 |
“You and I in a small toy store, buy a bag of balloons of our money,” my brother sang by my ear. I giggled, but was more interested in his hands on my waist – not firm, just ... right there ... on my hips like he was leaning down a little while he leaned down. That made me smile and made me shudder a little. A good shudder. I liked it when we were friends, when we were close.
My brother paid for the balloons and all the other stuff we had chosen for Halloween costumes, and we left the store. He took my hand, and we went back to the hotel to get creative.
So it is: My aunt finally married her loved one on the Saturday after Halloween. They really liked Halloween – they had met at the time! I don't want to say that my mother forced me and my brother to go to the wedding, because she didn't. We like our aunt and wanted to go.
My mother said, “Katie, you and Henry, I’m afraid you’ll have to take a few days off from school because we’re going to Aunt Marcy’s wedding in Chicago!” and I pretended I was mad – just “Ohhhhhh, crap!” And so, but I laughed. Mom knew! The only thing that spoke against it was that we would miss Halloween with our friends, but we would have our cousins. At least we thought.
My aunt lives somewhere in Chicago, and it's always fun to visit her a couple of times a year. We go for a week every summer, either during the spring or winter holidays, and do different stuff, or sometimes we just hang out when our cousins meet us there or we drive to them.
In the spring, just around Easter, we were at this Wolf Lodge in a suburb of Chicago. There were plenty of water slides there, and it was fun to play on it with Henry. I'll tell you right away, my brother's hot! At least for me and my friends. My cousins were also allowed to stay there, so it was fun all around. But secretly I liked to hang on to my almost naked big brother when we slipped down a big slide together – I just “needed” him for safety! He always paid attention to my breasts when he held me or threw me into the water, but not on my butt, and I never made up for it!
We live in Nebraska, so it's great to go to the big city a few times a year, and I don't mean Omaha! At home, there is a lot of land and not much to do. If Henry and I didn't have our bikes, I wouldn't know what we were going to do. We are not farmers, but my father is already – he leads Mr. Tyrell's operation. We live in a suburb of Omaha, somehow between Omaha and Lincoln, near the Platte River, but that actually just means that our house and all sorts of leisure activities are a little further away. Not that you could swim in the plate. And yes, I hate it when my cousins ask what it's like when the cows fly around because of all the tornadoes ... (I saw a tornado.)
Life out there revolves around the corn. Over the last two summers, Henry harvested and cleared corn for a few weeks for good money, and this year I was allowed to work with him for the first time. I hated it and didn't last through the season. I should have known when the boss said, “A twelve-year-old girl? You can’t do that.” He was right, I honestly didn't last a week. On that first day, only another young girl was there, but a few teenagers persevered it, as I was told. It was strange to watch my brother wear long sleeves and so to work on hot days. At home, he wears only shorts and his Cornhuskers cap in the summer. So he got himself a nice tan and builds muscle. So I like it a lot when he's driving upstairs without and I can see her. At least in the summer.
So when I talk about a city trip, I mean Chicago. A real city where the buildings just don’t stop and Lake Michigan is so big that it might as well be the sea!
However, be...
We had been forgotten on Halloween. I admit, it kind of hurt. No, it really hurt.
We arrived on Thursday with Mama (Daddy later) with the Amtrak and stayed at this large downtown hotel. Aunt Marcy and her fiance Ronald came to dinner, as did Uncle Ted, my mother’s brother, and his wife, Aunt Frannie, and my Uncle Bill and Aunt Trisha, but none of their children came – the restaurant was too chic for all the children. They all said we could come to them for the “sweet or sour” for Halloween, and they would pick us up.
The next day, on Halloween, the adults took the wedding rehearsal in one of the dining/conference rooms on the third floor. After that, they wanted to go out to eat and hang out for the rest of the evening and get drunk. So all our cousins were home and went to play “sweet or sour” or to a friend’s Halloween party.
And Henry and I stayed here at the hotel. We should have gone to one of them, they would have helped us with the costumes and we would have gone to play with the cousins and cousins “sweet or sour”. Damn, we would have just gone with the smaller children if someone had picked us up. Or if we'd known the bus routes.
Only the wedding party came. No one came to pick us up. We waited. We didn't have their numbers, so we couldn't call. We could have gone down and mixed with the rehearsal guests, but we would have just been in the way, waited until it was all over, and would have looked pathetic.
So we sat in the lobby for another hour after we expected to be picked up. You can't read the comics in the paper forever. Then my brother got up and made a decision.
“Come on, Katie,” Henry said, taking my hand, “we’re going costume shopping.” Even as children, we’d had it ingrained that Henry always had to hold my hand when we went anywhere. I’d just turned twelve that summer, and Henry would be fourteen in January, but he was doing it anyway, and there was no way I could stop him. We left the hotel lobby and walked out onto Michigan Avenue.
There's just something special about this town! It just feels different! There's electricity in the air! People are moving fast, some talking to themselves on their phones, men in suits, women with shopping bags, teenagers or college kids, dressed however they want, and some dressed like they're in the movies. All the cars… I bet as many cars drove past us here as in all of Lincoln! And when I looked down the street, the street just kept going, it didn't end at a field.
“Hey!” Henry pointed at a hole in the middle of the street that cars were driving into. “That’s from Batman! When they go into the street under Gotham City in Batman: The Dark Knight? Exactly!” He was so excited, but he wouldn’t let go of my hand. We’d already seen a few movies with Chicago on them when we came out, so we wanted to see if we recognized anything, like Ferris Bueller’s Day and The Fugitive, but seeing Batman stuff always made Henry happy.
Down the street there was this huge, crooked building with giant Xs on top, and no matter how far we went, we never got any closer!
"Henry, why don't we get closer to the building? It's just always... down there... and we keep walking, and it's still down there!" I asked my brother. I'm not stupid, but what the heck?
"This is the John Hancock Building," said Henry, as if that explained everything.
I had to giggle. "Hand penis!"
“Yeah, I’ll give you handjob!” Henry laughed back. He put his free hand in his pocket and stuck it out a few times to make sure I kept laughing. I had to quickly look around to see who had seen us. Actually, no one. Just my brother, who was grinning at me broadly. His blond hair caught his eye. He wore it long on one side in the front, and when he surfaced from the pool, he could swing his head and shoot water at you with that hair, and he was damn accurate!
"So, where is the Serious Tower?" I asked him when I had stopped giggling.
"A little inland, away from the lake, so it doesn't fall into the water when the beach erodes." He pointed to the left. It used to be the tallest building in the world, but I still couldn't see it because of all the other tall buildings.
It was actually quite cold, so I was glad we'd dressed appropriately for the trip. My mother tells me that when she was young, it actually snowed here one Halloween, and she had to wear her winter coat over her mermaid dress! I was hoping it wouldn't snow, although it felt a bit like rain, but Henry said it might just be because we were right by the lake.
Not that I didn't enjoy walking around and looking at the people and buildings, but... "Henry, where are we going?" We had to pull out of the crowd and stand next to a streetlamp so that people would naturally wander around us. It was cool that some people were dressed up for Halloween—the girls mostly in black with dyed hair, although we also saw a few boys who looked a bit like zombies.
Henry slowly turned in a circle, looking at the names of the shops. "I thought there might be a good store nearby, like a Target or something, where we could buy costumes."
“Why do we need costumes? Nobody comes for trick-or-treating,” I reminded him.
“Katie, we may be stuck here in Chicago, but they make candy here! And all these people are dressed in black and orange, and everyone knows it’s Halloween. All we need is a good costume, and then we can go trick-or-treating. And there have to be some houses and apartments somewhere off this main street, right?” My brother looked determined. I admired that about him. Not to mention, Uncle would ruin Halloween for us!
Then Henry and I spotted it at the same time. A Walgreens! We knew that!
So we went to Walgreens and bought supplies for Halloween costumes. There was a large section with Chicago souvenirs, but the Halloween section didn't have much besides candy because it was a downtown store. So no Spider-Man or Pikachu costumes, and no Batman costume either, which disappointed Henry. So we had to get creative.
“What if…,” Henry began as we strolled through the corridors. He picked up a small stuffed dog next to the birthday cards. “I put on my wedding suit and stick this dog on, and do some makeup for bruises and a beard? I could be John Wick!”
I understood what he meant by creativity. I took three little stuffed kittens with me. "I can pin them to one of the hotel bathrobes, put on the free slippers, and be a crazy cat lady!" I could curl my hair with Mom's curling iron.
Next, I found a bag of purple balloons. "Could I blow them up and pin them on myself? I'm a bunch of grapes!" That was a good "maybe." We took the balloons too.
We saw some toys from Jurassic World. "If you put on your shorts and my button-down shirt," Henry thought, "you could be the woman from Jurassic Park 1. We just need to make a badge or something, maybe with a stuffed dinosaur?"
We brought a box of markers with us. There was stationery for drawing in the hotel room.
We went to the clothing department. There were some red leggings. “I’ll wear those and your red Cornhuskers shirt backwards and a green wool hat, and I’ll be a bottle of Sriracha!” We both said, “Uh…,” but I put them in the basket. A red wool hat could turn us into a terrible garden gnome if we could just find something for a beard? No. There was a leotard, and if I combined it with something, I could be Barbie. Maybe stick paper wheels on my shoes and rollerblade them… Complicated, but as Barbie, I could do anything if I stuck my chest out and smiled a lot. I have breasts now—not big, but they’re there. I told Henry about it and that we could turn him into Ken, so we went to the cosmetics department and looked for Aqua Net hairspray.
"Blue hairspray?" Henry found a colored spray can nearby. "Hey, could you be the sad blue girl from Inside Out?"
“I don’t know if that would work,” I said. “I think I saw the girl outside, just like in real life. So no costume.”
On the way back to the clothing department, we passed the automotive section, and I picked up a chamois leather. I held it against Henry's hips. "Tarzan?" I joked. Yes, I was just kidding, but part of me pictured Henry almost naked with it on. I mean, I've seen him swim and run around, but it would be funny if he wore it on purpose!
Henry took a second chamois leather. "Only if you were Jane!" He held the chamois leather over my breasts.
My imagination ran wild, but I pulled myself together. "Sorry, that'll never keep the little ones in place..." I said, holding my right breast with my free hand. Henry laughed, but looked at me for a little longer and put the two chamois leathers away.
Back into the clothes: "A pair of thick mittens and be that Bernie from Congress?" Hmm... "An umbrella and be some kind of Mary Poppins?" Hmm... "This undershirt, my jeans, draw on a mustache and be Freddie Mercury?"
“Maybe,” I said, imagining my brother’s bare arms.
"A blue T-shirt... Look around, maybe there's at least a Superman shirt, or I'll take this plain one and draw an S on a piece of paper. There are glasses over at the pharmacy. With my jacket, I could be Clark Kent?" Henry seemed to like that idea, so we took the blue T-shirt.
The next aisle was for food. We put a bag of Doritos and some Ruffles in our shopping basket, along with a few small donuts, and then each chose two Cokes—I got vanilla, Henry cherry. You need that kind of thing to watch TV in your room, right? There were these little cereal boxes… “Could we stick them on you and be a cereal killer? Find or make a knife? Stick them on your shirt and make crazy eyes?” That was maybe a maybe, but it reminded us to get some tape too, since we always thought we could stick things on ourselves.
I put a plant on my head. "Get me a yellow tablecloth as a poncho and I'll be a pineapple?" Meh...
"Here are some silk roses. Put on your dress, and you could be the Bachelorette!" Henry suggested.
That was a maybe. "I'd have to be pretty for anyone to understand..."
"You are pretty," Henry said to me.
I had to stop. That blew me away! "You... you think I'm handsome, Henry?"
My brother blushed slightly. We were in the middle of Walgreens, and I was somehow embarrassing him. But what else could I say? It was exciting and mysterious at the same time!
"Hey, don't get me wrong, like it's weird or anything," he began, shifting slightly. "You're my sister and all, but even I can see you're hot, and I'm going to have to keep my friends away from you soon."
I didn't know what to say. This was... I couldn't believe it! The words swirled in my head, and I had to... I wrapped my arms around Henry, smacked him on the ribs with the shopping basket, and pressed my ear against his chest. "Are you serious, Henry?"
I heard his "Of course" through his body, the air in his lungs echoing in my ear. His hands closed around me, one of them stroking my long, golden hair, but then I felt him pull away.
Oh... yes... we were still in the middle of Walgreens.
"Come on, let's buy this stuff and then go back and figure out what to do," he said to me. And then he sang in my ear at the checkout, when I took the things out of the basket and he saw the balloons again.
I love my brother.
On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at a stand in the large Millennium Park with the fried bean thing and bought some overpriced hot dogs. They were good hot dogs, but apparently ketchup on hot dogs isn't allowed in Chicago.
Upstairs in our room, we ate the hot dogs and fries and were less annoyed because we'd had enough. I guess we had a pretty good room for the occasion, a suite. There was this fancy living room with a sofa, chairs, a table, windows, and all the trimmings; in our mom's bedroom, there was a big bed that she'd share with Dad when he came to town; and Henry and I had our own bedroom with two single beds. I suppose they thought they were doing us a favor. Usually, when we went away, we all got a room with two big beds, and I had to share it with Henry—which I didn't mind at all. But we knew that Mom and Dad wanted to cuddle this weekend if there were proper bedrooms. With two single beds, though, I couldn't exactly lie down and cuddle with Henry. But at least we had privacy. And our own bathroom, which was quite nice.
We dumped our supplies on the desk next to the TV. We bought the puppy, three kittens, balloons, a blue shirt, an eight-pack of cereal, six artificial roses, cheap children's sunglasses, a sleeveless undershirt, a leotard, red leggings, a green wool hat, Aqua Net hairspray, tape, scissors, Doritos, Ruffles, donuts with little gems, and two Cokes. (The Cokes went in the fridge because we'd bought two root beers from the hot dog vendor.) It all cost way more than Henry wanted to spend, but he had his money from our summer job, and we wanted to give him a choice.
We finally had to get into costumes if we were going out trick-or-treating. Henry took off his Nike shirt and then his jeans because he thought he'd try "Clark Kent" first. Stripping down to his underwear wasn't a big deal—we saw each other like that every day. But when Henry was standing there in just his blue briefs and socks… "Hey, if we went back and got you some blue leggings, you could be Superman!" I said.
There he was, almost naked. It was different seeing him in his underwear. In shorts, his buttocks had the same shape, but in his briefs, he looked different, as if he were showing off his curves. His front was completely different too – in the shorts, his penis was just a bulge, but here it had shape; you could see where the individual parts were and what they were doing!
But there he stood, his muscular chest, his arms with their summery-looking biceps, his strong legs, and those underwear—socks instead of boots—and he looked like a superhero. He seemed to be thinking about it.
“I know what you mean,” he said to the floor, looking at his legs and underwear, “but we’re not going back. We should have thought of that before. I bet there was a Dracula cape somewhere. If we only had black clothes, I could be Bruce Wayne, like after the fight with the Joker, like when he came home and took off his mask.” Then he looked at our things on the table. He picked up my red leggings. “But with these and my Cornhuskers shirt inside out, I could maybe be The Flash…”
He tried to step into them, but realized he had to take off his socks, pulled his leggings up to his thighs, and finally realized that his underwear belonged over them.
My brother took off his underwear. I saw his butt. His real butt. He turned away from me, but I couldn't look away. My brother was naked. He put on his leggings, then his underwear, then his red shirt, and turned back to me. "Yes? No?"
I was still a bit dazed. "The leggings really do make your legs look slimmer," I managed to say when I came to my senses. The combination really didn't look good, even for a cheap costume.
“Yes, I thought so…” Henry said, sitting down and undressing again. I couldn’t just get up and run in front of him to look, but just knowing he was briefly naked again in my presence was incredible. I said nothing. I simply enjoyed it.
He put on his khaki trousers, his new blue T-shirt, and his button-down shirt. Then he drew a Superman "S" on hotel stationery. Meanwhile, I glued the three kittens onto the hotel bathrobe and tried it on. "Crazy cat lady?" I asked Henry.
"What are you wearing underneath? Your jeans, like that?" he asked. He took the lenses out of the cheap sunglasses and put on his Clark Kent glasses.
I wasn't sure. It wasn't a sexy costume, just funny. I'd have to mess up my hair. "Maybe my pajama pants?"
"How about grapes or Sriracha?"
I dropped my bathrobe and faced the same decision as Henry. Should I put on the red leggings in the bedroom, or just do it out here like him? I risked everything and decided to tease him too, just to see his reaction. I undressed in front of my brother down to my bra and panties. Nothing he hadn't seen before, but we were here. "Give me your red shirt," I asked as I pulled on the leggings.
My brother watched me. He only gave me the shirt after I had put on the leggings.
"If you wear them over your underwear, they get all knotted up," he said, looking clearly at my backside.
I went to the mirror and turned around. "Yes, but you can't see them with that shirt on." Henry shrugged and then helped me by coloring in a "Sriracha" label.
I put on the green wool hat; I thought I looked funny, in a good way. Henry put on his jacket, we took some photos of ourselves (I wish I'd had my camera with me when Henry showed me his bum!), we made sure we had a room key and some Walgreens goody bags, and went out into the corridors as Clark Kent and Sriracha!
We tried knocking on a door further down the hall. No answer. We tried another. No answer. At the third door, someone said, "What do you want?"
We sang "Trick or treat!"
She said, "Go away."
We had to imagine that it would happen. We had better luck at the next door. We knocked, and it opened. A shirtless man stood there. He had trousers and shoes on, but no shirt. He was very hairy, on his chest, shoulders, and back! I didn't know men could have back hair! He also had shaving cream on the back of his neck, so I guess I knew where we'd gotten him.
"Trick or treat!" We sang.
"Hey-eyes... Look at you, Youse! Yes, it's Halloween, I understand. I never would have thought children could..." He looked both ways down the hall, perhaps to see if there were more children or adults nearby. "Hey, I don't have any candy, but Youse, kids have nerve, I'll tell you that. Here."
He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. He knocked over a couple of one-dollar bills at our Walgreens bags.
"What are you, a CPA?" he asked Henry. Henry's shirt had fallen closed, and he opened it to reveal the S. "Well, that's a pretty cheap Superman, guy. Where's the effort in that? And you, doll-face, let me tell you... You're wearing something sexier, showing a little skin, instead of dressing up as a Keebler elf. And I'd give you a few more dollars, you know what I mean?"
I didn't know what to say. Henry picked up the dollars.
"Hey, Merry Christmas!" the guy said and closed the door.
We went straight back to our room.
Once inside, I grabbed that stupid hat and threw it against the wall, then ripped off my red shirt and collapsed on my bed. "This is stupid! We're stupid for even trying!" I felt like crying, and maybe I did. My eyes were wet.
Henry came up behind me and put his arms around me. I raised my teeth to let him. "Ignore that gorilla guy, he's just an asshole."
"Gorilla-guy!" I sniffed and laughed. From then on, Henry and I would refer to the 'gorilla-guy' in many private jokes.
"But you have a doll's face. I told you so..." he whispered in my ear, "...you're really pretty."
That made me smile. "You know my friends and me, they all think you're hot..."
"Your friends... And you?" He repeated. Oops, I already said that. Didn't I?
I sat up. "Mm-hm. I'm your sister, I can judge you. You look good after all that work this summer." And that was that.
We went back out to our costume shop. What else could I be besides stupid Sriracha? With my back to Henry, I took off my bra, then stepped into the yellow leotard. "Maybe Gorilla-guy was right after all." What if I showed more skin and did the Barbie costume?
"You don't have to do that..." Henry said, looking directly at my chest. I knew my nipples were erect back then, but I felt a little daring. Henry did call me pretty, after all.
"Yes, my underwear is all in a pile, still. I could take that off," I said, annoyed, "and make a ponytail. Do you think that would be Barbie enough?"
"You... you could try it..." Heinrich Gehustet.
I really didn't like that Barbie combination. I had no idea what to do with it. "Yes, no... I'll go with Cat Lady, but I'll wear my shorts underneath, show some leg."
And that's what I went with. Henry decided to try something a little more Halloweeny. Even though he'd put in some effort, he taped four cereal boxes to his sleeveless undershirt and poked holes in the boxes with the four plastic knives we got from the hot dog guy (why, I don't know—what do you need knives for with hot dogs?). He pulled his jeans back on and gave himself a little stubble with my mom's mascara. We took a few pictures and we were back outside.
We decided not to go door-to-door to the guest rooms this time, but went downstairs and knocked on the desks of the front desk and the concierge. Both of them, I'm happy to report, had a large bag of candy on their desks! We got three Musketeers and life-size Kats from the front desk lady, and full-size Reese's Cups and Milky Ways from the concierge. We wanted to try the Bell Captain, but the concierge quietly shook his head at us. The front desk lady waved us back.
"You kids should snatch the stores while they're still open," she told us. "Of course, whoever's closest to the counter has something, even if it's just Smarties or Tootsie Pops. College kids like to trick or prank and think it's funny, but the stores like the good intentions and surprises."
That's exactly what we were hoping to find out! We were starting for The Street when the concierge stopped us. "Kids, I hate to tell you, but it's gotten colder out there now." We should have remembered. It used to be cold, too. "Bring a coat or... change your outfit, Klein? Like padding or... trousers?"
That should be the third costume change! But with four chocolate bars and two dollars in our pockets, that's what we wanted to let dangle!
In the elevator, Henry knew he couldn't drape his coat over the cereal boxes—the whole look would be ruined. Would he go back to Clark Kent? He decided to try the John Wick look. I could pad my robe and wear trousers, I knew that, but I suddenly wondered if people would think I was a homeless person? When Henry decided on John Wick, I had the idea of pairing them up, like we might have done with Barbie and Ken.
Henry changed quite quickly in our room, getting into his nice suit he brought to the wedding and sticking the few stuffed dogs on his shoulder. He was painting John Wick's beard on his face with Mom's mascara brush when I came back from Mom's room.
I was in my beautiful wedding dress, a red, street-length, off-the-shoulder gown, but I wore leggings underneath and borrowed my mother's black jacket to keep the chill off. I would wear a little makeup—not much—and use the curling iron on my long, golden hair so it just fell below my shoulders, and apply a lot of Aqua Net for wind protection. And I wore the six fake roses.
"What do you think?"
Henry was stunned, which made me very happy. "Doll face, you're not pretty. You're beautiful!"
I couldn't hide my smile, and I gave Henry one of my roses. "Will you accept this rose?"
When he saw the flower of mine, he leaned in and kissed me. He kissed me! A real kiss! On the lips! And not some quick birthday peck, a proper kiss! I felt it all the way down to my toes. At first, he only kissed my lips, but when he didn't pull away, I kissed him back. When we broke the kiss, I had to shake the stars out of my eyes, but a smile, I'm afraid, has been glued to my face now.
We took some photos, grabbed our Walgreens bags, and took the elevator down. We got a very approving smile from the concierge as we walked outside. Henry took my hand, like he always did.
As we walked down Michigan Avenue, we now looked like we belonged. Well, we were certainly dressed appropriately, although Henry's fake beard—and the dog, as children, sort of gave us tricks and treats—didn't exactly make us look like kids.
Not every store had candy for us. We got a few "Oh, I'm sorry, but aren't you cute!" replies, but Carrie, the desk lady, was right, and we got candy in other places. No more life-size ones, but we got lots of M&Ms, Snickers, Milky Ways, and suckers—I don't know the brand. One department store had candy, but since the nearest desk was cosmetics, the girl there let me try on a nice lipstick with my dress and gave me some perfume samples—which was really cool!
Our favorite place was this soul food restaurant. The lady not only gave us some M&Ms, but we were feeling so sick we hadn't had dinner yet, and sat us down and gave us plates with samples of short rib street tacos, roasted green tomatoes with lump crab, kaleid dip and chips, and some parmesan truffle fries. This was, hands down, the best stuff we had ever tasted! And it was just appetizers, she told us, because the entrée stuff was portioned. Henry tried to pay, but the lady wouldn't hear of it, and her husband, who had been cooking in the back, came out and immediately recognized Henry's outfit.
"Money isn't good—not if you can't spend it." He told Henry, which Henry loved because it was a John Wick line. "I guess. The lady wanted to know who John Wick was, and then the man and Henry both said, 'John wasn't exactly the bogeyman. He was the one you sent to kill the damn idiot!'"
Henry said he should have a fake gun, but both the man and the woman immediately reacted and said a fake gun was the worst thing you could have in Chicago! I was like, Okayyyy...
We asked about any houses in the area to go to, and she said there were some west of the loop, but at night and now it gets kind of "deserted" in the southern loop. Since it was already dark, we should either stay in well-lit places or head back.
We took some selfies. The couple and I gave each of them a flower, and we were on our way. (Before the wedding on Saturday, we brought... Our father is here for lunch!)
We walked as far north as the Chicago River – which isn't as big as the Missouri, but it was definitely deeper than the plateau, and this lady told us that the Chicago River runs backwards for some strange reason – and we still hadn't reached that John Handtail Building! We decided to head back to the hotel.
On the way there, it started to rain. Yes, it started out light, and we hoped that would be the end of it, but it turned really heavy very quickly. There was no avoiding it. We tried running, but I was in my strappy flats and slipping, luckily still holding Henry's hand so I wouldn't fall. We tried waiting it out in a doorway, but we got soaked and had to keep moving around for people to see. We just kept going and made it back to the hotel lobby as soon as we could.
When we got inside, I realized not only that my dress was ruined, but also Mom's jacket and Henry's whole suit. I started to cry when our friends, Mr. Thomas the concierge and Carrie, the receptionist, came to our rescue. Carrie assured me the things weren't ruined—just incredibly wet!
We should go to our changing room and call you. You should send a valet to collect our clothes and have them cleaned and pressed. They wouldn't be ready until tomorrow, but we didn't need them until before the wedding, and our mother didn't need to know—until the bill arrived at check-out!
I gave them all my wet roses, keeping the last one for myself.
When we changed, Henry just slipped out in front of the window in his white button-down shirt and socks, singing into the Root beer mug. "Just take these old-time rock 'n' roll songs and put them on the shelf..." He tried to do the Tom Cruise thing from the old movie where he sings in his underwear. Definitely cheered me up!
But Henry's shirt and underwear were wet like mine, and they had to go too. Our underpants and socks dried on the shower rod, but all the nice clothes went downstairs, somewhere, with the valet. We were cold, but we didn't bother taking hot showers, just dried ourselves with towels, combed out our hair, and wrapped ourselves up.
|
Curiosity at the pajama party