Mercury in Retrograde (17 page)

“You won't, don't worry,” Lipstick said, “I just promised her I wouldn't say anything until she was prepared to go public. And she will be ready by the Met.”

“Wonderful. I look forward to being introduced to this mystery woman,” Jack answered, peering at Lipstick closely. “I thought I had you all figured out, Lena Lippencrass, but it seems you are full of surprises. And I don't like surprises. They rarely work in my favor.” He grabbed his cape from the coatrack,
whooshed it around his shoulders, and stalked out.

Lipstick allowed herself to slump into the deep couch's cushions and, looking at the ceiling, moaned, “I am in hell.”

“No, you are in Jack's office,” said Christina, who had silently glided into the room after Jack had left. “Are you planning on staying here all day? Should I order you lunch?”

“No, no, I'm leaving,” Lipstick said and headed back to her desk.

 

After work Lipstick, who was feeling slightly paranoid, decided to mix up her route. Instead of taking the F train, she walked a few blocks east and took the 6 train to Bleecker Street. But, on the corner of Bleecker and Houston, she turned around and once again caught sight of the brown-wigged spy coming out of the train station and walking her way.

 

“I had to duck into the bathroom at the BP station on Lafayette to get rid of her,” Lipstick told Dana and Penelope that night at yoga.

“Ew, public toilets.” Penelope shuddered. Penelope had a lifelong loathing of public toilets, which had been instilled in her at the tender age of five, by, naturally, her mother.

“Rule number 44: Never—
ever—
sit directly on a public toilet seat,” Susan had snapped at Penelope after catching her youngest daughter clambering down from her porcelain perch in the local Cincinnati IHOP bathroom. “Squat over it. Not on it! Do you know how many diseases you can get from sitting on that?”

Among the maladies one could inflict on oneself by putting one's bare unprotected ass directly on a public porcelain, according to Susan Rosenzweig Mercury, were: herpes, crabs, the clap, syphilis, hookworm, warts, tetanus, gout, rotgut, yeast infections, and teen pregnancy—which was viewed as the worst because, as Susan said, “look at what happened to Karen Klinger
from down the street. She got pregnant, dropped out of school, and now works at (shudder)
White Castle
.” Which meant, to Penelope's young fertile mind, sitting on a public toilet was a direct road to ending up pregnant, broke, living in a trailer, and on welfare while working for a fast-food chain.

“Well, it's not like I wanted to go in that darn bathroom,” Lipstick said. “But I had to do something to lose that woman.”

“Hey, I almost forgot, we can't do yoga next Saturday,” Dana said, coming out of her lunge.

“Why not?” Lipstick asked. “Is something wrong?”

“No, it's Passover,” Dana answered, twisting her arms and legs around each other, trying to match Sally's squatting eagle pose. “I'm going to Cleveland tomorrow for the holidays. I'll be back Monday.”

“It is?” Penelope asked. “And how do you do that damn pose? I always fall on my face.”

“Concentration, Penelope, something you seem to lack,” Sally murmured.

“You should know it's Passover—aren't you Jewish?” Dana asked.

“Well, not really. I'm Jew
-ish,
” Penelope said. “My mom's a Jew, but Dad's born-again. I'm not really anything.”

“You're mom's a Jew, you're a Jew,” Dana said, exhaling and standing upright.

“Yeah, but she's not particularly religious. She celebrates Passover, but every year she'll say, ‘Services start at six so we'll get there at eight, 'cause that's when they eat!' It's always weird. She drags Dad along, and he tends to antagonize everyone by wearing a ‘What Would Jesus Do' T-shirt. Mom always uses the same excuses to get out of services like, ‘The dog died,' ‘Jim was incontinent,' or ‘The car broke down.' Shit like that. Their imaginary dog has died like five times, and Grandma has been resurrected twice. Thank God I don't live in the same city as
them anymore. I couldn't handle the stress.”

“Yeah, well,” Dana said, sighing as she sat down on her mat, “I know what you mean. The prospect of going home and having my mother grill me about Noah and giving her grandkids has kept me up for the past five nights. Between that, my weight, and work—which is killing me right now—I've kind of started to, um…”

“Yeeees?” Lipstick prompted her.

“Lose my hair,” Dana replied.

“What?” Penelope said, “I don't see anything. Your hair looks fine to me.”

“Check this out,” Dana said, lifting up the back of her bob. Sure enough, underneath, near the bottom of her hairline by the nape of her neck was a bald patch the size of a silver dollar. Sally and Lipstick stopped their poses and came over to look.

“Hmm, well,” Lipstick said unconvincingly, “it's not that bad.”

“You can barely tell,” Sally said, elbowing Lipstick.

“Does this happen a lot?” Penelope asked.

“Oh, not really,” Dana said. “It happened in law school during finals, during the Bar exam, and after the divorce. My doctor says it's stress-induced alopecia. My hair usually grows back when I calm down.”

“Oooh, so chic,” Lipstick said. “Princess Caroline of Monaco had alopecia. She went full-on bald after her father died and her sister Stephanie ran off with that guy in the circus.”

“Hopefully I won't be going full-on bald,'” Dana snapped, letting her hair drop and smoothing it down with her hands.

“It'll get better,” Lipstick said, rubbing Dana's back. “Do you think it will grow back in three weeks? We have the Met Gala, you know.”

“Well, if it doesn't, then I'm not going,” Dana said.

“Please,” Lipstick pleaded, “we can always work around a
bald patch. Have a Valium. Spray some Rogaine. Anything—I've been working on our dresses for weeks now.”

“And I can steal you some of Trace's spray-on hair!” Penelope offered.

“Does that stuff really work?” Dana asked.

“As long as it's not raining,” Penelope said.

“Fine,” Dana said.

“Oh, thank God,” Lipstick exhaled and gave Dana a big hug. “I promise, it will be fine. And now, I gotta go back to work on those dresses if they're going to be done in time.” Lipstick blew Penelope a kiss and went back to her apartment and her sewing machine.

 

Later that night, after three more hours of sewing, Lipstick checked her voice mail. There were two messages from her mother.

“First message,”
the machine's digital voice crooned. “Lena, darling, where are you?” her mother's voice wailed. “I'm in fits. Please, please call me or your father. He's very upset. He has had to take three Zantacs with every dinner for the past month. This is getting ridiculous.”

“Second message.”

“Oh my good Lord in Heaven. I just logged on to Socialstatus.com and it says you are a
whore
in
Soho
? Darling! Please! Come back to us. We don't care what you've done or how you are paying the bills. Daddy will pay off your pimp. Just come home!”

She's lost her mind,
Lipstick thought as she sat down at her sewing table, ready for two more hours of work before she called
it a night.
I'll call her tomorrow and set everything straight.

At two in the morning, one week later, Lipstick was fading. Her back hurt from sitting in her kitchen chair and stooping over the sewing machine for the past four hours while she slaved away in her own personal sweatshop on the Met Gala gowns she was making for herself and Dana. She stopped sewing and, stretching her back, yawned.

It had been a long day. She'd put in a full day of work at
Y
and gotten yelled at by Jack for not covering Fabiola Winchester's Tea for Tots soiree at the Ritz-Carlton several weeks earlier. It was an oversight, Lipstick admitted. But she'd been so tired lately from her double life that she'd simply forgotten.

But it had not gone unnoticed, especially after the party was missing from the pages of
Y,
but not from
WWD
and Socialstatus.com. Jack was even more peeved after Fabiola had called his assistant Christina, her best friend, to complain about Lipstick's lack of attendance.

“You're slipping,” Jack had hissed at the afternoon meeting.
“I don't care how many events there are to cover, or what new fabulous designer you're courting, these people are what make this magazine run. They are the air we breathe and the ink we type. They are the reason
Yis
. And, may I add, the reason you get
paid
(
barely,
thought Lipstick). Don't let it happen again. And what's with those gloves you're wearing lately? Have you suddenly become a germaphobe? And for God's sake, Lena, get some sleep. You look atrociously Goth, which, as we all know, was two seasons ago. Christina has some Ambien if you need it or put some makeup on, but those bags under your eyes are unacceptable.”

To make matters worse, Lipstick had had to lie to get out of covering SueAnne's cocktail party celebrating Dolce & Gabbana's latest scent, Torture, that evening. She'd told Jack she was meeting the Dauphin designer at a secret locale to persuade the designer to debut at the Met. In reality she'd had to go shopping.

But it wasn't at her old haunt, Bergdorf. Instead, Lipstick had used the last of her old allowance to go to the fabric stores on Seventh Avenue. The Met Gala's theme this year was feathers, and she had to be creative. There were no feathers in her closet. But at least the bill for several yards of black and green organza and two huge bags full of feathers had come to a little over three hundred dollars, as opposed to three thousand, the typical bill for her pre-exile-to-Soho shopping trips.

Back at her apartment, Lena started the sewing machine up again. The feathers she'd bought were everywhere. On the floor, on her clothes, even in her hair. It looked like she'd stepped into a ring with seven multicolored chickens. And lost. She was so tired she was seeing double, but she had to get the dresses done by the following week, so she continued sewing.

But her mind was on what happened on the way home from the fabric store. Loaded down with four oversized bags, Lip
stick had taken the 1 local train down to Houston. On her walk home, she spotted the stalker.

The woman with the Anna Wintour wig was standing behind some scaffolding on the corner of Sixth and Houston. And she was taking pictures again. Three blocks later, as Lipstick turned onto Sullivan Street, she was still behind her, half a block away. Lipstick picked up her pace and ran inside her building.

Why is she doing this?
Lipstick thought, sewing feather after feather onto the dress she was making for Dana.
What does she want from me? It's so creepy. And weird.

Penelope had tried to look on the bright side. “Well, you know you've made it when you have a stalker!” But that hadn't made Lipstick feel any better or made her life any easier at work. Jack was appalled by the posts on Socialstatus.com of Lipstick looking like a commoner—getting off the subway, walking into what looked like a dilapidated tenement building, and hanging out with people (Penelope, Dana, and Zach) who certainly weren't on the social register as far as he knew. And, of course, she was still broke. She'd kept Jack's probing and criticisms at bay, but she wasn't sure how much longer she could hold out for.

And who stalked someone? It was just so odd and unsettling. It infuriated Lipstick. At least the photos of Lipstick on Socialstatus.com—at parties in her creations and on the street—had run up traffic. She was getting more press on the site than anyone ever had before. People had become obsessed with her. The comments section was full of chatter like, “Lena is so cool. She's so urban fabulous.” And that week she was ranked number two on the site—just below Bitsy Farmdale, who'd incidentally suddenly taken to wearing little gloves, just like Lipstick. She'd never been so popular on the circuit before. And much to her own surprise, she'd never cared less.

Her life was so busy that she rarely had the time to check the site anymore and obsess over her ranking. She'd look at it
casually at work, but it didn't seem to matter. All of the people who she'd been “friends” with for years just seemed to want something from her. They wanted Lipstick to put them in
Y,
or cover their gala, or be photographed with them as, now that Lipstick was so popular on Socialstatus.com, they knew a picture with Lipstick would ensure that their visage was posted onto the website alongside hers.

It was tiresome. All Lipstick wanted to do was go home and sew more, to do something she felt so passionate about, and create a tangible product. She loved darting dresses and hemming shirts. She adored creating confections out of her own clothes and fitting them to her—or Penelope's or Dana's—body. And when a dress or shirt was done, there was the satisfaction of wearing it, or seeing it posted on the website and then being praised by people who had no idea where the clothes had come from. It was the purest form of flattery, with no strings attached, because no one could figure out who the designer was; they just wanted the clothes.

The few hours of spare time she had were spent with Penelope and Dana, who didn't care what her father did for a living or where she shopped. They were just fun. And for the first time in her life, Lipstick felt accepted for who she was, not what she was—or who her parents were.

Lipstick even began to miss her parents. At the completion of every dress, she would think,
Mother would love this.
When she rode the subway instead of wasting money on a taxi she'd think,
Daddy would
die.
He always said I'd be eaten alive down here.
And every day she'd think,
I'll call them tomorrow.
But she never got around to it.

Lipstick was so lost in her thoughts that she wasn't paying attention and her forefinger ran under the sewing needle.

“Oh! OW!” she cried as blood dripped from her fingertip onto the black dress she was making. “Oh no!” she yelled as she
went to the sink and ran her hand under cold water. At least the stain wouldn't show on the dark fabric. She bandaged her finger and just as she was about to call it a night, she heard a knock on the door.

Lipstick, wearing only a white tank top with no bra underneath and a pair of running shorts, opened the door and blushed. It was Zach, holding an open Heineken in his hand.

“Hey,” he said, “I figured you might be working late and thought you'd need one of these.”

“Oh, thanks,” Lipstick said, taking a beer.

“What happened to your finger, and what's with the feathers everywhere?” Zach asked. “You okay? You need some help?”

“No, no,” Lipstick said, “I'm okay. Just a bad run-in with the sewing machine. Wasn't paying attention.”

Reaching out for her hurt hand, Zach rubbed it against his cheek and said, “You should be more careful. These are precious fingers.”

Lipstick gasped. She could feel the jolt from where her hand hit his cheek in her thighs. “Oh, yes. Right,” she said.

Kissing her hand, Zach said, “Well, I gotta go. I have an early-morning meeting with some potential clients. But stop by tomorrow if you want. I'd love to see you.”

“You…you don't want to stay?” Lipstick asked.

“No can do, not tonight, anyways.”

“Okay…see you later then. And thanks for the beer.”

“Good night.”

“'Night.”