by Anne Wagener
Susan squeezes my hand. I forgot she was here. I open my eyes, and we exchange a brief ocular conversation. Mine says: WTF times infinity?!
And hers: I know. This is total shit. There’s more to the story. I’ll tell you soon.
I risk glancing at Charlie again to find myself in the headlights of his gaze.
I shrug and turn my palms up—a reprise of WTF times infinity combined with a plea for him to flash his dimples three times and magically whisk us back to the Portrait Gallery.
The dimples are nowhere in sight. He stares at me for about ten seconds with no apparent recognition. As if he’s staring at one of those visual puzzlers with all the blurred colors, waiting for a 3D image to pop out.
And then, oh yeah, it pops.
His eyebrows fly low and draw together, prompting a worried crease between them. He looks almost desperate. We need to talk, he mouths.
Before I can respond, Holly stalks up to him in a pair of skinny jeans, a lacy tank top, and a string of pearls. The attendants follow with her dress, which is zipped away from his prying eyes in a large plastic carrying bag.
He takes a few steps toward her, hands shoved in his pockets.
She’s fuming. “I don’t believe you. You knew I didn’t want you to see it until the wedding day!”
They’re standing near me now, and I can smell his smoky scent. It rolls into the corners of my mind, unfurling with the memories.
“And you’ve been smoking again!” she screeches. “We talked about this, Charlie.”
I back away from them and park my butt in a chair. I am melting. Simply melting in this velvet chair.
After a month of not seeing him, I started to remember his hotness in a conceptual way, but I’d forgotten the details: the crooked slope of his nose, the full lips. He’s wearing his red Chucks and his hair is artfully disheveled. I’d forgotten how my entire being seemed to vibrate with electricity in his presence. This time, though, the electricity is mixed with anger and disbelief. How could he be with Holly? And never mention he was engaged?
“Oh,” Holly says, catching me in the net of her peripheral vision. “You should meet my—my bridesmaid.”
“Hi, Piper.” Charlie’s voice is quiet, the color gone from his face. “Good to see you.”
“You know her?” Holly sounds incredulous. She probably thinks she conjured me into existence for the sole purpose of doing her bidding. I think I’ve actually downgraded from the accounting firm and the airport. Well done, me.
I want to leap into his arms, kiss him all over his face, taste his lips again, but I can’t move. It’s like in a bad dream when you’re about to be eaten by a giant squid, or when a guy is coming at you with a massive spork, but you can’t move an inch.
“Helloooo?” Holly puts her hands on her hips. The gesture causes the long string of pearls to sway, grazing the top of her chest. I can’t help but envy her frame, which is slim but shapely enough to make me appear prepubescent in comparison. “You two know each other?”
“Yeah, from Susan’s wedding,” Charlie says.
“Oh, right.” Holly takes the dress from the attendants, who are giving her instructions about keeping it in a cool, dry place.
As soon as she’s out of earshot, Charlie turns to me. “Listen, there’s a lot you don’t know—”
“You’re engaged?” I whisper, half to myself, half to him.
“I need to talk to you,” he says, his voice low and urgent.
“We don’t have anything to talk about.” I fold my arms across my chest and wait for a giant anvil to drop on my head.
“Piper!” Holly pauses her conversation with the attendants to bark at me. “Fetch the rest of my stuff from the dressing room.”
I spin on my heel and begin marching out her orders. Behind me, Charlie says, “I’ll help her.”
He catches up with me and we traipse toward the dressing room in silence, crossing over the lighted platform. When shielded by the propped dressing room door, we face each other in the little enclave of mirrors. The mirror behind him reveals that the back of his neck is blooming with splotches: One particularly large splotch is shaped like Texas.
Holly’s bride-white lingerie hangs from a golden hook, as if she’s presiding over this moment. Reminding me that I might never be alone with him again. I scoop up her veil, which is draped over the back of a chair. I can’t bear to touch the lingerie, but I don’t want Charlie to, either. I tentatively reach for it, but he catches my arm. “I was going to tell you.”
I wrench out of his grip and take a step away from him. Our eyes lock, and I search his for sincerity. The gold flecks are muted by the soft light of the store. The kind of light that makes everyone appear soap-opera-esque.
“I meant to tell you that time—when we were on the phone at Starbucks—but then—” He sighs. “Then I thought in person might be best. But I never meant for it to be like this. I had no idea you’d be here today. In my wedding party.” He rakes a hand up the side of his head, letting his palm rest on his temple.
Texas has ripened in its redness, and my anger ripens, too. “What, you were going to see how long you could lead me on? Were you with her when we met? You scum bastard.”
He shakes his head. Maybe it’s my imagination, or a trick of the soap-opera lighting, but his eyes look watery, pleading. “I wasn’t with her then. I swear.”
I think back over the past month in time-lapse, the signs like so many flashing-red-light intersections I blazed through. Flash: He signed his e-mail “Your friend.” And then flash: On the phone, he said, “There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”
Texas is turning purple. Chameleon Charlie. Is he stringing me along even now? If so, why do I get the uncanny sense that within Texas, there are emotions warring against one another, Santa Anna’s troops scaling an Alamo defended by Texans and Tejanos?
“Piper!” Holly’s voice carries across the store. “Make sure you get my tiara!”
I turn away from Charlie and pluck her princess tiara off a velvet chair.
“That night at the Portrait Gallery meant a lot to me. Meeting you meant a lot to me,” he says, his voice husky.
“Oh, really? How so? I made you realize you were ready to commit to someone else?”
“You don’t understand. Holly and I have a complicated past.”
I close my eyes. Furious but also trying not to cry. “And between you and me, it’s simpler, right? Just—over.”
“Piper,” he tries again, “hey—”
My eyes fly back open. “Like I said, we don’t have anything to talk about. Happy engagement, Charlie.”
I carry the veil and the tiara out of the dressing room, leaving him to put Holly’s lingerie into her pink shoulder bag.
While Holly finishes chatting with the attendants, he noiselessly joins us, the pink bag slung over his shoulder. He stands next to me, far enough to be innocent but close enough that I catch a whiff of smoke. He’s watching Holly with exasperation, the way you’d look at a screaming child who won’t let you sleep. Texas has disappeared. All that remains is a tiny flaming archipelago just below his hairline.
Holly motions for us to follow her to the exit. The perky bob of her blond ponytail mocks me. Please let the anvil drop on me now. Please? I’ve never asked for much, God, besides the Barbie Dream House, a passing grade in physics, and revival from that one hangover where I did shots of cheap vodka after a six-pack of Keystone Ice. Please. Please don’t let this be real.
As if to offer proof, Holly stops at the door and hands her bags back to the attendants. “Do you mind?” she asks them, her voice suddenly sweet.
She puts her hands on Charlie’s shoulders, stands on tiptoe, and plants a long kiss on his mouth. It’s a strange kiss, a frozen kiss during which neither of them moves. A seventh-grade kind of kiss, the kind where you have to lock lips
for two minutes straight, only you haven’t figured out foreplay or tongue kissing yet, so you just maintain painstaking contact. Lips mashed awkwardly onto lips. A few seconds into it, Holly cocks back one ballet-shoe-clad foot behind her, fifties-housewife style.
Something about the kiss gives me the serious heebie-jeebies. It’s the feeling I get at the zoo when I watch the black bears—a hair-raising feeling that the bears are really people in bear suits. Only now I’ve got the reverse feeling: Holly seems like a bear, or an octo-witchy, in a person suit. An alternate species come to claim Charlie. I gauge Susan’s reaction. She’s totally a bear in a person suit: a millisecond away from mauling Holly.
I don’t turn back until I hear the commotion of Charlie collecting Holly’s things from the attendants, who ooh and aah over the kiss. Charlie’s gone splotchy again, this time on his neck and cheeks, as he’s slowly buried in plastic and lace.
Holly appraises me, an afterthought. “We’re going to get something to eat. Make sure you get fitted, and I’ll text you later about the shower plans.” They walk out the front door and into the heat. Charlie looks back one last time, and a flicker of our Tesla electricity passes between us. But this time it hurts, so I look away.
As soon as they’re out of sight, Susan wheels on me. “Oh my God. I had no idea he was going to be here. Are you okay?”
I’m several galaxies away from Planet Okay, but I’m not sure how to articulate that, so I just shrug.
“Here’s the story.” She speaks fast, her curls shaking, her speech clipped. She gives it to me metronomic, pausing between each measure as if giving me time to digest this horrifying news. “He and Holly broke up before my wedding. Before he met you. Anyway, a couple weeks after my honeymoon, he tells me he’s moving home. That he has news. I’m out of the loop for days, have to hear it from Mom and Dad because I can’t get ahold of him. I don’t know the whole story, but I will. That’s where you come in.”
I’m shaking my head. “You want me to be a bridesmaid in Charlie’s wedding?” My mental metronome is teetering, stuck. Defeated by heat, humidity, and humiliation.
She grips the back of a chair, drumming her fingers on the wooden frame. “No! I mean yes. Undercover.”
“Still not following.” I sit in one of the chairs, and Susan paces back and forth, talking at breakneck speed.
“Holly had me come here to give an opinion on her gown fitting, aka to have me be one of the many people telling her how hah-mah-zing she looks in her dress. So when we arrive, I happen to slip in how helpful you were in my wedding. Surprise, surprise, she doesn’t have any girlfriends. So I suggested you could help her out with stuff. She, ah, didn’t say she wanted a bridesmaid, exactly, so in desperation, I may have used the word ‘servant.’ This is all in the last”—she checks her watch—“hour and a half. She says, ‘Fine, okay’ ”—Susan says this part in imitation of Holly’s high-pitched voice—“but that you have to be here today so you can get fitted for a bridesmaid dress. The whole thing’s so rush-rush.”
My head is spinning. Right round.
“I texted Charlie I’d be here this afternoon, but he never responded. I had no idea he’d show up. I thought I’d have time to explain everything before you saw him again. I’m so, so sorry you had to find out this way that he was engaged.”
I rub my eyes. “Wait, go back to the part where I’m undercover?”
Susan stops pacing. “Okay, here goes. You’ll be a bridesmaid, ostensibly. But there’s another reason I need you in the wedding party.” I raise my eyebrows at her dramatic pause. “I’ve never trusted Holly. It’s a long story. Basically, she’s a manipulator. I need you to find out what she’s up to, how she roped Charlie back in. If it happens that you find out something that would cause the wedding to get called off, so much the better. But first and foremost, I need someone on the inside. Because Charlie’s not talking. Or listening. I’ve played the Big Sister card one too many times, and now he’s shutting me out. So I’m going to use any other means necessary.”
I blink at her. I’m still processing.
She continues, “I know this is a huge thing to ask. I’m willing to hire you, make this an official thing, like with my wedding.”
I don’t know why I didn’t see it before: Susan is the kind of person who always needs a cause. A crusader type. I envision her in a crowd of protesters, holding a homemade banner: “Save Charlie!” And there’d be a pithy chant: “Two, four, six, eight, don’t let Holly procreate!”
Speaking of which, “You don’t think that maybe Holly’s—”
Her hands fly to her ears. “Oh, no. Don’t even say it out loud. That is so not happening. We’re not even going there. That’s the one thing I can’t handle.”
I close my eyes. When I open them, I pinch myself. What. Is. Happening?
She frowns. “So will you do it? Piper? Look, I know I can be intense, it’s just that— He’s my baby brother. And this isn’t some teenage rebellion. This is a huge, life-changing mistake. I’m so, so tired of losing him to that—that harpy. Of watching her suck the life out of him. I won’t stand by and watch. I love him too damn much.”
She finally collapses in the velvet chair next to me, and we both stare at the empty lighted platform.
I imagine myself a wedding Terminator: I march into the sanctuary, red beady eye gleaming, and say, “Get out” in an Austrian accent. Or I’m a Trojan horse: They wheel me in there in chiffon, and I blow the whole thing to shit.
But maybe I’m catastrophizing (Lin’s new favorite word). I guess all she’s really asked so far is that I investigate.
I imagine each dressing room door conceals a reason why I should or shouldn’t do this. The ones that fly open first are the cons: I don’t know how to investigate anything beyond conducting a Google search; I don’t want to be a part of this in any way; it’s too painful to even be around him. Then the pros: I trust Susan if she thinks this is wrong; maybe I can keep Charlie from getting hurt; I need the money, I need the money, I need the money—and, hmm—wouldn’t this be the crowning jewel of my exposé on crazy jobs? And there’s obviously the stray minion: Wheeeeeee, dimples!
I tell Susan, “I need more information before I can commit. I don’t know anything about their past. But I think what we should do first, pending the dress fitting, is have a shot of something strong and brisk.”
Susan sits up straight. “I know just the place.”
Twenty-Three
Susan drives like she talks: fast and intense. I do my best to follow her west on Route 7 into Great Falls, a sleepy town tucked between Virginia and Maryland. Past a few consignment shops and a 7-Eleven, she zips into a strip mall parking lot and pulls into a spot in front of the Shoddy Wheelbarrow pub.
Once inside, we’re transported from strip mall to seaside English pub. Insignia and flair cover every inch of the walls, from ads for PG Tips tea to pictures of English soldiers in World War I to a road sign that reads: “Caution, Elderly Crossing.”
Susan and I bolt for the bar, which is beginning to fill up with the onset of happy hour. The bartender sports mutton chops and wears a plaid hat that seems like it might pop off his head from the entropy of the fluffy white hair underneath.
The building, Susan explains, was imported from across the pond, along with the staff. As if to offer evidence of this, Mutton Chops places two Hagrid-sized hands on the oak bar and asks, “What can I pour ye?” A plaid towel is slung across one shoulder.
Susan and I look at each other. “Shots,” I say. “Surprise us.”
Mutton Chops raises his eyebrows, which are made of the same hefty fluff as his hair. He gives a belly guffaw that makes his beard shake. “Rrrright!” He reaches behind the bar for the bottle of Paddy Irish whiskey. “A little remedy from across the pond.”
Susan and I clink glasses, drink, then set the glasses down in unison.
“Another?” h
e asks.
I defer to Susan. “I have seven dollars to my name, so it’s up to you.”
She cocks an eyebrow. “Well, if you accept my proposition, you can consider it your first payment. And if you don’t—well, never mind. It’s on me anyway.” She gives Chops a peremptory nod.
He pours again; we drink. He sweeps the glasses away. “You want to tell me what kind of day involves a double dose o’ the Paddy?”
“My brother’s marrying the wrong girl,” Susan says.
“And what leads ye to believe tha’?”
“It’s a long story. And I need props.” She nods at the liquor stock behind him. “Bottles will work.”
Chops bows. “What is needed will be provided.”
Susan narrows her eyes, discerning. “Gimme two bottles of Skinnygirl vodka in different flavors, a Budweiser, the Crown Royal, and a craft beer—maybe a Sierra Nevada IPA. We won’t pour; it’s for demonstration purposes only.”
Chops produces the requisite bottles. The happy hour crowd swells around us, and a general buzz of conversation fills the room, punctuated by the occasional burst of laughter. It sounds like an orchestra warming up for a long, drunken performance.
Susan lines up the Skinnygirls, the Bud, and the Crown Royal and gestures across them, Vanna White–style. “Meet the Garbo family.” She pushes the Skinnygirl Tangerine toward me. “Holly Garbo.”
The Skinnygirl Grapefruit: “Holly’s older sister, Rachel Garbo.”
The Bud: “Holly’s father, Mark Garbo.”
The Crown Royal: “Holly’s mother, Lena Collinsworth.”
She touches the Sierra Nevada, which is still off to one side. “And, of course, Charlie. Now. Let’s rewind back about ten years. My parents run their own custom tailoring business, and right around my junior year of high school, they crossed a success threshold. Charlie would have just been starting eighth grade. Anyway, they acquired enough upscale clients—senators, judges, and the like—to upgrade to a nicer neighborhood in Fairfax: as fate would have it, a couple of blocks from the Garbos. Our parents were within schmoozing distance.”