The addict’s whine. Helen hated his self-pity. “Any struggling actor would love to live here and wear expensive clothes like yours.”
The self-pity dried up. The sneer was back. “They’re from Sawgrass Mills Mall, moron. Whoever heard of a drug dealer shopping at an outlet mall?
“Look, I admit it. I asked her for help. So what? Do you understand how time-consuming drugs are? They take energy, effort, and careful planning. Kiki was my last hope. I begged her. She didn’t understand. No one does. Having an addiction is like hiding a beautiful damaged child in your home. I hate it. I hate it.” He was sniveling again.
“You love it,” Helen said. “You called your addiction a child, not a burden or a monkey on your back. You’ll never let go of this baby—and it will never let go of you. You thought Kiki would set you up in a nice apartment, maybe even pay for your rehab. You poor schmuck. I thought only women fell for rescue fantasies.”
Jason gave a mean laugh. “Hey, Helen, you know what they say about you older women? You don’t swell, you don’t tell, and you’re so grateful.”
Helen wanted to slap him. “Kiki never heard of gratitude. She turned you down and laughed at you. So you killed her.”
Jason was sweating heavily now, despite the room’s freezing temperature. His hair was plastered to his forehead. Sweat slid down his tanned chest.
“Are you crazy? I couldn’t even fuck her, much less kill her.”
Helen felt the acid of his bottomless self-contempt. “You tried to hit up Desiree for the rehab money the day of her mother’s funeral, didn’t you?”
“She owed it to me,” Jason said. “But she wouldn’t give it to me. And I didn’t kill her, did I? Just like I didn’t kill Kiki.”
Helen left him alone in his velvet box, hugging himself.
Chapter 23
“This wedding dress makes my hips look fat!” The bride was so skinny, Helen could have pulled her through a wedding ring.
“Stacey, you don’t have any hips!” Helen snapped.
Stacey’s sunny little face clouded.
“I mean, you’re lucky to be so thin,” Helen said. “Most brides would kill to be as slender as you.” The rest would be treated for anorexia.
Stacey’s smile returned. She bought the dress. But Helen’s patience was shredded. She was tired of hearing: “My butt’s too big.” “My gut sticks out.” “I have cellulite on my thighs.”
Each statement was pronounced in the tragic tones usually reserved for, “I have terminal cancer.”
What irritated Helen was that these young women didn’t have an ounce of extra fat. They were model thin, with thick glossy hair and sweet, firm skin. But they didn’t appreciate their natural gifts. They also didn’t realize how soon those gifts would be gone.
Helen wanted to strip off her clothes and say, “This is cellulite, sweetie. This is fat. In twenty years, you’ll look like me—if you’re lucky. Most women my age look even worse.”
Stacey barely had her nonfat thighs out the door before Helen had the celadon affair.
Lindsey, a fragile redhead, came in to inspect her celadon bridesmaid dresses. Celadon looked like plain old celery green to Helen, but two-thousand-dollar dresses couldn’t be the color of a common vegetable.
Helen thought the pale green dresses would look like an Impressionist’s dream on Lindsey’s redheaded sisters and cousins. She expected the bride to go into raptures.
Instead, Lindsey fished two pale green carpet fibers out of a miniature purse. They looked like something the police picked up with tweezers at Kiki’s crime scene.
The bride put the two fibers against the celadon dresses. Her rosebud mouth turned down. “They don’t match,” she wailed.
“They don’t?” Helen squinted at the carpet bits. She could hardly see them.
“The color scheme is wrong, wrong, wrong,” the bride cried. “The dresses are supposed to match the hotel carpet exactly.”
Helen saw Lindsey sneaking into the hotel and snip-ping off the carpet fibers. She wondered if the rug had other bridal-induced bald spots.
“My whole color scheme depends on this.” Lindsey sounded desperate. “The dresses have to match the carpet and the carpet has to match the chair covers.”
Privileged brides rented chair covers so their guests wouldn’t see the naked metal legs.
“Everything is ruined.” Two tears ran down Lindsey’s unlined face. “We’ll have to send back the dresses.”
Helen saw an ugly shade of red. No way, missy, she thought. You’ll take those celery dresses if I have to chop them up and feed them to you. Helen summoned the last of her sanity and said, “Let me get Millicent.”
Millicent was hauling white gowns out of brown boxes in the back room.
“Another crisis,” Helen said. “Lindsey is crying because the dresses don’t match the carpet. I can’t believe anyone would make an issue out of something so stupid.”
“Helen, take a deep breath,” Millicent said. “I know it seems trivial to you, but it’s vital to her. I’ll handle this.” She ran her hands through her white hair, adjusted her black suit, and headed out to the salon floor.
“Lindsey, darling,” Millicent said. “Please don’t tell me you want an exact match. That’s so Kmart.”
Lindsey’s green eyes widened in horror. Helen could see the flashing blue lights.
“You want something in the same color family, but it should be at least two shades off.” Millicent picked up a celadon dress. “This is perfect, like everything else in your wedding. Now have your bridesmaids call me for their fittings.”
Lindsey put the fibers up against the dresses again.
“See?” Millicent said. “Two shades. Precisely.”
Lindsey sniffled. “You’ve saved my wedding.” “That’s my job, darling.” Millicent hugged her good-bye.
“Move over Henry Kissinger,” Helen said. “If you were in the diplomatic corps, we’d have peace in the Middle East.”
“World peace is not as important as celadon dresses,” Millicent said. “I’m unpacking stock in the back. Watch the store.”
The shop was blessedly empty. Helen sank down in the pink chair. She was tired of the problems of people who had no problems. “Who cares?” she wanted to shout at the brides. “In twenty years, you’ll be divorced, anyway.”
Like me, she thought. Had she ever shed tears over wedding trifles? She vaguely remembered some flap over baby’s breath and daisies. But it was almost two decades since she’d married Rob. She’d cried a river since then.
The doorbell rang. Helen saw a woman of about forty sporting a plum-sized stone on her left hand. Hallelujah! A mature bride. They were usually easier to deal with. This one turned out to be a doctor with good sense and good money.
Helen soon had the doctor bride in the fitting room with three gowns. Millicent was measuring another bride’s train. The doorbell rang again. It was Nora, a nervous mother of the bride.
“Have a seat, Nora, and I’ll be right out with your dress,” Millicent said.
But Nora didn’t sit. She slipped by Helen and Millicent and found her dress in the back. She tried it on by herself in an empty fitting room. Millicent never let a woman alone with a salon mirror and her own insecurities. Now Helen saw why.
Nora stumbled out wearing fuzzy-ball tennis socks and a five-thousand-dollar red gown. She stood in the salon shrieking: “It’s too big. I hate it. My husband will hate it. It’s a disaster.”
Tears flowed. Makeup ran. Millicent charged out. “Nora, sweetie, it’s not a disaster. It’s a minor alteration. I know my business. I ordered it a little big because you’re so well-endowed. Our seamstress will take it in at no
