Dictatorship of the Dress (9780698168305)

by Topper, Jessica

  Noah

  LET IT DIE

  “Thought we’d find you here, Noah!” Bidwell said with his customary forced joviality, as he threaded his way through the crowded bar, family in tow. He was clutching what looked like our Vegas itinerary in his hand.

  “They must’ve water-boarded Warren,” Tim hissed in my ear.

  “Son, we know you’ve been a little off lately, and I’ll be the first to admit, all the pressure of the big day has taken its toll on all of us,” Bidwell boomed loud enough for the entire bar to hear. I swear the chandelier actually trembled above us.

  “So we’ve put a pin in it,” he said, pinching his thumb and index finger together and sweeping the air. “And we’re here to take a relaxing vacation, to give you kids some time to talk, and if, by the end, you are ready to go ahead with the big wedding, great. If not”—he swept his hand as if he had all of Vegas at his disposal—“you can just have a quiet ceremony here. No fanfare.”

  No fanfare. No witnesses. Not even my mother. I was a POW. Prisoner of Wedding.

  “Hi, Timothy,” Sloane said in her usual flirty tone that she reserved for any male over the age of twelve. She completely ignored me.

  “Sloane. Looking lovely as usual,” Tim allowed. He was the only one of my college friends she had met before, and she went swooping in for the Euro double-cheek air kisses.

  “A word, Ridgewood.” Bidwell’s voice was still forced, but no longer jovial. He beckoned me out of the bar and over to a tufted purple velvet couch tucked against the lobby wall. It looked like it belonged in Liberace’s living room, with an old-fashioned, corded black phone on a wooden table nestled between the couch cushions.

  “Here’s how it works in the Bidwell household, son. If Sloane isn’t happy, my wife isn’t happy. If my wife isn’t happy, I hear about it twenty-five hours a day. Now, we’ve got a big year coming up, son. Big profits. With lots of points riding on it for you . . .”

  He fixed a stare on me that previously would have sent me cowering back to my corner office. But fuck the corner office. Fuck the profits and the points. I stonily stared back.

  “And your point is . . . ?”

  “Two choices.” He picked up the receiver of the old-timey phone for dramatic effect. “You call Butler and tell him to pack his shit up, because security is coming to escort him out of the building. You both lose your shares in the company and any claim on the prototypes in current development. Kiss the Series C equity financing good-bye.”

  He egged me on to take the handle of the phone but I kept my fists in my lap, mainly to keep myself from punching him.

  “Or,” he said simply, dropping the receiver back on its cradle, “you marry her, call me Dad, and give Anne and your lovely mother some grandchildren, and we can forget this conversation ever happened. It’s a no-brainer, Noah.”

  “Is this a threat?”

  “No. It’s a promise I made to myself, after Remy Georges almost destroyed her.”

  I was taken aback, not so much by the venom in his voice, but by the familiarity of the name.

  “Remy Georges? The photographer?”

  “That dirty Frog playboy broke my princess’s heart, and I’m not about to let a two-bit Wop hack off the street do the same.”

  I let the ethnic slur slide in favor of breaking the news to him like a steel pipe to the knees. “But . . . Sloane’s hired him, sir. As our wedding photographer.”

  Bidwell’s mouth gaped as wide as the mounted barracuda back on his office wall; when I was first hired, he’d bragged about hiring the best taxidermist in the business to create a fiberglass replica of his big catch, so he could release the poor sucker back into the wild.

  “But . . . but why would she—”

  For once, Bidwell and I were on the same page. The hell if I knew. Was Sloane looking for revenge? If so, an elaborate wedding to rub her ex’s nose in it was pretty extreme. Then again, this was Sloane we were talking about.

  “Oh, that little girl of mine holds a grudge a mile long.” He shook his head. “Always has. But I won’t stand for it. You call that money-grubbing piece of trash and tell him his services are no longer needed. Got it?”

  He touched the Liberace phone between us again, as if to remind me of his earlier threat. Now the barracuda look was in his toothy grin. So much for the catch-and-release program; he wasn’t going to let me off the hook anytime soon.

  “And book a chapel here. Let’s get this over with.”

  He stood, giving his suit jacket a tug. “You have until Saturday. Might want to have that suit pressed, while you’re at it,” he added, and strode back to the bar.

  I followed him stiffly, my mind still reeling over this bomb that had been dropped. This bombe nucléaire. I thought about all the French phrases Sloane slipped into just about every conversation. She must’ve been obsessed with the guy. And now she was using her money and influence—and me—to get back at him. Before he left for Paris.

  No wonder she had been so insistent on the date change.

  She wanted him there, to torture him with what he could’ve had.

  And what was I? Just some weapon in her stash. Riding along in Bidwell’s deep back pocket. She didn’t love me. She probably never had.

  I felt like a tool.

  It was as if the phone call to Sloane had never registered, never stuck. She and her mom were yapping about—what else? The wedding. They had been incapable of discussing anything else for the last year. Tim’s eyes must’ve glazed over at the first mention of pomander balls and bombonieres. “We’ll leave you two,” Bidwell said, and with that, he adjourned the board meeting by clapping a hand on Tim’s shoulder. “Alone.”

  Tim was determined to leave no man behind. Least of all, his best friend. “Noah and I were actually just discussing my best man duties, and—”

  “It’s okay, Tim. We’ll reconvene later,” I told him.

  “You sure?”

  I picked up my drink with my left hand. “As you were, Sergeant,” I said, pointedly toasting him with my first two fingers crossed. “I need some alone time with my bride-to-be.”

  He gave me the thumbs-up, drained his drink, and pushed off the bar stool. “Nice to see you all.”

  “Carry it flat, Mother. I want it to be perfect.”

  Sloane unloaded what appeared to be twenty pounds of wedding dress across her petite mother’s outstretched arms. “The steamer says she can’t be here until Friday.”

  Anne Bidwell remained impassive, either used to her daughter’s demands or unable to express emotion due to all the Botox injections in her once-beautiful face.

  I flicked my eyes in Tim’s direction once more. With one palm flat, the other hand making a small circle above it, Tim turned on his heel and walked toward the casino. I saw him swing one arm around. Map check and move out. He was going to assemble the troops in one place. Knowing Tim, he was planning a military maneuver to blow this Popsicle stand.

  “Daddy booked us a luxury suite at the Paris,” Sloane was saying. “I want to try the new Gordon Ramsay there, and of course, Le Provencal.” Suddenly her French didn’t sound all that exotic or impressive to me. But apparently it did to her, since she kept rattling on as if she just liked hearing the sound of her own voice. “And Mother arranged a private backstage tour of Jubilee for the four of us at Bally’s, tomorrow at two. It is supposed to be gaudy and fabulous, with all those crazy outfits. How do you think I would look in all the feathers and sequins?” She struck her version of a Vegas showgirl pose for me.

  My mouth opened, then it clicked shut. “Unbelievable,” was all I could muster.

  “Order for me, Noah?” Drink selector was just one of the tasks Sloane had assigned to me as boyfriend early on. Along with purse holder, shopping bag carrier, and doormat.

  I flicked through Vesper’s creative mixed drinks menu, trying to de
cide what was the most suitable drink for the occasion. Corpse Bride? Fear and Loathing? The Cyanara?

  I leaned toward the bartender. “A Blue Blood. And another Hendertucky, please.” I noticed my AmEx was no longer in the check holder. Jerking my head up, I saw Tim’s back disappear into the crowd. That crafty son of a bitch.

  Sloane’s eyes surveyed me coolly, taking in my three-day scruff and rumpled suit. “You look like you’ve slept in your clothes.”

  “I sort of did. Big delay,” I began. “I still haven’t been reunited with my luggage.”

  I touched my tie defensively, and a jolt of adrenaline burst though me as the image of Brioni silk, sliding between Laney’s breasts and down the rest of her gorgeous body, hit me.

  “Oh, you poor thing!”

  Sloane put on her concerned girlfriend actress mask for show and moved to embrace me, but I put a hand up between us. I didn’t want her invading that sacred space or clouding my mind with her passive-aggressive tactics.

  “Out of all the flights you could have taken, you chose a nondirect? What were you thinking?”

  “I wasn’t thinking,” I said drily. But I am now.

  Out of all the flights, how did I land on Laney’s?

  Luck? Fate?

  My eyes focused in on the woman I had proposed to in front of Buckingham Fountain that Valentine’s Day past. We had had the Initial Public Offering on our app stock . . . and I had gone into Insane Proposal Overdrive. What had I been thinking?

  When Laney asked me back at O’Hare how I felt about pretending to be engaged to a total stranger, she had no idea its double meaning.

  The bartender brought the fresh drinks. I swiftly moved Laney’s drawing before Sloane could use it as a cocktail napkin. “I hear there’s an Aureole here,” she said breezily. “Their bar is supposed to put the one in New York to shame. We should have dinner there. And I want to try the Wicked Spoon, upstairs, for brunch. It’s received amazing reviews.”

  “Sloane,” I started. I didn’t want to think about suffering through another dinner with her, or brunch, or anything in between. If I didn’t say something now, my whole existence would be moving from one decadent feast to another, the experience meaningless, tasteless. Empty. I thought about Slim Jims and root beer floats and Laney.

  “It’s now or never,” I heard an unfamiliar voice announce behind me.

  It was raspy and robust but at the same time, diminutive. I swiveled my head the other way but was met with an empty bar stool. I dropped my gaze down a few inches.

  Dressed in a small white outfit with a plunging V-neck and a high collar, a miniature version of Elvis stared up at me expectantly. His jumpsuit had a blue-and-gold peacock design embroidered on the front and along the wide pant legs, and probably all across the back as well.

  A huge belt, covered in gold medallions and forming a design at the center that resembled the eye of a peacock feather, cinched his tiny waist. I thought about Laney’s peacock feather tattoo and my insides turned to jelly. “For luck,” she’d told me.

  The mini Elvis’s hair was a perfect black pompadour, and his sideburns were thicker than mine could ever grow. “Well?” He gestured. “A little help here? I got a show in twenty.”

  “Oh. Sure, man.”

  He put his shoe (not blue suede, I noted, but a classic white buck instead) on the rung of the bar stool and lifted an arm. I grabbed him near the elbow and in a swift heave-ho, he was up on the high white stool next to me.

  “Thanks.” He grinned.

  Sloane, meanwhile, was growing impatient on the other side of me. She was the only person I knew over the age of four who needed constant entertaining and attention. It was exhausting and nowhere near as novel as during our initial courtship testing of the waters. I could only imagine it getting worse during the nuptial and newlywed phase. If only I had had the sense to put our relationship under the microscope like an alpha/beta trial years ago, I would’ve seen the glaring defects.

  “Are you done playing tourist and hobnobbing with the locals?” she snarled, stabbing her ice with her stirrer.

  I swiveled to look at her. I had been playing tourist all my life, apparently. Gawking at the glitz and giving much too much attention to the meaningless souvenirs along the way.

  Now, Noah. Or never.

  Or forever hold your peace.

  “Sloane, you gave me a shot that day, because you said I made you laugh. But honestly, I don’t think we’ve laughed together once since that day. I’m not happy in this relationship, and I can’t imagine you are, either.”

  “I don’t know why you are saying this.” She haughtily sipped her drink. “We make a great couple. All my friends are jealous of us.”

  “Including Remy?”

  She froze. “He’s just the hired help,” she said icily. God, is she really that ruthless? “He has nothing to do with us.”

  “There is no ‘us,’ Sloane! It stopped being about us soon after the wedding was announced. I want to be in a partnership, not an ownership.”

  “So I’ll change,” she said flippantly, as if she was talking about swapping her little black Helmut Lang dress for this season’s Stella McCartney’s.

  “You’ve already been changing! And for all the wrong reasons. You’ve had all these surgeries, made all this fuss, just so you can get back at some guy who dumped you?”

  Color drained from her perfectly made-up face. “I have no idea what you are talking about.” Her voice shook as she tried to regain her composure. “You can go have dinner with the boys,” she allowed, swinging her Tory Burch satchel bag onto her arm and almost knocking the peewee peacocked Elvis off his stool. “I’ve got the spa booked.” She was off in a cloud of flowery perfume and the click-clack of her Louboutins.

  “What. A. Royal. Bitch.” Elvis used a dramatic pause between each word for emphasis, and all I could do was nod, shake my head, and nod again. “Not to stick my nose in or anything. But I was right here and couldn’t help but witness it.”

  “Do you mind me asking . . . what’s with the peacocks?”

  “The King was fascinated by the symbol of the peacock as a good-luck charm,” he rasped. “Sounds like you could use a roomful of them.”

  I wasn’t religious, but if that was a sign from above, it couldn’t have been any clearer than if the gargantuan chandelier were to come crashing down on my head.

  Miniature Elvis drained his drink, hopped down, and swaggered off.

  “Excuse me.” I jogged after him. “But where can I find more of you?”

  He looked taken aback. “People of very short stature?”

  “No. More Elvii.”

  Set it Free

  All You Had to Do

  I’m in another time zone

  I’m zoned out

  I’m shut in.

  My mind is reeling

  I wish it’d shut up

  What I’m feeling,

  I wanna shut down.

  All I have to do is

  Forget you

  Not say your name

  Not take your call

  It should be easy to

  Hate you

  ’Cuz

  All you had to do was,

  All you had to do was tell me

  After all.

  It’s not fair

  It ain’t right

  I still want to hold you through the night

  Want you to whisper all the things you never told me

  In my ear

  Now all you have to do is

  Forgive me

  Say my name

  Will you take my call

  It should be easy to

  break me

  ’Cuz

  All you ever did was

  love me

  After all.

  (music a
nd lyrics by Allen S. Burnside, copyright 2007 Laney Jane Hudson)

  “Laney?”

  “Still alive, Mom.”

  “Is your flight still on time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you at the airport?”

  “No.”

  I stared across the Pacific, imagining the sigh she let go traveling from the Hawaiian islands, skimming the top of the water, and making landfall, blowing back my hair as it came ashore.

  “The dress will get there in time for the wedding, Mom.”

  “I didn’t just want the dress here, I wanted you here, too!”

  I stood up and walked to the shoreline, the dress bag in my hand waving like a warning flag. “What about what I wanted, Mom? All those years ago! I wanted to go to California with Allen.” The horizon blurred beneath my tears.

  “It wouldn’t have changed what happened to him, Laney.”

  “Who’s to say?” I screamed. “Who’s to say I shouldn’t just put on this wedding dress and walk right into the ocean and join him?”

  “Laney. I’ve got just one thing to say on the matter.”

  “What? A Veraism?”

  “No, I didn’t make this one up. And I don’t want you to draw it. I want you to just listen. If you love something, you have to set it free.”

  “Oh, and if it comes back, you get to marry it a second time, like Ernie? And if it doesn’t come back, it’s died of cancer?”

  “I should’ve told you about Ernie before this.”

  Allen’s lyrics, penned just for me, were ricocheting through my skull like a pinball.

  All you had to do was tell me.

  “You should’ve told me a lot of things, Mom! You shopped at that King Kullen supermarket every week! You saw Allen’s mom and she told you he was sick and you never told me! We could’ve had more time.”

  “I know you aren’t going to believe me, but I loved Allen, too. Like he was my son. But you know my first marriage ended before it started. We were so, so young and we had to learn the hard way. I didn’t want you and Allen making the same mistakes. I always had faith in Allen’s talents; I had no doubt he would go far.”