Fatshionista (7 page)

“All right, and
why now?” Everyone had hidden motives and objectives. To work with him as
closely as I would have to, I needed to know what that motivation was so I
could ensure that our company goals did not conflict with his. While we rarely
turned down work, we also had to choose designers who were a good fit for what
we were trying to cultivate.

He stared at me
from under hooded eyes as his hands fidgeted with the buttons on his cardigan.
“Millicent.”

“Please, everyone
calls me Millie. Well, everyone except Marta.”

He smiled at that
and seemed to relax a little bit. “Millie, I’ve reached a point in my private
life where my business life has to evolve into what it is going to be, and it
has to do it quickly. I know that sounds veiled and convoluted, but for your
side of it, just know I am extremely motivated to launch my brand in the US and
the resort wear collection will be a trial run for the fall collection in
February. I need to start off with an easy win, and resort wear is very similar
to what I have been designing in India. I will work tirelessly; I will give you
whatever you need to make this launch a success.”

Well, that told
me absolutely nothing. I could hear his passion, I could see his passion for
this move to New York, but I still felt as if there was something more riding
on this than his professional success. I knew I shouldn’t care or be concerned,
but on some level, I wanted to help him. Maybe it was the ridiculous fantasies,
maybe it was the way his eyes changed when he spoke about his passion, but I
knew I would do whatever I could to help this man become a success.

“All right then.
Sounds like we’re on the same page. I’ll tell you up front that you need to be
clear about what you are asking for from our company. Some designers are the
creative thinkers and we’re simply the hands that make it so. I know you were
at the Ram Patel show—that is an excellent example of us executing the
client’s wishes with no creative input from our side. Ram was very clear on his
vision for the show from the color scheme to the music. If that’s what you are
looking for, I have no problem with that; it’s just something we need to
understand up front. Certainly we can offer whatever support you need from
editorial to stage design. We even have our own photographer who can show you
how your looks will photograph on the runway.”

“How did you know
I was at the Ram Patel show?” he asked.

Great.
Here I thought we had this cosmic, viscerally charged connection and he didn’t
even remember me. Maybe he couldn’t recognize me without a headset, glasses,
and dark circles under my eyes?

“Mr. Singh, you
plowed into me on stage after the show. I don’t usually forget being run over
by an Austin Powers look alike.” Crap, maybe that wasn’t offensive? Maybe? Kind
of?
Smile, Millie. Ha, ha, new client, a little joke between friends…

“Hmmmm.” While
professional Millie was squirming in her seat, after hours Millie loved the way
he made that thinking noise. There was nothing more attractive than a beautiful
man in deep thought.

“Austin Powers? I
take it you didn’t care for my choice of attire that day. At least now I know
you were in awe of my charming wits and good looks and not my clothing. I
thought maybe it was the boldness of my fashion sense that caused you to stare
open-mouthed at me.”

“So you do
remember meeting me?”
Little liar.

“I remember it
quite well, Millicent. I was just teasing you a bit. It’s the one thing my
sisters hate about me.”

Don’t compare
me to your sisters. I don’t want to be your sister, mister.

 “So,
support? What exactly are you looking for our company to provide, Mr. Singh?”

“Let me get back
to you on that, Millie. My first instinct is to ask for everything, all the
help that you and your team can offer. But I am a stubborn son of a bitch, and
I don’t want you getting pissed off and dumping me on the side of the fashion
highway, as it were. So let me mull that one over a bit.”

I couldn’t help
imagining a limo pulling to the side of a deserted highway and the door opening
as I shoved him out of it. “Mr. Singh, I assure you that you will not be the
first designer I’ve worked with who pisses me off, and you won’t be the last
designer I would be tempted to throw out of a moving vehicle. I’m sure we can
find some type of middle ground; just let me know what you decide. In the
meantime, shall we look over some of your past collections?”

“Certainly, I
have my iPad with me if you would—” Suddenly the loud grumbling of a
stomach rose up over his words and drowned him out. Thank God it wasn’t mine.

“Well now. It
would seem that I have once again forgotten to eat. Would you be so kind as to
join me for lunch while we look over the collection? Unless of course you’ve
already eaten, in which case I can just order something in.”

“No, I normally
pack a lunch, and I haven’t had a chance to eat just yet. There’s a great café
just around the corner—nothing fancy, just soups and sandwiches. Does
that sound like it would work?” I had to raise my voice at the end to be heard
over the second grumble.

He grinned and
stood up, gingerly avoiding the magazines piled around him. “I think anything
sounds good at this point. Please lead the way.”

That, based on
the close proximity of the office walls and hoarder-like stacks around us, was
easier said than done. I had to swing out around the edge of the desk to avoid
picking my sweater and brush by him, front to front, to make my way out the
door. So much for Defcon 5. That little brush-by created just enough friction
to send all my reactors to Defcon 1. Good Lord, I had to find some human
contact somewhere. Maybe I needed to join one of those groups I had heard about
where total strangers gathered together and hugged each another. They lay
around in piles on the floor and hugged and held on to each other—nothing
sexual, nothing kinky, just comforting human touch.

I pasted on a
smile and led the way out of my office. I turned to see if he was following,
and he was just standing there with a puzzled look on his face. He probably could
read minds and now knew I was a complete sex-starved maniac who wanted to climb
all over him. He caught my look and smiled as he followed me out of the office.

Any hope I had of
impressing this man was lost when I decided to order the soup instead of the
sandwich. As a woman with an ample bosom, I spent almost as much time dropping
food on my chest as I did getting it in my mouth. Normally, I could brush the
crumbs off and draw little attention to my obviously ravenous breasts.

Not the case with
soup. Soup dribbles and runs and stains and generally makes a complete mess
when spilled. Add to the fact that the soup of the day was my favorite tomato basil
with chicken and that I had chosen an off-white wrap blouse, and let’s just say
by the time lunch was over, I was sporting quite the Sweeney Todd look.

Oh well, as long
as I was eating, I might as well feed them, too. Daniel seemed to take it all
in stride. It certainly didn’t slow down the telling of his life story. I didn’t
know what it was about designers that they thought I needed to know their whole
life’s journey to produce their fashion show. I thought it was an ego thing;
they needed to feel like I understood who they were as a person and not just as
a designer.

I really didn’t.
I just needed to know what they wanted their clothes to say and who they wanted
to see them. I could take the rest from there.

I was glad I had
decided to keep my familiarity with India a secret. He went on for thirty
minutes about the neighborhood in Delhi where he grew up. He described it in
painstaking detail, right down to the smell of the street food vendors and the
sounds of the truck horns. I had to bite my tongue a couple times when I didn’t
agree with his take on something. He claimed that the neighborhood was a poor,
humble area.

But it wasn’t.
Some of the largest houses I saw when I lived in Delhi were in South Delhi. He
either really lived in South Delhi but wanted me to think he was poor, or he wasn’t
from Delhi at all. He wouldn’t be the first designer I had met who claimed an
exotic background but was really from some non-discrepant American (or in this
case, maybe British) suburb.

However, since I
was keeping mum about my knowledge of the city and I was preoccupied with
covering my breasts in tomato soup, I let his inaccuracies slide.

What I couldn’t
let slide was how comfortable I felt with him. And not comfortable like when-you-were-with-a-gay-man
comfortable. Comfortable like when you were starting to really hit it off with
someone and you were thinking maybe this might actually go somewhere. I didn’t
know where my wires were crossed. He had made several mentions of men he had
dated and that he left India to go to school in the UK because he was following
the love of his life, Dean. But I still felt like we were clicking in a very
rub-your-boy-parts-against-my-girl-parts kind of way.

It didn’t matter,
though. If by any chance I was right and we had any spark at all, however
delusional that may sound, I had thoroughly doused it in tomato soup. Yes, I
was one classy broad. I would have to go back to the office and beg Lizzie to
let me borrow her overalls. Setting aside the fact that my hips could never
shimmy into her size-two coveralls, I didn’t even think they could cover the
extent of the damage I had inflicted upon my poor, defenseless blouse. The poor
thing looked like something out of
Silence of the Lambs
.

Daniel finally
paused to take a breath and for the first time, I think, actually noticed there
was another, living human being at the table with him.

“Uhm, Millie, I
hate to spoil your lunch by pointing this out, but you seem to have dropped a
spot of food on yourself.” He seemed almost embarrassed to point this out.

“Well, I think it
stopped being a spot about nine or ten spills ago. I am fine; this happens all
the time—one of the perks of having breasts. You men have no idea how
lucky you are, and you especially, since not only do you not have to deal with
them yourself, you don’t have to worry about a partner who has to deal with
them. It must be nice to live in a world where breasts play absolutely no role
whatsoever,” I said as I cupped both my breasts, as if to better articulate my
point.

As his eyes
shifted to my chest, I quickly dropped my hands. How did I get so carried away?
It was bad enough that I had covered myself like a Jackson Pollack painting and
was sitting here spinning bumping parts dreams around an obviously gay fashion
designer—now I was groping myself to visually illustrate my point? I had
been so divorced from polite society, working all the time with only the
occasional social event on my calendar, that I had lost the ability to even
have a casual lunch date.

In the midst of
my self-flagellation I had missed the fact that Daniel was still staring at my
chest. It was as if he were taking it all in for the first time. Maybe it was
like a Rorschach test; he was trying to see what shapes and images he could
make out of the spilled soup.

But that heated
stare shooting out of those piercing blue eyes was making me all tingly and
making me forget my earlier observation that this extremely gay man had
absolutely no interest in me whatsoever.

“Um, Daniel, I’m
sure to an artist such as yourself, the living work of art in front of you is
fascinating, but your studied attention to my chest has created quite the lull
in our conversation.” At no point during my sentence did he even look up.

After a beat or
two, just long enough for my words to settle in, his head jerked up, and were
he not already that beautiful café au lait color, I would swear he was
blushing.

“Right, right, of
course. Please forgive me—my mind was wandering. They are quite
fascinating.”

Now it was my
turn to stare. “They are?” I said as I glanced down at my breasts.

“The stains, I
mean, yes, the stains—so abstract, so red, so…tomatoey, quite right,” he
continued to mumble as he picked up his ringing phone from the table.

Well, I was glad
we had cleared that up. Tomato soup 1, Breasts 0. A shame, really, now they
were all dressed up and had no place to go. Oh well.

His phone
conversation consisted of a lot of yeses, rights, and of courses. When he hung
up, he looked at me apologetically and said, “I have to be off. My samples are
here from Delhi, and I need to make sure the colors are right. This resort
collection is all about color and texture and it has to be spot on; I only have
one shot to truly come out to the New York fashion community, and so much is
riding on this collection.” He gathered up his man purse and phone while
signaling the waiter for the check. Coming out, indeed.

“No worries, I
know how important those first samples can be. If you are pleased with them,
why don’t you call me tomorrow and I can come by and check them out?  I
have an intern who I’ll bring to take photos; this will help me get a head
start on the presentation of the clothes. I need to get an idea of what you’re
trying to say and your design aesthetic.”

“You didn’t get
that by me talking about my background? I thought that would give you an idea
of what I was trying to say with my clothes.”