Gia frowned.
“I’m loyal to family, but enough is enough,” Gia said decisively. “I’m done with my no-good brother’s no-good wife’s no-good brother’s no-good daughter.”
So that made No-Good Crystal Gia’s … niece-in-law? Untangling the branches of this family tree was like an Odyssey of the Mind brainteaser.
Drea barely tilted her head in my general direction.
“But you haven’t seen Cassie in years!”
“I know! I was all worried about finding someone to replace No-Good Crystal, and there she was! It’s fate!”
The Greeks cared so much about the concept of fate that they put not one, not two, but three sister bosses in charge of carrying it out for all humankind. I disagreed with the Greeks. I didn’t believe in destiny. And Drea didn’t either.
“You don’t even know her!” she pointed out.
Gia took hold of my chin and squeezed my cheeks. My own mother was never this hands-on with me.
“She was always a good kid. And she can’t be worse than your cousin.”
“Ma, look at her. She obviously doesn’t care about fashion.” Drea fluttered her thickly coated lashes at my Barnard T-shirt and cutoffs. “No offense.”
I took, like, half offense.
“Drea’s right,” I conceded. “I’m probably unqualified for this position.”
“I saw your name listed in the graduation program,” Gia said. “Didn’t you get the math award?”
I nodded.
“Congrats!” Gia applauded. “You’re qualified! And I don’t have any more time for discussion because here comes the white whale.”
Gia gestured toward a fiftyish woman in tennis whites making her way toward the store’s entrance. She carried a quilted Chanel handbag in one hand, a cigarette in the other.
“A whale?”
This woman was all sinew, gristle, and bone.
“It has nothing to do with her weight,” Gia said. “It means, she’s a big fish…”
“Whales aren’t fish,” I corrected. “Whales are mammals.”
“Fish, mammal, whatever!” Drea threw up her hands in exasperation. “I forgot how annoying you are!”
Gia smacked her daughter in the back of the head.
“Manners, Drea!”
Then she turned to me.
“Mona Troccola is a big spender,” Gia explained patiently.
Mona paused at the entrance to take a last, long drag on her cigarette before depositing the butt into the child-size metal ashtray.
“I have to pull some looks for Mona,” Gia said. “Drea, you take Cassie to the back office. Show her around.”
“But, Ma…”
“Do not give me any lip!”
Drea pouted in literal defiance to her mother’s orders. Gia rushed over to greet Mona with a nicotine-tinged air kiss.
“Mona! Darling! Mwah!”
“Gia! Darling! Mwah!”
I followed Drea through a mirrored door into Bellarosa’s back office. A multitiered chandelier hung over a gold-trimmed desk, behind which sat a zebra-print upholstered piece of furniture that more closely resembled a throne than any chair I’d ever seen.
I was alone with my former best friend for the first time since seventh grade. I didn’t know much about what she’d been up to all these years; I mean, other than what we all knew about Drea. She’d run through dozens of boyfriends since middle school. Jocks, skaters, punks, metalheads, hicks … Drea’s exes shared no common denominator other than their inability to resist her many charms.
I was at a total loss for what to say when Drea spoke up.
“You reek.” She scrunched her nose. “Like rotten fruit.”
“Really?”
I’d barely had the energy to shower that morning and hadn’t bothered with shampoo. Maybe the scent was still trapped in my hair?
“It’s cucumber-melon body spray,” I tried to explain. “I was…”
“I don’t care if it’s Giorgio Beverly Hills! You need to change into something else before you contaminate the merchandise!”
“But I don’t have any other clothes with me.”
Rolling racks of couture lined the gilded walls. Drea slowly swiveled her head from one side to the other.
“Where, oh where,” she asked, “could we possibly find you something to wear?”
The idea of wearing Bellarosa’s clothes was so ludicrous that I still didn’t quite get what Drea meant, even as she started riffling through the new arrivals that would soon be displayed out front.
“Aha! This!”
She brandished a hanger with an electric-blue stretch of Lycra I couldn’t quite identify as a specific item of clothing. Was it a skirt? A top?
“Try on this tube dress!”
So … it was both?
“Um, I don’t have the body for it,” I said.
Drea stepped back to silently take me in from head to toe. She appraised me for a few seconds, then shared the results of her skillful scrutiny.
“You’re European size thirty-two,” she said definitively. “You have the body for it.”
“But it’s not exactly my style,” I said.
Drea snorted. “You don’t have a style.”
With black velvet clinging to her curves, Drea demonstrated why she was voted Best Dressed at Pineville High. She was the authority. Her expertise would not be denied.
“Put this on right now because I can’t stand the sight or smell of you for another second.” Drea thrust the hanger at me. “Go!”
I entered the private dressing room and tried to make sense of what Drea had just handed me. It would be hard to imagine a less practical article of clothing. I couldn’t figure out whether I should approach the electric-blue tube from the top down or the bottom up. Shockingly, I didn’t get stuck. With one tug, the slippery fabric slid right past my knees, over my hips, and up to my bust.
“Come on out, Cassie!” Drea shook the silk drapes. “I don’t have all day.”
I parted the pink curtains and cautiously stepped forward.
“Well?”
Drea always had this unforgettable honk of a laugh. It was the greatest, most gratifying sound if you were in on the joke. It was the worst sound in the world if you were not.
I emerged to the mass strangulation of a million geese.
“OHMYGAWHAWHAWHAWHAWWWWWWNK.”
Drea’s awful laughter echoed throughout the whole store. Within seconds, her mother came bursting into the back office to shut her up.
“What’s going on back here?”
Gia stopped dead in her tracks at the preposterous sight of me in that tube dress.
“Drea! What is wrong with you?”
Drea was unable to catch her breath.
“HAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWNNNNNNNNNK.”
“I told her I didn’t have the body for this!”
“You have the body,” said Gia, stroking my hair. “But not the…”
“Soul,” Drea finished for her.
I thought Drea was making another joke at my expense. But Gia agreed.
“She’s right,” Gia said. “It fits, but it doesn’t fit you. And that’s okay. As a back-of-store employee, you can be the exception to Bellarosa’s dress code.”