“What’s she gonna do with three hundred napkins?” one of the waiters interjected. He was clearly new.
“Six hundred, actually,” Olga offered. “Always good to have extras, right?” The staff laughed. “She claims they’ll be heirlooms. Point is, we need to be sure that we keep these separate from the rented linens at the end of the night; got it?”
The waiters collectively nodded and, like a colony of ants given orders from their queen, ran off to execute the said napkin plan. Olga did some mental math. It would take six pairs of hands another four hours to create an optic that the guests would undo in seconds with the flick of a wrist—290 guests, to be exact. Barring a crazy incident—some overgrown frat boy spraying the bridesmaids with champagne, say, or a drunken guest knocking over the croquembouche display—they should end the night with between 150 and 175 brand-new beautiful linen hemstitch napkins that she could take for her cousin Mabel to use at her wedding that fall.
Olga hated her cousin Mabel.
Of course, it hadn’t always been this way. Yes, Mabel had been a loudmouth girl who developed into a loudmouth, know-it-all woman, but despite this they had been, in their youth, quite close. Slowly, though, a rift had formed and expanded. Then, last year, at age thirty-nine, Mabel was concurrently promoted to mid-level management at Con Edison and proposed to by her long-term boyfriend. The combination rendered her insufferable. Olga was only a year or so older, and for the entirety of their lives Mabel had been in a one-sided competition with her where action of any sort in Olga’s life was interpreted by Mabel as a sign of aggression and met with a “So, you think you’re better than me, huh?” Truth be told, for most of their lives, using a traditional American metric for measuring success, Olga was better than Mabel. Olga had left Sunset Park, gone to a fancy college, started her business, had been featured in magazines and on TV, had traveled the world, and gone to dinners costlier than one of Mabel’s paychecks. But now, with this engagement, Mabel was going to achieve something Olga never had: being a bride. Never mind that Olga bristled at the idea of third dates, let alone marriage. To Mabel, in this one arena, she had finally won, and she was not about to let her victory go unnoticed. On Christmas Eve, drunk on coquito, she waved her engagement ring in Olga’s face repeatedly, saying, “Julio got it from Jared’s, bitch, what did you get? That’s right, nothing.” At the bridal shower that her family pressured her to host because “she’s the one with all the party hookups,” Mabel gave a special toast to her “cousin Olga, who can help the brides, she just can’t get a groom.”
Olga had taken this in stride. Primarily because if finding someone like Julio to be tied to for all eternity was the one contest she would lose to Mabel, then she had chosen well. She was equally placated knowing that, when the time was right, she would think of the perfect fuck-you gesture to take just a bit of wind out of Mabel’s sails on her wedding day. Just the right little something to be the pebble in her shoe when she reflected on the day. It was during her sixth meeting with Mrs. Henderson, the mother of today’s bride, specifically about the topic of napkins, when the idea came to her and she was immediately filled with delight, knowing that she could strike two birds with one tiny stone.
From the beginning, Olga knew the napkins were going to be the “thing” with this event. At every first meeting with a client there was one comment casually uttered that Olga filed in her mental Rolodex, knowing that, in several months’ time, she would spend hours or even collective days dealing with what had been a seemingly innocuous statement or question. So it was when Mrs. Henderson and her daughter came in the first time and, just as they were about to sign Olga’s pricey contract, Mrs. Henderson exclaimed, “We didn’t speak about one of the most important things! The napkins! I do hate when they leave lint on your gown.” Olga agreed immediately and waxed on about that and a number of other nuanced considerations regarding table linens. Within moments, the paperwork was signed, and Mrs. Henderson was phoning their “money person” to deal with the matter of getting Olga her not-insignificant deposit payment. With her one comment about lint, Mrs. Henderson had revealed herself to be, at best, neurotic and, at worst, crazy. Olga had only quoted them her fee for normal rich people. Anxiety consumed her when she realized she had not charged them nearly enough.
She had not been wrong. Mrs. Henderson’s daughter, the bride, was a forgettable girl marrying a forgettable guy. They both, wisely, allowed Mrs. Henderson to do whatever she wanted with the wedding, knowing that if she was satiated, Mr. Henderson was far more likely to give them the cash they needed to purchase their own place in Bridgehampton. Yet even with the bride and groom largely absent, Mrs. Henderson had kept Olga and her staff’s hands full, mainly with the aforementioned napkins. What would they be made of? How wide would the hemstitch be? How would they be folded? What about the cocktail napkins? What about the hand towels in the bathroom? Was a white napkin rude? Did the same rules apply to napkins as to guests about wearing white at a wedding? Should they switch the order to ivory? Was that same quality of linen even available in ivory? Should they add in a pop of color? What would people say about a blue napkin? Would that be good luck? Would that leave lint?