Chapter 19: Chapter 17: Bridesmaids

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> “I sat out the drafting of the Articles. We were away at war and I assumed that the Congress would absolutely make a mess of things. As usual, I was right.”

“So girls, what do you think?”

Lisa stood on a raised platform surrounded by mirrors, decked out in the eighth wedding dress of the afternoon. Stacy and I sat behind her on a plush couch, champagne flutes in hand and midway through our second bottle.

“Lis, you look stunning. I think this is definitely the one,” said Stacy. She had said that about the last three, but who was counting?

“You think so? But what about the DeWitt? I think that one was very slimming.”

“As if you need the help. But let me take a pic of this one and then we can compare.”

“Good idea Stac!” I added. I was at my wits end with this outing and anything that sped it along was a win in my book.

Stacy got up from the couch and started taking pictures of Lisa from every conceivable angle, as I reached down into my bag to retrieve the tiny piece of the gummy I had stashed away at the bottom. I hated to waste a piece, but if today was the day that Beatrice finally resurfaced, I wanted to be ready. And if it wasn’t, then at least the late night at work I was going to have to put in to make up for skipping out early wouldn’t be terrible. The taste of the gummy was slightly more palatable the third time around, and after a few moments, I felt the buzz of the champagne fade away.

A week had passed since I had become Beatrice’s woman, and of course my new boss had gone silent again. It had given me time to do my homework though. I had finally made my way through Rita van Asch’s diary, but hadn’t gleaned anything more from it than during my first purview. All I knew was that Rita had the compulsion ink that Beatrice now had, and boy did that make me feel good inside, what with the death threat and all.

Every time my phone had buzzed the past week, my heart would start beating a mile a minute; I would warily look at the screen, waiting to see if it was a task from Beatrice that I couldn’t possibly complete, which would be followed by the promised death note waiting in my mailbox or slipped under my door.

I tried to put Beatrice out of my mind, which was difficult because somehow she was still in my mind, and focus on the task at hand: getting a wedding dress purchased in as little time as possible. But that proved to be a tall order, as Stacy and Lisa spent the next half hour flipping back and forth through hundreds of pictures, while the saleslady came in every few minutes to see if we had made any progress.

“Shoot, you know what? We can’t make this decision now anyway,” said Stacy after finally putting her phone down.

“Well in that case,” I said, “we might as well go-”

“You need to see how the dress looks with your veil!” she continued. “I’ll go bring in some options.”

“Oh good thinking Stac!” said Lisa. “While you do that, JJ, can you bring me the Vera? It should be the white one with the flowers over there.” She pointed to the large pile of white dresses stacked on a chair in the corner and I grimaced.

“OK,” I said. I walked over to the pile and saw that they all appeared to be white with flowers somewhere on the dress. The first one on top was too hefty to push aside, so I grabbed that one and carried it over to Lisa, who had stepped out of the monstrous gown she had been wearing.

“JJ, this is the other DeWitt, not the Vera. But that’s fine. I wanted this one also.” She took it from me and slid it on.

“Sorry, they all look the same to me,” I said as I zipped it up. When I reached the top of the dress, I saw Lisa’s eyes in the mirror and it looked like she was going to cry. Crap.

“Wh-why would you say th-”

“No, no, what I meant was, in the pile, they all looked the same. Now that you have it on, of course I can tell it apart. You look amazing!”

“Oh. Thanks,” Lisa said in monotone. “I actually don’t love this one. Let me go find the first DeWitt and you’ll just hold this one for a second. Part of me wants to pick one of the DeWitts on the slim chance we meet Dalia after the lecture.” She motioned for me to unzip, extricated herself from the new dress, and handed it to me.

“So, how’s Duncan?” she asked as she considered the pile.

“Umm, good. He’s good.” It was so out of character for Lisa to ask about my life that I didn’t offer anything further. We had maybe gone on one double date with Lisa and Brad in all the time we had been dating. The guys seemed to get along, as they were both in finance, but that only made the dinner more unbearable for me, as I had to listen to Lisa the whole time drone on about fashion and tangential topics related to fashion.

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“He’s been in Hong Kong for a month now, should be coming home soon,” I offered. Lisa didn’t answer, but soon returned with the first DeWitt and directed me to put the one I was holding down while she slid on the new one.

“Oh, I’m sorry JJ. That must be so hard for you.”

“Yeah, it sucks. But we FaceTime every day, or at least try to.”

“Still, to be apart for that long. Then when he’s in town, you must feel a lot of pressure to make everything perfect. It’s like you’re always on The Bachelor.”

“Ha, yeah, a little. But usually it’s not lik-”

“Zip please.”

I was going to explain how it wasn’t like that between Duncan and me, that we always fell back into our casual rhythm, and that neither of us felt the need to make a spectacle out of our brief time together. But the zipper was giving me all sorts of issues and I didn’t want to accidentally tear the delicate fabric. After some gentle urging, I finally navigated it to the top of the dress and then moved to the side so I could see how it looked.

Lisa did look stunning, I had to admit, and I was genuinely happy for her. It wasn’t every day that one of your best friends got married, and deep down I was happy to still be included in her inner circle. She certainly had had plenty of opportunities to ditch me over the years, but she hadn’t, and that had to count for something, right?

“Ooh, JJ, what is that on your finger?” Lisa suddenly turned around, grabbed my right wrist and held it up to her face. “Well, it’s not an engagement ring, but I guess something is better than nothing. Let me see how it looks on my finger. I need to pick out a wedding band for the ceremony.”

Before I could protest, Lisa started shimmying the ring off my finger and I heard the commanding words start to form in the back of my mind.

“NO!” I yelled, shaking free of Lisa’s grasp and retreating back to the couch to push the ring back down to its resting place. The voice faded once again and I breathed a sigh of relief, but Lisa turned around fully and stared at me, a look of bewilderment in her eyes.

“JJ, what the hell is the matter with you?”

“N-nothing. It’s just, this ring, it was my mom’s. I didn’t want you to … I don’t want to lose it.”

“I wasn’t going to swallow it, Jen. Jesus Christ. You need to chill the eff out.”

Lisa shook her head, stepped down from the platform, and sat down on the couch next to me. The contrast between us was ridiculous: me, in my work hoodie and her in a seven-thousand-dollar dress. And now I had made things even more awkward, but as much as I wanted to explain myself, what could I say?

“Hey, sorry Lis, it’s just if I take the ring off, my sociopathic mentor’s voice will start sounding in my head?”

Yeah, OK.

“JJ, is something wrong?” Lisa’s tone changed abruptly from rage to caring and I looked down at the floor, embarrassed at my outburst.

“The last few months, it’s like you’ve pulled yourself back. You never initiate, you zone out during dinner, you’re really behind on your bachelorette planning tasks. I mean, at this point, we’re going to have to take a boat to London if you don’t get our flights booked ASAP. It’s like you’re just going through the motions.”

“No, it’s not like that, it-”

My phone suddenly buzzed and I pulled it out to see a text from Beatrice, now of all times.

“Where ru” was all it said.

“downtown,” I wrote back quickly before slipping my phone back into my bag and hoping that her question wasn’t a sign of things to come.

Unfortunately, it was, as my phone buzzed again a few seconds later and I sheepishly looked at Lisa.

“Sorry, Slack feed at work is blowing up,” I offered before looking at the text.

“Need u to get to Raid Board ASAP.”

Well, maybe it was nearby.

Another buzz.

“1391 St Nicholas Ave.”

Shit. That was all the way uptown, practically in the Bronx.

“Go thru yellow door and up to floor 3 and turn left. At end of hallway.”

Terrific.

“Im all the way downtown. might be awhile,” I wrote back, trying to buy time.

A final buzz.

“well then youd better start running :)” was the response.

The smiley face almost made me throw my phone across the room. Was she kidding with this crap? I was supposed to just drop anything at a moment’s notice and run off to some random place with barely an explanation?

“Do you need to leave?” Lisa suddenly cut in and I realized I had been staring at my phone for a minute without saying a word.

“Yes, I mean, I don’t want to, but, it’s my boss. I told him I had to a doctor’s appointment, so I could duck out no questions asked, and now he’s asking when I can get back to the office.”

“It’s fine. Just go.”

She picked up Stacy’s phone and started flipping through the dress pictures. I contemplated trying to explain myself further, but instead turned and walked silently out of the room just as Stacy was returning with her hands full of veils.

“JJ, where-”

I kept walking, not wanting to explain myself to her either.

“What happened?” Stacy asked Lisa from the doorway but I continued my exit into the main part of the boutique without looking back.

“Work emergency apparen-” was the last thing I heard before I sprinted out of the store and into the pouring rain.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

I pulled out the tiny umbrella I kept in my purse, only for it to be blown inside out immediately upon opening. The rain was coming down in sheets and it being the evening rush as well, there was no chance I could get a cab. So I broke into a jog towards the station that was several avenues away, weaving in between the throngs headed in the opposite direction, only to be greeted by a crowd of people seven deep trying to board an already overcrowded train and a countdown clock indicating that the next train was 17 minutes away.

I ran down the platform, looking for a shallower crowd to push my way through and after throwing a couple of elbows, I staggered into the train just as the doors closed for the final time. It took several stops before the car emptied enough for me to pull out my phone to text Beatrice that I would be there soon. A slew of texts greeted me on my screen.

“how far r u”

“whats tkaing so long”

“y arent u answering??”

“Sorry!” I wrote back.

“On subway. Very crowded. 7 stops away”

I waited for a response as the train exited onto the elevated tracks, which finally gave me time to read over her first text, my drenched clothing clinging to my skin.

What the heck was the Raid Board?

Beatrice hadn’t bothered to mention it last week, but I knew what a raid was in a video game - a more complex task or quest that required multiple people working together - so maybe this was something similar. Why the Raid Board was in a physical location as opposed to just another section of the online Quest Board was a different story, but I guess I would soon find out.

The train slowed as it reached the last stop, and I bolted through the doors and down the stairs, the rain finally subsiding. I looked up the address on my phone and it was only two blocks north. No further word from Beatrice meant that I had maybe beat her there so I quickened my pace until the end was in sight.

It was only then that I realized where I was heading: an elementary school.