Cat signaled for two more coffees. Bess yawned again, stretched her long limbs like a puppy, then wandered up to the bathroom in her flannel pajamas for her own toilette while Cat nibbled on her toast and started her second double espresso.
Soon the whole cabin was awake and chatting genially while they ate their customized breakfasts—fresh avocado salads, granolas, sausages, roasted grapefruits. Cat watched a chèvre-salmon-dill omelet go by and felt her stomach recoil. Lately, so achingly tense that she could barely stand to eat anything, Cat stuck to the pediatrician’s standby, BRAT: bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast. She said a silent prayer for the day that her anxiety would subside enough to actually digest meats and cheeses again. For the past few weeks, Cat had been feeling a combination of dread and the same nonstop adrenaline that had dominated previous major escarpments in her life: her junior year of high school, her last year of college, the six months before she’d taken her graduate school comps, her first year working for Hillary.
But anxiety wasn’t the only thing that kept her from eating. Cat was now so focused on the way she fit into clothes that she’d become obsessed with herself, unable to daydream about anything except the hollows between her bones. A few days before she’d caught herself staring with envy at the slenderness of what turned out to be a child.
Cat knew these feelings were wrong.
She knew they were a sickness. A capital-P Problem.
But when she felt the slender breeze of other people’s envy: the moment they watched her pointed elbow rest on a table, or when their eyes slipped down to the pockets developing behind her clavicles—oh, it was a rush. The thinnest woman in the room proved her discipline and power just by being herself. It was akin to being a queen or inheriting a billion dollars. Nobody could take it away from you. You could only take it away from yourself.
She swallowed the last of her espresso and returned to the restroom to change into the Albert V. outfit the cabin staff had so thoughtfully hung out for her.
Cat had made an effort her very first year at RAGE to profile all the employees of Albert’s Paris boutique, including the cleaning lady, who naturally wore a custom pair of Albert V. overalls. Albert sent a friendly thank-you note, and she’d sent a funny card back; a half-dozen letters and a few very brief in-person chats and years later, Cat received this mystery box via messenger with a note—won’t you wear this when you arrive to Paris?—in his long, fine scrawl.
She held it up. The base layer was a crisp black cotton mid-length dress with a full skirt and neckline that plunged in a narrow rectangle to the bottom of her rib cage. Next, a wraparound belt cinched her waist and created a curve where none had previously been visible. The shoes he’d sent were slip-on sandals, heavily fringed, their leather thin and flat as paper; the matching jacket was short—cut just under her armpits—to show off the hard work accomplished by the dress.
With her shorn hair, thick black eyeliner, blocky sunglasses, and the rectangular leather backpack she’d brought as a carry-on, Cat looked like a terrorist sent from the future. She nodded at her reflection, then found her way back to her seat.
Bess had changed, too, in the restroom opposite, and now looked every inch the all-American sweetheart. She wore very pale blue jeans, a white cotton dress shirt, incredibly high striped stiletto pumps, and a thin rose-gold chain. Her hair had been blown out and pinned before the flight to give studied volume and shape to her otherwise-unruly curls, now the very color and quality of honey. She smiled broadly at Cat. A rust-colored suede trench, also coated in fringe, lay folded in her lap. Her handbag was an embroidered American football.
“I think I’m actually excited,” she said to Cat, who tried to smile. “Did you see this Virtue coat they sent me? I’m dying over it.”
Bess’s wardrobe had increased tenfold over the past few weeks, beginning the day after Bess and Jent Brooks had been caught sneaking out of Portmanteau, a pop-up speakeasy housed in a train car inside the long-abandoned subway station at Worth Street. Virtue had been the first brand to get in touch. Bess had agreed but insisted that she be allowed to keep everything she wanted; they’d balked and tried to back out. Ella had stepped in, and after three days of negotiations, during which Bess and Jent were captured sailing on the Hudson, making out in the backseat of a yellow cab, playing shuffleboard in Brooklyn, and, the real coup de grace, looking at a West Side townhome with a huge Sotheby’s “For Sale” placket out front, Virtue more than caved. Not only would she get free clothing, she’d get fifty grand a year to wear it.
Jent was short. There was no getting around it; with shoes on he was barely eye-level with Bess. Without them she had to lean down to kiss him. If they actually got married, she’d never have to wear heels again, she realized, feeling a mixture of elation and devastation as she thought about the rows and rows of shoes currently occupying the built-in bookshelves of her West Village apartment’s parlor. At least, she told herself, they’ll remain perfect forever—you can’t ruin shoes you don’t wear.
But Jent’s height had turned out to be inversely proportional to his other traits, the biggest of which was his sense of humor. He made Bess laugh, big, deep belly laughs, and he was also cynical, confrontational, ambitious, practical, thrifty; everything that Bess, sweetheart straight-A pothead peacekeeping hoarder, was not. She flat out loved it. He acted all the ways she had always thought about acting, said all the things she’d always thought about saying. He was brave and strong even though he wasn’t tall, and, best of all, he rode a motorcycle, a beat-to-shit Honda café racer from the late seventies, a sporty, badass bike—loud, fast, and in constant need of repair. Bess was instantly fond of the way he looked sprawled out on the floor of his Bushwick loft, covered in grease and surrounded by parts.
The night they met at Paahtoleip? he’d reached over and punched his number into her phone when no one else was looking, texting himself right away with the words Jent, it’s Bess, I love you. She’d laughed at the bravado of it and when he texted later that night—I love you too. Want to get married today?—she’d replied immediately, demanding, Take me to dinner tomorrow. Real food, no bullshit.