a man lounging about in Batman socks that makes me feel like the question is okay in this moment. I’m suddenly curious, trying to imagine what was wrong. “Because this is the second time you’ve brought up being sick and the second time you haven’t actually said what’s wrong.”

  “It is?” Noah asks in surprise.

  “It is. You said it when we got pizza, and you said it again now.”

  “Did I?”

  “You’re sort of doing it again. Not saying what’s wrong.”

  “It’s a little embarrassing. What was wrong was a little embarrassing.”

  What could possibly be embarrassing? I zipped closed my bag, racking my brain.

  “I’ll trade you,” Noah offers. “Tell me something interesting.”

  “I don’t have any interesting stories,” I admit. “I grew up in Minnetonka, Minnesota. Interesting things don’t happen there.”

  “Fine, tell me your most embarrassing story,” he says.

  I laugh nervously, a single story rising up to the top of my brain like a bubble of carbonation. I have only one embarrassing story, and it’s beyond inappropriate. “I don’t have one.”

  “Everyone has one. Growing up in Minnesota? I bet yours is fantastic. Mishap with a farm boy?”

  “Farm boy? Where the hell do you think I lived? I grew up in suburbia. It looked like New Jersey with more lakes.”

  “Come on, you tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine.”

  I can tell that Noah is finding my embarrassment amusing. I can’t think of anything else that’s embarrassing. Having my sketches rejected by Francesca? Slipping on some ice my first year in New York and landing in a slushy puddle? My mind keeps returning to my worst story, and Noah starts laughing. “You’re cringing! Do you realize you’re cringing just thinking about it? It has to be good. Come on, tell me and then I’ll walk you down so you don’t have to carry all the outfits alone.”

  “Fine, this is really, really inappropriate,” I tell him. “It’s about . . . oral sex.”

  Noah’s eyes get rounder, and he leans forward so I can lower my voice. His door is slightly ajar, and I can see people milling about in the hallway outside, but whispering feels too intimate. I compromise by leaning forward so he can hear me, but placing my sewing bag between us like a fabric shield.

  “Uh . . . I used my boyfriend’s toothbrush to clean my teeth right after having oral sex for the first time. And a few days later, I came down with this terrible sore throat. I could barely swallow. I was almost eighteen, but I didn’t have a regular general practitioner, so my mother took me to the pediatrician that I had seen since birth.”

  Poor Dr. Bernard. I still cringe when I think of his slow, gentle movements through that appointment, like an old tortoise. The way he slung his stethoscope over his shoulder with the end of his tie. His black shoes paired with his chocolate-brown pants. Back when I was little, I never cried during vaccinations because I didn’t want to disappoint him.

  “I thought I had a disease like gonorrhea or syphilis from the blow job. Like in my throat. Or, really, I thought I was being punished by Jesus for having oral sex. I didn’t know how to tell my doctor, so I waited through the whole appointment, as he swabbed my throat for strep and felt my lymph nodes. And then, right as he was getting ready to leave the room, I blurted out that I was scared that I had a venereal disease because I gave my boyfriend a blow job. But I sort of shouted it, and everyone in the hall heard me, which I discovered a few minutes later when I stepped out of the room to collect my post-appointment lollipop and sticker.”

  “I will never forget the look on this elderly doctor’s face, this man who had held me when I was a baby and cleaned off my umbilical stump. He had to tell me that I had probably picked up strep throat from using the boy’s toothbrush to clean my teeth after oral sex. So that’s it. My most embarrassing moment.”

  I feel awkward, not for the story itself, though it does make me uncomfortable to think about despite it being almost two decades old, but because I shared something like that with a man other than my boyfriend. Even though it’s just a story, it feels as if I’ve crossed a line, and I don’t know what made me say it. I can blame Noah’s cajoling or my exhaustion, but the fact is that it was my own decision. I wish I could rewind the clock; I would tell him the stupid slipping-on-ice story. He wouldn’t know that it wasn’t the original anecdote that popped into my mind. I’m so self-conscious and angry with myself that I almost miss his answer.

  “Stage two, nonseminomatous germ cell testicular cancer. Beginning, middle, and end of story.”

  He leans back, away from my sewing bag that I’ve scrunched toward me as if building a wall, and I feel like I’m falling. Scattered.

  Chapter Ten

  I SLIP OUT OF my ballet flats and put on a pair of killer heels when Tabitha and I are a block away from Noah’s apartment. I balance myself by pressing my left hand against the side of a building, pointing my toes to slip them into the black pumps with a ribbon strap around the ankle. I discreetly bend over in my little black dress, trying to tie the straps without exposing my bottom to half of Manhattan. Tabitha stands guard behind me, keeping me modest.

  Normally I reserve this dress for when we’re going to the Film Forum in the Village, but tonight, I am channeling Audrey in what Tabitha calls my Holiday Golightly outfit: a black sheath dress that skims my body (which I finished off from one of Francesca’s toiles), black ballet heels, and a triple strand of pearls connected with a rhinestone brooch. Before we left the loft, Tabitha tied my blond hair into an Audrey-worthy French twist with a top bun, securing it with dozens of tiny gold bobby pins but forgoing the tiara because it felt like overkill. If anyone asks about the outfit, I’ll admit Francesca’s hand in it, but point out all the ways I changed her original design to make the dress unforgettable. Tabitha has settled, in solidarity, on a look that is like Grace Kelly à la Rear Window, a black off-the-shoulder neckline bodice with capped sleeves cinched with a matching black belt before her dress continues into a white cloud of tulle and chiffon. The only thing missing is the black branch pattern near the waist since Tabitha trimmed the dress instead with elegant, asymmetrical loops that reflect the asymmetrical straps of her black heels. She left the gloves and wrap at home, and I nixed the cigarette holder.

  This morning I considered not going at all, but Ethan told me that I would be crazy to skip the party. I had sort of expected him to encourage me to come home considering how little we’ve seen each other the last few weeks. We’re like ships passing in the night, mostly focused on getting Beckett’s needs met. But when I commented over breakfast that I was too tired to go out tonight, he told me that I should take advantage of the cool things that come about from all this work. I can’t see Ethan hoping that I’ll pick up another job here, so the only possibility is that
he thinks I’m going to make friends with celebrities who will bring us to all sorts of fabulous events. I rolled my eyes but didn’t inform him that becoming friends with someone like Neil Patrick Harris was even less likely than Nigel Howe handing over the fall line to me this winter.

  Of course, Ethan doesn’t know about the inappropriate conversation a few weeks ago in Noah’s office. I didn’t know how to bring it up: hey, hon, I told this virtual stranger about that time I got strep while having oral sex. Not the sort of words that go well with cuddling in bed, so I left the story unspoken, tucking it toward the back of my brain with the hope that I’d forget about it altogether. I haven’t spoken to Noah since that conversation in his office. Chances are that Noah has completely forgotten about it, and I’m worrying about it for nothing.

  We buzz Noah’s apartment, and the front door clicks open, admitting us into the empty vestibule, with worn, carpeted stairs the only exit beyond the front door. We climb up to his apartment on the second floor, Tabitha’s hand on my waist to steady herself, and we pause to look at each other before knocking. It feels like old times, before I was dating Ethan, when we used to go out in the city; two single women.

  Noah opens the door, looking polished in dark jeans and a grey t-shirt advertising a bar in faded darker grey writing. He leads us inside, and my eyes do a quick scan of the living room; who will be the next person to don an original Arianna Quinn design?

  There are about thirty people crammed into the small space, leaning on the back edge of the sofa as well as sitting on the cushions, or filling up the narrow threshold between the kitchen and empty dining area. The lights are dim, and I can barely make out faces, though I immediately see Joseph Gordon-Levitt leaning on the arm of a chair occupied by Chloë Sevigny.