“I am, but if we’re going to do this we need expert assistance.”
The car made its way through the backed-up, honking streets of what Tom said was the Diamond District in Midtown. “On any given day,” he explained, “over three billion dollars’ worth of precious gems are cut, polished and sold within a four-block radius. If you look out your window you’ll see men and women wearing brown polyester, as if they worked preparing tax returns at walk-in storefronts. But they’ve got Peruvian amethysts and fistfuls of fire opals tucked away in the softest flannel pouches strapped to their inner thighs.”
We left the car and entered a shop where the dusty windows showcased, on faded velvet display stands, thin gold electroplate chains, sometimes dangling with cheeseball pendants of flat, gaudy intertwined hearts. Tom kept moving past the bored clerks until we reached a small, airless back room where the walls were lined with tiny oak drawers, and there was a woman bent almost double over a metal table as if she’d just dropped a contact lens.
“Madame Ponelle,” said Tom, with a surprising amount of respect.
The woman looked up, and I saw that she had a magnifying device like a small telescope, comfortably wedged, or maybe implanted, in her right eye.
“Thomas,” said the woman, and I knew that she was the only person on earth who could ever get away with using his full name. “You’re back.”
“And this is Becky,” said Tom. “Becky, this is Madame Helena Ponelle, who deals in only the very finest gemstones. Madame Ponelle, we’ll be needing all sorts of things, in red, white and black. Because Becky is about to become the most beautiful woman in the world.”
“Of course,” said Madame Ponelle, who resembled an especially regal basset hound, in a pale pink smock. “Rubies, diamonds and perhaps black pearls, a single strand, I think — more youthful.”
“I agree,” said Tom. “And what are you working on?”
“Since you last visited, I’ve retired completely from cutting the stones myself. But when this arrived, from a bed of volcanic ash in the Maldives, I couldn’t resist.”
She stepped back, revealing that at the center of the table, mounted in a vise, was the largest diamond I’d ever seen, even in a photograph. It was the size of a multifaceted softball, and I thought it was a joke and that Madame Ponelle was about to squeeze a hidden rubber sausage so her bogus diamond would squirt me.
“Is that … real?” I asked.
“Indeed,” said Madame Ponelle, “and I’ve only just sold it. It’s being used to ransom an extremely wealthy family who are currently being held hostage by Somali pirates.” Then she sighed and brought her lips very close to the diamond, whispering, “I’ll miss you.”
“You can’t do better than Madame Ponelle,” Tom told me once we were back in the car. “Her inventory is so comprehensive that it can’t be insured. The premiums would be impossible.”
“And she just keeps everything in those little wooden drawers?”
“Yes. Although I should mention that all of those yawning clerks, in the outer showroom? They were all once either presidential bodyguards or Mossad agents, and they’re armed to the teeth. If you had tried to even touch that diamond, well, what was left of you could’ve easily fit into one of those little drawers.”
“Oh my God …”
“But let’s talk about something infinitely more serious.”
“Like what?”
“Shoes.”
We were soon in Brooklyn and Drake pulled up in front of a five-story-high brick building that was painted with ancient, barely legible advertisements reading HEEL-TO-TOE INTERNATIONAL and FINE FOOTWEAR FOR GENTLEFOLK OF THE UTMOST DISTINCTION.
“Heel-to-Toe has been here for almost two hundred years,” said Tom. “The company was founded by Italian immigrants, who left for America after the king of Naples had insulted them.”
“How? What did he do?”
“On a whim, he’d worn a pair of French shoes, which Napoleon had provided, as an act of diplomacy. The Neapolitan king had quickly realized his mistake but it was too late. The far superior Italian shoemakers had taken all of their equipment, their awls and their needles and their glues, and left the country. They make all my shoes.”
Tom angled his foot and his black lace-ups gleamed, although not too brightly. “The simplest design,” he said, “requires the most skilled workmanship, because you can’t hide your mistakes. I’ve had these shoes for over twenty years and they only look better.”
A small reception area was lined with pegs that held hundreds of carved wooden forms shaped like streamlined feet and calves. “They’re called lasts,” said Tom, “and they’ve been whittled for the company’s most cherished clientele. If you look closely, each last is stenciled with a coded series of letters and numerals, to protect everyone’s privacy.” The lasts were made from a golden pearwood and they reminded me of artificial limbs, or the feet of those posable artists’ mannequins.
As Tom led me into the factory itself I could hear Italian curses overlaid with snatches of laughter and the tapping of hammers. “Each floor of the building houses one step of the process,” said Tom. “There are the rooms where the hides are tanned and dyed, and the rooms for cutting, stitching and molding. One pair of shoes can take three months of labor, by twelve separate artisans. But the main floor is reserved for the final adjustments. This is where the world’s finest shoes are born.”
This area was open, with brick walls, pitted plank floors and crude wooden farm tables. There was a single Italian dwarf seated on a high stool at each table, and each dwarf was wearing a dark suit and tie, and most of the dwarves had thick heads of hair and handsomely trimmed and oiled mustaches. The dwarves were all very good-looking, and while they kept working, each one managed a sideways glance at me, followed by a facial expression that didn’t look very impressed.
“Anselmo,” said Tom warmly as an older, silver-haired dwarf using a gold-topped cane approached us.
“Tom! Where have you been?” said the dwarf as Tom knelt slightly and the men embraced. “And this must be Becky.”
“I had Lila warn him,” Tom told me.
“I’m the Before,” I told Anselmo.
“You will be beautiful,” said Anselmo, taking my hand as his eyes swept to my feet, which were wearing my most comfortable shoes, which were a discount store knockoff of those lumpy suede Australian booties that, I admit, do make your feet look like blobs of chocolate pudding.
“I hope we are not too late,” murmured Anselmo.
“But why are they all, you know, little people?” I asked Tom, back in the car.
“Because their shoemaking secrets are so precious that the original Heel-to-Toe families intermarried. Once you’ve worn their product, you’ll understand. And approve.”
An hour later, we were outside the penthouse on the one-hundred-twenty-eighth floor of a glass-and-steel skyscraper on the Upper East Side, where, as Tom informed me, “We are about to meet with the most gifted perfumer alive today. He lives all the way up here because the air is the coldest and the cleanest, and doesn’t compete with his work.”
An assistant brought us into a room that made Tom’s compound look like a festering garbage dump. Everything was so white and hypoallergenically sterilized that I worried about depositing grime, just by exhaling. There was laboratory equipment, including glass canisters holding samples of everything from freshly mown grass to just-ironed linen to clippings of recently shampooed blond hair, along with some camellias I recognized from Tom’s garden. Assistants were measuring and sifting and recording results on touch screens, and while each man and woman sprouted an extremely large nose, when Tom said, “Archie!” I wasn’t prepared for what swung around to greet us.
Archie was the biggest nose I’d ever seen, with a man attached to it lagging far behind, maybe within shouting distance. Archie’s nose was like one of those huge modern sculptures that fill the entire plaza in front of an office building, where people have to squeeze around it to
get to work in the morning. His nose was arched and curved, and while his nostrils were finely molded, they were so deep that I expected to see an ENTRANCE sign on one and an EXIT sign on the other. I loved Archie’s nose because it made me get what Tom had been talking about when it came to expertise. If Archie’s nose couldn’t detect and classify and judge a scent, that scent didn’t exist.
Tom and Archie couldn’t hug or shake hands because there was too much nose in between them. Instead, Tom nodded as Archie stayed still, because if Archie moved his head too abruptly, people could get hurt.
“Becky is going to need fragrances for day, evening and all sorts of special events,” said Tom.
Archie slowly moved his nose in my direction and when he inhaled I felt a definite suction and the ends of my hair were lifted and tugged in Archie’s direction.
“Missouri trailer park,” Archie deduced, although his voice, coming from far beneath and behind his nose, had an echo. “I’d say you lived near the recycling bins, and about fifteen yards from … from …”
As Archie continued to sniff, I helped him out: “An alcoholic named Emmett.”
By late afternoon we were on a balcony overlooking the bustling main floor of a Tom Kelly manufacturing and distribution plant in central New Jersey. There were conveyor belts snaking around stainless steel vats and the machinery that was being used to mix, solidify and package Tom’s many lines of cosmetics.
“I just wanted you to see this place,” said Tom. We were both wearing hard hats and protective goggles with the Tom Kelly logo.
“I’m having a batch of products custom-blended for your particular and extraordinary needs.”
I wasn’t sure if Tom was insulting me again by implying that in order to make me beautiful, he’d need the whole factory’s worth of wet-look mascara and barely there pore-minimizing foundation. I watched employees in white jumpsuits pouring buckets of additives into the larger vats of creams and powders. The additive buckets were labeled in silvery gray letters, with terms including “Renewal,” “Tenderness” and “Firmness,” like campaign promises.
By dusk we’d returned to the compound for my next fitting. I still didn’t know what I’d be wearing, because my red dress now only existed as a stiff, cream-colored muslin mock-up, held together with tape and straight pins, and covered with markings in grease pencil. I looked like a not very appetizing rag doll, as Tom, Mrs. Chen and Lila circled me, exchanging a shorthand of frowns, fluttering hand gestures and tongue clicks.
“What?” I finally said. “Do I look that bad? Are you all that worried? Is it that impossible?”
Tom, Mrs. Chen and Lila all glanced at each other and, in instant agreement, joined in a massive tongue click.
“SHUT UP!” I yelled as they all continued to shake their heads in sorrow.
The next day I left my hotel and moved into the compound. Lila brought me to my room, or my cell, which was down another long, twisting hallway on a lower floor. It was an L-shaped chamber with Tom’s mandatory white walls and the furniture included Tom’s favorite black leather armchairs nestled in chrome tubing.
Once I was alone I picked up a remote control, which activated a wall of what I thought was solid black leather but which turned out to be drapes, which were dramatically swooshed into a corner, revealing a wall of glass overlooking the Hudson. I was practically walking on water and strolling out to greet the tugboats, ferries, kayaks and a trio of mega-yachts. I staggered backward, both drawn to the river and terrified of crashing through the glass and drowning.
“Come on,” said Lila, who’d reappeared. “The red dress. It’s done. They’re ready for you.”
Two of Mrs. Chen’s assistants helped me into the dress, lowering it over my head, and then adjusting the intricate boning and mesh. The whisper-light, concealed corset and stiffened bodice were both confining and necessary; they were Tom Kelly’s hands, insistently compressing and shaping my flesh. The dress itself floated over this gently rigid core and there were at least three layers of fabric. First came a mist, or maybe a rumor, of the most caressing, liquid satin, which was covered by a haze of something iridescently sheer, followed by a swirl of the airiest pure silk chiffon, a fabric so transparent and alive that it became a delicate force field.
Before I go any further, I just have to say one thing: Until that moment, I hated dresses. Dresses were girly and impractical, so I stuck to oversized T-shirts, sweats and jeans, which didn’t cost much or get in my way. When I had sidled past them in the halls, even when I’d kept my head down, Shanice Morain and her clique had cackled and asked me if I was the new school janitor. They’d always dressed alike, in tight, micro-short white denim skirts, with sherbet-colored skimpy ribbed tank tops, worn in layers to emphasize the girls’ thinness, and they’d flipped and stroked their yards of shiny, flat hair which they’d spent hours shampooing and conditioning and most likely deep-kissing because they loved it so much.
One of the only fights I’d ever had with my mom revolved around what I’d intended to wear to my middle school graduation. The school had forbidden pants so I’d bought the plainest, most shapeless navy blue polyester dress I could find. “Becky!” my mother had said as I was leaving the trailer for the ceremony. “What are you wearing? You look like a nun. No, I take that back — you look like a depressed nun.”
“It’s fine,” I’d insisted. “It’s no big deal.”
“Oh, sweetie,” my mom had said, sitting me down. “I know that, because you don’t want me to feel bad about getting so big, you never want to dress up. You sort of hide out inside your clothes. But you don’t have to. I’ve worn some pretty clothes, and I loved them and I don’t want you to miss out on that.”
“But this won’t show any stains if I spill something. I don’t need anything fancy….”
“It doesn’t have to be fancy. But you should wear something that makes you feel wonderful. That’s what a really good dress can do, if it’s the right color and it fits well. It can make you feel like — like nothing can stop you. Like you can rule the world.”
I’d remained doubtful but because my mom had insisted, I’d worn the navy blue dress with a narrow red leather belt and some red glass beads. “You see?” my mom had reassured me. “It’s a start. Now you look like — like a nun going on a date.”
But now, at Tom Kelly’s compound, in a dress designed by Tom and painstakingly stitched by Mrs. Chen and her seamstresses, maybe everything would be different. I shut my eyes and held my breath. I decided that, for once in my life, I wouldn’t be nervous or skeptical, and I wouldn’t make a wisecrack and try to automatically lower my expectations. I decided that maybe, for the first time ever, something amazing was going to happen. My mom had sent me to Tom Kelly for a good reason and when I opened my eyes I was going to be someone completely new, someone who’d never be afraid and someone who could do anything. I was going to believe in magic, and I could feel the magic working: My blood was pumping and my skin was tingling because the red dress was changing me, and the atoms of my face and my body were being reborn and rearranged, as a totally fresh human being, or maybe a superhero, bursting out of my old, useless lumpiness, just the way Tom Kelly had promised, and I got so giddy and excited that I made a mistake. I opened my eyes.
All I saw was me, the same old awkward, slouching, pigeon-toed, a-diet-wouldn’t-kill-you, not-pretty girl with the drab brown hair and the plain brown eyes and a little too much chin. I was a hapless teenager on a misbegotten prom night packed into an overblown disaster loaned to me by one of those church organizations that try to cheer up the poor kids. My dress could’ve been donated from long-unsold stock by Karol-Amber’s Ultimate Bridal Experience Plus Dressy Dresses Boutique-on-the-Square.
Tom and Mrs. Chen were smiling, and I’d never hated anyone so much. This whole three-dresses deal was obviously a rich people’s prank to humiliate the imported trailer trash, and there were most likely hidden cameras, and the footage would be aired on one of those America’s Most Gullib
le Morons compilation shows. My face was hot with shame and embarrassment and I only blamed myself: Why had I agreed to this bullshit? What did I think was going to happen?
I was about to rip off the dress and throw it on the floor and spit on it, but then I remembered my mom and I knew that I had to demonstrate at least minimal good manners because I hadn’t been raised by wolves.
“So what do you think?” asked Tom, goading me, seeing how far he could push me.
“I think it looks … fine,” I said, probably with steam blasting from my ears.
“Good,” said Tom. “Very good. So I’ll go get dressed, and then we’ll be on our way.”
On our way? To where? Was Tom going to drive me down a lonely highway to a swamp and dump me into the muck, giggling as he told Drake to floor it, or, even worse, so much worse, was Tom going to drag me to a happening restaurant or to someone’s twelve-million-dollar penthouse loft and exhibit me to his friends, asking everyone, can you believe this pathetic blob is Roberta Randle’s daughter?
“Becky,” said Lila, who sat with me at her desk while Tom was getting ready. “I can only imagine what you’re feeling. And yes, New York City, and people like Tom, can do more damage than a flamethrower at full blast. But there’s only one word you need to remember, as your mantra….”
“My what?”
“A mantra is something that centers you. And prepares you. And it pays off.”
“Fine,” I said as I slumped on a curved glass bench. I didn’t care if I was creasing my dress, in fact, I hoped I was. I hoped that people would say, sure, that girl is a hopeless, butt-faced, stoop-shouldered uggabug, but her Tom Kelly dress sucks too. “So what’s my mantra?”
“Your mantra,” said Lila, “is ‘wait.’”
Tom appeared a few seconds later in his hand-tailored tuxedo, which he wore with a careless ease as if he were still hanging out in his T-shirt and jeans. Tom looked like a man in an advertisement, ambling barefoot along a St. Croix beach at dawn, still in his formalwear but with his tie undone and his pleated shirt hanging open, with one arm draped around some blond hottie and a bottle of champagne dangling from his other hand. The ad could be for anything, from Tom Kelly cufflinks to a chain of exclusive Tom Kelly gated resort communities to a prescription-only Tom Kelly cure-all for erectile dysfunction.
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