Grave Apparel (7 page)

“Camels swill booze?”
Lacey
leaned back in her
chair.
“I had no idea. But
you’ll
miss
Felicity’s
outfit.”
Lacey
had no idea what Felicity
would
wear,
but
she had
faith
in
Felicity’s
Christmas
spirit.
“I’m
sure
it
will
be
festive.
Ferociously
festive.”
“Everything’s
just
hilarious
to
you,
isn’t
it?”
Cassandra
picked
up
Lacey’s
column
off
the
floor.
She crumpled it up into a ball and with a surprising
show
of fury pitched it at
Lacey
once
again.
Lacey
caught
it.
“You
and
Felicity
Pickles
can
wear
nothing
but
holly and
ivy
and
choke
on your mistletoe, for all I care!”

“You
forgot
the part about the starving oppressed
masses.”
Lacey
looked
at the ball of paper and tossed it neatly
over
her shoulder into the
wastebasket
without looking.
“And
mistletoe is
poisonous.”

“You’re
disgusting.”
Cassandra swung her
yellowandblack
backpack
over
her shoulder and stomped
off.
“You
people! All of you!”

All of
who
?
Lacey
wondered.
“That’s
hardly the Christmas spirit, Cassandra!” she called after the hunched form receding down
the
hall.
Lacey
fished
her
crumpled
column
from
the
wastebasket
and flattened it out. But she had no time to brood
over
Cassandra’s
hostility; she had to change her clothes. It
was
nearly time for the party and
Lacey
was
determined to
have
a good time,
even
if it killed
her.

The entire
newspaper
was
humming with anticipation
over
tonight’s
Christmas
party.
It was “blacktie
optional,”
an
in
struction that
never
failed
to send reporters into spasms of pan
icky
indecision.
How
blacktie is “blacktie”?
How
optional is “optional”?
Wouldn’t
that rumpled blue blazer do just as well?
Navy
blue is just
like
black,
isn’t
it? But who
wants
to be the only guy at the party
not
wearing a tux?

The male managers were all
expected
to wear
tuxedos,
even
the
grouchy
and
generally
illdressed
Mac
Jones.
But
there
was
also
a festive final
touch
intended
to
jumpstart
the
holiday
spirit: A jolly redandwhite Santa cap
was
mandatory wear for
the
male
managers.
The
female
managers
were
merely
ex

pected to be attired
“formally,”
sufficient
challenge in itself for
the
Washington
women
of
the
Fourth
Estate.
For
them,
the
Santa caps were
“optional.”
Lacey
did not
know
for certain,
but
she suspected that Claudia was having a little joke with
her
Santa motif. There
was
a certain amount of grumbling
over
this “blacktie optional/Santa hat mandatory” dress code,
but
Lacey
knew
newshounds
everywhere
loved
free
food
and
liquor.
They’d
wear much
worse
than a tux and a Santa cap for free food and
liquor.
For
free food and liquor
they’d
wear nothing at all.

The
Eye
Street
Observer
wasn’t
known
for its welldressed
staff.
Reporters, especially in
Washington,
D.C., tend to
believe
what
they
write
is
far
more
important
than
what
they
wear.
Lacey
tended to agree,
but
she
regretted
that her colleagues at
The
Eye
set the style bar so
low.

For
day,
blue jeans or khakis with polo shirts were a typical male
reporter’s
choice, along with that rumpled blue blazer if he had to
cover
something on the Hill. Getting
tuxedoed
up for the Christmas party
wasn’t
a
reporter’s
favorite
official
duty of the
year.
A
few
of the female reporters appreciated
fashion
and dressing up,
but
many
considered it grossly
unfair
that dressing up
was
so easy for the men:
Tuxedo?
Check. Santa cap? Check.
Ready
to
party,
dude!
Lacey
recalled some odd and entertain ing female
fashion
choices from last
year’s
party.
She hoped her
coworkers
would
hit similar heights this
year.

Who
knew
it
was
possible to
find
a
floorlength
black
velour
turtleneck dress?
Lacey
visualized this as a cocktail party dress for a bohemian
exnun.
At least it contrasted nicely with the
“retreads,”
the ancient
bridesmaid’s
dresses pulled out of the closet once a
year.
It’s
long,
it’s
satin,
it’s
a weird
color,
it’s
in my closet: Hello Christmas party! Or as one young reporter in a fluorescent neon green departure from good taste that posi
tively
screamed BRIDESMAID DRESS had
confided
to
Lacey,
“I
wore
this in a wedding!
Wouldja
believe
it? It
totally
doesn’t
look
like
it, does it?”

Another told
her,
“My sister made me
buy
this stupid dress for her stupid wedding. Why
buy
something
new
every
year when
I’ve
got this? Merry Christmas!”

There would, no doubt, be several varieties of the velvet peasant sack dress, a dressedup hippie look: Laura
Ashley
goes

to the Renaissance
Fair.
But at least it was usually
colorful.
Burgundy
and purple seemed to be the popular choices.

Another current female reporter
favorite
was
the amorphous
and
practically
colorless
New
Age
offspring
of
this
peasant
sack dress, in ecologically correct hemp and cotton. The tax re porter at
The
Eye
had
several.
Her black and gray and beige of
fice
attire came entirely from earthfriendly online catalog sites.
Clad
last
Christmas
in
yet
another
shapeless,
structureless,
earthtoned,
naturalfiber
sack
that
might
have
held
organic
po
tatoes in an earlier life, she had boasted to
Lacey
how
these
fit
her
every
time,
even
though she
always
ordered through
the
Web.
“It’s
so amazing! Smithsonian, you should write about this in your column!”

Lacey
hoped there
would
be some delicious
fashion
disas ters at this
year’s
party,
but
she could
never
write about them.
Too
dangerous.
She
grabbed
her
garment
bag
and
tote
bag
full
of essentials and dashed into the ladies’ room to transform her self for the
evening
before heading for the National Press Club a dozen or so blocks
away.
It
wouldn’t
do to
have
the
fashion
reporter
show
up looking less than
fabulous,
or at least what
passed
for
fabulous
at
The
Eye
.
But
before
she
could
make
progress on her
fabulous
look, her cell phone rang. The number
looked
familiar,
but
she
couldn’t
quite place it. “Hello?”

“Smithsonian. This is
Wentworth.”

Lacey groaned. Cassandra had been gone for all of
three
minutes. “Cassandra. What a pleasure.
Now
what?”

“We’re
not
through
with
this.
I’m
taking
your
egregious
piece of junk journalism contradicting my editorial and
every
thing I stand for to the managers’ meeting on
Monday.”
Cassan dra
was
technically some sort of minor
manager,
although she
didn’t
appear to
Lacey
to manage much of
anything,
least of all her emotions.
“We
need to speak with one
voice
at
The
Eye
.”

“And
that
would
be your
voice?”

“Are
you mocking me?”
Cassandra’s
voice
lifted an
octave.
“The managers’ meeting will deal with this! This
isn’t over!”

“Knock yourself out, Cassandra. This call is
over.”
Lacey
hung up with a silent oath,
vowing
that Cassandra
would
not ruin her
evening.
Or her Christmas spirit. She swung open the ladies’ room
door.

LaToya
Crawford,
the pretty AfricanAmerican Metro sec
tion
reporter,
was
rummaging
in
her
purse
for
lipstick.
She

wore
her trademark long jetblack
pageboy,
with
never
a hair out of place. It
looked
beautiful and
bulletproof.
She glanced up
at
Lacey.

“Girl, you look frazzled.
You
do need a Christmas
party.

What’s
up?”

Lacey
gazed
at
her
reflection
in
the
mirror
under
the
ghastly
fluorescent lighting and smoothed her
hair.
“Just a little runin with the one and only shepherdess of the
downtrodden
of the
Earth.”

“Ewww,
Cassandra?
What’s
she jumping on you for? No,
wait.
I
know.”
LaToya
laughed. “That
Fashion
Bite you wrote?
Musta
pushed
all
her
buttons.
Cassandra
thinks
Christmas
sweaters are
destroying
the ozone layer or
something.”