Sellevision - Augusten Burroughs [29]
C
hanges was the current it bar and restaurant in Philly. Located on Twenty-sixth and Poplar, Changes attracted an upscale, hip clientele. Bebe was to meet Eliot at the bar at eight P.M. Although she had never seen him before, he’d given her a pretty good visual description: six-foot-one, 185 pounds, salt-and-pepper hair (“Yes, a full head,” he’d laughed). She was to “look for the nervous guy at the bar wearing gray slacks and a red sweater with five or six empty martini glasses in front of him.” At least on the telephone, he had been charming.
Bebe had tried on three different outfits before finally deciding on the new black slacks, the new black silk shell, and the coral cashmere jacket she bought two weeks ago, but hadn’t worn. Around her neck she wore an eighteen-inch fourteen-karat white gold rolo chain, at the end of which was a Diamonelle Glitter Ball slide. For earrings, she went with simple fourteen-karat white gold demi hoops. She wore a tasteful Diamonelle tennis bracelet in fourteen-karat yellow gold, but you really didn’t notice the yellow so much as the stones. But even if you did, it was perfectly okay to mix your white metals with your yellow. On the ring finger of her right hand, Bebe slipped a two-carat princess-cut Diamonelle simulated sapphire ring with two twenty-five-point channel-set trillian-cut stones on either side. But then she slipped it off, fearing that it might look like an old engagement ring she refused to return. She decided to leave her fingers ringless.
The first thing Bebe noticed as she stepped into Changes was the beautiful arrangement of lilacs atop the bar. The vase itself was filled with clear glass marbles in water. The second thing she noticed was a man in a red sweater. He was sitting at the bar, speaking with the bartender, when the bartender suddenly caught her eye and stopped talking midsentence. The man in the red sweater tracked the bartender’s eye-line, which led him directly to Bebe.
He stood immediately and Bebe approached him, extending her hand. He took her hand in his and gently guided her to a chair at the bar, which he pulled out for her. “You must be Bebe,” he said. “I’m Eliot, as I suppose you’ve figured out by now, unless you’re an extremely well-dressed and friendly meter maid and I forgot to put money in the meter.”
Bebe laughed and sat on the tall stool next to Eliot, exhaling and admitting that she was “kind-of slightly sort-of nervous.”
Eliot suggested they remedy that situation at once and asked Bebe what she would like to drink.
“Oh, a glass of white wine, I suppose.” The bartender nodded and walked to the opposite side of the bar.
“You lied to me,” Eliot said with a completely straight face.
“How did I lie to you? I told you I’d probably be wearing something black.”
“You also said you weren’t beautiful—to use your exact words, ‘just slightly over average.’ And that, Bebe, is a bald lie.”
“Okay, that’s it, I love you.”
They both laughed.
As the bartender set the glass of wine before Bebe, he paused and then said “I’m terribly sorry to interrupt you, but I just had to ask: Aren’t you Bebe Friedman from Sellevision?”
Bebe smiled and admitted that yes, indeed, it was she.
“I gotta tell you, my girlfriend started watching you and then she got me hooked—you are so hilarious.”
“Well, thank you so much!” Then motioning with her head toward Eliot, “So how much did he pay you?”
The bartender laughed, excusing himself.
“I feel terrible that I’m not familiar with your work,” Eliot said.
Actually, it was a relief to Bebe. At least she knew that he didn’t like her just because she was a semicelebrity. And was it just the lighting, or did Eliot actually look like George Clooney?
“So tell me about the dry-cleaning business. I feel I have a right to know considering I subsidize the entire industry.