The Tourists

by Jeff Hobbs

  7

  I WOKE UP the morning after Randolph Torrance’s party with no remembrance of how I got home. French fries were scattered all over the bed and a half-eaten cheeseburger sat on the nightstand. The only reason I even considered getting out of bed was that my tooth still throbbed and it was 6:30 and I was never going to fall back asleep. I took the last of the Vicodin and listened to the message on my phone from sometime during the night:

  “It’s me, Ethan. Listen, I know you were at that fucking depressing monkey party last night, and it made me sad you didn’t tell me you were going. You should have…Samona told me you might be there and that’s one of the reasons I went—to see you…” He sighed. “Maybe avoiding rudeness would be a first step toward moving along with that little thing you call a life? Let’s just leave it at that for now…Maybe some other time we can talk about all the things you don’t really know…I can’t help thinking that you’re…” He trailed off and I thought my phone had cut out. Then his voice returned. “Well…call if you’re compelled.”

  I certainly wasn’t compelled, and instead I went out and bought the Post and a fruit smoothie, which shocked my tooth but the Vicodin was washing away the pain. Bleary-eyed, I read every word in the Post, starting with sports in the back and working my way toward the front: the Yankees were on a winning streak but traded their best lefty, handbags from Juicy Couture were a must-have, two actresses from Friends were vacationing in Hawaii, photos of the Hilton sisters curtsying with Ashton Kutcher at a club opening on Twenty-second Street were laid out next to a fireman who had died in a building collapse on the edge of Harlem.

  By the time I finished it was after nine. I logged onto the Internet and saw that David had e-mailed.

  From: David. Taylor@Leonardco.com

  To: readyandwaiting@hotmail.com

  Sent: Thursday, June 3, 5:52 AM

  Subject: last night

  glad you came by last night. sorry you disappeared. a yale guy Ethan Hoevel came by sometime right after. think you knew him. good guy—is he gay? might end up doing some work for us. how random is that? ok, stay in touch. regards, d

  I noticed two uppercase letters.

  I replied.

  Thanks for throwing me the invite. Great to see you and your wife (old lady, ball & chain, other half, lifelong love, etc). I’m very jealous—and I woke up this morning in bed with a half-eaten bag of french fries. Do not ask.

  And just as I hit send, a new message popped up.

  From: samona.taylor@printingdivine.com

  To: readyandwaiting@hotmail.com

  Sent: Thursday, June 3, 9:02 AM

  Subject: (no subject)

  Hello there. I very much enjoyed seeing u last night. It brought back lots of nice memories. Will u come by the studio sometime? Maybe tomorrow? Fondly, SAT

  I read it a few times and always came back to “nice memories.”

  I wrote back.

  Samona. Yes, it was a good time. You looked great. I’m pretty swamped though—want to say next week instead?

  Then I closed my e-mail, turned my cell phone off, and set the landline to go straight to the machine, like Ethan did when he traveled, and I began three days of quiet, solid work.

  They went by fast. I didn’t drink at all except for the occasional beer with take-out sushi (a risk but an inexpensive one). My tooth started feeling better. My apartment looked clean. My computer was streamlined and running smoothly. The editor at New York magazine called back and I pitched my Gowanus idea very lucidly and she promised to try her best to clear up some space. On Sunday I went back to Brooklyn and interviewed random residents about pollution. I also covered a bar opening in the meatpacking district as well as a fund-raiser in a mausoleum-like apartment on Central Park West for the New York City Council speaker who was running for mayor next year.

  And on Monday, soothed by the recent activity, I was finally ready to see Samona Taylor.

  I wore dark jeans and a blue polo shirt and headed west to University Place, then down through NYU and SoHo. It was muggy and gray, with sprinkles of warm rain. People sat around Washington Square sweating in the heat. And I prepared myself for a short meeting with a girl I hadn’t seen (soberly) since college. It was just a formality, I told myself. I would compliment her on how she looked and send my best regards to her husband and say encouraging things about her studio based on my limited experience in the fashion industry, and I would throw out a few ideas about getting more publicity and suppress the inevitable pangs of desire for her and ignore the jealousy I felt toward David and Ethan, and I would keep my fantasies of various combinations of the three of them in a large bed to a minimum. I walked across the slippery cobblestones of Greene Street with a clear head.

  There was no one in Printing Divine when I opened the door and entered the reception area. The studio inhabited a narrow space—maybe seventeen feet across—that stretched deep into the block, and the twenty-foot-high ceiling with skylights helped ease the claustrophobia I caught while I waited. The floors and walls were all white-on-white, and two chairs and a small sofa made up a waiting area along with a wooden table layered with magazines. Vintage movie posters hung everywhere (Last Tango in Paris, Rear Window, An Affair to Remember) alongside the occasional framed promo from recent events (Betsey Johnson at Lotus, the Tommy Hilfiger party at Lot 61). Unrecognizable New Age music played softly from speakers. Lying on top of the reception desk was a guest register and a “comments” book. Beyond the desk were two glass-walled offices, both deserted.

  I opened the “comments” book—all blank pages with dates on top of each one. I went for the guest register but there was a creak overhead.

  A woman nearing forty was descending a staircase that was tucked against the wall to my right. The first thing I noticed was how disproportionately long her arms seemed next to her short body. She scanned me up and down, just like I was doing to her (just like everyone was always doing to everyone else in this city) and then she asked in a very high voice, “May I help you?”

  “I’m here to see Samona.”

  “She’s upstairs. Do you have an appointment?”

  “I’m just an old friend.” I told her my name.

  “Nice to meet you,” she said with too much enthusiasm. “I’m Martha. Her colleague.”

  As we shook hands, heavy footsteps sounded throughout the canyonlike studio and Samona’s voice came from somewhere above us.

  “Hello down there.”

  I looked up too fast and a cramp shot through my neck.

  Samona was leaning over a railing and she was wearing a red silk blouse that accentuated her breasts and revealed a small, dark freckle that I’d never noticed before.

  “I’ll be right down.”

  “Take your time. I should have called. I’m sorry.”

  “No problem,” she said, smiling at me. “Take a seat in my office and I’ll be right there. Martha, would you take over for me up here?”

  Martha grumbled under her breath and rolled her eyes. “Sure. No problem.”

  A few minutes later the two of us were sitting across from each other at a small conference table, drinking lukewarm green tea while talking vaguely about business. The room was cramped and Samona was scrolling through a very thin portfolio, talking about things like organic dye distributors, ink settings, gloss, thread counts. I just went along with the fact that she didn’t seem to know very much about any of it.

  “And we usually use a quarter-inch bleed around the fringes.” Samona paused. “Or wait—it depends. We use a full bleed with darker fabrics so the colors won’t run. Right. That’s right.”

  I gazed at her while she went on, talking as if I were a client of some kind. I asked a few polite questions—“Who would be your dream client?” “How amazing is it that you started your own company?” “Didn’t you major in art history?”—and she gave basic answers while squinting at the portfolio, absently rubbing at a smudge.

  “So, what were you working on?” I finally ask
ed, clearing my head. “Before I barged in here.”

  “Well, I was upstairs where all the real work gets done. Down here’s just, like, bookkeeping and phone calls.”

  “Right,” I said. “Right.”

  She seemed distracted—there was something she wasn’t saying yet—but she grew slowly more animated as she went on. “But upstairs, upstairs it’s all state-of-the-art presses. And right now we’re basically working on two jobs. One’s pretty big—Betsey Johnson and—”

  “How’d you land her so early in the game?” I asked, trying to sound impressed.

  “Martha’s husband,” Samona said. “He’s a stylist. He does wardrobes.” She paused, and then assured me, “Betsey is totally happy with the work we’ve done.”

  “Who’s the other client?” I asked.

  “Not as big,” Samona said. “A designer you probably haven’t heard of yet—Stanton Vaughn.”

  She glanced away.

  Somehow, I wasn’t surprised.

  “I just saw some of his stuff at the Urban Outfitters around the corner from where I live,” I finally said in the most casual voice I could muster.

  Suddenly she looked back at me and laughed. “You shop at Urban Outfitters?”

  Stuck, I managed to say, “Just for, like, underwear and…scarves.”

  It was “scarves” that caused a silence to envelop the room while Samona stared at me intently, as if I were a riddle that needed solving.

  “Anyway”—her rolling voice started up again—“we have our sights set a little higher than Stanton Vaughn. I mean”—and now she leaned in conspiratorially—“we’ve been hearing that he imports his material from Indonesia.”

  At first I didn’t know what this meant.

  And then I made a guess and jumped in for the save. “Ten thousand little kids with infected blisters working for seventeen cents a day?”

  Samona nodded grimly. “That’s really not something we want to be connected with.”

  This exchange caused her to stand up. “It’s boring down here—why don’t I show you the presses?”

  She led me upstairs into a claustrophobic space where the printing machinery was packed too tightly between the narrow walls, the racks of clothes, and a low ceiling. There were three printing presses, and spaced between them were cutting boards and a measuring table scattered with small magnifying glasses, dye trays, slicing tools, and an iMac connected to a scanner and a large photo printer. The smallest press was pushing out a set of retro-black shirts marked with the logo of a muscled chest while Martha stood behind it monitoring the output.

  I recognized the clothing.

  So: Ethan was going to save Samona and her little business.

  The same way he had saved Stanton.

  The same way he had tried to save me.

  Just because we all needed him to—and because he could.

  I wondered aloud how they’d managed to arrange the machines and racks to actually fit in this space.

  “We hired an interior space consultant,” Martha called from across the room in her little-girl voice.

  “Was that in the proposal you wrote for David?” I asked.

  Samona stopped. “He told you about that?”

  “I wrote most of it,” Martha added.

  “He’s a businessman, and he was investing his money,” Samona said defensively. “Of course we wrote a proposal.”

  I changed the subject by gesturing toward Martha. “Is that how you two met?” I said loudly over the hum of the machines.

  Samona seemed relieved to be asked a question she could easily answer. “Oh, I’ve known Martha since my modeling days.”

  “I was a stylist then,” Martha said. “And Samona’s a Pisces, and I’m a Taurus and—you know—Neptune and Venus, parallel orbits.” She squinted at me. “What’s your sign?”

  “I don’t really believe in horoscopes.” I tried to smile.

  Martha leaned forward over the machine. “When were you born?”

  I told her.

  “You’re a Virgo.” She leaned back again, satisfied. This information seemed to explain exactly what I was doing there.

  “What does that mean?” I asked her while trying not to stare at Samona.

  “You’re ruled by Mercury. That means communication.” Martha studied me. “It also means you’re practical, adaptable, but generally you’re indirect—among other things.”

  “Should I be writing this down?” I asked.

  “It’s a weather report. You don’t have to write it down. Just be aware.”

  “The weatherman is only right about a third of the time.”

  Martha shrugged like it was my loss.

  Samona rolled her eyes. “Martha is an evangelist of the zodiac.”

  Then Martha turned back to the machine and said to me, “So what do you do exactly?”

  “I’m, kind of, a writer. I guess. Journalism, mostly—I do a lot of fashion reviews.”

  “Oh?” Martha looked up, intrigued, scanning me up and down again as if trying to gauge whether or not this was actually true.

  Samona chimed in. “Hey, maybe you could write up a little story about a boutique textile printing company started by two friends with an eye for fashion and a taste for adventure!”

  “I could…try,” I replied, distracted by the way Samona was looking at me, her dark eyes wide and expectant and impressed.

  I had to pull away by focusing on Martha, who had already lost interest in me—she’d seen the way I was staring at Samona, I quickly realized, and she knew that the reason I’d come here had nothing to do with fashion journalism—and she murmured, “So, you two were friends in college?”

  Samona and I exchanged half smiles.

  “Yeah,” I said. “We knew each other.”

  “Not well,” Samona corrected. “More like we knew of each other.”

  “You knew about me?” I blurted out. Then I picked up the sleeve of one of Stanton’s shirts. The fabric was warm.

  “Careful,” Martha warned, moving to take it from me but then, for some reason, retreating. “Dye’s still wet.”

  “Is this Betsey or Stanton?” I asked. The entire situation seemed to call for me to pretend like I didn’t know anything.

  “That’s Stanton,” Samona said. “Wait, this machine is too loud—let me pause it.”

  She hit a few buttons before Martha exclaimed “Don’t!” and there was a grinding noise from deep inside the machine. The press stopped rolling. There was another sound: the rending of fabric. And then the shirts stopped coming out.

  Martha went to the keyboard and started hitting buttons but all that did was cause another grinding sound.

  The computer across the room beeped and said “ERROR.”

  Martha turned the power off. The loft was silent except for the New Age music.

  “Sorry,” Samona said. “I’ve done that before.”

  “I know.” Martha just stared at the machine, her hands on her hips. “Shit.”

  I cleared my throat and said, “Maybe I should go…”

  “No. No.” Samona put her hand on mine just like she had done in Randolph Torrance’s apartment. “Stay,” she said. “Please. Don’t you want to have lunch?”

  “ERR-OR.”

  “I was just going to get some noodles at this little place in Chinatown—”

  “No, no—we’ll order something.” Samona’s voice sounded desperate.

  “You must be busy, though, and now you’ve gotta take care of this.” I waved my hand around the machine, where Martha had pulled the console off and was staring inside.

  “How about paninis? There’s a great place around the corner.” I had turned toward the stairs but Samona grabbed the back of my shirt.

  Martha turned around. “Samona, we’re going to need this press this afternoon.”

  “ERR-OR.”

  “Look, I’ll fix it, Martha. Why don’t you just go pick up something from Angeli and it’ll be all fixed by the time you get back.”<
br />
  Martha was focused on me now, and I sheepishly looked away and pretended to inspect the wounded machine.

  “Just pick up a bunch of the mozzarella and tomato, okay?” Samona was almost pleading as two twenties materialized in her hand and found their way into Martha’s pocket.

  “ERR—” Martha hit the return button on the way to the stairs. She didn’t say anything as she left. The electronic bell over the door rang when it opened and rang again when it closed.

  The two of us stood very still. And then Samona, who seemed to be calming down slightly, let go of my shirt, and in the quiet I could hear her subtle exhale. She began following instructions on a side panel and opened the top of the press and leaned inside.

  “This should only take a second,” she said apologetically. “It’s just stuck, I think.”

  “Do you…need any help?” I offered, but was cut off by a deep grinding of plastic and metal. Samona cried out and leaped away from the machine, clutching her hand. She shook it limply from the wrist. There was a black dye stain across her blouse, just below her breasts.

  I had to force myself to avert my gaze and concentrate on the skin of her hand, which was already swelling.

  I took her hand in mine. Her fingers were incredibly soft and uncallused.

  “It doesn’t look too bad,” I said. “Do you have any ice?”

  “It’s fine,” she muttered. “It’s okay.”

  “It’s starting to swell.”

  “I’ll get some ice in back.”

  And then, after an uncomfortable silence gave her no choice, she pulled her hand away, and it left a deep black ink stain on mine.

  “You know what,” I said. “I think I can probably fix this.”

  “The fashion print business: man’s work.” She sighed and attempted a smile.

  When she went downstairs for the ice, I leaned into the machine. The mat and roller were steaming hot, and a tattered shirt collar was jammed in the teeth. I started easing out fabric, gently at first, trying to preserve what was left of the shirt.

  Samona came back upstairs while I was still inside the machine.