A Dangerous Dress (20 page)

“Where does nonsewer trash go?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you saying you don’t know because you don’t know, or because it’s a nonsewer matter, and public inquiry is not permitted?”

“Both.”

At that point, Celestine jumped in. The two of them talked in French for about five minutes. I understood not one word. Finally Monsieur Lebecq opened a desk drawer and extracted several pieces of different-colored paper and handed them to me. I could tell they were forms. There were eleven of them, all in French. All different.

Celestine stood up. So I stood up. Then she started to swear. I don’t know what she said, but Monsieur Lebecq turned red, then redder, then almost purple.

“Let’s go,” Celestine said to me. So we left.

Outside, Celestine snatched the forms from me. “Do you want to fill out all these forms, or do you want to throw them away?”

“Why would I throw them away?”

“Because you will stand a better chance of finding your suitcase if you take the forms to the nearest trash bin, climb in, and wait to see where they take you.”

I
did not climb into the trash. And we did fill out all those forms and file them. “But only because you want to,” Celestine said. “Your chances of getting help because you file forms are none and none.”

“You mean slim and none.”

“I mean none and none.”

“Why?”

“Because you are in Paris,” she said. “And because you are in France.”

If any French person is reading this, please do not be mad at me. I didn’t say it, Celestine did. And she is, after all, a French person.

Celestine made some more phone calls. But very quickly, we ran out of ideas about how to find the suitcase. It was just gone.

I did not care about the actual suitcase. Or about the lovely D&G outfit and Stephane Kélian shoes that Celestine had given me. Okay I cared about them just a little bit. But really, I only cared—I mean
cared
—about Grandma’s dress.

It was so many things to me. It was my inheritance from Grandma. It was my inspiration. It was the thing that made people think I was special, the thing that got me out of Kirland. It was the source of my power, to the extent that, for about ten minutes, I had any power. And now it was gone. I felt lost.

Being with Celestine helped, of course. And, oddly enough, so did my new job. New jobs are scary things. When I started at Independence Savings, even though I had been there probably thousands of times in my life, and even though Uncle John was my uncle as opposed to just my boss, it was scary. So starting a new job in a foreign country surrounded by people speaking several languages I don’t understand should have been even scarier. Only it wasn’t.

The first day, things were a little awkward, because nobody at Armani Collezioni knew quite how to treat me. Except for Celestine, they weren’t exactly thrilled I was there. After all, the sales staff was complete before they were told to hire me. On the other hand, nobody got fired on my account. And given how I got my job, even if they didn’t like it, they didn’t say so. I guess they were afraid word might get back to Mister Armani.

By the second day, though, everybody figured out that I was actually good for business. We developed a tag-team system. In case you don’t know, that is a wrestling term. Except for Celestine, nobody at Armani Collezioni had ever heard of tag team.

Not that Celestine or I ever watched professional wrestling. Of course we agree that Dwayne Johnson is awfully good-looking. But we know that just from seeing him in movies. Not from watching The Rock kick Stone Cold Steve Austin’s ass.

Anyway when you’re a professional tag team wrestler, you wrestle with a teammate, and the person you’re wrestling against has a teammate. When you get tired, or you’ve already done all your big signature phony moves and it’s time for somebody else to show off, you tag your teammate. Then the new person jumps into the ring and you jump out. Hopefully before somebody hits you in the back of the head with a chair.

Tag team at Armani Collezioni was a lot safer, but the basic concept was the same. Somebody would walk into the store. The sales staff would size up whether they were a real shopper, or a just-looker. If they seemed like a shopper, one of the other salesboys or -girls would offer to help them. If the shopper spoke French, I stayed out of it. If the shopper spoke English, but there was even the littlest hint that they
might
speak French, I stayed out of it. But if the shopper spoke only English, and no French whatsoever—and let me tell you, it is pretty much a cinch to spot those people, 99.9 percent of the time—then it was my turn.

“Excusez-moi,”
Celestine would say. Or Jacques. Or Yves. Or Madeline, or Severine, or Pauline, or Jacqueline. Then they would look toward the front of the store, toward the little room behind the checkout, which is where I would sit and wait. And they would call, “Jeanne?”

Tag.

That was me. Jeanne. Which is not pronounced
Jean,
like blue jeans. More like
zhahn.
It’s the closest French name to Jane. Anyway, they’d call “Jeanne,” and I’d come running. In my best French-English, I would say, “I can . . . asseest you?” I asseested a lot of English-only Americans, and not one of them ever had a clue.

I was
really
good at my new job.

That is not just me saying that. Or Celestine. All my coworkers said so. They were very impressed. They wanted to know where I worked back in the United States. Calvin Klein, maybe? They refused to believe I had an accounting job at a savings and loan in Indiana. Not that they knew what a savings and loan was, or where Indiana was, for that matter.

On the one hand, I don’t know why it was such a big deal. I can think of harder jobs than showing fabulous clothes to people who have a lot of disposable income. On the other hand, not everybody can do it. For example, take shirts and ties. Almost anybody can pick a suit—but for most people, picking the right shirt for the suit, then the right tie for the suit and the shirt, might as well be brain surgery. But it was easy for me. And it’s not a skill anybody else in my family had, so this wasn’t something I
got
from somebody. It was just something I
had.
It was all mine.

After my second day at Armani, I decided to call home after all. I had been gone five days, and I didn’t want my parents to worry.

I got the answering machine again. I left a message saying my movie job was over, and now I was selling clothes for Armani. I said the new job was great, Paris was great, Celestine was great, everything was great. I said I still didn’t know when I was coming home, and asked my mom to tell Uncle John I’d be gone a little while longer. Then I hung up.

I guess I forgot to mention about losing Grandma’s dress.

Next, I called Bank of America to find out what was wrong with my Visa ATM card. They passed me around for a while, but eventually I reached a man who told me my account was frozen because of suspicious charges from Paris, France.

“That’s because I’m
in
Paris, France. I’m the one making the charges.”

“Well, how are we supposed to know that, ma’am?”

“Because I
am,
” I said. “Don’t you have security questions that prove I’m me?”

“Absolutely,” he said. He asked me my birthday, the mailing address on my account, and my social security number. All of which I knew. “Name of the first street you lived on.”

“Wespark,” I said. Which by the way is where I have lived my whole life. And where I still live.
“W-E-S-P-A-R-K.”

There was a pause. Finally the man said, “I’m sorry, ma’am.”

“What do you mean, you’re sorry?”

“That’s not the answer I have here.” With that, he hung up.

Oh shit.
He was right. Because my parents lived in another house till I was six months old. When I originally gave the bank all this security information, my mom made me change my answer to be completely accurate. What was the name of that street? I couldn’t remember.

I had no money. Which meant I was stuck in Paris.

B
eing stuck in Paris didn’t seem too bad, until I found out that Josh Thomas was stalking me.

“Josh Thomas is stalking me,” I told Celestine when I came back to the apartment the evening of my fifth day in Paris.

“That’s ridiculous.”

“I saw him.”

“Where?”

“At our
patisserie
.”

People in Paris do not grocery shop like you and I do. In Kirland, you drive to Sterk’s market every two weeks, roll a huge cart with one wobbly wheel through the aisles, and fill it until you can’t see over the top. In Paris, you only buy things the day you need them. Because you have to buy everything when it is totally fresh. From the way people act in Paris, I suspect there is a law that actually requires this. Also a law that says you cannot shop for different food groups in the same store. You buy meat at a
charcuterie,
bread at a
boulangerie,
and cheese at a
fromagerie.
If you need pastry—and trust me, if you are living in Paris, you need pastry—you go to a
patisserie
. Okay, maybe bread and pastry are technically in the same food group, but they have separate stores anyway.

So everybody in Paris makes like a dozen shopping stops every day on their way home, at the shops they think are the best ones in Paris. People go far out of their way to buy the best baguette, which is that long skinny French bread. Which French people really do eat, and really do walk down the street holding under their arms. Anyway, Parisians have very strong opinions about all these little stores, and I imagine that disagreements on who makes the best baguette are probably grounds for divorce.

Celestine believes that the best desserts in Paris come from a
patisserie
that is literally one block from her apartment. So she was shocked when I told her we would have to buy our
mille feuilles
someplace else from now on. The combination of perfect pastry and perfect convenience is not something one gives up lightly. “Why should we do that?” she demanded.

“Because I saw him at our
patisserie
.”

“Josh? You did not.”

“I did so. I was right behind him.”

“From behind, you could not see if it was him.”

“He was wearing his Astros cap.” I had told her all about the Astros, and promises, and lost causes.

“Well,” Celestine said, “that could be a coincidence.” Although she did not sound very convinced. Because let’s face it, there are not a lot of Astros caps walking around Paris. “What was he doing?”

“He was buying pastry.”

“What kind of pastry?”

Do not ask me why Celestine thought that was relevant. “A Paris-Brest,” I said. Which is a pastry that, according to the French, is shaped like a bicycle wheel. To me it looks more like a bagel, only a bagel topped with almond slivers and sprinkled with powdered sugar, and instead of being spread with cream cheese, the inside is stuffed with yummy almond cream.

“I guess if you were close enough to see that he was buying a Paris-Brest,” Celestine said, “you were close enough to know if it was really him.”
Oh. That’s
why it was relevant.

In fact, before I had realized it was Josh, I was practically right behind him, with just one person between us. Then I saw him. Which immediately made me feel nauseous. Which is a very unusual way for me to feel, standing in the
patisserie
that Celestine says is the best in Paris. Fortunately I was able to run out of the pastry shop before he saw me.

For the past two days, I had done an excellent job of forgetting all about Josh. Okay maybe
excellent
is a little bit of an overstatement. Pretty good. Or at least fair. Under the circumstances, I mean. But in any event, seeing him brought everything rushing back. How I was starting to feel about him. Until he betrayed me, making them throw away my things like that. Grandma’s dress.

Then it occurred to me that maybe Grandma’s dress was paying me back for losing it. I have already told you how powerful Grandma’s dress was, and so far, that power had always worked in my favor—but maybe, like the Force in the
Star Wars
movies, Grandma’s dress had a dark side. Maybe now I was cursed.

“If they are not making the film, why would he still be in Paris?” Celestine asked.

“Because he’s looking for me. He’s stalking me, and he’s planning to wreak some awful vengeance on me for destroying his movie.” Okay that sounds a little overheated, I admit. But seeing him upset me terribly.

“Let’s go out,” I said to Celestine.

“You’re joking,” she said. But I guess I didn’t look like I was joking, because then she said, “You’re not joking!”

You must understand: Celestine goes out pretty much all the time, to fashion parties and artsy parties and who knows what other kind of parties. Since I moved in, she had been hinting around that we should go out to take my mind off things. And every time she hinted, I said thanks, but no. I told her I didn’t want to go, because wherever she was going, I was sure everybody would only speak French, and, as you know, I do not. That was part of the reason. But the main reason was that I was so scarred and traumatized by the whole Gerard-and-Nathalie-and-movie-and-Josh experience, I just did not feel like going to parties.

Even though I did not tell Celestine the real reason, I’m pretty sure she knew. Because she knows me very very well. So when I said, “Let’s go out,” she was surprised. And delighted. “It will be the best thing for you,” she said.

At that particular moment, I did not care whether it was the best thing for me. I was just feeling spooked by seeing Josh only a block away, and in case he had tracked me down and planned to knock on our door that evening, I did not want to be home.