Queen Of Babble: In The Big City qob-2 Read online

  There is no way I can ever go to the Met again. I’ll be too nervous about running into him. Though I’m going to miss poor Mrs. Erickson, for whom I’d also left a good-bye note, since she’s spending the holidays in Cancún, and doesn’t even know I’ve moved out. I even stood in front of the Renoir girl, and wished her a fond farewell. I hope Luke’s next girlfriend—whoever she is—appreciates her.

  “I’m sure,” I say to Chaz.

  “Well, then I guess I better run the car back,” he says. “I don’t want to deal with holiday parking and all that.”

  “Oh, right,” I say. I’d almost forgotten that it’s New Year’s Eve. I’ve got Jill’s wedding to go to in a few hours. Which reminds me. “What are you doing tonight, anyway? I mean, with Luke still out of town, and Shari—well, with Pat. Do you have any plans?”

  “They’re having a party at Honey’s,” Chaz says with a shrug. “I figured I’d hang out there.”

  “You’re going to spend New Year’s Eve in a karaoke bar with strangers?” I can’t keep the incredulity from my voice.

  “They aren’t strangers,” Chaz says, sounding wounded. “The dwarf with the bow staff? That bartender who’s always yelling at her boyfriend? Those people are like family to me. Whatever their names are.”

  And suddenly I’m taking his arm.

  “Chaz,” I say. “Do you own a tux?”

  Which is how, nine hours later, I find myself standing beside Chaz in the Grand Ballroom at the Plaza Hotel (now the Plaza Luxury Condominiums), a glass of champagne in one hand, and the clutch that matches my 1950s pink silk Jacques Fath evening gown in the other, as Jill Higgins, now MacDowell, standing on top of the ballroom’s grand piano, prepares to throw her bouquet.

  “Here,” Chaz says. “Give me that stuff. You better get up there.”

  “Oh,” I say. Despite my reservations—once I’d made sure that Jill’s dress looked perfect (which it did) and that her mother-in-law’s eyes bulged out when she saw her in it (they did), I’d been reluctant to stay long at the reception. It’s weird to be at a wedding where the only people you know are the bride and groom, who certainly don’t have much time to spend with anyone but family on the big day—I was having a pretty good time. Chaz declared that there was no way he was going home before twelve (“I’m not getting into a monkey suit just to change into jeans before the ball drops”), and the truth was, he was right. Jill’s friends from the zoo were hysterically funny, and as out of their element as I was. And John’s friends weren’t anywhere near as snooty as I’d expected—the opposite, in fact. Just about the only person, in fact, who didn’t seem to be having that good a time was John’s mother, and that, apparently, had to do with the fact that someone overheard Anna Wintour say that Jill’s gown was “cunning.”

  Cunning. The head of Vogue called something I made—well, rehabbed—cunning.

  Which actually is no surprise to me, because I think it’s pretty cunning, too.

  In any case, it’s clear Jill will be Blubber to the press no more, and that seems to have depressed John’s mother… so much so that she’s currently sitting with her head in one hand at the head table, shooing away solicitous waiters who keep coming by with ice water and aspirin.

  “Everybody,” Jill is yelling from on top of the piano. “Get ready! The person who catches it is the next one to tie the knot!”

  “Go on,” Chaz encourages me. “I’ve got your bag.”

  “Don’t lose that,” I say. “It’s got all my needles and emergency sewing kit and everything in it.”

  “You sound like a nurse,” he assures me with a laugh. “I won’t lose it. Just go!”

  I hurry to the front of the room where the bridesmaids and assorted female zoo employees are gathered before the grand piano, thinking to myself bemusedly that for someone who habitually wears nothing but jeans and a baseball cap, Chaz cleans up very nicely. My heart actually skipped a beat when I opened up the door and saw him standing there in his “monkey suit,” ready to escort me.

  Then again, I suppose all men look handsome in tuxedos.

  “Okay,” Jill calls. “I’m going to turn around and do it so it’s fair. Okay?”

  I reach the front of the room, and jostle in with all the other girls. I see Jill notice me. She smiles and winks before she turns around. What does that mean?

  “One,” Jill calls.

  “ME!” shrieks the woman beside me, whom I recognize as one of the other seal keepers at the zoo. “THROW IT TO ME!”

  “Two,” Jill calls.

  “No, ME!” another woman screams, leaping up and down in her festive though aggressively bright charmeuse satin pantsuit.

  “Three!” Jill says.

  And her bouquet of white irises and lilies soars through the air. For a moment, it’s silhouetted against the warm gold lights from the ceiling. I lift up my arms, not expecting much—I’ve never caught a ball on the fly before in my life—and so am shocked when the bouquet falls neatly into my outstretched hands.

  “Whoa,” Chaz says, when I run up to him triumphantly a little while later, to show off my bounty. “If Luke saw you with that, he’d probably pass out.”

  “Look out, bachelors of Manhattan!” I yell, brandishing my bouquet. “I’m next! I’m next!”

  “You’re drunk,” Chaz says, looking pleased.

  “I’m not drunk,” I say, blowing some of my hair from my face. “I’m high on life.”

  “Ten,” the people around us suddenly start chanting. “Nine. Eight.”

  “Oh!” I cry. “New Year’s! I forgot it’s New Year’s!”

  “Seven!” Chaz joins the chanting. “Six!”

  “Five,” I yell. Chaz is right, of course. I am drunk. Also, cunning. “Four! Three! Two! One! HAPPY NEW YEAR!”

  The people who managed to remember to hold on to their wedding favors—New Year’s horns—blow on them, hard. The band launches into “Auld Lang Syne.” And above our heads, a net is released, and hundreds of white balloons tumble softly down, like snowflakes, to land in piles around us.

  And Chaz reaches for me, and I reach for him, and we kiss happily as the clock strikes midnight.

  Lizzie Nichols’s Wedding Gown Guide

  Here is a bona fide cure for any postwedding-reception hangover:

  Pour 5 ounces of tomato juice into a tall glass. Add a dash of lemon (or lime) juice and a splash of Worcestershire sauce. Sprinkle in 2 or 3 drops Tabasco sauce, then add pepper, salt, and celery salt to taste. If you’re feeling adventurous, add some ground horseradish. Add ice, then garnish with celery stick and lime wedge.

  Finish off with 1.5 ounces of vodka.

  Enjoy.

  LIZZIE NICHOLS DESIGNS™

  Chapter 27

  Rumor travels faster, but it don’t stay put as long as truth.

  — Will Rogers (1879–1935), American actor and humorist

  I wake to pounding.

  At first I think the pounding is just coming from inside my head.

  I open my eyes, not recognizing where I am for a few moments. Then my vision clears, and I see what I had originally taken for big pink blurry blobs floating before my eyes are actually roses. And they’re on the walls.

  I’m in the bed in my new apartment above the bridal shop.

  And, I realize when I turn my head, I’m not alone.

  And someone is knocking on the door.

  These are far too many realizations to have at once. Any one of them would be confusing enough all on its own. But considering the fact that they all occur to me simultaneously, it takes me a minute to process what’s actually going on.

  The first thing I notice is that I’m still in my Jacques Fath evening gown—rumpled now and stained with chocolate cake. But it is very firmlyon… as are my Spanx beneath it.

  Which is good.Very good.

  I notice furthermore that Chaz is fully dressed as well. That is, his tuxedo pants and jacket are still on, but he appears to have lost his tie, and his shirt is more than hal
fway unbuttoned, the studs—his grandfather’s onyx and gold studs, I remember him telling me—gone, as are his shoes.

  I rack my poor, addled brain, trying to remember what happened. How did Chaz—my best friend’s ex-boyfriend; my ex-boyfriend’s best friend—end up sleeping, even if fully clothed, in my new bed?

  And then, as I take in other facts—such as that Jill’s bouquet is sitting on my bedside table, looking wilted but really not worse for wear, and that my shoes appear to have vanished—I begin to recall the chain of events that led to this startling early-morning discovery: Chaz and I sharing a New Year’s kiss that started out as merely a friendly peck… at least, that’s how I’d intended it to be.

  But then Chaz was throwing his arms around me and turning it into something more.

  I’d pushed him away—laughingly—only to realize he wasn’t laughing. Or at least, not as much as I was.

  “Come on, Lizzie,” he said. “You know— ”

  But I’d laid a hand over his mouth before he could finish whatever it was he’d been about to say.

  “No,” I’d said. “We can’t.”

  “Oh, why the hell not?” Chaz had demanded against my fingers. “Just because I met Shari first? Because you know if I’d met you first—”

  “NO,”I’d said, pressing my hand down even more firmly. “That’s not why, and you know it. We’re both feeling very vulnerable and alone right now. We’ve both been hurt—”

  “Which is all the more reason we should seek solace in each other,” Chaz said, taking my hand in his and moving it away from his mouth—so he could kiss it! “I really think you should take all your frustrations over Luke out with me. Physically. I promise to lie very still while you do it. Unless you want me to move.”

  “Stop it,” I’d said, wrenching my hand away. How could he make me laugh so much during what was supposed to be such a serious moment? “You know I love you—as a friend. I don’t want to do anything that might jeopardize our relationship… as friends.”

  “I do,” Chaz said. “I want to do things that might jeopardize our relationship as friends a lot. Because we’re always going to be friends, Lizzie. No matter what. I really think it’s the whole physical part of our relationship that needs a lot more work.”

  “Well,” I’d said, still laughing. “You’re just going to have to be patient then. Because I think we both need time to grieve for what we’ve lost… and to heal.”

  Chaz, not unsurprisingly, made a disgusted face at this—both the idea of it as well as the way I’d put it seemed to displease him. But I’d continued, undaunted, “If, after a suitable amount of time, we’re both still interested in taking our friendship to another level, we can reevaluate.”

  “How much time are we talking about?” Chaz had wanted to know. “I mean, to grieve and heal? Two hours? Three?”

  “I don’t know,” I’d said. It had kind of been hard to concentrate, considering the fact that he still had his arms around me, and I could feel those studs of his grandfather’s pressing through the silk of my dress. That wasn’t all I felt pressing through it, either. “At least a month.”

  He had kissed me again after that, as we swayed back and forth to the music.

  And I don’t think it was just the champagne that made me feel as if it were raining gold stars all around us, instead of white balloons.

  “Well, at least a week,” I’d said, when he’d finally let me up to breathe.

  “Deal,” he’d said. Then he’d sighed. “But it’s going to be a long week. What have you got on under there, anyway?” His hands were at the waistband of my panties, which he could feel beneath my dress.

  “Oh, those are my control-top Spanx,” I’d said, deciding in that moment that in this and all future relationships, I was going to be ruthlessly, even brutally honest—even to my own disadvantage—such as by admitting to a guy that I wear control-top panties. Not just panties, either, but basically bicycle pants.

  “Spanx,” Chaz had murmured against my lips. “Sounds kinky. I can’t wait to see you in them.”

  “Well,” I’d said, welcoming yet another opportunity to be brutally honest. “I can tell you right now it’s not going to be as exciting as you might expect.”

  “That’s what you think,” Chaz had said. “I just want to let you know that when I look into my future, I see nothing but you.” Then he’d whispered,“And you’re not even wearing Spanx.”

  And then he’d dipped me, so that suddenly I was giggling up at the ceiling, from which the last of the balloons were still falling, in fat, lazy arcs.

  The rest of the night was a blur of more kissing, and more champagne, and more dancing, then more kissing, until finally, staggering out of the Plaza just as fingers of pink light were beginning to stretch across the sky above the East River, we tumbled into a waiting cab, and then somehow, into my bed.

  Only nothing had happened. Obviously nothing had happened because (a) we’re both fully clothed, and (b) I wouldn’t have let anything happen, no matter how much champagne I might have had.

  Because this time, I’m going to do everything the right way, instead of the Lizzie way.

  And it’s going to work, too. Because I’m cunning.

  I’m lying there thinking about how cunning I am—also about how untidy a sleeper Chaz is, considering the fact that his face is all smushed against one of my pillows, and that, even though he isn’t a drooler, like I am, he’s definitely a snorer—when I realize that the pounding sound I’d thought was actually my hangover is coming from the door.

  Someone is knocking on the outer door to the building—which actually has an intercom, but it’s broken (Madame Henri swore to me it would be fixed by the end of next week).

  Who could be pounding on the door at—oh God—ten in the morning on New Year’s Day?

  I roll out of bed, then climb unsteadily to my feet. The room sways… but then I realize it’s only the slanting floors that make me feel as if I’m about to fall. Well, the floors and my severe hangover.

  Clinging to the wall, I make my way to the door of my apartment and unlock it. In the narrow—and chilly—stairway to the ground floor, the pounding is louder than ever.

  “Coming,” I call, wondering if it could be a UPS delivery for the shop. Madame Henri had warned me that by taking occupancy of the apartment on the top floor of the brownstone, I’d be responsible for signing for all after-hours deliveries.

  But does UPS even deliver on New Year’s Day? It can’t possibly. Even Brown must give its workers the day off.

  At the bottom of the stairs, I struggle with all of the various locks, until finally I can pull the door open—though I’ve kept the security chain on, just in case the person outside is a serial killer and/or religious fanatic.

  Through the three-inch crack between the door and frame, I see the last person in the world I ever expected.

  Luke.

  “Lizzie,” he says. He looks tired. Also annoyed. “Finally. I’ve been knocking for hours practically. Look. Let me in. I need to talk to you.”

  Panicked, I slam the door shut.

  Oh my God. Oh my God, it’s Luke. He’s back from France. He’s back from France, and he came to see me. Why did he come to see me? Didn’t he get my brief but cordial note in which I gave him my new address so he’d know where to forward my mail, but instructed him not to contact me there?

  “Lizzie.” He’s pounding on the door again. “Come on. Don’t do this. I flew all night to get here to say this to you. Don’t shut me out.”

  Oh God. Luke’s at my door. Luke’s at my door…

  … and his best friend is asleep in my bed upstairs!

  “Lizzie? Are you going to open the door? Are you still there?”

  Oh God. What am I going to do? I can’t let him in. I can’t let him see Chaz. Not that Chaz and I did anything wrong. But who would even believe that? Not Luke. Oh, God. What do I do?

  “I’m… I’m still here,” I open the door to say. I’ve thrown ba
ck the chain, but I don’t move to let Luke step inside—even though it’s freezing, standing there on the stoop in my evening gown, with the bitter cold seeping in around. “But you can’t come in.”

  Luke looks at me with those sad dark eyes. “Lizzie,” he says, apparently not even registering the fact that I’ve obviously slept in my clothes. And not just any clothes, either, but my Jacques Fath evening gown that I’ve been saving for years for an event fancy enough to wear it to. Not that he would know that. Because I never told him.

  “I’ve been a total ass,” Luke goes on, his gaze never straying from mine. “I’ll admit, when you brought up… well, the marriage thing last week, you really threw me for a loop. I wasn’t expecting it. I really did think we were just hanging out, you know. Having fun. But you made me think. I couldn’t stop thinking about you, as a matter of fact, though I tried. I really tried.”

  I stand there blinking at him, shivering. This is what he flew all the way back to America—apparently spending his New Year’s Eve on a plane—to say? That I ruined his holiday, even though he tried not to think about me?

  “I even talked to my mother about it,” he says, the winter sunlight bringing out the bluish highlights in his ink-dark hair. “She’s not having an affair, by the way. That guy she met the day after Thanksgiving? That’s her plastic surgeon. He does her Botox. But that’s beside the point.”

  I swallow. “Oh,” I say. And realize, belatedly, that that’s why Bibi’s eyes hadn’t crinkled when she’d smiled at me while issuing her invitation to join them in France for the holidays: she’d just had Botox injected into them.

  Still, this doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t, in fact, change the part about how Luke chose to spend the holidays with his parents instead of going with me to the Midwest to meet mine.

  I remind myself of this because I’m trying very hard to keep my heart steeled against him. Because, of course, the hurt is still fresh. Like I’d said to Chaz, we’re both still grieving.