Fashionably Late Read Free Page B

Guilt is like a muscle.
    Learn to use it.”
    As if the thought of Carl had conjured him up, Karen saw her tall, fat, balding friend making his way toward her. The table wouldn’t be complete without Carl Since the days at South Side High School, back in Rockville Centre, Long Islandţwhich both she and Carl still called “Lawn Guylind”ţ he had been her biggest cheerleader. Actually, her only cheerleader.
    Certainly, neither her mother nor her younger sister were supporters of Karen’s dream to make beautiful, fabulous, comfortable clothes. Belle was too practical, too critical for dreams, and poor Lisa, younger than Karen, needed support and couldn’t give any. Only Carl, with his crazy optimism, his sense of humor, and his mother’s sewing machine, had supported Karen’s ideas. He was her earliest fabricator and ally. Now his bulk crossed the last part of the Waldorf dance floor and he enveloped her in his big embrace.
    “Brava, brava, brava!” he boomed, and smacked kisses on both her cheeks.
    “GrazEa,” Karen responded, exhausting all of her Italian vocabulary with that single word. It had been agony for her to learn French, which Jeffrey had insisted she do for her career. Karen was no Defina when it came to languages. She still spoke English with the heavy, adenoidal tones of Nostrand Avenue (where her family lived before her father could afford Rockville Centre).
    “So how did you achieve this enormous success?” Carl asked in a mock announcer voice, holding up a butter knife from the table setting as a faux microphone.
    “I guess I just kept my nose to the grindstone for a long time,” she answered, too modestly and sweetly.
    “Oh, is that what made your nose look like that?” he asked. “Let’s get a picture of it.” Carl popped out a tiny camera. He handed it to Jeffrey. “Yo, Defina. Get over here! I want a picture with the stars of the evening.”
    Defina smiled and obliged, but Karen saw Jeffrey’s expression tighten.
    Why hadn’t Carl asked her husband too? Sometimes Carl could be incredibly undiplomatic. Karen was always aware that Jeffrey could be made to feel like an appendage, when the truth was he had made all her success possible. But to Jeffrey’s credit he obligingly held up the camera and squinted.
    “The Three Musketeers and their mid-life crisis,” he said as he flashed the picture.
    “Isn’t that a book by Dumas?” Carl cracked.
    “I think so,” Defina said. “But I can never remember if it’s Dumas pere Dumasfils, or Dumas the Holy Ghost.”
    “Hey, guys, you’re confused,” Karen explained. “Even I know that it’s Casper the Holy Ghost.”
    Jeffrey shook his head at their foolishness. “Could you behave like celebrities instead of tourists for just one evening?” he asked.
    “Speaking of celebrities, I saw John Kennedy Junior in the lobby,” Carl whispered. “I nearly passed out. I swear, he is a real and present danger to the gay community. The boy could cause cardiac arrest.”
    Carl began breathing hard with actual or feigned excitement. It was difficult to tell with Carl. “Oh, to be Daryl Hannah for just one night!” he cried.
    Karen rolled her eyes at him. “Behave,” she warned. Carl was obsessed with the Kennedys, or pretended to be. He was probably the only person in the country who could name all the Kennedy cousins of this generation. It was a parlor trick he did, kind of like naming the wives of Henry the Eighth or the seven dwarves, except it took a lot longer.
    By now most of the people in the ballroom had taken their seats, and Carl joined the Karen Kahn team at the table. He picked up a glass and when one of the waiters brought champagne, he cleared his throat and got serious. “Let us all toast this year’s winner of the coveted Oakley Award,” he saluted. Karen was touched. Then, on cue, everyone at the table pulled out a slice of toast and lobbed them across the table at herţeven the sedate Mercedes. Then they all collapsed in