Stories from New York #3 (11 page)

“I’m sorry, what?” Dakota asked.

“Don’t ‘I’m sorry, what?’ me, young lady,” Garamond countered. “I’m in the middle of a crisis, as I’m sure you all know. I don’t have time for this. You girls aren’t supposed to be wandering around on this floor. What if Helvetica saw you?”

“She isn’t in yet,” Dakota said.

“That doesn’t matter, Dakota. And, Ivy, you certainly shouldn’t be here. I know you were all supposed to be at the shoot, but at the moment we don’t
have
a shoot. You should all be in the interns’ room where I left you.”

“Well, I…we thought we were supposed to…” Dakota began.

“Garamond, we’re looking for Quincy,” Ivy said.

Garamond raised his eyebrows. “Darling, we’re
all
looking for Quincy. If we don’t find her soon, the photographer is going to walk, Helvetica’s going to get back and find out we’ve misplaced our celebrity, and we’re going to be in the middle of a big fat mess. I don’t think
you
can help
us
.”

“We had a couple of ideas of where she might have gone,” Ivy pressed.

Garamond stared at Ivy for a moment, then his expression changed. “Oh, I see. You think she might have gone to the sample room. I can assure you, darling, that is the first place Constantia looked.”

“But it can’t hurt to have more people looking, can it?” Ivy said. “Maybe she didn’t want Constantia to find her. Let’s face it, Constantia isn’t exactly the most approachable woman in the world.”

Garamond sighed. “That may be true. But the point is, you aren’t supposed to be on thirty-four unless you have a specific reason to be here. And this is the second time today, Ivy.”

“The second time?” Ivy asked, confused. “What are you talking about?”

“Somebody told me they talked to you just a—” he said.

His phone rang again, and he hesitated a moment, looking at the screen.

“Oh, her again. Anyway, as I said, you know perfectly well you aren’t supposed to be here.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “Though there is something to the idea that you might be better at figuring out what that girl is thinking than I am. And who knows—if you do find her, she may be more receptive to you than to me or Constantia. Okay,
listen. We did not just have this conversation,” he said. “Have your look-see, don’t get caught, and get yourselves back where you’re supposed to be. And if you happen upon Quincy, please tell her I’ve already fixed whatever it is she’s unhappy about and get her to that studio!”

Then he whisked past us, answering his phone with a clipped, “Garamond speaking.”

We stared at each other for a moment.

“I can’t believe you told him what we were doing,” Dakota said.

“Well, it worked, didn’t it?” Ivy asked. “Mom would always bring me to his office to say hi when I visited. He likes me.”

Which kind of meant that maybe he didn’t like Dakota quite so much, and now she knew it, too.

“Um, shouldn’t we go?” I asked. “We’re still really not supposed to be here, right?”

“Follow me,” Dakota said. “The sample room is down this way.” She lead us past a rack hung with dresses, pants, and fake furs in every shade of red imaginable. A large note had been stuck to it that said F
OR
H
ELVETICA’S
A
PPROVAL
O
NLY
.

“Here it is.”

We were standing outside an unmarked door painted battleship gray.

“What do we say to Quincy if she is here?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” Dakota said, sliding her ID through the slot.

“What could we say that would convince her to go back to the shoot?” I pressed.

“You’re supposed to be the think-on-your-feet girl,” Dakota said, pushing the door open. “Just don’t pick anything up. Everyone goes in for a look sooner or later. But if someone thinks you’re taking something, that’s a problem. Come on.”

The first thing I noticed when I stepped into the sample room was the smell. It smelled like a department store times a hundred. I could make out leather and perfume and twenty other things my nose couldn’t immediately identify.

There were small light fixtures set into the walls that cast a dim, amber-colored glow throughout the room. Dakota flicked a switch and turned on the overhead lights.

“Wow,” I said.

When people talked about the sample room, I had imagined something small—a closet, really. This room was HUGE, with very high ceilings and racks and shelves and boxes everywhere. I didn’t know where to look first. I could certainly see how someone could stay out of sight here if they wanted to. There were mannequins and deep racks of dresses and stacks of boxes somebody could duck behind.

To my right was a huge wall, maybe eighteen feet high and the length of two school buses, that was covered in shelves containing nothing but shoes. They seemed to be arranged in some semblance of order, with businesslike heels on the right, staggering glittery stilettos in the middle, and items in the boot family farther down the wall. It was a strange sight, and looking around the room, things just got weirder from there.

“Whoa,” Ivy whispered. “I’ve only ever been in here once, and I was about eight. I thought it was creepy, and I never wanted to come back.”

“It
is
kind of creepy,” I said. “I feel like the shoes are looking at us. Wow! Look at those,” I added, taking a few steps forward and pointing at a rack to our left where ball gown after ball gown hung, just waiting to be slipped on and swirled around the room. It was hard to pick out individual colors in the dim light, but I could see sequins and satin sheen and layers of tulle.

“There are other rooms,” Dakota said. “See the handbag section there? There’s a door next to it. That’s coats. Over beyond the boots is another room for hats and scarves. I can’t remember what the rest of them are. One of them is a whole little room just for lipstick.”

“How are we going to—” I began, but Ivy silenced
me by pressing on my arm. She raised one finger in the air, indicating that we should listen.

After a moment, I heard it, too. A rustling sound in a short, quiet burst. Like the rustle of fabric against fabric.

Dakota pointed toward the room she’d said was for coats.

“That way,” she said, walking toward the door. Ivy and I exchanged a quick look, then hurried after Dakota. We caught up with her just as she stepped through the doorway.

The room was lined with racks of every kind of coat I could imagine. Along the wall nearest to the door were a bunch of fur coats, all hanging together on a rod suspended from the ceiling. They made me think of Narnia—the fantasyland that lay on the other side of some coats just like these.

I was about to say that the room appeared to be empty when, suddenly, a rack of long winter wool jackets seemed to wobble. A hand emerged from between two sleeves, followed by a person.

“I was afraid you were that Constantia person,” the girl said. “She’s like a platoon sergeant with lipstick.”

The girl had reddish hair that hung perfectly straight at chin level and small, pointy features. She wore leggings, a long tailored jacket, and a fat purple
scarf wrapped several times around her neck. She wore no makeup and didn’t look much older than me. She was fresh-faced and very pretty. If I hadn’t spent the last hour talking about her, I would never have recognized her. But there was no mistaking it. This was definitely Quincy Vanderstan. I couldn’t believe how casual she was being.

“I’m Paulina,” I said. “This is Dakota, and that’s Ivy.”

Ivy smiled and gave a little wave. Dakota was absolutely frozen. She didn’t seem to be able to move.
Self-assured Dakota is starstruck
, I thought.

“Ivy?” the girl asked. “One of the four magazine girls?”

Looking mystified, Ivy nodded.

“Garamond mentioned you this morning. Something about you coming up to the shoot with four questions. I love the name Ivy, so it kind of stuck with me. Someone stopped me on my way here, and I told them I was you. Sorry—hope I didn’t get you into trouble. I needed to blow off some steam for a while.”

“Uh, no problem,” Ivy said.

That explains why Garamond thought Ivy had already been on thirty-four,
I thought. How did Quincy manage to look so normal—so totally unrecognizable?

“I guess everyone’s looking for me,” Quincy said.

“Yes, they are,” I said. “We were looking for you, too.”

“Oh, I can be such an idiot,” Quincy said, walking over to the rack of fur coats and running her hand along them. “It wasn’t even any of the people here I was mad at—it was my mother.”

“What happened?” Ivy asked. “Not that it’s any of my business, but…”

“Oh please, I made it the whole magazine’s business by leaving the shoot,” Quincy said. “Garamond, who is a sweetheart by the way, was going over some ideas for what I should be wearing for the shoot, and he started showing me the coolest steampunk dresses he’d pulled when my mother interrupted him and said no, I need to have a more timeless, sophisticated look. She wanted me in Chanel or Halston, not that she could pick either of them out of a lineup. I’m eighteen years old, and my mother is standing there talking over my head, telling somebody what I have to wear. I had a long flight last night, and I had to get up way too early this morning, and I was cranky. I just blew my top. My mother snapped at me and got all angry, and when everyone was running around pulling gowns for her to look at, I just slipped out.”

Dakota blinked a few times, like she’d just awakened in her own body.

“Steampunk? Do you mean the Violetta collection?” she asked.

“Yeah!” Quincy said. “They were Violetta. How did you know?”

Dakota visibly relaxed, obviously relieved that she had found the power of speech again.

“I’m an intern here. I got to sit in when they were laying out the article about her Milan collection,” Dakota said.

“Oh, I was actually at that show,” Quincy said. “That’s what got me into steampunk in the first place. My mother hates it, naturally. So here I am. Constantia came in here looking for me before, and I just couldn’t face her. She’s so…proper. So I ducked into the coatrack until she left. Did everyone go ballistic?”

“Oh, they’re all frantic,” Dakota said cheerfully. “The whole building is talking about it.”

Good one, Dakota
, I thought as Quincy covered her face with her hands. “Oh no,” she groaned. “This has all happened so fast. A year ago I was just a high school kid with a part in a TV show. Then it was like one morning I had a movie, and then another movie, and suddenly I’m in the spotlight all the time. It sounds great, and a lot of the time it is. But sometimes you don’t want the entire world to be watching you. I acted like such a baby and messed up
the whole shoot. How can I go back and face them?”

“Actually, Quincy, it doesn’t really become a problem until Helvetica Grenier gets to the office,” I explained.

“Exactly,” Ivy said. “My mom says shoots run late all the time, for any number of reasons. They expect that, it’s normal. What they’re worried about is Helvetica showing up and asking where you are, and nobody being able to tell her.”

Quincy looked up. “And she isn’t in the building yet?”

“No,” I said. “Listen, you could have taken off for any number of reasons. For all anyone knows, you…you saw a mouse or something. It wouldn’t be the first time. We could all just go back up there together and walk in as a group. Believe me, nobody will care
why
you left. All they want is to have you back so they can get on with the shoot.”

“Absolutely,” Ivy said. “We’ll all walk in together. Nobody will be anything less than thrilled. And Helvetica will never know. Believe me, no one is going to tell her they lost a movie star!”

“Really? Oh I can definitely do that, going in as a group,” Quincy said. “You guys are great.”

Dakota’s phone made a little chirping sound, and she held it in front her.

“Well, it might be too late to slip in unnoticed,” she
said. “Whit just texted that Helvetica’s on her way up in the elevator right now.”

“Oh no,” Quincy said. “I can’t face her like this. It’s too humiliating. Once Helvetica finds out how unprofessional I was, everyone in the whole industry will know.”

“No, they won’t,” Ivy said firmly. “First of all, Helvetica can be a terror to work for, but she keeps what goes on at
City Nation
very quiet. My mom has told me that more than once. Second, it’s not necessarily too late. Dakota, did Whit say Helvetica was on her way up to the studio or just that she was on her way up?”

Dakota checked the text again. “Just that she was on her way up,” she said.

“So if she just got here from her meeting, wouldn’t she go to her office first?” Ivy asked.

“Yeah, she would!” Dakota said. “She’ll go to her office to put away her coat and have a fresh coffee. Nobody is allowed to disturb her until she’s had that coffee. Then she calls Constantia in to get the morning roundup. She always does it that way, every single time.”

“But if we take the elevator, we might run into her,” Quincy said. “You know what? I’ll just have to risk it. I created this mess in the first place. The least I can do is own it.”

“No, you don’t have to,” Dakota said. “There’s a way to get to the studio from here that I can guarantee Helvetica won’t be taking.”

That seemed like a difficult promise to keep, but Quincy immediately brightened.

“Cool! Let’s go!” she said.

We dashed to the door, Ivy stopping long enough to switch off the lights. “Where are we going?” she asked Dakota, who was heading down the opposite direction from the elevators.

“Fire stairs,” she said. “You aren’t supposed to be able to get from the stairwell back onto a floor. But people always prop the doors open so they can go between floors without going out to the elevators. It’s so much faster. This way.”

She pulled open a door, but not before I read a sign on it that said F
IRE
D
OOR
—N
O
R
EENTRY
. I hoped she knew what she was talking about. From what I’d seen of Dakota, chances were she did, but now that Helvetica was in the office, we really had to stay hidden.