Apart at the Seams Read online

  I can tell by the way her brow furrows that she isn’t thrilled with this development. “But what about getting stuff done here? Like the laundry?”

  “Rachel,” I assure her, “we’ll have lunch.”

  I start cleaning up the sorting blocks, pushing them through the various holes—stars through the star-shaped hole, squares through the square-shaped hole. I half listen as Rachel talks about Mopey Maria, who works in the deli downstairs, while the rest of my brain considers the idea of untranslatable words. The thousands of words that float like islands inside languages, no bridges to connect them to the rest of the world.

  Fashion is sort of an untranslatable word. What works in one place is anathema in another. And it’s so hard to define, pin down. How am I supposed to make people look as if their dresses and suits were all meant to be together while still allowing each person’s individuality to guide the fabric, the cut of the silhouette?

  “Right?” Rachel asks. I look up at her blankly, wondering what I’m agreeing to as I nod. Rachel looks satisfied, and goes back to dissecting her life. Rachel can spend hours discussing her life, picking apart every relationship and situation as if they contained the complexity of a Dostoyevsky novel. I wish I could gain something by talking things out, but the more stressful things become, the quieter I tend to get.

  Maybe Rachel has picked up on that, too, because she suddenly pauses and asks me how things have been at work or home.

  My eye catches on my sketchpad as I cut up fruit for Beckett at the kitchen counter. “Did you see the Nightly last night?” I ask. “The bit about the election?”

  Rachel furrows her brow. “I don’t think I saw it last night.”

  “It was so incredibly funny. I have to show it to you.”

  I pick up Beckett, who immediately squeals happily as I bring him close to the laptop, thinking he’s going to get to see the Wiggles on YouTube. I balance him on my hip while I type one-handed and bring up the clip, ignoring Rachel’s confused expression over my enthusiasm for a Nightly sketch. The computer screen fills with David Lear, the host of the show, dressed as one of the presidential candidates, standing next to an actress impersonating his wife. They launch into a musical number, and I cover my mouth with my hand to hide my embarrassed smile. I figure that if I’m going to be designing something for his team, I should be familiar with their work.

  “I guess it’s funny,” Rachel says when the sketch ends.

  “Did you know that the show was nominated for a bunch of Emmys this year?”

  “That’s cool,” Rachel says, stealing a chunk of Beckett’s banana.

  “Well, Davis & Howe got the job of designing the team’s dresses and suits. I’m going down to the studio tomorrow to meet with the people we’re dressing and David Lear’s stylist.”

  “Oh my God,” Rachel says, her mouth dropping open. “Ari, that’s incredible. Are you going to get to meet David Lear? Will you get to hang out with the other actors like Carter Anderson? Do you think you’d be able to bring me with you to the set at some point? Can you imagine that blog post? Just the pictures alone: backstage at the Nightly.”

  Suddenly I’m nervous to talk about the project, especially since I have no clue how I’m actually going to pull off something that will dazzle both David Lear and Nigel Howe. I pretend that it isn’t a big deal, shrugging while I knock a pile of grape halves into a bowl. “Don’t put anything on your blog about it, okay?”

  Rachel looks offended by this request, but she coolly shrugs and says, “No, of course not. But that’s really cool. I can’t wait to hear all about it.”

  I quickly change the subject, but I can tell for the rest of the visit that there’s something Rachel wants to say or ask. And I hate the idea that my best friend can’t tell me what’s inside her head.

  JULIE COURTLAND told me to text her when I’m outside the building since getting through security can be a tad difficult. I wait for her on the sidewalk, ignoring the security guard who watches me as if I’m some common groupie who has come down to the studio in an attempt to burst onto the set and touch David Lear. I stare in the opposite direction as if I’ve paused on the sidewalk because I’m fascinated by the clientele entering and exiting the bar across the street.

  I hear the metal door open and close, and I turn around to see a woman with honey-colored hair and chunky black-framed glasses walking toward me, her hand outstretched. “How are you, Arianna? I’m Julie. Let’s go in the side entrance. It’s a little bit easier than navigating security at the main entrance.”

  She enters a code into a unit on the door, and then leads me into a security vestibule where she flashes her card and says hello to the man behind the desk.

  “Hey, Ray, this is Arianna. We need to get her a temporary badge because she’s going to be coming down here a bit to work on the Emmy dresses.”

  “No can do,” Ray informs her. “We’re not doing temporary badges anymore. She’s going to need someone to walk her in every time she comes down. Do you have ID?”

  I fumble in my purse for my wallet and produce a driver’s license that I hand over to Ray. “It’s not a big deal,” I tell Julie.

  “It’s a big deal for me. I’m not always here,” Julie sighs.

  Ray hands me back my license, and then buzzes us into a linoleum-tiled kitchenette where someone has set up platters of rolled sandwiches on the counter and an enormous sign promising death to anyone who disturbs the food. There are a few sofas facing a television, which is playing the news. Someone has messed with the poster for Eclipse on the back wall and taped a cutout of David Lear’s head looking coolly into the camera in the bottom right corner so it looks as if he is one of the werewolves or vampires. A Post-it note bubble touches his lips with the words “Team Edward” scrawled across it.

  “Team Edward,” I comment, pointing at the poster.

  “David Lear loves Stephenie Meyer. He practically has a PhD in the Twilight series. And he’s not embarrassed to admit it. Want a tour of the place?” Julie asks. “It’s not that exciting, but people seem to always want one.”

  I don’t want to appear too eager, so I sort of shrug, pretending that I’m mesmerized by the CNN coverage. Julie takes a few steps down the hall, and I follow her. “Down here we have a few green room-like spaces. There’s the guest green room where the nightly guest gets ready and hangs out, and then there’s this much larger room that we use when we’re having an extra person interviewed in one of the opening segments. Like, let’s say when David Lear did that piece on gay marriage in New York, and he had on Jason West for a few minutes in the beginning of the show. So people like that hang out in here. Or sometimes we use it if we have a special audience member that we’re going to want to bring to the VIP seats.”

  The room is currently empty except for an intern setting out a fresh fruit platter on the back table. He looks up at us and nods when we walk in. The walls are a bluish green and covered with pictures of various celebrities with David Lear, most of them taken with the set in the background. “Do you want water or coffee or something?” Julie asks.

  “I’m fine.”

  We double back out of the room, and she takes me to see the editing rooms and the hair and makeup suite. We pass by the costume shop, which contains Julie’s office, as David Lear’s personal stylist. I start to walk into the suite of rooms, but she pulls me back into the hallway. “We’ll end up here at the end of the tour so we can talk details. But first, let’s go up and meet some of the staff you’ll be dressing.”

  Julie leads me up a set of back stairs into an office-looking area complete with cubicles.

  “So the writers all have offices down this hall and that’s their meeting room at the end. That’s where they brainstorm out the segments, and it’s also where you can do some of the fittings for the writing staff. There are seven of them nominated along with David Lear fo
r Outstanding Writing for a Variety, Music, or Comedy Program. It’s a really big room, and it’s mostly empty.”

  She opens the door, and there, sitting on the sofa reading a magazine as if he’s waiting for me, is Noah from the dry cleaners. I knew that it was likely that we’d run into each other on the set, but I feel strangely tongue-tied now that we’re back in the same room.

  “Hey you,” he says as a greeting.

  “Arianna,” I remind him.

  “I knew that your name was Arianna Quinn,” Noah says, grinning. “David hired you to dress us for the Emmys.”

  “Oh, you two know each other,” Julie says, punching something into her phone. “Do you mind if I step out here for a moment to deal with this? Tie crisis for tonight’s episode.”

  I rock on my heels, trying to think of something clever to fill the silence. “I haven’t heard from your girlfriend.”

  “Ellie and I are sort of having some trouble at the moment. We’re not really on the same life-plan timeline.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say automatically, wishing I had never brought her up.

  “We broke up,” he continues. “That night we had coffee. Hence why you haven’t heard from her. It seemed like a bad idea to pass along your email address while she was busy packing up all of her things.”

  I’m curious about what he means by “life-plan timeline”, but it would be rude to ask. Instead I offer my apologies again, even though I have nothing to do with the demise of their relationship, and then stand around awkwardly, wishing Julie would come back into the room and save me.

  “I’m sorry about that. Wasting your time that night,” Noah admits.

  “Oh no, I had a really good time. And, you know, we survived Dresspocalypse.”

  “What’s Dresspocalypse?” Carter Anderson asks, walking into the room. My heart plummets at that moment into a space somewhere near my knees, like an egg drop at a science fair. He plops down on the sofa next to Noah and looks up at me, waiting to hear the rest of the joke. Carter Anderson is looking at me. At me.

  Carter looks nothing like the uptight, prep-school-educated character he plays on the show. He’s even more attractive in real life with his artfully disheveled hair and torn jeans than he is on the television screen in character. I try not to stare back and fail miserably.

  “It would take way too long to explain,” Noah tells him. “Writing team is having a meeting in here in a moment. Emmy outfits.”

  Carter rolls his eyes and gets off the sofa, pausing to steal a cup of coffee from the carafe in the corner of the room. “David never gets the correspondents anything nice.”

  “Get nominated for an Emmy next year and maybe he’ll also buy you couture. Or not. It may be like sex: you never forget your first, but everyone who comes after . . .”

  I blush at the mention of sex, cursing the fact that my skin is so pale that it looks as if I’m being internally painted any time I get embarrassed.

  Julie comes back in the room, sidestepping around Carter as he leaves the room, while unconsciously fixing her hair. “Arianna, I thought you could take a second to meet the whole team before their usual daily meeting, and then we could go down to the costume shop and hash out a few more ideas.”

  The rest of the writing team files into the room over the course of the next ten minutes, and I try not to let it show that this is my very first design job. I jot down a few traits of each writer, trying to capture their personalities on paper so I can design a dress or suit that will reflect their best qualities. There are four women and three men, including Noah, all of whom are not really grasping how dress construction works nor the fact that their outfits need to work together to create a cohesive picture. But still, I let them verbally build their dream dresses and suits while they eat stale muffins from a tray in the back of the room and drink coffee out of Styrofoam cups. And I take a copious amount of notes in the notebook I purchased specifically for this job. It makes me feel more organized than I really am.

  Somewhere around the third insistence by the same writer that she needs something sleek, something without ruffles (“Please, I just have to say it one more time because I really feel strongly about this. I once had a bride make me wear a hideous chiffon dress with a bib—a bib—of ruffles. Please, I really need to insist on no ruffles.”), my brain shuts out the words floating around me and starts to form sparks of ideas. I could take Nigel Howe’s idea and do layers of blue hues. I could do a sleek column dress with an open, loosely draped back. I doodle a backless dress in my notebook’s margin.

  Julie finally cuts off one of the writers while she’s musing about a skirt constructed out of ostrich feathers, and I promise them that I’ve gathered plenty of ideas to start sketching. I gather up my things while Noah launches straight into the daily writer’s meeting, asking if there has been any movement on the cooking show sketch.

  “We’ve nailed down a restaurant for filming,” one of the writers yawns, kicking her feet up on the low coffee table in front of her.

  “We can talk material down in my office,” Julie whispers, heading toward the door.

  “Hey, Arianna,” Noah calls out, interrupting his own meeting and causing the six other pairs of eyes in the room to follow his gaze to my immediately frozen face. “I’ll see you around.”

  “Oh, yeah, I’ll be back soon with sketches,” I quickly answer, hoping my smile looks casual and confident even though my heart is pounding furiously over the attention. This must be what giddy feels like, a release of sparkling bubbles deep inside my abdomen, as if my body is just one long champagne flute.

  Chapter Four

  I WALK INTO my building, still feeling a little drunk on the fact that I’m designing Emmy dresses. I can’t wait for the elevator; instead, I bounce up the stairwell and let myself into the apartment. With Beckett at the nanny share and Ethan at work, the apartment is absolutely silent, the perfect space for sketching out ideas uninterrupted while they’re fresh in my mind. Until I see the state the kitchen is in and realize that I’m going to need to do some straightening if I want to have a place to work.

  I clear Ethan’s breakfast dishes from the kitchen counter into the sink, soaking the dried-on cereal flakes with water. I recycle the empty milk carton, taking out of the bin one of Beckett’s trucks that he’s hidden among the other plastic containers and washed-out cans. I sweep up the small pile of crushed cereal dust Ethan sloppily shook from the box onto the counter. I wonder where he tucked away the velvet-covered box. Am I going to stumble across it while I straighten up the apartment, as if coming across a loaded gun? Ethan hasn’t brought up the proposal again, which increases my worry instead of putting me at ease. The topic of marriage feels like a jack-in-the-box, the crank clicking as the song slows down. Pop goes the proposal.

  I shove thoughts of marriage out of my head and sort through the junk mail Ethan allowed to pile up on the counter, wipe up a sticky drop of orange juice from the kitchen tile, and brew a pot of coffee before I finally sit down at the counter with my sketchpad in front of me, trying to get back to the excitement that carried me up the stairs, before I saw the state of the apartment.

  Before I can touch pencil to paper, there’s a knock on the door.

  “Damn it,” I hiss to myself, glancing up at the clock as I walk toward the front door. The whole reason I came home instead of going straight to the loft was so I could work without interruption. I peer through the peephole and see a distorted version of my best friend.

  I chew my lip, debating whether or not to open the door. As far as Rachel knows, I should be at work. Rachel knocks again, and I answer it, pretending that I was in the middle of something and couldn’t tear myself away until the second knock.

  “We got engaged,” she tells me, holding up her hand, which is missing the Me&Ro ring we purchased a few months ago together and now is adorned with three gold-hammered
bands. “Adam and I are getting married. Again.”

  I stand in the doorway, frozen to a few inches of tiling, my mind trying to catch up with my body, since it’s still back at the set, thinking about evening gowns. It’s like trying to jog underwater. My brain can’t even tell me if this calls for congratulations or condolences, since Adam is my best friend’s ex-husband. It was a very civilized divorce, but still, a divorce nonetheless. People aren’t supposed to go backward, are they?

  I manage to get out an exclamation of a sort, and Rachel comes into my apartment, joining in my shock. She’s happy enough to sit at the kitchen island without speaking, just staring at the rings with me while I alternate between trying to think of something to say and wondering if I’ll still remember all the ideas I had for the Emmy gowns when I finally have time to draw. Rachel doesn’t know about Ethan’s proposal. Chalk it up to a dozen other things we haven’t shared with Rachel since we started dating. I didn’t want to put Rachel in the middle of our discussion before we had a chance to have it.

  Despite the heat, I wrap my fingers around my cup of coffee, my fingers suddenly cold with anxiety. The thought that has been trying to slip to the forefront of my brain finally squeezes through and slaps me. A wedding. Big white dress, flowers, bridesmaids. Right as I’m trying to convince Ethan that it would be better for us to remain dating forever. There is no way that we’re going to get off the topic of weddings if his sister is planning to get married a second time before he’s walked down the aisle once, even if it is to the same person.

  I nervously tap the bands with the tip of my nail. “Do you think you’ll wear white?”

  She’s going to ask me to go dress shopping with her. I’m going to have to endure several dozen Katz relatives reminding me that I’ll be next, as if I’m anxiously waiting for Ethan to pop the question. She’s going to stick me in a bridesmaid dress. Another hideous bridesmaid dress. Probably one with a mermaid cut. And she’s going to tell me that it looks fabulous on me when we both know that it doesn’t. She’s going to try to convince me that I’ll wear it to future events, as if the only thing that has been missing from my wardrobe prior to this point is a hideous mermaid-style dress. It is going to be the topic du jour every time we see Ethan’s parents or go out to Park Slope to lunch with his sister and niece or see Rachel, which can be on a daily basis. The one thing I really didn’t want to talk about again, the thing I wanted everyone to forget, is going to be on everyone’s minds. All the time.