“And this is our cue to leave,” I mutter to King.
Five minutes later, we’re out of there.Yet still nowhere closer to making Ella ours.
Ella
Mrs.Dali wakes me gently.Warm light comes through her gauzy curtains, filtering a rosy pink through the room.
“Good morning,” she says.
“Good morning.”I sit up on her couch, warm beneath the afghan she gave me last night.
We worked well past four a.m., only stopping for tea refills, and I even switched to black tea so the caffeine could help keep me up.
Now I can say that the dresswasugly, but it’s taking shape.
The dress used to have everything wrong with it.Fabric flowers, tacky beading, and even lace trim to go with it.Not to mention long, flowing trains of fabric that draped from the back of the shoulders.It was truly a product of the early seventies.The only tolerable thing about it was the shimmery blue color of the fabric.
Mrs.Dali had taken one look at my expression, because I have no poker face, and seen that the dress wouldn’t work.
But she took it out of the garment bag anyway, and started reassuring me that this dress had “good bones” and we could make something out of it.
I hadn’t believed her, to be honest.My worst-case scenario soon became fixing it up with her and then putting it on andpretendinggo to the gala while really hiding behind our apartment building for four hours.
Because no way did I want anyone I knew to see me in this dress.
However, after we stayed up for hours, pinning things, cutting things, and basically performing surgery on this dress, it has turned into something really quite amazing.
I could never have even attempted this on my own.Mrs.Dali is a wizard, and she has every possible thing we could need, right here in her apartment.I didn’t even know that sewing kits were a thing, and here she has like five of them, little boxes with threads and needles and pins all stuffed in side, in every shade of the rainbow imaginable.
“Did you sleep long enough?”she asks.
“Plenty.”I check the time on my phone.I only got four hours of sleep, but I feel awake, rejuvenated.Standing up, I stretch.“I really appreciate you letting me crash on your couch.”
Around four a.m., I tried to go back to my own apartment, but my brother was sleeping outside of it, leaning against the door.I just couldn’t deal, and when I returned to Mrs.Dali’s apartment, she was kind enough to offer me her couch.
But I don’t want to take advantage of her already generous hospitality, so it’s time to get going.
I turn around to look at where we left the dress last night, and gasp in surprise.“You’ve done more with it.”
Her brown eyes crinkle at the corners and she gives me a smug smile.“Yes, I always wake up early, so I slept for a couple of hours and then I was awake at six.I haven’t been able to leave the gown alone.”
“It looks incredible,” I say.
The plunging neckline is far more risqué than anything I would ever choose to wear.It’ll land halfway between my breasts and my belly button.The wide band going across the waist is no longer covered in a mishmash of beads, lace, and fake flowers; it’s now a single fabric panel with two silk ribbons sewn at the top and bottom.The funky streamers at the shoulders are gone completely.
My throat tightens as I struggle to hold in my emotions.“I don’t know how you managed all of this.”
“Well, I had your help, Ella,” she says.
“It didn’t look this good last night.”
She gives a little laugh.“Nothing looks good at three a.m.Why don’t you try it on?”
I pick it up, my motions reverent.This dress is no longer an abomination—it is now a work of art.Smiling at Mrs.Dali, I hurry to her bathroom, saying over my shoulder, “I’ll be right back.”
Kingston
I don’t know why I bother trying to work the day before the charity gala.I do this every January, think that I might be able to concentrate, but that’s never the case.Everyone in the world has things to ask me—is the caterer set, have the cases of champagne been ordered, do we have a back-up band on call in case something goes awry with the string quartet, and, from my son, is a tuxedo absolutely necessary?
