Ten Thousand Hours

by Ren Benton

  Sniffles suddenly cured, Kim gushed a carefree goodbye and hung up.

  Ivy sagged against the wall. Think, think, think. Like a manager. The problem was lack of a bride, so the solution was to find a bride — or a reasonable facsimile.

  She practiced a calm, confident smile in the mirror until it stuck on her lips. She left the safety of the dressing room and strode across the show floor as if she knew exactly what she was doing.

  She culled Martina from her lighting and sound people. “Kim isn’t coming. How much were you relying on interviewing her?”

  “After talking to her on the phone, I didn’t expect her to say much other than ‘I feel like a princess,’ but we’re screwed without a visual.”

  Finally, someone willing to share custody of the problem. “If I find another woman to stand on the pedestal and play the bride, could you focus on the concept of the party and live without the princess quote?”

  “Give me a victim, and I’ll make it work.”

  “You’re getting married. I don’t suppose—”

  “You’re a funny girl.”

  The irony was not lost on Ivy that the one time she needed a bride to try on a dress and buy nothing, it was for an event intended in part to discourage such behavior and there was no such bride around.

  Martina suggested, “Maybe one of the invites who also didn’t get a courtesy call about the cancellation will do it.”

  Ivy preferred to handle the crisis internally if at all possible and reserve begging outsiders for the last resort. They were, after all, potential customers. Their confidence in Swann’s depended on how well the staff coped with the unexpected.

  She greeted Kim’s friends and relations and apprised them of the situation, sans gory details. All five agreed to carry out their original parts in the revised plan in exchange for free food and champagne.

  That part of the problem under control, Ivy reported to Rita. “One of us will have to model a dress and act like she’s having a good time.”

  Rita declined the invitation. “No one wants to see my back fat bungee-corded into a corset.”

  The head seamstress, Evelyn, had ascended from her subterranean domain to watch the production. “I’m too old to pretend this foolishness is a good time.”

  Katie shook her head so hard, her headband flew out of her hair. “My boyfriend will freak out if he sees me in a wedding dress.”

  That left only one option. Ivy didn’t have a boyfriend to freak out, she was under sixty, and she had slightly less back fat to ooze out of a corset than Rita. She could mime the Happy Bride Flutter. As long as the camera didn’t zoom in on her face, the home audience would never know the extent of her disdain for the proceedings. “I’ll do it. Rita, you’ll have to answer the questions about the store and event.”

  “If I thought I’d have to be on TV, I’d have had my hair done.”

  A new voice chimed in, “I’ll do it.”

  The four of them turned en masse at the arrival of Sabrina, who hadn’t mentioned any intent to help with the party.

  She held up a box of Ritz and a can of squirt cheese. “I brought cheese and crackers.”

  “I’m setting up the food.” Katie seized the offering and whisked it away, mouthing at Ivy, Not in this lifetime.

  The stiffness in Ivy’s jaw made her teeth ache in honor of another conveniently timed appearance, but Sabrina’s perfect body, perfect hair, and perfect makeup made her an ideal model. “Great. Let’s get you into a dress.”

  “Oh, I can’t wear the dress. Half the county was at my wedding last year. They’ll want their gifts back if they think I’m shopping around for a new husband already.” Sabrina flashed her perfect, promotion-stealing smile. “I meant I’d answer the questions. I know all the details, and I just came from the salon. I don’t mind taking Ivy’s place.”

  I don’t mind shoving Ivy in front of a bus and taking credit for orchestrating this publicity stunt.

  Martina was ready to roll. “We’re on the clock here. Somebody put on a dress.”

  Ivy glanced over at the couch. The guests looked bored and impatient, and the way the champagne was disappearing, they’d soon be drunk. They had too little goodwill to impose upon. No matter how much she hated it, the roles were cast.

  The target consumer for the parties wanted to play dress-up and had a few hundred dollars to burn for the privilege. The way to attract that woman’s attention was with a sky’s-the-limit explosion of bedazzled lace. The most extravagant item Swann’s had in inventory at the moment was a seventeen-thousand-dollar fantasy princess ballgown.

  The sample wasn’t anywhere near Ivy’s size, naturally, so the home audience would get a good look at her bare back where the dress wouldn’t fasten — just how she’d always dreamed of making her television debut.

  She needed Katie’s help to carry the mass of tulle, lace, and crystals across the showroom. She stepped onto the pedestal, and Katie fluffed the train behind her.

  “Ooh, that’s pretty,” one of the women on the couch said.

  Kim’s friend had come to the store with no intention of dress shopping, but now she had a familiar acquisitive look. An idea took shape in Ivy’s mind. Maybe Swann’s should have a fashion show to reel in women who were as yet unaware how much they wanted a wedding dress. Profits from ticket sales could go to charity — perhaps one that provided school and work clothes for women who couldn’t afford them — and the store would keep the publicity and customers resulting from the looky-loos.

  But right now, she should attend to the potential customer nibbling at the bait. “The designer is Romona Keveža.”

  “Show me the back.”

  “That may the best part of this gown, but you’ll have to use some imagination while it’s on me.” Katie helped lift the skirt again while Ivy shuffled a hundred eighty degrees on her pedestal. “In a dress that fits you, everyone at your ceremony will have a view of crystal buttons sparkling straight up your spine.”

  She choked on a laugh when she saw her reflection in the full-length mirror. The dress would be stunning on someone else — Sabrina, for instance — but Ivy looked ridiculous. Illusion mesh to her collarbones held up a sparkling lace bodice with a plunging V that was wasted on her absent cleavage. The mesh continued down to her wrists, concealing none of her arm flaws. Her waist insisted on maintaining the same girth as her rib cage, so in an A-line skirt, her overall shape resembled a can of squirt cheese balanced on a funnel.

  “Find the chapel veil that goes with this,” she whispered to Katie.

  It could serve as the shroud for this dead event.

  Rita brought her a glass of champagne. “Part of the bridal experience,” she muttered through her smile.

  Ivy feigned a sip for the camera. No point making the evening worse with the taste of bubbly vinegar and rubbing alcohol.

  The woman on the couch asked, “How much does that one cost?”

  “Sixteen-eight.”

  “That’s not bad.”

  Not bad at all — for a small car, a house full of furniture, or two years of Ivy’s mortgage payments. For a single-use costume, it was obscene.

  But one did not criticize the spending habits of potential customers. “The best part about this dress is that it arrived yesterday. No one within five hundred miles has gotten married in this dress. Someone still gets to be the first.”

  “Hm.” Expertly made-up eyes narrowed as if calculating how rapidly a wedding could be arranged to claim bragging rights.

  Ivy dipped her knees so Katie could fasten the veil to her hair.

  A chorus of aah arose from the couch when she straightened.

  The veil was the most devastating weapon in the consultant’s arsenal. Something about that extra piece of tulle brought even strangers to the aah moment.

  She hoped the news crew got a good shot of the guests when it happened. Swann’s phones would be ringing nonstop with calls from brides who wanted that attention for themselves.

  Havin
g failed to secure a previous engagement to use as an excuse, Griff joined his parents and brother for a late dinner at the Italian restaurant for which Ivy had been too spectacular.

  He bent to kiss his mom’s cheek. Sharon Dunleavy’s diminutive physical stature was but a fraction of her presence. “Where’s Sarah?”

  “She and the baby have the sniffles, so they’re tucked in at home.”

  Sarah was his greatest ally in this group. After straying from the fold for so long, he felt as much a part of the family as the person who married into it three years ago. At a table for four, he was on his own.

  His father asked, “How are things progressing with Rafferty?”

  Sharon tapped him on the arm. “Thomas, you had all day at the office to ask him that. No business at dinner.”

  The family resemblance made itself known in the identical way all three men shifted uncomfortably. What were they going to talk about if not work?

  If Mom insisted on making conversation difficult, Griff was all for making her carry the burden of it. “Are you doing anything special for your anniversary?”

  “We were thinking about going camping.”

  His gaze crashed into Dan’s. Griff was no stranger to sleeping under the stars and pissing on trees. The rest of the family believed air conditioning, plumbing, and a premium cable package distinguished man from beast. “By camping, you mean...”

  “You know. Rent an RV and toot around for a few weeks. See the sights.”

  “Ah,” their sons said in unison. By RV, she no doubt meant a tour bus outfitted like a luxury penthouse suite, which made more sense for their parents than sleeping bags in the dirt.

  “What will it be, forty years?” Dan asked.

  “Thirty-nine. For forty, we’re spending the summer in Europe.”

  That sounded more like his parents. They’d probably rent a castle.

  Maybe the Duchess could get them a deal.

  He couldn’t suppress a grin at the thought of her. “That’s a long time. Any advice to bestow?”

  Dan snorted. “Whose pants are you trying to scam your way into now?”

  Griff’s jaw clenched — not at the insinuation he had to scam women to get sex but at the reduction of Ivy to a pair of pants to be gotten into. “Watch your mouth.”

  Sharon sat forward, keenly interested in his reaction. “Is there something we should know, Griff?”

  Ivy was a take-home-to-the-family woman. If he succeeded in expanding the relationship, they would find out about her eventually. Might as well be now. “Her name is Ivy.”

  “Which bar did you pick her up in?”

  “Daniel,” Sharon admonished. “How often does your brother have anything to say to us about a woman?”

  “He doesn’t say. He inflicts. You’re obviously forgetting the one he took to dinner with Doug Lancaster — the stripper with her tits hanging out?”

  “She was an orthopedic surgeon.” Griff met her at her practice while one of her partners was treating him for a fractured patella. “And she was rightfully proud of those tits, which were levitating, not hanging. Lancaster signed the contract at the table, whereas a month of meetings with your tits got us nowhere.”

  Thomas intervened after a nudge from his wife. “Enough, both of you. No work at the table. No tits, either. How did you meet Ivy?”

  How he met Ivy differed from how he met the Duchess, but the separation between the two personalities seemed flimsy now. Ivy was... Ivy. “We were interested in the same gift for our respective mothers.”

  Sharon brightened. “Who won?”

  “You did.” She high-fived him across the table. “I bribed her with lunch.”

  Thomas shook his head. “My advice, from my lofty position of four decades of marriage, would have been to let her win.”

  Sharon rolled her eyes at the ignorance of men. “If she was a sore loser, she would have told him to choke on his lunch. She let him win so she could spend more time with him.” She turned her attention back to Griff. “My advice is sacrifice what you want only when her happiness means more to you than your own.”

  “Aren’t grownup relationships all about putting someone else first?”

  She put on her lecture face. “Anyone who says your partner’s happiness should always come first is full of crap. Martyrs are bitter, self-righteous people who take out their resentment on those who fail to reward their alleged selflessness. Grownup relationships nurture both parties, and that means putting your needs first half the time.”

  Dan gave a tight shake of his head.

  The move did not escape their mother’s attention, though she never looked away from Griff. “Don’t take advice from your brother. Sarah is entirely responsible for maintaining the balance in that relationship, without which Dan would be the king of martyrs.”

  “I thought he was.”

  “Hey!”

  Sharon continued as if the outburst never happened. “With the right woman, what you want will be the same much of the time, so life shouldn’t be one battle after another.”

  To date, his battles with Ivy were on the scale of who got to eat pie off of whom, scuffles in which even the loser was pleased with the outcome. That would certainly change if their relationship grew up. Given the imbalance her sister created, letting Ivy have her way only half the time still left her with a deficit overall. His urge was to spoil her to compensate for Holly’s mistreatment. He didn’t resent it now, but would he in a month or two? Especially when she had so many other demands on her time — work, kids, friends in crisis — that she might not have anything more to give to him than occasional incredible sex.

  Or might not want to give him more. You’re the only person who lets me do whatever I want could be the only reason she let him have what little free time she had. His relationship expansion plan was based entirely upon his want and the assumption that of course a nice girl like Ivy would want the same, but he did have a history of filling in blanks extraordinarily badly, and not just with her. “How do I know what she wants?”

  “Pay attention. She’ll let you know, either subtly or directly. Anytime the answer isn’t crystal clear, it’s better to ask her than guess.” After a sip of wine, Sharon added, “And if her response is to the effect that if you really cared, you’d be able to read her mind, run for the hills and don’t look back. Absence of communication is terminal for your future happiness.”

  In some areas, Ivy’s communication was sublime. There. More. Harder. In others... not so much. She wasn’t hosting a casket party at a funeral home tonight, for instance.

  She wouldn’t talk about her reluctance to show off her body because she didn’t look like an airbrushed supermodel. Maybe there was a common thread with other taboo subjects. Was she embarrassed about her job because it didn’t measure up to her idea of perfection?

  Bemoaning his family’s snobbery toward his work history wouldn’t have encouraged her to open up. He could reassure her no form of honest work was anything to be ashamed of, especially to a man who would rather be building roof trusses than be stuck in an office all day.

  Dan fiddled with his silverware. “You look troubled, Griff. Does your clinging vine already expect you to intuit when to pay her rent?”

  His eyes widened with alarm when Griff’s hand fell on his forearm and yanked him halfway across the table.

  Good. Griff wanted his undivided attention. “Insult me as much as you want.” He was used to it. Hell, he’d earned most of it. “But if you take one more cheap shot at Ivy, you’ll be explaining to your wife why you came home with fewer teeth than when you left.”

  Their father brought his hand down on the table. “That’s enough, dammit. Both of you. Don’t make me play the ‘my heart’ card.”

  Griff released Dan’s arm. He hadn’t been violent even when drinking. Aggression left a bad taste in his mouth. “Sorry for threatening your teeth. I’m going to head home.”

  He kissed his mother goodbye and made his way to the exit desp
ite her protests.

  Dan followed him out to the parking lot. “Griff.”

  He didn’t look back. “Not in the mood, Daniel.”

  “I’m sorry, okay? How about you bring her over for dinner? Sarah can kick me under the table if I get out of line.”

  Griff would give him credit for trying if he didn’t know their mother had everything to do with the apology and the invitation. “Maybe.”

  Grudging overture extended; noncommital acceptance given. Mom would be satisfied, and the brothers wouldn’t actually have to endure each other’s company.

  Dan went back inside. Griff proceeded to his car. If Ivy could meet his family without being subjected to Dan, the introduction would go beautifully. His parents would love her. She was the golden child — like Dan.

  Except sexier and much, much less obnoxious.

  Walking out of the restaurant meant he was on his own for dinner. Nothing in his fridge appealed to him. A carton of ice cream in the freezer appealed for reasons that had nothing to do with the nutritional form of hunger, reminding him of Ivy’s enjoyment of the bastani, the way she’d polished the spoon, her frigid tongue against his skin igniting heat within him.

  What the hell had he thought about incessantly before he met her?

  He doused a meal-sized serving of ice cream with bottled hot fudge the color of Ivy’s eyes and took his bowl to the living room. He turned on the news to catch up on current events but instead caught a fluff piece about dress-up parties for grown women.

  Ivy would have something deliciously cynical to say about anyone who paid to be placed on a literal pedestal. He took out his phone to leave a message to entertain her after her long day at the office.

  With the first ring, the TV screen filled with big brown eyes and a radiant smile as Ivy played dress-up on a literal pedestal to the breathless aahs of her admirers.

  In a wedding dress.

  Her sweet, welcoming outgoing message scoured his ear like 60-grit sandpaper.

  Who are you marrying?

  He terminated the call without asking. The time to ask questions had been before — at any point before — instead of filling in so many blanks extraordinarily badly.