I'll Eat When I'm Dead

by Barbara Bourland

  Raphael and June had shrieked with joy when she’d walked through the Beinecke doors the following day. “We can wig you so much more easily now,” June had said happily. Cat just sighed in reply and tried to get past them to her office, where she’d closed the door and spent the next two weeks prepping content for the December issue.

  After the disaster that was October—it had done a mere half-million on newsstands globally after being eviscerated online, and Cat guessed they wouldn’t have anything for November, either, now that the cover girl was dead—Margot had assigned Cat to oversee a photo shoot that Hillary had originally proposed for the December issue, titled Bridle: The Exquisite Ties That Bind. The shoot intended to showcase the nation’s ten best-selling mass-produced wedding gowns.

  Hillary had put together a proposal to update those dresses using high-tech, sustainable fabrics whose sheen could approximate that of small-run Italian silk satin or handwoven French lace, with the help of the latest 3-D printing and laser cutting techniques. She’d sourced the quantities needed for the manufacturers in question to update their stock throughout the entire North American retail corridor, including a thirteen-yard-wide section of fabric made from a 3-D printing lab in Los Alamos, which Cat realized must have been the spool of “ribbon” she’d died next to.

  Margot had put the shoot on pause once Hillary died, but now that RAGE was focusing on sustainability, it was worth a shot, and so to sweeten the arrangement, Paula had spent the last two weeks directing RAGE’s attorneys and their lobbying firm to negotiate a ten-year import deal with Customs and Border Protection for each of the participating manufacturers. All that was left was the shoot itself, now Cat’s responsibility; it had originally been assigned to Lou, but given the remarkable failure of the October issue, she’d been yanked from the project entirely.

  The handmade samples were in the cargo hold below. The shoot was scheduled for two days from now, the last free day before Paris Fashion Week officially started. Bridle: The Exquisite Ties That Bind was a feature that would hopefully prove to be both high-fashion and high-minded. Most importantly, it could break RAGE’s politics into the wedding market for the very first time, an industry so wildly profitable that RAGE had never made an iota of impact. Women everywhere, manipulated by the complex retail politics of “their day,” had always been happy to shell out thousands of dollars for what were, in the end, mostly synthetic rags made in brutal East Asian sweatshops with astronomical profit margins. On lower- and mid-priced wedding dresses, everything from the fabrics to the stitching were usually fabricated by actual children, little girls who must have looked at the plastic lace and faux pearls that they sewed on so carefully with a particularly grotesque sense of fate’s cruelty.

  Cat finally understood why those last six months had been so important to Hillary, why her friend had been so concerned about RAGE, about their jobs, about their stability as a team: Hillary had seen that RAGE would need to pivot before anyone else did. Mania’s “proprietary ethical rating” had oversaturated their moral high ground over the last three years, and readers officially no longer cared about the difference between editorial and advertorial, not when they perceived each to hold the same values. It was time to find a new tower to shout from.

  Cat had wanted to discuss the shoot with Hutton the moment Paula handed her Hillary’s notes. Her friend had died next to that box of “ribbon,” something so trivial and odd that he’d asked her about it in their very first conversation. No one will know, she’d tried to tell herself, attempting to rationalize violating RAGE’s famously complete non-disclosure agreement. Yet in the end she hadn’t said a thing about the shoot to Hutton—because he’d never called her or texted her again. Detective Mark Hutton had completely disappeared from her life.

  When she returned to her seat, Bess was already snoring across the aisle, a sleep mask banded over her eyes, moisturizing gloves and socks on her hands and feet. She must be exhausted, Cat thought. Bess had been handling their appearances for the last two weeks all by herself.

  The gamine air hostess was nearly done making up Cat’s lie-flat bed with real goose-down pillows and a puffy, oversized duvet. She smoothed the sheets with a flick of her red-gloved palm, turned down the lights, lightly misted the pillowcases with lavender linen water, and motioned to Cat that it was ready before gracefully moving on to the next berth.

  Cat climbed in, eager to get some shut-eye before they landed in Paris for what she hoped would be her final few weeks as RAGE’s very own live-action marionette. Margot had been out of the office for the last week, supposedly meeting with their international editions on a round-the-world tour, so Paula, seated in the next section up in one of the four suites of the risibly lavish Premiere Classe, had been at the helm. Cat had worked up the courage three days earlier to ask her about returning to the office permanently; Paula had put her off. We’ll discuss after Paris, she’d said.

  This week would begin with a few events and Hillary’s shoot, followed by nonstop shows and meetings with European brands, mostly in public and always on behalf of the magazine. It was just ten more days, Cat told herself. All she had to do was make it through the next Sunday, and maybe, if there was time, she could go see her parents before flying back home. She slid in a pair of earplugs, popped a Klonopin, washed it down with some white wine that tasted faintly of rancid nail polish, and passed out.

  Six hours later a red-gloved hand rested lightly on her shoulder. Cat blinked awake in the still-dark cabin. “Petit déjeuner, madame?” whispered the air hostess; Cat nodded, feeling dazed. “Café noir, double, s’il vous plaît,” she whispered back before grabbing her toiletries and making her way to the bathroom.

  By the time she returned to her berth someone had magically removed all her linens and remade her seat into a chair. The outfit she’d brought had been steamed, pressed, and hung in the narrow cubby above her ottoman, and her breakfast—a perfect double shot of espresso and two plain slices of toast—had been laid out on a table folded down from the wall and covered with a thick white tablecloth and heavy silverware. As Cat settled back into her seat, Bess yawned across the aisle and pulled her sleep mask over her forehead.

  “Are we there yet?” Bess asked in a childish singsong, her face still half-smushed into her pillow.

  “Forty-five minutes or so,” Cat replied. “Want some breakfast?” Bess smiled and nodded.

  Cat signaled for two more coffees. Bess yawned again, stretched her long limbs like a puppy, then wandered up to the bathroom in her flannel pajamas for her own toilette while Cat nibbled on her toast and started her second double espresso.

  Soon the whole cabin was awake and chatting genially while they ate their customized breakfasts—fresh avocado salads, granolas, sausages, roasted grapefruits. Cat watched a chèvre-salmon-dill omelet go by and felt her stomach recoil. Lately, so achingly tense that she could barely stand to eat anything, Cat stuck to the pediatrician’s standby, BRAT: bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast. She said a silent prayer for the day that her anxiety would subside enough to actually digest meats and cheeses again. For the past few weeks, Cat had been feeling a combination of dread and the same nonstop adrenaline that had dominated previous major escarpments in her life: her junior year of high school, her last year of college, the six months before she’d taken her graduate school comps, her first year working for Hillary.

  But anxiety wasn’t the only thing that kept her from eating. Cat was now so focused on the way she fit into clothes that she’d become obsessed with herself, unable to daydream about anything except the hollows between her bones. A few days before she’d caught herself staring with envy at the slenderness of what turned out to be a child.

  Cat knew these feelings were wrong.

  She knew they were a sickness. A capital-P Problem.

  But when she felt the slender breeze of other people’s envy: the moment they watched her pointed elbow rest on a table, or when their eyes slipped down to the pockets developing behind her cl
avicles—oh, it was a rush. The thinnest woman in the room proved her discipline and power just by being herself. It was akin to being a queen or inheriting a billion dollars. Nobody could take it away from you. You could only take it away from yourself.

  She swallowed the last of her espresso and returned to the restroom to change into the Albert V. outfit the cabin staff had so thoughtfully hung out for her.

  Cat had made an effort her very first year at RAGE to profile all the employees of Albert’s Paris boutique, including the cleaning lady, who naturally wore a custom pair of Albert V. overalls. Albert sent a friendly thank-you note, and she’d sent a funny card back; a half-dozen letters and a few very brief in-person chats and years later, Cat received this mystery box via messenger with a note—won’t you wear this when you arrive to Paris?—in his long, fine scrawl.

  She held it up. The base layer was a crisp black cotton mid-length dress with a full skirt and neckline that plunged in a narrow rectangle to the bottom of her rib cage. Next, a wraparound belt cinched her waist and created a curve where none had previously been visible. The shoes he’d sent were slip-on sandals, heavily fringed, their leather thin and flat as paper; the matching jacket was short—cut just under her armpits—to show off the hard work accomplished by the dress.

  With her shorn hair, thick black eyeliner, blocky sunglasses, and the rectangular leather backpack she’d brought as a carry-on, Cat looked like a terrorist sent from the future. She nodded at her reflection, then found her way back to her seat.

  Bess had changed, too, in the restroom opposite, and now looked every inch the all-American sweetheart. She wore very pale blue jeans, a white cotton dress shirt, incredibly high striped stiletto pumps, and a thin rose-gold chain. Her hair had been blown out and pinned before the flight to give studied volume and shape to her otherwise-unruly curls, now the very color and quality of honey. She smiled broadly at Cat. A rust-colored suede trench, also coated in fringe, lay folded in her lap. Her handbag was an embroidered American football.

  “I think I’m actually excited,” she said to Cat, who tried to smile. “Did you see this Virtue coat they sent me? I’m dying over it.”

  Bess’s wardrobe had increased tenfold over the past few weeks, beginning the day after Bess and Jent Brooks had been caught sneaking out of Portmanteau, a pop-up speakeasy housed in a train car inside the long-abandoned subway station at Worth Street. Virtue had been the first brand to get in touch. Bess had agreed but insisted that she be allowed to keep everything she wanted; they’d balked and tried to back out. Ella had stepped in, and after three days of negotiations, during which Bess and Jent were captured sailing on the Hudson, making out in the backseat of a yellow cab, playing shuffleboard in Brooklyn, and, the real coup de grâce, looking at a West Side townhome with a huge Sotheby’s “For Sale” placket out front, Virtue more than caved. Not only would she get free clothing, she’d get fifty grand a year to wear it.

  Jent was short. There was no getting around it; with shoes on he was barely eye-level with Bess. Without them she had to lean down to kiss him. If they actually got married, she’d never have to wear heels again, she realized, feeling a mixture of elation and devastation as she thought about the rows and rows of shoes currently occupying the built-in bookshelves of her West Village apartment’s parlor. At least, she told herself, they’ll remain perfect forever—you can’t ruin shoes you don’t wear.

  But Jent’s height had turned out to be inversely proportional to his other traits, the biggest of which was his sense of humor. He made Bess laugh, big, deep belly laughs, and he was also cynical, confrontational, ambitious, practical, thrifty; everything that Bess, sweetheart straight-A pothead peacekeeping hoarder, was not. She flat out loved it. He acted all the ways she had always thought about acting, said all the things she’d always thought about saying. He was brave and strong even though he wasn’t tall, and, best of all, he rode a motorcycle, a beat-to-shit Honda café racer from the late seventies, a sporty, badass bike—loud, fast, and in constant need of repair. Bess was instantly fond of the way he looked sprawled out on the floor of his Bushwick loft, covered in grease and surrounded by parts.

  The night they met at Paahtoleipä he’d reached over and punched his number into her phone when no one else was looking, texting himself right away with the words Jent, it’s Bess, I love you. She’d laughed at the bravado of it and when he texted later that night—I love you too. Want to get married today?—she’d replied immediately, demanding, Take me to dinner tomorrow. Real food, no bullshit.

  He’d picked her up on his motorcycle and driven her across the bridge to Staten Island, taking her to a tiny restaurant in St. George called Enoteca Maria, where every night the kitchen was run by a different old Italian grandmother. They’d spent their first real date eating chicken feet while a ninety-year-old woman, her body made mostly of bosom, screamed at Bess that she was too skinny before presenting her with a single cheese ravioli the size of a bagel. It was everything that Bess never knew she’d always wanted, and the past few weeks had flown by, the appearances and events a mere blur between dates and free clothes.

  The landing gear growled up through the carpet as it kicked into place. The women buckled themselves in. A few short minutes later, they were pulling up to the gate, grabbing their coats and carry-ons, pulling out their embossed passport holders, and moving through immigration in a daze.

  Molly came out from coach and helped them stack their suitcases onto an aluminum cart, and the trio made it through customs without incident. Luckily the crowd on the other side was made up of only bleary-eyed families waiting for their loved ones, instead of photographers waiting to capture them carrying their own bags. The cameras, Cat knew, would be waiting outside the hotel.

  A slight man with dark hair and eyes held up a card with “ONO/BONNER/BEALE” written on it in marker. He walked them to his Peugeot, a half-minivan, half-SUV, and somehow loaded their bags into the tiny trunk and back row of seats.

  They turned onto the Avenue des Champs-Élysées and rode the magnificent boulevard all the way to the Place de la Concorde, then rounded the Tuileries to Hôtel Le Narcisse, the venerable five-star situated on the north side of the gardens. A bellman in a sharp navy uniform, including a tiny hat trimmed in gold tassels banded onto his head, escorted them inside.

  Le Narcisse, formerly owned by the Sultan of Yemen, had been the subject of a boycott for years until the sharia-law-loving sultan was forced to relinquish many of his assets to a class-action lawsuit for his USVI-based LLC initiated by over five hundred sex workers who claimed they’d been held by him against their will for periods of three months up to five years.

  In a magnificent twist of fate, the sex workers—both men and women—now collectively owned Hôtel Le Narcisse and the Plaza Greque in Paris, Hotel Genesis in Rome, the Beverly Glen Hotel in LA, the Boston Hotel in London, and a half-dozen other exquisite properties. The entire Boston Collection, as it was known, was now managed for them by the Diogenes Group; and Diogenes, in turn, was a subsidiary of Lucas Holding, BV—the massive and privately owned company inherited by Lou’s ex-husband Alexander.

  The remainder of RAGE’s full-time staff would arrive tomorrow and stay through the weekend, a delivery on Margot’s summer promise, and Lou had helped Molly arrange a takeover of the fifth and sixth floors at a significant discount. Cat prayed for a room of her own, but she thought it was probably unlikely, given how distant and awkward Lou had been with her lately—it had been weird after Callie died in Cat’s arms at Lou’s apartment, and then just plain bad once Cat had been given Hillary’s December shoot. Thankfully, Lou wasn’t due to arrive for several days, claiming obligations with her children until the end of the week.

  As Cat had expected, dozens of photographers were positioned across the street from the hotel. The men leaned against the iron fence of the Tuileries as they awaited the arrival of the incoming flock of editors, models, buyers, designers, and socialites who were in Paris to buy, talk about, th
ink about, covet, reject, and obsess over clothing. This industrial whirlpool of stuff would suck them all in while the men in the background counted their money—because all the labels Cat would see this week, the forty-plus “top” luxury brands that would “compete” during Paris Fashion Week, were owned by just six companies, all of them privately owned and commanded by men.

  Cat rotated a few times for them before saying, “Au revoir—un plus juste’avant le dîner,” swirling her finger to indicate she and Bess would be back and dressed in new outfits before dinner.

  “Merci, mesdames,” the photographers responded politely.

  As soon as they entered the elaborate lobby, its ceilings hung with crystal chandeliers and the damask furniture in the style of Louis XVI, a small man with polished black hair and a perfectly fitted navy suit appeared.

  “Bonjour, mesdames, Mademoiselle Ono, Mademoiselle Bonner, Mademoiselle Beale, bienvenue à Hôtel Le Narcisse.” He switched to English. “We are so happy to have you. We have a special treat for you. Our best suite, if you can perhaps take some photos of your stay?” He mimed taking a selfie. “Yes?”

  Cat, Bess, and Molly all nodded.

  “Okay, wonderful, here we go.”

  He made his way across the marbled lobby and led them to a private elevator. They rode up to the seventh floor, where the doors opened into a cavernous marble entry hall. The concierge moved quickly, his polished dress shoes tapping sharply on the floor, and brought them through an elaborately carved and painted wooden door into the most decadent hotel room Cat had ever seen.

  “No wonder they got their heads cut off,” Molly said under her breath.

  The windows looked out over all of Paris between casements of gilded, handcarved molding. A white grand piano, a painted antique harpsichord, and a scattering of silk sofas and chairs were placed around the enormous living room. The floors were carpeted in alabaster wool so fine that Cat was afraid to step on it. Tasseled white and beige Persian silk rugs had been placed underneath all the furniture, carved and polished woods that had the delicate, dollhouse look of the final French monarchies. Every single object in the room had been either gilded or inlaid—or both. A kennel of one’s own, thought Cat.