The Portrait of a Mirror

by A. Natasha Joukovsky

  Was there not also some prospective twinge of fear, of pain? Sure, but she tried not to picture it: Dale’s arm encircling Vivien’s waist, all casually and whatnot, in that dear, tasteful manner of appropriate public intimacy. How brutally unfair—that such a touch was not only to be allowed, but very likely necessary. Diana recalled the way he’d steadied her in Paris by the elevator, the passion and intensity with which his hand had arced around her—that was the form of such an act, of which this new imagined version, even if precisely realized, could never escape the realm of simulacra. Cruel, inferior gesture! The idea of witnessing its flaunted materiality—as if that meant it was the real true thing—was too, too horrible. All the more reason to find her alone first, to independently impress her. In certain instances, there is no better remedy for rising above one’s torrid, circling horrors than to look certifiably hot.

  As every woman knows, impressing another woman is a far more taxing enterprise than impressing a man. Unlike their basic counterparts, advanced bitches were unfazed by designer labels, let alone perky breasts. Such properties were not assets, they were assumptions. Diana needed to introduce Vivien to that illusory New York Times version of herself—and that wasn’t about the clothes or the shoes or hair or makeup or even the jewelry—even the engagement ring and wedding band. It was about the subtle underlying message that the amalgamation of these things conveyed. And yet it went beyond style too. Aura would be closer. Her posture and movements, facial expressions, word choice and elocution—if even one of these elements was awry it would render the quality of a silk or the length of a leg line irrelevant. There was a thin, fragile balance to preserve between self-control and nonchalance. And with the slightest indication of inauthenticity, the spell would be broken.

  Diana calculated the optimal ratios of simplicity and interest, classicism and trend, sex appeal and understatement, avant-garde art show and after-work business function, and the results brought her to the Theory boutique in Center City. It was a white dress that caught her eye, deliberately oversized but with a plunging neckline and pockets. The kind of garment that few men understand but women tend to deeply appreciate—to envy, even—especially from the position of entrapment in a beautiful, uncomfortable dress. Diana tried it on to ensure it wasn’t too tentlike and bought it without looking at the tag. Shoes were next, and these were harder. Diana had the impression Vivien was on the tall side, or at least taller than she was. She needed the maximal height she could walk in with the impression of ease, and they couldn’t be some ultra-chunky wedge where this calculus would be obvious. Stylistically, they had to be nothing short of show-stopping. The simplicity of the dress required it.

  Four stores later and with every other shop closed, Diana found them at Nordstrom Rack. Technically they were the wrong season—navy velvet, with a festive holidayesque bow on the back, but they were open toe at least, and a high-quality Italian brand. Most importantly, the heel fell somewhere between a wedge and a stiletto, and even though they were probably four inches high, she seemed to be able to walk in them. Their comfort would surely deteriorate over the course of the evening—but once she had cemented her initial imprint and they’d all had a few drinks, it hardly mattered if she switched into flip-flops. By that point, such disorder in dress might even impart a poetic appeal.

  Back in her hotel room, Diana evaluated the overall effect, and could find no fault. The mechanism of her self-distraction had succeeded twofold. And it was an appropriate museum ensemble, not so much in the sense that she looked like a work of art as in that she might fade nicely into an architecturally nuanced background. Negative space, Diana whispered to herself with an impish half smile, disrobing and falling promptly into a glorious, dreamless sleep.

  Less than ten blocks away on Walnut Street, Dale’s repose was marked by considerably greater agitation and ambivalence. The prospect of introducing Diana to Vivien had the potential to be thrilling: his fiancée would be, he was quite sure, at the very height of her wiles on Thursday evening, and it would be satisfying to show her off—not in the sense of a trophy wife, but in that of the modern, enviably equal one. And yet, for all of Vivien’s cunning sophistication, Dale could not shake the notion that Diana would be impervious to her subtle brand of social one-upmanship. His fear wasn’t that Diana wouldn’t be jealous, but that she would too freely acknowledge her jealousy—that she would deconstruct Vivien’s charms with such astute precision that they’d cease to sound charming, overshadowed by the charm of Diana’s astute deconstruction. Never having met Wes, Dale would have little recourse for an apropos counterattack. The scenario presented a fundamental lopsidedness that Dale would be powerless to correct. Then there was the larger fear, looming on the border of his consciousness: that Diana—or worse, Dale himself—would somehow betray the intimacy of their relationship in a manner that, to any outside party, would seem impossibly incongruent with sustained physical chastity. Had he expressed this fear to Diana, she would have summarily labeled it guilty-seeming innocence. But the fully subconscious truth went deeper, as fully subconscious truths tend to do, its genesis springing from contentment’s ultimate killer: comparison. The metaphysical intimacy Dale shared with Diana outshone any connection with his future wife. That this fact amounted to an existential threat did not prevent it from being true, and Dale was overwhelmed by fatigue from the effort of hiding such a secret from himself.

  And so, not quite knowing why, Dale left the Clock bar early on Tuesday. By Wednesday he felt so physically ill that he was forced to forgo a night out with Diana entirely, the dread of failing to equal her surmounting even his craving for her presence. Dale felt so improved on Thursday morning that he chastised himself for the habitual sleep deprivation he was now accustomed to tolerating for those wee hours together. It wasn’t healthy. His wedding was in less than two months. Still, when he arrived at Olympia, Dale’s newfound refreshment was immediately channeled into banter with Diana. Indeed, within the space of a few exchanges, their badinage began to seem the overarching raison d’être for feeling refreshed. There was a new-looking garment bag hanging in the corner of the fifty-second-floor conference room, and Dale itched to see Diana in whatever it contained.

  —Oh my god, I love your dress, Megan gushed when Diana emerged from the ladies’ room a little after 3:00 p.m.

  Eric’s jaw hovered no more than a few inches above the floor.

  —Mom, you do not look like a mom.

  Diana brushed him off, but Dale had to agree—even if her sartorial choices all paled in comparison to a certain pair of white shorts. It wasn’t like she could’ve worn anything in the vicinity of her Parisian getup to an event that, however superficially glamorous, essentially boiled down to a client function. She was already pushing it with that neckline, Dale assured himself. When she bent down to lift her tote and affix it to the top of her suitcase, he caught a sliver of lacy bralette through the exaggerated armhole and had to actively redirect his thoughts.

  It had been previously determined that Parker, Dale, and Diana would ride in the car arranged for Prudence and her deputies. It was a large SUV, but at full capacity, and with Diana wedged between her male colleagues in the back row, it was not a comfortable drive. Diana’s body sidled up against Dale’s, yet with the utmost prohibition of touch. When he looked at her to nourish his wretched passion, he found the heat wasting him away. There were several polite calls to turn up the air-conditioning.

  CHAPTER XXIII.

  Wes range left his Uber and Briskly ascended the front steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, squinting absently at his growing reflection in the glass of the revolving door. His mind was already inside the building, his first interaction with Jack Howard crystallizing with third-person omniscience: all warm smiles and complimentary platitudes and good-old-boy physical affirmations coming together like abstract snippets of future recollections. Only occasionally were these impressions interspersed with pictures from another exhibition—with actual, if conveniently altere
d, Mental Catalogue memories. Wes had prepared himself for this, too; for the déjà vu of this hallowed venue and the strong possibility of reencountering Vivien Floris in the flesh. He corrected his windswept hair, as if preemptively dusting off something buried in his brain beneath it. There it was. That trusty old heuristic: polite brevity. Wes’s ring and watch caught the declining sun and flashed off the revolving door into his eyes. No flash, please! He entered the Great Hall.

  —Welcome to the Young Members’ Party! said a pretty young greeter in a bright yellow dress. Last name A through M on your left, N through Z on your right.

  Wes gave her a half-smile nod of thanks to which she seemed disturbingly invulnerable, already employed in welcoming the next patron. He retrieved his ticket from another pretty young woman behind the right-hand desk, only to immediately hand it back to a different museum official, yet another pretty young woman guarding entry into what struck Wes as a high-end yet poorly attended nineteenth-century disco club.

  —The VIP preparty is on the roof, the third girl explained, reading Wes’s confusion. The main party down here won’t get started until later.

  —Ah, got it, thanks.

  She smiled bashfully, almost less with her mouth than her shoulders, and Wes felt a revitalizing burst of confidence. He passed the sign for Art & Myth without incident on his way to the Roof Garden elevator.

  Even partially obscured behind Pierre Huyghe’s giant-rock-in-a-fish-tank installation, it was impossible not to spot Julian. He was wearing his signature round tortoiseshell glasses, a light blue-and-white striped button-down dress shirt, an orange-and-navy rep bow tie, and what Wes could only assume were the infamous white gabardine pants. He would have seemed fussily groomed even in isolation, but in animated gesticulation next to the generically businesslike gentlemen who were presumably Jack Howard and a high-level associate, Julian looked like a Charleston wedding guest poised to give an impromptu lecture on supply-side economics. Wes shook his head to himself, worrying that the latter half of this observation would turn out not to be a metaphor.

  But no, mercifully—Julian was merely recounting the creation myth that was his version of Ecco’s branding journey. The conversation paused to welcome Wes, and much to his relief, Jack’s smile and handshake fell well within a standard deviation on the normal curve of his anticipated greeting. The second gentleman, Wes learned, was Mercury’s chief marketing officer, Greg Templeton.

  —I was just about to tell Julian how important branding has been for our business too, Jack segued—you have to understand, in the early 1990s, no one would have ever expected a payment-switching company to become a household name.

  —And when he says no one, he means no one, emphasized Greg.

  —I remember it well, Wes exaggerated, relying mostly on the research he’d done over the past two weeks. The “pay like a god” commercials. They were hilarious.

  —Thank you, the humor was indeed an important aspect, said Jack. That the conceit seemed tongue-in-cheek camouflaged how serious we were about tying our product to divine power. I think the reason it was so successful, financially speaking, was because we were able to—we were able to tap into this genuine sense of immortality in our customers at the prospect of opening their wallets. And, look, we knew we had a great product. Once the association was made, the convenience of plastic made it easy to retrigger and reinforce the feeling.

  —A brand is, after all, the promise of a repeatable experience, added Greg Templeton glibly.

  —I would argue, Julian countered, that the best brands are actually the promise of a recursive experience.

  Jack Howard looked intrigued.

  —What do you mean by that?

  —I mean they become embedded inside you, inextricably woven into the tapestry of your consciousness in a way that mirrors their presence in the broader tapestry of our collective cultural one. Think about it: how many people at this party would be unable to link pay like a god to MercuryCard? More people would have trouble identifying Barack Obama as the president of the United States, I assure you. It has become one of those seemingly random, seemingly incidental pieces of knowledge that it is nearly impossible not to know. If you can’t establish the same mental connections that everyone else does when there’s talk of paying like a god or saving fifteen percent or more on car insurance or breaking off a piece of that Kit Kat bar or whatever it is, you are fundamentally hindered in your ability to participate in contemporary American life. This is why I have such bullish expectations for Ecco’s brand equity. Power is persuasive, addictive even, sure, but please tell me—what could be stickier than the recursive experience of recursion itself?

  It was a favorite riff of Julian’s, one Wes had heard versions of before and tried to convince him to tone down a bit. Three deep vertical creases had pooled in Jack’s forehead. Greg looked hopelessly confused. But before Wes could temper Julian’s rhetoric, Jack jumped in:

  —I think it’s brilliant, he said flatly.

  —You do? said Wes and Greg, wide-eyed, simultaneously.

  Julian looked terrifically haughty.

  —Yes; this is exactly the kind of disruptive thinking I’ve been talking about, Greg, Jack said before turning to Wes. It’s clear you have a visionary running your operations. Very little could reflect better on you as a young executive. Enough small talk. If you don’t let me buy your company, I’m going to have to steal your chief operating officer. So, what’s it going to take?

  —Six glasses of champagne, Parker Remington demanded at the bar in the Great Hall.

  —Sorry, sir, but this bar isn’t open yet—you’ll want to head up to the Roof Garden.

  —I’ll meet you all up there, Diana announced to the group, excusing herself to the ladies’ room.

  The others made their way to the elevator, hopping aboard with a pair of pretty young museum employees.

  —Um, excuse me, ma’am, one of them addressed Prudence. I’m sorry, but pets are not permitted in the museum.

  —He’s not a pet, he’s my service animal.

  The girls looked at each other skeptically, but were powerless to question her. This was one of the benefits of being Prudence Hyman, Dale thought. Cloaked in the guise of a victim, she had unchecked power to oppress. He smiled at the girls sympathetically, hoping to soften the blow. Not too sympathetically, though—for all Dale knew, these were friends of Vivien.

  From the moment he’d ascended the front steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dale had been sharply on the lookout for signs of his fiancée. He’d primed himself for her to appear unexpectedly, instructed himself to act as if she were perpetually standing just behind him. He would not be caught off guard, let alone in some seemingly compromising position with Diana. If there was to be a surprise encounter, it would at least be a predictable one. Or so Dale thought, until he spied Julian Pappas-Fidicia in earnest conversation with Jack Howard and Greg Templeton and—yes—yes, there was no mistaking it. There was only one person who that person next to Greg could be: Charles Wesley Range IV.

  Dale nearly tripped on the uneven surface of Huyghe’s ground installation. It was like coming face to face with a celebrity or, closer still, a character from a novel—the kind, frankly, he would have liked to have written. There was this misplaced yet powerful sense of familiarity, kinship even, known to be false but felt to be true. This sensation itself was a familiar one. To Dale’s uncomfortable recollection, Wes Range engendered precisely the same sort of first impression as Diana Whalen.

  —Ah ha, Parker, glad you could make it, Jack Howard addressed his old friend first. Prudence, thanks for coming; I want you to meet Wes Range and Julian from Ecco. Wes, Julian, this is Prudence Hyman, Mercury’s chief information officer, and—er—

  Even Jack Howard’s well-oiled extraversion stumbled on how to introduce a dog.

  —And this is Horace, Prudence helped him.

  —It’s a pleasure to meet you. May I? Wes asked amiably before petting Horace.

  �
��Oh sure, he loves the attention, she said, significantly undercutting his “service animal” status.

  To Dale’s shock, Horace did love the attention. Ugh, Horace would like Wes Range.

  —Julian Pappas-Fidicia, nice to meet you, Julian inserted himself. Tell me, Prudence, is Horace an . . . orange Pomeranian by chance?

  —That’s correct.

  —Interesting, said Julian, making no similar move to touch the creature. Notoriously resilient breed, right, Dale? Great to see you, by the way.

  —You two know each other? Jack asked, holding out his hand to Dale.

  —I should hope so, Jack, said Dale, shaking it, actively ignoring Julian’s odd introduction. He’ll be officiating my wedding in September. We’re old college friends.

  —No kidding! Small world. Do you and Wes know each other then too?

  —I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure, started Wes with an open, sociable smile.

  Julian interrupted him with relish:

  —Perhaps not, but you have had the pleasure of meeting Dale’s fiancée.

  —Oh really? Who’s your fiancée, Dale?

  Wes’s inquiry came in that particular tone of loose, amiable curiosity reserved for playing the name game. Dale felt a nervous shiver run up his back that was utterly incompatible with it.

  —You know Vivien? Vivien Floris?

  —Vivien Floris! Wes exclaimed quietly, Ah, yes—but not well, I’m afraid—we went to the same high school, yes, but she was a couple of years ahead of me.