Bead-Dazzled (6 page)

Her mouth grew painfully dry. Dust danced about the light fixtures, and stale air clogged her throat. Charlie and Holly leaned forward, waiting, as if a fabulous, fully formed idea would leap out in a thought bubble over her head.

“I need to get out,” she announced abruptly. “I need fresh air.”

“I’ll come—” Holly offered.

“No.” Emma cut her off. She grabbed her sketchbook and pencil. “Sorry, I just got to clear my head. Not think of anything but the clothes for a bit.”

She’d done this before. Walks around the city always brought inspiration. The shape of the skyscrapers, the blurring colors of the traffic, the exotic trinkets in the store windows.

“Ivana put together an online study group for Bio,” Holly said quickly, her words running together. “I’m going pack up my laptop then go home to join in. Okay?”

“Good luck,” Emma said. Normally, Holly hanging out with Ivana, even online, would bother her. Today her mind was too wrapped in design ideas. She glanced at Charlie. “You?”

“Staying put.” He fitted his headphones over his ears and opened a notebook. Then he closed his eyes and nodded in beat with his music.

Emma hurried out past Marjorie, who was on the phone again, and into the elevator. Two women in intricate silk saris stood murmuring in a corner. Emma couldn’t help but notice the detailed work of their traditional Indian garments. The shorter woman’s was made of a deep purple raw silk with embroidered turquoise details and a smattering of sequins. Even in the dull florescent lighting of the elevator, the fabric shimmered. The taller woman’s sari was a deep burnt orange with pomegranate edging. The silver sequins that delicately trimmed the neckline of the fabric reminded Emma of the edible silver balls her Mom’s favorite bakery on the West Side used to decorate the pink-iced cakes. The saris gave the otherwise dank industrial elevator a festive vibe.

Emma really wanted to touch the fabric. Feel its weight and softness. See how it was able to fall so delicately over the women’s curvy bodies. But that would be way too weird. She flipped her sketchbook open to an empty page and began to draw the saris. She kept her fingers busy sketching.

The elevator stopped and the women walked out, their heads still pressed together in conversation. Emma wished they would stay. Her sketch wasn’t done. She watched them retreat down a darkened hallway, the soft swish of the exotic fabric muffled by angry voices.

“This is your fault! Do you see? Do you see all this fabric?”

At the mention of fabric, Emma shifted her focus to the scene playing out before her. The elevator doors had opened, like curtains, on a massive argument. A tall, thin man with tawny skin and wire-rimmed glasses stood in front of an office door directly across from the elevator. A large vein in his forehead throbbed as he yelled at a heavy-set bald man.

Emma’s eyes fell on bolts of raw silk and cotton lying at the men’s feet.

“Ruined! Ruined! Ruined!” the thin man ranted. “Do you realize the quality of this material that is now garbage?”

Even from four feet away, Emma saw it was the good stuff. The elevator doors began to close. Impulsively, she slipped out between them and into the hallway.

The men took no notice.

“The flood. It no my fault,” the older, bald man countered in halting English. “I sorry. It is bad pipe that make flood.”

“Water in my showroom. Do you get the magnitude of the damage?” The thin man wouldn’t let up. “You are the building superintendent. It is your job to make sure the pipes don’t burst.”

The superintendent shook his head vigorously. “I no control the pipes. Pipes are old. It is cold.” He shrugged. “Happens.”

“Somebody needs to reimburse me. This fabric has water stains. It’s lost to me.” The thin man kicked the nearest bolt with the tip of his brown lace-up shoe.

Emma tried to pretend that she was intently reading something in her sketchbook and wasn’t eavesdropping. She secretly eyed the fabric. Some bolts were pure-white thick cotton. Others were a creamy ivory silk. The lighting was dark in the hallway, but she could see the water stains creeping along one edge of the rolls.

“I fix the leak now. Go get my tools.” The bald superintendent hurriedly turned away from the angry fabric importer. “You call building manager. Leak his fault.”

Emma felt herself nod. Her dad always complained about Mr. Kriptka, the building manager. He called him The Ghost. He never returned calls, never came by, and never spent money to improve the tired, old building.

The fabric importer sighed, realizing that he would now have to battle with the invisible Mr. Kriptka. “Hurry back!” he called then noticed Emma staring at him. “May I help you?”

Emma read the small, metal sign affixed to the door behind him.
Sultan Silks.
Her dad often teamed up with them to sell materials to wedding dress manufacturers—her dad’s lace and this man’s silk.

“I heard…I mean, I was getting off the elevator and I heard…your fabric got ruined?” Emma started tentatively.

“Yeah. Luckily, the pipe burst at the far end of the showroom. I would’ve been sunk if it had flooded the storeroom.” He eyed her suspiciously. There weren’t many teenage girls wandering the halls of Garment District suppliers. “You are?”

“My dad is Noah Rose. He owns Laceland. Upstairs on eleven.” Emma pointed toward the ceiling as if that would better explain who she was. “I’m Emma.”

The man nodded and his face relaxed a bit.

She stepped closer to the bolts of silk and squatted to get a better look. “The water is only on one side.”

“One side. Two sides. All over. It doesn’t matter.” He waved his hands in the air. “No one wants ruined merchandise. I have to toss it all away.”

Emma’s mind spun. She could cut away the stained sections. With some stealthy scissor action, there was plenty to craft dresses, gowns, tops, and even a jumpsuit. An entire collection!

“Can I have it?” she asked. “I mean, that is, if you’re really going to throw it away?”

“I can’t imagine what you’re going to do with damaged silk and cotton”—he opened the door behind them—“but it’s all yours. You just need to get it out of the hall before the end of the day or the cleaning crew will have their way with it. I must go deal with the mess and the insurance company.”

“Thank you. Thank you!” Emma cried. She couldn’t believe her luck. The fashion gods were totally smiling down on her. First, getting to be a part of the benefit and now this gorgeous fabric literally waiting at her feet for free!

She tugged at a bolt and nearly toppled backward under its weight. She needed help.

U there?
she texted Charlie.

Always,
he replied immediately.

Help needed. Go to 3
^rd
floor.

????
Charlie responded.

Ask Isaac 4 hand cart. Bring to 3
^rd
flr.
Emma texted. Then she added,
Please.

Charlie had a lot of questions when he arrived, rolling hand cart in tow, and saw the damaged fabric. Emma didn’t have answers. All she knew was that somehow, some way, she was going to use this water-stained white and ivory material.

Together they hefted two bolts onto the cart and transported them back to her studio.

“Look what I brought you,” she whispered to the three headless dress forms. “Naked no more.”

She often spoke to The Girls, as she called the forms. Depending on the fabric she draped upon them, they changed features and personalities. Some days they were university students in Paris. Some days they were actresses walking the red carpet. Some days they were artists at their first gallery showing. Whoever they were, The Girls were always happiest when Emma draped and pinned fabric on them. They liked it when the studio was busy.

So did Emma.

“I’m going to come up with a collection idea that you’ll love,” she whispered. “I promise.”

She, Charlie, and her dad packed up and left Laceland together. Charlie walked west toward the Hell’s Kitchen walk-up he shared with his mother. Emma and her dad caught the 34
^th
Street bus, heading east then transferred to the Second Avenue bus heading uptown. As the bus inched through the gridlock traffic, Emma filled Dad in on Goin’ Green and her plans. Getting off at 52
^nd
Street, they huddled together under one large umbrella and walked the two blocks east toward their apartment building. Dad was on his phone—something to do with a tear in a shipment of lace.

Emma watched the rain splatter on the sidewalk. Puddles caught the light from the streetlamps and shimmered as the rain danced on their surface. The cars’ red taillights and the yellow of the taxis combined to form a wet rainbow. In the winter darkness, the city sparkled from the wetness.

Out over the East River and into the distance, the white lights lining the bridge to Queens twinkled in the mist, looking like a diamond necklace from Tiffany’s. Or like glass beads trimming a collar of a long, black evening dress. Bright headlights cut through the darkness, and the pink neon of the store signs flashed. Emma thought of the sparkly pink sari. The raindrops clung the edge of the umbrella like dripping jewels.

A little sparkle, no—
a lot
of sparkle.

She let her imagination run wild. Beaded shoulder straps. Beaded belts. Beaded necklines that gave the illusion that the wearer had on the most amazing necklace.

That’s how she’d anchor her collection.

She’d make it sparkle.

Allegra Biscotti would shine at the benefit.

DRESS LIKE AN EGYPTIAN

“I
need you to know your stuff. This a review of last night’s reading,” Ms. Ling informed the class. She finished drawing a Venn diagram on the whiteboard—four interlocking circles for the four ancient river valley civilizations. “The compare-and-contrast test is later this week.”

Everyone copied the words Ms. Ling wrote, taking meticulous notes, but Emma’s mind drifted far from the Indus and the Nile. The graphic pattern of the overlapping Venn circles intrigued her—much more than the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Her pen strayed to the margins of her notebook.

What if she made the circles different sizes?

What if one was large and the others were small?

She imagined repeating the pattern on a tunic. Interlocking rings of the same color. She’d embroider one circle with glass beads that caught the light.

Shimmer. She was all about shimmer now.

She still hadn’t told Charlie or Holly her great idea. Later, when they met up at Laceland, she’d lay out all the plans she’d stayed up late into the night crafting. Just the thought of her sparkly designs made her shiver with excitement.

“Moving on.” Ms. Ling’s clipped voice popped Emma’s fashion bubble. She hurried to scribble the whiteboard information around the series of circles now flooding her page. Maybe when she finished the show she’d stencil a plain T-shirt with the pattern.

“We will be doing an in-depth project on the river valley civilizations. A group project.” Ms. Ling leaned toward the computer screen on her desk. “One group per civilization.”

The buzzing began. Whispers and gestures to friends. Promises to work together. Emma frantically searched out a friendly face who was also smart. Maybe Pooja or Audrey?