Queen of Babble

“But that’s just it,” Luke says. “I don’t know if I am. Good at healing sick people, I mean.”

“Just like I don’t know if there’s anything I’m good at that someone in New York will actually pay me to do.”

“But,” he says, “as a certain person keeps telling me, you’ll never know if you don’t even give it a try.”

Then we’re bursting out of the trees again and onto the circular drive that leads to the house. It’s even more impressive, it turns out, in daylight than it is at nighttime.

Not that Luke seems to notice. I guess because he’s seen it so many times already.

“That’s different,” I say. “I mean, you already know there’s something you can do. Someone’s paying you a six-figure salary to do it. You know how much I get paid? I get eight bucks an hour at Vintage to Vavoom. You know how far eight bucks an hour goes in New York City? Well, I don’t, either. But I’m guessing not very far.”

Luke, I notice when I glance nervously his way to see what he thinks of my admission, is gri

“Is this how you are with everybody?” he wants to know. “Or am I just lucky because, in a moment of weakness, you revealed all your deepest secrets to me?”

“You promised not to tell anyone about those,” I remind him. “Especially Shari, about the thesis-”

“Hey,” Luke says, pulling up in front of the chateau. His gaze is steady on mine. He’s not smiling anymore. “I said I wouldn’t tell. Remember? And I’m not going to. You can trust me.”

And for a second-while we sit there looking at each other across the bag of croissants-I can swear that something…happens…between us.

I don’t know what. But it’s different from all the times I thought he was going to kiss me. There’s nothing sexual about what happens there in the car. It’s more like some sort of…mutual understanding. Some sort of acknowledgment that we are spiritual kin. Some sort of magnetic pull-

Or maybe it’s just the smell of the croissants. It’s been a really long time since I’ve had any kind of pastry.

Whatever it is that’s going on between Luke and me-if anything-it’s over a second later when the door to the chateau is thrown open and Vicky, standing there in a pale blue kimono, says, “God, what took you so long? We’re all starving. You know I get hypoglycemic if I don’t eat first thing in the morning.”

And the moment between Luke and me-whatever it was-is gone.

“Got your cure for hypoglycemia right here,” Luke says cheerfully, grabbing the bag of croissants.

Then, when Vicky stomps back into the house, Luke turns to me and winks.

“Look at that,” he says. “I’m healing people already.”

The dawn of the twentieth century is often referred to as “la Belle Epoque,” or “the beautiful age.” Certainly the fashions of the age were beautiful, featuring, as they did, big hair, low decolletage, and tons and tons of lace (see: Winslet, Kate, Titanic, and Kidman, Nicole, Moulin Rouge ). Achieving the look of a Gibson girl (created by a popular artist of the same name) became the rage, with even President Roosevelt’s vivacious daughter, “Princess” Alice, wearing her hair in the Gibson girl’s pompadour style-a look very hard to maintain while “motoring,” Alice’s favorite hobby.

History of Fashion

SENIOR THESIS BY ELIZABETH NICHOLS

19

Keep silence for the most part,

and speak only when you must,

and then briefly.

– Epictetus (c. ACE 55-135), Greek Stoic philosopher

The rest of the morning is a blur of deliveries. The first truck to arrive is the one carrying the dance-floor, stage, and sound equipment for the wedding’s band-in this case, not the string quartet Luke tells me plays most weddings at Mirac, but Blaine’s band, Satan’s Shadow. As workers from the company in charge of setting this up begin their work, another truck-this one filled with folding tables and chairs for the rehearsal di

Just as Shari, Chaz, Blaine-who, his band not having arrived yet, declares, “I’m bored,” and begins pitching in-and I get the last of the folding chairs off the truck, another one arrives, this one carrying all the food the chef and staff from a local restaurant will be preparing for the festivities. This food needs to be unloaded and carried to the kitchen, where Madame Laurent supervises its storage, and the restaurant chef begins preparing canapes for the cocktail hour, which begins in the late afternoon…

Which is when the out-of-town guests begin showing up, either in their own rented vehicles or ferried from the train station by Dominique, who has managed to avoid having to do any hard labor by volunteering to do this instead. The groom arrives first, with his dazed-looking parents. I am very curious to see this computer programmer Vicky is marrying instead of the rich Texas oil baron her mother wanted for her, and I have to say, when I finally see Craig, I can understand the attraction. Not that he’s good-looking-because he’s not.

But when Vicky comes flying at him from inside the house, blathering about everything that’s going wrong, from her friends still not having hotel rooms to Blaine having told her that she looks fat in her rehearsal-di

“Vic. It’s all right,” he says.

And Vicky actually stops crying.

At least until half a dozen of Vicky’s friends-as pretty and blond as she is-pile out of minivans and stumble across the gravel driveway in their wobbly high heels to hug her. Then she starts bawling all over again, and Craig, not looking in the least bothered by this, gently leads his parents to the vineyard, where Monsieur de Villiers happily shows them around the cavernous cask room.

Soon it seems the entire chateau is under attack by what appears to be the upper crust of Houston society, stylishly clad matrons with their navy-blue-blazer-wearing husbands in tow, with whom Dominique mingles and laughs.

These Houstonians, in turn, raise their eyebrows at the arrival of the remaining members of Satan’s Shadow, who show up in an extremely disreputable-looking van and are greeted by Blaine with their signature Satanic cry, which involves tipping back the head and ululating (which causes Vicky to run inside, screaming, “Mo-o-o-om!” and Shari, as she helps me spread a tablecloth over the last of the twenty-five or so tables on the lawn, to shake her head and go, “God, am I glad I’m an only child”).

I’m happy when the staff from the restaurant takes over and begins setting the tables. This leaves us free to run inside to change before the cocktails are served-a necessity since we’re going to be ma

I’m just coming back down the stairs, feeling refreshed and semi-presentable in a black sleeveless A

“I’m telling you, son,” a portly bald gentleman in khaki pants and a black polo shirt is saying to Luke. “It’s an opportunity you can’t afford to miss. You were the first person I thought of when I heard.”