Nine Women, One Dress

by Jane L. Rosen

  Lucinda fixes the curtains across the room.

  LUCINDA Maybe you could use a few more hours.

  DAPHNE What was that, Lucinda?

  LUCINDA I said, Mr. Beauregard has been out riding for hours.

  DAPHNE We have cocktails at the Whitmans’ tonight. I want to wear that darling dress I bought last week in Atlanta. They said Jackie Kennedy has the same one. Lay out my diamonds and my pearls—I’ll start dressing at five. Oh, which shoes shall I wear? Better make it four-thirty. I have quite a few decisions to make.

  LUCINDA As you wish, Mrs. Beauregard.

  DAPHNE And for the hundredth time, Lucinda, you need not call me Mrs. Beauregard.

  LUCINDA Sorry, ma’am.

  DAPHNE Much better. Tomorrow I’ll be lunching in town. Please spend that time dusting off my snow-globe collection. And make sure it’s when Rose is napping. I don’t want her touching them.

  LUCINDA I know that, Mrs. Beauregard.

  DAPHNE For the love of sweet Jesus, please call me ma’am.

  At that point I stopped running the lines in my head. I was distracted by the man next to me. He had a small notebook. Probably a critic. He wrote down three words. I tried to read out of the corner of my eye.

  Over her head.

  Over her head. Oh boy. Could he be talking about the maid? For the love of sweet Jesus, please let him be talking about the maid. Maybe he was from Newsday. We could survive a bad review from Newsday. As long as it wasn’t the Times. Jesus—seven lines in and he already thinks she’s in over her head. And she hasn’t even slipped out of her southern accent yet. That usually doesn’t happen till Act Two.

  Daphne’s husband entered the scene. His disdain for Daphne was palpable. As was the critic’s disdain for Jordana. He wrote a word I’d hoped not to see.

  Ambitious.

  You may think of this word as complimentary. I knew it wasn’t. I pictured his review.

  Ms. Winston might have chosen a less ambitious role for her Broadway debut. One that didn’t have her accent stray farther south of her native Los Angeles than, let’s say, Pasadena.

  Onstage, Reggie Beauregard took hold of Daphne’s most precious snow globe—an antique replica of Niagara Falls—and threw it to the ground.

  Daphne shrieks.

  DAPHNE Not the Niagara Falls! You know that belonged to Mama!

  REGINALD Well, now it belongs to no one. And if you don’t stop meddling in my business, you will belong to no one as well.

  Reginald exits stage right. Daphne throws herself onto the bed and sobs.

  Curtain down. End of Act One.

  The critic and his companion hurried to the bar as soon as the lights came on for intermission. I sidled up next to them, ordered a martini, and searched Web images of New York theater critics on my phone. I nearly choked on my olive. The man standing next to me was none other than Brad Bentley, chief drama critic for the New York Times. This is a total nightmare.

  “She is way too old for that part. The guy who plays Reginald could be her son,” said his crony. Bentley agreed as he ordered another scotch. Maybe he would sleep through the second act. What was I going to do? A bad review in the Times would devastate her. Too old for the part? I could not imagine the hell and Botox a remark like that would bring about.

  He spoke to his friend. “At least you can leave. I have to stay for the second act!” His friend dismissed the suggestion, but I took it.

  I ran from the theater as if it were on fire and hailed a cab. You may wonder what I see in this narcissistic prima donna beyond a meal ticket, but I love her. I do. There’s something underneath the drama, underneath the ego, that speaks to me. We understand each other. And I’m her person. It’s better being her person than being the person I am without her—an out-of-work actor who hasn’t been cast in anything since Titanic, when my character’s name was First to Drown. Well, I wasn’t going to drown today. Today I was going to jump ship, and I was going to take my darling egomaniac leading lady with me.

  I made all the necessary arrangements in the car back to the hotel. The second act was only fifty minutes long, so I had to multitask. The three-hour time difference between New York and L.A. helped. I called Jordana’s assistant back home and had her arrange first-class tickets for the midnight flight to Paris and a suite at the Plaza Athénée. At three a.m., when the reviews came out, we would be sound asleep somewhere over the Atlantic. Thank god and her agent that she never signed that contract. I ran up to our suite, threw some essentials and half her wardrobe in my black wheelie bag, grabbed our passports, and was back in my seat before the finale.

  In my absence Daphne and Reggie had returned from the Whitmans’ dinner party, where Daphne had accused Reggie of groping the Whitmans’ maid in the pantry. As payback he’d smashed every last one of her snow globes. This drove her mad, and the play wrapped up with Jordana wrapped up in a straitjacket, being taken away to an asylum. The curtain dropped. People clapped, mostly I think because it was over, and I hurried backstage during the curtain call to wait for her in her dressing room. She came bursting in, full of exuberance and hope. Actually, it wasn’t hope—she was completely certain she’d been fabulous.

  “Was I fabulous, darling? Tell me!” It was definitely a “Tell me!” not a “Tell me?” Already down to just her slip, she reached for the little black dress she was to wear to the opening-night party. She couldn’t wait to take in all the accolades she was sure would be forthcoming.

  I broke it to her gently. I knew it would hurt less coming from me. I’m her person; this is what I do.

  “I thought you were fabulous, baby, really I did, but I sat next to Brad Bentley, you know, the critic from the Times—”

  She interrupted me; her exuberance had turned to irritation. “Of course I know who Brad Bentley is. I wasn’t born yesterday!”

  “Well, he seems to have noticed that. And I’m pretty sure that he’s writing that you’re in over your head. I’m sorry.”

  She sat down and breathed. She could be pretty clear-headed when it came to her own damage control. “The reviews will be out at three a.m., right?”

  I nodded.

  “Did you see anything else?”

  “He wrote the word ambitious,” I said, in as humane a whisper as I could.

  She grimaced. She knew that word was lethal. “We need to be as far from here as possible when that review comes out!”

  “How’s Paris?” I pulled out the wheelie bag I’d stashed before sneaking back to my seat and told her that everything was arranged. We went out the front of the theater to avoid the crowds that would be waiting by the stage door and jumped into a waiting car. She stripped off the little black dress that had been so full of promise when it had arrived, shoved it in the luggage, and threw on the disguise I had brought her: a Juicy Couture tracksuit and a dark brown wig.

  “The show must go on!” she proclaimed grandly. “Without me!”

  “JFK Airport,” I said to the driver as I marveled at her resilience.

  CHAPTER 20

  The Juicy Couture Tracksuit vs. the Burqa

  By Medina Karim, Shireen’s Levelheaded Sister

  Age: 16

  I was used to the stares, but somehow my sister wasn’t. Even though she was two years older than me—you’d think that’s two more years to get used to it. Our entire trip to New York City was narrated by her complaining about the stares. Even just now, while my sister was complaining about it, I noticed a woman in an obvious wig and an ugly Juicy Couture tracksuit staring at us.

  You may think it odd that I am familiar with Juicy Couture, but I know of the latest fashions as well as the outdated ones. You may think it odd because I am wearing a burqa. So is my sister. So is my mother. But my sister reads all the latest French fashion magazines. We live in Paris. In her dreams she lives in a fantasy world where people stare at her because she is beautifully dressed from head to toe in the latest Chanel or Dolce & Gabbana, not because she is robed from head
to toe in her religion. Her eyes often well up in response to the reactions of strangers. I believe those tears are due to her own disappointment that she is not a Westerner or, even more ridiculous, a Western model on the pages of a fashion magazine. I fan through the magazines when she is finished with them, but I do not live in a fantasyland and I’m honored to wear a burqa. I wish she would seek refuge with Allah and give up these thoughts.

  Suddenly my sister, Shireen, noticed the Juicy Couture woman as well. I wondered what took her this long. “Look, over there, that woman in the out-of-style tracksuit is staring at us. We should stare at her in that putrid outfit! She can wear anything she wants and that’s what she chooses?” The woman made matters worse by whispering something to the man next to her, doing a sort of half point in our direction. A quick poke for his attention, then a flick of the wrist to direct him to look at the circus act: Muslim women dressed in full burqas in the Western world.

  “What do you think she’s saying about us?” Shireen asked me.

  I softened it, as I always did. “It’s hot in here. Maybe she’s saying, See those girls with the pretty eyes—they must be hot.”

  “I am hot,” Shireen responded, even more annoyed at realizing it. We both looked over at our younger brother in his New York Yankees T-shirt. This infuriated her more—him wearing that T-shirt and us cloaked in our religion. She did not feel the strong bond that I did to our mother and her mother before her in our native Saudi Arabia. My mother knew this, to some extent. Last year she even bought Shireen a special burqa made of crepe, with black velvet trim. Shireen told me the velvet made her cry more. It was like a taste of something that left her wanting.

  She interrupted my thoughts. “Dalia was all wrong about New York, all wrong,” she complained. Dalia is our cousin who spent last summer in New York. She went on and on about how Manhattan was different from Paris, how people didn’t stare so much. How in New York you could walk down the street with a camel and no one would stare at you. She was right in that New York is a melting pot. America in general is much more of a melting pot than anywhere in Europe, I think. Europe has a lot of different nationalities in each country, of course, but they never really seem to melt together. You can move to Germany, but you never really become a German. The same is very true of France, and I have been living there since the age of two. In America anyone can become a true American. What Dalia was wrong about was the staring. There are people in New York who seem content to spend their whole day perched on benches staring at other people. It even has a name: people-watching. It’s like bird-watching but without the binoculars. Still, it didn’t bother me.

  Shireen decided she was going to take down the Juicy Couture starer with just her eyes. She’d had enough. She stood and walked toward Juicy and the guy she was with and gave them a good, long, obvious stare back. It actually worked. They ran off to a corner and sat with magazines plastered in front of their faces until our flight was called. We laughed so hard that it drew my father’s attention, which was not a good thing. They called for our flight to board at just the right time.

  Once on the plane, Shireen looked sad again. I didn’t have to ask her why. She would be married in two weeks’ time, and the trip to New York, which she had thought would satisfy her yearning to explore, had done nothing for her. We had barely been allowed out of our father’s sight; thinking it would be any other way had been just a silly dream of hers. She would be married in two weeks to a man she barely knew and did not love. I know she had dreamed of things that have never even entered my mind. Dreams of dressing in the clothing on the pages of the magazines and attracting a man—even though those dreams defy the exact reason that we wear a burqa: to protect us from the lustful gaze of men. Shireen yearned for the lustful gaze of men. She dreamed of kissing a man. Not her husband, just any man. It is a sin to kiss anything with the intention of lust, anything, even a rock. I didn’t envy her dreams. They brought her only dissatisfaction with life.

  CHAPTER 21

  Indiscretion at the Ostrich Detective Agency

  By Andie Rand, Private Detective

  It had been two weeks since my interaction with John Westmont, but I was still thinking about it like it was yesterday. I had nearly skipped the whole way home from Bloomingdale’s. I mean not really skipped, but there was an extra bounce in my step. I was anticipating my phone call with Caroline and the relief that she would feel when I told her the good news. I thought about what I would say. He’s a keeper, Caroline! You got one of the good ones! A little unprofessional, I thought. But it was such a rarity for me to have this kind of storybook ending. In fact, it’s only happened twice in the three years I’ve been in the business. When one spouse thinks the other is cheating, they’re most often right. I’m not talking about the ordinary paranoia people sometimes feel in a marriage, I’m talking about enough paranoia to cause you to seek professional help. But the Westmonts had restored my faith in the sanctity of marriage. At least for the half hour it took me to not really skip home.

  I called Caroline’s cell and left her a message asking her to call me back. She called back within minutes. My cheerful “Hello, Caroline!” was met with a whisper from the other end.

  “Why are you whispering?” I whispered in return.

  “Because I’m hiding in a closet,” she said, adding, “John is right outside.”

  “Right outside?”

  He had said he was meeting her at Le Cirque straight from Bloomingdale’s. My heart sank. Had he put one over on me? It couldn’t be. Oh my god, I bet the present wasn’t even for Caroline. I felt sick.

  “Yes,” she said quietly, “I’ve had to spend the whole afternoon with him! I’m hoping you have enough dirt for me to cancel our dinner plans in a fitful rage and at least save my evening!”

  “You spent the whole afternoon with your husband, John Westmont?” I said incredulously.

  “Yes, and every minute with him leaves me feeling more and more demoralized. I can’t take much more of this. Please tell me you know something.”

  “I know that you’re lying to me. Though I’m not sure why.”

  “What are you talking about? What part am I lying about?”

  “It can be so hard to tell once you start, can’t it? You tell me. Go through all your lies and throw one out at me. Let’s see if it sticks.”

  My question was met with silence, and my anger boiled over.

  “I spent the afternoon with your husband,” I said, breaking the silence. “At Bloomingdale’s, helping him pick out an anniversary present for you. Let’s start with that. Why are you lying to me about that?”

  She laughed. Laughed. As if her response was going to humor me.

  “All right, you caught me. I should have just been straight with you to begin with, but I didn’t know if you’d take the case and get me what I needed if you knew the truth. I’m the one having the affair, not John.”

  I couldn’t even find the words to express how betrayed I felt. Her swollen eyes and monumental lies were all just an act to get me to take on her case. And it didn’t help that John was such a nice man. I was furious. I hadn’t been lied to like that—to my face and so cavalierly—since Derek, and it really struck a nerve. She continued without missing a beat.

  “This is getting tiresome, and it’s clearly not working. We’re going to need to do things differently. I knew there was a chance that there’d be nothing to get on John, the patron saint of husbands. I was hoping he’d do something that looked at least halfway suspicious, but he’s too boring even for that. It’s okay—I have a backup plan.”

  She went on about her plan and I listened quietly as my mind reeled. I could have just said, I’m not interested in your plan, you lying cheat, and you are no longer my client, but I waited—partly out of curiosity, partly because the extent of her duplicity was slow to sink in.

  Her plan was quite elaborate. I was to make another appointment with the masseuse and plant evidence, including a naked picture of John, when I was
left alone to disrobe. She would come in later that day to confront her and find said evidence.

  At that point I stopped her. I told her that it would never work and that I don’t plant evidence, and I fired her as a client. It actually might have worked, but obviously it was criminal and immoral and I wanted no part of it. I spent the rest of that night wallowing in my Cabernet and thinking of poor John with the elegant black silk evening bag and the pink envelope with the heart on it.

  Weeks later I was still thinking about him. I was having one of those days when you find a reason to cry in every song you hear. It was an off weekend with my kids, and while you may think that sounds free and liberating I often find it sad, lonely, and depressing. If only the most unconditional love in my life, my dog, Franny, could stay with me, I wouldn’t feel as deserted and would have a solid reason to get out of the house. But Franny was included in the visitation agreement. Better for the kids, he said. All of a sudden he was concerned with what’s better for the kids. The hypocrisy…

  Even though this is Manhattan and there are a hundred things to do on any given day, I was sitting in my office feeling melancholy. So I decided to check in on what John Westmont was up to. I’d like to say it was the first time I had done this, but I’d be lying. At first I just did it to see whether Caroline had removed the tracker from John’s phone, but she hadn’t even bothered. Then I just found myself wondering what he was doing. It was bizarre behavior, I admit, but I’d been rather bored lately. He seemed to be moving quickly down Madison Avenue. Realizing with a jolt that what I was doing was no better than common stalking, I exited from the program and vowed not to check again. And I took it one step further. Caroline had set it up so I’d be copied on all John’s incoming e-mails. Since she seemed to have no intention of deactivating that either, I decided I would run a search and mark all of them as spam so they would all be redirected into my junk folder from now on. Out of sight, out of mind.