Chapter Twenty-Five #5
The fitted bodice is crafted from heavy silk and it has a wide off-the-shoulder boat neckline that makes me feel Breakfast at Tiffany’s sophisticated.
My arms and shoulders are bare and the skirt flares to three-quarter length with a couple of tulle layers beneath it for added volume.
Or else it would probably be three-quarters on a normal height woman. On me it’s an ankle skimmer.
I feel like Danny Zuko from Grease might turn up and collect me for the prom in his big old American muscle car, then fling me around the dance floor when we get there.
We’d bop. Bop? Who even says that word? God, I’ve lost the plot.
I don’t want to bop with Danny Zuko or slow dance with Fletcher Gunn.
Scrap that last thought. It should have stayed in my head. It shouldn’t even have been in my head.
Anyway, I’m in this ridiculously glamorous French silk dress and I’ve used the fancy body lotion my mum gave me for my birthday that makes me look as if I’ve walked through a cobweb of fairy dust. My hair is sort of up in a messy bun in a way I’m hoping looks cool and underdone rather than like a bird’s nest. This is me on a really good day.
In fact, it’s me on one of my best days.
“You look every inch the princess, darling,” my mother says softly, and I can’t be sure but I think she’s gone misty-eyed. To be fair to her she doesn’t get many chances to see me look this girly, so she might as well grab it while she can.
“And have you a Prince Charming?” Gran asks archly. I pause, unwilling to answer.
“Maybe.”
“Didn’t you say it was a masquerade ball?” My mother gestures vaguely toward her own eyes. I could kiss her for her timing because I don’t need to elaborate on my date now. I just shrug, because I haven’t gotten around to sorting the masquerade bit of my outfit.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I may have one of those full-face rubber masks upstairs,” Gran says.
“Do you mean a gas mask, Gran?” It’s not really the look I was hoping for.
“No!” She bats the air as if I’m an idiot. “One of those you buy from special online shops. Bit like a balaclava with a zip up the back.”
My mother covers her mouth as if she’s been taken unwell.
“Gran, are you offering to lend me your gimp mask?” That’s a sentence I never expected to say.
She looks thoroughly unrepentant. “Don’t judge me, darling. I’ve been married for over sixty years, how else am I to keep the spice in our marriage?”
The fact that my grandpa has been dead for the last twenty of them clearly hasn’t held them back from moving with the times.
“On second thought, you’d better not. The talc would ruin your hairstyle.”
I can’t even begin to articulate an answer that doesn’t involve me losing my dinner into the sink. Thankfully my mother saves me again by sending my gran a reproving look and passing me a slender package from the dresser.
“What’s this?”
“Open it and see.”
I’m beginning to wonder if Dwayne was right about it being my birthday.
I slide a velvet pouch out of the package, and inside I find a wispy black lace eye mask.
It’s perfect for the dress and perfect for me because I couldn’t see myself with one of those fancy feather and gold ruffled things on a stick.
“I love it, thank you,” I say, standing on my tiptoes to give my mum a quick peck on the cheek. She isn’t a hugger, but she pats me on the cheek all the same and then kisses me on the forehead.
“Go on then, Cinders. You better get going.”
“Don’t come back with one shoe!” Gran calls as I open the door and they both peer down at my feet. I see a look of disbelief cross my mother’s face and I hotfoot it out of there before she can say another word.
It feels appropriate that Marina, Artie, and I arrive at the ball together with Babs as our pumpkin coach.
We belch and fart our way over the drawbridge and are greeted by a sight very different from the one we’ve become accustomed to.
The expansive drive has become a parking lot full of dark sedans and flashy coupes and we’re directed to park up toward the back.
“I think he wants us to hide Babs in the bushes,” Marina says, offended.
“Rude.” Her hand gesture is equally rude in response, and totally at odds with her appearance tonight.
She’s drop-dead gorgeous in the vintage silver mermaid dress, a Hollywood siren with rippling waves, curves to die for, and a glittering crystal eye mask.
Chewbacca howls beside her, and we all fall about laughing.
God, it feels so good to relax. I watch Artie clamber out of Babs, dapper in Nonno Malone’s retro suit, and I feel a rush of affection for him and his ridiculous Chewbacca mask.
I can only afford to pay him peanuts as our trainee, and in return, he gives us everything.
I like to think he gets far more than just his small wage from us though.
He’s blooming by the day from a painfully shy, lonely young man into a quietly confident trainee ghost buster.
It’s a career path he probably never expected to take, but one that is turning out to be just his cup of tea.
He turns and offers Marina a hand down, and uncharacteristically she accepts his assistance without complaint. It strikes me we are all a little bit different tonight, affected by the costumes we’ve chosen to wear and the personalities we’ve chosen to assume.
Artie is a confident Italian Wookiee and Marina is a glamorous Hollywood starlet. I’m not sure what I am. I’m more B movie than mainstream blockbuster, but all the same I’m happy in my own skin tonight, and that feels good enough for me.
“Oh God. There’s Gong Man,” Marina gasps as we thread our way through the parked cars toward the stone entrance steps.
I follow the direction of her finger and spot someone who looks like he’s just strolled off the set of one of those cheesy Hollywood blockbusters I mentioned.
He’s all brawn and teeth and she squeals with delight when he bounds down the steps and whisks her off her feet.
I see her wave at me over his shoulder as he kidnaps her, and I laugh softly.
“Ready, Artie?” I say. He’s slowed his step, and when he lifts his Chewbacca mask, I can see he’s a seething mass of nerves and self-doubt.
“What if she isn’t here?”
He sounds downcast, already forecasting being stood up on his first-ever date.
“What if she’s changed her mind?”
I look at the castle doorway and see Princess Leia emerge in small, uncertain steps.
“Put your mask back on, Chewy,” I whisper, and he looks across and catches sight of Hells Bells standing at the top of the steps. She looks like a knock-out in her white dress, a dead ringer for Carrie Fisher. I’m not kidding. She’s a doppelg?nger, mostly because she’s wearing a Carrie Fisher mask.
I watch as he makes his way up the steps and offers her his arm and they head inside, already laughing as if they’ve known each other forever.
I stand at the bottom of the steps, the summer evening sun warm on my shoulders. I’m in no hurry to go inside just yet, and glancing at my date, I see that he feels the same. It’s obvious from the way he’s just lifted his leg to pee on someone’s fancy-shmancy Jaguar.
“You brought your dog as your date.”
I glance down at Lestat, who looks really rather splendid in his black satin cape, and then up at Leo, who looks equally well turned out in his formal dinner jacket. Thankfully he removes the freaky beaky feathered bird mask he’s wearing before I answer him.
“He asked me. I couldn’t refuse him,” I say, and then we both laugh.
He’s flanked, as always, by Nikki and Vikki, who have chosen to wear identical cotton candy–pink dresses in exactly the same design as those hideous toilet paper holder dolls from the 1970s.
They watch Leo laugh privately with me, and although their smiles are wide, I can tell they are thinking stabby thoughts inside their heads.
I note they’ve opted for little Lady Gaga pink veils that cover their eyes rather than masks, and I wonder if they’d go all Hunger Games and try to kill each other for the chance to become Mrs. Leo Dark.
It’s an entertaining thought, if somewhat macabre, but then I’m no Disney princess inside my head either.
“I’ll see you inside later,” Leo says, and before he leaves he does something he hasn’t done in a very long time.
He leans in and kisses me on the cheek. I smell the old, familiar scent of his aftershave, and before he straightens, he quietly tells me I look gorgeous tonight, even if my shoes are a tad on the ridiculous side.
I know. I know. It’s Leo. He was in love with someone else yesterday, and he broke my heart yesternoon.
The thing is, when he broke it, I think he caught a loose shard of it and kept it with his own, and now he and I are linked for always.
It’s a loose link, mind. It won’t stop either of us from loving other people, but it’s a part of him and a part of me, and every now and then, the link between us tightens and there’s the outside chance we might shag.
There isn’t. I’m kidding. Or else, I’m at least 97.
5 percent sure I’m kidding. I just yearn for that feeling of being someone’s girl again, or of someone being my someone.
That sounds pathetic. Forget I said it. I just want someone to boff my brains out and say rude things to me every now and then.
I watch Leo disappear inside the castle and am momentarily amused by the fact that the creepy twins cannot get through the doorway in their dresses. One of them gives the other a shove, then she turns back and hauls her sister in behind her.
“Nice shoes, Ghostbuster.”
I turn around and there he is, the last man to say very rude things to me.
“Thanks. They match my knickers.”