Nine Women, One Dress (13 page)

I was used to the stares, but somehow my sister wasn't. Even though she was two years older than me—you'd think that's two more years to get used to it. Our entire trip to New York City was narrated by her complaining about the stares. Even just now, while my sister was complaining about it, I noticed a woman in an obvious wig and an ugly Juicy Couture tracksuit staring at us.

You may think it odd that I am familiar with Juicy Couture, but I know of the latest fashions as well as the outdated ones. You may think it odd because I am wearing a burqa. So is my sister. So is my mother. But my sister reads all the latest French fashion magazines. We live in Paris. In her dreams she lives in a fantasy world where people stare at her because she is beautifully dressed from head to toe in the latest Chanel or Dolce & Gabbana, not because she is robed from head to toe in her religion. Her eyes often well up in response to the reactions of strangers. I believe those tears are due to her own disappointment that she is not a Westerner or, even more ridiculous, a Western model on the pages of a fashion magazine. I fan through the magazines when she is finished with them, but I do not live in a fantasyland and I'm honored to wear a burqa. I wish she would seek refuge with Allah and give up these thoughts.

Suddenly my sister, Shireen, noticed the Juicy Couture woman as well. I wondered what took her this long. “Look, over there, that woman in the out-of-style tracksuit is staring at us. We should stare at her in that putrid outfit! She can wear anything she wants and that's what she chooses?” The woman made matters worse by whispering something to the man next to her, doing a sort of half point in our direction. A quick poke for his attention, then a flick of the wrist to direct him to look at the circus act: Muslim women dressed in full burqas in the Western world.

“What do you think she's saying about us?” Shireen asked me.

I softened it, as I always did. “It's hot in here. Maybe she's saying, See those girls with the pretty eyes—they must be hot.”

“I am hot,” Shireen responded, even more annoyed at realizing it. We both looked over at our younger brother in his New York Yankees T-shirt. This infuriated her more—him wearing that T-shirt and us cloaked in our religion. She did not feel the strong bond that I did to our mother and her mother before her in our native Saudi Arabia. My mother knew this, to some extent. Last year she even bought Shireen a special burqa made of crepe, with black velvet trim. Shireen told me the velvet made her cry more. It was like a taste of something that left her wanting.

She interrupted my thoughts. “Dalia was all wrong about New York, all wrong,” she complained. Dalia is our cousin who spent last summer in New York. She went on and on about how Manhattan was different from Paris, how people didn't stare so much. How in New York you could walk down the street with a camel and no one would stare at you. She was right in that New York is a melting pot. America in general is much more of a melting pot than anywhere in Europe, I think. Europe has a lot of different nationalities in each country, of course, but they never really seem to melt together. You can move to Germany, but you never really become a German. The same is very true of France, and I have been living there since the age of two. In America anyone can become a true American. What Dalia was wrong about was the staring. There are people in New York who seem content to spend their whole day perched on benches staring at other people. It even has a name: people-watching. It's like bird-watching but without the binoculars. Still, it didn't bother me.

Shireen decided she was going to take down the Juicy Couture starer with just her eyes. She'd had enough. She stood and walked toward Juicy and the guy she was with and gave them a good, long, obvious stare back. It actually worked. They ran off to a corner and sat with magazines plastered in front of their faces until our flight was called. We laughed so hard that it drew my father's attention, which was not a good thing. They called for our flight to board at just the right time.

Once on the plane, Shireen looked sad again. I didn't have to ask her why. She would be married in two weeks' time, and the trip to New York, which she had thought would satisfy her yearning to explore, had done nothing for her. We had barely been allowed out of our father's sight; thinking it would be any other way had been just a silly dream of hers. She would be married in two weeks to a man she barely knew and did not love. I know she had dreamed of things that have never even entered my mind. Dreams of dressing in the clothing on the pages of the magazines and attracting a man—even though those dreams defy the exact reason that we wear a burqa: to protect us from the lustful gaze of men. Shireen
yearned
for the lustful gaze of men. She dreamed of kissing a man. Not her husband, just any man. It is a sin to kiss anything with the intention of lust, anything, even a rock. I didn't envy her dreams. They brought her only dissatisfaction with life.

It had been two weeks since my interaction with John Westmont, but I was still thinking about it like it was yesterday. I had nearly skipped the whole way home from Bloomingdale's. I mean not really skipped, but there was an extra bounce in my step. I was anticipating my phone call with Caroline and the relief that she would feel when I told her the good news. I thought about what I would say.
He's a keeper, Caroline! You got one of the good ones!
A little unprofessional, I thought. But it was such a rarity for me to have this kind of storybook ending. In fact, it's only happened twice in the three years I've been in the business. When one spouse thinks the other is cheating, they're most often right. I'm not talking about the ordinary paranoia people sometimes feel in a marriage, I'm talking about enough paranoia to cause you to seek professional help. But the Westmonts had restored my faith in the sanctity of marriage. At least for the half hour it took me to not really skip home.

I called Caroline's cell and left her a message asking her to call me back. She called back within minutes. My cheerful “Hello, Caroline!” was met with a whisper from the other end.

“Why are you whispering?” I whispered in return.

“Because I'm hiding in a closet,” she said, adding, “John is right outside.”

“Right outside?”

He had said he was meeting her at Le Cirque straight from Bloomingdale's. My heart sank. Had he put one over on me? It couldn't be. Oh my god, I bet the present wasn't even for Caroline. I felt sick.

“Yes,” she said quietly, “I've had to spend the whole afternoon with him! I'm hoping you have enough dirt for me to cancel our dinner plans in a fitful rage and at least save my evening!”

“You spent the whole afternoon with your husband, John Westmont?” I said incredulously.

“Yes, and every minute with him leaves me feeling more and more demoralized. I can't take much more of this. Please tell me you know something.”

“I know that you're lying to me. Though I'm not sure why.”

“What are you talking about? What part am I lying about?”

“It can be so hard to tell once you start, can't it? You tell me. Go through all your lies and throw one out at me. Let's see if it sticks.”

My question was met with silence, and my anger boiled over.

“
I
spent the afternoon with your husband,” I said, breaking the silence. “At Bloomingdale's, helping him pick out an anniversary present for
you
. Let's start with that. Why are you lying to me about that?”

She laughed.
Laughed
. As if her response was going to humor me.

“All right, you caught me. I should have just been straight with you to begin with, but I didn't know if you'd take the case and get me what I needed if you knew the truth. I'm the one having the affair, not John.”

I couldn't even find the words to express how betrayed I felt. Her swollen eyes and monumental lies were all just an act to get me to take on her case. And it didn't help that John was such a nice man. I was furious. I hadn't been lied to like that—to my face and so cavalierly—since Derek, and it really struck a nerve. She continued without missing a beat.

“This is getting tiresome, and it's clearly not working. We're going to need to do things differently. I knew there was a chance that there'd be nothing to get on John, the patron saint of husbands. I was hoping he'd do something that looked at least halfway suspicious, but he's too boring even for that. It's okay—I have a backup plan.”

She went on about her plan and I listened quietly as my mind reeled. I could have just said,
I'm not interested in your plan, you lying cheat, and you are no longer my client
, but I waited—partly out of curiosity, partly because the extent of her duplicity was slow to sink in.

Her plan was quite elaborate. I was to make another appointment with the masseuse and plant evidence, including a naked picture of John, when I was left alone to disrobe. She would come in later that day to confront her and find said evidence.

At that point I stopped her. I told her that it would never work and that I don't plant evidence, and I fired her as a client. It actually might have worked, but obviously it was criminal and immoral and I wanted no part of it. I spent the rest of that night wallowing in my Cabernet and thinking of poor John with the elegant black silk evening bag and the pink envelope with the heart on it.

Weeks later I was still thinking about him. I was having one of those days when you find a reason to cry in every song you hear. It was an off weekend with my kids, and while you may think that sounds free and liberating I often find it sad, lonely, and depressing. If only the most unconditional love in my life, my dog, Franny, could stay with me, I wouldn't feel as deserted and would have a solid reason to get out of the house. But Franny was included in the visitation agreement.
Better for the kids,
he said. All of a sudden he was concerned with what's better for the kids. The hypocrisy…

Even though this is Manhattan and there are a hundred things to do on any given day, I was sitting in my office feeling melancholy. So I decided to check in on what John Westmont was up to. I'd like to say it was the first time I had done this, but I'd be lying. At first I just did it to see whether Caroline had removed the tracker from John's phone, but she hadn't even bothered. Then I just found myself wondering what he was doing. It was bizarre behavior, I admit, but I'd been rather bored lately. He seemed to be moving quickly down Madison Avenue. Realizing with a jolt that what I was doing was no better than common stalking, I exited from the program and vowed not to check again. And I took it one step further. Caroline had set it up so I'd be copied on all John's incoming e-mails. Since she seemed to have no intention of deactivating that either, I decided I would run a search and mark all of them as spam so they would all be redirected into my junk folder from now on. Out of sight, out of mind.

As I started the search, a new e-mail came in for him from the Apple store at Grand Central. I read it. I shouldn't have, but I thought,
It's not personal, it's just the Apple store.

We've reserved your spot in line at the Genius Bar and will be ready for you soon. You'll get a reminder when it's almost your turn.

From his location on the tracker I realized he must be going to the one in Grand Central Terminal.
He'll be there forever,
I thought. I realized a little too eagerly that I actually did need to go to the Apple Store. And it was the perfect errand for an unplanned day. We were down to one laptop cord in our house and it was causing lots of bickering. It never ceases to amaze me that they can make two-and-a-half-pound devices that carry all your photos, music, movies, work, and the entire Internet but can't make cords that last as long as their computers. I put on my coat and was out the door before you could say “totally inappropriate.”

As I noticed the Fifth Avenue Apple Store out the window of my cab, heading a whole seventeen blocks and three avenues out of the way to the Apple Store that I hoped John was at, I couldn't help but giggle. I was excited to see him, and the spying element made it more fun—for the time being, at least. I promised myself that if I saw him I wouldn't approach him first. I would let him find me. As if that little deal with myself would magically turn this unethical planned encounter into a real chance meeting.

I checked my (his) e-mail again. There was another.

We'll be ready for you shortly. Please make your way to the Apple store.

It was almost too easy. I often thought about how people in my profession did this before modern technology. Like the detectives who inspired fictional sleuths like Sherlock Holmes and Philip Marlowe. It was a whole different world. My girls had been obsessed with Nancy Drew lately; I like to think that had something to do with what their mom did for a living. I bought them a complete hardcover set of the originals. I began thinking up titles for modern Nancy Drew books:
The Secret Hidden Web Portal, The
Mystery of the Facebook
Group
. My cab pulled over to the curb.

Upon entering the great hall at Grand Central I was, as always, awestruck by its beauty. I've never been a commuter, but I couldn't imagine traveling to and from this place to be a routine worth complaining about. There is something romantic about train travel to begin with, but add in the grandeur and history of Grand Central station and it is downright enchanting: the constellation-covered ceilings, all the times visitors and natives alike have uttered the phrase “Meet me under the clock at Grand Central,” the majesty of its marble columns and arches. I could stare at the great hall for hours, but I had to move on. I had a mission. I headed to the store as his next Apple e-mail arrived.

Thanks for waiting. We're now ready for you. Please check in with a specialist.

I walked into the narrow store just as John Westmont was being escorted to his seat at the Genius Bar for his appointment. I decided to put myself directly in his line of vision but vowed not to make the first move. I perused the power cords and chose two, pretending to be absorbed in the task. I approached the technician to John's right, who was gently breaking some bad computer news to a woman who looked like she was going to cry. I think they both welcomed the interruption.

“Excuse me, can you please tell me which of these goes with the MacBook Air? I have the thirteen-inch,” I added, purposely not saying the year in case I needed more time to be noticed.

“Which year?” the technician responded, as I knew he would.

“Two thousand fourteen,” I said, which he followed with a tap on the box in my right hand.

“Don't I know you?” asked John Westmont, tapping my left. I looked at him with what I hoped was a quizzical expression.

“You're the lady from Bloomingdale's, right?” He looked at his feet to hide the flush in his cheeks. “I never got your name.”

I smiled to ease his embarrassment. “I never gave it to you. I'm Andie.”

“Just Andie?”

“That's right,” I said coyly.

“Okay, then,” he replied, reaching out his hand. “I'm just John.”

As I took his hand to shake it I felt a little jolt, and it wasn't coming from the power cords. “How did your wife like the bag?”

“She exchanged it, I think. Well, she said she was going to…” He paused, then said gently, “I thought it was a great choice though, really. Thank you.”

I smiled, feeling a little regret. Now that my plan was working it felt like a really bad idea.
Just what this man needs is another woman lying to him. I'll say “Nice seeing you again” and leave
, I thought. This couldn't go anywhere worth going.

“How long is your wait?” he asked.

“Oh, I'm just here for the new cord,” I said.

“That's good.” He smiled. “From the way my computer's acting, I'm guessing I'll have a bit of time to kill.”

“You're not going to leave it and come back?” I asked, wanting him to say yes but also wanting him to say no.

“Actually, I'm going to do something I've always wanted to—take the walking tour of Grand Central.”

I lit up. I couldn't help it. I had always wanted to take the tour of Grand Central too. I used to ask Derek all the time, but he thought it was too touristy. And then the last few years I hadn't had anyone to go with. It definitely seemed like the kind of thing that was better to do with someone.

“I've always wanted to do that!” I blurted out.

His Genius guy arrived just in time with an introduction and the standard “What seems to be the problem today?”

I saw this as my chance to get away—I really needed to just leave this man alone—so I reined in my enthusiasm and said in a much calmer tone, “Good luck. Nice seeing you again.”

As I turned to leave he gently grabbed my forearm. “Wait—please,” and to the technician, “The wheel is spinning all the time, and the last time this happened you had to hold it hostage for three hours.” He turned his laptop to face the technician, who took a look, pressed a few buttons, asked John to insert a password, and then voilà.

“Come back at four and it'll be good as new, or close to it.”

“Great, thank you!” John stood and faced me.

“Come with me—you should come,” he said sweetly.

I would love to
, I thought as I declined.

“It starts in an hour. We can have lunch at the Oyster Bar first. Go on, say yes.”

I had never done that either, but had always wanted to. I thought about the afternoon that awaited me if I said no. I would leave here, jump on the subway, and spend the rest of my day lying on the couch with my dear friends Don and Betty Draper. Lucky for me, my divorce coincided with the advent of binge television-watching. Now you could justify a lazy day spent in front of the TV watching
Mad Men
as an exercise in staying culturally relevant.

Or I could just say yes. I say it every morning when the man at the corner deli asks if I want milk in my coffee. I stopped making a whole pot after the divorce. It seemed wasteful.

“Yes,” I said.

“Fantastic!” he replied, adding, “My wife is usually the one of us to make new friends.”
He's got that right
, I thought.

Lunch at the Oyster Bar at Grand Central Terminal is a scene out of another era. I half expected Don Draper to sit down right next to us and ask for a light for his Lucky Strike. Countertops loop around the perimeter, with art deco tables in the middle. We grabbed the only two seats left at the counter in front of the open kitchen. Between the view of the chefs shucking oysters and the commuters stopping at the takeout counter behind it, there would be no shortage of distraction. We each had a bowl of Manhattan clam chowder and then shared a big plate of oysters. Their aphrodisiac powers seemed to work wonders on John, as he told me in great detail of the love he had for his wife. He added that he sensed something was wrong lately, and when he said it I felt a twinge in my heart. Poor John. He seemed to realize that he had opened up a little too much and that maybe it was odd. He apologized, saying, “There's something about spilling your woes to a stranger that feels tremendously cathartic. Want to try it? Tell me about your life.”