A Dangerous Dress Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  New American Library

  Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:

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  First published by New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, July 2006

  Copyright © Julia Holden, 2006

  All rights reserved

  Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following copyrighted material:

  “Bewitched,” words by Lorenz Hart, music by Richard Rodgers. Copyright 1941 (renewed) Chappell & Co. All Rights for Extended Renewal Term in U.S. controlled by WB Music Corp. and Williamson Music. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Holden, Julia, 1959-

  A dangerous dress / Julia Holden.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-0-451-21864-3

  1. Young women—Fiction. 2. Dresses—Fiction. 3. Americans—France—Fiction.

  4. Fashion shows. 5. Paris (France)—Fiction. 6. Manhattan—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3608.O4832D36 2006

  813’.6—dc22 2006000202

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For my daughter Rachel

  and

  the Jane in all of us

  Acknowledgments

  Warmest thanks to Bill Contardi, Kara Cesare, Claire Zion, Mom and Dad, Grandma Mary, Gianluca, Carolyn, Mary Jane, and, of course, Milan. To my dear Parisian inspirations: Françoise; Flavien, Céline, and all my friends at Hotel d’Aubusson; Loredana; Colin at the Bar Hemingway; and Valerie at Armani Collezioni. Finally, deepest gratitude to Laura, and, always, Mitch.

  1

  This is the story of a dress. A dangerous dress. A magical dress, I think. My Grandma’s dress. And it is a true story.

  Essentially.

  I know, just because I went and qualified true with essentially, now you’re going to think this story is not essentially true. But it is. For example, here are some of the things that are one hundred percent true.

  I go to the glamour capitals of the world, Paris and New York, where I do incredible (but true) things. Like selling the most exclusive designer clothes on the planet to the most radiant human beings on the planet. And attending an ultra elite private fashion show on a yacht, surrounded by the most gorgeous partygoers in the universe. And debuting on live TV as the fresh new voice of a major network news program. But in spite of all that fabulousness, this story starts—and may even end—in a town that everybody under the age of forty whose opinion I value, including me, more often than not calls Bumfuck. Even though its real name is Kirland, Indiana. If I were making this up, I wouldn’t start—and I certainly wouldn’t end—in Bumfuck.

  The town is named for Hap Kirland, who was an engineer. The railroad type. Probably nobody would’ve ever named anything for him, except that in 1887 he was driving a train out of Chicago, and right after he crossed the state line into Indiana, he ran off the tracks. The place he derailed, people started calling Kirland Siding. Which over time got shortened to Kirland. That’s what they taught us in school. Although why anybody would name a town after a guy who couldn’t keep his train on the tracks is beyond me. And what kind of a name is Hap, anyway?

  A sign at the town line says, WELCOME TO KIRLAND, INDIANA, POPULATION 5,120. The number is wrong. Nobody’s sure which way it’s wrong, but everybody agrees it’s not wrong by much, so it’s just easier to leave it the way it is. What matters, and what we can all agree on, is that Kirland is a small town.

  If you only talked to people from Paris and New York, you’d never guess that genuinely dramatic things happen in small towns. Because those big cities are made up of two kinds of people: those who never lived in a small town, and those who fled small towns to move to more exciting places like Paris an
d New York. And now I am about to perpetuate this problem. Because even though I’m from a small town, most of this story happens in Paris and New York. But I don’t want you to think that nothing of interest has ever happened in Kirland, Indiana.

  The interesting events began in 1986. I did not actually observe those events, as I was only five at the time. But everybody in Kirland knows what happened. Every last detail. Not a day passes without somebody telling the story like it happened yesterday. Each time somebody tells it, everybody stops and listens to what Nick Timko did to Mary Kovach.

  Back in 1986, everybody in Kirland loved Nick Timko. My mom insists I loved him just like everybody else did, even though I was five. Nick was a huge baseball star at Roger Wells Kent High School, which is the public high school. Nick was a senior, and he went steady with my cousin Mary, who was a junior. Mary’s mom, Rose, my mom’s sister, died about eight years ago. Mary’s dad, my Uncle John, is president of the Independence Savings and Loan Association of Northwest Indiana.

  Nick couldn’t decide between a baseball scholarship at Purdue and an offer to play single-A ball for the Cleveland Indians organization, even though Mary wanted him to go to Purdue so he could come home on weekends. But Nick couldn’t decide, and they had a fight about it at the senior prom at Reinhardt’s restaurant, and Mary ran off crying. Only before he could run after her, the prom committee announced the selection of the Prom King and Prom Queen. Of course Nick was crowned King, and of course Tina Kaminski, who everybody says was hot enough to peel paint off a Pontiac, was crowned Queen. So Nick and Tina had to dance together. Even though Tina was dating Greg Deegan, I guess she was always a little hot for Nick just like everybody else was, and for all I know maybe he was a little hot for her too. Or maybe it was just that night. But the consensus is that when they danced the ceremonial first dance, they danced very very close. And I guess they didn’t stick around for the second dance, because they ended up in the back seat of Nick’s old Dodge Dart in the parking lot. Which is where Mary found them.

  Before the sun was up the next day, Nick beat it out of town and started playing minor league baseball. He eventually made it to the major leagues for about twenty minutes. He never showed his face in Kirland again. We have an expression—when other people say It’ll be a cold day in Hell or When pigs fly, folks in Kirland say That’ll be the day Nick Timko comes home. And to this day, unless you ask her point blank, my cousin Mary never even mentions his name. Other people do, but not Mary. Which I think is entirely understandable, given what he did.

  Incidentally, I do not want to suggest that every small-town romance is as dramatic as Nick and Mary’s. My point is simply that interesting things do happen in small towns—not that they happen all the time. They do not.

  Anyway, enough about Nick, because the part where he’s relevant is done. But Mary is very relevant. With Nick gone, she had to figure out what she was going to do next. Uncle John always wanted her to go to work at Independence Savings. A lot of people assumed he would want Mary’s younger brother Johnny to work there, what with Johnny being a boy and all. But Uncle John figured that since Mary was born first, she should work at the bank, and maybe even take it over someday. I think if Nick had behaved and not gotten all sticky with Tina, he and Mary would’ve gotten married, and even though Mary wouldn’t have loved it, I think she’d have been willing to go to work at Independence the way Uncle John always hoped.

  As things worked out, though, Mary decided that if she was going to be unhappy about love, she sure wasn’t willing to be unhappy about work, too. So after high school she went off to Indiana University in Bloomington, where she drank way too much but still graduated with a teaching credential. Then she moved back to Kirland and started teaching third grade, which she still does. She also convinced herself she was in love with George Boba, whose sole redeeming quality was that he wasn’t Nick Timko, and they got married. Only George turned out to be a shit. Six years ago Mary and George had a baby girl who had Down syndrome. George must’ve done or said something awful about that, because two weeks after the baby was born, Mary broke his nose and she and Paris moved back in with Uncle John that same day. Paris is Mary’s daughter. She is the most amazing cute smart adorable six-year-old child ever, and since that day, George Boba has never seen her, doesn’t want to, and I hope he dies.

  As I said, Mary named her baby Paris. I always thought that was the best name I ever heard for a girl. So one day I asked Mary why she picked that name. First she said because nobody in Kirland ever named their baby Paris, which is true but not relevant. So I kept asking her, until finally Mary told me that she and Nick always talked about going to Paris together. Paris, France. Which I guess is maybe a little relevant. Or at least very romantic.

  Even though Mary never wanted to work at the bank, my cousin Johnny was happy to. Johnny had his whole life figured out. The day he turned eighteen he enlisted in the Army, just like Uncle John had done. But Johnny had seen his dad limp around with a cane on account of the shrapnel in his hip from the Korean War. So he joined the Quartermaster Corps, which he figured would be about as safe as an Army job could be. Plus he might learn some accounting that’d come in handy when he finished his tour and went to work at Independence.

  Only a year after he enlisted, along came Desert Storm, and Johnny got shipped out. I mention that not because now it’s topical to talk about Iraq. I mention it because Johnny died in an Iraqi Scud missile attack. He and twenty-seven other soldiers in the Quartermaster Corps. After Johnny’s funeral, my Uncle John stopped flying the American flag in front of the bank, even though he is the most patriotic man I know. But that’s really not the point. The point is that Uncle John was never the easiest-going man. Johnny’s dying made him even more difficult. And on top of everything, now there was nobody to go to work at Independence and follow in his footsteps.

  I knew he wouldn’t ask Mary again. She’d have said no anyway. But he knew she’d made up her mind, and even if he didn’t agree with her decision, he respected her, and he wasn’t going to use Johnny to pressure her into taking the job.

  He did not, however, have any such qualms about me.

  So when I graduated from high school, Uncle John paid for me to go to Purdue. Where I had an inordinate amount of fun. (Stupid Nick. Stupid stupid stupid.) And where I also earned a BS in Management. Which, I’m sorry, was not the fun part. It was the Uncle John part. It was all this accounting. And statistics and probabilities and economics and policy and—

  Ohmygod, somebody please pour me another beer.

  Wait. That’s not entirely fair. If I hadn’t studied Management at Purdue, I never would have gotten sick of all the Management courses. I never would have browsed the course catalog looking for something, anything else to take as an elective, to keep my brain from turning into an Excel spreadsheet. I never would have found the Consumer Sciences and Retailing department.

  Maybe you cannot tell from the name, but the Consumer Sciences and Retailing department is all courses about, well, clothes and shopping. I am not kidding. Did you know such a thing existed in college? I didn’t. If I had known when I started, I’m not sure I ever would have made it to that job at Independence.

  Not that I was any kind of a fashion expert when I went to college. Frankly I don’t know how anyone could grow up in Kirland, Indiana and be one. Except for Susie Anderson, whose mom used to take her to Paris twice a year just to shop for clothes. What such people were doing living in Kirland, I don’t know. Needless to say I hated Susie Anderson. And wanted to be her. Desperately.

  On the other hand, I bet Susie never met Mister Giorgio Armani in Paris, the way I did.

  But I am getting ahead.

  The point is that while I was growing up, I was not Susie Anderson. I did not shop in Paris, or anyplace else glamorous, or even fun. I shopped in JC Penney at River Oaks Mall. At best. When it came to fashion, all I could do was watch Cindy Crawford and Elsa Klensch on cable after my parents finally got cable, read
the occasional Vogue or Elle, and dream about someday shopping in glamorous, fun places and wearing glamorous, fun clothes.

  Then second semester of my junior year, just to give my brain a break, I took CSR 327. History of Fashion. Which was great fun, not too hard, and there was no accounting involved.

  Then came the week we covered the 1920s. And here we are getting extremely relevant.

  Because that was the week I saw my Grandma’s dress projected on the big screen at the front of the lecture hall.

  2

  My Grandma’s dress is, quite simply, the most amazing dress I have ever seen.

  I am not saying that because I am biased, but because it is true. And that is no small statement coming from me. I have personally visited every vintage clothing store in the entire city of Paris. Which, as you probably know, is a place where they make some pretty nice dresses. So when I say Grandma’s dress is special, I know what I am talking about.

  Before I tell you about the dress, I need to say just a little about my Grandma. First, and forgive me I know this sounds like an acceptance speech, but without her none of this would have been possible. And second, because the more you know about my Grandma, the more amazing the dress becomes.

  Grandma used to give me neck rubs, and even when she got very old, she had very strong hands. She did WordFinder puzzles using a magnifying glass that looked like a tiny telescope, which she needed because by the end she was legally blind. Legally blind, sure, I guess, but you never saw anybody clean a house like that. Don’t ask me how she knew where the dirt was. She passed away in 1998, just two weeks shy of her ninetieth birthday.

  Why do people say passed away? She died. She weighed eighty-five pounds at the end, and she died. And I still miss her.

  Grandma did not always weigh eighty-five pounds. When I was born she weighed a hundred and ninety-four. That’s what she told me. For all I know it was more. But she was big. She told me she got to where she wore a size twenty-two. Maybe the hundred and ninety-four pounds is true, because she told the truth about the size twenty-two. When she died she left me her clothes, and even though there wasn’t much, there were several of these huge old size twenty-two housecoats.