Queen of Babble

But when I turn to look at her, she’s stonily watching Lauren implore the wedding guests to coucher avec her tonight.

“New York City?” Andy looks confused. “You?”

I stick out my chin. “Yes, me,” I say in a voice that sounds completely unlike my own. “Why? You don’t think I can do it?”

Andy’s shaking his head. “Lizzie, I love you. I think you can do anything. Anything you set your mind to. I think you’re amazing.”

It comes out more like, I fink you’re amazing.

But that’s okay. Because right then I forgive him. I forgive him for all of it.

“Thank you, Andy,” I say to him, a big grin bursting out across my face. Maybe I was wrong about him. Oh, not about the two of us not being right for each other. But, you know. Maybe he’s not so bad after all. Maybe, even though we can’t be lovers, we can still be friends…

“Excuse me,” someone says.

Only this time it’s not a Houston society matron who’s come up to ask me how to get stains out of fifty-year-old lace.

It’s Luke.

And he doesn’t seem too happy.

“Luke,” I say. “Hi. I-”

“Is it true?” Luke asks me. “Is this him?”

He’s jerked a thumb in Andy’s direction.

I can’t imagine what’s come over him-Luke, so unfailingly polite to everyone.

Everyone but me, I mean. But then I guess I deserve it.

“Um,” I say, shifting uncomfortably, “yes. Luke, this is Andy Marshall. Andy, this is-”

But I never get to finish my sentence. Because before I can, Luke pulls back his arm and sends his fist crashing straight into Andy’s face.

Anarchy! That was the cry of members of the punk movement in the 1980s. But there was nothing anarchic about their postapocalyptic style. Punk, coupled with a fitness phase that began in the eighties and has been going steady ever since, went on to influence both high fashion and street style for many years to come, giving us such wardrobe staples as motorcycle boots and yoga pants.

History of Fashion

SENIOR THESIS BY ELIZABETH NICHOLS

26

Silence is the most intolerable of answers.

– Mason Cooley (1927-2002), U.S. aphorist

He tried to kill me,” Andy keeps saying. Although his words are somewhat indistinct behind the ice-filled dish towel Madame Laurent is pressing to his lip.

“He didn’t try to kill you,” Chaz says in a tired voice. “Stop being such a fucking baby.”

“Hey,” Andy says from his perch on the butcher-block kitchen table, “fuck you! I’d like to see how you’d react if someone sucker-punched you in the mouth!”

Only with his swollen lip and accent, the words come out sounding more like, Oi’d loik to see how you’d weact if someone sucker-punched you in the mouf.

“Chaz,” I ask worriedly, ignoring their squabbling, “where’s Luke?”

“I don’t know,” Chaz says. He was the one who’d jumped in and broken up the fight. Well, not that there’d been much of one. It had been more like a one-man assassination attempt. Luke had landed his punch, then backed off, waving his hand, apparently having injured it on Andy’s teeth.

Which Andy is now complaining feel loose.

Chaz, who’d come over to congratulate Shari for so thoroughly embarrassing herself onstage, was able to keep Andy from returning Luke’s punch merely by placing a hand on his shoulder. Andy is much more of a lover than a fighter, it turns out.

Though he doesn’t seem to know it.

“It was a completely unprovoked attack!” Andy insists. “I wasn’t doing anything to Liz! I was just talking to her!”

“Lizzie,” Shari corrects him, in a bored voice, from where she’s leaning against the kitchen sink, trying to keep out of the way of the caterers, who are streaming in and out of the kitchen with the first course-salmon-and glaring angrily at us as the chef tries to make progress at the stove with the second course-foie gras. “Her name’s Lizzie. Not Liz.”

“Whatever,” Andy says into the dish towel. “When I find that bastard, I’m going to show him a thing or two.”

“You’re not going to be showing anybody anything,” Chaz says to Andy in a firm voice. “Because you’re leaving. There’s a three o’clock train back to Paris, and I’m going to make sure you’re on it. You, my friend, have caused quite enough trouble for one day.”

“I didn’t do anything!” Andy cries. “It was that French git!”

“He’s not French,” Shari says, still bored, as she examines her cuticles.

“Lizzie,” Andy says from behind the dish towel, “listen. I’m sorry to bring it up. And now may not be the greatest time, but I was wondering about the money.”

I blink at him.

“Money?”

“Right. The money you said you’d loan me for my matriculation fees? Because I really do need it, Liz.”

“Oh no!” Shari bursts out. “Oh no, he did not just-”

“Shari,” I say to her sharply, “I can handle this.”

Because I can.

And, okay, it’s not like I ever really thought he came all this way to patch things up with me because he loves me.

But it honestly never occurred to me that he did it because of the money.

“Andy,” I say, “you came all this way to ask if I’d still lend you five hundred dollars?”

“Actually,” Andy points out, his words muffled by the dish towel, “you said you’d give it to me. But a loan’s all right, too. I feel terrible about asking, but in a way, you do sort of owe me the money. I mean, I did open up my home to you, and there was the gas money, you know, Dad spent picking you up from the airport, and-”

“Can I hit him now?” Chaz wants to know. “Please, Lizzie?”

“No, you can’t,” I say to Chaz.

Although it must be obvious from my stu

Shari gasps.

“Oh my God,” she says. “Andy, are you crying?”

It’s clear when he speaks that he is.

“Are you telling me,” he says, weeping, “that I hitched all the way here and you’re not going to give me the money after all?”

I’m shocked. Crying? He’s crying?

Luke must have hit him harder than any of us thought.

“You said on the phone that you couldn’t talk about it!” Andy sobs. “That’s all! You never said-”

“Andy.” I shake my head. Can this really be happening? “I mean, Andy, we broke up. What did you think was going to happen?”

“You don’t understand,” Andy cries. “If I don’t pay these blokes the money I owe them, they’re…they’re going to break my legs.”

I exchange confused looks with Shari and Chaz. “The bursar’s office is going to break your legs if you don’t pay your matriculation fees?”

“No.” Andy takes a shuddering breath from behind the dish towel. “I…I wasn’t quite truthful about that bit. It’s the blokes that run the poker ring that I owe the money to, actually. They’re…well, they’re quite serious about getting it back. I can’t go to Mum and Dad for it-they’ll throw me out. And my mates are all tapped out as well. Really, Lizzie…you were my last hope.”

I stare at him as his words sink in. Then I glance at Chaz and Shari, to see that both of them are looking at me, Chaz with a little grin on his face, Shari with a glower that clearly says, Don’t you back down. Don’t you do it, Nichols. Not this time.

I turn back to Andy and say, “Oh, Andy. I’m so sorry!” I reach up and give him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. I can’t believe I once loved that shoulder.

And I can’t believe he really thinks I’m such a sap I’ll actually give him a dime. Who does he think I am, anyway? Some kind of pushover?

“At least,” I say, “have some wedding cake before you go. Good-bye.”