An Innocent Fashion (4 page)

The Monday after the wedding was the first day of my summer vacation, and while my parents were at work and all the other kids slept in and then watched reruns on TV, I put on my new suit and walked the familiar path to the district library. I had spent my last two summer vacations the same way, loafing
around the library as casually as if it were my own living room, reading books until they kicked me out. Having long since graduated from fairy tales to “chapter books” like
Peter Pan
and
Treasure Island,
the district library had become my favorite place in Corpus Christi. It had two floors, and ten times as many books as my library in grade school; flooded with stories and sunlight, it was an oasis in the arid wasteland of my life and I preferred to be there all day than to ever borrow a book to read at home.

The crowning achievement of my reading list that summer was
The Age of Innocence
. I had already fallen in love with the Brontës, and Jane Austen, but Edith Wharton's sentences were easily the most elaborate I had ever encountered. The library closed at six, and on many evenings I was awakened by the librarian, who had found me snoring with the open book aflutter on the table and a dictionary on my lap, as every paragraph had me looking up the meaning of words like “perfunctory” and “parvenu.”

It was the dead of summer in Texas, a dry, bristling heat, but I wore that suit every day. All I could think about was what a man I finally was; what the other kids would say on the first day of school. A growth spurt during those months ensured that by the time the school year actually arrived, my suit was no longer as dignified as it was laughably ill-fitted. But my conviction to wear it, despite the prominent nakedness of my wrists and ankles, was unshakeable.

Two weeks into eighth grade I was perched alone on top of a wooden table in the middle of the dusty, sun-baked lunchtime courtyard, beneath the shade of a rustling oak tree. Chatter all around attested to the preoccupations of my peers—restless recapitulation of last night's TV shows and hushed rumors about
Corpus Christi High kids who were “doing it” in the bathroom stalls—while I sipped from a grape soda, reading to myself from
The House of Mirth
, my second crack at Edith Wharton: “‘
I really think, Mother,' she said reproachfully, ‘we might afford a few fresh flowers for luncheon. Just some jonquils or lilies-of-the-valley—
'”

“Ey, Elián!”

I looked up to find Cesar Montana running laps around my table. Cesar hadn't changed much since our failed playdates—he'd only grown bigger and acquired the valuable skill of imitating the noise made by race car engines.

Now he came toward me and shouted, “Why you such a
mariposa
?”

A ball of terror rose in my throat. “
Mariposa
” literally meant “butterfly,” but I knew Cesar meant it “the other way,” the way my father often did. To me it was preposterous that any man or woman should seek to be
unlike
a butterfly—one of the loveliest creatures in the world—yet I always paled when I heard it spoken at the kitchen counter. “
To think a married man could prefer pink socks over gray!
” my father would rant, breaking into another beer while I silently prayed he would never apply his favorite insult to me.

A small crowd was forming around me and Cesar—mostly boys, gaggling with open mouths while my tormenter flapped his arms, presumably like a butterfly.

“You heard me,
mariposa
? Why you wear dis fuckeen suit? Readin dis stoopit book?” He stopped in front of me to jab his finger at the spine of
The House of Mirth
.

I gulped at his formless face, my eyes locked on a mole on his cheek from which a hair stuck out like an antenna, when suddenly, having gained extra gall from the attention of the growing
audience, Cesar reached out and struck the bottom of my drink. The aluminum can hit me square in the nose, grape soda bursting over my suited chest. Fizzling purple liquid trickled onto my white shirt, while the can tinkled to the dusty ground at Cesar's feet.

Eyes widened. Lower lips dropped. Then a dozen arms were flailing, and in a haphazard stampede of hooves the herd scrambled in the opposite direction. They all knew what was next—they must have seen it in my face—and so did Cesar, a bully who had taunted a caged animal, only to see the bars suddenly vanish.

In my head, the cacophony siphoned into a single buzz of ambient noise. I propelled myself into the air, book in hand . . . in slow motion observed a shifting of the ground below me . . . then I crashed onto Cesar's back. He went tumbling beneath my body onto a tangle of upraised oak roots. The collision raised a cloud of ashy dust around us, and the din in my ears exploded once more into high-pitched wails: “Look! Look!
¡Elián va a matar a Cesar!
”

I raised
The House of Mirth
and delivered a backhanded
crack!
across Cesar's face.

I had never felt more hatred than I did in that moment. I hated Cesar, I hated the way he looked and the way he spoke and the way he moved. I hated him so much that when I looked down I didn't see a person at all, but everything that was ugly and wrong with life. Everyone who might hate
me
, just for being different. The fact that in Corpus Christi, and the whole world, there were thousands of people like him, and that ultimately, if they wanted to look down on me from the dumpster pedestal of their own mediocrity, there was nothing I could do about it.

His flesh yielded like dough as I hit him once more, on the
side with the antennaed mole, and then, as he covered his face and voices screeched like out-of-tune violins, I struck him again! and again! and again!

From somewhere far away, a hand tried to pull me up.

I was suspended from school, but it didn't matter. For once, my father was proud of me, and I spent the following two weeks at the district library, where I obviously preferred to be.

That such a perfect word as
mariposa
could be regarded as an insult in my hometown was confirmation enough for me: I would find a way to escape Corpus Christi, and in the meantime I would wear never less than a full suit, not to the grocery store, or the dentist, or to my grandparents' house. I got my first job at the district library checkout counter, and with my limited funds I graduated to ownership of many suits—thrift-store acquisitions in different styles and colors—all tailored by my indulgent mother to fit the dimensions of my lanky frame, while my father, perhaps in denial, looked the other way.

It was the only act of rebellion I knew—to be worthy of such an insult as “butterfly.”

YALE WAS EVERYTHING I'D EVER WANTED, BUT COLLEGE
doesn't last forever. After four years spent in exultation of a realized dream, I knew of only one other destination with the same promise of beauty and success, a name that echoed in my head, the sound of my life's calling:
Régine
. When the e-mail came, it was as though all the tectonic plates of my life met right beneath my feet. The subject line was
RÉGINE
, in all caps, with the accent and everything.

                  
Dear Ethan St. James,

                  
We have received your résumé and believe you could be qualified to work as an intern in the office of Edmund Benneton. Please respond promptly if you are available for an interview tomorrow at 2 p.m.

Sabrina Walker

Fashion Assistant

RÉGINE

I fired an e-mail back to Sabrina Walker so quickly that I charred my fingertips. To see Edmund Benneton's name in my inbox, together with the implication that he might want
me
, that it was
me
who could soon be at his side—well, I won't get too carried away, but let's just say it meant the whole wide world was all right, spinning around as it should, and that if I dreamed of anything hard enough, it would happen.

Edmund Benneton was the fashion director of
Régine
, and after Ava Burgess,
Régine
's editor-in-chief, he was the single most important person in the world of fashion. With his work appearing every month on newsstands and front porches and little side tables in salons, Edmund reached an audience of millions, therefore possessing the power to affect the whole world—or at least, the
look
of the whole world. His was the life I envisioned for myself—basking in endless beauty, cavorting with artists and models and designers—

“Ethan. . . .”

My Elysian dream was interrupted by a faraway voice. “Oh!” I exclaimed, accidentally uncorking the bottle of enthusiasm I had planned to reserve until the right moment. I turned and rose to my feet, stretching out my hand, bursting, “You must be Ms. Walker!”

I'd correctly guessed only one thing about Ms. Walker: She was, by virtue of a stilettoed boot, extraordinarily tall. Other than that, well, she was clearly my age, around twenty-one, and hardly a “Ms. Walker” at all. She had the fresh, collegiate face of someone I could have been friends with at Yale—blushing cheeks, blue eyes incandescent with ambition. But the rest of Sabrina Walker distinguished her sharply from any friend I'd known.

Her white-gold hair was pulled up into a high ponytail; baby hairs shellacked into seamless oblivion, a long, infallible tress swishing uniformly over her nape like a silk tassel. She wore black from head to toe; a crepe secretary blouse, bow-tied with military stiffness around her throat, and a gabardine skirt, its razor-sharp pleats encircling her waist in a synchronized regimental march. Her glossy thigh-high boots were made of reptilian skin, with heels like bayonet blades. Her footsteps on the marble floor sounded
click, click, click
, like the clacking platinum balls in a Newton's cradle—a perfect balance of ease and exactitude.

My heart spiked instinctively as her hand glided into mine. With frosted delicacy, she permitted the briefest physical contact—a gesture which escaped the crudeness of an undignified joggle and the intimacy of a presumptuous clench—then, like eager Orpheus, I felt a Hadean chill claim her back, her fingers slipping away.

Sabrina smiled, her teeth glacier-white. “Burgundy suit—how bold.” Her voice was surprisingly husky. It was easy to imagine her, a few years earlier, in a plaid version of her short pleated skirt, smoking smuggled Parliament Lights out of a dormitory window at some mist-wreathed New England boarding school. She sat down, while in a daze of cryogenic uncer
tainty my outstretched hand remained suspended behind her. “Résumé?”

I hastily conducted an inventory of my disobedient limbs. The folder containing my résumé appeared miraculously in her hands, and my body in the parlor chair before her.

“You're the Yale boy, right?” She opened the folder and barely skimmed the page. She was chewing gum, and smiling again—a conspiratorial smile, as if we were part of the same club—and said, “I have friends that went to Yale.”

Against her amicable tone, I perceived the loud, self-destructive irrationality of my own nerves.
Why
was I so uncomfortable? Not only was Sabrina smiling, but she was going out of her way to be friendly.
Don't ruin this!
I took a deep breath, prepared to redeem myself with a masterful round of the name-game (“Oh, of course I know so-and-so!” followed by anecdotal evidence of her friend's and my closeness—“We were classmates! Neighbors! Practically best friends!”)—anything to calm my terror and seal the deal with Sabrina Walker.

“Do you know Cecilie Harris?” she asked, as I unconvincingly attempted to place my hands in a casual arrangement on my lap.

I felt my pent-up shoulders relax. Cecilie Harris was actually a good friend, and the invocation of her name was like a trickle of relief through my petrified veins.

Sabrina caught the flash of recognition on my face. “An expensive mess, isn't she?” she said. Her eyebrow rose with cruel relish. “Our fathers both work at Sotheby's, so we've summered together. She acts like some kind of hippie, when her parents own a château in Saint-Rémy.” Leaning forward, her voice thrilling with scorn, “She wore a
caftan
to a Commodore's Ball at the Nantucket Yacht Club.”

I laughed nervously as my shoulders tensed up even more than before.

“God, I wish I'd gone to Yale,” she moaned. “Went to Dartmouth. Have you been there?” She reclined into the damask chair, its cream flourishes forming an elegant backdrop for her mockery. “If you haven't, don't bother, unless you're a fan of sweatshirts and cheap beer. The experience was distressing.” She laughed to herself unexpectedly before waving away her transgression. “Anyway, where are you from again? Originally?”

It took me a second to remember. “Corpus Christi,” I managed.

She cocked her head.

“It's in Texas,” I clarified.

“Oh.” Her expression, which a second ago had been so convivial, was suddenly obscured by a dense fog. “I had assumed . . . from your last name . . . St. James, you know, like Georgina St. James. I thought you were her brother or something . . .”