A Dangerous Dress (18 page)

Then again, everybody else seemed to survive out there, so I guessed I would too. I didn’t even let myself get hung up on whether my Indiana driver’s license would let me drive legally in Paris. Nobody else seems to worry about driving legally in Paris.

I checked my map, figured out the route, picked up the key to the Vespa, and studied the bright cobalt-blue helmet, which I decided not to wear. Who wants to make a grand entrance at Giorgio Armani with helmet hair? Then I thought again about the traffic. Maybe a little helmet hair wouldn’t be so bad. I took it with me.

Down in the courtyard I found a shiny, gorgeous, perfectly adorable cobalt-blue Vespa parked among several other scooters. It had to be Celestine’s. It was perfect, the gorgeous color matched the helmet, and it was the only Vespa there.

I had never driven any kind of motorcycle or scooter before, but driving the Vespa was easy. Even if I did miss the first turn I was supposed to make. Then almost turned the wrong way down a one-way street. Many Parisians will ride scooters the wrong way down one-way streets, but I am not brave enough to do that. At least not intentionally.

I finally got headed the right way, and turned onto a big street called Rue de Rivoli, which I got to stay on for three kilometers, which is about two miles. Now all I had to do was sort of curve around the Place de la Concorde and turn right onto the Champs-Elysées.

The Place de la Concorde has beautiful fountains, green and bright gold, and in the middle is an Egyptian obelisk called Cleopatra’s Needle, which looks like the Washington Monument, only covered with hieroglyphics. I learned those things from picture postcards. Although I drove through the Place de la Concorde, I did not get a very good look at it. To be precise, I drove around it. And around and around. Like in
National Lampoon’s European Vacation,
where Chevy Chase gets stuck driving around a traffic circle. It was funny in the movie.

Ha ha.

I made the mistake of approaching the Place de la Concorde in the left lane, which becomes the inside lane of a huge traffic circle. Actually more like a traffic oval. You will recall that I am from Indiana, the home of the Indianapolis 500, which some people call “eight hundred left turns.” That was what I felt like, going around and around the Place de la Concorde, stuck in the inside lane.

There are no lane lines at the Indy 500, either.

Finally—
finally
—I scooted to the right lane without injuring myself or others. I turned onto the wide Boulevard des Champs-Elysées and went straight for a while. When I had to turn left onto Avenue George V, I couldn’t bring myself to cut across all those lanes. I wimped out, waited for the pedestrian green light, then waddled the Vespa across the crosswalk and turned onto George V. Finally, ahead of me, I saw the Armani store. All I had to do was park.

The rules about parking in Paris, if there are any rules at all, are different from anyplace else I’ve ever been. People park cars with two of the wheels on the sidewalk, or even all four on the sidewalk. They just ride up over the curb and park scooters and motorcycles right in the middle of busy sidewalks. So in theory, my choice of parking spaces was unlimited.

Parking on the sidewalk looked easy enough. I now suspect there is a trick to it. Like slowing down first, and using your foot to ease the scooter up over the curb. At the time, though, I didn’t give it much thought. When the front tire hit the curb, I bounced about two feet up in the air, then landed on the seat, hard. I looked up, and the Armani store window was getting awfully close in a hurry. So I braked kind of suddenly, and almost but not quite got thrown over the handlebars. I did stop. With at least an inch between my front tire and the store window.

I know the Vespa has a kickstand. But at that moment I was more focused on getting down and kissing the sidewalk. So I got off the Vespa without putting the kickstand down. Gravity being what it is, the Vespa fell on its side. For a second it looked to me like a cobalt-blue horse that was sick and keeled over, and I had the irrational thought that somebody would have to put it out of its misery. Then I remembered it was a Vespa, and not my Vespa, either. I picked it up, figured out how the kickstand worked, and parked it properly. By Paris standards.

When my knees had mostly stopped shaking, I went inside the store.

W
hen you walk into Armani on Avenue George V, there is a little branch of the store on your right, which displays men’s sweaters, shirts, ties, and accessories. On your left are the sales desk, men’s dressing rooms, and the bathroom. Most of the store stretches in front of you like a corridor. You walk past mannequins with fancy women’s clothes on your left, and racks of men’s suits, coats, and jackets on your right. There’s a comfy chair for customers, then a row of sweaters, shoes, bags and accessories down the middle. In the back is the promised land—women’s clothing: pants and blouses and jackets and suits and dresses and gowns and beaded gowns and oh my. In the very back are the ladies’ dressing rooms, the tailoring room, and the stockroom. Not that I took everything in the first time I walked into the store. I didn’t. I was distracted by the fact that as I was walking in, Lucy Liu was walking out.

I am not absolutely sure it was Lucy Liu. But I think so. Besides, it seems like the kind of place she would shop.

After my brush with Lucy, I started looking in earnest for Celestine. Of course, I did my best to look at the clothes too. It was my first time in an Armani store. For all I knew then, it would also be my last time, so I wasn’t going to miss anything. And if you are wondering what is the big deal with Giorgio Armani, I guess you have never watched the Oscars, the Emmys, the Golden Globes, or Joan and Melissa Rivers.

There were just a few people shopping. Most of the people in the store looked like they worked there. Even though they were all wearing different outfits, all the outfits were navy blue, and all the people wearing them were slim and cool and oh so fashionable.

At that moment Celestine came out from the ladies’ dressing room area at the back of the store. She was probably fifty feet away, but she spotted me immediately and her face lit up.

She broke into a run, then planted her feet flat, held her arms out like a surfer, and
slid
all the way up to me. She gave me a big hug and kissed my cheeks, right, left, right, left. Wow. Four was a new record for me. Then she looked at me, and all the blood drained out of her face. “Oh my God.” She gasped. “What are you wearing?”

I was wearing a navy pantsuit and a perfect little scoop-necked white top under the jacket. Just like Celestine.

All of a sudden I realized why she had two of the exact same outfit in her closet. I was wearing the Armani salesgirl uniform. “I didn’t know,” I said. “But . . . it’s not so bad, is it? I mean, it’s kind of funny.”

She didn’t look like she thought it was funny. In fact, I never saw Celestine look so serious. “You don’t understand,” she said. “He may be coming to the store today.”

“He who?”

She looked around and lowered her voice.
“Signore Armani.”

Giorgio Armani the person lives in Italy, and spends most of his time in Milan. When he comes to Paris it is mostly for fashion shows, not to visit his stores. And if by chance he goes to one of the stores, it tends to be the store at the Place Vendôme—the very same Place Vendôme where Josh Thomas took me to his favorite bar in the world and then walked out on me, and where I subsequently got lost coming out of the Ritz. Everything in that store is Giorgio Armani black label, the most expensive. So the news that he might actually be coming here, to the Armani Collezioni white-label store, which is only the second most expensive, had everybody who worked here excited. Thrilled. Terrified. Like if you went to church one Sunday the same as always and somebody mentioned to you, “Oh, by the way, the Pope is stopping by today.”

“Là! Il est là!
” A handsome young man who stood halfway out the door was pointing urgently down the street.

All the navy-suited people ran for the door, even Celestine. She ran right out with the rest of them. Leaving me alone in the store. Me and the three customers. Fortunately, nobody seemed to be actually
shopping.

You know what I mean. I don’t care what or where the store is, some people only ever walk into a store to
look,
even if it’s a Wal-Mart in Valpo, Indiana. Furthermore, I have found that the higher the prices in a store, the higher the percentage of just-lookers. So I hoped that the man and the two women were just browsing.

Sure enough, the man wandered out, and about half a minute later one of the women left. The other lady was strolling through the men’s clothes up at the front, so I figured I was safe, at least as long as nobody else came in.

For the first time since I walked in, I looked at the floor. It’s made of tan-colored stone, very soothing. And very smooth. I remembered the way Celestine slid up to me. We used to do that at home, when I was little. Kirland is very cold in the winter, so there’s always plenty of ice. Before I learned to skate, I used to run and slide, just the way Celestine had on the stone floor.

I looked around. The browsing lady was still in men’s, so I took a little run, planted my feet, and slid. Then I did it again. Took a longer run, and slid even farther. And farther. And—

“Excuse me.”

In midslide, I looked up to see the browsing lady holding a blouse.

“How much is this. . . .”

I opened my mouth to say something, although I had no idea what. But she put her hand up, right in front of my face, and stopped me.

“No, wait,” she said. She dug into her purse, a brand-new Louis Vuitton shopping bag. Not the nice classic Vuitton, but that new print in those obnoxious candy colors. She pulled out a palm-sized gadget, typed something on the little chicklet keys, then looked up. “Chemise,” she said, with a huge smile. Only she said “
Ch
emise.” Pronouncing the
ch
like channel.

I couldn’t help myself. “Chemise,” I said. Pronouncing the
ch
like Chanel. Bear in mind, I think I have made this clear already, but I do not speak French. It just so happens that
chemise
is a perfectly good English word. But the
ch
is pronounced
sh.
Even in English.

All of a sudden two things occurred to me. First, I probably shouldn’t be saying anything at all to the customers. And second, I probably shouldn’t be
correcting
the customers.

“Do you know,” the lady said, “that is just like you French people.”

I wondered if impersonating an Armani salesgirl is a criminal offense in Paris.

“First ignoring me while you slide around like you were a child, then correcting me like
I
was a child. I have only one thing to say to you,” she said.

“Thank you.”
She grabbed my hand and shook it. Her long fingernails dug into my skin. “Thank you so much. Everybody in Atlanta told me the French are just bossy and rude and condescending. Especially in stores. But do you know, since I have been here, everybody has just been so”—she struggled to find the right word—
“nice,”
she finally said, and made a face like it tasted bad in her mouth. “I don’t know why, but they have been depriving me of a genuine French experience. So God bless you, child.” She smiled a big smile. For a second I thought about telling her that bright red lipstick was so not her, but I figured maybe that would be a little too much genuineness all at once. “Now tell me,” she said, holding up the blouse. “How much is this . . .
chemise?
” Pronounced right.

I looked at the tag. Which she could have done just as easily. But she wanted me to be French. I didn’t want to disappoint her, so I tried to remember how French people speak English.

“Sree hundred and twenty.” It sounded really fake to me, but she didn’t blink.

Instead, she held the blouse up in front of herself. “What do you think?”

I didn’t like it on her. But I did see one on the same rack that I thought would be nice. Several, actually. I picked one of them up. “Zees one,” I said. “Zees eez, for you . . . more good.”

“Ooh,” she said. “This is going to be fun. Well, dear, let’s get me into a dressing room.”

I got her size pretty much right away just from holding the clothes up and eyeballing. Even though I had some experience with Nathalie Gauloise, all I knew was that a thirty-six was a size four. Dottie—that was her name—was no size four. She looked like a ten to me, which it turned out was a forty-two. Fortunately there were lots of those on the rack.

She was a very easy fit, and a very fast shopper. If she put something on, it fit. If I told her it looked good, she wanted it. So in about ten minutes she was ready to pay for a pile of clothes.

“Don’t let me forget to fill out that form to get my tax back,” she said.

I started to perspire. I could help somebody pick clothes, and I could tell them if something looked good or not, but cash registers? Credit cards? Tax forms?

Dottie walked out of the dressing room and I followed her, carrying a huge stack of stuff. I did a quick count in my head. About 5,600 euros. With the crappy exchange rate, over seven thousand dollars.

As we walked toward the front of the store, a man appeared.

He wasn’t very tall—maybe five-nine, tops. And he was an older man. But just because I use the word
older,
do not think one single negative thing about his looks. Because he was . . . well, gorgeous. He was tan, and he had the most gorgeous white hair and gorgeous blue eyes. He was wearing blue jeans that were faded just the right amount and that fit him perfectly, and a navy blue T-shirt—wool, I think, maybe even cashmere—that fit him even better than the jeans. And he had the most amazingly gorgeous muscled arms.