Scot on the Rocks (15 page)

“You are an angel,” I said. I clearly needed coffee by now. Nonetheless, Vanessa shot me one of those knowing looks. A raised eyebrow kind of look. One of those “He’s Jack, you say?” looks. “In a platonic way,” I quickly said. That should allay everyone’s confusion about the matter once and for all.

“Yummy,” Vanessa said, laughing at me. “Thanks, honey — don’t tell the partners that I drank this. It’s not Healthy Foods coffee.”

“Please tell the partners that I drank this,” I told him. “Maybe it’ll get me thrown off of the case.”

“Will do,” he said. “Now, where’s the chair?”

We pointed across the floor to a few chairs set up just outside of the fitting rooms. He walked past Nina as she came back with a dress.

“This will be the only one that you need to try on. I promise,” she said. “Brooke, is that your boyfriend?”

“Jack?” I asked. “No! God, no! I mean, he is, of course, very special, but, no, we are not dating.”

I rushed off to try on the dress before I could get myself into any more trouble with Nina.

Outside of my dressing room, I overheard Nina approach Jack.

In a low, sultry voice that she hadn’t used with Vanessa and me, she asked, “Is there anything that I can help you with?” Help him? Does he look as if he shops for women’s dresses?

“No,” Jack answered, “I think that I’ll just sit here and wait for Brooke.”

“Perhaps you would like me to try something on for you?” she offered. Oh,
help
him.

“Um, uh, no thank you?” Jack answered, kind of like a question.

“Very well,” she said.

I put on the dress that Nina had picked out for me. A haze of pale pink organza with delicate ruffles strewn about, it had tiny spaghetti straps and a fish tail that was meant to float on the floor behind you.

I took a look at myself and immediately fell in love. With the dress, not my own reflection. It was really perfect. She did a great job picking it out. It just goes to show you, we all grow up and the past is forgotten. Nina’s all grown up and she’s skinny and pretty now and has an amazing eye for clothes. Turns out we
can
all just get along. A smile crept onto my face as I came out of the dressing room.

“So,” I asked, effecting my best Audrey Hepburn, “how do I look?”

“Brilliant, darling,” Jack said with a Scottish accent and I smiled.

“We’ll take it,” Vanessa said to Nina.

W
e ran back to our hotel just in time to see a very pissed off former cross-dresser waiting for us in the hotel lobby. Even if you hadn’t seen him there, you would have felt him — his presence filled the entire lobby. There he was, sprawled out on a couch, taking lots of room with his long legs crossed and his massive bag of hair and makeup supplies sitting beside him.

He happened to look great. As a man, I mean. Last time I saw him, Damian was in New York, dressing and performing as a woman. Don’t laugh. He did a really mean Diana, and his Barbra wasn’t too bad, either. His face has a very feminine quality to it, so with the right hair and makeup, you would swear he didn’t have an Adam’s apple.

Damian now had cut his hair short and was dressed in form-fitting black pants with a black button-down shirt, which framed his six foot four very, very tall, very, very thin body perfectly. To complement the look, he had his shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest (no chest hair, of course) and was wearing a Louis Vuitton belt that had little
LV
s all over it. He looked as if he could be in an ad for something expensive.

“We’re late,” Vanessa said. “Damian looks pissed.”

“We’re not late,” I told Vanessa. “We are on time.”

“Correction,” Jack said. “We would have been on time if we hadn’t stopped for shoes.”

“Okay,” I said, “first of all, there is always time for shoes.” What kind of talk is this coming from Jack? Even if we
were
running late to my ex-boyfriend’s wedding, I still would not stand for such blasphemy.

“That you can’t really walk in,” Jack persisted.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Vanessa asked.

“I don’t know,” Jack said, “walking, shoes…Do you see where I’m going with this?”

“You are so naive,” I said as we approached Damian. He rose from the couch slowly and stared at us disapprovingly. And he did
rise,
mind you; he didn’t stand up or get up or anything that we normal people would do. Rather, Damian rose deliberately, like Moses parting the Red Sea.

“Okay, running like that — not attractive,” Damian said.

“Dame, you remember Brooke and Jack,” Vanessa said, still out of breath from the mad sprint from the taxi to the lobby. “And you had better not have been talking about me just now.”

“Good to see you, girls,” he said, looking us up and down. “We don’t have much time.” And with that, he began to walk toward the elevators. Because of his height, he moved as if in slow motion, gliding down the hallway, while the three of us followed quickly in his wake.

“Did he just say ‘pleased to meet you,
girls?
’” Jack asked, grabbing my arm. I laughed as we all got into the elevator.

“We’re cutting your hair today, Brooke?” Damian asked me. My hand instinctively flew to my head, the way a mama bird protects her baby birds.

“No,” I said. “I am not cutting my hair.”

“Damian,” Vanessa said.

“Brooke can’t cut her hair,” Jack said, “it’s her trademark.”

“Thank you, Jack,” I said, “I’ve had it this length all my life. And anyway, Douglas loves my hair.”

“Chop it off,” I could have sworn I heard Jack say under his breath just as we got to our floor.

Entering the suite, Damian got down to business. “Okay, first things first,” he commanded, “get that booty into the dress you’ll be wearing for tonight. I need to see it to figure out a hair and makeup concept.” He waved his arms out like a magician and gave a dramatic pause before saying the word
concept —
as if he should have been accompanied by a lone spotlight beaming down on him as he said it — and pronounced the word
concept
as if it were two:
concept.

As I ran into my bedroom, giddy with excitement, Jack’s cell phone rang.

“Hello?” he answered. “Oh, hi there…. No, I’m actually not available today to do some work on that case…. Maybe you could get Michael to do it?…Well, I
would
come in today, but for the fact that I’m in L.A. for a wedding…. Yes, I
am
aware that we have an L.A. office…. Yes, I understand,” he said, making a play for our
USA Today.
Grabbing and ripping its pages, he brought the phone down to the newspapers he was tearing up. “Uh, Ronnie, you’re starting to break up…. I think that I’m losing you…. Oh, you can get Michael to do it? Great! Hello? Hello?” And with that, he slammed the phone shut. “Ah, technology,” he said. “It has made our lives infinitely easier.”

“This is why I love being a lawyer,” Vanessa said. “What case was that on?”

“The Healthy Foods case,” he said. “I’m going to order some snacks from their competitor from room service. Anyone want anything?”

“No, thanks,” Vanessa said. “Some of us are actually loyal employees.”

“You just had their competitor’s coffee an hour ago,” Jack said.

“No one said being a loyal employee was easy,” she replied.

Taking the dress out of its Barneys garment bag, I felt just like a little kid with a brand-new toy. I slowly unzipped the bag as carefully as a child opening a Christmas present (not like I would know what that’s like, being Jewish and all, but I unzipped the bag as carefully as I
would imagine
a child opening a Christmas present would). I admired the dress for a moment. It was just as beautiful as when I first laid eyes on it in the store. Sliding it on, I was beaming as I zipped myself up. I did a little spin in it before moving on to the shoes.

I removed my new shoes from their box and admired them, too, for a moment before sliding them onto my feet. The salesperson had called the color
blush
and the model name
beauty.
They were satin open-toe three-and-a-half-inch heels with enormous rhinestone detailing just above the toe. They were like an outfit in and of themselves.

I was sexy. I was sensational. I was elegant and refined. It was me, on the best day of my life. I walked out, ready for the compliments to wash over me.

“Very funny, girl,” Damian said, dismissing me with the turn of his head. Not the reaction I was going for.

“What’s funny?” I asked Damian, who was already walking toward the windows to take in the view. “What’s funny?” I then asked Vanessa, practically tripping over the fishtail as I spun to face her.

“Nothing, honey,” she assured me. “My cousin here is just being a Hollywood prick. See, this is why everyone hates L.A.”

“Don’t nothing me, girl,” he said.

“Shut up, Damian,” Vanessa said.

“For the love of God,” I cried out, “What. Is. FUNNY?”

“That dress,” Damian said. “That dress is funny. It’s a copy of the dress that Miss Ava wore to the Golden Globes last year.”

“That dress costs more than most people’s rent,” Vanessa said. “How can it be a copy?”

“Oh, my God,” I said, suddenly breathing much quicker than before.

“And it’s not even a good copy,” Damian said.

“So,” Vanessa said, “then maybe no one will notice that it’s a copy.”

“Oh. My. God,” I said, grabbing at my stomach to make sure that I was still breathing.

“It’s nothing,” Vanessa said. “Brooke, you’ll wear my dress and I’ll wear this one.”

“Not with that caboose, she won’t,” Damian said.

“Who the hell do you think you are talking to?” Vanessa demanded.

“I meant her,” Damian said, pointing to me.

“Oh,” Vanessa said.

“OH. MY. GOD,” I said, falling onto the couch and putting my head between my legs the way they tell you to on airplanes in case of a plane crash.

It was just like that scene in
Rebecca.
When the mean old maid makes the new wife dress up just like the dead first wife and go to a party with all of the dead first wife’s friends and everyone looks at the new wife and is, like, totally appalled. It’s like Nina is that mean old maid and Ava is the dead first wife and I’m the new Mrs. Winter. Or deWinter. Or whatever the hell their name was.

Maybe if I’d remembered Nina’s freaking name this afternoon this wouldn’t have happened! I am a bad person. I am a very bad, bad person….

“Everyone, shut up!” Jack said from the other side of the room, taking control of the situation. It was the way I’d seen him take control with tough adversaries, reluctant witnesses and difficult partners. For all of his constant joking around, when Jack meant business, people usually listened. The room was silent as we all sat waiting for what Jack would say next.

“Damian,” he said, “didn’t you bring other dresses with you? I heard Vanessa specifically ask you to bring an extra dress or two in case we didn’t have any luck shopping.”

“Well,” Damian said, “I brought one dress.”

“It’s fine,” Vanessa said. “It’s gorgeous.”

“We haven’t seen it yet,” I pointed out to her, looking up from my lap.

“Right,” she said. “Show us the dress.”

“Well, what size does little Ava over there take?

“Don’t be mean to her,” Vanessa said, “she’s having a total crisis here…girl!”

“Don’t say
girl
if you don’t know how to use it,” Damian said. “It doesn’t become you.”

“Um, let’s see,” I reasoned. “Usually I’m a ten, but I haven’t really eaten much in the past few weeks what with the breakup and all and then the stress about finding a date for the wedding…. So, I guess that makes me about an eight now.”

“Girl, this is L.A. I’ve got a six.”

“We’ll take it,” Vanessa said, and Damian walked over to his bag of tricks. He pulled out a dress — delicately, carefully — holding it as if it were a Fabergé egg.

It was a vintage Halston. I’d never seen one before. It was gorgeous. The epitome of what glamour is, was and always should be. Miles of whisper-thin black fabric perfectly cut to be more like a work of art than a dress. He put the dress in my hands and I, too, handled it carefully, as if it were a baby, as I walked back into the bathroom. I hung the dress onto the back of the bathroom door and couldn’t help but notice the superior workmanship, holding together a design so timeless that it was relevant even now.

It was a floor-length column dress, with a slit cut from the pool of fabric at the bottom to where I imagined the very top of my thighs would be (and Vanessa thought that no one would see my freshly waxed bikini line). There was a slit on top to match. I wasn’t sure which slit made me more nervous. The fabric bunched into an elegant knot right in the middle — I needed to suck in my stomach just to look at it.

I put it on. Well, I tried to put it on, anyway. I squeezed as much of me as I could squeeze and walked out for Damian’s harsh judgment. Parts of me were spilling out from every bare angle of the dress. I held my hands over my breasts, which were pouring out (and not in a sexy way). Damian motioned for me to remove my hand and I shook my head no furiously. We danced this little dance a few times until, reluctantly, I moved my hand.

“I can’t wear this,” I said.

“I beg to differ,” Jack said, turning around from across the room. “You are
wearing
that dress.”

“Never fear. Just a little bit of this and you will be all set,” Damian said. He was holding up a roll of something that resembled tape.

“What the hell is that?” Vanessa asked.

“You are not putting that on me,” I said. I wasn’t quite certain exactly what it was, but I did know one thing for sure. It was going nowhere near any of my important body parts.

“Double-sided tape,” Damian said, just as naturally as if he were saying “an antique broach” or “a safety pin” or some other thing that did not entail adhesive material latched on to my most delicate areas.

“You are not putting that on me,” I said again, just in case he’d missed it the first time.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “All of the actresses do it.”

“Do I look like an actress to you?” I asked him.

“No,” he said, “you do not.” And then, as if that were not insult enough, he began to put his hands into the dress to move things around. He was about two inches away from touching parts that I didn’t even let Douglas touch.

“Hey!” I screamed out.

“Please,” he said, “don’t be so parochial, Brooke. Jack, get your mouth off the floor and divert your eyes.”

“Well, I’m going to watch just in case something happens with the tape,” Jack said. “Like, if it becomes un-taped or something.”

“Yeah, no,” Damian said. I suppose you can’t blame a guy for trying. “So,” Damian said, “with the tape, it’s going to look like this.”

He surprised even me. I looked amazing. If I do say so myself, that is. Which I do! Maybe I really
am
a size six!

“So, that’s just to give you an idea of what the dress will look like once I tape you into it,” he explained. “Eliminates all of the sagging that you’ve got.” Sagging? Did that man just say
sagging?
So, maybe I’m not a size six.

“Dame!” Vanessa screamed. “Be nice to her. She’s practically having a nervous breakdown over here.”

“Nervous breakdown?” I asked, trying to be cool. Or as cool as one can be with a former cross-dressing gay man’s hands down one’s dress.

“Girl,” he said back, “that is a vintage Halston I’m about to tape your friend into. I
am
being nice.”

“Point taken,” I said. I thought it best not to infuriate the man who was now holding my breasts and later would be taping them into a dress.

“Anyway,” Damian said, hands out of the dress and now smoothing it out for me, “I knew that if
I
could fit into this dress,
she
could fit into this dress.”

“He can fit into this dress?” I mouthed to Vanessa. She shrugged her shoulders.

“Now,” he asked, “who’s ready to get gorgeous?” Vanessa and I both raised our hands.

Damian blew my long hair out straight and then put it in enormous rollers the size of cantaloupes to give it body and a bit of wave. He told me that he was going for a Rita Hayworth thing. For Vanessa, he went Jackie O, adding extensions and smoothing her locks into an elegant upsweep that defied gravity. He even put a bit of pomade into Jack’s shaggy hair to give him a look that could only be described as dangerously debonair.