Queen of Babble Gets Hitched (4 page)

“This is like watching a lamb being led to slaughter. Is getting married really that important to you? It’s just a goddamned piece of paper.”

Okay, well, it’s going to be fine after a few more phone calls. And more sex.

A lot more sex.

The declaration of union between two people has long been considered by sociologists to be an important step in the development of human happiness. Societally speaking, a heterosexual male who has paired off with a heterosexual female is generally thought to be calmer and less prone to violence, and a wedded female equally less troublesome. Their offspring benefit from having both a father and a mother, and—in ancient times, at least—the entire tribe benefited from the goodwill generated from a happy union. In other words: weddings were a joyous occasion that brought about less fighting and unpleasantness all around.

I would just like to point out that none of these sociologists came to my sisters’ weddings. Obviously.

Tip to Avoid a Wedding Day Disaster

Is your future mother-or sister-in-law driving you insane as you plan your special day? There’s a simple way to get her off your back. Give her something to do! Allowing his family—especially the female members—to take part in the preparations for the big day will not only make them feel special but will also lift some of the burden off your shoulders.

Just make sure you don’t ask them to do anything too important. That way when they mess it up (as they in evitably will), it won’t matter.

LIZZIE NICHOLS DESIGNS
^™

“Hello, Chez Henri, please hold.”

“Hello, Chez Henri, please hold.”

“Hello, Chez Henri, please hold.”

“Hello, Chez Henri, how may I help you?”

“Yeah, is this Henri Bridal?” The woman on the other end of the phone has pronounced it Henry instead of the correct French pronunciation of my boss’s name, which is En-ree.

That I can forgive. What I can’t forgive is that she’s chewing gum. I can feel my toes curling. Of all the annoying personal habits a bride-to-be—or anyone, really—can have, gum-chewing is the one that aggravates me the most.

“Yes, it is,” I say, glaring at all the blinking lights on my phone. It’s a good thing I had all those months of reception work at the law offices of Pendergast, Loughlin, and Flynn. I can handle an overloaded switchboard like nobody’s business.

And the Monday morning after Jill Higgins’s New Year’s Eve wedding to wealthy socialite John MacDowell—at which Anna Wintour (yes, the Anna Wintour, longtime editor of Vogue) called my restoration of the ancestral MacDowell bridal gown “cunning”—the phones at Chez Henri are ringing off the hook.

Of all the mornings for Monsieur and Madame Henri to come in late from their home in suburban New Jersey, this would not have been the one I’d chosen. I’m just saying.

“I wanna make an appointment to see that chick,” the gum-chewer says.

“I beg your pardon?” I am taken aback. First gum-chewing, then a reference to me—and she can only be referring to me. I am the only employee at Chez Henri who can reasonably be referred to as a “chick,” Madame Henri being in her fifties—as a derogatory slang word for “young woman”?

“You know,” Gum-Chewer says. “The chick that designed that dress for Blubber.”

Blubber. The nickname the press dubbed poor Jill Higgins, because she happens to work in the seal enclosure at the Central Park Zoo. And because she’d deigned to fall in love with one of New York’s wealthiest bachelors, and she doesn’t happen to be a size two.

“I’m sorry,” I say to Gum-Chewer. “The chick to whom you are referring happens to dislike people who look down on others due to their weight.”

Gum-Chewer appears to have swallowed her gum. “But—”

“And furthermore, that chick happens to dislike being called a chick.”

“Um, excuse me.” Gum-Chewer snaps her gum. “But do you have any idea who I am? I’m—”

“No, and I don’t care to know. Good-bye,” I say, pressing the END CALL button. “Chez Henri, how may I help you?”

“Elizabeth? Is that you?” The woman on the other end of the line has a heavy French accent and sounds as if she’s speaking to me from inside a tunnel. No, it isn’t my future mother-in-law, who is from Texas. It’s Madame Henri.

“Madame, where are you?” I ask in French, the language I now routinely slip into when speaking to my employers, though I hid the fact that I could speak it—not perfectly, but well enough to understand (and be understood by) them—for months. “It’s crazy here. The phones are ringing off the hook.”

“Elizabeth, I’m so sorry. I meant to call earlier, but my cell phone doesn’t work here. I’ve been at the hospital.”

“The hospital?” The other lines continue to ring. Callers, impatient at being placed on hold, have hung up and are calling back. I turn away from the phone. “Is everything all right? I hope nothing happened to the boys—”

“No, the boys are fine. It’s Jean, actually.” Madame Henri’s voice sounds tiny. She’s a petite woman, but the one thing about her that’s never seemed small before is just that… her voice. She’s always had a commanding—even domineering—presence. But not now. “He didn’t feel well at breakfast yesterday morning. I thought it was just too much champagne from the night before. But then he said his arm hurt—”

I gasp. “Madame!”

“Yes.” Her voice sounds even smaller. “He had a heart attack. He is scheduled for emergency bypass surgery here at the hospital today. Quadruple.” Then, with a hint of her old asperity, she adds, “I told him he works too hard! I told him he needed to take more time off! Well, now he’s getting it… and look how he has to spend it! He could have taken it at our home in Provence. But no! Not him! This is what it has come to.”

“Oh, Madame.” I shake my head. “Well, I’m sure he’s in very good hands—”

“The best,” Madame Henri says simply. “But it will be weeks before he can return to work. And I as well, because who do you think will have to play nursemaid to him? His sons? Bah! They are worthless. Worse than garbage.”

I’m relieved to hear her bad-mouthing her children. That means the situation is nowhere near as dire as I’d first feared from the way she’d sounded. If she can trash-talk the kids—who, from what I’ve observed, pretty much are worthless—things are okay.

“And just as the shop is doing the best business it has ever done before,” Madame Henri goes on. “All thanks to you! And this is how we repay you. When he is well again,” she adds matter-of-factly, “I will kill him.”

“Don’t worry about the shop,” I say, keeping my face resolutely turned away from all the blinking lights on the phone. “I’ll be fine here.”

“Elizabeth,” Madame Henri says. “I am not a fool. I can hear the telephone ringing.”

“The phone,” I admit, “is a bit of a problem at the moment. But not one I can’t solve.”

“Do what you have to do,” Madame Henri says, with a sigh. “Even… even hire someone.”

I can’t help letting out a gasp. The Henris are almost insanely tightfisted. For good reason, of course. Until I started working for them, they barely made a profit. In fact, for the first four months I worked for them, I did it for free, just to prove I’d be worth the eventual investment of my thirty grand a year… and the rent-free apartment over the shop.

“Madame,” I say, hardly daring to believe what I’d just heard. “Are you sure?”

“I don’t see what choice we have,” Madame Henri says with a sigh. “You can’t do it all alone. Not the phones and the gowns. I’ll try to stop in when I can, but it won’t be often. You’re going to have to get some help. It’s Jean’s own fault,” she adds waspishly. “And I’ll tell him so if he dares to complain when he hears of it… after he’s out of the hospital, of course.”

“Don’t bother him about it, Madame,” I say. “And don’t you worry about it, either. Leave everything to me. I’ll take care of the shop. I’ll take care of everything.”

I have no earthly idea, of course, how I’m going to go about this. I just know that this is a crisis, and, well, I used to be a Girl Scout. Crises are what Girl Scouts are trained for. I’ll get through this somehow.

I tell her to let me know if there’s anything else I can do, and also to let me know the minute her husband is out of surgery. Then I hang up and stare at all the blinking lights on the phone and listen to the shrill ring of the unanswered line. I have every confidence that I can handle this. I really do.

It’s just that I don’t have the foggiest notion how I’m even going to begin.

“Hello, Chez Henri, can you hold?”

“Hello, Chez Henri, can you hold?”

“Hello, Chez Henri, can you—”

“Lizzie?” a familiar woman’s voice screams hoarsely in my ear, cutting me off. “Don’t you frigging put me on hold. It’s me, Tiffany.”

I pause just as my finger is about to hit the HOLD button.

“Tiffany Sawyer,” the hoarse voice continues impatiently. “From Pendergast, Loughlin, and Flynn? The office we both used to work in until you, like, got totally fired, remember? Which, by the way, was last week? God, what is the matter with you? Are you going to turn out to be one of those people who become famous and then, like, forget everybody they knew on the way up? Because if that’s the case, you totally suck.”

“Tiffany.” I glance at the Henris’ wall clock. It’s barely ten, which would account for the hoarseness in her voice. Tiffany, part-time model, part-time receptionist in Chaz’s father’s law offices, which is where I met her, rarely makes it up before noon, thanks to her hard-core partying with her married photographer boyfriend, Raoul. “What are you doing up so early?”

“Whatevs,” Tiffany says. “It’s, like, the day after New Year’s. The city was dead last night. But that’s not why I’m calling. Do you know—do you have any fucking idea—who made Page Six in the Post today?”

“Tiffany.” I can’t take my eyes off all the blinking hold lights. “I know this might seem hard to believe, but I’m actually working right now. My boss had a heart attack, and I’m the only one here, and I don’t have time for—”

“You. You did. There’s a huge story about you, and a photo of you and Jill Higgins at her wedding, and about how you’re the up-and-coming wedding gown designer to the stars, and how Anna Wintour—Anna fucking Wintour—said your gown for Jill Higgins was, and I quote, cunning. Do you have any idea what that means?”

The other line starts ringing. “I’m starting to get a pretty good idea,” I say.

“You are the shit,” Tiffany screams into the phone. “You have it fucking made!”

“You know,” I say. “It really doesn’t feel that way right now. Because right now, I can’t get a thing done because I don’t have anyone to ANSWER MY PHONES!”

“Jesus Christ, you don’t have to yell,” Tiffany says. “You need someone to answer your phones? I’ll answer your fucking phones.”

I blink, not certain I’ve heard her correctly. “What? No. Wait. I—”

“I’ll be right there. Where are you again? I can stay till only one because you know I’ve got Pendergast at two. God, I wish I could quit that place. But the benefits are so good. As soon as Raoul gets rid of that troll wife of his and I can get on his insurance, I’m giving Roberta my two weeks’ notice. God, I can’t wait to see her pruny, dried-up face when I do. But I can get someone to come in at one and help you out. I wonder what Monique is doing today. I know she got booted from Chanel for doing blow in the back room. But—”

“Tiffany.” I’m gripping the edge of my desk. “Really. It’s fine. I don’t need your help. Or Monique’s.” Whoever that is.

“—it’s cool,” Tiffany goes on, “’cause she’s in Narcotics Anonymous now. So am I. That’s how I met her. Coke is for whores.”

I realize there’s no point in telling Tiffany that the Anonymous part of Narcotics Anonymous means you actually aren’t supposed to tell people you—or other people you meet there—go to meetings. It will just go in one ear and out the other, like so much of what I tell Tiffany.

“Look, you said your boss had a heart attack, right?” Tiffany goes on. “We’ll just come in and help out until he’s back on his feet, or whatever. Don’t act like you don’t need us. I can hear the frigging phone ringing off the hook in the background.”

“Um, thanks. It’s just—” How can I explain that if I were stranded on a desert island and Tiffany pulled up in a rescue boat, I wouldn’t get in it. Love her like a sister? Yeah. Trust her? Not so much. “I don’t have the money to pay you. I mean, we’re not exactly making huge profits yet, and—”

“What are we talking about here?” Tiffany wants to know. “Twenty bucks an hour?”

“Twenty?” I gasp. “Who do you think we are, UPS? I was going to call Manpower and offer ten—”

“Ten!” Tiffany lets out a bark of laughter. “I haven’t made ten bucks an hour since I used to babysit my neighbor’s kid back in North Dakota. But,” she adds, more soberly, “I guess it’ll be worth it if I can get my hands on a Lizzie Nichols original. Those things are going to be next to impossible to get by the time Raoul’s green card comes in and he can finally ditch the troll, I know it. Just like I know Monique’s gonna want one, too. Her boyfriend, Latrell, just popped the question at Christmas. With a four-carat square-cut pink diamond from Harry Winston. Latrell’s in the music industry.” Her tone becomes reverential. “He knows Kanye.”

“Wait,” I say. This can’t be happening.

“Look, I’ll be there in twenty,” Tiffany says. “We can discuss it then. You want a muffin or something? I’m starving. I’ll pick up muffins on the way. Fuckin’ Page Six! Can you believe it? Oh my God, Lizzie, this is gonna be so righteous. You’re gonna be so much of a better boss than Roberta. God, I hate her. Ciao, baby.”

Tiffany slams down the phone. I stare at the receiver, not sure what just happened. Had I just solved the problem—or created a bigger one?