Borrow-A-Bridesmaid (2 page)

My hands are wrist-deep in my T-shirt drawer—can't rule out the possibility of Andrew Jackson hiding between vintage tees—when I find a disposable razor lurking in one corner. I'm about to launch it at the trash bin when Lin's words pop back into my mind:
Y
ou should sell your body. But then you'd actually have to shave your legs.
I run my hand down one calf and frown. “Ha. Sell my body. Hmph. Sell my body?”

I retrieve my laptop, open up a new window, and type in “craigslist.org.”

At first I type “Escort Services” into the search box, then hastily hit “delete.” Maybe I could start with something a bit more innocuous. I click on “Creative Services” then “Post Ad.” Staring at the blank form, I mentally mine my past experiences for hidden talents. Besides analyzing Milton's poetry. Thanks, English degree.

My eyes sweep the room for inspiration, finally landing on one particular photograph.

After a moment of reflection, I begin typing.

Two

T
he next day, I'm hopping from foot to foot in the airport security line, which has shown no sign of speeding up in the past twenty minutes, when I realize I might as well accept my fate: My face is going to get hosed down by one of Sal's Mountain Dew–breath tirades.

The best part about covering the C shift today is that I only overlap with Sal for an hour. Sleeping until three o'clock in the afternoon isn't a bad perk, either, though Lin left me a note on the kitchen counter this morning dubbing me “Queen Lazybones.” By the time I make it through security, he'll probably be heading home to Fairfax, his taillights in tandem with the rush-hour crowd.

“Hey, do you know what's going on?” I ask two maintenance men ahead of me in line.

One of them—Albert, according to his green security badge—turns back to me and shrugs. Dark circles shadow his eyes. “I think one of the X-ray machines is down.”

“Cheese and rice! I'm already late.”

Albert nods, Eeyore-like. “Tell me about it.”

As it turns out, my brainwaves are as inept at speeding the security line along as they were at zapping my debt. The airport, like Dante's limbo, is a land of the waiting. Full of long lines, long hallways, short tempers. Full of fluorescent lights and people with sad eyes. I think of an inscription I saw in Edinburgh when I was on foreign study: “Cities are hungry places.” I cast my eyes to the metal detector, adding my own imaginary inscription above it: “Airports are lonely places.”

Twenty-three minutes later, I'm finally fast-forwarding through my security routine: I shed my shoes, belt, and purse into a worn gray tub. The TSA officer examines my employee badge with glazed eyes and waves me through the scanner. On the other side, I snatch the various pieces of my attire from the conveyor belt and sprint for the C Terminal tram, slipping through the closing doors as I finish refastening my belt.

The tram starts moving before I have a chance to put my sneakers back on, displaying my mismatched socks for the tram population's viewing pleasure. As I crook my elbow around a pole for balance, my gaze maneuvers between pieces of floral luggage to the front of the tram, where I'm hoping my favorite driver, Kalil, is at the wheel. When I see salt-and-pepper hair at the front in lieu of Kalil's dark locks, I sigh and settle into a seat in the back. Kalil and I met a few weeks ago and have been sharing our post-grad woes ever since: He's a philosophy major who whispers sweet nothings about Sartre as we slip between taxiing planes in the twilight. I only have his torso to judge from, but gazing at him is quite a nice ocular massage. Sexily tousled hair, wide brown eyes, broad shoulders, and surprising artist's hands that look capable of far greater fine motor skills than those involved in tram driving.

When I told him I have no idea what I'm doing with my life, he responded with: “The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.” I smiled up at him and said, “God, I hope so. I just wish
these
weren't the days of our lives.” I gestured to his tram rearview mirror and the grumpy contingent of after-hours travelers reflected in it.

I peer at today's passengers through the round tram windows, thinking they're lucky to be going somewhere, anywhere. Right now, my backpacking friends are likely being finger-fed escargot by Frenchmen with elegant mustaches, or perhaps relaxing at a hostel in the Italian countryside, drinking wine and swapping stories and spit. And I'm wedged between a handlebar-mustached man who is mumbling to himself and a three-year-old in a Spider-Man T-shirt who's tugging on my pants leg.

“Bad,” he says to me.

“Eh?”

He points to my shoeless feet. “Mommy says we can't take off our shoes.”

My eyes flick over his shoulder to the “Shirt and Shoes Required” sign. Conceding defeat, I bend down to slip my shoes back on.

The tyke scrunches up his face, still not satisfied.

“What now?”

“Poopie,” he says. “I make poopie.”

When we arrive at C Terminal, I squeeze past Monsieur Poopie Pants and dash to the Book Nook. A few people are browsing the
New York Times
bestseller wall, paperback novels tucked under their arms. Two more stand by the magazine section at the front.

Sal's talking with one of the five or six customers in line, but he will have noted the exact time of my arrival. The man has an internal clock that never stops ticking. He nods toward a book cart, a silent imperative to begin shelving in my least favorite section: biography. These hefty tomes are arranged by subject matter, not author name, so I have to focus on shelving instead of daydreaming about all the stories I want to write.

The first of those stories is a romance about a dashing airline pilot who sweeps a bookstore clerk off her feet. She gets to thumb her nose at her evil bookstore boss as she sips cosmopolitans with her pilot at the Red Carpet Club. Before she leaves with him on an extended vacation to Fiji, of course.

Back to reality: my book-cart chariot awaits. By now, I know no amount of optimistic brainwaves is going to turn Sal into a pumpkin. Or a naked mole rat (the current front-runner in my game of “If reincarnation is true, what sort of unfortunate creature will Sal be in his next life?”).

I toss my purse under the counter, loop my Book Nook lanyard around my neck, and flip my badge around so my name is facing front—one of Sal's golden rules of “making ourselves available to the customer”—before pushing the cart over to the biography section. I avoid glancing at the travel section, which never fails to remind me of all the places I'd rather be.

Half an hour later, Sal saunters up behind me, watching me shelve. “Ah ah ah,” he interrupts as I'm about to squeeze a book on the end of the top shelf. If I had eyes in the back of my head, I'd see his long finger waggling back and forth.

“Sorry.” I shift the book down to the next row and face Sal. His eyes drift southward, linger on my chest, and land on my left knee, where a conspicuous wrinkle lurks in my khakis. It's no secret these babies haven't been ironed since their last wash. He parts his lips, then seems to decide not to fight that battle today. He's standing so close I can smell the mixture of sweat and cologne on his skin. And, only slightly less potent, the raging Mountain Dew breath.

I look over Sal's shoulder to lock eyes with Kelly, who started last month and is the sweetest person I've ever met. With the exception of Kalil, she's been the only saving grace, the only bright spot of kindness, I've found at the airport, not to mention my buffer and comrade-in-arms against Sal. She goes cross-eyed and sticks her tongue out at me as I try not to burst out laughing.

“You sure you're okay being in charge tonight?” Sal reaches toward me. My back stiffens against the Hillary Clinton display. I bet she'd sock him a good one if she weren't plastered onto a hardcover. Delicately, he takes his thumb and forefinger and turns my badge so my name is facing front again. “Now. I need you to go down to the stockroom and load the cart before I head out. Here's the bestseller list. Make sure to get plenty of these and some pop fic to boot.”

“Yep.” I make a mental note to bring my cell down to the stockroom. Personal calls during work hours are forbidden, along with leaning one's elbows on the counter, neglecting to greet a customer the nanosecond he or she enters the store, and any manner of dilly-dallying.

But if ever there were a time for rule-breaking, it's today. I've got to take care of some covert Craigslist correspondence. As I leave the store with the book cart in tow, the United guy shouts, “Sign up for a United card and get twenty thousand free miles and a bonus gift!” He and I trade mournful looks, and I realize I had the airport inscription all wrong.

It should read: “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.”

When I get
home the following night, the house smells like casserole. I find Lin in the kitchen, pulling off a pair of quilted oven mitts.

“How was your day?” He kisses me once on each cheek. “Stovetop chicken casserole for dinner. You know, I'm more grateful every day Steve's a chef. I play my cards right, and we'll all be relaxing over foie gras in the near future.”

“Foy who?” I kick off my shoes and toss my Book Nook badge on top of them. “In the meantime, I'll take your stovetop any day.”

We sit side by side on the kitchen bar stools, diving in. When I've swallowed enough mouthfuls to quiet the Jabba the Hutt noises coming from my stomach, I wipe my mouth and give Lin a cautious glance. “You, eh, remember what you said about me selling my body?”

He sets down his fork. “Don't tell me. You and Sal started an underground exotic dancing club called the Captain's Choice.”

I open my mouth in protest. “Lin—”

“There'll be a secret entrance behind the romance section. Prospective customers need only walk in and utter the secret password: ‘Frequent flyer.' You know, I think I may want in. The world of graphic design is not all it's cracked up to be. I'm more than halfway to carpal tunnel and less than halfway to artistic director.”

Having given up on getting a word in edgewise, I continue shoveling the steaming casserole into my mouth as Lin prattles on about all the roles he's qualified to take on in Sal's and my clandestine dance club operation. When it's clear he's winding down, I swallow. “You've got me. Busted.”

“Wait, so what were you going to tell me?” Lin takes my plate, sets it on top of his, and carries it over to the sink.

“I do have a plan.” I lean back, resting my elbows on the counter. “I'm going to rent myself out. As a bridesmaid.”

He turns back from the sink, blinking at me. “Say what?”

“The inspiration came to me the other night when I was going through my stuff. I was looking at a picture from my cousin Lana's wedding, and I remembered that I was the only one who could bustle her cracked-out Cinderella dress. And I was the only one who could talk Lana into a state of serenity when she got cramps right before the ceremony.”

“That's way too much information, but I'll forgive you.”

“What do you think?”

“Honey, I admire your ingenuity, I do. But . . .” He wipes his hands on a kitchen towel and comes over to stand on the other side of the counter, hands on his hips. “You're too much of a star to be on the sidelines. And you already have a job where you're treated like less than a person.”

“Thanks for reminding me.”

“If you take a second job, it shouldn't be something else with an eau de subservience.”

I frown. “You're pissing on the happy mental montage I had going.”

“Yeah?”

“The sky was raining flower petals, and I was frolicking with a series of brides at the park as a hipster photographer snapped pictures and said things like ‘Be the sunshine!' ”

“I'll grant you this—anyone would be lucky to have you gracing their wedding pics. You're a total secret undercover babe.”

I mock-bat my eyelashes at him, bristling with pleasure at his compliment.

“Can I see what that looks like, by the way?” he says. “Your ‘Be the sunshine' face?”

I conjure the look: a coy smile, eyebrows raised, arms akimbo, head cocked to a 45-degree angle.

He pats my shoulder. “Very sweet, but speaking of pissing—your montage is missing a bathroom scene where you're hiking yards of chiffon up over the bridal hiney. Anyway, what kind of person hires a bridesmaid?”

I un-akimbo my arms and cross them over my chest. “I met her earlier tonight. She seems legit.”

“You did what now?”

“I met my first client after work.” I wipe my mouth with a napkin and pretend to be nonchalant. “She's lovely.”

“And where did you unearth this person?”

I hesitate. “It may or may not have been Craigslist.”

He aims a pointer finger at me. “We'll skip the part where I reprimand you for risking your life. Let me say this: That's how people get their kidneys stolen. One minute it's all, ‘Oh, I'll just pop by and see this nice lady who needs a bridesmaid.' The next, you're prostrate on a bloodstained metal table, being poked at by rusty cutting tools.”