A Different Kind of Fitting

Joan was fifty-two years old, and six weeks ago she had thrown a coffee mug at a wall.

Not at Martin, mind you. She wasn't violent. At the wall. It was a mug from a community theater production of Oklahoma from 2019, and it had survived a dishwasher, two moves, and a decade of her holding it, so it died on the drywall of her apartment above the dry cleaner with a satisfying crunch. Martin had stood in her kitchen doorway with his coat half on and said, "See, this is exactly the problem," and then he left, and Joan swept up ceramic and thought, well. That's four years gone.

He hadn't been a bad man, exactly. He was just the kind of man who told her at dinner parties that she was "passionate" in the tone other people used for "exhausting." He worked in insurance. He ironed his t-shirts. And somewhere in year three he had stopped asking her anything about her work, which for a costume designer who lived and breathed hem lines and bias cuts was basically a slow amputation.

So there she was, six weeks later, eating cold lo mein over her cutting table on a Tuesday, staring at her phone. She had a short list of numbers she never deleted. Her sister. Her tailor. And Lana.

Lana Vasquez, who was fifty now, who had studied fashion merchandising with Joan back when they were both twenty-something and broke, who had dated Joan for three glorious months when Joan was forty-six and Lana was forty-four, and who now owned a bridal salon downtown called The Velvet Train, which was honestly the best name for anything Joan had ever heard.

They had reconnected last year at a college alumni gala. One glass of bad champagne and Lana had her hand on Joan's elbow within five minutes, laughing at everything Joan said like Joan was still the funniest person in the building. Nothing had happened that night. But emails had happened. Occasional lunches. And one text from Lana in March that just said, you still owe me a story about the pirate costume, which Joan had never delivered.

Joan set down the lo mein and called her before she could talk herself out of it.

"Joan bloody Fischer," Lana answered on the second ring. "To what do I owe the honor, six months of silence?"

"I need a project," Joan said. "Or a job. Or a distraction. Possibly all three."

"Well hello to you too. What happened?"

"Martin happened. It's over. Six weeks."

"Six weeks and you're only calling me now? I'm offended. I expected you at week two."

"I spent weeks two through five being dramatic about it. It seemed important to do it properly."

Lana laughed, and Joan felt something in her chest unclench that had been clenched since the mug hit the wall. "Come by the shop Thursday," Lana said. "I've got a trunk show coming and I am drowning. You can help me fit sample gowns and complain about men, in that order."

"Women," Joan said.

"Sorry, complain about whoever wronged you, in that order."

"That's better."

"Thursday, ten o'clock. Wear something you don't mind pinning."

The Velvet Train sat in a renovated Victorian on Fulton, all tall windows and pocket doors, with gowns hanging in the old parlor like a field of waiting ghosts. Lana opened the front door at 9:58 with a pencil behind her ear and an armful of tulle.

"You look terrible," she said warmly. "Gorgeous, but terrible. You've been crying at your cutting table."

"Only twice."

"Amateur. Come in, I've got coffee that tastes like the pot hasn't been washed since spring."

They worked. That was the beauty of Lana, Joan thought, pinning a side seam while a bride's mother hovered and Lana charmed the woman into trusting the process. Lana never asked her to narrate her grief. She just handed Joan a pincushion and let the work do the talking. By noon they had five sample gowns fitted for the trunk show, and Joan's shoulders had dropped two inches.

"Okay," Lana said around one, locking the front door during a gap between appointments. "Lunch, and then I have a proposition."

"Lana, the last proposition you made me was in 2018 and I still have opinions about that hotel."

"The Fox was fine."

"The elevator was a closet. We are not built for the Fox anymore."

"We'll agree to disagree. Lunch first."

Over sandwiches from the place on the corner, Lana laid it out. The trunk show was in ten days. She had three sample gowns in sizes that needed a real body in them, not a mannequin, and her usual fit model had broken her ankle on a hoverboard, which Lana reported with the relish of a woman who had warned everyone about hoverboards since 2015.

"I want you in the gowns," she said. "In the front window for the Saturday reception. Fifty-two and glowing, in a two-thousand-dollar dress, in my window."

"Lana."

"Joan."

"I haven't been in anyone's window since I was twenty-five."

"Then it's overdue. Look." Lana put her sandwich down. "I watched you walk into that alumni gala last year in that green wrap dress with your chin up after a man had already started making you small. And I thought, there she is. She's still in there. So. Say yes."

Joan chewed on it. Also the sandwich. "You're doing that thing where you dare me and dress it up as a favor."

"It is both. It's a dare favor. A favare."

"You're an idiot."

"And you love me. Say yes."

"...Fine. Yes. But if I look lumpy in silk, you're lying to me."

"I will lie to you beautifully."

The first fitting was the following Monday. Joan arrived at nine with her hair pinned up and a thermos of coffee, and the shop smelled like lavender spray and new fabric. Lana had cleared the back fitting room, the one with the tall cheval mirror and the velvet bench, and laid out a gown in soft white silk across the bench like a sleeping thing.

"This one's the showpiece," Lana said. "Bias cut. It will either be spectacular or will destroy us both."

"Sounds like our three months."

"Don't be sentimental, get undressed."

Joan laughed and stepped behind the screen. Being half-naked in front of Lana was not new, exactly, but it had been six years, and her body felt things these days that it hadn't in 2018. She slid the silk over her head anyway, and Lana knelt at the hem, pins in her mouth, muttering numbers to herself, and within ten minutes Joan had forgotten to be self-conscious because there was nothing like watching Lana work.

Then Lana stood, went to the drawer under the vanity, and came back holding something that did not look like fabric.

"Okay," she said. "So here's the thing. Before you get weird."

"That's how you always start a sentence before I get weird."

Lana held it up. It was steel and leather, polished, beautifully made, straps and a front panel with a small lock plate at the hip. Joan knew exactly what it was the moment her brain caught up.

"That's a chastity belt," Joan said. "Lana. That is a chastity belt."

"It's a fitting accessory," Lana said, entirely deadpan. "Custom. Look at the finish on it. I had it made for a designer showcase, it's an art piece, and I need to check how it sits under the silk before Saturday, because I am apparently considering putting it in the window display too and I need to know if it lines show."

"You are not putting a chastity belt in a bridal window."

"It's a statement about the institution of marriage."

"You're out of your mind."

"I'm a visionary. Try it on."

Joan stood in the silk gown and stared at her. Then she laughed, high and nervous, the kind that escaped before permission. "You're serious. You're actually serious."

"Completely. And Joan." Lana set it on the bench and held up both hands, all business now. "It only happens if you say yes. Plainly. No dares, no pressure. You say no, it goes back in the drawer and we finish the hem. That's the whole deal."

And that was the maddening thing about Lana. She had always been like this, even at twenty-six, even at forty-four. She pushed hard right up until the line, and then she held the line like