He clicked off the lamp and slumped into the mattress beside me. The heavy breathing began. I felt his eyes upon my back. For a minute he was still. Then he sighed and wrapped himself around me from behind—the three of us woven together once more, like a rope—while in the dark Madeline murmured over and over, “Nothing has changed, nothing has changed . . .”
chapter eleven
The next morning we awoke in a pool of intermingled sweat, the sun cooking our ripe flesh through the tin ceiling above our heads.
Madeline woke up first. She crawled on her knees and nudged Dorian and me. “You have work soon,” she reminded us.
Dorian was still holding me. I heard his lips smack together in my ear.
“I’m going to shower,” Madeline whispered. She leaned over my body to kiss him, and her hair fell over my face as their lips touched. I felt her slide toward the edge of the mattress, then heard the ladder creak as she descended.
Dorian peeled himself away from me like a piece of plastic wrap and sat up, bumping his head.
I stirred. The sudden absence of his warm, damp body felt so uncomfortable that I groaned, and pressing the sheets against me, sat up slowly beside him. Sweat ran down our arms. Beneath our overlapping bodies on the sheets we had left a seeping blotch, a damp, faintly lilac bruise, as if we had been three sweating slices of grapefruit set upon a napkin overnight.
A vaguely succulent smell hung in the air, chlorine mixing with the nectar from our pores. It dripped like condensation into memories of yesterday’s reality: champagne, pool water, and my saliva on Dorian’s lips.
“Messages from Mom,” Dorian said next to me. “That’s how I know it was a fun night.”
I turned my head up, still lost in a trance—perplexed to see him there at all, instead of faded away like a dream.
“She hates it when I’m photographed drinking,” he continued, holding his phone between his hands on his lap. “For her it’s okay, because models are paid to be incoherent. But she thinks if I try to get a real job, people will think all I do is drink champagne for a living.”
“Well, that’s sort of true, isn’t it?” I yawned.
“Shut up.” He went yawning after me, and gave my shoulder a push.
Thirsty, I licked my lips a little. “What are you talking about anyway?”
He handed me the phone. His mother had sent him a halfhearted, “Not again, Dorian,” with a link to New York magazine’s website, and a slideshow of the previous night’s party.
“Are you in here?” I asked, scrolling through.
Of course he was. With the exception of the empty glass against his lips, Dorian looked like a figure on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, floating in the pool with his angelic consorts Kaija and Plum, his luminous white arm around some black mass draped against his shoulder like a wet fur cloak. I began to scroll away, then realized, in a sudden flash of recognition—it was me. I was the cloak.
I laughed out loud. I didn’t remember having my picture taken at all, yet there I was, with my dopey, drunken grin shining out from under my waterlogged hair.
I had been photographed at a party, I realized—just like some kind of socialite. Did it mean, perhaps, that I was really on my way to becoming . . . somebody?
“What’s it say?” Dorian asked me.
I was so enlivened to think that someone had photographed me at all that I hadn’t scrolled down to read the caption.
“It’s just our names. Kaija Goodman, Plum Bonavich, Dorian Belgraves . . . oh . . .” I trailed off, choking a little on my own saliva. “. . . Guest,” I finished.
That was me . . . Guest, like an extra in the bottom of a film credit roll: Girl at Diner 1 . . . Girl at Diner 2 . . . Man Walking Dog . . . Guest.
“They didn’t know my name,” I said.
“You’re lucky then, aren’t you? Otherwise your mom might be complaining to you too.”
I handed Dorian back his phone.
“Don’t worry, there’ll be other parties,” he said, sensing my dejection. I felt his hand touch my head. The gesture reminded me of going to church as a young boy, when the pastor cupped his hand over me and said in Spanish, “May the Lord bless you and keep you.” That was always my favorite part of the mass, because afterward my head tingled and I liked to think that it was the Holy Spirit flowing through me.
He ran his fingers lightly through my hair, his touch feeling like a hundred Holy Sprits flowing through me. I looked up from my lap and into one of those moments in life marked by utmost clarity. From the depths of Dorian’s expansive eyes, I saw the truth flowing: Aside from Madeline, Dorian was the best love I had—the best love I’d ever had, and ever would. A love so perfect, it even looked perfect.
“Dorian, I—” I started. I placed my hands on his knee, and I leaned toward him. His legs were folded underneath him, the sheets clinging to his thighs. I wanted to kiss him, but my heart began to beat too hard in my chest. I was seized with panic, and looked sharply away. I couldn’t do it.
His hand slowed down in my hair. I gulped down at the sheets and felt a wave of disappointment, of sadness toward myself, as I realized that if once I had been fearless and carefree, the best and the brightest, my time had passed. I was dark now—empty. I was everything I didn’t want to be. Terrified, I clutched his knees and gasped. He was looking at me, eyes shining. As I met his gaze the panic rose in me once more—the thought of failing, doing something wrong. The old Ethan would have kissed Dorian—he didn’t need to be drunk, would have swooped in stone-sober and done it, but this Ethan . . . My heartbeat spiked, to think that I could be so different now.
Dorian’s hand stopped. He opened his mouth to say something, and I knew the moment was passing. It would pass and I would regret it for my whole life, and become one of those people who carried their regrets like an empty shell—one of those people I said I’d never become. A shriveled compromise, an adult.
I was paralyzed at the thought of facing him, the thought of moving or doing anything at all, and yet if I didn’t, I knew I would be lost forever. The thought scared me so much, I forced myself to look at him and think, I’m still me, I’m still me! My blood began to trickle outward from the center of my quavering chest. This is what it feels like to have emotion!—to be moved!—to be alive!—This is what it feels like to be young! My heart pumped faster and faster until blood was throbbing through my veins. I was enflamed, all my youth screaming, “Do it! Do it!” a kid rushing through a field, wild and free, and I knew—I knew I had to kiss him, so I leaned forward and—
Dorian emitted a small gasp, like a child going underwater. I felt a light pressure against my chest, but it was already done.
The second our mouths touched, I was seventeen again, and any question of my dying youth silenced by a loud roar of adrenaline, a primordial desire to sear our flesh together.
I pushed forward, heaving and hungry.
Suddenly—crack!—I think I heard it before I felt it, just the single deft collision of two hard, unyielding things. My arms flew. I went reeling backward in one smooth arc, a complete reversal of my own forward momentum.
I was stunned, like a fried cable.
Dorian’s Botticelli mouth was open—awestruck, apologetic. He glanced between me and his open palm, which was stiffly shaking. I flinched: his palm was the first clue.
After an agonizing one . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . the second clue revealed itself; rivulets of blood pouring down my face. I couldn’t feel the source. I reached up—my nose, I realized. Suddenly I flashed back to several months ago: Dorian standing before me for the first time since graduation, shards of bitten martini glass on my tongue, blood escaping from my mouth. The whole front of me had been warm then, as it was now.
Mentally processing in that slow, stilted way of his, Dorian twitched, unsure of what to do. He cocked his neck like a bird. His mouth was still open, and for the first time I saw no light at all in his eyes, just sadness as he finally understood what he had done t
o me—not just now, but all along.
He rushed to jump across the widening hole between us, with “I—I’m so sorry—” He reached forward. There was a protruding vein in his neck that I had never seen before, a wire keeping him upright.
I winced. Gobs of crimson fell between us. My own embarrassment made my blood course faster. “I thought—” I began, but it was no use. When I looked down, the blood had dripped onto my arm and it was easy to imagine the paring knife flashing in my other hand as the life seeped out of my crooked, outstretched wrist.
I finally felt the first stab of pain. I cried out, and patted around for something to stop the bleeding. Dorian let out a childlike moan, and joined me. Together we seemed to be searching for a lost thing—a phone in a nightclub, or a piece of cutlery that had fallen under the table. He moved the bottle of water, and picked up a sock, as if he had forgotten our purpose and was simply tidying up. Then he seemed to remember, and in desperation he clenched my bedsheets. I was gasping, the blood was in my mouth—it might have taken him a minute, or less, or longer—but he yanked, and offered up the striped sheet toward my nose. I pressed it against my entire face, to staunch the bleeding and my own shame. The blood didn’t soak the sheet, but coursed down its folds like peppermint streaks.
Madeline appeared then at the top of the ladder. She held a towel around her waist, mouth open as her golden hair dripped water between her naked breasts.
Dorian looked at her, then back at me. To me he said, “I don’t—love you—like that—but I do love you—” his voice full of effort, yet still hollow. As if to prove his point, he lumbered forward—to put his arm around me, or make things better somehow—and I heard a sickening crunch. My glasses were pressed beneath his knee, the rims crushed into the bed. When he lifted himself slowly away, the eyes were two empty holes and the glass sparkled like diamonds on the naked mattress.
SABRINA WAS SHAKING HER HANDS IN THE AIR LIKE A GODS-CURSING aborigine. “Is this some joke I’m not aware of? You are both half an hour late, without so much as an e-mail to let me know? Ethan? Dorian?”
We glanced at one another. Dorian’s shirt had my blood on it, but if Sabrina noticed anything strange between us—the spilled blood, a gulf of quiet sadness—she responded only with a wild, wordless sputter.
Dorian and I had been silent all the way to work. I’m not sure why we didn’t just take a cab—it was the obvious thing to do, but we had both been too stunned to think of it as we fumbled around trying to make sense of things, while Madeline just got in the way.
I’d had to leave my glasses on the sheets, the clear shards dangling from the tortoiseshell rims like the bashed-in teeth of a disfigured grin.
It wasn’t unlike the time Dorian had drawn a picture of me, when he asked me to remove my glasses, and left me in a blur; this time though—unexplainably—I felt more comfortable in my half-blind state. Dorian led me down the stairs to the subway, the whole time holding my hand firmly, determined to prove something to me—that even if he didn’t care for me that way, he still cared. After two failed attempts, he put his whole hand over mine and swiped my MetroCard for me. When our hands touched there was a fizzle, like a drop of water onto an incandescent bulb.
Even though she wasn’t going with us, Madeline followed us grimly to the platform. “Are you okay?” she whispered, as the train that would take me and Dorian away whooshed in. She pressed her forehead against mine, and held my face between both hands. “I’ll see you later.” The train doors opened. Bodies swarmed around us, and Madeline stepped away.
When the doors closed and the train departed, I saw her staring at the platform floor, her hand pressed against her mouth like she had just realized a terrible thing was about to happen.
There was a single open seat on the train. Dorian tried to get me settled there, but I shook my head. I felt close to him, yet completely emasculated. He must have felt similarly, but in reverse, because as the subway filled with people he drew me closer with a protective arm around my frail back. I ached to lay my head on his chest, but refrained in a singular assertion of personal dignity—and the six inches between us quivered with visceral anxiety.
I closed my eyes. The doors whirred open and people clambered in, continuing despite me or Dorian or Madeline to live their lives. They crowded closer and closer at each stop until finally, at Union Square, their pressure was too great, and the distance between me and Dorian was forced to close. We pressed together. I melted onto him, resting my cheek on his shoulder, feeling the relief of a liberated cramp.
He stared over me at the tunnels rushing outside the window, while I glanced around the subway car without my glasses. With everything out of focus—all the balding heads, and cell-phone-illuminated pores, and pleather straps peeling off shapeless fake Louis Vuitton bags—it was like a Goya painting. The masses shifting their world-weary weight, their helpless heads lurching as the train dragged them haltingly to hell. The hands were the most sublime part—grasping, outstretched, clinging hopelessly to the train’s cold metal poles, everybody looking like they were about to plummet into the Inferno.
Only one lady reading a book, her palm pressed elegantly against an overhead bar, fingers fanned out like she was drying them at the nail salon, retained any dignity whatsoever, and I thanked her quietly on behalf of human civilization.
ANYWAY, SABRINA DIDN’T NOTICE ANYTHING BETWEEN ME and Dorian. I wanted to warn her that I wouldn’t be able to see today before she had me trying blurrily to discern Prada from Pucci, but there was no time, and she didn’t seem to care, exploding, “Just—get to your desk! Everybody needs their samples back—I’ve already done Prada, Dior, and Oscar—I need you to pull Kors and Vuitton right away—like, in the next five minutes—then check the e-mails I forwarded to you for the rest.”
Dorian and I moved together in the direction of our desks. We bumped each other as we crossed toward our respective seats, and he stiffened, glancing at the carpet, uttering his first word to me since the train—a tremulous, “Sorry.”
“Not you, Ethan.” Sabrina held out her hand to stop me. “Clara needs to speak with you.” She scissored with a stocking-clad snip-snip-snip toward the editors’ cubicle and I followed her out of the closet like a miscreant being led to the principal’s office. “He’s right here, Clara,” Sabrina announced, and with a cutting swish of her skirt left my side.
“Eeeeethaann.” Clara swiveled her chair around to face me. “Hello, my darling. Please follow me.” She rose, nudged her hand politely against my arm, and hastily wafted down the hallway like a sweet-smelling smoke ring.
My stomach flopped. No doubt Clara was obligated to reprimand me on my tardiness. My mind stumbled through an obstacle course of pleas: Today had been the first time! It was only for thirty minutes! and even—Dorian was late too! We arrived at a door I had never entered before, and when Clara opened it I realized we were inside the conference room.
The conference room was where all the important people had their meetings. It was where they sat around discussing how many issues reached how many people, and how many of those people were female or divorced or college-educated, and whether they got their issues on the newsstand or by subscription, and, in the end, how could they get more people to buy it? It was where they discussed how to redo florals once again for spring and whether Gwyneth’s baby would make her too fat to do a February spread, and I was perplexed that Clara would bring me here to tell me that I shouldn’t be late again.
No sooner had the door closed than she expounded, in an uncharacteristically dull voice, “Someone has sued the Hoffman-Lynch Corporation.”
Her silk skirt glimmered as she tucked it hastily beneath her to sit, while I felt blindly for a chair of my own.
“Do you know what that means, Ethan?” she asked sharply.
The bristle in her voice made me miss the seat. “I’m sorry, I just—” I began to explain about my glasses.
“That means Hoffman-Lynch is being charged with violating labor
laws—misrepresenting their internship program to take advantage of young people—people who want a chance at the fashion industry.”
I tried to process this, but my only takeaway was relief that Clara’s displeasure had been provoked by something other than me.
“It’s a Bazaar intern,” she scathed. “Some state-schooled brat—she says she was treated like a slave or something just because, I don’t know, they had her making copies while she had a stomachache,” she flapped her hand around like a dying brown bird “—I mean, please, what does anybody expect when they sign up for these things? Summer camp? Of course it’s hard, but you’ve never felt exploited, have you?”
Having under Edmund’s workload personified the dictionary definition of “exploited,” I struggled to conjure up any level of support for this outright fallacy.
With a sigh, she remembered herself and straightened up, patting away some imaginary wrinkle on her skirt. “The bottom line for you is . . .”
I blinked at her blurry face.
“. . . they’re taking away all our interns.”
My neck cracked. “Taking . . . away . . . ?”
“For legal reasons,” she explained, “Hoffman-Lynch is dismissing all unpaid interns.” She paused, then added, “Effective immediately.”
In a moment when I should have felt shock, passive acceptance descended over me like a Caravaggioesque fog. It was like the ending of a movie I had seen many times before, which every time I hoped would turn out different, but never did: in it I was boarding the Texas-bound red-eye flight that would take me away from my happy ending; crossing from the Jetway onto the plane with my eyes lowered in shame and my potential folded up in my suitcase, silently praying for the plane to crash and deliver me from my misery.
As the terror of my inevitable homecoming stirred in the deepest part of me, I blurted—“Who will assist Edmund?”—clinging to some nonexistent tatter of hope. “Edmund—he can’t do anything himself! I mean—what I mean is, he’s a genius, so . . . won’t he still need someone to assist him?”
An Innocent Fashion Page 32