Chapter 10
I let Stewart pick me up on Goose Lane for the forty-minute drive to Providence.
Only Christopher is home, and I tell him I’m going to a costume party, which in no way feels like a lie.
I wait at the bottom of our walkway for my ride.
The chauffeured black town car pulls in just as Mrs. Goldberg is throwing a sheet on her line, and I hop into the car before either Stewart or the driver can get out to help me.
I sit statue-still in the back next to Stewart.
He says hello but is deeply involved in his phone.
He doesn’t say anything about my dress or my haircut.
I love my haircut, and this dress is Busy-approved.
I should not be spiraling the way I am, but Stewart is just completely fucking dashing, and I don’t want to look at him.
He’s in a tuxedo that was woven by angels with tiny hands to the exact specifications of his body.
His black shoes have been professionally tied by the royal shoe tyer.
“Are you all right?” he asks me. I can’t worry the ends of my hair, so my right leg is bouncing.
“Yes, fine.”
He puts his earbuds in and makes a call to someone about a problem in Dallas.
Honestly, with this level of warmth, I can see why Audrey may have sought solace elsewhere.
When Stewart Whitfield is in work mode, which seems like all the time, he cannot be distracted.
It should be clear that I could use a few words of affirmation.
I need confidence to walk into a swarm of millionaires and try to make small talk that will be so on point that they will all believe I am the new chosen Whitfield woman.
I really wish I understood what Bitcoin is.
I’m not looking for a full-out pep talk, but a compliment would be nice.
I’m in a magic green dress. There’s a golden dahlia around my neck to match my handbag and shoes. Notice my gold shoes, Stewart.
“Can you at least brief me?” I ask when he’s off his call. “Like about what I’m walking into?”
“It’s their annual cancer fundraiser. I’m being honored.”
“Why?”
“Because I gave a lot of money.”
“Ah.”
“We’ll be sitting with the head of the charity and some old friends of my parents’. All pretty low-key.”
I nod at the window.
“Dolly. You can’t screw this up. We met on bikes, you’re in a beautiful dress. Simple.”
I grab it. “You like my dress?”
“Of course, it’s…” He raises both of his hands to suggest wow.
“Okay. Thank you. You just didn’t say.” I turn back to the window.
“We have a business arrangement. And if I told one of my employees she looked”—he stops and struggles to find a word.
“How you look,” he says finally. “I would be sued.” He gives me a matter-of-fact look, but I swear his eyes linger for a nanosecond on my bare shoulder and then on my chest. “But you’re welcome. ”
I raise my hand to where my hair meets my chin. I refuse to ask for another compliment.
“Actually,” I say. “I recall a clause about touching being allowed if it’s to save my life? In that spirit, I think a compliment when I’m about to walk into a party and have a full-on heart attack is warranted.”
He laughs, and even that laugh is dashing. It’s like his tuxedo has doused him in dashing potion. “I accept your interpretation there. So, yes, you are wearing everything very well.”
“I am wearing everything very well. That is a top ten worst compliment of my life,” I say, just as we’re pulling up to the valet. “And the guy who asked me to my senior prom led with ‘I already asked Vicky Walsh and she said no, so you’re next.’ ”
Stewart’s laughing as he steps out of the car and extends his hand to me, outsizing his own dashingness.
He places his hand on my elbow as we walk up the stairs and into the hotel.
The perfume of flowers hits me immediately.
People are milling around, sipping their cocktails, and somehow not craning their necks to see the canopy of flowers above us.
Yellow roses, daisies, and sunflowers are the only ones I can name, but the ceiling is covered with a sheet of every possible yellow flower.
I want to pull out my phone and take a photo for Naomi.
I want to take a selfie so I can remember my celery-green dress under it.
“Stewart, hello,” a gray-haired man says. Stewart extends a hand to him, and I notice his cuff links for the first time, gold acorns, of course.
“Paul,” Stewart says. “This is Dolly Brick.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Paul says. “You are absolutely stunning in that dress.”
“Thank you,” I say, and raise my eyes to Stewart. That’s what you were supposed to say, my eyes tell him. He rolls his eyes the tiniest bit.
A waiter comes by with a tray of champagne flutes and we each take one.
Stewart and Paul are talking about an industrial property that’s for sale along the Providence waterfront, and I’m half listening and half clocking the women around me.
They’re all in long dresses, many of them brightly colored florals.
It’s all so joyful and whimsical. Black tie for the men, and rainbow sorbet for the women.
Everyone wants to talk to Stewart, and he is charming.
His demeanor is welcoming but regal. He knows everyone’s name and introduces me immediately, alternating between keeping a hand on my elbow and resting it stiffly on the small of my back.
It’s possessive in a showy way, but that’s the whole point.
“And what do you do, Dolly?” asks a woman who’s name I’ve already forgotten.
“I teach kindergarten in Boston.”
“Ah,” she says, resting her hand on the golf ball–sized emerald around her neck. “You two are like Charles and Diana!”
It’s a grim comparison to say the least. “Well, sort of. Except he cheated and she’s dead,” I say, and look up at Stewart, who winces a bit. I could have just said nothing. Nothing was the thing to say. I feel a little blush creep up my neck.
“Let’s try not to go down that path, honey,” he says, wrapping a tight arm around my shoulders. I don’t think I can do honey.
“How did you two meet?” she asks, and I know this one! I tell her the tale of our morning bike rides and Stewart’s gallant rescue.
“That’s sweet. Which park?” she asks, and I immediately forget the name of every park in Boston. It’s as if all park-related data has been swept from my mind.
“Boston Common,” Stewart says.
“Yes, Boston Common,” I say, relieved. Of course. That’s over by him.
“You two,” she says. “Bikes are forbidden on the paths in Boston Common.”
“We found that out the hard way,” I say, nudging Stewart with my elbow like we’re frat brothers. This was actually the hardest way to find that out. “We got tickets because of it. Not on the same day. Different days. Stewart got two. But we went back.” I do not have the power to stop. “With bikes.”
“We bike in town now,” Stewart says, and asks about their summer plans.
I need a minute. Despite my absolutely perfect dress, that was a screwup.
I am entirely unprepared, and this isn’t going to get easier.
There are going to be jokes and references that I’m not in on.
No one here is going to get excited about my Boston parking arbitrage scheme.
I need to figure out how to plaster a pleasant look on my face without saying any more words.
I could be Stewart’s girlfriend as a mannequin.
I excuse myself to go find the restroom.
The restroom is nicer than the dressing room at Wendell’s.
It has a seating area with gilded mirrors and pale pink sofas.
Two women in their twenties are seated, laughing at something on their phones.
I use the bathroom without ruining my dress and emerge from my stall anticipating a round of applause.
I wash my hands with a tiny trickle of water to ward off any splashing and dry my hands with an environmentally questionable paper napkin.
Just as I pull my lipstick out of my gold purse, a woman in her fifties comes out of the stall behind me.
Our eyes meet in the mirror, and I smile my pleasant smile. She does not smile back.
“This goddamn dress,” she says to no one. She’s holding on to the spaghetti strap of her pink chiffon gown and then lets it fall away, torn from where it should be attached at the back. She wets a paper napkin and dabs it at her neck and forehead. “Sweating.”
“Do you need help?” I ask, tentative.
She turns to me. “All the help in the world. I have to go out there, and I knew this dress didn’t fit.
The salesgirl assured me it did. And I liked the size, the number, you know.
It made me feel good. So I bought it and now I have to go out there, sweating—do I stink?
I bet I do!—in a broken dress like I just crawled out of the back of someone’s car. ”
“You look beautiful,” I say, because she does and because it’s what I wanted Stewart to say to me when I was nervous.
“And look what I have.” I open my gold bag and show her my CVS emergency needle-and-thread kit.
“My grandmother never left the house without ChapStick, five dollars, and a sewing kit. May I?”
“Yes,” she says. She’s staring at my little red kit like it’s a miracle. “Thank you.”
“No problem. I am not a great seamstress. But I can hem things and make curtains. I can do basically anything that’s going to end up a rectangle.
” I take her pink strap and stretch it to where it was previously sewn, and it’s tight.
I don’t like the way it presses into her skin like she’s trapped.
“If you have five extra minutes, I can sew this one on a little looser and then let out the other strap. You might be more comfortable?”