“I was copying the painting of that guy over there,” he pointed to Abraham Pierson over the mantle, “but you’re way better-looking.”
I felt my blush ripen into a deeper shade as he confirmed his corporeality with another juicy bite of clementine. He turned up his wrist to wipe a trickle from the corner of his lips, then leaned in, his face swooping right in front of mine.
“Wow!” he exclaimed. His green eyes blinked inches away from my own, and the scintillating smell of citrus washed over me. “Are your eyes . . . ?”
“Yea, they’re—different colors.”
“That’s amazing,” he said, with greater fascination than I felt was deserved by any aspect of my humble appearance. “I’ve never seen that before.”
Our intimate proximity brought me within earshot of his headphones. “Are you listening to Puccini?” I asked.
He nodded, and his face withdrew from mine. “You like him?”
I laughed outright. “I love Puccini. Madama Butterfly was my first opera.”
He pulled his headphones down around his nape, his fingers still wrapped around his half-eaten clementine. “Then how about this?” Resting his knee on the seat opposite me, he fiddled with a volume button in his pocket; “O Soave Fanciulla,” Rudolfo and Mimi’s duet from Act One of La Bohème, crescendoed. “You’ll let me draw you, and I’ll put Puccini here so we can both listen.” He unslung the headphones from his neck and dropped them onto my tray with a grin. “Unless—I don’t know, are you studying for something?”
“Not really. I just . . .” I was flattered, but confused by his choice of artistic subject. Between the two of us, wasn’t it his face which deserved immortalization?
“Then you’ll do it!” he filled in, and swung himself into the chair before me. “You don’t have to do anything,” he promised, “except be still.” He turned to a new page in his sketchbook and remembered, “Oh—! I’m Dorian!”
His outstretched hand was like an anatomical study, his smooth, broad-knuckled fingers sticky with clementine juice.
“We have a class together, you know,” I informed him, as our hands met and he gave mine a vigorous shake. “Intro to European Art, with Pericles Lewis.”
“Oh, I know,” he nodded, and I swelled up to hear that he had recognized me. “I like all your suits. I wish I could wear clothes like that, but I’d just get them dirty.” He smiled, and it was like looking straight into a blinding light. “Do you want this?” he asked. His white wrist caught a flash of sunlight overhead as he offered up the remainder of his clementine.
I laid it on the corner of my tray as he lopped his book bag onto his lap and began to shuffle through it. The bag was expensive-looking—camel-tone leather, with elegant brass trimmings—but unfortunately, it also looked like Dorian had run it through a trash compactor, with its crisscross of deep scratches over the whole front, and a shedding piece of yellow gaffer tape wrapped around one strap. Inside, a piece of shattered charcoal had coated the entire lining with a leaden ash.
A pair of blackened drumsticks rolled to one side. “Do you play the drums?” I asked.
“No.” He gave me a quizzical look, then realized—“Oh! Yes. These.” He rubbed the drumsticks together like he was starting a fire and sent a cloud of charcoal dust into the air. “I thought I would learn music, but it’s too hard. All those symbols—you know what they say about language, once you get old, it’s almost impossible to learn a new one, and . . .” He abandoned the drumsticks into the bag with a clatter as his search intensified, and for a second I was sure he would give up and dump it all onto my silver lunch tray.
“Now where did I put my—” He raised his hand to his chin and smudged it with charcoal. “I have the worst sense of—oh!” An unexplained chorus of pine needles drifted idly to the floor as he emerged victorious with a battered box of oil pastels. “This picture needs to be in color,” he said. “With your eyes, I’d be stupid to draw you in black-and-white.”
He unhinged the crushed lid. “Now, I don’t want you to have any expectations,” he warned. “I just started learning to draw people, so—I don’t really know what I’m doing. I’m pretty fast though—you’ll just have to be still for five minutes.” He pulled out a bright orange pastel for consideration, and closing one eye as he held it up to my face, decided promptly that it matched my white skin.
I tidied up my evolution flashcards and clasped my hands over my tray. “Where should I look?”
He pointed with two fingers into his eyes. “Straight at me,” he replied, then—“Your glasses.”
“What about them?”
“Can you take them off?”
I sat paralyzed by self-consciousness. Dorian couldn’t have known, but I had never let anybody see me without my glasses: They were as integral to my sense of self as my colorful suits, armor I wore to protect me against the world. Without them, I would be practically naked, yet how could I fear Dorian, whose face defied all malice—its every contour a testament to enduring virtue?
He sat there with the pastel hovering over the page, and a look of earnest willfulness. All around I became aware of doors flying open and closed, but the silence between us was deafening. Eyes closed, I touched my fingers against my tortoiseshell rims. I felt the glasses slide off my face, almost of their own accord; heard the faint clicks as I pressed the two hinged legs closed, one by one, against my chest. I wrapped my fingers around the flattened frame; let my hand fall upon my lap; looked up. When I opened my eyes at last, everything was clouded: Dorian’s silhouette, his outstretched arm, the back of his sketchpad like a blurry white swatch in a Mondrian painting. Yet I could feel his eyes on me—keen and unflinching—and my heart began to beat very fast.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, without a hint of hesitation.
I felt the blood rise yet again to my cheeks, and tried to laugh off my embarrassment: “Says the model’s son.”
“It’s true—I mean, don’t get a big head about it, but . . .” He settled back into his chair with a creak. “You know who you remind me of? Remember that Caravaggio we saw in class last week—the young boy, with the black hair?”
I knew exactly which one he was talking about. “The Borghese boy? Carrying the basket of fruit?”
The abstraction of a nod. “Not your face, exactly,” Dorian explained, as he adjusted his sketchpad on what looked like his upraised knee. “Just the expression. He’s holding this whole basket of fruit, but still—he looks so hungry.”
I felt my lips unstick as I let this settle over me; listened to the whoosh of his hand over the paper. A circle, the basic contour of my face. His own hazy countenance shifted up and down—turned white when he looked up at me, then fell into shadow upon the lowering of his gaze toward the page.
“So where are you from?” he asked.
“Texas,” I replied, and before I could carry on with some self-deprecating detail, his face lit up, penetrating the fog of my blurred vision with unmistakable delight.
“No way!” he said, although I could hardly guess the reason for his enthusiasm. “Did you own a horse?”
I laughed. “Is that what you envision, when you hear somebody’s from Texas? You should think deserted malls and parking lots instead.”
“I love horseback riding,” Dorian said. I heard him blow on the surface of the page; brush the back of his hand over it to clear off a pitter-patter of unwanted eraser specks. “That’s what I wanted to do at West Point—thought I’d get to gallop around with a bayonet or something.”
“You went to West Point?!” I leaned abruptly toward him.
“Don’t move!”
“Sorry, I just—” I drew my face back and shook away my surprise. “I had no idea.”
“Yeah, I just escaped,” he smiled. “Or, well—I transferred out, but when people ask I tell them I freed all the horses and then jumped the fence. Except there wasn’t really any horses. Or a fence, really.”
“How’d you end up at West Point, though?”
/>
“I told you, I wanted to ride horses. I’m just kidding, sort of. I didn’t want to go to college, but my mom was going to make me, so I thought I’d do something different.”
“It didn’t seem drastic?”
“Not more drastic than jumping from Texas to Connecticut. I mean, my mom thought it was extreme, but she’s used to it. She says it’s what happens when you don’t have a Path.” He paused to exchange his pastel for a different color. “Have you heard about Paths?”
I squinted, trying to detect some deeper meaning in the word, the translation of which was perhaps lost through my lack of vision. “You mean, like roads?”
“No, I mean—in life. Like when people say, ‘Everyone has a Path, and you just have to follow it.’”
“Of course I’ve heard of that,” I laughed. “You make it sound like some big mystery!”
“Well, because it is! Everyone except for me has a Path. I don’t know why. I just think to myself, How am I supposed to pick one thing to do for the rest of my life? I want to go everywhere, do everything. My Path looks like this so far,” he said, and traced a preposterous trail of loop-de-loops in the air with his finger.
“Isn’t art like your Path, though?”
“Art is my latest thing. That’s how it always goes: I start these things—hobbies, projects—and then I get bored.”
“Like horseback riding.”
“No, actually I’ve always liked horseback riding, but other things haven’t stuck that long. Like when we lived in London I was obsessed with water polo. In Milan, it was opera. Then I had a mountain biking phase in Toulouse, and a bird-watching phase, and then a cooking phase when we first moved to Paris. That one was bad. I still can’t even do eggs . . .” His voice trailed off as he tilted his hazy head up to the white ceiling, and began enumerating on his fingers. “There was gymnastics and painting—both acrylic and oil—” He seemed to have only gotten started when I felt a hand on my shoulder.
“I almost didn’t recognize you without your glasses,” remarked Madeline, as she bent over to kiss my cheek.
I stirred, remembering myself, and returned the tortoiseshell glasses to my face. The familiar sight of Madeline came into sharp view—her delicate hands and flowing hair, and a floral pink-and-white sundress nipped at the waist by a Tiffany-blue sash.
Dorian, too, seemed to emerge from a blurred world into clarity, as he stared at Madeline, enraptured. “How . . .”
Madeline’s hand trailed off my shoulder as she noticed him.
He pieced together a breathless benediction: “How have I never seen you before?”
She blushed, and glanced at me. Then their eyes connected and a shy smile hovered around her lips before her usual charm flooded her face. “Maybe you have, and you just weren’t paying attention.”
He shook his head. “No. I’d have paid attention.” He stood up.
Madeline glanced at me once more—for approval, perhaps, or an explanation—while I just smiled with dumb fascination.
Dorian looked at me, and then at her, and it was as if a circuit had been completed. And in that moment, I knew that Dorian was a piece of us we had been missing.
He extended his hand; she accepted.
Then—“I’m Dorian.”
Immediately the electricity that had been coursing between us flickered, the bulb dying.
“Oh,” Madeline managed, her face plummeting into shadow. “Your mother is the model . . . right?” Her voice contained all the enthusiasm of a punctured tire, and I remembered that the subject of Dorian Belgraves had arisen once between us. “Narcissistic brat,” she had said, referring to his too-photographed appearances in the shallowest social spheres of New York. “He’s what’s wrong with this country—everyone cares less about world affairs than they do about these talentless, superficial people.”
If Dorian had registered the abrupt change in the air, he seemed to have garnered from it another meaning altogether: “Wait . . . You two aren’t . . . dating, are you?”
“No . . .” Madeline admitted, and cast me a sidelong look of discomfort.
“Then—are you free for dinner tonight?” he asked.
Madeline realized her hand was still idle in Dorian’s grasp. She winced a little and took it back, then slipped her hand under my arm. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” she replied.
My chest dropped. I gasped a little, opened my mouth to intervene, to say, “Wait! Of course she’ll go—she’s just . . .” But Madeline’s grasp around my forearm tightened. My loyalty wavered as I questioned her poor judgment—then I felt myself rise with a bewildered sense of obligation. Benumbed, I picked up my tray, and she pulled me away.
“Nice of you to ask, though,” she shrugged politely. I could barely stand Dorian’s crestfallen expression—although between him and me, it was unclear whose disappointment was greater.
IT WAS ONLY AFTER I BELIEVED I HAD ADJUSTED TO LIFE AT Régine that the “usual” state of affairs was redefined by a truly un-“usual” morning.
“Good moooorning, everyone!” Clara strolled through the fashion closet doorway in a black-and-white houndstooth dress suit, her portrait-ready ebony face framed by a black headband in her blonde hair. She held up a flutter of legal-size pages, and beseeched the air: “Can sooomebody please make me four copies of this?” She rounded the corner of the accessories table, stocking-clad thighs cutting through her twice-slit pencil skirt, as her smile passed over Sabrina . . . then George . . . then me.
Her passage came to an undignified halt. She backpedaled with a few unbalanced steps, seemingly to get a clearer view of me, and struck an empty garment rack. Naked hangers rocked side to side, squeaking like a series of unlubricated door hinges, as George and I sat at full attention with our backs erect. Frozen next to us in mid-stride, her head immobile, Sabrina’s eyes flickered from Clara to George, and finally to me, as she waited intently.
Clara, however, withheld further verbal exposition and lowered the papers in her hand with a precipitous ripple. She folded them edge to edge and remained undecided on her next step, patting the pages with distracted imprecision against her suit jacket.
“Clara . . . ? Are you all right?” It was Sabrina who broke the silence. The white fluorescent glow illuminated the otherwise imperceptible under-eye folds she was developing from too much smoking outside of fashionable parties.
Clara turned to her and nodded in a kind of default resolution to her consternation.
“Actually . . .” she began slowly, with a sudden chipper edge as her eyes seemed to blossom into waking life. “I came to suggest a walk.” She smiled like it was the most natural thing in the world. The frozen strangeness of the previous moment melted in the warmth of her charm. “It’s a beautiful day out. I think you and George should take a walk.”
Sabrina squinted. “But . . .” She cast a sidelong glance to the telephone on her desk, to whose constant attendance she owed her greatest claim to professional worth. “What about phone calls?” She spoke as if Clara had suggested that she abandon her sobbing newborn.
“I think for twenty minutes it should be fine,” Clara replied with a forceful edge, an order this time, though still disguised as a suggestion. “I mean—we all deserve a break sometimes, and you work so hard, don’t you?”
When Sabrina didn’t immediately agree, Clara took a challenging high-heeled step toward Sabrina’s cubicle and cocked her head. “Don’t you?” she repeated, a little sharply.
“I . . .” Sabrina recovered quickly. “Yes, I do work hard.” She gulped and looked at George. “George . . .” she trailed off, and the next moment they were pressed together, springing toward the door. Sabrina murmured, “Thank you,” to Clara, and George echoed with a mumble of the same syllables.
The door shut behind them. Silence. I looked left and right, but there was nobody else—I was alone with Clara.
“All right now,” Clara said, sitting right down into George’s chair. She crossed her legs, and the lace fr
om her thigh-high stockings peeked out from under her pencil skirt with daunting refinement. She leaned forward. If, from a distance, her calligraphic mannerisms had an air of spontaneous grace, close proximity attested to their premeditated precision. Every muscle in her face seemed to move in accordance with a grand design.
“Ethan . . . it’s Ethan, riiight?” She spoke with honeyed politeness, like a Georgia socialite preparing to resolve a minor catering detail before a charity ball. “I thought that after another week or so, this conversation would not be necessary, but—I think it would actually be better to nip this in the bud.”
My stomach plummeted as I wracked my brain for a memory of my incriminating offense. In such a brief time, how had I managed to offend Régine’s most congenial editor?
“I have to ask you,” she continued, “and please excuse my directness, but have you ever had a real job before?”
I shook my head in terror.
Clara responded, “Well, do you like working at Régine?”
“Oh, yes!” I rushed in. “Did I give you the impression that . . . ?” Distressed to think I had somehow conveyed ungratefulness in my brief tenure, my eyebrows wrenched in overcompensatory earnestness. “It’s my dream to be here—I’m learning so much. It’s just amazing.”
Clara smiled gently. “That is wonderful news.” She considered for a moment how best to redirect my enthusiastic reply. “And when you say that you are learning a lot, does that include anything in terms of rules? That is, have you learned any of the unwritten rules that constitute our code of conduct here?”
The unbearable strain in her face had me on the verge of hyperventilation. “Whatever it is I’ve done, Clara—I mean, Ms. Bellamy—ma’am . . . I just—I’m so sorry. I can’t tell you how much it means for me to be here, and to jeopardize that in any way . . .”
“Don’t be afraid,” she soothed me. “You haven’t jeopardized anything. As I’m sure you’ve guessed from my accent, I’m not exactly from here either. I understand what it’s like to not know the rules.” Her generous circumvention of my embarrassment rendered her powers of graciousness complete. “Let me put it this way,” she said. “To be at Régine is a privilege and, as with any privilege that may be conferred onto you in life, there are many corresponding rules to ensure that your privilege is balanced with the proportionate share of responsibility.” Her palm flowered out toward me. “For example, you wouldn’t say hello to someone you didn’t know on the elevator, would you?”
An Innocent Fashion Page 16