An Innocent Fashion (15 page)

“My, the fashion closet's full! Should have gone the other way!” exclaimed Jane, kicking away a bra which had fallen onto the pointed toe of her nude heel.

I smiled, and looked back at Clara, who was standing with her brown hands clasped. “Oh, Jane,” she melted, with an expression of embarrassment. “You shouldn't have.” Her A-line dress gave her the appearance of a housewife whose afternoon of diligent homemaking had been disrupted by an unannounced visit from her mother-in-law.

Clara rushed to clear away her desk and make a place to rest the tray. Her fingers fumbled over papers and pens. “Excuse the mess,” she gushed, and got carried away straightening up the stickies on her computer screen. Evidently thinking that Jane might be offended by the presence of writing instruments, she opened her drawer and swept all the pens inside with a clatter.

Seemingly unaware of the distress she had inadvertently
caused, Jane approached with a beaming grin, the crinkles around her eyes making her appear less like the creative director of
Régine
than like a grandmother in an advertisement for cake mix.

The platter passed to Clara, and the transference revealed a row of party hats dangling from Jane's wrist. “Here,” she said, and distributed them to Will and Christine.

Christine patted her head and smiled nervously while Jane came up behind Clara's glamorous blonde hair and fastened a party hat there.

“You need one too, Ethan,” she said, as she offered up the cone from her own head. I accepted, and was flabbergasted that she remembered my name.

Clara turned. She fingered the elastic band around her jaw, grimacing like a person who had been strapped into a restraint collar as the others blinked at each other, unsure what to do next. “You shouldn't have,” Clara said once more to Jane, “you really shouldn't have.”

“But I did,” Jane said. “Come on, everyone,” she instructed, “have a cupcake!”

My mouth watered, as I hoped that “everyone” included me. Sabrina had not yet authorized a lunch break.

Jane plucked a cupcake off the platter and leaned roguishly back against Clara's desk, rocking her foot over her high heel. “Oh, go on,” she urged the others, unpeeling the cupcake liner, “eat!” She savored her first bite and waved her hand in a circular motion, which seemed to include me.

I took this in good faith and hastily picked up a cupcake, my mouth pooling up with saliva. The editors followed, with visible reservation. Their hands clashed over the platter.

“Oh—sorry.” Christine blushed.

“No, I'm sorry.”

“Go ahead.”

“No, you go ahead.”

Clara finally gave in. She held out her palm like a dish—careful not to drop any sprinkles—and placed the cupcake on top, blinking. Hovering her other hand over the chocolate frosting, she took a breath, like she was about to do a daring thing, then lost courage, and deflated. She turned her head almost imperceptibly to the side and whispered to Christine from the corner of her mouth, “Do you have a knife?”

Christine shook her head. Her cupcake was cupped between two upturned palms like a sacramental wafer.

“I'm going to save it for later,” Clara said at last to Jane, smiling like a person who had been hit in the stomach and was trying to disguise their pain. “I hope that's all right?”

“Suit yourself.” Jane shrugged amicably, and licked a dollop of frosting off her own finger. “How are you celebrating tonight?”

Clara had carefully returned the cupcake to the platter, and was folding her hands on her lap like a Sunday school girl. “Oh, it'll be a quiet night. Julian is just taking me to dinner—you know . . .”

Down the hall, Edmund's head poked out from his corner office. He came billowing down the passage in a linen chemise and clapped his bony hands together.

“Happy birthday, Clara, do you have any contact solution?” he said, rubbing his eye. “Dry eyes again.” He prodded a fallen chocolate sprinkle on the crystal platter, and raised his finger to his nostrils for a suspicious sniff.

Relieved by the temporary distraction the task presented, Clara reached into her drawer, and pulled out a bottle of contact solution. He took it from her and said to Jane, “Do you have a moment to discuss this business with the Asian model?” while he jabbed at his eye and walked away.

Jane nodded, pulling the last chocolaty lump off the cupcake liner. She popped it into her mouth and asked through a mouthful of frosting, “What's wrong? Is it another scheduling thing with Lui Wen?” She folded the liner into a heart shape and tossed it into Clara's trash bin. “If you need her to be Asian, why don't you try out Soo Joo, like I suggested?”

They walked away—Edmund fast ahead, and Jane strolling behind. “Because Choo-Choo is not famous enough,” he declared, rubbing his eye again. “I don't want to shoot some nobody.” And he closed the door behind them.

A moment passed in silence before I realized the only sound was me licking my fingers. I suddenly stopped, and the moist cupcake paper wilted in my hand as I glanced up at the fashion editors. Christine, who was between the others, looked at Clara, then bit her lip and turned to Will. All of them blinked.

Will and Christine still held their cupcakes intact.

“Do you—?” Will began suddenly.

They turned to him.

“Never mind,” he said.

More blinking. Christine raised a finger like she had a thought, then recoiled. I was struck by the strangeness of the void between them. They were three of the fashion world's most exemplary models of taste and social grace, each one embodying the person you wanted most to be—a powerful, perfect person from whom you would take any advice, and on
whose suggestion you would invest several thousand dollars in an Hermès bag, or a pair of Ferragamo slippers, and who always knew what expensive thing went just right with another expensive thing, and whose conviction in these matters you would regard more highly than your own—yet they could not figure out what to say to each other over a simple plate of cupcakes.

I waited for them to say
anything
: to share some bit of pointless, silly gossip, or even, maybe, to crack a joke. Surely Will would say, “
It's almost three—let's wrap up, and catch happy hour somewhere!
” Clara would blush, while Christine prodded her playfully, “
Yes, it's your special day—we'll go somewhere tacky and fun, just for laughs!
” It would have been normal, even for them. After all, they sat next to each other
every
day, all day, for at least eight hours. Presumably they knew each other very well—better even, most likely, than their respective lovers—yet none of them stirred or said a word. The lives they had chosen dictated that they simply couldn't.

Clara finally put an end to it. “All right, well that was fun,” she said, with an almost prayerful clap of her hands.

“Yes, we'd better get back to work, hadn't we?” agreed Will.

“You can go now, Ethan,” Christine allowed. “Leave the trunk.”

I savored the last of the chocolate frosting in my mouth, which I had allowed to dissolve slowly on my tongue for a whole minute.

“Can you—take these away?” Clara added, pointing at the cupcakes. She peered over toward Edmund's door, to be sure nobody would witness her ungrateful disposal of Jane's thoughtful gift. “See if anybody else would like them, just please—don't
bring them back,” she said, urging me with a wave of her hand to hurry.

They all turned simultaneously to work, and the whole space seemed to drift foggily back to a state of normalcy.

GEORGE WAS SITTING THERE WHEN I RETURNED TO OUR DESK.

“What are you getting for lunch today?” I asked, as I laid down the cupcakes between us.

“Probably salad,” answered George, not looking up from his article about a reality TV star's infected breast implant. The most I had been able to gather from our stilted exchanges thus far was that George was from New Jersey, and had a relative who worked in
Régine'
s Advertising Department. Ever the optimist, however, I was hoping to conspire with him over the strange scene that had just unfolded.

I said, “I think I'm going to get a salad too,” even though what I really wanted was macaroni and cheese, preferably not from the just-add-water packs awaiting me at home, which my shoestring budget had ruled were my only option for affordable dinner in New York City.

But before I could initiate a friendship over salad, he commanded, not even looking at me, “Hey, Polka Dot, I need you to do me a favor. Can you get me this volume from the archives library?” With an intense scribble of great significance—still not looking at me—he wrote
Jan–Mar 1964
.

“Um, sure,” I said. “Now?”

“Yes,” he replied, bored, staring at his screen while stretching his hand out toward me, the sticky floating off one finger. “Now.”

The volume George asked me to retrieve was not exceptional in any way. I couldn't be sure what he would do with it, but I brought it to him.

At the end of the day, the sober, brown-leathered volume was still sitting there, and the most he had done with it was rest his elbow on the cover.

M
y first thought upon waking up the next morning was that I was late for class.

It was the familiar state of panic I'd experienced frequently throughout four years of undergraduate life; the same sputtering and aimless flailing, the same frantic attempts to free myself from a tangle of bedsheets. On those mornings I was greeted by intermittent flashes of assignments yet undone while I fumbled for an alarm clock that got perpetually misplaced at the crucial moment, and some memory of which class I was about to be late for.

Now I sat straight up and conked my head. Sooner than usual, everything came back into sharp focus—graduation and
Régine
, Madeline and Dorian, and how could I forget?, the four-foot apartment that I lived in, with the tin ceiling whose duty it was to smash my dream-filled head into waking life.

A lot of people thought I was joking when I told them my New York “apartment” was only four feet tall, but with my negligible income as a part-time library assistant in the Yale Art History archives—depleted constantly by my acquisition of thrifted wardrobe pieces—I had been lucky to afford even that. It had all happened so fast too: graduation day had been on a Wednesday, my interview with Sabrina that Friday, my first day at
Régine
on the following Monday. With my practical sensibilities limited by a background of willful collegiate indulgence, I didn't know the first thing about starting an adult life in New York, or anywhere. I didn't know about rent, or bills, or groceries, or really a single matter related to the “real world,” a phrase which before that point had bothered me immensely for its supposition that life in college, with its room-and-board charges sent to the Latino Scholarship Fund, and free heat/water/Wi-Fi that never went out, and dining halls that promised a buffet any time between eight in the morning and nine in the evening, somehow wasn't how “real” people lived.

Of course, I learned soon enough that if the agreed-upon conception of the “real world” necessitated hardship of any kind—desires unrealized, dreams deferred, both manifested in struggles of a practical nature—then for quite some time I had been living out a most unreal life.

THE FRUIT OF MY COLLEGE MEMORIES HARDLY CONTAINED A
bitter seed, yet the sweetest moments I traced to Madeline. Once we transcended the stifling barrier of our own mutual fascination, we entered a relationship resembling the honeymoon phase of two newlywed twelve-year-olds—giggling and preening
and finishing each other's sentences, each one of us lavishing the other with a regular abundance of flowers and pet names. At the time, we perceived no sexual dimensions to our mutual attraction, because both of us assumed I must be gay. Even though I'd still never actually had sex, or even kissed anyone, the label had become an important part of my identity. It was a surprisingly convenient label, offering—despite its share of unfavorable prejudices—a crucial array of freedoms. I had learned early that to fit the conventional template of masculinity would require me to make unbearable compromises in life. That is, if I wished to live in the world as a “straight” person, I would have to relinquish my entire personality.

A “straight” man wasn't really allowed to like fashion. He wasn't allowed to be “pretty” or “sensitive,” or profess any appreciation for his natural femininity, and unless he was uncommonly confident, or surrounded by uncommonly open-minded people, he was doomed to be scrutinized for any flail that jeopardized his passage along a very narrow tightrope. However, if the same man told people he was
gay
, like I did, suddenly all those feminine qualities became okay, even desirable.

Of course, liking fashion or being “sensitive” actually had nothing to do with preferring one sex over another. None of the stereotypes really did, but I was too young to realize that, and if my intellect was supposedly advanced, in almost every other sense—especially sexually—I was a late bloomer. It wasn't that I lacked a physical inclination toward sex; I had masturbated almost every day in high school, under the covers in a dreamy morning idyll, after being half-awakened by my own erection.

I had tried to watch porn too; “straight” porn at first. The first time I did it my parents had been asleep. It was the dead of night, and I was on the shared desktop computer in the living
room, with my zipper undone and my hand hiding a bulge as I typed the search query
s-e-x
with the other. My heartbeat accelerated as, gaining confidence in the dark room, I deleted the letters and inserted
p-o-r-n
instead. I clicked on the first thing—something about “creampies”—my eyes widened, and my erection softened in my hands.

After that I tried again, and again, every time with similar wilting effects—based on which anyone would simply conclude that I was definitely gay, and would probably enjoy gay porn instead. But watching two men have sex didn't change anything, as my interest was constantly undermined by the same essential issue—
who were these people, and why should I care about them having sex?
Without a personal context, the sight of a naked body aroused me as much as a Roman nude in a museum—actually less, because at least toward Adonis or Aphrodite I could imagine some kinship.

Of course, I didn't
know
what this all meant—just that I must be gay, and therefore that my relationships with women, including Madeline, were naturally defined by platonic boundaries.

Lacking the insight to consider a more nuanced understanding of ourselves and our own attraction, Madeline and I faced little trouble assuming our logical roles—we were destined to be best friends, what else?—both of us unaware that the buds of attraction between human beings could blossom beyond the crudely fenced-in constructs of conventional categorization.

By October of our Fall-Winter semester as freshmen, we were content to enjoy the breadth of intimacy afforded to us by our conveniently sexless arrangement. We were in love, in our unique way, and although it glowed with a childlike aura, years of quiet disaffection for our respectively un-Romantic peers had
given us each the maturity to perceive the rarity of our intense bond.

Inwardly, Madeline and I were like twins who had been separated at birth. The main difference, of course, was that Madeline had been raised over a grand piano by parents who attended benefits and wore expensive
parfums
, while I—well, I simply didn't talk about my upbringing. It was regarding this subject alone that I withheld my true self from her, and the fault of
Madama Butterfly
that Madeline uncovered the reason.

In the early months of our friendship, Madeline heard the new season of the Metropolitan Opera in New York would include a modern adaptation of her favorite Italian tragedy. As opera was one of her greatest pleasures, and I had yet to see one, it was clear enough that we should go together; however, Madeline wanted us to buy orchestra seats, the most expensive, maintaining that I would never be able to relive my first opera, and “
you just won't
feel
the music from a cheaper seat.
” I might have afforded a discount ticket on a balcony, behind some giant column, but never the seats which she insisted on, and neither could my dignity afford to tell her. “
I have an exam that week,
” I said. “
We'll go the next
,” she said.
“I get sick on trains.”
“We'll take the bus.”
And so on, just a series of excuses, increasing in ridiculousness, until at last Madeline's baffled face lit up with realization: “It's not the money, is it?”

It was the first and last time she ever directly posed such a question to me. My flushed cheeks and hollow intake of breath were answer enough for her, and the next day she said to me, “We're going next Saturday. My treat.”

From then on, it was always this from Madeline
—
“
My treat,
” or “
You can pay next time
”—followed by a masterful demonstration
of her unsurpassable social grace: a giddy laugh, then a harmless diversion (commentary on classwork, or the weather). In this way she ensured that there would never be a pause, that I would never have the opportunity to suggest a repayment, or express my gratitude, or demonstrate in any way that her gesture was a cover-up for some inherent inequality about which only I was distressed.

More so than the money itself, these gestures of consideration for my dignity distinguished Madeline as possessing the truest generosity I had ever known. Hers was a special kind of thoughtfulness that was rare in the twenty-first century—attesting her commitment to the manners of more chivalrous times. Therein, ironically through her unselfish view of money, the institutional upholder that she often derided, was her nonconformist spirit most pointed.

Madeline willingly took on the role of my benefactress—my governess and ward in one—who despite my halfhearted protests went to great lengths so I could share with her the fine life which was so clearly our mutual destiny, never knowing the full extent to which her charities fulfilled my lifelong yearnings. Every weekend it was tickets for the opera, and the ballet, and the Philharmonic—experiences denied by my life in provincial Corpus Christi, which she knew I would honor with my hands gripping the armrest and my body leaning toward the stage in wide-eyed appreciation. Following
Tosca
, or Verdi's
Requiem
, would be surprise reservations to dimly sconced West Village restaurants for aged cabernet and croque monsieurs, and miniature cheesecakes topped off with sea salt, syrup, and twisted lemon slivers.

Pledging to include me in every aspect of her rarified life, Madeline even had her parents upgrade their donor's package
at the Metropolitan Museum so that I could accompany them to events, and when, on the opening night of the Baroque Legacies exhibit, she discovered a small hole in my thrifted tuxedo trousers, her reaction was tiered as such: a wounded expression, a string of choked-up words (
“But why wouldn't you feel comfortable just
telling
me?”
), and a compulsory shopping trip to Bergdorf Goodman. There she had me try on a dozen black tuxedos—Dolce & Gabbana, Calvin Klein, Dior Homme, each more exquisite than the last—until finally she conceded that the three-piece from Giorgio Armani was good enough for me.

Our first “fight” unfolded shortly before Christmas, when I promptly declined her invitation to join her extended family on a holiday in the Swiss Alps.

She had already done too much for me. As much as I wished to share every moment with her, to accept from Madeline's satin-lined pocket a fully paid vacation seemed an abuse of our love. Furthermore, if there was a single lesson my proletariat parents had successfully passed on to me, it was to never indenture oneself; for all of the grief conferred on me by its beige walls, my parents had often remarked with pride that they had accepted no loans in the purchase of their house. As a result the back of my head had already been spinning for weeks with insurmountable calculations as I tried, despite Madeline's fiscal nonchalance, to tally the dizzying debt I felt would be my duty to somehow repay.

When I voiced my initial protestations, we were lunching under vaulted ceilings in Berkeley Hall as sunshine from arched windows filled every mahogany corner. Madeline put down her spoon, her silver tray bearing her typical lunch fare: a bowl of organic Greek yogurt and a cup of strawberries, with an abundantly annotated photocopy of a Noam Chomsky essay at her elbow.

“How presumptuous of me—of course you should spend Christmas with your own family,” she backtracked, “I didn't mean to be insensitive, it's just you never talk about them, and—if you want to come, we'll just schedule your flight out of Texas on the twenty-sixth,” she said. “That way you can have Christmas with them, and stay for New Year's with us. It would be a short holiday—I don't know, ten days, but then we can catch the flight back together. Do you think that would be all right?” She raised a strawberry to her lips, and if I weren't so embarrassed I could have laughed at her sweet, ridiculous assumption that I would oppose her perfect Swiss holiday because I preferred a miserable Noche Buena with pathetic presents and only my rowdy family as a consolation, with everyone spilling Coronas around a dried-up evergreen.

“It's not the dates . . .” I started. “It's just—” and of course I froze, and turned the same color as the last time we had broached the issue of money—symptoms easily diagnosed by Madeline as an offense to her time-honored benevolence.

Her whole countenance dropped with the weight of a hundred acorns shaken from a tree. “For the love of God,” she spat. She tossed the half-bitten strawberry onto a napkin with disgust, and raised her voice: “The
money
again? You're going to make me lose my appetite.”

Grant Goodwin passed us with a smile. He was trying to catch Madeline's eye, but had to content himself with my halfhearted grimace on her sour behalf. “Please,” I said, reaching over the wooden table, “not so loud, I just—”