Fashionistas (11 page)

R
oger’s cell phone is programmed to play the theme song to an obscure Swedish children’s television show that aired for two years in the early seventies. Childish but not Swedish, Roger exuberantly showed off his new ring one night over dinner, playing the quickly grating tune over and over again until the couple at the table next to us quietly asked him to stop. Embarrassed, Maya averted her gaze, I hung my head in shame, and Roger spent the rest of the meal talking with food in his mouth and complaining in between telephone calls that people don’t have manners anymore. It seems that some people never did.

I hear the familiar la-da-do-dada now and cringe. The Met is crowded with summer tourists and the European portrait rooms are thick with sweaty people in fanny packs, but I know that if I turn around I’ll see him. He is right behind me, and between
Portrait of a Man
and
Portrait of a Bearded Man,
I’m cornered. I hold myself still like a leopard in the underbrush and hope he passes, but I have no camouflage.
My summer dress is bright blue and I stand out like a beacon against the old Dutch masters.

Roger says, “Vig darling,” and I turn around. Since he and Maya are no longer dating, I’m not required to affect pleasure. I’m not required to affect anything at all, and I give him a look of pure disgust when he raises a hand to indicate that he’ll be off the phone in a second. I did not come to the Met to stand in Roger Childe’s waiting room.

I point across the room to indicate the direction in which I’m going and walk away. My instinct is to scurry out of the building, but I settle with hiding behind a pair of German-speaking tourists who are admiring a Rembrandt. Next to me a woman is drawing the picture with thick gray charcoals and I’m distracted for a moment by her skill. I’m also sketching austere portraits, but I’m using a No. 2 pencil. I’ve never done this before and my clumsy fingers don’t glide across the paper. They stumble and limp and sometimes even fall. I feel self-conscious and silly, but I refuse to let these wayward emotions quell my enthusiasm.

I’m here because I want to be Technicolor. This is the revelation that struck me last night as I was railing against hustle and drying colanders and putting away dishes. I don’t want to write boring service items either. The world is so much more interesting than the type of teeth-whitening strips you use.

Enter Pieter van Kessel, a young Dutch designer whose fashions borrow liberally from Rembrandt and Frans Hals. His fall show impressed me and stayed with me and gave me dangerous ideas above my station. I squashed them, of course. I crushed them ruthlessly beneath my heel because up-and-coming designers are not the sort of thing
Fashionista
covers. Rising stars are not in our cosmos. At least not under the Jane regime.

But suddenly I’m eager to plan for the best-case scenario. It will mean going back to Keller’s apartment and braving his anger and calming him down enough to gain his com
pliance. It will mean researching a story idea that has very little chance of coming to fruition. But this is how it has to be done. I still don’t believe in the cultivation of hustle, but you can’t wait for the world to come to you. You have to go after the things you want. And I want van Kessel. I want to meet him and talk to him and write about his designs. I want to publish a story about the making of a superstar
before
he plays to packed stadiums.

My moment of distraction is fatal. While I’m contemplating the woman’s clean lines and my future, the German-speaking couple moves on to the next painting and I’m left without cover.

“Vig,” Roger says again, either oblivious or unoffended by my hasty retreat. He’s off the phone now and holding the hand of a beautiful redhead in a skintight leather dress. Roger is a creepy guy, the sort who thinks up catchy nicknames for serial killers or peeks into the women’s bathrooms, but I don’t think of him as the type to go for skintight leather dresses. J. Crew only makes tasteful jackets.

Roger is of medium height and build and is plagued by a persistent acne problem that is exacerbated by encroaching baldness—his hairline is receding, followed closely by an army of pimples that cannot march fast enough across the plains of his scalp to keep up with its retreat. Accutane did not help and only made spending time with him and Maya unbearable. Roger is quiet and introspective when he’s drunk.

“Sorry about that, Vig,” he says, kissing me on the cheek. When he and Maya were dating, there were no cheek kisses or darlings. “I was leveraging information. It was a very important visit.”

Roger believes that language is something you bend to your will instead of the other way around. He changes nouns into verbs and invents new usages. He thinks he’s revolutionizing the English language but he’s not. He’s just speaking nonsense.

“Vig darling, meet Anthea,” he says, introducing me to his companion, whose eyes are so large and round she seems right out of a Margaret Keane painting.

I offer my hand. “Hi, I’m Vig Morgan.”

She takes a second to read and interpret my gesture before grasping my hand. Her grip is so loose and cold that for a moment she seems dead. “Hi.”

“Vig’s a friend of Maya.”

“Oh,” she says in such an arch manner that I naturally conclude that the only Maya she knows is Roger’s psycho bitch ex-girlfriend.

“She’s an editor at
Fashionista
magazine,” he adds, giving me more context.

Anthea looks interested. “That should be cool.”

“Yes,” I say, because it should be.

“Anthea works in a shop on Twenty-second. It’s called DeMask,” he says casually. “Ever hear of it?”

DeMask is one of those sex shops that sells everything from inflatable butt plugs to male chastity belts. I’m not intimately acquainted with the establishment, but I’ve seen their ads in the
Village Voice.
“The Mask? No, I can’t say I have. Do they sell costumes?”

Roger is annoyed by my ignorance and is about to elaborate but Anthea giggles. “Yes, sort of,” she says, before adding, “If you ever need one, you should drop by. All our latex originates in Europe.”

“In Europe?” This is not an area of the fashion industry I’m familiar with, but I know that a European pedigree is always a selling point.

“Yes, we’ve got outlets in Germany and Amsterdam.”

Roger is not happy with this friendly chitchat. Now that DeMask is a friendly costume shop with Old World charm, he doesn’t want to talk about it. He looks impatiently at his watch. “Look at the time. Anthea and I have to engine. We’ve got somewhere we need to be.” He places his hand at the small of her back before leaning in to kiss me again. I’m pre
pared this time and dart my head in the other direction. His lips meet air. “It was so lovely to see you. You will send Maya my love, won’t you?”

There is an awful victorious gleam in his eye. He is expecting me to go running back to his ex-girlfriend of four days with the tale of how he’s now dating a drop-dead gorgeous woman with large breasts and a yen for whips and chains, but I don’t. I tell Anthea good-bye and return to taking notes on the Delft School. I never say a word about the meeting to Maya.

A
lex Keller opens the door with an angry sneer on his face. Although he’s still devastatingly appealing, his posture is more in keeping with what I’ve come to expect from him and it puts me at ease. Now I’ll be able to clear up yesterday’s misunderstanding.

“Who are you?” he asks, raising his voice and leaving me in the hallway where the neighbors can listen. “Why are you sabotaging my dog’s happiness? What have I or Quik ever done to you that you need to ruin his life?”

I open my mouth to explain, but he doesn’t let me. Keller is on a rampage, treading familiar ground, and will not be interrupted.

“Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a dog walker you can trust? Any idea? Do you have a dog?”

I assume this is a rhetorical question, like the last one, and don’t answer.

“Well, do you?” he presses, his voice raising thunderously.

“No.”

“Do you have a cat?”

“No.”

“Do you have a fish?”

“No.”

“Are you a pet owner in any way, shape or form?”

“No.”

“So you know absolutely nothing about the care and supervision of domesticated animals. You have no idea the damage you’ve done, do you?”

“No.”

“Do you have any idea how hard it was getting that appointment with Kelly in the first place? She’s extremely busy and only agreed to see me as a personal favor to a friend. As a
personal
favor to a friend and I wasn’t here when she stopped by for our
scheduled
appointment. Do you know what she did when she found I wasn’t here? She left a short, abrupt note with the doorman informing me that she doesn’t have time to play games and that she’ll have to deny herself the pleasure of my custom. And don’t be naive. Her use of ‘pleasure’ was completely facetious.”

It occurs to me that I wouldn’t want anyone walking my dog who routinely used the word
custom,
but as it was so clearly pointed out to me only seconds before, I’m not a pet owner in any way, shape or form.

Keller takes a deep breath. He’s steadying himself. “Now, if you will excuse me. I don’t see why I should be afflicted with your presence any longer.” He closes the door.

Over the years, Keller has behaved appallingly and no doubt voodoo dolls, hexes and incantations have all been implemented on his behalf, but I’m not a plague on anyone’s house.

I knock on the door, hoping that he’ll at least come back and stick his eye against the peephole without my having to lean against the bell. I’m here to ask him a favor and am well aware that alienating him further won’t help my cause. Still, I’m prepared to do it. I’m prepared to stand on his doorstep and pound on his door and shout his name. I’m prepared to
do anything. Jane’s downfall, once a part-time fantasy that sustained me during fourteen-hour days, is now a cherished goal. It
will
come to pass.

A dark shadow, which I assume is Keller’s eye, covers the hole, and I adopt a posture of deep contrition, stooping my shoulders and looking abashed, even though the image he’s seeing of me is warped and tiny.

“I want to apologize,” I say, knowing the door is thin. The neighbors are watching
All in the Family
and I can clearly hear every word Edith says. “Please.”

He doesn’t respond but nor does the shadow move. “I’m very sorry and I would like a chance to explain my motives. I’m distraught to discover what a mess I’ve made.” I don’t know what distraught looks like, so I content myself with more pronounced contrition. I tilt my head down. “Please, I didn’t mean to sabotage Quik’s happiness,” I insist, trying very hard to sound sincere. I’m not quite convinced that anyone’s happiness has been sabotaged, but saying so at this juncture doesn’t seem wise. I decide to wait a few minutes, at least until I’ve passed the threshold, before instigating a more clearheaded discussion about the dog’s daily care and supervision.

Keller opens the door. “Who are you?” he asks, his voice even and well modulated. I’m no longer worried that the neighbors are listening.

“Vig,” I say, cringing and preparing myself for the onslaught of curses that are going to be rained on my head.

Instead of raining curses, he furrows his brow. “Vig what?”

Vig is not a common name and it’s inconceivable that he knows another one. “Vig Morgan. We work together.”

“At Walters and Associates?” I can see him running through the faces he sees all the time at the office. Mine is not one of them.

Walters and Associates? “No, at
Fashionista.
”

“Oh,” he says, momentarily disconcerted. A faint blush creeps up his neck. He knows that I’m intrigued. He knows
I’m interested and want to hear more about the firm of Walters and Associates. He stares at me silently, carefully considering his next move. Finally he opens the door and steps to the side. “Come in.”