Serge Dupuy, the chef of the Restonia, not only made Brett's meals himself, but I knew because of certain hints being dropped—he was planning to copyright Brett's régime as
his
, in a book titled something like
Dupuy's Red Cuisine Path: How to Eat Your Way to Power Muscle
.
Although Serge lacked a sense of honourableness in upholding the client-chef relationship, not to mention copyright and plagiarism (applicable in someone's unique requests in dining?), I enjoyed his creations on my behalf as immensely as he enjoyed making them. I relished our slightly competitive dialogue in the form of me ordering, he cooking, he creating new surprises, me eating them and giving him my judgements.
He was an artist. Sure, he had a sleazy, lazy side—but he was a total
unknown
, without even a line of Woolworths sauces to his name. I looked down on Serge, but did not disparage his wish for fame.
There were only two rules I gave Serge regarding the food he made for me. No meat. Growing up, I had my fill of flesh foods, and swore off meat when I urbanized myself. I didn't hold anything against Brett. He had his needs, but no thank you, for me. The other rule I gave Serge was: no garlic, no matter whether he thought a dish needed just a touch, a little touch, or not. Other than that, the more extravagant the creation, the more wildly creative, exciting and even
decadent
the menu, the better. After all, Desirée Lily would want all that. And I was no longer the girl with the smell of hot mutton fat in her hair, who thought of a cold Tim Tam chocolate biscuit as the height of decadent frivolity.
~
That leaves the dragon-of-a-problem that
somehow
had to be slayed: my looks.
That day of Jim's death-discovery, events overtook this ultra-priority, but every non-hassled moment I tried to figure out a way to kill this fiend. Jewels had lost their twinkle as the answer. I didn't ask Brett for advice. Although he was blessed with looks, he did nothing with them. Therefore, I expected him to be bloody useless but he must have seen my glumness, for he approached me with an inspiration.
It took me a whole day to summon up my nerve and follow Brett's advice, but I did—calling Justin to an extraordinary tête-à-tête in my bedroom. There I revealed to him with all the dignity that I could, considering the state of my garb, that I was emerging from a chrysalis, but prematurely—my new wings unfolding before the pattern of their colour, pattern, shape, and size was quite determined. I needed a 'determiner' (Brett's suggested word). Justin understood
exactly
what I meant and almost melted with the romance of it all. He immediately suggested Kevin's services as dragon slayer, or what Justin called 'style master'.
Justin scurried away and in about five minutes, in the midst of post-Jim commotion and the redecoration of our suite, he produced Kevin.
Kevin took one look at me and turned to Justin. 'I will always remember this.'
I must have shown that I was ready to burst something, for Justin turned to me. 'He's happy!' he said.
'Of course I'm bloody happy, you drongo!' Kevin snapped at Justin. He turned to me. 'I am beyond ecstatic at the opportunities afforded me,' he announced, sounding constipated. And besides, I didn't like my looks rubbed in quite so much. I felt like a derelict house in front of a mad architect. Would there be anything left of me but bones, by the time Kevin was truly happy? I would have flounced away if that could have restored some dignity and I had some place to flounce to, or other resources.
'You want to be private, I can see,' Justin said, absorbed in the giant sofa being carried into the suite.
Kevin didn't hear Justin, being totally absorbed in me. His brain was busy, I could see. If he'd had a crowbar in his hand and I were that house, he would have bashed through his first wall already. I had no choice, so I led the way to my room. He closed the door behind us. My clothes now ponged more than ever as my armpits poured sweat. I was going to sit when he grunted, so I continued to stand. Finally he asked, 'I don't mean to pry, luv. But do you know your dimensions?'
Of course I didn't. He pulled a tape measure out of his pocket and offered it to me. I closed my eyes, meditated in panic for a while, and then took the plunge, because I had to jump. I gave the tape back to him and told him to take the measurements over my clothes. Then he would have what he wanted.
He was as professional in his touch as I expected him to be, writing everything down on a little pad, and even sticking his pencil behind an ear while he wielded the tape measure.
He made a number of grunts as the figures added up, enough to get a tailored wetsuit sewn with no additional fittings. At last he was satisfied, apologizing for the hassle, but adding that now that that nasty job was done, I wouldn't have to be measured again, and I could just try on clothes and enjoy myself. For someone to whom trying on clothes was worse than a trip to the dentist, his statement was funny—and I laughed.
'Don't,' he said.
I had hurt his feelings! I hastened to apologize, and explained that he should be able to understand what a pain and chore the clothes issue would be to me. An unusual frankness forced this out of me, maybe because he had been the one kneeling when my crotch-to-floor measurement had been taken.
Tight-lipped, he asked to be excused, and I gave him permission, smacking the back of my head once he was out of sight. I needed help, and had blown my chance.
A vexing situation. I went into the lounge and threw myself petulantly and experimentally into the lap of that chesterfield. Then I reached for a loquat, a bowl of which had magically appeared in the decorating flurry.
I had just spat my fifth loquat pit into a crystal bowl, when Kevin knocked on the suite door.
'Come in,' I yelled, feeling ashamed of myself, but too trapped in my own physical ugliness to grovel in front of Kevin for the sake of his ego needing to make a silk purse out of a side of bacon.
He was carrying a white tissue-wrapped package tied with lilac ribbon, and he handed it to me.
'I took the stuff out of the top,' he said, 'because you don't need it, and I'm sorry if it retains a bit of scent (here, he blushed) but I thought it could be a bit of something to wear this evening at dinner, and would maybe...'
And when I continued to look at him stupidly and irrelevantly, he stamped his foot. 'Oh, do try it on. Do. Do it for Kevin.'
Somehow, he managed to give me confidence in that tantrum, though I didn't think it was the real Kevin speaking. Maybe he could do something with this side of bacon.
He didn't do as I suggested: sit on the chesterfield to wait. He paced outside my closed bedroom door while I changed.
The package was heavy for its thickness. I unwrapped it on the bed. A top and a skirt, in diaphanous layers of what I guessed was silk chiffon, the smoky lilac of a bushfire dawn, beaded with seed pearls the colour of the moon. The pattern was teardrops.
All so delicate, yet so weighted, so rich.
I tore off my stinky rags and ran into the shower because it would have been a sin not to. After towelling myself, I tiptoed back to the bed. Why I tiptoed, I don't know.
They fitted as if made for me.
Kevin knocked, and I answered, 'Oh, Kevin.'
He knocked again, and I flung open the door.
The smell he had spoken of was the faint whiff of him. A pleasant aroma—healthy man plus sandalwood, tabac, and coriander. I knew my scents from the Higher Light, though theirs were like artificial vanilla to the scents the Restonians wore.
Superficially, Kevin didn't look at all like me. We were almost the same height, but he was curvy with a muscleman's curves, not mine.
'I did some adjustments,' he said.
The Restonia had a clothing repair service, I'd been told, but I had thought of them sending out to a wizened little tailor who was only too happy to sew a button at any hour . Kevin had to have been the needleman here. He wielded one mean needle, and worked quick as a tantrum.
The picture of Kevin as a bellydancer was too much a stretch of the imagination—and irrelevant now.
'Desirée ... Lily,' breathed Kevin, in a reverential whisper—not reverencing me, but his genius in knowing what was right, 'you make a perfect houri ... if you'd only stand up straight.'
He whacked me sharply between the shoulderblades, pushed his hands against my collarbones. He stood back, and tutted. 'Not good enough,' he pronounced, and marched into my bath.
He came out twirling a towel between his hands.
'You're not a kiwi bird!'
Whack
at the front of my thighs. 'Bum out!'
Whack.
'Out more. Be proud of it ... Yahhs. That's my girl. Give a nice curve to that back and waist. Look at yourself in profile.'
I turned obediently. Snapping towels hurt.
'See that curve? Give it more. A proper seahorse of a curve.'
Whack!
'Then give me an "S" if you don't know seahorses.'
How was I supposed to know seahorses? But I was getting the picture—a strange picture, not contemporary.
'Ehsss!' he hissed. 'Don't forget your shoulders ... There.'
Whack!
'Back! Push them baaack!'
~
My posture lesson was painful for both of us, seeing as it had to overcome years of curling in on myself, and he wanted me at maximum unfurl. He was a martinet. I was happy he didn't have a stick, because my skin was covered in blushes by the time he was satisfied. And then I not only stood two inches taller, but had two places on my body where you could rest your mug of tea.
The pain was worth it. 'Your body was meant for another time,' Kevin said, 'But those times will come again ... with you.' He sounded tired but elated, like a child after a party.
'Move,' he commanded. And I actually twirled!
Kevin smiled approvingly. The butterfly was opening its wings. Until he brought me down to earth.
'If only for your hair.'
—14—
Ah, that Arabian Nights romance of froth and trembling teardrops—Desirée's first garb. The low-slung diaphanous skirt that caressed my swell of thigh. The beaded bodice I spilled out of only, Kevin assured me, in the most alluring way. My below-the-waist little melon of a belly (Kevin's description) showed to its best advantage, as did my deep-as-a-pool navel (Kevin again), a crater I had previously thought of only as a cleaning nuisance.
My back now flaunted a seahorse curve.
My skin glowed. My body was so white and pink and peach that it surprised me, but it shouldn't have, since I had hidden it the whole of my adult life. My arms were a fright. I had to promise Kevin to correct that fault, being tanned from just above the elbow to my snaggle-nailed, rampant-cuticled hands, about which he lectured me again.
~
But enough of tan arms, broken nails, bare feet. Kevin's interest was clothes.
From his first generous lesson (he wouldn't take payment for his houri outfit), Kevin taught me that clothing can be fun, and it can make one feel bloody marvellous. Lying on my pillows reaching for Turkish delight was more delightful, when dressed right ... popping a peeled grape into my mouth (Of course I had to order them, though only once. They are far better when you pop the skins in your mouth), the
wack wack
of air from the ceiling fan (got it installed for fun) stirred the silk to caress me, the countless little pearls, to tremble. Dressed right, I learned to move my body to its best advantage instead of its eternal shame. Freedom and joy.
But I couldn't wear my houri outfit only. Kevin had much work to do. He brought me art books, not that I needed to see what he planned, but he could not contain himself. This art he drew inspiration from for his vision of Desirée Lily was actually not art at all. Just collections of dressmaker designs, many by Worth who Kevin was madly jealous of for having lived at the right time. Kevin was a romantic, and a visionary. I giggled and he sighed over Bakst's exhibitionisms for the Ballet Russe—all bared breasts flinging and veils flying. Impractical, and not quite fitting for a famous novelist, but I was flattered.
Desirée Lily, Kevin told me, was
made
for her body.
How could your mother have known
, he asked me,
what you would be like?
He marvelled at the exact fit between my body and my name. La Belle Époque, and better yet, the ten years earlier, he told me, was my time—and the French part of it, not the American, which had those scarecrow Gibson girls with their stiff serge skirts. Kevin liked froth, and lots of it.
He taught me about ruffles, ruches, swags, bias cuts, décolletage; leg-of-mutton sleeves hugely puffed to the elbow, then tight as gloves and buttoned past the wrist. He was a stickler about skirts, because the right skirt makes the right, swaying walk—the trained skirt, which restricts the size of steps, the gored skirt that creates an elongated trumpet bell shape 'like the gently opening head of a longiflorum lily'—he adored symbolism. Jackets were his passion, unfortunate in our climate. But he persevered, begging me to wear them in training for my world tour. He made them with collars so high they exhibited my head on a plate of creamy velvet.
Kevin took me on a tour of what Justin had bought, and reintroduced me to the women in the pictures—Justin!
He brought me advertising pictures of corsets and bustles worn by beautiful women, and would exclaim, holding up a page, 'Look at you.'
Then he would make me strip and parade in front of the picture, daring it to look back at me. I didn't need a bustle or a corset or wadded tissue for my equally 'extraordinary' (according to him) breasts. It was a delight to parade with nothing on, except a pair of kid-glove boots in palest violet that came halfway up my calves and buttoned with a button hook. Kevin watched, commanded if he thought I was slouching, and when I was not, almost swooned with delight. Not a bit of passion for me, mind you. I was only the mannequin he had always wanted, his impossible dream come true.
Why did he work at the Restonia? He didn't only work at the Restonia. He had moonlighted for years sewing 'clothing for special needs', as he liked to call it, from ballgowns to day dresses—for a whole assortment of blokes. He didn't like the bitchiness of the rag trade, he said. As for me, his touch was more respectful than any doctor's, and though in his fittings and his critical assessments, he got to know my body more intimately than I had ever taken the time to, it was all for the cause of helping him to design, and often produce with his own hands, incredible creations to be worn as a canvas wears paint.
Justin and Kevin had, without even discussing it, the same vision of my colours. Not an inner vision thing as in the way of the Higher Light's many books on colour vision—'You need to identify the colour personality type of your interlocutor to understand how to use colours to influence him or her.' Kevin and Justin didn't know and weren't interested in psychology. They were aesthetes. And their different but agreeing aesthetic senses had determined that my predominant colour should be white. Kevin added other touches—lilac, violet, peach, butter yellow, ancient-mariner's-eyes blue, but their strength, according to him, lay in the spareness of their application. A lightness of touch was the secret, 'like splitches of rain'.
Of course I never told him, but Kevin had the soul of a poet.
Because I stayed in constantly, Kevin's taste for the luxurious was almost sated, but not quite. He always had room for more, and continually needed a new dress, opera cloak, negligee, chemise, ballgown, tea robe—modern only if you lived in another century, but that didn't bother him if it didn't bother me. He told me that if I wore with confidence, then my style
would
be contemporary.
He had to do a few boringly modern things for the few times I had to go outside the building and deal with the mundane outside world—the sessions concerning Jim, for instance—but even the clothes Kevin designed for these occasions made me feel almost beautiful, if I could have cut off my head. If a headless me would have been practical and socially acceptable, I would have felt wholly beautiful.
I almost forgot to tell you about the shoes. He knew a man who spoke no English but communicated perfectly. At the first appointment, Kevin and he crooned together over old shoes while Mr Hazumi held my feet. My feet were not as adorable as the rest of my body, my toes being too widely splayed to be ideal, and my heels 'cracked to buggery'—one look from Kevin made me assure them both that my feet would be disciplined immediately to be soft and smooth.
But my feet are small, thank goodness. With Mr Hazumi's considerable craft and artistry, I soon had shoes as pretty as the slippers of the lady who gave Justin heartburn, and who made me laugh. Thankfully, both Kevin and Mr Hazumi found stilettos horrible and modern and common anyway, so all my shoes were wearable, with short and curvy heels.
~
One day when Brett was up on his futon mountain and I was feeling fabric swatches, I noticed him easing the laces on his boots again. I couldn't remember what his feet were like, whether he had corns or ingrown nails because on the one occasion I could have noticed—that night in Kate's house when I went into his room and we discussed the contract—he gave me quite a lot to look at, and I'm afraid my eyes never did get below his midsection.
But something was wrong about the fit of Brett's boots. I didn't ask him personal questions, as he could be moody, and I didn't want to pry.
A little later, he got up and went to his room.
I took a piece of dressmaking tissue and a pin out of a cabinet, and crawled over the floor. The imprints of Brett's boots were still fresh, squashing the curls of the sheepskin rug. It was easy to lay the translucent tissue down and prick the outline.
This time I was the designer, and Mr Hazumi made up my order exactly to specifications. The toes were rounded and generous—not like Brett's clodhoppers. And the boots I designed were made of butter-soft, butterscotch leather. They were inspired by the pictures I remembered of Puss 'n' Boots.
'Puss,' I used to point, tucked halfway into bed, and my dad would say, 'And Puss fell upon him,' and here he would pretend to be Puss and drop his head to my tummy, and nibble me through my nightie, and I would pretend to be a mouse, and go 'Eee eee!' and Dad would show no mercy, as he would raise his head, bare his big yellow teeth, gather me to him in a hug, and say, 'and he ATE HIM UP!,' and I would scream with pleasure, and he would kiss me on the top of my head, and tuck me into bed.
These boots, like Puss's stopped just below the knee, where the leather rolled outwards and fell in a great soft collar.
I could hardly wait but I waited a whole half day, and gave Brett the boots just after dinner.
He unwrapped them with a worried frown. When he took them out of their wrapping, his face went through—I can only call them
contortions
.
He became physically ill with a degree of speed I would have thought impossible.
I helped him to the door of his room, where he asked to be left alone.
But he turned to me first. 'Thank you,' he said, and he sounded like he meant it.
The groans and cries that I heard from his room made me go to mine, and for the first time, lock my door. That door didn't shut out noise of this sort. But about an hour later, all was quiet.
The next morning, he came to breakfast, but was odd. He asked me if I needed to talk to friends from before. Didn't anyone miss me, didn't I need to do anything from my past life?
It was already early January. I hadn't thought about my past life or anyone in it, in more than the vaguest terms for at least a month.
Gordon. He would be distraught. He had occurred to me before, and I didn't know if he would be able to get over me. I didn't want to see him now. Maybe I would give him an audience in the future.
Of my other friends, I wanted to keep as far away as possible. Especially since the tampon incident would be in everyone's mind. Simone would make sure of that. Gordon would have raging dreams of the tampon and me and Brett. But Gordon always had a cloying kinkiness to his love.
No, I told Brett. I'm fine.
And family, he asked.
'Why are you interested?'
'Part of my chaperone duties,' he said, but I don't think that's true.
I thought of Mum and Dad—of the home I left when I was seventeen. I usually rang every couple of months, and was a bit past due. It was easier ringing than writing because what was there to say? But it was hard ringing, all the same. My father wouldn't know what to say, and my mother would suck me dry of every detail of my exciting city life. I always felt choked up with Dad. He meant well. And with Mum now, I would have to invent the boringly mundane, a different challenge to the norm. And there was always the painful part of the phone call—the 'have to run, something's burning, cut off my head accidentally, gotta go to the doctor' part.
'I suppose I should ring them,' I said, feeling a lovely swatch.
Brett seemed satisfied with that and dropped the subject.
We didn't talk much at that time. Perhaps he was shy. I know I was.
~
Jewels.
Kevin scorned them. He said jewels were cheap. I didn't argue, though I think what he disliked was their competition.
~
But you might wonder about the practical stuff. Like spending millions on a purchase with a credit card. I did, too, but Justin and Brett dealt with that side of things. The company paid for all our expenses, I found out one day, when Justin casually mentioned it. On asking Brett, I learned that something that sounded as real as James Bond's cover, was the company. I hadn't worried before I learned this fact, but then it scared me. Company returns and tax department people and all that. Brett called my worries 'piffle', which really made me panic. I assumed it was all air—that we were going to have to abscond any second, bailiffs baying at our heels. He made an I-am-piqued sound in his throat, but waved his hand and produced a computer, a model I hadn't seen, but I never knew computers well. He used it with remarkable expertise for a one-finger typist using a keyboard with all black keys. 'There,' he said, pointing to the screen. The company even had a Big Five, or is it a Big Four—multinational as auditor. A thoroughly above-board concern, with above-board trade. And he was the CEO and Chairman, and a Desirée Lily was listed as Director, newly appointed.
'Are you a believer now?' he asked.
I nodded.
He waved his hand again, and the computer disappeared. He didn't like them either.
Brett's information chilled me. I was so stressed that I demanded to know how we as
artists
could be seen to be involved with 'a Company, for godsake!'
He stepped back and regarded me. I was wearing at this moment, a Worth-inspired confection in platinum satin, its ermined-velvet train stretching out in the distance behind me.
'My dear...' Brett said.
I subsided.
He invited me to sit on the chesterfield and he settled on his mountain, where he began with a long scratch between his horns, using his long nail. When he was finished, he explained that, as I could see, Universal Imports or whatever it was called, was not only a real company, but that Justin
expected
him to buy everything through a company as all modern artists do, and that I should have known this and prepared him because Angela should have known these things, and why should he, who had not visited for quite a while, be expected to know everything about our modern age, and adjust instantly? Lucky the company existed, or he would have had to make arrangements on the spot ...
My chastising lasted, mercifully, only a little longer.
Brett
had
been working hard. I felt chastened and said as such, but hoped he liked my dress.
~
Now, Hair.
'A disaster.'
That was what Kevin said. He asked what it was supposed to be. It didn't have a name as a style. I didn't think it looked bad until Kevin told me that bad was not the word for it. And he leaned over and retched.