Queen of Babble (24 page)

“Oh,” I say, wrapping both arms around my bucket, then realizing, belatedly, that I must look very prim.

“No thank you.”

He eyes me incredulously. “What? You don’t smoke weed?”

“Oh no,” I say, “I can’t afford to lose any more brain cells. I didn’t have that many to start with.”

He chuckles some more. “Good one,” he says. “So what’s a nice girl like you doing in a dump like this?”

I assume he’s joking, since Château Mirac is hardly a dump.

“Oh,” I say, “I’m just visiting with my friends.”

“That tall dude,” Blaine says, “and the dyke?”

I take umbrage at this. “Shari isn’t a lesbian! Not that there’s anything wrong with being a lesbian. But Shari isn’t one.”

He looks surprised. “She isn’t? Whoa. Coulda fooled me. Sorry.”

“She and Chaz have been dating for two years!” I’m still shocked.

“Okay, okay. Jeez, no need to jump all over me. I said I was sorry. She just seems kinda dykey to me.”

“She hardly said two words to you!”

“Right.”

“What, any woman who doesn’t fall all over you is a lesbian?”

“Relax,” Blaine says, “would you? God, you’re worse than my sister, for Christ’s sake.”

“Well, I can see why your sister might be upset with you,” I say, “if you go around accusing her friends of being lesbians when they’re not. Again, not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

“Jesus,” Blaine says, “chill out. What, are you a lesbian or something?”

“No,” I say, feeling my cheeks start to heat up, “I’m not a lesbian. Not that—”

“—there’s anything wrong with it. I know, I know. Sorry. It’s just, you know, you’re here by yourself, and you got so upset when I asked about your friend…”

“For your information,” I say, “I’m here by myself because I just got out of a very bad relationship with a British guy. Yesterday. That’s why I’m here, as a matter of fact.”

“Yeah? What’d he do? Cheat on you?”

“Worse. He cheated on the British government. Welfare fraud.”

“Oh.” Blaine looks impressed. “Hey, that’s bad. My last girlfriend turned out to be a disappointment as well. Onlyshe dumpedme .”

“Really? What for? Did you accuse her of being a lesbian, too?”

He smiles. “Funny. No.She accusedme of being a sellout when my band signed with Atlantic Records.

Dating a musician with a trust fund is one thing. Dating a musician with an actual recording contract turns out to be something else completely.”

“Oh,” I say. And he looks so sad that for a moment I really do feel sorry for him. “Well, I’m sure you’ll meet someone else. There must be lots of girls out there who’d enjoy dating someone with a recording contractand a trust fund.”

“I don’t know,” Blaine says, looking depressed. “If so, I haven’t met any.”

“Well,” I say, “give it time. You don’t want to rush into anything right away. You need to give yourself a chance to heal emotionally.” This sounds like such good advice. I should give serious consideration to taking it myself.

“Yeah,” Blaine says, sucking on his joint, “I hear ya. That’s what I told my sister about Craig. But did she listen? No.”

“Oh? Craig is your sister’s fiancé? Is he a rebound?”

“Oh, hell, yeah. I mean, he’s better than the last guy she almost married—least this one’s not part of Houston ‘society’”—he makes quotes around the word with the fingers that aren’t holding the joint—“but talk about boring. I mean, the guy practically makes Bill Gates look like freaking Jam Master Jay, if you get my drift.”

“Right,” I say.

“Still,” Blaine says with a shrug. “He makes her happy. Or as happy as any guy can. Still, Mom’d much rather have her marrying some guy like ol’ Jean-Luc.”

I am disgusted with myself for the way my heart turns over even at the mention of Luke’s name.

“Oh really?” I say in an attempt to appear only casually interested in the topic.

“Shit,” Blaine says, “are you serious? If Mom could get Vicks to hook up with some guy who went to one of those fruity boarding schools, like Luke did, and has a castle in France, she’d frigging cream herself. Instead,” he says with a sigh, “she got stuck with Craig.” He holds out a hand and examines the fingers that say F-U-C-K. “And me.”

“Oh yes,” I say, “I noticed your tattoos at dinner. That must have…hurt.”

“Truthfully,” Blaine says, “I don’t remember if it did or not, I was so wasted. Soon as I get back home, I’m having ’em lasered off. I mean, it was funny for a while, but I’m makin’ serious business deals now and shit. It’s embarrassing to walk into those corporate meetings with ‘Fuck You!’ tattooed on your hands, you know? We just sold one of our songs to Lexus, for a commercial. Six figures, dawg. It’s unbelievable.”

“Wow,” I say. “I’ll be sure to look out for it. What’s the name of your band, anyway?”

He blows a blue plume of marijuana smoke toward the ceiling.

“Satan’s Shadow,” he says reverently.

I cough. And not because of the smoke.

“Well,” I say, “that’s an…unusual name.”

“Vicky thinks it’s dumb,” Blaine says. “But I notice she still wants us to play her gig.”

“Well,” I say, “weddings are a big deal to girls. You should probably go apologize to your sister, don’t you think? I mean, she’s really stressed. I’m sure she didn’t mean to take it out on you.”

“Yeah,” Blaine says, lumbering, with an effort, from his chair, “you’re probably right. Hey, you wouldn’t be interested, would you?”

I blink, confused. “Interested? In what?”

“You know,” Blaine says. “Me. I’d never cheat the government. I’ve got a CPA for that.”

“Oh.” I smile at him, startled but flattered. “Thank you very much for the offer. Ordinarily, of course, I’d jump at the chance. But like I said, I’m just coming out of a relationship and I probably shouldn’t rush into anything new too soon.”

“Yeah,” Blaine says with a sigh, “it’s all about the timing. Well, g’night.”

“Night,” I say. “And, um, good luck. With Satan’s Shadow and all.”

He waves and shuffles from the kitchen. And I hurry out as well, clutching my bucket.

The late 1800s saw the prominence of the “puffed sleeve” on women’s gowns for which Anne Shirley so longed in the classic children’s book seriesAnne of Green Gables . Dresses were longer than ever, requiring skirts to be lifted while crossing the street, thus revealing lace-trimmed petticoats available now not only to the rich, thanks to mass production.

Amelia Bloomer’s trousers, meanwhile, finally found eager supporters in young female enthusiasts of the newly invented bicycle, and no amount of chastising from their parents, priests, or the press could induce girls to give up their “bloomers,” or their bicycles.

History of Fashion

SENIOR THESIS BY ELIZABETH NICHOLS

18

His talk was like a spring, which runs

With rapid change from rocks to roses

—Winthrop Mackworth Praed (1802–1839), British poet Igot the rust stains out.

I know. I can barely believe it myself. I’m standing in the kitchen of Château Mirac early the next
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morning, having soaked the gown overnight in my room, then hurried downstairs—seemingly at the crack of dawn, but a glance at my cell phone tells me it’s only eight—to rinse it in the kitchen sink, which is much wider than the one in the bathroom across the hall from my room.

I swear that’s the only reason. It has nothing to do with my fearing Dominique might find me there and demand I hand the dress over to her now that it’s saved.

Really. Nothing to do with that.

Saved, but still not perfect. I have to mend the torn strap and the jaggedy parts along the hem, plus give the thing a supergood ironing when it finally dries.

But I did it. I got the rust stains out.

It’s a French miracle.

I’m gazing at the dress with rapturous self-satisfaction when I hear someone behind me say, “You did it!”

And I nearly have a heart attack, I’m so startled.

“GOD!” I cry, spinning around to find a smiling Luke in the doorway, looking excited. “What are you trying to do, kill me?”

“Sorry,” Luke says, “I didn’t mean to scare you. But…you did it! The stains are gone!”

My heart is hammering a mile a minute—but I have to admit it’s not just because he startled me. It’s also because he looks so gorgeous in the morning light. His freshly shaved face is still glowing a little pinkly from whatever he uses as aftershave (I suspect plain alcohol, since he doesn’t smell like anything in particular, except clean), and the ends of his dark hair are curling damply against the collar of his blue polo shirt. He’s got on those jeans again—the ones he was wearing the first time I met him, the Levi’s that fit his butt so perfectly, not too snug, but not too loose, either. He looks like something dropped from a helicopter—you know, the perfect guy, for a needy girl trapped on a desert island.

That girl being me, and the desert island being my life.

Except, of course, he isn’t mine.

A fact about which he is undoubtedly vastly relieved, I realize, when I see his gaze going from the gown I’m holding to the clothes I’m wearing—which happen to be my Sears jeans and Run Katie Run T-shirt.

Well, Mrs. Thibodaux had been pretty explicit about what we’d be doing all day—setting up tables and chairs in preparation for tomorrow’s wedding. I don’t want to get one of my nice dresses dirty.

Plus I couldn’t be bothered with my hair this morning, so it’s piled into a ponytail coming out of the top of my head. At least I have makeup on. Some, anyway. Enough to keep my eyes from looking piglike.

“Cream of tartar works, huh?” is all Luke says, though, as his gaze goes from me back to the dress.

Which is something of a relief. I get positively jumpy when those dark brown eyes turn in my direction.

“It sure does,” I say, giving the gown a satisfied flick. “Of course, it doesn’t always work this fast.

Sometimes you have to go through multiple soakings. I don’t think that gun could have been there that long. The grease and rust didn’t really set in that deeply. Now I just need to mend and iron it, and it’ll be as good as new. Whoever it belongs to is going to be stoked to get it back good as new.”

Luke grins. “I think tracing its ownership is going to be a tad difficult. We’ve had a lot of guests here over the past few centuries.”

“Well, this one probably stayed here sometime in the past few decades,” I say. “I’m thinking late sixties, early seventies. Though, I grant you, with Givenchy it’s hard to tell. His lines are so classic…he really isn’t influenced by the vagaries of popular trends.”

Luke’s grin broadens. “The vagaries of popular trends?”

I blush. “I thought that sounded good.”

“Oh, it did. You’ve got me convinced. So. Want to come with me to get the croissants?”

I stare at him. “Croissants?”

“Yeah. For breakfast. I’m going into town to the bakery now, to get them before everybody wakes up and comes downstairs, whining for breakfast. I know you haven’t seen Sarlat and I think you’ll like it.

Want to come with me?”

If he’d asked me if I wanted to go to Family Day at the local Gap, where all Gap employees give their friends and relatives thirty-five percent off all Gap products—which is basically my idea of hell on earth—I would have wanted to come with him. That’s how far gone I am about him.

Except, of course, for that one trifling detail.

“Um,” I say, “where’s Dominique?”

I feel like that’s a nice, neutral way to ask if his girlfriend is going along, too. Without coming right out and asking it that way. Because “Is your girlfriend coming?” might sound as if I don’t like her, or that I only want to go if I can get him alone, or something like that. Which isn’t true. At all.

Although if she is coming along, I might find something else I have to do instead. Just because having to sit and watch the two of them together isn’t really high on my list of fun things to do while on vacation in the south of France.

“She’s still sleeping,” Luke says. “Little too much champagne with Mom last night.”

“Oh,” I say, keeping my expression carefully neutral. “Well, just let me hang this to dry. And I’ll be right back.”

“I’ll be out in the car,” Luke says, indicating the back door to the kitchen, in front of which the butter-colored convertible is parked.

I run like the wind. I hang the dress from the peg (what servants used for their uniforms in the olden days?) on my wall, with the bucket underneath to catch the drips.

Then I grab my purse and tear back downstairs.

Luke is sitting behind the wheel. There is no one else in the car. Around us, the morning air smells as fresh as newly folded laundry, and the sun, already getting hot, feels delicious on my skin. It’s completely quiet except for birdsong and the huffing of Patapouf, the basset hound, who has come sniffing around the back kitchen door in hopes of getting some handouts.

“Ready?” Luke asks me with a smile.

And, despite all my best efforts, my heart bursts right out of my chest and flies around my head on little cherub wings. Just like in a cartoon.

“Yes,” I say to him in what I think sounds like a perfectly normal voice—considering the fact that my heart is twittering around and around my head—and hurry to slide into the front passenger seat.

I am so, so dead.

But so what? I’m on vacation! It’s okay to have a little crush. In fact, it’s better to have a crush on Luke, who is safely taken, than it would be to have one on, say, Blaine. Because I might actually end up hooking up with Blaine, who is available, and that would be very emotionally risky, considering my fragile state of rebound.

No, it’s fine that I have a crush on Luke. He’s safe. Because nothing will come of it. Nothing at all.

The ride down the same driveway it took us so long to climb up the night before last is hilariously bouncy. I have to hang on to keep from being thrown around the massive front seat. But Luke and Chaz really did do a good job cutting the tree branches back—none of them whip at us.

And then suddenly we’re bursting out of the trees onto the same road along the river that we’d traveled from the train station the other night…but that had been in the dark. Seeing the river up close for the first time in daylight, I can’t help gasping.