Queen of Babble in the Big City (14 page)

But not as much, I realize all at once, as Jill moves toward the security gate, and I spot the most hideous of all fashion faux pas—VPLs, or visible panty lines—below her waist. Oh God! VPLs! Someone must help her!

And, by God, that someone is going to be me. Which is more important anyway, my making rent or this poor, put-upon girl looking the best she possibly can on her wedding day? That’s a no-brainer. I’m just going to go up to her and offer my services. We’re not in the office now, I’m on my own time. And maybe she won’t even remember where she’s seen me before. No one ever remembers receptionists…

“Excuse me—”

Oh! Too late! She’s going through the security gate. Dammit! I’ve missed her.

Well, that’s okay. No, really, it’s fine. I’ll get her next time. If there
is
a next time…

There
has
to be a next time.

“So.” A lanky guy in gray cords that I’d noticed hanging around one of the magazine stands in the lobby is sidling up to me.

Great. This is all I need. To be hit on by yet another guy who thinks from my clothes that I’m some midwestern rube who is going to fall for his line about how he’s a photographer for a modeling agency, and do I want to go back to his studio with him so he can take some pictures of me? Because he wants to make me a star. Yawn.

“Sorry,” I say, turning around and heading toward the lobby doors. “Not interested.”

This, of course, is why New Yorkers have a reputation for rudeness. But it’s not our fault! It’s guys like this who make New Yorkers so suspicious of any stranger who tries to speak to them on the street!

“Wait.” Gray Cords is following me. Oh no! “Was that Jill Higgins you were waving to just then?”

I stop. I can’t help myself. The words “Jill Higgins” have this magic effect on me. That’s how much I want to get my hands on her wedding dress.

“Yes,” I say. Who
is
this guy? He certainly doesn’t look like a pervert…but then, how do I know what a pervert looks like?

“So, you’re a friend of hers?” Gray Cords wants to know.

“No,” I say. And suddenly—just like that—I know who he is. It’s amazing how hardened you can become after just a few months in Manhattan. “What paper are you with?”

“The
New York Journal,
” he says matter-of-factly, taking a PDA from one of his pockets and turning it on. “Do you know what she’s doing here? Jill, I mean? There are a lot of law firms in this building. Was she headed up to one of them? Would you happen to know which one…and why?”

I can feel my face turning bright red. Not because I’m embarrassed for having said something indiscreet. Because for once I haven’t. My face is getting red because I’m angry.

“You people—” I want to hit him. I really do. “You should be ashamed of yourself! Following that poor girl around, calling her ‘Blubber’—what gives you the right to judge her? Huh? What makes you think you’re so much better than she is?”

“Relax,” Gray Cords says, looking bored. “Why do you feel so sorry for her, anyway? She’s gonna be richer than Trump in a couple of months—”

“Get away from me!” I shout. “And get out of this building, before I notify security!”

“Okay, okay.” Gray Cords slinks away, muttering the four-letter word for the female sex organ that I apparently remind him of.

But I don’t care.

And just to ensure he stays away from Jill when she comes out, I march up to the security desk, point Gray Cords out to Mike and Raphael, and inform them that he just exposed himself to me. The last I see of Gray Cords, he is being chased out of the building by two men wielding billy clubs.

There are times when having a big mouth and no great reservations about telling outright lies really comes in handy.

The last thing anyone wants on her wedding day is to end up on prime-time television—you know, with one of those moments where the bride slips and a dominolike effect causes everyone she comes into contact with to fall as well, until the last person lands with his face in the wedding cake, like something on
America’s Funniest Home Videos
(although there is really nothing funny about wasted cake).

So be sure to break in your wedding shoes before the big day…not just to save yourself from blisters, but to keep yourself from slipping, as well. Women’s shoes have notoriously slick soles. You can avoid having your feet slide out from under you at an inopportune moment by applying no-skid stickers to the bottom of your shoes (on the outside, not the inside, silly).

Forget to buy stickers? Never fear! By carefully (so as not to cut yourself) running a knife blade across the sole of your shoe in a hatchmark pattern, you can also prevent slipping on just about any surface (save ice. But if you’re getting married on ice, you have a completely different set of problems).

L
IZZIE
N
ICHOLS
D
ESIGNS
™

Gossip is dying out because fewer and fewer people care to talk about anything besides themselves.

—Mason Cooley (1927–2002), American aphorist

B
y the time I finally get to Monsieur Henri’s shop later that afternoon, I’m no longer freaking out about having invited Tiffany and her boyfriend to dinner. It was the right thing to do. Thanksgiving is about family, and Tiffany is certainly part of mine.

Well, my work family, anyway. Sure, she can be annoying—she’s still only cleared one drawer in the reception desk for me, and she leaves sticky, half-gnawed Twizzlers
everywhere
. Plus, she’s repeatedly erased my wedding-gown site bookmarks on our shared computer.

But she’s been pretty nice to me, as well. I mean, she leaves all her fashion magazines behind for me to read (since I can’t exactly afford to buy my own), and almost always has some little beauty tip to give me—like that Vaseline works just as well for dry skin as expensive moisturizers, or that putting deodorant on your bikini line after shaving prevents ingrown hairs.

Which is more than I can say for Madame Henri. Not about the deodorant (not that I’ve ever gone up to her and taken a big whiff) but about being nice to me. Oh, sure, she tolerates me.

But only because I take on a significant portion of her husband’s workload, leaving him free to spend more time at home…a fact about which I’m not entirely sure he’s that happy.

When I walk through the door that afternoon, in fact, Monsieur Henri and his wife are having a violent argument—only in French, of course, so that Jennifer Harris and her mother, who are there for Jennifer’s final fitting, can’t understand what they’re saying.

“We’ve got to do it,” Madame Henri is saying viciously. “I don’t see how we’re going to manage otherwise. Maurice has sucked away every last bit of our business with those newspaper ads of his. And when he opens up that new shop of his down the street—well, I don’t need to tell you, that will be the nail in our coffin!”

“Let’s wait,” her husband says. “Things might pick up.”

Then, noticing me, he says in English, “Ah, Mademoiselle Elizabeth! Well, what do you think?”

As if he has to ask. I’m standing there staring at Jennifer Harris, who has come out of the dressing room in her gown, and looks…

Well, like an angel.

“I love it,” Jennifer says.

And anyone could see why. The gown—now with an open, Queen Anne–style neckline, and tight, over-the-wrist lace sleeves (with loops that go over the middle finger, to keep the lace in place)—looks fantastic.

But it’s Jennifer herself who’s the most beautiful of all. She’s glowing.

Of course, she’s glowing because I did a kick-ass job on her dress.

But that’s beside the point.

“Are you wearing the shoes you’re going to have on for the ceremony?” I ask, Monsieur and Madame Henri’s latest tiff forgotten as I hurry forward to fuss with her skirt. I’ve added a lace drape—to match the sleeves—at the waist, giving her more of a Renaissance-style look. Which, with her long neck and stick-straight hair, really works.

“Of course,” Jennifer says. “You told me to, remember?”

The hem is the perfect length—just sweeping the floor. She looks like a princess. No, like a fairy princess.

“Her sisters are going to kill me when they see her,” Mrs. Harris says—but not unpleasantly. “Because she looks so much better than any of them ever did.”

“Mom!” Jennifer knows she looks fantastic, so she can afford to be gracious. “You know that’s not true.”

But the fact that she can’t take her gaze off her own reflection illustrates that she knows it
is
true.

Pleased with the results of my labor—and Monsieur Henri’s, as well. He did, after all, provide the lace—I help Jennifer remove the gown and am packing it up for her while her mother pays the not insignificant bill (although it’s a lot less than if they’d bought a whole new dress, even if they’d gone to—shudder—Kleinfeld’s).

I’ve given Jennifer her garment bag with instructions on how to steam any creases out (by hanging the gown in the bathroom with a hot shower going). Whatever happens, I inform her, DO NOT IRON it. Jennifer is so high on how pretty she looks in her dress that she just says “Okay” in a daze, and runs out to where her mother has parked the car without another word.

Her mother, however, is more circumspect, stopping beside me after paying Monsieur Henri to squeeze my hand and say, while looking into my eyes, “Lizzie. Thank you.”

“Oh, no problem, Mrs. Harris.” I’m a little embarrassed. It’s weird to be thanked for doing something you love and would have done in any case, whether or not anyone was paying you (which, in this case, no one was).

But when Mrs. Harris takes her hand away from mine, I see that I’m wrong. Because she’s surreptitiously pressed a bill into my hand.

Reminded immediately of Grandma and her emergency sawbuck (which I still have in my handbag), I look down and am surprised
to see two zeroes after the number one on the bill Mrs. Harris has given me.

“Oh, I can’t accept this,” I start to say.

But Mrs. Harris has already swept out the door, with a promise that she’s going to tell all her friends with daughters of marriageable age about Monsieur Henri. “And I’ll make sure they stay away from that horrible Maurice!” is her parting cry.

The second she’s gone, Madame Henri starts in again on her husband.

“And as if things were not bad enough, those boys of yours stayed in the apartment again last night!”

“They’re your sons, too,” Monsieur Henri points out.

“No,” Madame Henri corrects him. “Not anymore. If all they are going to do is come into the city to go to the clubs, then dirty up my perfectly clean apartment—which they know they are not supposed to stay in—they are
your
boys. Because you will not discipline them.”

“What do you want me to do?” he demands. “I want them to have the advantages I did not have growing up!”

“They have had enough advantages,” says Madame Henri emphatically. “Now is the time to let them fend for themselves. Let them see what it is like in real life, to have to earn a paycheck.”

“You know it’s not that easy,” Monsieur Henri says.

Has he got that right. I look down at the hundred-dollar bill in my hand. It’s the first “found” money I’ve had since moving to this city. Everything here is so expensive! It seems like no sooner do I get a paycheck than it’s gone again, first to rent, then to Con Ed, then to food, then to cable (because I can’t live without the Style channel), and then, if there’s anything left over, to my cell phone bill.

“Well,” Madame Henri says with a sniff. “I am having the apartment locks changed. And I am keeping the key here in the shop. Hidden.”

And what about FICA taxes? FICA—Federal Insurance Contri
butions Act (or as Tiffany insists the letters really stand for, Fucking Idiots taking my Cash Assets)—seems to eat up more of my paychecks than anything.

“How much is
that
going to cost me?” Monsieur Henri wants to know.

“However much it is, it will be worth it,” Madame Henri declares. “If it means those pigs will be kept out of the place. You should see what I found in the bedroom wastebasket. A condom! Used!”

It’s impossible to pretend I don’t understand French when I hear this. I can’t help making a face…especially when Madame Henri brandishes a plastic trash bag that apparently holds the evidence of her claim.

“Ew!” I cry.

When both Henris look at me curiously, I quickly wrinkle my nose and say, “That garbage smells.” Because, truthfully, it totally does. “Do you want me to take it out for you?”

“Er, yes, thank you,” Madame Henri says after a moment’s hesitation. “It’s the garbage from our flat upstairs.”

I take the bag between two fingers. “You own the apartments upstairs?” This is news to me. I didn’t know they owned the entire brownstone the shop is in. And I thought they lived in New Jersey. They certainly seemed to complain enough about the commute.

Monsieur Henri nods. “Yes. The second floor we use for storage. The top floor is a little flat. I sleep there sometimes when I have to work late on a gown—” Which hasn’t happened, as far as I can tell, in a long, long time. Business hasn’t been good enough for any of us to pull any all-nighters. “Otherwise, it sits empty. Our sons use it from time to time—”

“Without permission!” Madame Henri cries in English. “I would like to rent it out, help with some of the costs of the business—and to keep my pigs of sons from thinking they can sleep there whenever they miss the train home after a night of debauchery. But this oaf here does not like the idea!”

“I don’t know,” Monsieur Henri says, not looking as if his sons’ alleged debauchery bothers him that much. “I don’t want the responsibility of being a landlord. And supposing we get one of those crazy tenants, eh? Like we read about in the papers? The ones with all the cats, who won’t move out? I don’t want that.”

Madame Henri responds by shaking a balled-up fist at her husband. I smile and slip outside to deposit the trash bag in the can by the stoop. With everyone in New York seemingly scrambling to find a better place to live, it’s weird to hear about a place sitting empty…well, except for when it’s used as an occasional flophouse by a couple of party boys.

“Mademoiselle Elizabeth,” Madame Henri says when I come back inside. “Do you know, perhaps, of someone looking to rent a small efficiency?”

“No,” I say. “But if I hear of someone, I’ll let you know.”

“It can’t be just anyone,” Monsieur Henri insists. “They must have references—”

“And be willing to pay two thousand dollars a month,” Madame Henri adds.

“Two thousand?” Monsieur Henri cries in French. “That is robbery, woman! Are you mad?”

“Two thousand dollars a month for a beautiful one-bedroom is perfectly reasonable!” she fires back, also in French. “Do you know how much they are charging for studio apartments? Twice that!”

“In buildings that have a swimming pool on the roof!” Monsieur Henri scoffs. “Which ours most decidedly does not have!”

And the two of them are off and running, arguing back and forth. But I’m not alarmed. I’ve spent enough time with them by now to know that this is how they are. I mean, they argue all day long…

…but I’ve seen Madame Henri fuss over her husband’s hair in an extremely loving way, while at the same time accusing him of purposely practicing unhealthy dietary habits in order to expire sooner and be rid of her.

And Monsieur Henri regularly ogles his wife’s legs, while simultaneously telling her how much her nagging drives him crazy.

Once I caught them kissing in the back room.

Couples. They’re all a little nuts, in their own way, I think.

I hope that when Luke and I are as old as Monsieur and Madame Henri, we can be just like them.

Minus the failing business and degenerate sons, I mean.