Yarn

by Jon Armstrong

  A saleswarrior loosely wrapped in black ribbon stood before a shop with a pearl and smoke entrance. She looked me up and down with disdain and then opened her mouth wide. Instead of teeth and a tongue, hers was filled with whirring gears and spindles. What that was, what it meant, I didn't know. Clearly, the top of the Zea was different.

  At the end of a cul-de-sac, I came to the entrance to Boutique Bunné. From the outside, it looked like an average store decorated in midnight blues with an array of light jets weaving patterns, but once I stepped past the muttering saleswarriors, the place expanded. Inside, the boutique was hundreds of tintedglass-floors high, spider webbed by a network of miniature entervators fluttering up and down. Directly above, on the roof, I could see an enormous open-air atrium filled with consumers.

  A saleswarrior in a sky-blue jacket, with short black hair and pyrite eyes, stepped before me. "The tides of darkness, shopper Fleece Swansdown. I am your heart and credit. You will surrender with me before the ornaments of happiness and liberty." Shiny leather boots rose to her hirsute crotch. The heels were as sharp as pins. "One hour…" she said, as red numbers flashed inside the black beads of her choker. "If I have not assisted your material freedom and truth, the necklace will cut my air."

  "I'm just looking."

  She closed her eyes and when she reopened them the beads on her necklace flickered to 59:99:99, and began counting down. "Our shopping has begun. My death has a moment and time." She eyed me and smiled. "My life remaining is all to help you."

  I glanced at the other customers and the other saleswarriors and wondered if I could get away from her. "I'm not here to buy anything."

  "My breath is but interest on tomorrow." Two more saleswarriors came toward us. Necklace introduced both, but I didn't get their complicated names and titles. One held an IMG wand; the other had on an antenna jacket and was writing in the air. "They will document our journey, our trials, and our success."

  "I'm just looking," I repeated with a sigh. "I'm just curious about Bunné."

  She shook her head slowly. "Souvenir is memory."

  The warrior with the wand flashed us with light. Covering my face, I said, "No, I just came to look!"

  "Come," said Necklace with a bow. "I will show you the true universe of Bunné."

  Reluctantly, I squeezed into one of the small entervators with them. Necklace whisked us to another floor, and the doors opened on a circular showroom where dresses, slacks, and blouses hung suspended in the air. The space was silent, the air sweet and cool, and as I stepped out, I could see that the garments were incredible. Each yarn, each stitch, each pleat, each button was in proportion and rhythm. I stopped before a simple blue skirt.

  The yarn was some incredibly high-twist satellite wool, deeply saturated, and while it was nothing more than simple twill it was gorgeous and fine. When I touched it, I found it as warm and supple as the side of a woman's neck. The drape was absolutely true. The two darts, the waistband, the single small button on the side closure were all refined and perfectly in balance with the whole. And the topstitching around the waist was pure music, for somehow Bunné had sewn on the beat of the cloth, that is, each stitch fell the same exact number of yarns from the last.

  I found more garments with ingenious refinements, luxurious fabrics, and stitches metered in perfect harmony. And as much as I had admired the workmanship of the skivvé saleswarriors, Kira included, and the geometry and details of Zanella's jackets, Bunné's creations stirred me in a way I could not describe.

  From there, Necklace took us to another showroom, where I considered the hems on Bunné's jackets, the finishes on her foundation garments, and the weave of her six-millioncount broadcloth. I was in awe. Her ideas were incredible, her technique, faultless, and the execution, complete.

  "This is astonishing," I told Necklace. "I've been studying fashion, but her things… are perfection. They're ideals, like pure forms somehow transformed into real yarn. It's like I'm seeing truth for the first time." I gazed into the saleswarrior's blank eyes and saw my own reflection and my own dreams. I was meant to find this. "The way she cuts and sews is exactly right." Images of wrinkled landscapes, grids, and rhythms of my youth came to me. "This is what I dreamed."

  Necklace's sharp eyebrows dipped suspiciously as the other two furiously documented what I had said. "You see beyond the bag and beyond the credit," she whispered. With a bow, she added, "It's an honor to shop with you."

  On another floor she showed me Bunné's miniatures: tiny hats suitable for a thumb, shirts that could lay flat on a palm, and slacks that fit two fingers. "We sell a thousand times our hot couture in minis."

  And in fact this floor was filled with customers mixing and matching little shoes with dresses and handbags, but I wasn't impressed. These had none of the artistry of her real clothes. The materials seemed stiff and cheap; the sewing was haphazard, and while they were cute, they weren't at all the same objects of art.

  I asked the saleswarrior to take me back to the couture floors, but at the end of the hallway, before we came to another minientervator bank, I saw a simple blue T-shirt in a large gilt frame. On the front in precise embroidery it read: Whisper in My Ear. I stopped and gazed at the shirt for a long time. In the slubs, our shirts had slogans sloppily printed with some rubbery-smelling off-white paste that attracted dirt and were usually unreadable in two weeks: Rows of Love, I Heart Fructose, Drop the Pollen, I P Golden, Future Fertilizer. Most slubbers didn't even know what they meant.

  Staring at this perfect shirt, its micro-ribbed collar, triple-core shoulder seam, full-fashion sleeves, and hand-rolled picked hem, I couldn't believe that the thing existed. It was an affront. It mocked the non-woven ones I, and millions of others, had to wear.

  "What is this?"

  "A micro-denier satellite water-cotton slogan T."

  "No! Why is it here?"

  "It's just on display."

  "I had to wear the opposite, recycle version of that for nineteen years. Why couldn't she even make a good neck hole? She knows everything about clothes. She could have done it perfectly!"

  The three of them stared at me.

  "Why does she hate me?"

  "She hates no one," Necklace replied with a shake of her head.

  "Where is she?" I looked around. "Where is Bunné? I can't understand why she made those B-shirts so terrible."

  "Bunné is above." She pointed toward the barely visible amphitheatre above our heads. "Tonight is an egg-split coronation."

  Somewhere I'd heard egg-splits. "What is that?"

  "Only royal coronal customers can obtain the chance to offspring with a split of one of Bunné's queenly eggs."

  The idea seemed repulsive. "Who wants that?"

  Necklace stared at me blankly. "Her heart, her mind, her flesh is the ultimate product."

  "She's up there? I want to see her!"

  The numbers in the saleswarrior's necklace began emitting a tiny chirp. "Less than four minutes left," she said.

  "I told you, I'm not buying anything! Just take me to Bunné."

  She smiled a wan smile. "You want what Miss Bunné has made for you."

  "She has never made anything for me!" I looked up at the shirt. I wanted to break the glass, tear that thing down, and rip it to shreds.

  "Once you buy it," said Necklace, "you will know. You will understand."

  I laughed at her. "You can't understand. Have you ever seen her non-woven shirts? The ones she sells in the slubs? They're horrible. I tried to fix them, but they're the worst things ever made."

  "She made something for you. For you alone." Necklace spoke the way one would to a child, and then she headed toward another entervator bank.

  "What did she make me?"

  "Your shopping destiny awaits."

  She wasn't going to take me to Bunné or anything else real. I'd seen her stuff, and it was time to leave. Necklace held the door to the small entervator for me as the numbers in her necklace ticked down. At first her gaze was the empty
stare of the Seattlehama saleswarrior, but then her lips tightened, her complexion paled, and the liquid in her eyes trembled. She said, "Please," with feeling and urgency.

  This was a mistake, I thought, as IMG and the writer followed me into the mini-entervator. Necklace touched a lit button and we were whisked upward. The beads on her necklace read 0:55. She yanked a lever and the doors slid open to a small, empty room. Straight ahead was a counter. On a square of black velvet sat a beautifully crafted, blue mini-T, barely three inches tall, with the words Bunné Hurts perfectly embroidered in silver thread.

  "This?" I wanted to laugh. "This is what I'm supposed to buy? She hurts? This is smut! It's complete rot!"

  The numbers on the saleswarrior's necklace blinked 0:00. She tried to grip the strand, pull it away as the thing was tightened, but she couldn't get her fingers under it. She was choking. Tears streamed from her eyes.

  "The moment!" said the IMG saleswarrior as she splashed us with light.

  I tried to break the necklace, but it was too strong. I looked for a latch, but it didn't have one. The beads were sinking into her flesh. Her face was white.

  "Do something!" I screamed at IMG. She just flickered her light at me as the other drew frantic descriptions in the air.

  Necklace collapsed in my arms. Her body felt heavy and limp, but her lips moved. I pressed my ear to her mouth and heard, "Buy… the… T."

  I glanced up at the counter. "Okay!" I shouted. "I'll take it!"

  The necklace expanded instantly. The saleswarrior gasped for breath.

  YARN JOBBER

  On the large sign at the complex entrance of NuSity, I saw that someone had graffitied it into NuShitty. From the lurid colors, the painful smiles of the model family lounging in a living room with over-stuffed purple furniture and the requisite explicit acrylics on the walls, I could tell that the anonymous speller no doubt had it right. Beyond the sign, I passed an out-of-order security hut, and as I followed lights to the parking, a woman came jogging toward me. While I wondered if she were some guard, with her lilac and black thong-back gown and roller sleeves, she looked more like the half-naked muchacha-ko warriors that Pheff might have wished for. I scrolled the window. She leaned against the Chang, attempted a smile, and asked, "You want to touch some bias-cut charmeuse?" While she looked like she might be only twenty-two, her voice was as rough as the back of that fabric would be. "No thanks." The oldest and second oldest professions: prostitution and weaving-a potent duo. The crumbling parking pavilion housed an assortment of dented and elderly Karmans, Pips, and even a few of those cheap one-wheeled Bolbos that I doubted were street legal. I parked and started toward the towers. The air was warmer here and, despite the blocks of bright sunshine between the close-set rocket-shaped towers, smelled of mildew and mold. In the building's shabby lobby, a sign announced that the watervator was out of service. Inside the open doors of the people mover, a fat man in ratty overalls lay snoring. Back outside, I squinted up into the glare. No entervators connected the buildings, so the only way up was the external stairs that circled the moon decks.

  After twenty floors, I stopped to catch my breath and wipe my brow with an oxygenated cloth. What struck me about this development, besides the decay-the long streaks of white oxidation on the metal-skinned towers and the aesthetic sabotage of the bright and haphazard piles of junk on the decks-was the lack of occupants. On several floors I heard the thump of music and the drama of amplified voices, but I hadn't yet seen anyone going up or down.

  Then I saw a woman in tight stretch step out to the deck of the next building three stories above. She flopped a neon yellow rug over the rail, and raised a large wooden fork. Then she noticed me. Although she was haloed in glare, I could see her face clicking through several emotions, like a gun barrel rouletting past empty chambers, before ending up with a wide smile-accompanied by a preening tug of her top and twirl of the fork.

  When I shrugged, she beat her rug, sending a cloud of dust and debris toward the ground. I continued my climb.

  My legs ached when I got to the forty-first floor. There I found apartment E surrounded by piles of boxes. On the door, crucified with wide swatches of tape, was a yellowed business card reading CeeCee Textiles, Zoom Langsin.

  It seemed to me that behind this door stood a terrifying absolute edge and end of the fashion world. My knock produced a hollow pot-metal sound. After a beat of silence, I knocked again, more forcefully. "Hello? I'm looking for Mr. Zoom Langsin." Cocking my right ear toward the door, the way a robin might listen for a worm, I heard what sounded like shuffling and desperate whispers.

  I tensed and imagined several men with weapons. Ryder had called ahead to warn them! I backed up a step, waited, but nothing happened.

  "Zoom? It's Tane Cedar, men's precision tailor." I heard nothing. "I just want to speak." After a beat I upped my offer. "I want to buy some yarn!"

  "Go away!" It was a woman's voice. Was Zoom a woman?

  "This could be lucrative."

  "I'm not open!" Now a man spoke. "Come back tomorrow!"

  "Zoom, can we talk for a few moments?"

  "I'm not open!"

  "Please. Just a few minutes." I heard no reply. I knocked again. "Ryder sent me. He said you're the best." I could picture the two of them in there, standing still, their eyes locked as they listened. "Zoom! I need a specialty yarn! I'm willing to over-pay."

  No answer. What was wrong with him? He lived in this rotting tower and yet seemed happy to ignore a begging customer.

  "Zoom! What is going on? I need the yarn! Speak to me at least." Met by more silence, I beat on his door angrily. "If you don't open this, I will!"

  This was more than just the Xi. This was basic civility. He couldn't even crack the door and tell me to go sew myself? From inside my jacket, I pulled out the stitched black-polyoxide case for the water-shears and opened it. The golden device looked much like a pair of non-powered shears, except that above the top jaw was a pressurized water-tank the size of an egg.

  When water-shears were used to cut layers of cloth, the wider bottom jaw acted as the take-up and recycled the high-pressure stream of grit-filled water. But, of course, I wasn't going to cut fabric, so I unlatched the bottom, returned it to the case, and deposited it in my outside jacket pocket. I put my ear to the door and thought I heard him swearing. "Can you hear me? This is business! Talk to me."

  I pointed the shears toward the lock, momentarily considering what laws of city, state, and decorum I was about to violate. "Stand back!"

  Squinting, I aimed the top jaw at the lock. I imagined that I might need to spin it around to cut a circle around the lock, but with just a short burst, the screeching jet, like the blunt foot of a karate dancer, punched a wide hole in the aluminum, removing the lock itself, a good chunk of door, and five inches of the frame.

  Pushing on the now useless door, which fell inward, clattering noisily to the floor, I stepped into the black room. "I'm very sorry about this. This is an emergency and I have to speak to you. I will have your door repaired."

  "What the hell?" screamed Zoom. "You're crazy!"

  My eyes began to register the surfaces and outlines of the small room. In the middle was a wide bed with pastel floral sheets. Stretched out across it was a wiry nude man. His wrists and ankles were tied. A woman in a scream shirt and a hole skirt seemed to be trying to undo a large knot of black yarn wrapped around his crotch. "Oh… shit," I said, turning away. "I didn't… I mean… I'm sorry."

  "I said I'm busy! You couldn't wait a minute? What's wrong with you?"

  "I had no idea. I need to speak to you about some specialty yarn."

  "No!" he cried. "You get out! And give me two thousand for that door." He gestured at the closet. The woman pulled a blackand-white-striped jacket from the closet, tossing it over him as one might a towel on a spill, turned, headed into the toilet, and slammed the door.

  I pointed to the yarn ball that had fallen on the floor. "That's not Xi, is it?"

  He laugh
ed as if I'd told a bad joke. "You are crazy! What's the matter with you? You broke my door! I said I was busy."

  I smiled an embarrassed smile. "I need Xi yarn."

  "I don't have that shit! And you know what? That was a brand new door! It's worth three thousand. You better have cash!"

  "I'll pay for the door, but Ryder said you have connections."

  "He's selvage! Give me the money and get out before I call the satins!"

  "I'll give you what you want for the door." I stepped closer. "I need Xi yarn."

  "Stitch yourself."

  "Zoom, I'm sorry about your door. I'm sorry about barging in here and interrupting your leisure. I wouldn't be here except that I need Xi for a project."

  He laughed at me. "Leisure? I only can afford one fabriwhore a month." He pointed toward the toilet. "You just ruined that!"

  The bathroom door was flung open. "I'm a seamstress! Don't you dare call me a fabriwhore. You say that again and I'll never come back!" With that, she marched past us and out the doorway, even as Zoom begged her to stay. When she was gone, he flopped back his head and let out a moan.

  I dug out my wallet, pulled out a Calvin, and placed it on the bed. "Where can I get Xi?" He stared up indignantly. I added another Calvin. "Zoom, where can I get some?"

  He snorted. "Last factory is closed."

  I added another Calvin.

  Zoom blew out an angry sigh. I added another.

  The color of his face changed. He peeked at the bills for an instant before returning his gaze to the ceiling. "It's not made in the hemispheres anymore."

  "So… where is it made?" I took another bill from my wallet, pretended I was going to drop it on the others, but then scooped them all up, turned, and started out the door.

  "Fuck!" he cried as if I had yanked the yarn around his bobbins. "Wait! Come back here! All I know-there's supposed to be one mill left in Antarctica."