A Dangerous Dress (19 page)

If that seems like a lot to notice while you’re walking from the back of the Armani store to the front, did I mention he was gorgeous?

As Dottie and I got close to the front of the store, I saw that all the blue-suited men and women who worked there were gathered in the doorway. There were more of them than fit in the doorway, so some of them were outside looking through the window. They weren’t looking at Dottie, or at me, or at the pile of clothes I was carrying. They were looking at the gorgeous man.

He, however,
was
looking at Dottie. And at me. And most of all, at the pile of clothes, which I put down on the counter next to the register.

The man turned to the blue suits crowded into the doorway.
“Dagli un lavoro,”
he said.

Nobody moved.

When he spoke again, he sure sounded annoyed. “
Porco Giuda,
” he said, “
ma non c’e nessuno qui che parli italiano?
”

He smiled at Dottie and me. He had the most dazzling white teeth, and the most charming smile. When he turned toward the door, I somehow knew he wasn’t smiling.

“Hire her,” he said. In English. Then he walked straight out the door. Right through the blue suits, as if they weren’t there. They might as well not have been. They parted for him like he was Moses and they were the Red Sea. He was not Moses. He was Mister Giorgio Armani.

Although you have probably figured that out by now.

Then he was gone, and the spell was broken. All the employees rushed into the store.

I turned to Dottie. “Sank you.” At that instant my best friend appeared next to me. “Celestine weel help you now,” I said.

I
t was amazing how fast the day went by. I guess I never had a job I liked so much before. No offense, Uncle John. Anyway, before I knew it, it was seven o’clock.

Seven o’clock. Now why did that ring a bell?

Uh-oh.
The clerk at the Hotel Jacob told me to pick up my suitcase by seven. “We have to leave,” I said to Celestine. “Right away.” Suddenly I had a very bad feeling.

“I will drive,” Celestine said. If she saw my look of terror as we approached the Vespa, or noticed the scrapes on her scooter from my parking job, she didn’t mention it.

“Please hurry,” I said. I didn’t know if seven o’clock was some kind of deadline, if I was already too late, or what it was I was too late for.

We pulled to a stop directly across from the hotel. “Go claim the bag,” Celestine said. “Have them call you a taxi, and put the suitcase in the trunk. I’ll give you the fare.”

Even though it was a quarter past seven, I hesitated. I was afraid to go into the hotel, which was full of Movie People I had just put out of work. I was about to ask Celestine to get the bag for me—only at that moment, across the street, I saw a man turn the corner and come running in our direction. A man I knew. All of a sudden my face felt hot. I ducked down behind the Vespa, which didn’t provide a lot of cover, but was better than nothing.

“What are you doing?” Celestine asked.

“I can’t let him see me,” I said as the man rushed into the hotel.

“Him who?” she asked.

“Josh.”

“Who is Josh?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

Celestine gave me a look. “Oh yes you will.”

A whole minute went by. My legs were starting to hurt from squatting behind the Vespa, so I asked, “What’s he doing?”

“Talking to the desk clerk.”

“What’s he saying?”

“How should I know? He’s across the street. And inside.”

“Does he look mad?”

Celestine looked back toward the hotel. “I think he’s yelling.”

“How can you tell if you can’t hear him?”

“He’s pounding on the desk.”

Just then, a beat-up little gray pickup truck pulled in front of the hotel. The sides of the cargo section were unpainted plywood. Even though I couldn’t see very well, it looked like there was trash in the flatbed.

“What color is your bag?” asked Celestine.

“Pink.”

“Pink??”

“It’s my mom’s bag. I wouldn’t buy a pink suitcase.”

“Okay.” Then she looked across the street again and frowned. “This is not good.” The way she said it, it sounded so much worse than not good that I stood up to see.

A bellman walked out of the hotel and tossed my mom’s suitcase into the back of the pickup truck like a sack of garbage. Then the truck barreled away. Before we could even move, it was gone.

I was just starting to comprehend what had happened when I saw Josh step out of the hotel. I ducked back behind the Vespa so he didn’t see me. “That’s great,” he said to the bellman. “Thank you very much.” Then he walked down the block, reached the corner, turned, and vanished.

I stood up. My knees were shaking, and not because I had been crouching down for so long. “Did you see what he did?”

Celestine nodded.

“He told them to get rid of my stuff.”

She nodded again.

It is very difficult for me to describe how I felt at that moment. I was crushed. Shattered. Any word that describes being smashed into tiny little pieces. Because Josh Thomas had done this to me. My Josh.

Only it was very clear now: If he had ever been my Josh, even for a second, he wasn’t now. And he never would be. Never could be. Not ever again.

I still felt terrible that I was personally responsible for his movie falling apart, even though, as I think I have shown, you would have to be a pretty mean person to really think it was my fault. But how could he have done what he just did? After the way he kissed me? After he left that perfect rose in my room?

He must really have been bitter to get them to throw away my things like that.

Then ohmygod, the full force of the disaster hit me. “My Grandma’s dress was in that bag.”

“We’ll find it.” Celestine said it because she is my friend, but I knew she didn’t believe it. There was no logo on the truck. We didn’t get a license plate. We had no way to trace it. It was just gone.

I knew I would never forgive Josh for sacrificing Grandma’s dress to get back at me. But there was so much more. Even though we’d practically just met, we had been on the verge of something. Something perfect. Only now, right before my eyes, he had killed that something.

Celestine and I got on the Vespa and rode away without another word. On the way back to the apartment, she stopped for Japanese takeout even though I told her I wasn’t hungry.

Back at her place, she pulled two big bottles out of the refrigerator. “Sake,” she said.

I always thought you were supposed to drink sake hot, but I knew better than to question Celestine’s judgment about such things, so we drank cold sake. I didn’t feel very hungry, but I ate the sushi anyway. It was yummy. It seemed only mildly strange to me that in three days in Paris, other than breakfast, I had yet to eat anything you’d actually call French food.

By the way, sushi is something you should not order in Kirland. I don’t even think there’s anyplace that sells sushi, but if there is, don’t buy it.

I finished a very delicious California roll. I don’t know if they call it that in Paris. But in any event, I finished it. Then the next thing I knew I was crying. For Grandma’s dress. For Grandma. For Josh. For me. For losing everything in the world that mattered to me.

Except my best friend. Thank goodness Celestine was there. She knew when to let me cry. And, when I had pretty much cried myself out, she knew exactly the right moment to take two more big bottles of sake out of the fridge. I should mention, it was quite good cold. We got pretty toasted. Celestine asked about Josh, like she said she would. I told her all about him, like I said I would. I told her pretty much everything, starting from when I met him. She thought he was obnoxious, like I did at first, then kind of fell for him, like I did next, then
really
fell for him after the kiss on the bridge, then felt awful for him, like I did after the dress fiasco, and finally hated him along with me for the way he made them throw away my mom’s suitcase and Grandma’s dress. “I hate him,” I said when I was finished.

“So do I,” Celestine said.

“Don’t you think I should hate him?”

“Of course you should.”

“Good,” I said. “I do.”

“Then to hell with him.” We clinked bottles and drank. I’m not sure drinking good sake out of the bottle is exactly the classy thing to do, but we were both past worrying about classy.

“To hell with him,” I said. When I heard those words come out of my mouth, they sounded like somebody else was saying them. But I attribute that entirely to the sake.

“And to hell with Gerard,” Celestine said.

“Yeah,” I said. Then I said, “Who is Gerard?”

“My father.”

“You call him Gerard?”

“What should I call him?” she asked. “Father? Papa?
Dad?
” she asked, in her best imitation of a nasal Midwesterner. “He does not act like a father. He acts like a Gerard. Like a badly behaved boy. To hell with him.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m so sorry he did what he did to you,” she said.

“It’s not your fault,” I said.

“Of course not,” said Celestine. “But I am still terribly sorry. To hell with him.”

Sometime around midnight, Celestine reminded me that we both had to go to work in the morning. She tried to convince me to take the sleeping loft, but I said no way. I was perfectly happy to sack out on the couch. Which I was, actually. It is soft cozy old red leather, as comfortable as any bed.

As soon as she turned out the lights, I found myself thinking about Josh. And promises. Lost causes. The Astros. His movie. My Grandma’s dress.

If I kept thinking about those things, I would never get to sleep. So I made a conscious decision to think about something else. Like for example my amazing new job. Just four days ago I was working at Independence Savings and Loan in Kirland, Indiana, feeling like I had about as much of a future as the dull little yellow brick on my desk. Today, Mister Giorgio Armani himself had hired me to sell his fabulous clothes at his glamorous Paris boutique.

I couldn’t wait to tell my mom. My dad, too, but especially my mom. She and I always watch the Oscars and the Emmys and the Golden Globes together, especially the red carpet preshows, and we love to be catty about who is wearing what awful dress. But neither one of us has ever had anything bad to say about any Armani dress, so she would be particularly impressed with my new job.

Of course, if I called my mom, I would have to admit that I lost Grandma’s dress. And I was not sure how I could possibly bring myself to tell her that, since Grandma was my mom’s mother. So even though I had this amazing new job to brag about, maybe I would not call home after all.

Ever.

C
elestine and I got up very early the next morning. Which was complicated somewhat by all that sake. But headaches did not stop us. We were on a mission.

Before I describe our mission, you need to know that Paris is a very, very clean city. Big cities are typically not very clean. And Paris is certainly a big city. But the streets are clean. The sidewalks are clean. The little public trash receptacles always seem to be empty. All this cleanliness is so remarkable, you would think that the average Parisian would know who is responsible for it. But you would be wrong.

Our mission was to find my suitcase. Since we did not get a name or a license off that evil little pickup truck, we figured our only hope was to find where trash goes in Paris. I asked Celestine who picks up the trash.

“I don’t know.”

“But you have lived here your whole life.”

“And the trash has always gone away without my help. I don’t know.”

Celestine tried to figure it out online. But the French government web sites seem to have been created by videogame designers. The kind of games where you are lost in a maze with only a magic sponge and a hiccuping eunuch to help you find the treasure. We did not have six years to figure out the maze, so she logged off and started calling people. She knows a lot of people in Paris. Including some very important ones. Although most of them are not the type of people who are awake, much less in the mood to answer questions about trash, at seven A.M. In any event, none of them knew anything about who picks up the trash.

Then she remembered Didier. Who is apparently a minor pop music star in France. And who she seemed to recall was the son of some kind of deputy minister. She did not remember him right away because she said he was a very bad kisser—Didier, not the deputy minister. But Didier must have thought Celestine was a fine kisser, because he did not mind at all that she woke him up. He immediately put us in touch with his father.

So at eight fifteen in the morning, there we were, Celestine and I, in our matching Armani salesgirl outfits, in a very regal government building that Celestine said was built in 1763. A very good-looking soldier with a very big gun walked us down about two miles of corridors, then finally showed us into a bland little office that looked like it was built in 1963. Behind the desk sat a very small man with a very big mustache who introduced himself, first in French and then in English, as Monsieur Lebecq, deputy under-secretary of the Department of Facilities and Utilities. It rhymed in French, too.

Briefly, I told him what happened.

“I see.” He shook his head sympathetically. Then he thought for a while. Finally Monsieur Lebecq asked, “Is it a sewer matter?”

“I don’t think so. It’s a suitcase. It wouldn’t fit down a sewer drain. A little truck picked it up.”

“If it was a sewer matter, I might be able to help you. Public inquiry into sewer matters is permitted. For nonsewer matters, public inquiry is
not
permitted.”

“It’s not a sewer matter.”

“That is a pity.”