An Innocent Fashion (39 page)

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?”

The plane was rumbling to a start beneath my feet, when to my amazement, Clara nodded. “You're right,” she said. “That's why we're bringing some interns on board as staff—as assistants.”

I grabbed my chair with both hands. Through the blurriness I thought I saw a strange look on her face—a
smile
? It must have been a smile . . . and it dawned on me. I wasn't going to Texas at all. I was going to work for Edmund, the foremost authority of my dream world. I leaped out of my third-class airplane seat and screamed, “
Get me off of here!
” and all of a sudden I was swearing my loyalty to Edmund again. If, as the emperor, he wanted to strut naked throughout the town, then who was I to stop him? The whole time I would point and say, “
Look at those marvelous new clothes! The hat! The collar! How divine!
”
—
no matter that the fantasy was a lie, and the townspeople wretched and stupid, and Edmund not marvelous at all but just a naked old man whose clown-like shortcomings everybody was afraid to point out.

Clara wasn't firing me . . . she was
hiring
me. I shook my
head in wide-eyed disbelief, as she bowed her head, a blonde curl tumbling delicately into her face. “Did you hear me, Ethan?” she asked.

“N—no,” I trembled, leaning toward her. “I'm sorry, I—I didn't actually. I didn't hear anything.” I wiped my sweaty palms against my pants and smiled a little, one nostril wheezing while the other crackled with dried blood. I wanted to hug Clara, but if I moved I would start screaming out—”
I knew it! I knew it all along!
”—so I gulped, and folded my clammy hands over one knee, over the pants that Clara, and
Régine,
had generously bestowed upon me several months ago, trying to project the dignified look that would befit a young man of my new status—an employee of Hoffman-Lynch, the best magazine publisher in the world, where I'd be paid to walk the halls that for years had seen some of the greatest visionaries in the industry rise to prominence and bask in the glory of
Régine
's spotlight . . . and now it was my turn.
My turn
. “I'm sorry,” I told Clara, “I really don't mean to be so quiet, I'm just—it's such big news. What's next? How do I start?”

“Well, like I said, I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this. I've told you before that I have the utmost respect for your personal style, and I still think you have a hopeful future. It's going to be tough finding a job in magazines, but maybe, you know, you'll find a great position in PR, and of course, I'd personally be happy to write you any recommendations you need.”

“PR . . . ?” I trailed off. “Wait, what are you talking about?”

“Or anything you'd like, I don't know. People who leave
Régine
find jobs in PR without much trouble, and I mean, you went to Yale, so . . .”

I closed my eyes and shook my head. “I—don't—understand. Aren't you hiring me to be Edmund's new assistant? I thought
that's what you just said? That there'll be no more unpaid interns and he needs an assistant—a real one, like on the masthead . . . with a salary,” I croaked.

“Well, yes, it's a paid position, with a salary, and line on the masthead, but . . . I'm sorry, Ethan, really, but it's just that we're . . .” Clara paused, then started over. “
Régine
is hiring
Sabrina
to be Edmund's new assistant.”

My jaw dropped. “Wait,
what
?
”
I could think of nothing worse than Sabrina profiting from a misfortune with my name on it. “But Sabrina is
already
an assistant. What will happen to . . .” I was shaking—horrified—couldn't go on.

“There will be two—Edmund will have an assistant, and Jane will have her own as well. Jane has thought for some time now that Sabrina's personality does not fit her editorial vision. She is looking for somebody more creative, with a background in art.”

I let this settle over me, as relieved as if I was standing in a parched field and it had started to rain.

Maybe I was supposed to end up with
Jane
, not Edmund! As Jane's assistant, I would work every day with someone who shared my appreciation for beauty, true beauty—my heart's purpose and the real reason for my desire to work at
Régine
.

“Can I apply to be Jane's assistant?” I almost whispered. “Who can I talk to?” I thought of how Jane had described me last night: “
Somebody with life in them!
” I was perfect for her. We were perfect for each other. This journey couldn't end here. It
wouldn't
end here.

Clara took a deep breath.

Even half-blind, I could tell something was wrong. She started fiddling uncomfortably with her skirt, and she must have felt a twinge of guilt, or pity, or something—because she couldn't
look me in the eye. Instead her eyes focused on the door, while my own clung to her lips. I saw a mirage of hope shimmer over them, then—

“I'm afraid that position is already taken.” She swallowed. “
Régine
is hiring Dorian to be Jane's new assistant.”

She reached forward and placed her hand on my shoulder. “I'm sorry, Ethan,” she said. Then with a helpless shrug, she stood up, and left me there alone.

TOMORROW MARKED THE START OF JUNIOR YEAR. MADELINE
and Dorian were sprawled on the sagging Victorian sofa in our living room while I sat on the floor—all of us exchanging stories from our summer vacations apart, waiting for the ecstasy to take effect.

It was a sunny summer day—one of those by which we would measure all other summer days: blood flowing with sweat through our veins as we gazed at each other through heavy-lidded eyes, intoxicated by ourselves.

Dorian hung his arm around my neck. As in every place where our limbs crossed—Madeline's hand on my shoulder, Dorian's leg on her knees—a pool of slick sweat was beginning to drip between us. Moist, mismatched pillows moaned beneath our weight, while a futile breeze blew through the open bay window. A glass saucer glistened beside my feet, having moments earlier passed between our sweating fingers. We had all reached in—the pills were robin's egg blue—and swallowed together on a count of “One—two—three—forever young.”

I had only swallowed one tab, even though we'd each bought
two. I always planned to “hold on” to a second pill, to take when the first was wearing off. I also always changed my mind.

No matter how many times I'd done ecstasy, I always worried that the effects just wouldn't hit me. That maybe this time, this batch—fifteen dollars a pill, and “explosive,” according to Ted Hamilton, who had been selling to us from his dorm since freshman year—would have the same effect as a daily multivitamin. I was terrified that, like Blake and his lager-blooded Pi Phi brothers, who required entire kegs to feel merely “buzzed,” I would one day have taken too many drugs, and would never be able to get high again—the precursor to the more serious fear I would eventually feel at
Régine
, that I'd reached the highest level of joy that was permitted in a single life, and God, or the President, or whoever kept track of these things, would say to me, “
Now, now, you've had enough
” and I would never feel happy again.

Now I slipped the second pill in the oyster-like crevice between my gum and my bottom lip where, thanks to my prestigious education, I knew it would dissolve into my bloodstream fast. Madeline was telling us about her summer vacation in Nice. I gazed beyond her at a poster of Frida Kahlo on the far wall, crowded by eighteenth-century botanical drawings of flowers. Names like
Trillium grandiflorum
curled all around her braided head in the heat.

“. . . and I guess I just believed him . . .” Madeline was saying. “Anyway, it turned out fine, because I'd never seen a green motorcycle before, and . . .” She blinked, forgetting what else. “Will you give me a back massage?” she asked me.

The sun in her blue eyes, she unstuck herself from the couch to join me on the floor. I edged backward to make room for her, while a drop of sweat fell from the tip of her nose. She sat be
tween my legs; hung her head forward, sweeping her dampened gold hair to one side, and I lowered my hands upon her spine.

Above us, Dorian strummed a guitar, his latest hobby. He began to sing. I whistled through parched lips, and Madeline patted her own knee to the lumbering beat.

Rock me mamma like the wind and the rain,

Rock me mamma like a southbound train . . .