Page 33

Dressing Down

“H i! Hi, Raffie!” Helena called out as she leaned from the entryway of the clothing establishm ent 105th.

Unzipping his coat, he obeyed her frantic gesturing and entered the men’s clothing store, only to be greeted by anot her woman.

“Hello there again, honey cakes,” the bright woman with her Southern twang greeted him, opening her arms to give Rafferty a committed hug. He didn’t return it, and she didn’t seem to mind. Then she stepped back, holding him at arm’s length as she looked him up and down with approving eyes. It was almost motherly. No, wors e. Auntly.

“Rafferty, you remember Honey?” Helena asked as way of int roduction.

Honey didn’t wait for an acknowledgment. She seemed to believe that of course he remembered her. Which, of course, he did. “Well, let’s go on back and nick those clothes off. I wanna see what we’re working with,” she declared, followed by a suggestive tiger growl, before turning around to head to the back of the store.

“What is going on?” Rafferty asked, feeling like he was undressed already in the market square, which shouldn’t have bothered him. B ut it did.

“She’s going to do your fitting for your new uniform!” Helena chirped, clearly excited as she tugged on h is sleeve.

He looked around the store at the fashionable mannequins in their fashionable clothes. “This is the place you brought me before. Where you got me t hat suit?”

“Yes! For our first date,” she said, giving his cheek an affectionate peck. She still wasn’t seeing th e problem.

“This does not seem like… the rig ht store?”

“Oh, I know, but that’s alright, this store also has another service where they sell high-end clothing including tailored uniforms. What we want is in the back,” she insisted as they passed through a pair of swing ing doors.

The back area was starkly different than the front. For one thing, a small platform, covered in the same gray-blue carpet as the floor, stood in front of a semicircle of mirrors. A little stand stood next to the platform where Honey had placed an open notebook. The clerk had draped a roll of measuring tape over her shoulders and was jotting down something into that notebook. A second after they had entered, she looked up, beaming a smile as big as her hair.

“Come on in, don’t be shy, sugar drops,” Honey invited, gesturing toward the platform. “I was just joking before about getting naked. Though do shrug off that coat. I’m fairly good at eyeballing you, but for this special order, we need to get it right.” She winked at Helena, who grinned like this was all some sor t of joke.

Rafferty sighed. “Okay, let’s get this over with,” he stated, firmly stopping Helena’s tugging toward the platform. “But I don’t understand what’s wrong with a standard chef’s uniform.”

Helena’s cheerful face melted to concern. “This is for your new uniform, for the competition. It’s like half kitchen scrubs, but also half costume, you know, for the show. You’ll be a celebrity chef! You need to have a signat ure look!”

“I’m thinking of it like a Formula One racer’s jumpsuit,” Honey chimed in, spooling the measuring tape between he r fingers.

“Oh, and before I forget!” Helena scurried over to a briefcase he hadn’t seen before leaning against the wall with her purse and coat. She pulled a small stack of papers out of the briefcase. “I need you to sign these. This is your contract for the event, just like yo u wanted.”

Rafferty’s heart clenched at the word “contract.” It made Honey pause as she measured around his chest. Their eyes met briefly, but before he could interpret that look, Helena came up beside him on the platform.

“And look!” She flipped the pages in her hands to one in the middle, then thrust it up to him, bending the papers so only the text she wanted to highlight was easily read. It wasn’t a word; it was a number. “Fifty thousand dollars. That’s your pay for doing th is event.”

“For cooking for one night? That’s quite a deal!” Honey declared, shifting her tape down to measure first his waist, then his hips.

“Yeah!” Helena agreed. “And that’s just what he gets paid for doing the show. If you win, the grand prize will be another $50,000!”

“Is that a lot of money?” he h ad to ask.

“It’s a really good yearly salary. I made sure,” Helena as sured him.

“I don’t make that much working here every day, that’s for sure,” Honey said pleasantly. “It looks like you’re moving up in the world, my little crèm e br?lée.”

The older woman then went around, giving his rear a little pinch in time with her crème br?lée endearment. He jumped out of his skin with a little yelp. Immediately, Honey put her hands up, closing her eyes in self-consternation. “I am so sorry. I’ve already been talked to about that. My fault, I’m aware. That is unacceptable. It won’t happen again, I swear.”

“It’s fine,” he assured, relaxing his shoulders back down. “Worse has happened to me in my time, be lieve me.”

“Oh, but that just makes it more… ohhhhh,” Honey continued as she knelt down beside him to lay her tape along the outside of his leg, measuring from his waist to the floor. “I promise, Honey is going to be a good girl fro m now on.”

Honey continued to chastise herself as she worked, but Rafferty stopped trying to put her at ease. Instead, he glanced at Helena, who smiled warmly, still offering him the contract. Except he wasn’t taking it, and he couldn’t return her smile. He just wanted her to get the damn thing away from him. Since he didn’t have the will to do that, however, he remained frozen, unsure of wh at to say.

A moment later, her own smile began to falter, and worry lines appeared between her brows. “What’s wrong? Is there something else you would want?” She turned the contract toward herself, flipping the pages again. “I can fix it. Just tell me what you want.”

“No, it’s not that,” he said. “It’s good. Thank you. That is very genero us, but…”

“But, what?” Helena urged with the eagerness of a puppy. Her beautiful gray eyes were stormy with the lightning strikes of gold flashing thr ough them.

He cleared his throat. “Where is this money com ing from?”

Why am I questioning this? he thought. What do I care where the money came from?

“Oh,” she said, relief washing her face back to a grin. “I’m getting several advertising companies to agree to sponsor this event. I’ve also made a deal with another production company to do the TV pr oduction.”

“All within a couple of weeks?” Rafferty exclaimed. He had very little knowledge of such things, but the TV executive who he had once cooked for in the ’70s had waxed poetic on “What a real pain in the ass it is to get everyone to agree to any and every little decision.” Which was why it would take years to even start p roduction.

Helena blinked at his question, the pucker returning between her brows. “Has it only been a couple of weeks?” Her gaze went internal for a second. Then she started shaking her head. “No, no, it’s got to be closer to a month.”

“But still…” Rafferty wanted to argue, but he wasn’t sure it was truly worth it.

“This child’s working like lightning,” Honey chimed in as she shifted from the stand where she had been jotting down her measurements. “And now, chocolate muffin, I need to get in there for some more personal measurements. Do I have your permission?” She indicated his i nner seam.

“Yes, yeah,” he said, wishing she would just get this over with.

A song jingled through the air, stopping whatever additional thing Helena was going to say. Spinning to her briefcase and purse, she dug in the latter to pull out her mobile. “Sorry, sorry, I got to t ake this.”

She didn’t wait for his permission to answer, turning away to talk softly into the magic rectangle.

Rafferty huffed, letting his eyes drift up to the tiled ceiling above as Honey knelt down before him. Her action was too much like other views he had seen, ones he’d rather forget. Sweat trickled down his back, making his skin itch.

A few seconds later, Helena pocketed her phone and snatched up her coat. “I’m so sorry, but I’ve gotta run and put out another fire. Are you going to be okay here?” she asked him, her eyes pleading with him t o be okay.

“I’m fine, ” he lied.

That was all she needed. She was gone.

“My that child is running around like her house is on fire,” Honey laughed, as she stood to write down a few more measurements. “She’s going to burn herself out at t hat pace.”

“What would you know about it?” Rafferty responded in a surly voice, but he didn’t mean to; this helpful woman had done nothing to warrant it except being just too damned cheerful.

She also didn’t take offense, which was its own kind of annoying. Instead, she laughed some more. “Oh, I was young once. Thinking I could change the world if I just worked hard enough. Put enough energy in, and it would all simply get done. Then I would win because I was the hero of my own story. How cou ld I not?”

“That isn’t how the world works,” he said, watching her in the reflections of the tri-mirrors before him. Again, he saw his face, one he didn’t really recognize and so felt disconnected from. It was a feeling he hated, but in that moment, he also felt like he couldn’t turn away. Honey moved behind him, pulling some things from a rack of clothing he hadn’t noticed before. She put the first two back before humming, satisfied with the third, then changed her mind again and switched it out with a fourth.

She stepped up beside him, brandishing her prize, a suit of kitchen scrubs, only they were black with piping of bloodred. “The only thing I know for certain is no one knows how the world works. We all just try for what we think is best in any given moment, and we’re lucky if we turn out to be right.”

“Then what’s the point of any of it?” Rafferty sneered. “If this is supposed to be winning, why doesn’t it feel like it?”

The reflection of Honey cocked her head to one side. She studied him for another long moment, her gaze feeling like it was reading more of his soul than his expression. “If I were to venture a guess, it’s because you haven’t fully let go of who you used to be in order to make room for who you are trying t o become.”

“You make that so und easy.”

Honey laughed. “Oh, I know it’s not.” Then she offered him the clothes. “But let’s start with the outside of you. Please, go try these on and come back here. They won’t fit perfectly, but I’d like to see the genera l layout.”

There was another mirror in the changing room, and it took every fiber of Rafferty not to punch it. Instead, he quickly took off his clothes and donned the outfit Honey h anded him.

While she had said it wouldn’t fit, the feel of the black cloth as it slipped over his shoulders or pulled up over his hips, it was as if it had already been made for him. He paused as he looked at himself in the sing le mirror.

He liked it.

The red piping at his shoulders and down his sides at the seam made him look powerful, like a general, even though the cut was still one of a chef with the front panel buttoning at the shoulder. If he undid the button, a triangle of red appeared as it laid back. He felt strong and confident. P roud even.

“Why doesn’t this feel like winning?” he asked himself. The reflection furrowed his eyebrows at him as the answer almost slipped from his lips, a traitorous answer that he had kept trapped inside of him, threatening to come out. He had to hold it back no matter what. Helena could n ever know.

“Are you dressed?” Honey called from the other side of the thin door.

Without a further glance, he opened the door forcefully and marched past Honey to go to the platform.

“Oh my, now that looks sharp!” Honey called, before giving an appreciative whistle. “Your lady is going to love you in this. What do y ou think?”

“It doesn’t matter what I think. Whatever she wants,” he said, stiffening his jaw like a soldier, his hands ramrod straight at his sides. His tri-reflection in the tri-mirrors repeated the gesture, but the three of him reflected back all see med wrong.

“What do you mean it doesn’t matter? You’re the star of the show, cinnam on crisp.”

Firmly, he shook his head. “My life is hers. I owe her ev erything.”

A soft, gentle hand rested on his arm. “You don’t owe her y our life.”

He ripped his arm away. “You don’t understand. You can’t un derstand.”

Honey’s eyes reflected back at him in the mirror, and he flinched. While they didn’t change at all, they burned th rough him.

Then she sighed, shifting her stance. “Look, this isn’t my decision. I am just here to facilitate your big transition. If there is something you need to tell her, then you better tell her. Otherwise, it will become the slow poison that destroys you both.”