Tell me something I don’t already know.
Harley
You’re going above and beyond. Designer would’ve sufficed. It didn’t need to be high end.
SDILF
Don’t fight it, Goldilocks. Enjoy the ride. FYI—I had to flip my day around. Instead of picking you up, I’ll send a car for you when you’re done.
Harley
I can take a taxi or a rideshare.
SDILF
I’ll send a car to pick you up when you’re done. Catch you later.
Yes, sir.
Since I spent yesterday with Kaz bouncing from one of his businesses to the other to get a feel for his empire and how I’ll go about creating more buzz, I’m not surprised he wouldn’t want to cross the Brooklyn Bridge back and forth today again. The traffic during rush hour extends the trip by a solid forty minutes—sometimes more.
Time to get a move on.
I arrive at the designers department and approach a tall, blond man.
I ask him for Judith, and he tells me he’ll go get her.
As I wait, I peruse the racks, too afraid to touch any of the pricey couture.
“Miss Lancaster,” a voice says from behind me.
I turn around and do a double take.
The woman standing in front of me could pass as a doppelgänger forThe Devil Wears Prada’sMiranda Priestly’s character.
“Judith?”
“Yes,” she says.
Like the editor-in-chief of the fictional fashion magazine Runway, Judith doesn’t have a hair out of place. And like the character, she must wake up at the crack of dawn to apply her makeup with such precision.
Black is the color of choice for so many stylish women in New York, but in Judith’s case, she wears the color like she came out of the womb wearing teeny black diapers and itsy-bitsy black onesies.
Judith is giving off vibes of fashion consultant extraordinaire.
She steeples her hands together and looks me up and down. “Yesterday, I had a good chat with Mr. Lindström, and I understand my mission.”
She says that like I’m a lost cause.
“It’s a good thing I convinced him to bookla totale.”
I wrinkle my nose. “What does that mean?”
“The whole enchilada,” she says. “Hair, manicure, pedicure, a mini facial, and makeup for when we’re done.” She enumerates each treatment using her fingers. “This”—she waves a finger up and down my body—“is an all-day job, Miss Lancaster.”
Ouch.
She checks her watch. “It’s ten past eleven, let’s get to it. We want to make sure you step out in style at tonight’s gala, since you’ll be hanging from one of New York’s most eligible bachelors. The press will be watching.”
