Best Friend for Hire

by Mary Mary Carlomagno

  “How is your sweet girl?” asked Pop.

  “She’s great,” James answered noncommittally. Anxious to turn the conversation away from Tara and their secret cohabitation, James panicked and flipped the conversation back to me.

  “How about you, Jessie, do you want to tell everyone about your new boyfriend?”

  “No, James, I don’t. Let’s talk about Tara a little more.”

  “Sure, you can tell them, what’s his name, the guy with the tattoos?”

  Memo to self: If I ever get out of here alive, kill James.

  “Tattoos? Madonna mia.” Nana invoked a prayer to the Virgin Mary.

  “Let’s talk about how great I was to help Tara with her move,” I volleyed back, not intending to reveal anything, but to win James back over to “Team Jessie.”

  “Why, where is she going?” asked my father innocently.

  The uncles worked on a conspiracy theory, mumbling something about “dames,” “cheating,” “they always leave you,” and “who can trust them.” But my mother was not to be sidetracked; she had seen enough Matlock episodes to know a cover-up when she saw one.

  “No one is going anywhere and no one is breaking up…” James answered in an effort to dispel the numerous erroneous theories at the table.

  “Then, what?” my father asked.

  James looked at me and I looked at him. It was like the gunfight at the OK Corral; someone would have to fire first. Instead of telling our own truth, like Oprah would have recommended, we each blurted out the other’s secret with fingers pointed instead of revolvers.

  “Tara and James are living together!”

  “Jessie is working at a bar with her new boyfriend!”

  The uncles dropped their forks. The grandmothers grabbed each other in a moment of pure panic and instinctively made the sign of the cross. And my mother silently stood up and left the table. James and I stared at each other, embarrassed by what we had done as my father continued to eat, seemingly unfazed by what he had just heard. He looked at both of us, but neither of us could meet his stare. We sat with our heads down and concentrated on our plates. The room was quiet for the next several moments and then Pop broke the silence and asked the only question anyone at the table really cared about:

  “Is he Italian, at least?”

  I was standing in the middle of a crowded sports bar, shoulder to shoulder with a group of rambunctious New York Islanders fans during a playoff game. Hockey is one of those sports that has a seemingly endless regular season as well as an endless playoff season. The sport seemed like it never took an off-season break. This was similar to my current problem, planning Emily’s wedding, which was also showing signs of having no off-season. There are times in a person’s life that make one ask, how did I get to this place? One may even inventory the events that led them to these watershed moments in their lives. This was not the case for me; I knew how I had gotten here. I had set these events in motion the moment I volunteered to help save the day, Emily’s wedding day to be specific. That agreement was very much like boarding a runaway train bound for disaster.

  The bar, McKenzie’s, was no different than the other five or so bars on the street that looked exactly the same. There was a large screen television on every wall, tuned to every New York sports game. The décor was hand-selected by the Irish owners, who were from Dublin. They tried to replicate their neighborhood pub back home with both décor and Irish-accented staff. This amalgam of motifs and its midtown location helped attract a melting pot of patrons, from sports fans to Irish nationals, to tourists on their way to the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

  Def Leppard’s Pour Some Sugar on Me was playing as the bridal party did another round of lemon drop shots. This was maybe our third or fourth round; after that many, you begin to lose count and accountability. Feeling the effects of the last drink, I retreated from the group to observe my surroundings. I felt like an outsider, like an anthropologist studying an odd civilization’s customs. In this case, the bachelorette party, that banal prelude to the formalness of a wedding. For reasons I could not figure out, a woman’s most elegant event has to be preceded by this very public scene of debauchery, a necessary rite of passage. In our case, a bar crawl through Manhattan directed by Maggie, Emily’s older cousin and ringleader of the bridal party, seven girls in all, including the bride. When I joked about this being a real life seven brides for seven brothers, I was met with blank stares; that was not the first indicator that I was in strange territory.

  Because Maggie had an intimate knowledge of which bars had the hottest guys hanging out in them, she appointed herself as event planner for the evening. Judging by her ease at navigating the crowded bar and maintaining the attention of the bartender, I could see why. But I was not convinced about this ritual or this person as the ritual planner. When you are on a runway train, it’s impossible to regain one’s footing, much less one’s control. And if I were more aware, I would have seen the clues that life was sending my way—I would have seen this coming when I had first met Maggie at the bridal shower, just one week earlier.

  My role at Emily’s bridal shower was twofold: make sure that the guests think that Emily was surprised!, when she had, in fact, planned the entire event months ago. Anyone who knew Emily would surely realize how staged this surprise entrance was. She would never be this composed this early on a weekend morning. Her usual routine was to sleep well past noon and stay in her Juicy Couture sweatsuit well until happy hour.

  The second part of my mission was to meet with cousin Maggie to review the plans for the bachelorette party. This should have been easy since I had already planned the entire afternoon at the Peninsula Hotel Day Spa. It was all set. We would have lunch, Emily would be groomed, and the girls would chat and bond. This was a no-brainer, elegant and easy.

  I should have known that easy was not exactly what Emily wanted, based on the shower, a four-hour event that itself could have been someone’s wedding and which included a multi-course meal, speeches, and culminated in a gift-opening marathon. Emily’s former wedding planner, in her final moments, had even planned some of those cute shower games, like the bride wearing a hat made of bows from the presents and gift bingo, where each shower member has to cross off the received gifts on her bingo card. After yelling “Bridal Bingo,” the winners receive a Tiffany keychain with a tiny framed picture of the happy couple on it. I should have sent her a thank-you note for her brilliant foresight.

  All games aside, one small piece of business had to be taken care of. I had to find Maggie and tell her about spa day. Thankfully, I was able to call in a favor at the hotel from my former author booking days to secure the reservation. Things were really coming together, I thought. All that was left was a quick conversation with the cousin, who undoubtedly would be relieved that the bachelorette party was not only dealt with, but also was going to be awesome.

  I had received no heads up about Maggie. A simple phrase such as, “Hey, look out for that one, she will steamroll you” would have been helpful. Like a little bunny heading off to meet the wolf, I tapped Maggie on the shoulder. Maggie was a large woman with dark, shoulder-length hair and frighteningly intense blue eyes. Defiantly wearing jeans and a tank top to this elegant brunch should have been my first clue that Maggie was not going to allow herself to be handled.

  “I have a plan for the bachelorette party, a spa day.” As I talked, everyone at the table suddenly became engrossed in their own conversations, immediately avoiding eye contact with me. Was it something I had said? Apparently it was everything I had said.

  “So, we finally meet.” Maggie stood and sized me up as she guided me to the punch fountain, so that the two of us could have a little gangland style sitdown of our own.

  “About that spa day, it ain’t gonna happen. Just telling you. You might think you’re in charge, but I own the bachelorette party. Just so there are no misunderstandings, ’kay fancy p
ants?”

  I understood, and it wasn’t only because my pants were indeed fancier than hers.

  “Okay, good talk. Let’s get some punch and get back to the gifts. Mine is next.”

  Maggie was a detail-oriented dictator. Her gift tied into the party’s theme, a white tank top, with the words “Bride to Be” bedazzled across the front at chest height.

  “That’s for the bachelorette party.” She hollered from the back of the room.

  “It’s gonna be awesome, right, Jessica?”

  She elbowed me hard and I nodded in assent, scared to do anything else by that point. Being coerced into having a rollicking good time at a bachelorette party run by Tony Soprano concerned me, and for good reason.

  The bridal party, at least, rode in style to the event with limousine service that I had pulled together at the last minute when Maggie said, “You know what you could do for us? You could get us a fancy car to drive us around town, that’s what you could do.” And so I did. I was feeling like I had gained a new boss.

  We needed to pick up Emily at Brendan’s apartment on the Upper East Side. He greeted us at the door wearing an Islanders jersey. I am not sure what motivates a grown man to wear this oversized shirt. Is there some repressed fantasy that he is acting out, where, in the final minutes of the game, he might be called out of the stands to play? And if that were the case, why would he be chosen among the hundreds of other similarly costumed men in the arena?

  Much to everyone’s surprise, Brendan hopped into the limo as well. Emily insisted that we drop him off at Madison Square Garden on the way downtown. Emily was also in costume in her “Bride to Be” tank top, a miniskirt that was designed like a tutu, and knee-high boots. Her look was rounded out by the requisite tiara with feathers that also said “Bride” in case anyone could not see her T-shirt, which, in her defense, was obscured by a necklace made of condoms strung-together. This look met at the unlikely intersection of Princess Avenue and Porn Street. Inside the limousine, Maggie and the rest of the girls popped open a bottle of champagne and handed out condom-inspired party favors.

  Our first stop was the Bubble Lounge, a champagne lounge in Soho that had just received an excellent write-up in New York magazine.

  “They have bottle service, which is really hot,” Emily squealed in the back of the limo. This admission was greeted with high-fives among the rest of the party. Maggie told us that “this joint” would be the first of many she wanted to show her baby cousin.

  “Hot,” of course, was Emily’s highest compliment. Emily had a liberal scope of what was hot: anything written up in New York magazine was hot, things that are shiny were hot and, of course, bubble gum-pink bridesmaid dresses were the hottest. There was a bubble theme developing here, the Bubble Lounge being the second installment. Bubblegum-pink was the first, which reminded me of the dress shopping, my debut event as wedding planner or, more accurately, where I had learned what exactly makes bubblegum-pink so hot.

  “It’s not quite powder pink, not quite rose or yucky mauve, and not really like hot pink. It’s just pink, like bubblegum,” Emily explained in exhausting detail.

  After coordinating the six bridesmaids and Emily via text message, we had met in the heart of the garment district. Emily chose this private atelier based solely upon her having stumbled across it watching Access Hollywood. She also liked the idea that it was called an atelier rather than something “cheesy” (her word) like David’s Bridal. I rang the buzzer and shouted my name over the noisy street traffic of Seventh Avenue. We were buzzed in to a nondescript entryway. These entries are prevalent in buildings all over Manhattan that house suites of different businesses, from graphic design companies, to jewelry wholesalers, to appointment-only retail shops like this one.

  Past the entryway, we entered into a grand lobby area that looked like the entrance to Versailles. There, we were met by Zora, a flawlessly dressed woman in a grey, well-tailored pantsuit, accented by a long tape measure that she wore like a necklace. We followed her into a large, white dressing room that had mirrors on every wall. A large silver tray adorned with champagne flutes sat on a table to our left. Reflected in the mirror, it looked like hundreds of trays with thousands of flutes.

  “Zee dresses you will like are over here,” she said in an English with a put-on movie French accent. She looked at me with a smile as she sized up our group.

  As a good wedding planner should, I had called Zora in advance and asked her to pull a few dresses in preparation for this mass shopping. With seven girls of varying body types, a consensus would not be easy when it came to selecting a bridesmaid dress. But these girls had no opinion either way; they were just happy to have free booze.

  “Come, little angel bride, sit in the nice chair and you can zee what the girl will put on, yes?”

  Zora guided Emily over to a large throne in the middle of the room. She then lined us all up against the dressing room doors. She was looking for one of us to be the guinea pig to try on the dresses first and model them for the group. One by one, she asked each girl to take a glass of champagne and sit behind Emily. Maggie, the first to sit, grabbed two glasses of champagne before she plopped down on the fluffy couch, flutes in hand. Like one of those picky judges at a dog show, Zora eliminated all the competition until I was left alone, apparently the best in show.

  “Jessica, you are the closest to the sample size, you will be our model,” Zora declared, handing me an honor I wasn’t honestly sure I wanted.

  “Oh, goody,” said Emily as she positioned herself for prime viewing, ready to score the fashions like a magazine fashion editor at a runway event. Or, with all the champagne being downed, a runaway event.

  The first dress was a lovely navy sheath that she deemed too “old lady.” I tried not to take that one personally, as Maggie laughed from the peanut gallery. Mind you, Maggie was one year older than me. The second dress, a two-piece silver ensemble, was greeted with a simple “ick” by Emily, and the last, a tasteful black cocktail dress, was, in her jaded eyes, “boring.” Truthfully, I knew that Emily wanted her bridesmaids to dress up as her real life royal court, but I thought it was my mission to guide her toward making the right decision, as I had so many times at work. That was my first mistake. Emily was getting exasperated with the process. She blew air at her bangs and began to slouch. I was losing her.

  “These are just not fun,” she complained as Zora poured her a second glass of champagne in an effort to maintain her buzz.

  “I just want something pretty…pretty and pink.”

  Zora reacted quickly to the pea that was irritating this princess by telling her that she had just the thing, a sample dress that had just come in. “It might be out of your price range,” she warned, “but I think you must see it.” Exclusive, new, and unique, I thought, were too much for Emily to handle.

  “I must see it,” Emily repeated. And once she started the signature handclap and began stomping her feet in perfect synchronization, I knew the fight was lost. And Zora knew it too.

  “As you wish, dear angel bride.” She zipped off and quickly returned with the dress in pink. The girls gasped. I gasped. Zora gasped, somewhat staged, I supposed. As if she had known this was going to happen all along, that she had deliberately withheld the pink dress in order to make a more dramatic show of it. This was not the first angel bride she had seen, nor was I the first well-meaning wedding planner she had encountered, either. There was a reason that Zora was so successful in this highly competitive business.

  The dress was a strapless, skimpy-bodiced dress in full-length taffeta. It had a large bow placed on the back of the dress, to create a Scarlett O’Hara bustle effect. I worked my way into the dress from top to bottom and got a bit stuck in the middle. I then extrapolated myself by laying down on the floor. The second try was more success full as I laid the gown down and stepped into the middle and then squeezing into one side and then the other before
finally hoisting the skirt below my bra band. This dress made not only a statement, it made a noisy entrance as well. The crinoline and tulle underneath caused a swishy sound as I sashayed through the dressing room. I hoped that this noise would not drown out Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major that was planned for our arrival at the wedding. Note to self: Make an appointment to confab with the organist and soloist.

  Based on Emily’s reaction, it looked like the tradition of the bride choosing the least appealing dress for her bridesmaids was holding true to form here. “Are you sure?” I asked for a final time, feeling vulnerable now in my Pepto Bismol-colored attire. “The navy is really elegant,” I said, as I tried to coax her back to reality. “It’ll look very pretty in the pictures, the perfect backdrop to your white dress.”

  “No, no, no, pink is hot,” Emily insisted and headed off to the shoe department with the peremptory manner of a mad European monarch.

  With Emily gone, I pulled Zora aside to see if she could swing a deal on this exclusive dress if we were to order seven of them and pay in full. She, of course, could never discount this designer; he would not stand for it.

  “Maybe I can do something on the shoes, depending on what you pick,” she grinned with the secret smile of a shark moving in on its prey.

  “Nice work, fancy pants,” Maggie said, as she slapped me on the back before she followed the rest of the girls to the shoe department. Defeated in my pink bubble dress, I picked myself up and looked for some last hope to redeem this appointment. Shoes would be easy; they are underneath the dress and no one would see them under all this taffeta. But nothing else about this wedding planning was coming easy. I thought about the previous wedding planner, and could well understand now why she had quit.

  I arrogantly thought I could sweep in and control this wedding. A rookie mistake, for sure. Most people are not self-aware enough to realize that they may also trip over the same pitfalls that had forced the first person to quit. But if we don’t have a little ego to think we can overcome these obstacles, nothing in life would ever happen. I was wondering how much I could effect change here when a glimmer of hope surfaced.