Wedding Season (27 page)

“So what happened with Little Miss Mitelman?” Henry says through the partition.

“Nothing. The usual. She kept slinking around. Sharpened her claws on me, flirted with Gabe until I thought I was going to be sick.”

“You still haven’t talked about it with him, then.”

“No.”

“And you’re not going to?”

“Not a chance.”

“You’re insane.” Henry sticks her head through the curtains of my cubicle. “Hey. You have lost weight. I’m taking you out for milkshakes when we’re done. I’m up to four a day.” Henry looks down admiringly at herself. “My ass is huge, but my tits are fantastic. What? Don’t look at me like that. When I get depressed, I eat.”

I step out of the dressing room. The assistant, Magdalena,
hands us each a dress made of pale muslin, loosely stitched and pinned together.

“Huh.” Henry holds hers at arms’ length. “This looks like something by that freako German designer Joan’s all into.”

“They’re dress patterns,” Magdalena tells her. “So we don’t waste expensive fabric. We’ll adjust for size and cut the final dresses off these.” She swishes away.

“So, since when are you depressed?” I step back into my cubicle and struggle into my dress.

“Oh, you know,” Henry says airily. “Since Delia decided she wasn’t sure if she wanted to go through with this wedding.”

“What?” I lurch around to her cubicle and part the curtains. “What are you talking about?”

Half in and half out of her dress, Henry looks down at me, grins maniacally, and bursts into tears.

“Out, out, out,” Veruka barks. “We have very little time before next client arrives.”

I open my mouth to retort, but Henry pushes past me and goes to stand before Veruka, sniffling. I follow her.

“Hank, when did this happen? What’s going on?” I raise my arms as Magdalena tugs at my dress’s bodice. Veruka shakes her head and clicks her tongue as she inspects the strained fabric over Henry’s hindquarters.

“Started about a month ago, I guess.” Henry heaves a sigh and wipes her nose on her bare arm. “Delia got a crush on this extreme dyke we met at a dinner party, who started filling her head with all kinds of crap about how marriage is an oppressive patriarchal fascist fuck tradition and she’s betraying lesbians worldwide by participating in it. It’s all so circa 1970 I can’t believe it. Ow! Watch the fucking pins.” She glares at Veruka.

“Stop this crazy waving around and you will not be hurt.” Veruka yanks at the fabric of Henry’s dress.

“Then Dee started getting really weird,” Henry continues, “got really moody, developed a total wandering eye. You saw her at Melody’s wedding, practically hemorrhaging hormones on Ora. And it was right after that when she told me she was having second thoughts about our wedding.”

“She wants to break up?” I feel ill.

“Nah, not break up.” Henry shrugs. “She just isn’t sure if she wants to do the wedding thing. I don’t know what’s going on with her. Can we actually not talk about this right now this exact second?” Her eyes fill with tears.

“Okay, girls, we are done.” Veruka stands back and examines us, lighting a fresh cigarette. “Please to not add any more weight, my dear. Easier to take in than to let out.”

“There’s a deeper lesson in that, I’m sure,” Henry says, stomping toward the dressing room, “but I’m too goddamn fat to know what it is.” She disappears behind the curtain. Veruka puts a hand on my shoulder, and her smoke wafts into my eyes.

“Do not worry too much about your pretty friend,” she says. “It will all work out. I know. Ah, and only look. I see you have become engaged, also. Very nice ring. Perhaps when you return for dress, we discuss your plan for wedding gown.”

“Sure. Thanks.” I walk back to my cubicle. As I take off the flimsy cotton dress, wary of the pins, I hear Henry rummaging around in her bag. Something comes flying over the partition and lands on my head.

“Present for you.” Henry’s voice is rough with tears. “I got it last time I went home, and I keep forgetting about it.” It’s a dark red T-shirt printed with black letters that read
My Best Friend Went to Hell and All I Got Was This Stupid T-Shirt.
I put it on, collect my things, and stand in front of her cubicle.

“Hank. Thank you. I’ll treasure it forever.”

“Just don’t let Gabe borrow it,” Henry tells me as we
wave to Veruka and make our way out. “Because you know he’ll never give it back.”

“Milkshake.” I hold the door to the street open.

“Tequila shots.” She puts an arm around me. “I’m buying.”

P
ANTHEON IS EMPTY
when we arrive. The maître d’ waves at us from across the room.

“Luke’s not on yet,” she calls, “but he’ll be here soon.”

“Thank god for that,” the bartender says as we sit down.

“Hi, there.” Henry leans her elbows on the bar. “Give me a shot of your highest-octane tequila. With a tequila back. And the same for the lady, please.”

“One shot for the lady.” I wave at the bartender. “Water back.”

Henry punches my arm. The bartender pours the shots, and places them in front of us. Henry raises a glass to me, tosses it back, and slams it down on the bar.

“Okay then,” she winces. “Where was I?”

“Your girlfriend was skirt-chasing and having second thoughts about the wedding.” I sip my tequila. “And you haven’t talked to me about this until now because…?”

“I don’t know.” Henry sighs. “Don’t be mad. For a while I thought I was just jealous and I was embarrassed, I guess, about getting a taste of my own medicine.”

“I know how you feel.” I have an unworthy moment of feeling pleased that Henry’s been humbled, and that I’m not the only one suffering stupid fits of demon possessiveness. It doesn’t last.

“That’s not it, though.” Henry toys with her second shot, dips her fingers into it, and licks them. “Delia can flirt her ass off with all the super-dykes and straight girls in the world, and I don’t give a shit, because I know she’s coming
home to me. But, see, I thought I didn’t really care that much about the wedding. It was just an excuse to have a big party and wear a pretty dress and get a lot of presents and have all my friends together in one place. But when Dee said maybe she didn’t want to do it I freaked out, and it took me a while to figure out why.”

“So. Why?” I wait as Henry kicks back the second shot of tequila.

“I still don’t know, exactly,” she says. “Our families, kind of. I mean, they’re supportive and all, but they don’t really get it. I wanted them to see we’re a couple the same way they’re couples. That we’re going to be together and live together and have kids and get old together just like them.”

“You wanted your families to see you’re just like everybody else.”

“Yeah, that’s it. But then I realized, I really wanted to prove to
myself
that we were just like everybody else. But we’re not.” Henry looks over at me. Tears are racing down her cheeks.
“I
want to be like everybody else. But I’m not. I could get married twenty times, and I still won’t be. The world is never going to get it, not in this century. I’m tired of them making us different.” She snorts wetly and lets out a choked sob.

“Oh, Henry.” I hand her a cocktail napkin.

“Married.” She sobs. “What a fucking farce. I can’t even get really truly married.”

“Hey, hey.” I lean and put my arms around her, and she buries her face in my neck. “Hen, you know, it’s just a ceremony. You and Dee will be together no matter what. You’re more married than lots of people are. The ceremony’s no big deal.”

“Oh, sure, easy for you to say.” Henry sniffs. “You’re straight. You can take marriage or leave it or get all la-dee-da philosophical about it. Doesn’t fucking matter.

People will still see you and Gabe as a real couple, and me and Delia as freaks of nature.”

“But
you
know you’re a real couple. Since when do you care about what anyone thinks of you? Why does it matter what anyone thinks about you or your marriage?”

“You tell me, friend.” Henry sits up and blows her nose loudly on a napkin. “If it’s just a ceremony and you don’t care what people think, why do you suppose you’ve made such a fuss about the evils of marriage for all these years?”

“Um.” I stare into my shot glass, sensing a trap. “Is that rhetorical?”

“Why haven’t you addressed this whole Ora thing with Gabriel?”

“Because. I, uh… what’s the connection?” I gape at her.

“Coin,” Henry says. “Two sides of same. Answer the question.”

“Because it’s not appropriate. I have no basis for suspecting him, really. And so what if he did flirt with her? Weren’t you holding forth recently about flirting as a harmless end in itself?”

“Fancy schmancy,” Henry says. “Now, what’s the real story?”

“That
is
the real story.” I glare at her. She glares back. I sigh. “I don’t know, Hank. Of course I want to ask. It’s driving me insane. But I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. And bringing it up with him seems like such a typical, stupid, jealous-woman thing to do. I don’t want to be such a
girl
about it. I don’t want to act like other people do.”

“My point. Exactly!” Henry slaps the bar.

“What?” I am now genuinely confused.

“Oh, Christ on a crutch.” Henry sighs, and pats my cheek. “I love you, but for such a smart girl, you can be really, deeply fucking dense. Forget it, okay? Never mind.”

“Hank. It’s going to be okay. Really. Delia’s just got pre-wedding jitters. I’ll talk to her if you want.”

“I know. Thanks. Thanks for the shoulder.”

“Yours to dampen any day.”

“Hello, ladies.” Luke ties on his long white apron and lopes to our end of the bar. “Good to see you. We missed you girls last month.”

“Everybody’s been honeymooning,” Henry tells him. “It’s just us tonight, and Joan and Erica. Maud went to visit Tyler’s family in Glasgow, and Miel and Max are still in France or some goddamn place.”

“Say,” Luke says, elaborately casual, “you hear anything from your friend Ora Mitelman?”

I sigh and put my head down on the bar.

“Luke?” Henry lifts her voice sweetly. “If you ever, ever use that name around us again, I will personally detach your testicles, plunge them down your throat, and basket-weave them through every last one of your ribs.”

“Sure,” Luke says. “You bet. I’ll take that as a no.”

T
HE FOLLOWING WEEK
, I arrive at the office late for our Monday business meeting. The staff is already assembled around the conference table, faces interred in their morning cups of coffee.

“Ah, Vern.” Charles looks up from the job book as I push open the front door. “Thank you for joining us. Children, please scootch around and make room for our laggard leader. Yes. Now. Where were we?”

I pour a cup of coffee and squeeze in between Pete and Tulley.

“We were discussing my sex column,” Damon says.

“Which the
Cosmo
client has been led to believe,” Myrna says, cutting her eyes at Damon, “is being written by an attractive woman in her early twenties with an array of mild sexual fetishes. Which quite clearly is not the case.”

“Dude, it’s only half-wrong,” Damon says. “Not even half. Anyway, they love it. What’s the problem?”

“What?” I choke on my coffee.
“You
submitted to the magazine? Do you know how much trouble this could cause?”

“Oh, come on, lighten up, guy.” Damon flips his hair at me. “It expands my range. It’s good for my creative juices.”

“Joy, it
is
a fashion magazine,” Charles says. “The silicone boobs are the least fake things in there.”

“Forget it, Damon. This has catastrophe written all over it. No way. Could someone pass the sugar? Please tell me they haven’t gone to press yet.”

“Calm down, princess.” Charles hands me the sugar bowl. “Tulley didn’t want to do it, but they wouldn’t take no for an answer, they just kept calling. So Damon wrote up a couple of sample columns for fun, and we sent them in with a fake bio. It was a joke.”

“Joke’s over.”

“It’s her week to be Bad Cop.” Charles pats Damon on the shoulder. Myrna looks pious. “Okay, quickly. Damon is off to Los Angeles for a couple of weeks to visit our movie people. While he’s out there he’ll meet with the Transgression Enterprise to review our strategy documents, and finalize the contract—the
six-figure
contract. Yes, yes, applause, please.” Charles bows as the staff clap and clinks mugs with spoons. “What else? The first round of the
Extreme Romance
series is now in production. They’ll evaluate sales and get back to us about it in six months. In the meantime, Joy and her friend Joan at
X Machina
have developed a fabulous proposal for a cross-branded line of erotica, which the Modern Love execs are reviewing, but we probably won’t hear anything about that until after Labor Day, and if it goes through we’ll be contracting most of the writing out to
X Machina
writers.”

“I’m going to miss working on those bloody things.” Tulley puts her head on Pete’s shoulder and sighs. “I suppose I’ll have to start dating again.”

“Don’t worry, my darlings. I have something very special in mind for you.” Charles waves his pen at the staff. “For the last month or two I’ve been meeting with folks from Talent Agency, which represents all kinds of artists. We’ve been discussing an initiative called the Medici Project, to broker and manage sponsorship of individual writers, musicians, and visual artists by major brands and corporations. A series
of relationships that fall somewhere between the historical artist-patron model and today’s sponsored athlete or spokesmodel paradigm. We’re assigning Pete and Tulley to work with the Talent Agency reps and creatives from their ad firm.” Charles gives me a guilty look.

“Why the long face?” I get up for more coffee. “I signed off on all of this. We deposited their check. Is there a problem?”

“Well, there’s good news and bad news.” Charles fidgets with the assignment book. “They’ve already secured three partnerships to launch the program. The good news is the agency picked Delia and Mercy Fuck to partner with Trashy Girl Cosmetics. They want to sponsor an international tour, even. The bad news… um. Okay, you know that big fashion guy Obie K.? No, of course you don’t. What am I thinking?” Charles shakes his head at me and sighs. “Anyway. He’s starting a ready-to-wear collection called Swank or Swish or Swoon or Sway or something like that. And they’ve signed on as Medici sponsor for Ora Mitelman.”