On my return to the fashion closet I ran into Sabrina, who was strolling to the kitchenette with an unprecedented air of amusement. Like a Homecoming Queen upon recent acquisition of some third-period gossip, she passed me with a spring in her stilettoed step and her eyebrows elevated by malicious pleasure.
“Who’s D?” she asked.
I didn’t know what she was talking about, until a moment later I found my desk nearly swallowed up by a monstrosity of hydrangeas.
“Somebody has an admirer,” George remarked dryly, “although I can’t imagine who.”
Thank you for last night, the card read, in a familiar, near-illegible scrawl. Love ya, D.
I gulped, feeling as though Dorian had violated a restraining order I had issued against him. He wasn’t allowed to come near here. The fact that Dorian had found a way to invade my life at Régine—with his Trojan horse of colossal flowers, the best that money could buy, surely—well, I ripped up the card into tatters over the wastebasket and, before the last shred had fluttered to the bottom, dunked the bouquet upside-down after it. It sunk with a tremendous thud, and the underside of the vase sparkled cheerfully with cellophane.
AT AROUND EIGHT O’CLOCK THAT MORNING I HAD WOKEN UP at Dorian’s apartment with a hand around my waist, and sunlight on my face.
I had awoken in this same manner almost one year ago, when for my twenty-first birthday, we all dropped acid in Edgerton Park, on a grassy, unnamed hill that thereafter none of us could find again. We danced all night like hand-holding paper figures in a Matisse collage, then crumpled to sleep in the grass. I remember being the first to wake up, finding Madeline’s arm draped around my chest and watching, through one half-open eye, the sun threading quickly through the blades of grass, casting an intricate glow over all the earth’s edges like an endless spool of white Spanish lace.
It felt exactly like that in Dorian’s bedroom as I absently caressed my own fingers over what I assumed to be Madeline’s hand. While I was trying to remember last night’s dream, I felt a whisper of hair on her skin which I didn’t remember being there before.
I turned my head. Dorian.
His naked chest was pressed against my back while the rest of him was clothed, both of us tangled up in his luxurious sheets. Madeline was lying along the foot of the bed, her head tipped facedown over the side of the mattress. Dorian’s gin-cooled breath flowed from his tiny nostrils onto my cheek like an intoxicating gas. I lifted my hand from his. Once, I would have wished it to remain there forever. Now, he felt too warm, as if under his skin his blood was blazing through his veins at a temperature that burned me. With my own cold fingers, I painstakingly removed his limb from around my body and slid away from him, edging toward the side of the rumpled bed.
In the sudden absence of my body, Dorian extended his arm across the bed—eyes shut, like he was looking for something in his dream—then, finding a pillow, drew it toward his broad, smooth chest, and wrapped himself around it like an infant. He licked his lips, and was suddenly at rest again. The bed creaked as I sat up and stretched my legs toward the floor. I checked for my wallet in my back pocket, then stood up and shuffled through a wreckage of storm-tossed clothes. Despite Dorian’s having settled several weeks ago in New York, a rakish pile of suitcases—half-ransacked, a hopeless tangle of socks and spilled sleeves—gave the appearance that he had only yesterday tornadoed off the plane from Paris.
His clothes were all designer—you could tell, even from afar—yet, unlike the piles that formed in the fashion closet at Régine, they were layered with soft carelessness. Everything he owned had adopted from him that quality of aristocratic ease, rumpled and unstarched yet still possessing an intrinsic appreciation of its value.
Amid this abundance of sprezzatura, the conspicuous dissident was a black leather book, jutting from under the idle arm of a heather-gray cashmere sweater. I pulled it out and traced my fingers over an embossed cover that read Ford. Dorian’s modeling portfolio. The first page was a torn-out magazine spread: Dorian in a chain-mail sweater, illuminated by dramatic silver light. I traced my fingers over his lips and then his eyes, always seeking some diversion, then over the text in the corner that read, SWEATER—DOLCE & GABBANA. It would have been easy to tell myself that this Dorian was somehow “different now,” that in becoming someone new he had excused himself from our entangled relations, yet Dorian appeared quite innocent of any change at all. There was no malice in his eyes, no superior smirk souring his mouth. I closed the portfolio and felt something fall out of the bottom—a piece of heavy sketch paper, folded up into a thick square. I picked it up from the wooden floor and my heart raced as I unfolded it.
A faint groan, as Madeline lifted her head with an effort and then let it drop. Her hair cascaded once more over the side of the bed, the golden vines of a hanging plant.
Before unfolding the last crease, I knew.
It was me. It was my portrait, which Dorian had started on the first day we met but never finished—only now, here I was in full. My mismatched eyes sprawled huge across my cheeks, radiating color, radiating life. The paper trembled in my hand as his voice reverberated through my memory—“You know who you remind me of . . . ? The Borghese boy—he has all this food, but he looks so hungry.” I gulped.
Dorian had taken me to Paris.
I returned the paper to the portfolio, and the portfolio to the suitcase, back under the folds of Dorian’s life, and turned wordlessly to leave.
On the way out of Dorian’s apartment, I stopped to sit at the piano. Madeline was right. It was a marvelous piano, the biggest piano I’d ever seen, and as I closed the apartment door behind me, I wondered how they’d gotten it through the door, or if they’d opened up the roof and lowered it inside with a crane.
EDMUND MUST HAVE LOVED THE “UNCLASSIFIABLY SUCCULENT” squid at the Spanish-Japanese restaurant I had chosen for his dinner reservation, because every day thereafter I was assigned a new task by him. I signed thank-you notes and looked up Swedish bed-and-breakfast rates; purchased contact lens solution and bid online for rococo furniture (Edmund wanted an “old throne-like chair, something that was sat on by a king, or at least a famous duke”). I even “shopped around” after work for lavender-scented mothballs, which consisted of sniffing the selection at various boutiques and sending him my detailed reports.
These were all little things—slightly demoralizing—but it didn’t matter. What did matter was that eventually the little things would transform into big things, and for the time being, he knew my name, which was more than could be said for George, or even Sabrina, whose name he still inexplicably believed was Susan. After two weeks I was sure that not only did he know my name, but that it was his favorite name.
Phone calls from Edmund sounded like this:
“Ethan, I need you to RSVP me to Kate’s wedding. Find me a flight to London arriving two days before and departing one day after, and see if Charles can’t set up a car service through the countryside.”
“Ethan, I need you to schedule a fitting with my tailor. Tell him the last two pants he altered for me were too short, and what does he think, I’m shrinking?”
“Ethan, I need lots of contact solution. Leave the bottles all over the place. My eyes are always dry.”
“Ethan, I need you to make me a fruit salad. My housekeepers always forget to pit my cherries, and I can’t just keep dismissing them.”
“Ethan, I need you to deliver my dry cleaning. Pick up the garment bag this evening from my office and tell Caesar that the McQueen shirt has a grease stain on the collar, and that no, it wasn’t me, it was some other fool because I don’t eat greasy food.”
“Also, Ethan—there are two McQueen shirts in that load I just called about, and both look like they have stains, but one of them is distressed on purpose, I’m sure you will be able to tell which.”
“Also, Ethan, please—when you take those shirts, tell Caesar I need a full refund for the cashmere sweater he supposedly laundered. Tell him there w
as a hair on the collar.”
Despite the volume of his demanding workload, there was never a cruel or derogatory tone in his delegation of any task—on the contrary, Edmund’s exhausted voice had the strain of a person constantly chasing after something with which he could never quite catch up. It was good fortune, not bad, that I credited for my extra workload, although clandestine bathroom breaks became quickly inadequate windows to complete it. While often his more personal errands led me panting around the city on the weekends, office-related tasks required me to stay after-hours at Régine.
At the end of the workday, usually seven or eight o’clock, I would follow Sabrina and George out of the fashion closet. Then, before reaching the elevator, I pretended to need a bathroom visit. Sabrina and George would never dream of waiting for me, so I gazed at the bathroom ceiling until I was sure they had disappeared, then swooped back into the fashion closet to finish my work for Edmund.
Quietly entering Edmund’s office down the hall, I would tidy up papers or computer files according to his instructions, and often reorient his desk, which a much-consulted feng shui book suggested he was in the habit of repositioning to channel “creativity chi.” Because he never actually called me to his office during work hours, I was determined that neither Sabrina nor George should know about it—especially not George. Sabrina already had a post at Régine, but George would easily sabotage my efforts to benefit his own ladder-climbing, and if he knew Edmund had taken a liking to me—well, I didn’t even want to think of what consequential toxins he could spread to pollute the air.
So that George would never suspect, I began to attack every phone call before the completion of the first ring. Sometimes the hairs on the back of my neck would stiffen a millisecond before the phone rang, and I was answering, “Régine,” before George had even turned his orange head. If he looked over while I was taking down Edmund’s instructions, I’d roll my eyes toward him like it was just another PR person on the line, and when Edmund hung up I would stay on the phone for a few seconds longer than necessary, nodding my head to pander, “Of course, Rachel, we’ll get the Valentino to you by this afternoon,” or “Have a good day, Simon.”
Edmund wasn’t just my hero anymore—some far-off figure, a poster on a classroom wall. He was the closest chance I had to realizing the life I wanted, the gatekeeper to my dreams. Edmund was going to save me.
One day, after several weeks of attuning myself to his every need, my neck hairs tingled while I was standing on a ladder hoisting a box of hats: Edmund. I could feel him. I prepared myself to scramble down the ladder, but there was no phone call.
The closet door swung open. “Which one of you is Ethan?”
From above, I watched Edmund’s half-plucked hairline soar into view like a pale, shiny moon. Arm emerging from under a green capelet, he pointed a bejeweled finger at me—“You’re Ethan, right?”
I nodded with petrified shock.
He gestured with a yawn toward George, who appeared as stunned as a person about to get run over by a cab. “Help Ethan, please,” Edmund instructed.
George raised his arms, and I let the box slide into his dumbfounded custody, where it bounced against his bulging stomach like a spoon upon bread pudding.
“Come on, boy,” Edmund said to me as I stepped off the ladder, careful not to graze George, who was staring at me with a mixture of menace and confusion. Edmund snorted, a deep hoglike snort, and with a swaggering lean wrapped his arm around my shoulder and drew me into a conspiratorial meander away from George.
He opened his mouth, and his saliva made an unsticking sound. “You should know, the next time you make me a fruit salad, the one thing I hate more than cherry pits is cherry stems.” He halfheartedly waggled a skeletal finger in my face before lowering his voice to a hoarse whisper—“Now listen carefully, because I am trusting you with a very important matter. “I’m leaving you the key to my apartment this afternoon,” he began, and my heart started to race.
That I should be entrusted with the key to Edmund’s home! My stomach leaped into my throat. This was it! After only a few weeks of bland servitude, I would be put to work on something meaningful. I prepared myself to accept the challenge—of selecting clothes, researching story concepts—and felt my own worth brimming as the notes of his overripe cologne swelled in my nostrils.
“See, I keep a collection of diaries,” Edmund continued. “Some of them are five, ten years old—just notes, musings—all my creative output. Over the years, with my schedule, you know—they have reached a state of . . .” The jewels on his fingers glittered like a pinwheel as his hand conjured words with a revolving motion. “Creative . . . disarray . . . so—what I need is somebody to organize them—to just find the ones that come first, and put them all in order . . . Do you think you can do that?”
I nodded fervently as his words settled in my head and I realized that Edmund—a man I barely knew, yet who was interwound so intricately with my dream of success—had extended to me his vote of utmost confidence. If I had any doubt that his request represented the rare and unusual solidarity between us, it evaporated when Edmund smiled at me. I looked up to reciprocate, but his teeth were brittle and yellow, the posts of a rotting fence, and to linger over the sight of them ruined the moment—so I looked off to the side of him, away from his ugly teeth and his receding hairline and his sagging everything, and smiled at the air around him.
He patted my back and separated from me, his capelet whooshing over my back. Then he received a phone call, answered “HELLO” like a hearing-impaired person, and torpedoed distractedly away.
“What was that?” demanded George, as the door shut behind Edmund. George wore a gray blazer today, and we almost matched.
“I—I messed up one of his inspiration boards,” I said, trembling with excitement. I was a terrible liar, and pretended to engross myself with an invisible hair on my pants. “He was reprimanding me.” I plucked it away and stole an upward glance to see if I had convinced him.
“But how does he even know your name?”
I shrugged, with an expression as dumb as I could muster. George furrowed his pale eyebrows and then, for the first and last time, Sabrina did me a huge favor.
Having been occupied with Clara and the other editors throughout Edmund’s visitation, Sabrina called over her cubicle now—“George! Have you heard of Madeline Dupre?”
I froze at the unsettling mention of my best friend’s name within the halls of Régine.
“No,” George replied. “Is she e-mailing us?”
“She’s dating Edie Belgraves’s son. It’s online, I’ve just—never heard of her.”
George turned his head away from me, distracted, while I grabbed the box of hats from him and scurried up the ladder once more.
IT WOULD HAVE BEEN EASY TO WRITE A PLEASANT REAL estate description of Edmund’s apartment: Fabulously located in fashionable West Village, steps from Washington Square Park, NYU, and more. Convenient shopping and charming restaurants nearby. Doorman, gymnasium, and crown molding throughout. What more?
The white-paneled lobby boasted a Baccarat chandelier and a remarkable echo. The doorman wore impeccably starched white gloves. The whole place smelled strongly of some flower—or rather, not any particular flower, but just “flowers,” a variety capable of no offense: Altogether, an airtight impression of generic luxury.
The impression ended abruptly when I turned the key to Edmund’s apartment and was simultaneously assaulted by a dark figure and a startling decorating scheme. The black figure lunged. I shielded myself with the door, saw him do the same, and realized the first feature in the foyer of Edmund’s apartment was a full-length mirror, as ornate as a window in a Gothic cathedral, hanging on a zebra wall. The reason I could not say zebra print was because the room in question wasn’t merely painted or wallpapered to look like zebra stripes, but covered from floor to ceiling with actual zebra, like someone had skinned a herd of them and sewn them together with all the stripes running in th
e same direction. I confirmed this with a shuddering touch—coarse, like horsehair.
I clicked the door behind me and wandered bewilderedly inside, my shoes echoing upon a shiny onyx floor. “Hello?”
Hoping to ward off any more surprises, I knocked against an open doorframe and poked my tousled head into the next room. Moroccan tapestries and Japanese silk wall scrolls. Orchids, calla lilies, birds of paradise. A Renaissance-style ceiling resembling a cloudy sky, complete with painted cherubs and precipitation in the form of a crystal-dripping chandelier. A Victorian camelback sofa, upholstered in purple velvet and covered with tufted leopard-print cushions; a big-screen plasma television and surround-sound speakers; Louis XIV-style chairs bordering a claw-foot coffee table; and a waxy gray wall-covering wafting upward from an untraceable breeze.
Puzzled by the gray wall-covering, I gave in to my temptation to touch it and thereafter resolved not to place a hand over anything unrelated to my designated responsibilities. It was an elephant skin—a dried-out elephant skin—and amid the churning of my stomach I wondered if working at Régine make it somehow legal for Edmund to own endangered-animal skins.
Iconic fashion photographs hanging throughout—full-color, framed in every iteration of gold curlicues—confirmed the apartment did not in fact belong to a taxidermist, and I ventured onward through a dizzying optical illusion of a hallway, its concurrent pink and white stripes painted in a head-splitting hexagonal pattern that was reflected infinitely in another full-length mirror.
The bedroom, in a shocking coral red, was no comfort at all. Magazines around the perimeter were piled to the height of a small person—leaning, crammed—and the floor was a black-and-white checkerboard, with the ceiling covered in a matching damask. Supervising the room was a huge Technicolor Buddha, painted with legs folded and eyes closed as he practiced his meditation during a Warholian acid trip. The one visual relief took the form of an ivory canopy that could be drawn shut over the bed, yet even that was cheetah print on the inside (although thankfully, it appeared, not sewn from actual cheetah skin). I couldn’t fathom the underlying design philosophy, but took it as confirmation of Edmund’s genius—a glimpse of which his diaries would soon miraculously grant me.
An Innocent Fashion Page 21