The Other Language(22)
Caterina realized she was sweating profusely, adrenaline shooting through her bloodstream as if she had just robbed a bank. She had to sit down, dizzy with excitement and fatigue, while the girls wrapped and hung the dress inside a black zippered bag with the white Chanel logo, and folded it inside another giant paper bag tied with a black silk ribbon.
The ride back to their musty pensione was enveloped in a daze, as though Caterina were coming down from a powerful drug, its energy now reduced to a softness that turned every muscle to mush. The people seated next to them on the vaporetto—a mix of tourists laden with bags and cameras, old Venetian ladies in housedresses and slippers, young mothers coming home from the supermarket—all appeared to be staring with timorous awe at the gigantic shopping bag with the two Cs entwined.
It was getting dark. Caterina turned to Pascal, who also appeared to be exhausted by all the emotions they’d gone through in the last hour.
“I hate that you are leaving me,” she whispered in his ear.
The Chanel dress, safely stowed on the train rack and then in the trunk of a taxi, made it all the way to the dreary neighborhood of Ostiense, where Caterina and Pascal lived in a two-bedroom flat above an electronics store and a cheap hairdresser.
As Caterina unzipped the bag, the silk organza unruffled itself, billowing like a flower in bloom. Gingerly she took the dress out and laid it on the bed. She held it for a moment, incredulous. She still couldn’t quite believe this ethereal, otherworldly thing belonged to her now. It looked so foreign, in its feathery splendor and exquisite details—the minuscule mother of pearl buttons, the silk lining, the bias cut—sprawled over the frayed bedspread, next to the old couch, the threadbare rug, the cluttered desk, the tangle of electrical cords on the floor. She felt bad for having kidnapped it from the plush environs where it had lived till then. Surely a dress like that had never lived in such a dingy place.
There was only one solution for the dress to fit in with the rest of her life, and that was to upgrade its surroundings. Out with the plastic hairclips, the worn-out shoes. Out with the slackening underwear, the faded T-shirts, the ugly knickknacks, the dusty magazines piled on the floor, the Ikea rug. In with fresh flowers, room fragrance, a cleaner desk, a new expensive matte foundation. As a precaution, she kept the dress well zipped up in its bag, so that it wouldn’t be contaminated by the lifeless clothes hanging next to it.
She made a few phone calls.
“Hey, you want to hear something crazy? I bought a Chanel dress!”
Her girlfriends flocked to the apartment, bewildered, as though she had bought a Matisse. Each time someone came for a showing, Caterina unzipped the bag slowly, letting some tiny feathers flutter out first, delaying its full revelation, like a stripper teasing the audience before unfastening her bra.
Not everyone knew what cruise collection meant, so she had to explain—being the haute couture expert now—that it was a mid-season collection that came between winter and spring. In the old days it meant exactly that: a line designed for wealthy customers going on cruises in warmer climates who needed extravagant clothes for their encounters on the deck. Think dancing in the ballroom of the Queen Mary. The cruise aspect made the dress even more romantic to her and her friends. Caterina associated it with Scott and Zelda, although she wasn’t quite sure if the Fitzgeralds had ever taken a cruise in their lives.
Invariably her girlfriends begged her to model the dress for them; they too wanted to get a reverberation of its glamour. Wobbling on the powdery pink sandals, strolling up and down the bedroom, which lacked the softness of the lampshades inside Chanel’s boutique, Caterina believed she looked amazing, despite the merciless light of the low consumption bulb.
Two days before the awards ceremony, while Caterina was washing her hair in the sink, the phone rang. A nasal voice announced herself as someone’s assistant who was in charge of the event.
Caterina felt a thrill go down her spine, managed to grab a towel and wrap it around her dripping hair, while the woman was saying something about arrangements for a pickup in a limo. She struggled to find a piece of paper and a pen to jot down the details. The thought of the limo, the image of her waxed and bronzed legs stepping out of it in her powdery pink high heels, occupied her mind for a handful of seconds, obliterating what the woman was saying.
“… pick you up at eleven fifteen, so we’ll make sure you’ll get to the theater by noon. Do you think that will give you enough time?”
“Yes, sure. Forty-five minutes will be plenty.”
She was about to add “It’s not like I live in the jungle” when her brain did a quick rewind.
“What do you mean noon? Why noon?”
“I’m sorry, I forgot to tell you this year we’ll be running on a different schedule. The ceremony takes place at noon.”
“Why?”
“We changed it to daytime this year. It won’t make any difference, really.”
Caterina tightened her grip on the phone.
“No difference? Well … you mean … Is it no longer black tie?”
“No, it’s a daytime event,” the woman said gaily, “so no worries on that score, it’ll be a much more relaxed dress code.”
There was a pause.
“Hello? Are you there?” the woman said.
“Yes, yes, I’m here.”
“I said you don’t have to worry about getting all dressed up,” the woman reassured her. “The ceremony this year won’t even be televised.”