Probably because I was ridiculously early.
The doors to the sixth floor opened up and I fled down the hall, sighing with relief that my garment bag was still on one of the rolling racks. And it looked like everyone else’s garment bags were there, too, thank goodness. Yesterday at Lacy’s, I’d been so in my own head about the modeling thing, I hadn’t even noticed what everybody else had done with their clothes.
I still wasn’t, you know, thrilled about making my runway debut, but I was feeling better about it, at least. As silly as it had been, walking the makeshift runway with Jorge at Molly’s Crisis had helped. As had watching all the reality TV he’d assigned me as homework, although that was mostly because it was relaxing, not so much because it was instructional. And, of course, taking the train uptown with KO had helped tremendously. I always felt calmer with him by my side. Maybe KO was right, and it would all be no big deal.
One by one, the other designers arrived. There were six of us total. I exchanged friendly waves with Deja before she shrugged off her coat, revealing a well-tailored blouse with a pussycat bow that was literally printed with cats. I was completely obsessed with her whole vibe. She knew what she liked, and she just went for it.
Last, but certainly not least, Rex London swept through the doors, Andy and his ever-present clipboard at his side. Today, Rex wore a suit but no tie, his floral-printed shirt contrasting in a coordinated way with his gingham pocket square in the same color story. Maybe I needed to start mixing patterns more confidently, because I was loving it on him.
“So, so sorry about cutting things short yesterday,” Rex apologized. “Here’s a tip, baby designers: Never go into television. It’s not worth the hassle!”
We all nodded, like we were currently fielding multiple offers from television networks. Although, actually, what did I know? Maybe the others were. I remembered what Andy had said about everyone else’s presence on social media and felt a few pinpricks of inadequacy. I did my very best to squash them. Jorge had insisted that what separated a good model from a bad one was confidence. All I had to do was pretend I knew what I was doing.
“Fake it ’til you make it works, Katy-girl,” he’d said. “Like that time I said I had tap experience when I auditioned to play Michael in A Chorus Line. Did I? Nope. But I just said, ‘I can do that,’ and I did it. And did I have tap experience by the end of the run? You bet your tiny lil booty I did.”
“I can do that,” I whispered to myself. All I had to do was find a point, focus on it, and walk. “I can do that.”
I’d also watched an old YouTube clip from A Chorus Line last night. You know, for motivation. Although I’d mostly ended up inspired by the ’80s leotards. They were kind of epic.
“So. Today.” Rex London clapped his hands. “One by one, you’ll put on your garments, I’ll give you some last-minute critiques, and then we’ll block out the show, walking order, all that good stuff. For the actual show, we’ll be walking downstairs, in the perfume hall, but we’ll just mock through it up here for now.”
We’d be walking in the perfume hall?! How cool! I couldn’t believe my first fashion show was taking place in the main hall of Lacy’s, a place that had meant so much to me for my whole life.
I just wished someone else could walk for me. Like, an actual model. Someone who knew how to make my clothes look good. I couldn’t mess this up. If I tripped in Lacy’s, I’d be too humiliated to come back, and that was an unimaginable fate.
Well. First things first. I had to get through this fitting before I worried about walking. Rex London still hadn’t seen my dress. I was hoping it was better than I’d remembered. I’d gotten so in my head about it, I honestly had no idea whether it was good or bad anymore.
I took a seat next to Deja as Rex called us up one by one. With each design he looked at, I got more and more nervous. To me, the suits and dresses and jumpsuits I saw all looked perfect, so professional, but Rex always found something to critique. He wasn’t mean, necessarily, but he didn’t hold back, either. I had to consciously stop myself from jiggling my legs with anxiety.
Deja was up there now, modeling what looked like a flight suit but made out of bright emerald silk printed with leopards and jungle flowers. The tailoring at the nipped-in waist was exquisite. And when she just casually mentioned that she’d screen printed the design herself, I almost fell off my chair. Everyone here was seriously good. Did I have what it took to measure up?
“Katy Keene!” Rex called. “Our final designer. I’m so eager to see what you have for us!”
“Extremely eager!” Andy said, clapping.
I brought my garment bag into the changing area set up in one corner of the room behind a folding screen and started getting undressed.
“I understand, of course, that you haven’t had as much time as the rest of the designers,” Rex called as I finished changing, zipping up my dress with shaking fingers. The nerves were out in full force, and my best efforts to channel Jorge’s confidence were failing me. “And that you haven’t had the benefit of receiving any input from me on your design. So just know that I do have that in mind …”
As I rounded the corner, now dressed in my look for the fashion show, Rex trailed off mid-sentence. And from the look on his face, I got the feeling he wasn’t speechless with wonder.
At least, not the good kind of wonder.
“Here it is!” I did an awkward set of ta-da hands and stood on the little raised platform in front of the three-way mirror. I was trying my very best to fake it, honestly, but I got the feeling I couldn’t fake my way out of this one. This wasn’t a tap dance audition for a high school production of A Chorus Line. This was just me, in a dress, standing alone in a brightly lit room at Lacy’s. I may have been fully clothed, but I’d never felt so exposed. Rex London crossed his arms and frowned at me.
“And what … is … it, exactly?” Rex asked.
Well, that wasn’t the question I wanted to hear.
“It’s, um, a dress?” I plucked nervously at a phantom thread at my wrist.
“Interesting. Is it? I see a high neckline with a floral detail. I see a chiffon bell sleeve. I see a plaid vest. I see a pleated A-line skirt. I see a collection of random elements that do not go together in the slightest which are, granted, reasonably well-constructed, but I do not see a dress.”
I exhaled slowly, trying with everything I had to fight the prickle of tears at my eyes and the burning in the back of my throat. I had known, coming into today, that this probably wasn’t going to be good.
But it was so, so much worse than I’d feared. Standing under the soft glow of the store’s most flattering lighting, I could see, for the first time, how truly bad this dress was. There was a case to be made that a garment consisting of seemingly incongruous elements had always been a way to move the fashion needle forward—just look at the prints that came out of the ’60s, or even the pattern mixing that Rex was so fond of—but this dress wasn’t worth defending. It wasn’t intentionally incongruous. It wasn’t intentionally anything.
And the worst part? It wasn’t me at all. Looking at myself in the mirror, I felt like I was wearing something that had been made by a stranger.
I braced myself for the gossipy whispers of the other designers, but instead, the room was absolutely silent, which was somehow even more humiliating. Even with the plush carpeting, I was confident you could easily have heard a pin drop.
“Tell me, Katy Keene. Has Veronica Lodge actually seen anything you’ve designed?” Rex asked. “Because I know Veronica, and she is an absolute paragon of style who wouldn’t be caught dead in an atrocity like this.”
“No,” I whispered, looking down, afraid to make eye contact with Rex, or to see what was written on the other designers’ faces. Probably pity at best, and disdain at the worst. “I mean, yes, she’s seen things I’ve made, but she wouldn’t wear this dress.”
“I honestly cannot imagine a single person who would. Can you step off the dais, please?” Closing h
is eyes, he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Seeing this monstrosity reflected in the three-fold in the mirror is triggering a migraine.”
“Good thing we decided to go paperless.” Andy pulled a packet of aspirin out of his pants pocket. Rex waved him away. “I can easily remove Miss Keene from all the literature before the show. In fact, I can do it right now.” He pulled his phone out of another pants pocket.
“No, no.” Rex sank into a chair, his elbow resting delicately on the arm as he looked at me like I was the worst thing to happen to fashion since low-rise jeans. “I’d rather not make a change now and get the bloggerati talking. Better we just don’t include her on the day of. No one will notice. Unless …” One eyebrow arched up. “Unless you think you can salvage this?”
“Salvage this? Are we looking at the same random collection of half-baked trends?” Andy whispered, wincing, like he didn’t want me to hear him.
“Perhaps Miss Keene is one of those creative types who works best under pressure.”
“I can salvage it.” Could I? Mom would have known exactly what elements to keep and what to toss, and how to turn it into something special. Me? I had no idea. But I couldn’t let my big chance slip through my fingers without at least trying one more time.
“We don’t lose anything by letting her try.” Rex shrugged. “Show up at Lacy’s an hour before call time for the fashion show. If it’s good, you walk. If it’s not, I never want to hear the name ‘Katy Keene’ again as long as I live. Understood?”
“Understood.” I nodded. “I can fix it. I promise. Thank you for giving me another chance. I know I probably don’t deserve it.”
“Probably not,” he mused, “but the concept of whether or not one ‘deserves’ something is always so unappealing to me. Who deserves anything, really?” I nodded like I understood what he was saying, but I didn’t, really. My brain was too busy melting with shame to focus on his meditation on the nature of what humanity does or doesn’t deserve. “I’d change before leaving, if I were you,” he said. “You wouldn’t want to scare the customers.”
Right. Summarily dismissed, I vanished behind the screen to change back into my street clothes. As Rex began blocking the show, arranging the designers in the order they were going to walk in, the room returned to its normal level of volume.
I held it together as I stuffed my horrible dress back in the garment bag, carried it onto the elevator, and fled through the perfume hall and out the doors, but the second I hit the sidewalk, the tears started flowing freely. My big chance, and I’d ruined it. What a complete and utter disaster. I took a seat on a stone planter on the sidewalk, perching on the edge, the plants within long gone for the summer and yet to be replaced by tiny Christmas trees. Looking up at Lacy’s, at the beautiful window display with the trailing scarves, I couldn’t believe it had been so recently that I’d stood here with KO in front of this exact same window, so full of optimism for the best fall ever.
Some fall this was shaping up to be. Did I even have what it took to be a professional designer? If this was what happened to me the first time I had to design under pressure, I should probably just give up. If I was lucky, that man at Howie’s Hoagies would still have the job available. Right now, “sandwich” seemed like the only career opportunity I was fit for.
Sighing, I pulled out my phone. My finger hovered over the contacts, wondering if I should call KO for sympathy, or Jorge for a pep talk, but then I realized I didn’t want to talk to either one of them. Thinking about recounting how badly I’d failed made me flood with shame all over again. Telling them would make it more real somehow.
There was only one person I wanted to talk to, and she wasn’t here anymore.
What I wouldn’t give for one more minute with Mom.
No wonder I was flailing. This was the first thing I’d tried to design since Mom died. Without her to bounce my ideas off of, or offer suggestions on my sketches, or help me tackle a particularly tricky pleat, designing anything felt impossible. I needed her, not just for this dress, but for everything. She’d been right by my side—from the first sloppy pillowcase I sewed all the way through to the elaborate construction of my prom dress. By then, she was too weak to sit at the sewing machine, but her eye was sharp as ever. She made me the designer I was—and she was the designer I wanted to be.
Could I do this without her?
I wasn’t sure. But I knew she’d want me to try.
Wiping my face on the back of my sleeve, too upset to care about the trails of mascara staining the red sleeves of my coat, I pushed myself up off the planter. I didn’t have Mom anymore, but I did have one piece of her she’d left behind. The place I turned to, whenever I needed things to make sense. Stuffing my garment bag under my arm, I turned decidedly toward the stairs to the subway, ready to head downtown.
I needed to get back to my sewing machine.
I PINCHED MY IMAGINARY BOWLER hat between my thumb and index finger and fanned out the rest of my hand. Nothing like a little Fosse to distract a guy from the endless waiting to find out if his life was going to change.
“Natalie! Those aren’t Fosse fingers!” Jason Bravard called, the studio at Broadway Dance Center filled with dozens of Advanced Musical Theatre students doing their very best Fosse moves across the floor. “And Jorge. Are you even trying to point your toes on the kick? Doesn’t matter how high it is if your feet are ugly!”
Point. Right. Fosse. Focus.
I’d kept my ringer on my phone on loud, with the volume all the way up. Obnoxious, but I wasn’t going to risk missing a call from the Hello, Dolly! team. Every once in a while, I’d snuck a glance over at my bag, but so far, it was depressingly silent. If your phone rang during class, it better be because you’d booked a gig, otherwise, the wrath of Jason Bravard was swift and unforgiving.
I hit the final pose, elbows in, arms flat, fingers spread wide.
“And one more time!” Jason called. Barely suppressed groans reverberated through the room. I wiped the sweat off my forehead with the edge of my crop top and got back into position for the top of the number.
One last run later, complete with very pointed toes on the kicks, we were dismissed. Following the rest of the class, I shuffled over to the edge of the room, crouching down to pull my water bottle out of my dance bag. And at that exact moment, sweaty and mid-gulp, my phone rang. Pulse racing, I dug through my bag until I pulled it out from under a cropped hoodie. I looked at the screen—a number I didn’t recognize with a New York area code. Que mierda. It was either a telemarketer, or it was the call. Vibrating with anxiety, still crouched over my dance bag, I answered the phone.
“Hello?”
“Hi there,” an unfamiliar woman’s voice said. “Is this Jorge Lopez?”
“Yes!” I squealed. “Um, yeah. I mean, yes,” I said, more sedately, like someone who was used to getting calls from Broadway casting offices all the time. “Yes, this is he.”
“Great. Well, we just wanted to let you know that, unfortunately, we’ve gone in another direction.”
“You’ve—I’m sorry, what?” What was happening? I had been so sure I’d crushed it. They’d laughed at all the funny lines when I’d read, without a single note about me being “too soft” or too anything else. They’d kept me in the room for hours, rotating out different Corneliuses as I read scene after scene, like they were testing who played best against me. Like I was already cast! And now, they were calling me to tell me I didn’t get it? How was this possible? Anytime I hadn’t been cast in something before, I just never heard back from the theater, like they were ghosting me out of a relationship.
“At the end of the day, for Barnaby, Ethan was just looking for someone with a little more … edge.”
“Yes, a character whose catchphrase is ‘holy cabooses!’ is definitely known for his edge.”
It just slipped out. I hadn’t meant to be so sarcastic. Even though I was pissed, I thought I knew better than to be so flip with a casting person, potentially burning a
bridge. Stupid. I bit my tongue as the pause on the other end of the line stretched on into infinity. During that pause, I died, was reincarnated as myself, lived another eighteen years, and came back to wait on the phone.
“Thank you for your time,” she said flatly, then hung up.
I didn’t get it. Everything I thought could come from this show: my Equity card, an agent, a real job on Broadway, gone. In a ninety-second phone call. I buried my head in my hands, squeezing my eyes shut.
“Guessing that wasn’t the call you wanted.” I looked up to see Jason Bravard standing above me, a sympathetic smile on his face. “Hello, Dolly!?”
“Yeah.” Avoiding eye contact, I pulled my jacket out of my bag and shrugged it on. “But, you know. There’ll be other shows.”
That wasn’t how I felt. It felt like my world was ending. But sometimes I did my best acting offstage. Like right now, when I was trying to save face in front of my scary-talented and sometimes just plain scary dance teacher, who had more than enough edge. I had a feeling that Jason Bravard had never been told he was “too soft” for anything. Except maybe the Navy SEALs, although, honestly, he probably could make the cut for that, too. I’d like to see a Navy SEAL attempt a fan kick.
“Yes. There will be.” I rose to my feet, still trying to avoid Jason’s piercing stare. “I know this isn’t what you want to hear right now, but you’re young, Jorge. You’re really young. You’ve got time. So much time. This is only your beginning.”
“Thanks.” Jason being nice to me was just making me even more upset. I felt more comfortable around him when he was critiquing me for not pointing my toes enough. Like, if he thought I was so sad that he had to be nice to me, I must have been really pathetic.
“Keep coming to class, okay?” he called as I walked out of the studio. “And keep auditioning!”
Ugh. The last thing I wanted to think about was another audition. I wanted sweatpants and Cheetos and people crying their fake eyelashes off on some train wreck of a reality TV show. I wanted nothing that had to do with Ethan Fox, or Hello, Dolly!, or Broadway, or any of it.
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