Page 23 of Still Me
“Sorry. Got stuck in the crowds.”
“My dress is wrong, isn’t it?” she whispered at me. “I have made huge mistake.”
She had seen it. In the sea of bodies it looked somehow too bright, less avant-garde than vulgar. “What am I going to do? Is disaster. I must change.”
I tried to calculate whether she could reasonably make it home and back. Even without traffic she would be gone an hour. And there was always the risk she might not come back...
“No! It’s not a disaster. Not at all. It’s just about...” I paused. “You know, a dress like that, you have to style it out.”
“What?”
“Own it. Hold your head up. Like you couldn’t give a crap.”
She stared at me.
“A friend once taught me this. The man I used to work for. He told me to wear my stripy legs with pride.”
“Your what?”
“He... Well, he was telling me it was okay to be different from everyone else. Agnes, you look about a hundred times better than any of the other women here. You’re gorgeous. And the dress is striking. So just let it be a giant finger to them. You know?I’ll wear what I like.”
She was watching me intently. “You think so?”
“Oh, yes.”
She took a deep breath. “You’re right. I will begiant finger.” She straightened her shoulders. “And no men care what dress you wear anyway, yes?”
“Not one.”
She smiled, gave me a knowing look. “They just care what is underneath.”
“That’s quite a dress, ma’am,” said Joshua, appearing at my side. He handed us each a slim glass. “Champagne. The only yellow drink was Chartreuse and it made me feel kind of queasy just looking at it.”
“Thank you.” I took a glass.
He held out his hand to Agnes. “Joshua William Ryan the Third.”
“You reallyhaveto have made up that name.”
They both turned to look at me.
“Nobody outside soap operas can actually be called that,” I said, and then realized I had meant to think it rather than say it aloud.
“Okay. Well. You can call me Josh,” he said equably.
“Louisa Clark,” I said, then added, “The First.”
His eyes narrowed just a little.
“Mrs. Leonard Gopnik. The Second,” said Agnes. “But then you probably knew that.”
“I did indeed. You are the talk of the town.” His words could have landed hard, but he said it with warmth. I watched Agnes’s shoulders relax a little.
Josh, he told us, was there with his aunt as her husband was traveling and she hadn’t wanted to attend alone. He worked for a securities firm, talking to money managers and hedge funds about how best to manage risk. He specialized, he said, in corporate equity and debt.
“I don’t have a clue what any of that means,” I said.
“Most days I don’t either.”
