But it seems kind of harsh that I can’t even pop into the nearby falafel place for a quick bite. Not that I am eating carbs, thanks to the size of my butt, or that there is a falafel place anywhere near the vicinity of the Met, which there most definitely is not, residences on Fifth Avenue being almost literally MILES from any affordable eateries and/or grocery stores. In fact, Fifth Avenue is like a wasteland, nothing but million-dollar apartments, museums, and the park.
I actually envy Shari her walk-up with Chaz. Sure, there are no Renoirs in it, and the floors slope toward the windows, and there’s only a portable stand-up shower that leaks and the enamel on the claw-foot tub is so stained it looks as if someone might have been murdered in it.
But there’s a totally cheap sushi place right across the street! And a bar with dollar Bud Lights at happy hour like two steps from their stoop! And a grocery store half a block away that delivers… for FREE!
I know I shouldn’t complain. I mean, I have a doorman. AND a guy who runs the elevator. And a view of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Luke’s mother’s windows are all double-paned, so you can’t even hear all the horns and sirens on Fifth Avenue.
And I’m only paying a thousand dollars a month for it. Plus utilities.
But I’d give it all up in a minute if I could just have a freaking caffè misto every now and then and not feel racked with guilt about it.
Which is what brings me to Monsieur Henri’s, not four blocks from Mrs. de Villiers’s pied-à-terre. It’s one of Manhattan’s premier wedding-gown restoration and preservation hot spots. Anybody who is anybody has Monsieur Henri restore, refurbish, and preserve her wedding gown. At least according to Mrs. Erickson from 5B, whom I met in the laundry room last night (the plumbing in Mrs. de Villiers’s building is too old to allow each apartment to have its own individual washer and dryer, and the cost of renovating would raise the maintenance fees even higher). Anyway, she told me that adding half a cup of vinegar to the rinse cycle saves you from having to spend extra money on fabric softener. And she should know. I mean, she had on a cocktail ring with a diamond about as big as a golf ball. She said she was only doing her own laundry because she’d had to fire her maid due to drunkenness, and the service hadn’t found her a new one yet.
So when I ring the bell to Monsieur Henri’s place, I am fairly confident that for once, I won’t be completely wasting my time. Mrs. Erickson had looked to me as if she’d know about wedding-gown restorers—the angle I am now pursuing, since the whole costume-restoration and vintage thing wasn’t working out. I have, in the past two weeks, been to every vintage clothing store in the five boroughs… none of which was hiring.
Or so the managers claimed. Several saw my college degree on my résumé, and said I was overqualified. Only one of them was interested in looking at my portfolio of refurbished vintage clothes, and when he was through, he said, “This might impress people back in Minnesota, but around here our customers are a little more sophisticated. Suzy Perette just doesn’t cut it.”
“Michigan,” I corrected him. “I’m from Michigan.”
“Whatever,” the manager said, rolling his eyes.
Seriously? I had no idea people could be so mean. Especially people in the vintage-clothing community. I mean, back home, thrifters are very supportive of and caring for one another, and it’s about quality and originality—not the label. Here, in the words of one of the store managers I met, “If it’s not Chanel, no one cares.”
Wrong! So wrong!
And, in the words of Mrs. Erickson, “What do you want to work in one of those filthy shops for, anyway? Believe me, I know. My friend Esther volunteers at a thrift shop for Sloan-Kettering. She says the cat fights over a simple Pucci scarf are not to be believed. Go see Monsieur Henri. He’ll set you straight.”
Luke suggested that taking career advice from a woman I met in a basement laundry room wasn’t the soundest thing he’d ever heard of.
But Luke has no idea just how desperate things have gotten. Because I haven’t told him. I am trying to appear sophisticated and full of savoir-faire where Luke is concerned. It’s true he was kind of shocked when all my boxes from home arrived, and we realized there was nowhere to put them. Fortunately, Luke’s mom’s apartment comes with its own lockable storage unit in the basement garage, where I’ve stashed all my bolts of material and most of my sewing supplies.
The clothes, however, went straight to a portable hanging rack I bought at Bed Bath & Beyond and installed in the bedroom, under the Renoir girl’s disapproving gaze. Luke seemed kind of shocked when he saw it —“I had no idea anyone owned more clothes than my mother,” he said—but he recovered himself and even asked me to model some of the slinkier ensembles (as well as, for some reason, my Heidi outfit, which he seemed to get an enormous kick out of).
But what Luke doesn’t know is that if something doesn’t give soon, that outfit, as well as the rest of the collection, are going up onto eBay. Because I am down to my last few hundred dollars.
And though it will break my heart to have to sell the clothes I’ve been collecting for so many years, it would break my heart more to have to admit to Luke that I don’t have the money for next month’s rent.
And while I know he’ll only laugh and say it’s all right and not to worry about it, I can’t help worrying about it. I don’t want to be his live-in mistress or whatever. I mean for one thing that is hardly an effective career path, as we know from Evita Perón. But also, I want to go shopping ! I want to add new things to my collection so badly!
Only I can’t. Because I’m broke.
So Monsieur Henri is my only hope. Because if he doesn’t work out, I’m totally selling off the Suzy Perettes for sure, and maybe even the Gigi Youngs.
Either that, or I’m signing up for a temp agency. I will fax and file for the rest of my life, so long as SOMEONE will hire me.
But as soon as Monsieur Henri (or whoever the guy is who buzzes me in when I press on the bell to Monsieur Henri’s shop) ushers me into the waiting area of his shop, all smiles and graciousness—until I tell him I’m not getting married (yet), I’m there to ask about employment opportunities—I have a pretty good idea it’s going to be the temp agency for me.
Because the middle-aged, mustached man’s face falls, and he demands, in a suspicious, heavily French- accented voice, “Who sent you? Was it Maurice?”
I blink at him. “I have no idea who Maurice is,” I say, just as a tiny, birdlike Frenchwoman comes out of the back with a big smile plastered on her face… until I say the word “Maurice.”
“You think she is a spy from Maurice?” the woman asks the man, in rapid French (which I now understand —well, mostly—on account of having spent a summer in that country, and a semester before that learning it in class).
“She has to be,” the man replies in equally rapid French. “What else would she be doing here?”
“No, honestly,” I cry. I know enough French to understand it, but not enough actually to speak it myself. “I don’t know anybody named Maurice. I’m here because I understand you’re the best wedding-gown restorer in town. And I want to be a wedding-gown restorer. Well, I mean, I am one. Here, look at my portfolio—”
“What is she talking about?” Madame Henri (because that’s who she has to be, right?) asks her husband.
“I have no idea,” he replies. But he takes my book, and begins thumbing through it.
“That’s a Hubert de Givenchy gown I found in an attic,” I tell them, when they get to the page showing Bibi de Villiers’s wedding gown. “It had been used to wrap a hunting rifle, which had rusted all over it. I was able to get the rust stains out by soaking it overnight in cream of tartar. Then I hand-stitched repairs to the straps and hem—”
“Why are you showing this to us?” Monsieur Henri demands, shoving my book back at me. Behind his head is a wall full of framed photographs of before-and-after shots of wedding gowns he’s restored. It’s pretty impressive. Some of them were so yellowed with age, they looked as if they’d fall apart at the merest touch.
But Monsieur Henri had managed to get them back to their original snowy-whiteness. He either had a way with fabrics, or some kind of wicked chemicals in his back room.
“Because,” I say slowly. “I just moved here to New York from Michigan, and I’m looking for a job—”
“Maurice didn’t send you?” Monsieur Henri’s eyes are still narrowed suspiciously.
“No,” I say. Really, what is going on here? “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
Madame Henri—who has stood at her much taller husband’s side, peeking around his arm at my portfolio—
