Queen Of Babble: In The Big City

Chapter 26

“Wait,” Chaz says. “So he said he couldn’t picture a future with you in it?”

I’m carting the second-to-last armload of clothes up the narrow staircase to my new apartment. Chaz, behind me, has the last one.

“No,” I say. “He said he couldn’t picture the future, period. Because it’s too far away. Or something. You know what? The truth is, I don’t even remember anymore. Which is fine, because it doesn’t matter.”

I reach the top of the stairs, turn left, and I’m in my new apartment. MY apartment. And no one else’s. Clean, furnished in shabby chic, and featuring faded pink wall-to-wall carpeting and cream-colored wallpaper with pink roses in every room save the bathroom, which is tiled in plain beige, it features floors that slope even worse than the ones in Chaz’s place; only four windows—two that look out onto East Seventy-eighth Street from the living room and two that look out into a dark courtyard from the bedroom; a kitchen so tiny only one person can enter it at a time.

But it also boasts a full-size tub in the bathroom, with a scorchingly hot shower, and two tiny, but highly decorative, fireplaces—one of which by some miracle actually works.

And I love every inch of it. Including the queen-size, lumpy bed, in which I’ve no doubt many unspeakable acts have been committed by the younger two Henris, but which a proper airing and a fresh set of sheets from Kmart ought to cure, and the tiny black-and-white television with rabbit ears, that I intend to replace with a color set as soon as I have enough money saved.

“That sounds like Luke, though,” Chaz says, coming into the bedroom where we’ve assembled the hanging rack along one wall. “You know. That whole follow-through thing we were talking about.”

“Yeah,” I say. It’s been a little over a week since Luke and I broke up—if, indeed, that is what happened that night in the hallway of his mother’s apartment building. I haven’t heard a word from him.

And the pain is still too raw for me to talk about it very much.

But Chaz seems to be unable to speak of anything else. It’s a small price to pay, I suppose, for his helping me to move—he borrowed a car from his parents and everything. He seems to feel it’s the least he can do, considering his best friend is responsible for my broken heart and his father’s company for my current state of pennilessness.

But I’ve pointed out that the latter, at least, has turned out to work to my advantage, since it galvanized me into finally demanding the compensation I deserved from my “real” employers. Even Shari was stunned by what she called my “sudden development of cojones .”

“Free rent and a salary? Good job, Nichols,” was what she said over the phone, when I called to tell her the news.

Although, if you think about it, all of this really is Shari’s fault. She’s the one who went out with Chaz, who was the one who invited us all to Luke’s château last summer. In fact, the whole thing could be construed as Chaz’s fault. Chaz is the one—as he pointed out on the stairs a little while ago—who told Luke how much I love diet Coke, thus prompting Luke to buy me diet Coke that day in the village, and making me fall in love with him, because of his thoughtfulness.

And Chaz is the one who got me the job at Pendergast, Loughlin, and Flynn that I later lost.

Of course, if he hadn’t invited us to France, I’d never have met Luke. And if he hadn’t told Luke about my loving diet Coke, I’d have never fallen in love with Luke. And if I hadn’t fallen in love with Luke, I probably wouldn’t have moved to New York. And if I hadn’t moved to New York, I wouldn’t have gotten the job at Chaz’s dad’s firm, and then I never would have met Jill, and thus made my dream of being a certified wedding-gown refurbisher a reality.

So. Everything really is all Chaz’s fault.

Which is why it’s only fitting he help me move.

“Well,” Chaz says, as I take the last dress from him, and slip it onto the hanging rack. “That’s it. You sure that’s everything?”

Even if it’s not, I can’t go back now. I left the key to Luke’s mother’s apartment with the doorman, along with a note—brief but cordial—thanking Luke for the use of the place, and asking that he get in touch with me about any outstanding bills or issues concerning the place.

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.