The Lost Ballet

by Richard Dorrance

  Chapter 37 – Hermes and Valentino

  At 8:30 the four troopers piled into a cab and headed for the Carrousel du Louvre. None of them wore couture except Richard, because he needed it and the three women didn’t. The less the women wore the better off everyone was. Richard had on his Galliano jeans with razor crease, an Alexander McQueen white silk shirt with gold embroidered hems at the shoulders, collar, and back, and Stella McCartney white lace-up suede shoes like her father wore at his wedding to Linda. No belt. Gale kept trying to stick a puce colored handkerchief in his shirt pocket, and he kept taking it out, in out, in out. Finally Anna said, “Look you idiot, have you forgotten this afternoon already? Are you dense? If she wants the handkerchief in your pocket, then it stays in your pocket. Got it?” He got it.

  Helstof wore light gray flannel pants, trim cut all the way down to her ankles, with huge pleats at the waist, and a simple black cashmere V-neck sweater. Her pumps were purple with black trim. Hanging in the V was a platinum necklace graced with a single violet tinged antique diamond, which at auction would bring somewhere in the neighborhood of $500K. She had declared it at customs.

  Anna flaunted a butter yellow pants suit, full cut and with side pleats running down to her knees. The jacket had a single gold button on one side and a black accent band at the pocket on the other. The sleeves truncated four inches above her wrists, and the pants did the same above her ankles. Her pumps were black suede. On the ring finger of both hands were identical bands, very wide, so as to not be mistaken for wedding bands, each lined with small yellow diamonds all the way around the inner edge. In one ear she had a disk of gold that matched the rings, with a similar yellow diamond stud in the center. In the four months they had been together in France working on the film, Richard never had seen this jewelry, and wondered where she had it stashed.

  Gale, of course, was flaming. She wore print-clashing pants and top, with a black three-quarter length light-weight silk jacket that came down to her knees. The pants were a paisley pattern dominated by jade green color, while the top was a herringbone pattern print, mostly gold and silver. The top and the silk jacket had huge matching buttons carved very thinly from alabaster. Her pumps, an inch taller than Helstof’s and Anna’s, were silver. Her jewelry consisted of two simple silver bracelets on each wrist, and huge high gothic silver earrings, one shaped like the left steeple at Chartres Cathedral and the other shaped like the right steeple.

  The Carrousel was a trip, with hundreds of people exhibiting the range of personal taste from the gloriously beautiful to the garishly banal. Finally seated in the Notre Dame ballroom for the Hermes show, the three neophytes and Gale caught their breath. A minute later one of the ushers came up to Richard and handed him an envelope. She pointed across the room at a tall brunette, totally draped in a skin-tight synthetic fabric covered in a kaleidoscopic array of fish scales. Small scales, large scales, red, blue, green, yellow, and silver, all colors, all shapes, and all fish scales. He opened the envelope and took out a room entry card from the Hotel de Crillon. Looking over at her, she smiled at him, then looked away. Whatever nationality she was, she wasn’t bashful.

  The lights went down and the walkway parade began. The first model looked like she was draped in an army parachute. Like the jumper had gathered it up after landing on the ground, taken it over and wrapped it around her, using the cords to tie it in place. Anna wondered if she was wearing combat boots on underneath, her feet being obscured by billows of the camouflage painted material. The second model wore a beautiful open weave cloth coat, three quarter length, an Irish gray color trimmed in a creamy frilly fringe. Helstof loved the material and cut of the coat, but was puzzled by what looked like a massive leather yoke from around the neck of a draft horse, that someone, the designer presumably, conceivably, had wrapped around her waist to serve as a belt. The model weighed about eighty pounds and this thing weighed about the same. It was straight off a Clydesdale, assuming Budweiser didn’t have a lock on them and they had some in France. An extraordinarily beautiful woman floated down the path, garbed in a mess that reminded Helstof of something her Ukrainian grandmother had worn at her grandfather’s funeral. There were bits of fur hanging from strange places on the model’s body, breaking up fields of black lace and black ruffles.

  There was thunderous applause at the end of the show, non-stop camera flashes, accolades of adoration cast at Christophe Lemaire, the perpetrator of the designs. None of this came from any of the Charlestonians, all of whom thought they just had witnessed footage that Busby Berkeley had rejected from one of his early projects. Helstof looked at Gale and said, “You brought me over here for that?”

  Gale said, “That was just the warmup. It’s like a rock concert, where the opening act always stinks, so the headliner seems great in comparison. Though I gotta say, what in god’s name is that man thinking?”

  “You saying Valentino is going to be different? Good? Not crazy shit like that?”

  “Creative people are different, Helstof. They just are. They need lots of room to play around in, to get that stuff out. Accept it. It’s just the way it is.”

  Helstof pulled in her legs so a man dressed like an ostrich could get out of the row of chairs. They all stood up and followed him out into the lobby where he was joined by a woman resembling an emu. They pecked at each other, very affectionately, and went over to the bar for pernods. The woman in fish scales stopped next to Richard, who was holding hands with Anna, and said, “Love those yellow jeans. Hope to see you later. Bring your friend,” and swam out through the lobby crowd, into the river called Rue Saint-Honoré.

  Gale wanted a Pernod too, a double, but Helstof led the way to the will-call window and asked if there were any messages. There was: “Pleased to meet you in the Seine River Ballroom at 10:30pm, prior to Valentino. Will be at end of train tracks. Stephan Derenencourt.” Also in the envelope were four tickets, each stamped 3750 Euro.

  Helstof looked at the clock on the vestibule wall, and said, “Let’s go. We’re meeting them in five minutes.” Richard still was looking at the doorway through which the fish scale lady had swum, but was jerked along by Anna and Gale, neither of whom had seen him get the room entry card. They found the ballroom, showed their tickets, and were escorted to front row seats by two willowy legged, barely legal ushers, one with straight hair down to her butt, the other with hair, short and slicked down with product, making her look like a teenage Hitler must have looked, minus the mustache. They sat for a minute, staring at fifty yards of metal train track that stretched back into the draperies hiding the changing rooms. No runway. Train track. Gale said, “This is going to be wild.”

  Helstof stood and said, “We’re supposed to meet them at the end of the track. Over there.” She led the way to where a handsome man was standing with a woman cloaked in a cream colored leather jacket and black leather skirt. Stephan Derenencourt introduced himself and his wife, Ingrid.

  “Bonjour. Hello. I am Stephan, and this is Ingrid.”

  The women and Richard introduced themselves. Gale pointed to the train tracks and asked, “What is going to happen tonight?”

  “We don’t know. These things are kept very secret. The French government intelligence agencies couldn’t find out, if they tried. But it appears a train is coming our way. Please, can we sit down and hear about your two projects in Charleston. Your team is very ambitious.”

  They sat in the five thousand dollar seats, and Helstof told them the short version of the current project to produce the lost ballet, and then Anna told them about her and Richard's postponed effort to write and produce an original ballet. She ended her summary, smiling and saying, “We have absolutely no idea why our friends in Charleston decided to move forward with the Stravinsky production, rather than wait for Richard and me to finish the film here and return to Charleston to finish our ballet. Really, I mean, what does old Igor have over us?”

&nbs
p; The French couple got the joke, and Stephan said, “I would be interested in hearing more about your ballet. Are you still in Paris tomorrow?”

  His wife said, “Selgey told me about the Stravinsky score, how he composed it for small orchestra, and how you are going to do the music with one man playing all the parts on synthesizer. I know this Pete Townshend. I love his songs. May we come to Charleston to see how you are doing this? It is fascinating.”

  Just then the lights dimmed, and the ballroom was filled with the loud sound of a train whistle. Overhead was a large, illuminated clock with Roman numerals, just like the one in the Gare du Nord. The whistle sound was replaced by the hissing of a train’s air brakes, and at the far end of the tracks, a large curtain was pulled aside. Then, chug chug chug, and from behind the curtain, the engine of a train appeared, shining a bright light down the fifty yards of simulated track. Jesus, the Valentino crew had built a fake train that actually moved, and that contained people in seats inside the single passenger car. The people inside were the models, wearing the new designs. Was this a fashion show or a circus?

  Chug chug and hiss hiss, huffing and puffing the engine and car moved slowly down the track past the rows of awestruck viewers, who, upon realizing the models were in the car, began to applaud and cheer. Steam billowed out from under the train, engulfing the seats in a fog scented with Valentino perfumes. When the engine reached the end of the track, the sound system emitted a loud squeal of brakes, followed by another blast from the whistle. The smoke cleared and the spot lights shone on the rear end of the passenger car, where the crowd saw the models get up from their seats. Out of the rear door came the first one, accompanied by a baggage handler carrying a small piece of Valentino luggage in each hand. The model was tall and thin, while the handler was male and short. The juxtaposed duo turned and walked down the simulated train platform the entire length of the train in front of the viewers. When they reached the front of the engine they crossed the track and walked back the length of the train on the far side, giving those viewers the same experience.

  After the first duo came the second, and the third, and the twentieth. Twenty tall, beautiful models accompanied by twenty short, swarthy men. Almost all of the clothes were a shade of earth brown, and all the models wore tall, fabric hats that made them look like they were out of a Dr. Seuss book. The expression on every model’s face was absolutely neutral, with not a hint of a smile or a frown. Despite the beauty of the faces, the women walked like robots, one following the other in a line.

  Anna found the whole thing bizarre, but the crowd erupted in applause and cheers. Richard wished the models weren’t bundled up like they were returning from a trip to Siberia. He wanted to see some swinging ass, even if it was skinny swinging ass. Helstof looked to see if the train had a real motor in it, or if it had been moved down the track by men pulling on hidden ropes. Gale was screaming with the rest of the crowd, because this was a fashion spectacle. After the models had disappeared behind the curtain at the rear of the train, the designer came out and walked the runway. He was about five foot three, had a three day growth of perfected coiffed beard, and wore black sneakers, black socks, black shorts, and a black t-shirt. He looked like a ball boy at an LA Lakers basketball game.

  Anna, Richard, and Helstof were glad it wasn’t them who had paid the $5000 per ticket. Gale would have paid it, if she’d had it. They chatted for a few minutes with Stephan and Ingrid, and headed back to the hotel. So much for Paris fashion week.