LENA

With each new gown I try on, it becomes a little harder to walk out into the alcove and parade it in front of Booker. If I were a gold digger, this would be one of the best days of my life.

I muffle a snort. Who am I fooling? This is a darn fine day, regardless. I have to pinch myself to make sure I’m not dreaming. To make myself believe all these gowns, each one of which seems even more impossibly beautiful than the one before, are going to be mine.

I never owned a single piece of clothing that wasn’t a hand me down before I left the B of C foundling home. For the longest time after, it still remained a rare day I could afford to buy anything new. And when I did manage to save up the funds, it was a single ready-made purchase at a time, unless I was buying staples like soap or toothpaste.

It never occurred to me to expect more.

Over the years, I’ve studied other singers I admire. And one of the things that’s jumped out at me from the beginning is how each one has her own style. Not merely their singing style; they all seemed to have their own fashion—oh, beans, what, what, what is the French word the fashion writers like to use?—panache as well. I watched the way their selections helped set them apart. How it imbued a status that drew the audience’s attention.

It took me a while to find what worked for me. Having grown up with the austere uniforms of the Blood of Christ, I had a heck of a time with the first few dresses I was handed to wear onstage. I will never forget the very first one. It was a cheap, used gown cut low on top and high on the hem. Having spent most of my life up until then covered from neck to ankle, I broke out in horrid red blotches upon seeing myself in the mirror. Then I used so much powder trying to cover the redness up, I could barely sing that night for inhaling the clouds of talc it put into the air every time I moved. But when I protested to the manager after the show, I was told to take it or leave it, because my choices were simple. I could wear the gown, or I could look for a new job.

I love to sing—and even more to eat—so I wore the gown.

Breaking into this business is a huge, on-going learning experience, but luckily I have always liked learning new things. The lesson that paid off the most was giving in to the spirit of a tune. I came to understand each song needs adjustments, because the emotional tone of music changes between one melody and the next. And each tone calls for a different...presentation, I believe the word is, which also varies from song to song. I get to play a wide range of roles onstage, depending on what I sing. Roles that range from earthy, to vamp, to angel, to tease. Every single one has the ability to take me out of myself. I love that.

Up until now, I had exactly two stage-worthy dresses of my own to play all the different roles. Still, sewing is something we did a lot of in the foundling home, so while I have rarely been able to afford enough fabric for a dress, I can almost always find remnants on the cheap. From those, I’ve made a variety of accessories to change things up. To give the gowns different looks that add believability to each role. Over the seven years I’ve been doing this I have gotten pretty darn good at making my two gowns—three, after last year at the Tropic—do the work of ten.

Now here I am, about to be the proud owner of not one, not two, but five brand new gowns! New is not a word I get to use often. And that doesn’t take into account the sheer number of accessories Alice keeps pulling from her never ending stacks of boxes. She has affixed fancy little hair bands and cloches on my head, has tugged long, silky gloves up my arms. She’s attached jewelry to my ears and around my neck and wrists. All to demonstrate to Booker how the pieces complete the look of the gown of the moment.

And he keeps giving the majority of them the nod.

So, yes, this is far beyond anything I could ever have imagined.

Yet, thrilled as I am with all this bounty, Booker is turning me into a nervous wreck. Okay, not a wreck, precisely. And nervous isn’t the correct word I’m searching for, either.

But I know this much. Booker is making me edgy. Aware. God, so aware. Of what exactly, I’m not quite sure. But I am definitely aware of him.

Maybe it’s because he’s dressed less formally than usual. Instead of his usual bespoke suits, today Booker has on a white collarless shirt, tweed slacks and suspenders. And his shirtsleeves are rolled up. I don’t know why I’m so fascinated by the sight of his strong forearms and hands, but they definitely have my steadfast attention. Maybe it has to do with the way the former is feathered with dark hair. He usually looks elegant and sophisticated. Today he looks... Rugged. Physically competent. And, oh, my.

So darn male.

It’s likely this virility that has me on edge. And it was made worse the last time I came out by the way he crossed his hands behind his head, his elbows and strong thighs spread wide as he leaned back in that undersized chair they’ve put him on. Well, that male display in addition to the fact there is simply something about the way he sits there looking me over every time I model a new gown. Something unnerving—and a little bit titillating. Because, that look.

I swear, it’s as if he’s The Sheik and I’m the fair Englishwoman he’s contemplating sweeping onto his horse and spiriting away to his tribal home in the desert.

“Oh, for gosh sake, Lena!” I mutter under my breath—and beneath the tenting of the gown currently covering my head while Alice cautiously maneuvers its skirt down my body. “Can you be any more fanciful?”

“What’s that, miss?” Alice asks around the pins in her mouth as she clears the fabric from my face. Plucking them from her lips, she returns them to their nearly empty little case. They are all that is left after she used the rest for the two adjustments Booker asked her to make in this gown.

Or, more like decreed. Which plays into this stupid, yet nevertheless persistent, Sheik imagery playing in my head. But not nearly as much as the manner in which Booker has been smoldering like a fire banked, yet still a long, long way from extinguished.

“Oh, for—” I fling these silly thoughts aside as Alice lowers the rest of the dress into place. “It was nothing really,” I reply. “Sorry, I’m just talking to myself.” I shake my head. “I’m afraid I do that far too often.”

Alice’s face lights up. “As do I! When someone catches me at it, I simply admit to what I’ve done, then say it was a mighty fine conversation.”

A tickled laugh bursts from my throat and I beam at the other woman in delight. “Oh, I will have to remember that the next time someone catches me having a ‘mighty fine conversation’ with myself.”

Over the course of my appointment here, Booker has put the kibosh on two of the dresses I selected ahead of time. Or I guess one and a half would be a more accurate description at this point. The first was a pale pink number I’d chosen, which he pronounced an unflattering shade that washed me out. The current gown, whose fit Alice is carefully adjusting so as not to prick me where she’s pinned it, is the last of the extras she originally included. Booker vetoed it as well, then changed his mind and asked her for these adjustments and to show him again. After a moment of fluffing and straightening its fit here and there, she sends me out again.

I walk right into that look again. His gaze covers me from neck to ankle, then slowly climbs back up again, pausing on some exceedingly personal territory on its way. When it reaches my face, he shakes his head. “No.”

Just no. I blow out an exasperated breath and stalk back into the dressing room. Where I close the door behind me perhaps a little harder than I needed to.

Alice helps me out of it again and hangs it on the door hook. Then she gathers the final dress, the one she made a special trip to collect after telling Booker she thought she had something he would very much like in light of the direction he has taken us this afternoon.

She stoops to pool the hem of the gown’s short train on the floor in front of me and lowers the skirt portion atop it. Keeping hold of the bodice’s short sleeves and a couple straps whose use I can’t quite figure out, she manages to further drop the gown enough for me to step into the space she arranged in the middle without treading on the fabric. Somehow, she simultaneously prevents the entire gown from forming a big black and tan puddle atop the dressing room carpet.

Once she has me lined up with the way she’s lain everything out, she slowly works the dress up my body. The first stop is at my waist, which it turns out has a cunningly disguised side zipper where the gown’s black bodice meets its golden-tan, sparsely patterned skirt. When she zips it up, it fits my hips like a glove before flowing to the floor in a widening A shape that rounds into a small train in the back. The black top has a fairly modest V in front once the sides are wrapped first across one breast and tied at the waist on the opposite side, then repeated on the other. It gaps a bit until Alice lifts the two black straps I wondered about. They attach to either side of the neckline, and Alice crisscrosses them over my chest, then lays them over my shoulders. Moving behind me, she crosses them again and fastens each band to the opposite side of the deep V in back. She also fastens a thin beaded chain across the widest, upper portion of the V.

Then she turns me toward the narrow full length mirror behind me.

“Oh.” I stare at my reflection. “Oh, my!”

In all honesty, this dress probably has more fabric than most of those I’ve tried on today. It has short fluttery sleeves, the V in front isn’t all that deep and it contains no sheer illusion fabric to show my legs from my ankles to above my knees like in the gold dress Booker approved.

And yet...

My God. And yet. “Oh, my,” I whisper again.

“Wait here a moment,” Alice whispers back and steps out of the dressing room, leaving the door slightly ajar.

“Mr. Jameson,” I hear her say. “Before I have Lena step out, I would just like to say this dress is quite different from the rest we have had her model today. It is not, perhaps, as up-to-date as the rest. Or perhaps it’s the vanguard of the next big thing—I’m not really certain. All I know is, it hasn’t been our biggest seller precisely because it isn’t in the boyish style currently so popular. I, of course, believe that is the very thing you will like about it.” Alice raises her voice. “Lena? Come out, please.”

Taking a final look at myself in the mirror, I raise my chin, then turn around.

And darned if I don’t throw a little extra swing in my hips as I saunter into the alcove.