Tease (Songs of Submission #2)(20)

“Yes.”

“Follow me.” She smiled slyly and winked at me. “This will be fun. I promise.”

We walked into a room with mirrors and a white carpet. My tea waited for me on a little marble table. Lorraine closed the door behind us.

“I set up some possibilities for you,” said Lorraine, pointing to a rack of garments on hangers. Four mannequins wore other dresses. All of the clothes were black eveningwear. “You probably won’t need any alterations. I pulled from size six per Mister Drazen’s recommendation.”

“He knew my size?”

“He said you were perfect. I had to draw conclusions from there.”

I didn’t want to know how many women he’d sent up to Lorraine. It wasn’t a productive line of thought, and I had a bunch of clothes to look through. I usually loved shopping, but that was nerve-wracking. I felt like a Dodger’s fan at Wrigley Field.

“If you sit,” Lorraine said, indicating a chair, “I’ll show you what I have.”

I sat slowly when her back was turned. I didn’t want her to see the pain in my face. She pulled things from the rack, one at a time, and laid them out. I rejected most as too dowdy or too slutty, which made her laugh. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted, which didn’t help. As she got to the last frock on the rack, and I knew from the length it wouldn’t work, I imagined myself walking into the L.A. Mod. Who would I see? How did I want to present myself? I’d be with Jonathan, but who would see me besides him?

She didn’t seem impatient or put out at all when I rejected the last thing and said, “I think I decided something.”

“Oh, good.”

“I want to look like an artist.”

She looked at me for a second, hands folded in front of her again, and winked when she said, “I know just the thing.”

She left and came back in a second flat. The dress was black, naturally, and soft to the touch, yet stiff enough to hold a shape. The skirt hit at the knee, with a raw edge and strips of fabric dropping from below the hem, like a deconstructed fringe. The bodice was plain, but the shoulder straps crisscrossed each other along the back and front, making an asymmetrical web of lines across the shoulders.

“It’s gorgeous.”

“Try it on.”

I went into the dressing room. The dress felt like magic on my skin. The difference between a Target dress and a designer dress brought to me by a personal shopper wasn’t the way it made me look, though I looked like the best version of myself. It was the way I felt inside it. I felt like a queen.

Until I got out of the dressing room, turned around, and saw the bruises on the back of my neck.

“Crap.” My face went hot red.

Lorraine waved the concern away. “We have something for that down at the makeup counter. I’ll get it for you. Don’t you worry. I’ve seen much worse. And I’ve seen wealthy brats who wanted something that showed those marks off.” She shook her head. I smiled at her. She made me feel comfortable, which I guessed was her job, but it was a gift. If she wasn’t there, I’d be very, very ashamed.

“I love this dress,” I said.

“You look lovely,” she said. “Do you have shoes?”

I hadn’t even thought of that. “I guess not.”

“And something nice to wear underneath?”

“Oh, I don’t need anything like that.”

Lorraine looked at me in the mirror. “It’s not about what you need, dear. And it’s not for you.”

“I guess I should spend a little something on him then?”

“Exactly.”

CHAPTER 11

After shopping the fifth floor at Barney’s, my room looked messy and dim. My mirror made my body squiggle. The walls were cracked, and the floor was scratched down to the raw wood. Even through that, the dress was perfect on me. The bracelets I’d bought to cover my bruised wrists clinked and clanked when I spun hard enough to make the skirt wave. I’d tried to protest that the red soles of the shoes didn’t go with the black dress, but Lorraine insisted they were fine, and since she’d rejected so many things on my behalf before that, I felt pretty sure she wouldn’t bullshit me.

The bill came, and though I wasn’t responsible for paying it, I had to sign off on what I was taking out of the store. Lorraine had slid it across Shonda’s little desk with a smile. I checked the items and then the price. It came to two thousand, nine hundred, ninety-nine dollars.

“I know I spent more than this,” I’d said. “I saw the price on the shoes.”

“Well, you caught me,” she’d said. “You’re not supposed to see the price tags. So if you don’t tell anyone you saw it…” She paused and smiled to let me know it really wasn’t that big a deal. “I’ll tell you. Mister Drazen asked that the bill say this number no matter what. He said you’d get the joke.”

“I get it all right.” I’d signed, trying not to smile too wide. But as I looked at myself in my bedroom mirror, I smiled again.

Gabby had done my hair to cover the bite marks, tsking the whole time and making me giggle. I’d told her what I could about the night before, leaving out the parts that made my thighs black and blue. She did a church lady voice that made me laugh so hard I thought I would break a rib. We were in the bathroom playing with my makeup bag when the doorbell rang.