Yarn (16 page)

Along the way, I found dozens of odd and interesting curiosities. The outside pockets were all triple stitched with a curiously strong, red thread. One pocket was lined with a silvery lamé, which I guessed had something to do with either electronics or heat. As I got further into the matting and horsehair layers over the shoulders, a layer of white felt nearly disintegrated as I removed it. Other places, the deconstruction was like a puzzle, and I had to figure out in what order the parts had been assembled so as to pull them apart without damage.

Once it was all laid out, I stood, stretched my hands and neck, and got to work putting it back together. That went surprisingly quickly. As I held the pieces together, I found I could actually insert the needle in the original hole and pull it so that the stitches matched exactly.

Sometime late the next day, the door opened. L. F. W. M. Nathan Zanella ACE stepped in. He was now wearing a long, dark fornication coat. His eyes were red, his cheeks hollow, and his hair splayed in all directions. He glared at me unhappily, but then noticed the jacket hanging in the open vault. Bending, he peered at it. He checked the sleeves and then the tags in the back. He pulled it from the hook.

"So, you didn't even try? What did you do, just sit here the whole time? Oh, this is shit sad indeed!"

I pointed my chin at the top of the vault where I had put a single horsehair. It had occurred to me that I would need some proof that I had disassembled the jacket. That fiber had come from deep inside the layers of the right shoulder.

Zanella picked up the hair and felt it between his fingertips. He seemed about to laugh at me, but then something changed. It was like he recognized the fiber and its specific crinkle. For several frantic moments, he turned the jacket inside out, checked the numerous pockets, felt around the back of the collar, and inspected the armholes. When he finally hung the jacket back in the box, and closed the door on it, his expression was confused and maybe annoyed.

Picking up the horsehair again, he stood silent for a long moment. "Shit," he finally muttered, "you did it."

PART 2 Z-TWIST

SEATTLEHAMA: SINGLED OUT ON THE ROCOCO ENTERVATOR

"If you don't know history," said Zanella, "you can't repeat it. Fashion is about cycles. It's about sensing what's about to happen. It's about seeing into the future. No… it's more than that… it's about
making
the future. If you guess right, you will have created next year. There are few who work so intimately with the future… cherish that."

He would often deliver these lectures standing before the windows, looking far down at the circle of buildings while he applied his make-up and sprayed his hair with an army of products. For the first several days he talked and talked.

"To be successful, you must know not just cloth, body, and ease, but time," he said another day as rain poured down outside. "Our job is to make love to the zeitgeist, listen to its moans, and interpret their meaning."

After a week he led me to another room in the sleep boutique. There he stored his collection of historical garments, fashion magazines, cloth and seam samples, yarn recipes, and fiber formulas. Unlike his living space, it was immaculate. It was a museum, a library, a laboratory, a design room, and for me-the world's most wonderful playground. We spent weeks unboxing and unwrapping one treasure after another.

I had to memorize his entire fabric samples collection and he would quiz me by showing me the three-inch squares.

"Damask… gambroon… pellicule… dornick… chiffon…" I stopped when he showed me the next.

"Hello? What's the matter?"

I woke from a daydream. "Sorry… drap-de-Berry…" His sample was darker than the woman's suit, but it was like seeing her paralyzed scream again.

Zanella told me where things had came from, who made what, who stole what idea from whom, how it was marketed, how the mills ruined the order, how the product deviated from the contract, and a hundred other stories. He quizzed me constantly, and soon I had answers about fabric, construction, patterning and draping. Identifying and discussing other designers' work took longer.

"You must see this," Zanella said one day, opening a sealed black box. Inside was a highly constructed pale yellow suit with clear buttons, no pockets, and low drop shoulders. Zanella laughed as he picked it up and handed it to me. "Poor Marrion! He's gone now. Rest his soul. Lister Erik Marrion Chat was his name. Marrion was his mark. He loved these pale and destitute yellows. He wore them all the time. His house was covered with them. And he adored those thick glass buttons. He made them himself with some mad high-fire technique. But he was a genius at tailoring. There are few more exquisite suits than his, but…" Zanella let out a long exhale. "He just kept doing the same silhouette in the same palette. I told him to experiment, but he clung to his ideas. He thought those ideas were his being. For years he was loved. He made dresses and gowns; he made popular
de nimes
in yellow, of all colors. He sold and sold… but then… overnight… he was hated." He met my eyes. "Fashion changes and fashion is the universal constant."

Those were my days. As much as I could, I traveled up and down in the Europa Showhouse admiring Vada and her endless costumes. Once she wore a stunning dress layered with tapestry and bone, next a sheer caustic dimity clung to her curvy figure, another time her face was barely visible behind feathers and Chantilly.

I decided that I wasn't just attracted to her appearance, or her magnificent and often risqué clothes, but to her maturity, her being, and the way she stood. When she was on stage, she was balanced, solid, and rooted to the floor in a way that reminded me of corn stalks at the height of the harvest. She belonged in a way that I could only wish.

When the Europa Showhouse docked the last stop, and Vada thanked, waved, and blew air kisses, I would slink off, my hands stuffed in my pockets hiding my excitement.

Thus would begin my nights. But instead of a few frantic moments in enterjohns listening to the admonishments and coupon offers from knitter-kritters, they were filled with fashion of a different sort when Pilla introduced me to something called Pearl River Love Tights.

"I'm not into the whole epic character stuff," she explained. "With these it's just a body and a minimum of fabric."

The bright yellow, pink, and teal bodysuits came in sealed packages, covered with cartoon frogs and pigs and promises of fulfillment, improved function, and ecstasy. The knit fabric within heightened touch and warmth like a giant magnifying glass. The first time, it was just the two of us sliding against each other in her green bedroom. The next night we headed to her Xi boutique and in one of the back rooms found a pile of others all dressed in Pearl Rivers.

I liked the tights better than Xi and soon got to know all the styles and weaves, from the slightly rough Tricolene, to the sheer Visiweave. Tights parties brought an intense and anonymous fashioning, where I often imagined I was with Vada. Some nights I only got an hour or two of sleep before finally collapsing in some corner of the boutique.

One morning, I woke in a pile of sleeping bodies. After peeling off the knit, and starting to re-dress in my usual clothes, I stopped. Staring at myself in the mirror, I hated what I saw.

I was dressing in a clumsy approximation of Warrior Remon of Loin, with violets, dark purples, fringe and frills. Worse, my face was as it had been shaped that day with Kira at the Black Blossom Shopping Amphitheater and Custom Fashion Art House. The man I was looking at wasn't me. Over coffee, I told Pilla.

"Finally!" She handed me her MasterCut. "Yes! Get a makeover."

A gender consultant reshaped my face and hair. I found a men's store nearby that sold a designer that Zanella had introduced me to-Cloque, a reclusive and little-known designer rumored to be nearly one hundred years old, had been designing since he was six. His clothes were not about trend, drift, or boom; instead they were about the integrity of cloth, simple tailoring, and cool colors.

When I walked into Zanella's that afternoon, I expected him to be stunned by my new look, but I was the one to be surprised. Zanella's room was immaculate. A stack of suitcases stood by the door.

"You're leaving."

"Back where I belong!" Behind the yellow lenses of his glasses, tears streaked his face. "I have stayed in Seattlehama long enough… I have contemplated long enough… I have fornicated enough coats… and I only took one steam-koto lesson. I actually burned my fingers!" He pulled off his glasses, wiped his face on a sleeve, and eyed me up. "I have something for you." He pointed to the old cloth-covered book on the coffee table.

Historical Highlights of Extraordinary Tailoring, Draping, and Costume Design.
Editor Betran Feldspar.

I picked it up and began to page through the yellowed volume.

"Two articles are mine," he said. "‘The Lost Drape Technique,' and ‘The Secrets of Gravitational Deformation Tables for Woven Cloth.'"

"You can't go," I said.

"It's time."

"There more things in your collection! I haven't seen everything."

"Only a few trifles."

I stared at the book. "I'm not ready."

"Please have a seat, Tane, I want to tell you something." Zanella clapped his hands happily. "And would you like a juice? When I cleaned up, I found a service-fridge in the corner." He laughed. "I had completely forgotten about it. I hate what a slob I am."

I sat, declining the juice.

"I must tell you something, Tane. When we first met, I did not think you were worthy. I didn't want to teach you anything, but I needed the money and the Xi that your… paramour… sugar… whatever you call that peculiar saleswarrior of yours… provided." He tilted his head back and propped the large frames back onto his now dry nose. With a white cloth, he dabbed an errant drop of juice that had splashed on his shirt. "But I've been surprised by you. You have vision that I do not possess. You have an innate command of fabric." He clasped his hands together. "So, I have two things to tell you. First, you still have much to learn. You are only now ready to
begin
in fashion, but you must first design women's clothes. I know that you have an interest in menswear, but study the female form. You will learn everything and more from her. The male and what he wears is a single planet to her solar system of silhouette and couture."

I didn't like the idea, but said, "Okay… I'll design for women."

"And second, don't let anyone ever tell you that fashion is superficial. It's the only thing that distinguishes humans from the critters. We have our fashion and our fashion is our culture. Leave people naked and not only will they freeze or fry, but their society and language will collapse to the hunter-gatherer of fifty thousand years ago." He leaned forward and spoke in a hushed tone. "Listen to me, Tane, as a designer… you are the shaper of men. You are the builder of order. It is through the tailor… that kings are fashioned."

I wandered toward the entervator port clasping Zanella's book to my chest. I didn't want him to go. I didn't want anything to change. I didn't even want to head back down, so I plunked myself in a chair.

After idly paging through the book and finding his article about gravity's effects on cloth, I glanced up at the t'ups, the holidays, and the costumed customers around me. I did not yet belong among them-as I had wished for so long-but I was beginning to sense who I was and what I could do.

More and more my thoughts were dominated with the shapes I could make, the seams I might sew, the folds I might make, and the bodies I might hide and reveal. Of the pants, vests, shirts, jackets, skirts, and gowns around me, the colors were wrong, the silhouettes, unseemly, the fabrics, squandered. I was here to shape them as I could.

I wanted to laugh. None of these t'ups knew it yet, but I was the one. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but as I sat there, holding Zanella's book, I felt all-powerful. All I needed was sharp shears, a tape, and some needles, and I could heal all that was broken.

Before I had seen just the yarn, or just the fabric, or just the darts and fasteners. My nights of fashioning bodies in what amounted to sensual foundation and my days of designers, lines, and ideas fused. It wasn't just about cloth. It wasn't just about skivvé, or jackets, or skirts. It was about the bodies inside.

As for Zanella, I knew I would never see him again. I had hugged him, thanked him a dozen times, and wished him well. I knew I was taking a small piece of him forward.

The Europa Showhouse arrived to take me down. I took a seat in the front on the far right, and after the door closed and the lights dimmed, Vada appeared in a red gown covered with beads as small and shiny as fish roe. Her hair spiraled around her head and something about her eyes seemed especially attentive and bright.

Shading her hand from the lights, she peered toward the back. "I am looking for a brave shopper who wonders about the price of happiness and the depth of credit. I need someone who is not afraid of the shine on the cosmos tonight. Someone from out of town, preferably!"

Since she always picked someone from the back, I was shocked when she pointed her red-gloved hand at me, and said, "You!"

My body froze. All I could do was quiver my head in an approximation of
no
.

"Cram your cut!" said the t'up woman beside me.

"Go on up!" shouted someone farther back.

My face must have been as red as her gloves when I finally stood. Someone next to me pushed me forward and I stumbled up onto the little stage. My hands were shaking. My mouth was dry.

"Are you a fan of mine or is your taste in vertical transportation simply purple and rococo?"

I shrugged, and once I had unstuck my tongue from the roof of my mouth, I said, "I like you." The words slipped out, but as I tried to explain them away, I was drowned in the crowd's screamed approval.

"Well," said Vada to the audience, "more white for my goblet… more muscle for my plate… another needle for my cut." While several in the front rows stood and whooped, she grasped my elbow and pulled me closer. Leaning in, she sniffed my face the way one might a freshly baked pie. "My olfactory intuition tells me that my very good new friend is just twenty-one years old…" She lifted my right hand and inspected my fingers. "My ocular intuition tells me that he has flair for certain
materials
."