A Dangerous Dress (35 page)

“I thought if I called, you might have told me not to come,” he said.

I didn’t think that was true, but I liked that he felt insecure about me. I was about to hug him, until I thought,
Maybe he’s here to tell me he worse than hates me.
So I just stood there.

Then I noticed he was holding a big shopping bag behind his back. No store logo, plain brown paper. He noticed that I noticed. He said, “I brought you something.” He hesitated for a second, then handed me the bag.

Inside was something wrapped in tissue paper. “What is it?” I asked.

“It’s for you,” he said. Which didn’t tell me anything. I unwrapped the paper bundle.

Then I gasped. I mean, literally gasped.

Because wrapped in the tissue paper was my Grandma’s dress.

I do not mean a dress that looked like Grandma’s. I mean,
my Grandma’s dress.

I could not speak. Which is not a natural condition for me.

“I . . . found it,” he said.

I took off all the paper and held the dress up. I looked at the front. The back. The skirt. I even looked at the lining. It was perfect. I don’t think there was a single bead missing.

About then is when I started to cry.

“Don’t cry,” he said.

Men can be so dumb sometimes. Even men who have done incredibly thoughtful things. Impossible things. Lovely, romantic, perfect things. Sometimes they need to shut up and let a girl cry. I cried. While I was crying, very carefully, I wrapped the dress up again.

“I’m sorry it took me so long to get it to you,” he said.

I put the dress back in the bag.

“It was really hard to find,” he said.

That is when I kissed him. We are not just talking some little peck on the cheek here. Quite a bit of time passed, in fact. Finally I stopped kissing him. “Ohmygod,” I said. Then I hugged him. With my whole body. I wanted every inch of me to touch him, so that all those complicated feelings would pass right through my skin and he would know exactly how I felt.

When I let go, he said, “Wow.” I was not sure if my hug had conveyed absolutely everything I wanted it to. But I thought
wow
was a pretty good start.

Then I noticed. Well forgive me for not noticing sooner, but I was distracted. Anyway, Josh was not wearing his Astros cap. “What happened to your hat?” I asked.

“I stopped wearing it.”

“The Astros aren’t in the World Series,” I said. It was only June, and even I know the World Series is in October.

“No,” he said.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “I thought somebody has to stick up for lost causes.”

“No matter how lost they are,” he said. “I still believe that.” He looked down at Grandma’s dress, then back at me. “I just decided to pick a lost cause that I really cared about.”

I hugged him again. For a long time. Finally I stopped hugging him. I looked at the bag again. I couldn’t believe it. Josh Thomas had brought back my Grandma’s dress. It was almost too good to be true. But only almost. Because it
was
true.

“How did you find it?” I asked.

We have one of those glider swings on our front porch. What did you expect? I told you about Kirland. He sat down. I sat next to him. Then he said, “I looked for it.”

I said, “Well of course you looked for it. You couldn’t have found it without looking for it.” That might have sounded a little bit bitchy. Which must have confused him. Especially considering the kiss I just planted on him. And those hugs. But as I said, my feelings for Josh are complicated, and it was then that I realized that some of my unresolved feelings
did
involve my being mad at him. “First you are going to tell me why on earth you told them to throw my suitcase away.”

“What?”

“That big pink suitcase. Celestine and I saw you. You talked to the guy at the front desk, and then they tossed the suitcase in that old truck and took it away. Just like you told them to.”

“What are you talking about? I told them
not
to.”

“You did not.”

“I did so.”

“You did so what?”

He crinkled his brow as he spoke. “I did so . . . not . . . tell them to get rid of your stuff.”

“I saw you,” I said again.

“I guess you didn’t hear me,” he said.

Which was true. “So what? I saw what happened.”

“So did I,” he said. “But I didn’t tell them to do that.”

“And why should I believe you?”

“I brought your dress back,” he said.

Which was also true. “So what were you doing there?” I asked.

“I came back to the hotel to talk to you. Only Gerard Duclos was in your room.”

“He was attacking me.”

“I know,” Josh said. “I mean, I read what you wrote. You should have asked for help.”

“You didn’t wait for me to ask. Besides, I’ve never been attacked before. You just make it up as you go along.”

“I’m really sorry,” he said.

I kind of shrugged. “I guess it might have looked like something else.”

“It did.”

I have given that episode a lot of thought. And it has occurred to me that Josh might honestly have thought Gerard and I were . . . well, you know. Yuck.

“Anyway,” Josh said, “once I finally cooled off, I decided to come talk to you.”

“What were you going to say?”

“That Gerard was an old womanizing pig. That you didn’t belong with him.”

“Anything else?”

For a few seconds, instead of talking, Josh rocked the glider with his foot. Then he said, “That you belong with me.”
Oooooohhh.
“Only I came back and you weren’t there. They told me you got fired, you skipped out on your room, and they were going to get rid of your stuff.”

“They did not.”

“They did,” he said. “So I told them that was illegal.”

“You did not.”

“I did,” he said. “I told them I was a lawyer. They asked if I was a French lawyer. When I said no, they laughed at me. That’s when I offered to pay your bill.”

“You did not.”

“I did,” he said. “And they said no, they were instructed by Monsieur Duclos himself to dispose of your things. So they did. Right there in front of me. I’m sorry I couldn’t stop them.”

“Wait a second,” I said. “I
did
hear you. After they threw my suitcase in that truck. You thanked the bellman. You said, ‘That’s great. Thank you very much.’ ”

“I was being sarcastic,” Josh said. “You do have sarcasm here in Kirland, don’t you?”

I felt like a dope. Not a total dope. If you had seen what I saw, you probably would have thought what I thought. But it turned out I was wrong. Extremely wrong. Life-alteringly wrong.

“By the way,” Josh said. “About all those other Miss Fireworks?”

I think I flinched. I was afraid of what he might tell me.

“There
were
no other Miss Fireworks,” he continued. “I knew the Tower sparkled, and I always wished I could find the perfect woman to kiss in the perfect spot. But I never found her. Until you.” He smiled. “You were my first. And last. My only.”

Searching his eyes, I knew he was telling the truth. I felt so bad for misjudging him. I wondered if he could ever forgive me. I didn’t know how to ask. Fortunately, eventually Josh spoke up. “I could not believe,” he said, “how many vintage clothing stores there are in Paris.”

I just looked at him.

“After I read what you wrote,” he said, “I went back to Paris. I found Irene. She told me they didn’t throw your stuff away. They gave it to some guy to sell. To pay your room bill. I asked her for the guy’s name, but she said it was no use, he had moved to Las Vegas.”

“Las Vegas??”

“She said he was a big
CSI
fan.” Josh shrugged. “I called directory assistance in Vegas. They never heard of him. Irene felt really bad. So she gave me her list of stores. The same list she gave you. Every store you looked at, I looked at. It took days.”

I couldn’t believe it. He had taken all that time and trouble. Even more amazing, he had actually found it. “Which store had it?”

“That’s the funny thing,” Josh said. “None of them did. So I went back to Irene. There was only one other place she could think of.” He paused. “She sent me to her mother’s store.”

“You’re kidding,” I said. But I knew he wasn’t. “Was Françoise still watching that TV?”

“With no sound. Yeah.”

“And you had to go up the spiral staircase into that little room.”

“That’s where the dress was,” he said.

“Funny coincidence,” I said. Only I don’t believe in coincidence.

“I don’t think I believe in coincidence,” he said. “So,” he said. “Can we take a walk?”

“It’s gross and disgusting and humid out,” I said.

“I noticed,” Josh said. “So, can we take a walk?”

I went into the house, ran upstairs, hung Grandma’s dress in its spot, and ran back down.

“Is everything all right?” my dad asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Everything is definitely all right.”

Dad smiled at that. He doesn’t say a whole lot. But he doesn’t miss a whole lot, either.

J
osh and I walked to Kirland Park, on the shore of Lake Michigan. It’s an okay park, but I don’t go there much. In the winter, it can be awfully cold with the wind whipping off the lake, and on a hot disgusting June day, it can be . . . well, hot and disgusting. I didn’t care. It seemed even nicer than the Tuileries gardens in Paris.

“I have something else to tell you,” Josh said. “And I think you’re going to like it. But I’m not sure,” he said. “Because it was a little presumptuous of me.”

“What is it?”

“It’s about what you wrote,” he said. “I . . . showed it to some people.”

I felt my stomach flip-flop. “That was private.”

“You asked somebody to read it.”

“I asked
you
to read it. I didn’t say to show it to other people.” We walked a little way without saying anything. “What sort of people?” I finally asked.

“My agent,” he said.

I got this crazy idea. “Does somebody want to publish it?”

“No,” he said. I felt . . . disappointed. Rejected, even. “They want to produce it.”

“What does that mean?” I asked. I stopped walking. That flip-flop thing in my stomach really started to jump around something fierce. “Produce it, like, make a movie?”

“No,” he said. “Produce it, like make a TV show.”

“What???”
There were no other people in sight. There were squirrels, though. I must’ve shrieked. Because the squirrels quit chasing one another through the trees. They stopped in their tracks and looked at me. “You’re kidding. The whole Paris-New York thing?”

“No,” he said. “The Bumfuck thing.”

I almost said “You’re kidding” again. But I didn’t. Because I could tell he wasn’t kidding.

Josh had shown my manuscript—which was an awfully serious word for what I had done, but I guess that’s how writers talk—to his agent. Who does movies, not TV, although why one agent can’t do both is beyond me. Josh’s agent did not want to show it to the TV agents at his own agency, because they would take the credit and get the commissions. Which does not sound like a healthy work environment. Anyway, Josh’s agent went to his health club, and this new guy started to hit on him. Which Josh’s agent was in no mood for, because even though he likes guys not girls, and even though the new guy was attractive, Josh’s agent just went through a bad breakup. But the new guy wouldn’t leave. He said Josh’s agent seemed tense, was anything wrong? Josh’s agent said Besides the bad breakup I went through? The new guy said, Besides that. Josh’s agent said That’s very perceptive of you, Yes, I have this great TV property, only I can’t show it to the TV agents at my own agency and I don’t know what to do with it. The new guy said Really, can I see it? And it turns out the new guy is a hotshot TV producer.

Josh assured me that in Hollywood, deals get made like this all the time.

So Josh’s agent showed my story to the new guy, who loved it, because apparently everyone in TV is desperate for programming that will appeal to Middle America.

Kirland is not the geographical center of the United States. I think that is someplace in Kansas. But trust me. Kirland is as middle as America gets.

The new guy loved the Nick Timko-cousin Mary stuff. Josh’s agent set up a meeting, and Josh pitched it as a dramedy, which is a made-up Hollywood word combining
drama
and
comedy.
Like
Northern Exposure
and
Picket Fences,
he said. Neither of which I have ever seen.

And by the way, now Josh’s agent and the new guy are dating.

“Can it be a reality show?” I asked Josh.

“I don’t think so.”

“Reality shows are very popular,” I said. Not that I watch reality shows. Although the guy on the last
Bachelor
was awfully cute.

“Reality shows don’t have writers,” Josh said. “I’m a writer, remember?”

Oh. Well. Anyway, the new guy sold the idea to one of the networks. “As a dramedy,” Josh said. “They’re ready to commit to a pilot plus six episodes.”

“Is that good?”

“It’s amazing.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I told them you have to get ‘Created By’ credit. And executive producer credit. And technical advisor credit.” He smiled. “I also told them you’re my writing partner.”

Wow.
“Am I?”

He took my hands in his, and it felt like his heart and my heart were beating together at exactly the same time. Maybe that was my imagination. But I hoped not. “Are you?” he asked.

That is when I kissed him again.

On the way back to the house, Josh told me they wanted to film in Kirland. Not all of it. The interiors would mostly be shot on soundstages in LA. But there would be a crew here, working half time. “So you’ll still get to spend plenty of time here.”