The All You Can Dream Buffet (27 page)

At 7:21, slightly tipsy: “I’m here at the White Horse with Joe Kim and Grange, and I was just thinking how long we’ve been together, me and you. Remember that game against the Duke Dogs when I threw a sixty-seven-yard pass and we went to eat at Sizzler afterward and the waitress snuck us drinks? Those were good times, babe. Good times.”

Ginny remembered. They’d been giddy with triumph and youth. They ate steaks and drank margaritas served in lemonade glasses because the waitress, all of twenty-two, was hot for
Matthew and had listened to the game on the radio. Ginny got drunk and three hours later threw up in the bathroom at Grange’s house, because his mother worked the greyhound tracks outside Wichita and never got home until three or four. Nobody had been available to drive Ginny home, so she’d slept on Grange’s plastic-leather couch, huddled beneath a coat because everybody else was passed out.

Good times. She’d given him a blow job in the bathroom while he played with her nipples under her shirt.

Suddenly weary, she didn’t know how she could listen to the rest of the messages. He’d left three more that night, the last at one in the morning, when he’d no doubt been well beyond slightly high and into full drunk. He didn’t do it often, but there was no way he’d been up at one and not been drunk.

Instead, she listened to the voice mail from her mother, left early this morning. “Ginny, I don’t know what nonsense you’re up to, but you can’t just leave your husband. He’s a good man and a good provider, and you’re out of your mind to divorce a man who loves you when you’re middle-aged. Kelly Lambrusco got away with it because she’s built like a brick you-know-what, but that’s not you. You want to spend the rest of your life alone?”

As she listened, she shook her head. “Mother, what in the world are you talking about?”

And then, with a sense of doom, she remembered the email she had written but
not sent
to Matthew, about never returning to Kansas and wanting a divorce. Had she accidentally hit
send
instead of
save
?

With a shaking hand, she scrolled past the earlier voice mails from Matthew to the ones left this morning. “Ginny, I just got your email. What are you talking about?” He sounded irritated but not angry. “Is this about all those phone messages I left you
last night? You know I was drunk. It didn’t mean anything, and it’s sure not worth a damned divorce. You’ve gone crazy on this trip, and I don’t understand a thing you wrote. Call me.”

She pulled the phone away from her ear. He thought
his
messages were making her crazy? She started to scroll back, but Lavender was striding toward her. “Trouble at home, gal?”

Ginny couldn’t decide whether to laugh or frown, so she did both. “I don’t know what’s going on.”

“Will it keep?”

She’d been out of touch for three days so far. Another few hours wouldn’t kill anybody. She stood. “Yes.”

“Good. Let’s go.”

Ruby instantly loved the smell of the local theater’s backstage area. They were meeting a wardrobe mistress who a friend of Valerie’s had put them in touch with. The place smelled of dust and time and wax, and she felt she could almost see the ghosts of dancers from performances past swirling around, their toe shoes tapping with authority against the wooden floorboards.

A willowy woman in her sixties met them at the back door. “Oh, my gosh,” she said, touching her throat. “Valerie Andrews. I’m so thrilled to meet you.”

Ruby thought,
She’s famous!
Which she’d sort of known, but it was funny to see it like this. Ruby knew Valerie through her wry, down-to-earth, also-famous blog on wine but had never known her as the dancer she’d been.

“Hello, Mrs. Tinker. I’m so grateful to you for this.” From her bag, Val pulled a wrapped gift. “Just a small token of appreciation.”

“Oh, thank you! Call me Bette.” Her fine skin showed a high blush over her cheeks and down the sides of her neck. She was obviously so happy to meet this famous dancer, and it made Ruby want to squeeze the wardrobe mistress tight. “Would you mind signing a program for me? I saw you dance twice, and I saved one of the programs.”

“I’m so touched, I can’t even tell you!” Val exclaimed. “Of
course I’ll sign it.” She tugged Hannah forward, and for once the girl put on her manners instead of an attitude, holding out her hand and smiling politely as Val said, “This is my daughter Hannah.”

“How do you do,” Hannah said.

“I’m pleased to meet you,” Mrs. Tinker said. “Are you a dancer, too?”

“No. That was my sister Louisa.”

“Oh, yes. Right, the one who—er, well, I’m so sorry for that loss. For both of you.”

Hannah’s spine went rod straight, making her taller by two inches, and Ruby stepped forward, grabbed her hand, and squeezed it with a bright smile up at the girl.

Lost in the awkwardness, the woman wrung her hands, looking for a long moment between Valerie and Hannah, then back to Val.

Gently, Valerie said, “You have set aside some tutus for us to try?”

“Yes. Oh, yes. Come this way.”

Ruby held on to Hannah. “She meant well.”

“I know. I wasn’t going to say anything.” She tugged her fingers away. “I’m not an idiot.”

Ruby leaned in and nudged her with an elbow. “This is going to be such a blast. Don’t you think?”

“I guess.”

The woman led them to a door that she unlocked with a key attached to her wrist. “This is the storeroom,” she said, and they followed her into a room lined with tutus and costumes in every imaginable style and color and length. “What kind of things were you thinking of?”

“Goddesses,” Ruby said. “We want to be barefoot goddesses.”

“Ah.” Mrs. Tinker’s eyes narrowed and her lips pursed, the computer of her brain sorting through the options. “Mrs. Andrews, I’d love to fit you first. What were you thinking?”

Valerie shook her head. “I have no idea. Will you choose something beautiful for me?”

“May I?” She pressed a hand to her chest.

Ruby said, “She wants to be queenly. Can you come up with that, maybe with a crown?”

“Odette!”

“Swan Lake,”
Valerie said to the others. “That would be perfect, Bette. Lead the way.”

“The rest of you can take a look if you like. Handle things carefully. We’ll be right back.”

Ginny and Lavender just stood there. Ruby swept forward, grabbing their hands. “C’mon, Hannah! You, too.”

“I don’t know what to look for,” Ginny protested, yanking back to avoid being swept into Ruby’s scheme. “This is weird. Maybe I don’t want to wear a tutu!”

“Oh, it’ll be fun.”

“For
you,
Ruby.” Ginny’s alarm was scribbled over her forehead, on her mouth. “I don’t like dress-up games.”

“You don’t?” Hannah echoed with incredulity. “I love them. You don’t have to be yourself.”

Ruby seized a skirt made of endless varieties of blue with a silvery overskirt. “Or maybe more yourself than you could be in real life.” She held it up, disappointed to discover that the waist was tiny, tiny, tiny.

Of course. She smoothed the fabric over her belly sadly, knowing it would never fit in a million years. “Nothing in here is going to work for me, is it? Even
not
pregnant, I’m not small enough.” A sudden vision of everybody else dancing in tutus,
their feet bare, while she swayed in her ordinary clothes made tears well up in Ruby’s eyes. She ducked her head, smoothing a palm over the dress, and tried to blink herself back to an even keel. Again she touched the skirt. “It looks like a blue moon,” she said with longing, and a sense of tragedy swamped her. Her tears flowed like a fountain. She couldn’t stop them.

“Oh, sweetie,” Ginny said, sliding an arm around her shoulders. “If we can’t find something here, I can make this for you in about an hour.” She looked over her shoulder. “Lavender, do you have a sewing machine?”

“I don’t sew,” Lavender said, tugging out one after another of the skirts, “but there are a couple in the workroom.” She frowned, rubbed her belly. “We need to get some food sometime soon. I’m starving.”

“Me, too,” Hannah said, walking down the aisle and flipping through the dresses.

“You could do this in an hour?” Ruby asked, her tears drying up as fast as they’d arrived. She ran her fingers over the fabric. “This sparkly stuff and everything? It’s the silver and blue that I really like.”

“We would buy it like that, with the sparkles on it. I’m sure Portland has plenty of places to buy good fabric.”

“You would do that?”

Ginny gave her a quizzical smile. “Of course.”

Ruby abruptly settled her head on Ginny’s shoulder. “You’re the best.”

Ginny chuckled.

“Let me find you something, please, please, please?”

“I don’t think so, Ruby. I feel so—”

“You don’t have to wear it if you try it on and feel bad. What could it hurt to just try it on?”

Ginny hesitated, and Ruby suddenly saw her deep shyness and remembered how far she’d come in the years they’d known her, from a wallflower to a star.

Ruby grabbed Ginny’s hand and hauled her down the row, looking for a color that popped out at her—not that tepid blue or the screaming yellow. No, no, no. About three rows over she finally saw it, the very shade of the flesh of a perfectly ripe peach. “This,” she said, pulling it out. The construction was simple, too, just the floating skirt and a sleeveless bodice adorned with sequins.

Ginny reached for it, brushed her hand over the bodice. “This color,” she said with a sigh. A stain of bright red burned over her cheekbones.

Intrigued, Ruby said, “What are you thinking to have that blush on your face?”

“Do I?” She put her hands on her cheeks. “It’s just that … well …” She looked over her shoulder. In a near-whisper, she said, “Jack said that my lips tasted like peaches.”

“So try it on! It will be perfect on you.”

Ginny agreed. “Where?”

Ruby laughed, looking around. “Here, I think. Just take off your shirt and pull it over your head.”

Ginny felt self-conscious, but she did it. Her shoulders were slim, her waist small, and the tutu fit her with a little bit of snugness over the bust, which actually made her breasts swell up over the bodice in a very nice way. Ruby tugged it slightly. “Will it stay on?”

“I can’t wear this!” Ginny put both hands over the upper swell of her breasts.

Ruby brushed her hands away. “Look at me, Ginny.” She smiled. “You look amazing. I swear. Walk around in it for a minute, see how it makes you feel.”

She did, wandering down the aisle away from Ruby, her head down as she brushed her hands over her skirt, palms open like a little girl. Ruby smiled and swung around with the blue one against her body, thinking inexplicably of Noah trying to cheer her up yesterday. Maybe they would dance together at the festival. She imagined the dark starry sky and the lights strung around the platform, which a crew was finishing today, and Noah’s thick, too-long curls falling around his face. It was only a flash, a sense of his hands on her sides, his smiling mouth close, their bodies—

Rebound,
said a voice.
Don’t do it. Not for you, not for him.
She knew he was vulnerable. She could feel it in him, deep and hungry, a yawning need for union.

For healing.

Ruby attracted men like him by the platoon, men broken by a thousand different things, hearts shattered, hopes smashed, souls shredded. She gave them kindness. Sometimes she had given them kisses. She gave them laughter and high regard, and that was often just right.

Ambling up the aisle, aimlessly pulling out a gown or a tutu or a costume, her fickle mind fluttered and settled on Liam. He had not seemed broken, not by anything in this life, anyway. It all went back to that weird vision she’d had of him in the very beginning, of his monkish self in a medieval world. And who was she to say—maybe they were memories of another life. Millions of people all over the world believed in reincarnation, and it would certainly explain a lot. Liam’s monkish current self, her own sense of connection to him. Maybe this life, this broken heart and the baby, were corrections to karma—punishment or reward.

Who knew?

Which ducked the Noah question. She prided herself on
being real with other people. She was so ripe for a rebound lover, and he would probably be very willing, but she was adamantly not over Liam, and Noah deserved the full-throated focus of a woman who was ready to love someone.

Too bad, really. She could like him. She just wasn’t ready to love anyone else yet.

A pale silvery tutu caught her eye, and she pulled it out. The sleeves were long and sheer. Iridescent beading swirled over the bodice and tea-length skirt. It was perfect for Lavender, and Ruby pulled it out to carry with her.

Ginny stood at the end of the row, swinging back and forth to make the skirt sway. Her hair fell down around her face, show-
ing her pale white neck. From this distance, she looked about seventeen.

Jack said that my lips tasted like peaches.

Half of Ruby wanted to protect Ginny from the possibility that this guy was a player who made time with lonely women. The other half wanted to see Ginny let her miserable marriage go, by whatever means necessary. As if she heard these thoughts, Ginny looked back at Ruby. Ginny’s glossy, uncolored hair was in her face, and her shoulders were bare, and Ruby realized that she had absolutely no idea that she was stunning.

“I think I like it,” she said quietly.

“It’s right for you.”

Ginny pulled the dress over her head and put her shirt back on. “Let’s go find the others.”

Lavender and Valerie stood with the wardrobe mistress, arrayed in a half circle around Hannah, who admired herself in a long mirror. Her hair was loose on her shoulders, and she wore a red tutu, strapless, that showed off her tiny waist, impressive bust, and delicate shoulders in a way that was slightly astonishing.

“Well, girl,” Ruby said, giving a catcall. She lifted one corner of the skirt in her hand. “I guess you found your dress.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Valerie said with lips pursed. “It’s much too old for her.”

“She’s fourteen?” the wardrobe mistress asked, cocking her head. “That’s perfect for Persephone.”