A Dangerous Dress

by Julia Holden

  “What crisis?” Reed asked.

  “Your crisis.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Fine.”

  “All resolved?”

  “All resolved.” Clearly he didn’t want to talk about it. Well excuse me. But he did dump me just as we’d been about to become more than associates. I thought it was perfectly fair for me to ask. I guess he didn’t agree. “Can we get back to business?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Bertie wants to develop your backstory.”

  I must have looked puzzled. “It’s a movie term,” Bertie said. “It means things that happened in a character’s life before the start of the film but are still relevant to the story.”

  “But we’re not making a movie,” I said.

  “Every medium is storytelling,” Reed explained. “Whether it’s movies or TV news. The audience has to care about you even before they’ve met you. So we need to tell them your story.”

  Bertie flipped open a notebook computer that was as thin as a restaurant menu. “What did you do before you went to Europe?”

  “I worked at a bank,” I said. “Actually, a savings and loan.”

  Bertie typed. Fast. Her fingers on the keys sounded like hail hitting a car roof.

  Reed looked at Bertie. “Savings and loan is better,” he said, and she nodded yes.

  Without looking up, she asked, “What’s the name of the savings and loan?”

  “Independence. Independence Savings and Loan Association of Northwest Indiana.”

  “Can you believe that?” Reed asked Bertie.

  “Amazing,” Bertie said. They were both smiling. “Job title?”

  “Deputy vice president.”

  “Nice,” said Bertie.

  In case you’re wondering, that really is my title. Uncle John said he felt bad he couldn’t pay me a lot, but he could make up for it by giving me a nice title. I don’t believe that, though. I don’t believe he felt bad about not paying me a lot. But I didn’t mention that.

  “Current status?”

  To which I didn’t say anything.

  Bertie looked up from her keyboard. “Current job status?”

  “I’m . . . on a break.”

  “What does that mean?” Bertie asked.

  “It’s complicated,” I said.

  “Let it go,” Reed said.

  “We really shouldn’t,” Bertie said.

  “You’ll think of some happy way to say it,” Reed told her in no uncertain terms.

  Then I told Bertie my story. Not in anything like the detail I’ve given you, but in considerably more detail than the Reader’s Digest version I told Reed back in Paris. By the way, I told them the real name of Reliable Pictures. Reed said they wouldn’t use that name because the conglomerates that own Reliable and Fox News are competitors, and the last thing anybody needed was a lawsuit. Reed giggled when I told how Nathalie took off her clothes in front of everybody, and Bertie blushed, plus she glared at Reed, although she typed it all down.

  “That’s a future segment for sure,” Reed said. “Hollywood’s moral cesspool.”

  “Actually it was kind of a joint-venture thing between the French and Hollywood,” I said.

  “Hollywood and France’s moral cesspool,” Reed said. Bertie nodded and typed.

  When I started talking about Armani Collezioni, Reed said, “Just call it Giorgio Armani.” Finally we got to the part about George, his girlfriend, the dress, and me getting fired. I started to explain that George worked for the State Department, and he wanted to buy his girlfriend a dress for this formal dinner with Jacques Chirac. Only when I said that, Reed frowned. When Bertie saw Reed frowning, she stopped typing.

  “Let’s leave that part out,” Reed said.

  “Which part?” I asked.

  “The State Department thing,” Bertie said. “He was just a misguided American citizen.” She started typing again. “Blinded by the overpriced glitz and flash of Euro-chic.”

  “Oh, that’s good,” said Reed.

  “He was an asshole,” I said.

  Bertie stopped typing again. “We don’t want to say that.”

  “We don’t?” I couldn’t see why not. I mean maybe we couldn’t say asshole on TV. Although as I recall, they used to say it on NYPD Blue. But surely we could convey the concept.

  “We don’t want your fellow American to come across as the villain,” Reed said. “There are much bigger fish to fry.” Then he laughed. “But of course you know that.”

  I laughed too. Even though I had no clue what he meant, or what was so funny. I felt safer acting like I was in on the joke. Plus it made Reed happy that I laughed.

  “So get this,” he said to Bertie. “Jane tries to tell the man he’s making a big mistake; he’s going to humiliate himself spending all that money and having his girlfriend wear that dress.”

  “Fantastic,” Bertie said, her fingers flying.

  I actually thought Reed did a pretty good job of telling it, considering he wasn’t there. Of course, he left out the whole tit thing, but apparently you still have to be quite delicate about what you say on TV.

  “So the man spent a fortune, bought the dress—then he and his girlfriend were humiliated, just like Jane tried to tell them they would be. When he came back to Armani to complain, they needed a scapegoat, so poor Jane got fired.”

  “That’s the part Reed saw,” I said.

  “He did?” asked Bertie.

  “He did,” I said. “He was in the store.”

  Bertie turned to Reed. “You were in Giorgio Armani?”

  “Armani Collezioni,” I said.

  “Stick to Giorgio Armani,” Reed said to me. “We don’t want to confuse people.”

  “What were you doing in Giorgio Armani?” Bertie asked Reed.

  “He was buying a tie,” I said.

  Bertie recoiled as if somebody had slapped her. Her head snapped around and she looked at me. Then her head snapped back and she looked at Reed. “You weren’t,” Bertie said to Reed.

  “I wasn’t,” Reed said.

  “You wouldn’t,” Bertie said.

  “I wouldn’t,” Reed said.

  “Then what were you doing in the store?” Bertie asked.

  “I was . . . location scouting,” Reed said.

  “You sure looked like you were buying a tie,” I said to Reed.

  “He was location scouting,” Bertie said to me. The way she hissed when she said scouting, I could tell that this discussion was over. Then she turned back to Reed, and smiled like her body had suddenly become possessed by a really happy demon. “Where were we?”

  “Poor Jane got fired,” Reed said.

  “You poor girl,” the sweet demon inhabiting Bertie Thorn’s body said to me. She didn’t actually sound all that sympathetic. Then she stopped typing.

  “I think we’ve got it,” Reed said.

  “Are we done?” I asked. I was tired. I had been talking, Reed had been listening, and Bertie had been typing, for more than three hours.

  Reed said he was done, but Bertie and I were not. He told me Bertie was the best, and she would take care of me. “Because you’re my star,” he said. He smiled, and I smiled. He gave me another hug that was somewhere between professional and personal, and left the room.

  Leaving me all alone with Bertie Thorn.

  50

  Bertie Thorn did not say anything. For quite a while.

  It was probably only about thirty seconds. A minute, max. But at the time it felt like we sat there in silence for an hour. She finally said, “So.”

  “So,” I said.

  Then she said nothing for a while.

  So it was totally out of the blue when she said, “He likes you, you know.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Reed,” she said. “He likes you. Quite a lot.”

  “No he doesn’t,” I lied. Despite Reed’s poor judgment, bad timing, and ambiguous hugs, I was pretty confident that he did in fact like me. Quite a lot. Which as I have
said was fine with me. But agreeing with Bertie on this issue didn’t seem like a good idea.

  “Of course he does,” Bertie said. “You’re perfect.” She narrowed her eyes and looked at me. “Aren’t you afraid?”

  “Of Reed?”

  “No, silly. Of going on camera. In front of millions of people.” She appeared to shiver slightly before straightening up in her chair. “We’re watched by more people than CNN, you know.”

  I didn’t know. And up until that moment, I had not actually focused on how many people might be watching. Now I thought about it. “No, I’m not afraid,” I finally said. Which was true. It did not scare me. I don’t know why, it just didn’t.

  “Being on camera scared me,” Bertie said.

  “You?”

  “Me,” Bertie said. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you.”

  “Know what?”

  “About me,” she said. “And Reed.”

  “No.”

  “I was you,” she said. “I mean, I was supposed to be. Reed was grooming me to be Fox News’s next big star. A fresh American voice with a point of view.”

  Hey, I wanted to say, wait a minute. That’s not you, that’s me. But she was still talking.

  “The whole time we were getting ready for my debut, Reed and I were . . . together.” She blushed. Full-on blushed, like somebody splashed bright red paint across her cheeks. Some people blush attractively. Like Reed, for example. Bertie Thorn does not.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “I froze. On camera. I couldn’t do it. I knew exactly what I wanted to say. But I couldn’t make the words come out of my mouth. On live TV.” Her eyes seemed to have sunk back into their sockets. “It was a disaster.”

  “I won’t do that,” I said. Meaning I’m assuring you, associate producer of Fox News, that I will not freeze on your show. I honestly do not think I was trying to rub my relationship with Reed in his ex-girlfriend’s face. But she didn’t hear it that way.

  “No,” she said, “I bet you won’t freeze.” She thought for a second, as if making some very important decision. Finally she said, “He went fly-fishing.”

  “What?”

  “Reed. That was the crisis. He stood you up to go fly-fishing.”

  “Fly-fishing?”

  “With Dick Cheney. Reed’s been expecting the invitation for weeks. You couldn’t expect him to pass it up when the call finally came.” She looked at me as if she was defying me to question Reed’s priorities.

  “Fly-fishing,” I said.

  “Uh-huh,” Bertie said.

  I just sat there for a minute. I wanted to tell her she was a miserable petty jealous bloodsucker with low self-esteem and no fashion sense. Instead I asked, “Are we done?”

  “We’re done,” Bertie said. “Let’s get you back to the hotel. And no late nights,” she warned. “You have an early call.”

  “How early?” I asked.

  “Five.”

  “Five A.M.?”

  Bertie nodded yes.

  “What time am I going on?”

  “Somewhere between ten forty-five and eleven.”

  “What am I supposed to do for six hours?”

  Bertie ticked things off on her fingers. “Hair. Makeup. Teeth whitening. Color check. Sound check. Dressing. Chair fitting.” She tilted her head and looked down at me. More than a little condescendingly, I thought. “And a dozen other things that wouldn’t occur to you because you’ve never been in the TV news business.”

  “But I am now,” I said.

  “You are now,” she said.

  51

  For the entire Hummer ride downtown, I was more than a little—excuse me—pissed off about having to get up so early. Also puzzled about Reed denying that he bought the Armani tie. Not to mention creeped out by the whole Reed-Bertie thing—how she was supposed to have been Reed’s fresh new voice, which seemed to mean that I was now her, at least professionally.

  A theory started to form in my head. I tried to stop it, because it wasn’t a very pleasant theory, but it moved right in and made itself at home anyway.

  Reed was a climber. To be more precise, a dating climber. Most dating climbers are looking for obvious things—always trying to trade up to the prettier girlfriend, the richer boyfriend. But Reed’s climb wasn’t about looks, or money, or—sigh—even about sex. He was all about, well . . . Fox News. How much would it boost his career to find a fresh new American voice? How high would his stock soar if he single-handedly delivered that elusive female eighteen-to-thirty-five demographic? And just how many Bertie Thorns had been his stepping-stones on the way up? Reed’s hugs would stay ambiguous until he was sure about me. Sure I was good for his job. Good for The Network.

  Falling asleep that night, and waking up grossly early the next morning, I tried to talk myself out of it. Back at the Fox News studios, while we did all those things Bertie had said we would, I worked hard to convince myself. After all, I reasoned, Reed wouldn’t go to the trouble of having them whiten my teeth unless he really liked me for me. Right?

  Most of all, I reminded myself that Reed had assigned his best investigative team to find Grandma’s dress. That counted for a lot. So maybe I was wrong. Maybe he wasn’t a dating climber after all.

  I wondered if they had found the dress. Forgive me, that question should have occurred to me before, but only a couple of days had passed, during which, as I have described to you, I’d been distracted. Plus, I had started to believe that losing Grandma’s dress hadn’t cursed me after all, it had set me on my very own path, maybe for the first time in my life. Everything really was coming together, like she said in my dream.

  Still, if Reed’s team could find the dress, that would make everything just about perfect. So I made a mental note to ask him. Then I turned my mind back to the serious business of preparing for my big debut.

  After hair and makeup, I looked in the mirror again. And I thought, You know, maybe I do look a little like Scarlett Johansson. Okay, a very little. But even wearing the not-so-exciting blue cotton sweater, tan khakis, and brown loafers that Reed chose, I looked nice. And I had to hand it to them: If they wanted Midwestern, they got it. I could’ve been any girl from Indiana, or Wisconsin, or Ohio, or wherever. Only prettier. If I do say so myself.

  Did I mention I had my own dressing room? It was not big, but it was clean, and cozy, and I did not have to share it with anybody. It was all mine.

  At around ten thirty, there was a knock on the door. “It’s me,” Reed said.

  I told him to come in. It was the first time I had seen him all morning. He gave me another mixed-message hug and told me I looked great. I almost asked how the fishing was. But I didn’t. That would have been unprofessional. And petty. A star should be above such things.

  Reed asked me if I was ready. I said I was.

  “I really think you’re the one,” he proclaimed. He said it so solemnly, you’d have thought I was Neo in The Matrix or something. He was confirming my theory, but I had to be sure.

  I flung my arms around his waist and looked into his eyes as enticingly as I could. “Kiss me,” I said.

  “Makeup,” he said.

  “Makeup?”

  Gently but firmly, he pushed me away. “You’ve already been to makeup. Better wait till later.” He flashed a killer smile. “Let’s see how your debut goes. We can celebrate after.” Then he looked at his watch. His smile vanished, and he was all business. “You’d better go to the bathroom.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Once we go to the set, there are no potty breaks.”

  “I’m really fine.”

  “Nothing looks worse on TV than a commentator who can’t sit still because she needs to pee,” Reed said. I went to the ladies’ room and peed.

  When I came out, Bertie was in my dressing room too, standing next to Reed. I wondered again how many fresh new voices had come before her.

  “Once we get on the set, you have to be completely quiet,” Bert
ie said.

  “Of course.”

  “You’ll probably go on about ten fifty. Michael will come out of the break at the forty-five and do two short segments. Then there’s a sixty-second commercial. We’ll move your chair out while that’s airing, get you positioned, confirm your sound is on, and then we’re ready.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Do I have to look anyplace special?”

  “We want you to look natural,” Bertie said. “Just talk to Michael like you’re having a conversation, and one of the cameras will capture it.”

  “If you’re about to make a really dramatic point, you can look straight at the camera where the red light is on,” Reed offered.

  “Let’s not get too advanced our first time out,” Bertie said. She was praying so hard I would fail, I’m surprised she didn’t cross herself.

  “She can handle it,” Reed said, and gave my shoulders a little squeeze.

  Climber. That’s what popped into my head. Still, I gave him a look that I hoped he and Bertie took as affectionate.

  “Fine,” said Bertie. She gave Reed a look that I am pretty sure she hoped he took as a death ray.

  We walked down a long corridor to a large heavy door. A red light was twirling over the door. Bertie put her forefinger to her lips. I nodded. She pulled open the door, and the three of us stepped into a little room that was like an airlock. Bertie closed the door, which was padded around the edges so it wouldn’t make any noise. I looked at Reed, then at Bertie. Bertie looked at Reed, then at me. Reed looked at me. Then Bertie. Then me again.

  “Did they find it?” I asked Reed in a whisper.

  “Who?”

  “Your best investigative team. Did they find it?”

  Reed looked at Bertie. She didn’t have a clue. He looked back at me. He didn’t have a clue either. “Find what?”

  Reed had never assigned anybody to find Grandma’s dress. He had never meant to. It had all been a lie to get me to do what he wanted.

  “Never mind,” I said.

  “It’s time,” Bertie commanded.

  I remembered my dream. Take chances, Grandma told me.

  I knew what I had to do.

  On the other side of the airlock there was another heavy door. Bertie pulled that one open, and we were on the set.