Scot on the Rocks bm-1

by Brenda Janowitz

  I jumped on top of Vanessa and woke her up.

  “Five more minutes, Mom,” she muttered as I began to shake her by the shoulders.

  “Do you remember last night when you said that it would really suck if we had to run around L.A. like complete idiots looking for a new dress and shoes?” I asked her.

  “Don’t tell me,” she said.

  She was right. I shouldn’t tell her. After all, this weekend is kind of like a minivacation for her, too, so I wouldn’t want to stress her out. So, I didn’t tell her. Instead, I reached over to the suitcase of dashed dreams and lifted a pair of silk boxers out.

  “I’m guessing that those are not yours?” she asked.

  A half hour later, we were out on the mean streets of L.A., hitting boutique after boutique, finding nothing. From Melrose to Rodeo, we hit every imaginable store in search of a black-tie gown suitable for a glamorous red-carpet wedding. Most of the stores only seemed to stock size-six gowns, so not only was I tired and cranky from all of the searching, I was also feeling a bit insecure and fat.

  By my estimation, we’d hit over twenty-five stores, and still could not find a stitch to wear. Things were starting to look hopeless.

  Hopeless, that is, until we came to a beacon of light. At first, we thought it was a mirage, we were so tired, but there it was. The unmistakable sign of all that is good and true in a harsh and unforgiving world: Barneys New York! Located conveniently for us right here in L.A.!

  Barneys New York — my favorite store of all time. Barneys is to me what Tiffany & Co. was to Holly Golightly. Nothing bad could ever happen to me once I was inside. Except for this one time last year when I walked into the housewares department asking for some help in locating an anniversary gift for my parents. From across the floor (and at Barneys, it is a big floor, I assure you) the salesperson called out, “Are you one of our brides?” It seemed as if the world had stopped and everyone was staring at me, on pins and needles, waiting for my response. It was as if they were all a bunch of spies for my old Jewish grandmother. (“You’re not married yet? Can’t you just pick one and marry him?”) I meekly whispered back, “No,” to which the salesperson yelled, “Well, then, I can’t help you.” What is this? I thought. You only help engaged people? Why, this is discrimination of the worst kind! Call the Anti-Defamation League! Call Alan Dershowitz! Call the Supreme Court of the United States of America — this calls for the ordaining of a new protected class under Title VII! Even if she meant that she only worked the bridal registry and was unable to assist people in other departments, I still thought that I had a case.

  But other than that little incident, Barneys is still my favorite store. What can I say? I’m very resilient.

  Like two schoolgirls, we were giddy with excitement as we got into the elevator.

  “Do you think dresses are on the same floor here as in New York?” Vanessa asked as she looked at the listing of what departments were on what floors.

  “More importantly,” I said, “where are the shoes?”

  “You always do that,” Vanessa remarked, pushing the button for the second floor.

  “Do what?” I asked, checking my reflection in the mirrored wall of the elevator.

  “Take your eye off of what’s important,” she said as we exited the elevator. “We’re here for a dress. Not shoes. And here you are, still pining over Douglas, a man who treated you horribly, while you ignore Jack, a man who treats you like a princess.”

  “Jack doesn’t even like me,” I said as we reached the racks, convincing not even myself. “Remember we tried this once before — South Carolina — and he put the brakes on it?”

  “That is not my recollection,” Vanessa said. “Anyway, how many years ago was that?”

  “We’re staffed on every case together,” I further reasoned. “Do you want me to get fired or something?”

  “And give up the twelve-hour days and constant weekend work?” she countered. “What on earth was I thinking?”

  “And even if he did like me, he’s totally on the rebound, anyway,” I said as I began to flip through the dresses. “He just broke off an engagement.”

  “Six months ago,” Vanessa said, eyeing the racks.

  “He’d never set a date,” I said, fingering a pale yellow cowl-neck column dress.

  “Well, look at you,” she said, placing both hands on the rack as she stared at me. “I was just saying to give him a chance. You’ve gone and got yourself engaged to the guy already.”

  “Anyway, he’s Jack. Now, be a good friend and look for dresses.”

  I held up a beautiful black satin number that I clearly could not afford. Vanessa shook her head no.

  “I would find it sexy, you know,” Vanessa said, holding up a short red dress to her frame. “Man travels three thousand miles to make a fool of himself all for a girl.”

  “It really isn’t like that,” I explained, showing Vanessa a black-and-white off-the-shoulder gown. She shook her head no.

  “Then what is it like?” she asked, putting down the red dress she was holding, waiting for an answer.

  “Brooke?” a salesperson asked, seemingly on cue. Saved by the bell. Or salesperson, as the case may be. “Is that you? Brooke Miller?” I politely smiled back, even though I had no idea who this woman who knew my name was.

  “Brooke, it is you! Oh, my God, it is so good to see you!” she cried, throwing her arms around my neck. As she did so, I threw Vanessa a very confused look. “How are you?”

  “I’m great. Thanks,” I said. “How are you?”

  “You don’t remember me, do you?” the woman said.

  “I remember you,” I protested a little too quickly.

  The salesgirl turned to Vanessa. “Well, could you expect the captain of the cheerleading squad, editor of the yearbook, etcetera, etcetera, to remember little old me? Senior year, voted most…”

  “Of course!” I interrupted, “South Bay High! Yes!” Anything to make her stop reliving my glory days.

  “You were a cheerleader?” Vanessa asked.

  “Cocaptain,” I said. “And I only did layout on yearbook.”

  “What were the etceteras?” Vanessa asked. She was having fun with this.

  “Let’s see,” the salesgirl offered, “there was homecoming queen junior year.”

  “And life has been downhill ever since….” I said to no one in particular.

  “We were in Spanish class together for all four years of high school,” she explained to Vanessa. “You look exactly the same! You still have the same long hair —”

  “Yes, of course! Spanish!” I knew that this was the part where I was supposed to show that I knew who she was, but I still had no clue.

  “Nina Mitchell?” she said, making it more of a question than a declaration.

  “Yes, of course!” I cried out. “Nina!” I was sure that if I said it emphatically enough she’d believe that I knew who she was, even though I was still piecing it together in my mind.

  “And this girl, of course,” she told Vanessa, “dated the hottest guy at school for a million years!”

  “Hot stuff! Go Brooke!” Vanessa said.

  “He wasn’t anything special, I assure you,” I said to Vanessa and the moment the words came out of my mouth, I totally regretted them. In an instant, a thousand memories came flooding back to me from the ninth grade. How could I say that about Danny? I was talking to “Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria” — the girl who was totally, madly, deeply in love with him from the time we all met when we were fourteen. Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria: an unfortunate nickname that Danny himself had thought up, seemingly to relate to her large size. (What can I tell you, he wasn’t the brightest boy….) Now that I think of it, she wasn’t even that large back then, she just wasn’t as skinny as the rest of us were.

  The braces may have been removed, the hair bleached blond, the waistline shrunk and the skin cleared up, but I knew that she was still Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria inside. I knew it because I’m still the girl I wa
s in high school on the inside, too.

  I remembered that I used to feel sorry for her because she always looked so sad. Like a kid with her face pressed against the candy-store window — always on the outside looking in. In the eleventh grade, at the homecoming dance, Danny and I were crowned king and queen. I was having the time of my life and there sat Nina, at a table in the corner, all alone. Looking at her, I thought I knew just what would cheer her up. Entirely against his wishes, I made Danny dance with her. I thought that I was doing a good deed. As he approached her, she looked so happy. Her face lit up like I’d never seen it before as she told Danny yes, furiously shaking her head. They hit the dance floor and all eyes were on them as he held her tight for a slow song. Halfway through “Careless Whisper” he leaned down into her and, while whispering something into her ear to distract her, pulled the back of her skirt up to reveal her enormous pink granny panties and control-top panty hose to the entire eleventh grade. Laughter erupted in the school gym and it took her quite a while to realize what was going on. I had sprinted halfway across the gym by the time she began pulling her skirt back down, arriving just in time for her to tell me, with her eyes fighting back tears, “You have ruined my life.”

  Thank God telekinetic powers only exist in novels.

  I think.

  I remember that after it happened, her mother was so infuriated that she called my mom and I was grounded for a month. Even though I had nothing to do with it. Not really, anyway. My mother said, “Either you did it or you are dumb enough to be hanging around with a boy who would. Either way, you should be ashamed of yourself and either way you’re grounded.” I guess I had great taste in men even back then.

  “I was, like, totally in love with Danny for all four years of high school,” she said. The final irony of Danny’s life is that he wrote in his yearbook that his goal was to “leave Long Island or die trying” and he now lives on Long Island with his wife and four kids. And his wife is very, very fat. And Nina is very, very skinny. Should I tell her that?

  “I’m sorry,” I quickly said instead. “He…he was kind of special. He was special. He really liked you back then, I remember.”

  “Yeah, right, Brooke,” she said, “I wish. I was a train wreck back then. Anyway, it is so good to see you! Speaking of hotties, I heard that you used to date Trip Bennington during law school or something.”

  “Actually, I did.”

  “Was he nothing special?” she asked.

  “Well,” I said with a laugh, as I twirled a lock of my hair, “he’s the reason why we’re here for the weekend. We’re here for his wedding.”

  “Oh, my God,” she said, as if time had actually stopped. “You are going to the wedding? I would kill to go to the wedding! It is going to be the event of the year.”

  “It’s really not that big of a deal,” I said.

  “Not a big deal?” she asked Vanessa. “Does this friend of yours think that anything is special? All of Hollywood will be there! A-list only! And Ava is, like, the most beautiful creature on the planet. One time she came in here and I got to dress her. She is, like, the nicest person on earth.”

  “So I’ve heard,” I said.

  “And she’s royal,” Nina continued. “Do you think that’s special?”

  “Believe it or not, Nina, we’re here to get a dress for the wedding,” I said.

  “But the wedding’s tonight,” Nina told me.

  “Don’t get her started,” Vanessa instructed. “We actually had this whole airport-lost-baggage thing, and so…”

  “Say no more,” Nina said. “We’ve got a million dresses here.”

  “We’ve got about an hour,” Vanessa told her.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said, as she rushed off to find me a dress.

  “You’ve got a major fan club,” Vanessa said. “Was she like that back then?”

  “We called her Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria,” I said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Vanessa asked.

  “Because she was as big as three ships,” I explained, looking over my shoulder to make sure she wasn’t coming back.

  “Okay,” Vanessa said. “That makes no sense whatsoever.”

  “We were fourteen,” I said, as Jack swept in with a tray of coffees.

  “I figured that you could use some coffee,” he said. He had been hitting the tourist spots while we were shopping and had a “Star Map” tucked under his left arm.

  “You are an angel,” I said. I clearly needed coffee by now. Nonetheless, Vanessa shot me one of those knowing looks. A raised eyebrow kind of look. One of those “He’s Jack, you say?” looks. “In a platonic way,” I quickly said. That should allay everyone’s confusion about the matter once and for all.

  “Yummy,” Vanessa said, laughing at me. “Thanks, honey — don’t tell the partners that I drank this. It’s not Healthy Foods coffee.”

  “Please tell the partners that I drank this,” I told him. “Maybe it’ll get me thrown off of the case.”

  “Will do,” he said. “Now, where’s the chair?”

  We pointed across the floor to a few chairs set up just outside of the fitting rooms. He walked past Nina as she came back with a dress.

  “This will be the only one that you need to try on. I promise,” she said. “Brooke, is that your boyfriend?”

  “Jack?” I asked. “No! God, no! I mean, he is, of course, very special, but, no, we are not dating.”

  I rushed off to try on the dress before I could get myself into any more trouble with Nina.

  Outside of my dressing room, I overheard Nina approach Jack.

  In a low, sultry voice that she hadn’t used with Vanessa and me, she asked, “Is there anything that I can help you with?” Help him? Does he look as if he shops for women’s dresses?

  “No,” Jack answered, “I think that I’ll just sit here and wait for Brooke.”

  “Perhaps you would like me to try something on for you?” she offered. Oh, help him.

  “Um, uh, no thank you?” Jack answered, kind of like a question.

  “Very well,” she said.

  I put on the dress that Nina had picked out for me. A haze of pale pink organza with delicate ruffles strewn about, it had tiny spaghetti straps and a fish tail that was meant to float on the floor behind you.

  I took a look at myself and immediately fell in love. With the dress, not my own reflection. It was really perfect. She did a great job picking it out. It just goes to show you, we all grow up and the past is forgotten. Nina’s all grown up and she’s skinny and pretty now and has an amazing eye for clothes. Turns out we can all just get along. A smile crept onto my face as I came out of the dressing room.

  “So,” I asked, effecting my best Audrey Hepburn, “how do I look?”

  “Brilliant, darling,” Jack said with a Scottish accent and I smiled.

  “We’ll take it,” Vanessa said to Nina.

  16

  We ran back to our hotel just in time to see a very pissed off former cross-dresser waiting for us in the hotel lobby. Even if you hadn’t seen him there, you would have felt him — his presence filled the entire lobby. There he was, sprawled out on a couch, taking lots of room with his long legs crossed and his massive bag of hair and makeup supplies sitting beside him.

  He happened to look great. As a man, I mean. Last time I saw him, Damian was in New York, dressing and performing as a woman. Don’t laugh. He did a really mean Diana, and his Barbra wasn’t too bad, either. His face has a very feminine quality to it, so with the right hair and makeup, you would swear he didn’t have an Adam’s apple.

  Damian now had cut his hair short and was dressed in form-fitting black pants with a black button-down shirt, which framed his six foot four very, very tall, very, very thin body perfectly. To complement the look, he had his shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest (no chest hair, of course) and was wearing a Louis Vuitton belt that had little LVs all over it. He looked as if he could be in an ad for something expensive.
/>   “We’re late,” Vanessa said. “Damian looks pissed.”

  “We’re not late,” I told Vanessa. “We are on time.”

  “Correction,” Jack said. “We would have been on time if we hadn’t stopped for shoes.”

  “Okay,” I said, “first of all, there is always time for shoes.” What kind of talk is this coming from Jack? Even if we were running late to my ex-boyfriend’s wedding, I still would not stand for such blasphemy.

  “That you can’t really walk in,” Jack persisted.

  “What does that have to do with anything?” Vanessa asked.

  “I don’t know,” Jack said, “walking, shoes…Do you see where I’m going with this?”

  “You are so naive,” I said as we approached Damian. He rose from the couch slowly and stared at us disapprovingly. And he did rise, mind you; he didn’t stand up or get up or anything that we normal people would do. Rather, Damian rose deliberately, like Moses parting the Red Sea.

  “Okay, running like that — not attractive,” Damian said.

  “Dame, you remember Brooke and Jack,” Vanessa said, still out of breath from the mad sprint from the taxi to the lobby. “And you had better not have been talking about me just now.”

  “Good to see you, girls,” he said, looking us up and down. “We don’t have much time.” And with that, he began to walk toward the elevators. Because of his height, he moved as if in slow motion, gliding down the hallway, while the three of us followed quickly in his wake.

  “Did he just say ‘pleased to meet you, girls?’” Jack asked, grabbing my arm. I laughed as we all got into the elevator.

  “We’re cutting your hair today, Brooke?” Damian asked me. My hand instinctively flew to my head, the way a mama bird protects her baby birds.

  “No,” I said. “I am not cutting my hair.”