“Lovely to see you again,” I said, holding out my hand.
Consuelo took it and touched it to her lips.
Binty smiled a wry, crooked smile.
Madame’s piercing gaze moved from Consuelo’s face to mine. She said, carefully enunciating, “We have much that is beautiful to show you, Madame la Comtesse.”
Consuelo said, “Indeed”—her eyes holding mine, her voice rich with intimation.
In the next instant, unceremoniously, she dropped my hand. “Bring it on, then. I’m bored, I’ve had a rotten day, and I don’t have a thing to wear.”
Madame’s mouth opened just a little—perhaps not enough for the guests to note, but with my knowledge of Madame’s unfailing composure before clients, the opening seemed to yawn like a crevasse. I interjected myself between Consuelo and Binty, gently elbowing them apart and linking each of their arms with my own.
“Come on,” I said. “Sit where it’s comfortable, and we’ll give you your own personalized Atelier Fiche show.” I led them to the sofa, squeezing their elbows close to my sides until their shoulders bumped companionably against mine and their steps were comically misaligned. On the rug, I released Binty and spun the giggling Consuelo around so her back faced the sofa.
“Countess Consuelo,” I said, “our studio is yours. Your wish is our command.”
Consuelo sunk into the sofa and kicked off her shoes. She put her feet on the coffee table. “Excellent, darling. Let the show begin!”
In a dark corner behind racks and shelves, I wriggled out of my dress. Madame Fiche had taken a chair. Snippets of her stilted conversation reached me as I pulled an outfit over my black corselet.
“And of course the weather … Needless to say, one does not like to … A woman of your stature, comtesse …”
Neither Consuelo nor Binty had much to say in response.
I stepped out into the center of the studio, into the afternoon light, and all eyes turned to me. The dark velvet train followed my progression, in fluid steps, toward the sitting area. I paused before reaching the rug and walked a wide, graceful circle in the skirt, butterfly jacket, and black sleeveless blouse.
Madame announced, “Allow me to present the first item in my Butterfly Collection.”
“Very glamorous for a red carpet entrance,” I said, “and a dramatic departure in your limousine.”
Binty watched dispassionately. Consuelo was rapt, Madame anxious.
When I was sure Consuelo had taken her fill of the heavy detailing, I slipped off the jacket and placed it on the remaining empty armchair. Now I was wearing only the black blouse and the long velvet skirt.
“Perfect for an elegant evening with your husband,” I said.
Consuelo put her fingers together in a steeple and smiled from behind them as I rolled my hips to catch the light in the velvet pile.
Then in one smooth motion, I pulled the blouse straight off, over my head, and dropped it onto the chair. “Or a special evening with someone else’s husband.” I twirled in the velvet skirt and my sleek black corselet.
Consuelo clapped and laughed. “More!” she cried. Binty cracked a smile.
Madame’s mouth dropped fully open.
She was right about the importance of good undergarments.
When I had modeled all the remaining variations of the butterfly line, I got back into my green dress and hauled the two racks closer to our guests. I met Madame Fiche’s eye and gave her a nod.
Madame picked up the baton. “Voila. You have seen the collection. It is dramatic, extravagant, and bold—entirely fitting for a woman of your beauty and charisma. You may not know this, Madame de Saint-Exupéry: after its explosive premier and all the attention lavished on it by the press, I refused to take commissions for this line. I waited for just the right woman, searching for the very figure of drama and poise to take the butterfly into the world. Now, at last, she has entered my atelier. The collection has found its muse.”
Standing by the racks, I awaited my cue. Consuelo seemed to be considering Madame’s pitch. Binty was already restless; he got up and strolled to the windows.
Madame said, “It would be a small matter to adjust the design to accommodate the governmental mandate, if this is your concern. We simply reconfigure the sleeves, and shorten and narrow the skirt—unless you’d like to keep it formal length, in which case we are granted greater freedom to do as we please. Would you care to try on the jacket, to feel the luxurious weight and hand?”
I shifted the other garments to display the jacket more prominently. The size should be right—the cut would accommodate Consuelo’s bust, which was larger than mine—but we would have to shorten the sleeves.
Binty called over, “Do you have anything to drink here?”
“Of course,” said Madame. “Mignonne, make tea.”
“Don’t you have a bottle—of anything at all? Christ, I could use a slug of something.” He was at my worktable, slouching in the chair with his legs extended in front of him and his hands dangling. He looked as though he could melt from boredom and slide off the chair to join the pile of silk on the floor.
“Attend to Mr. Binty’s needs, Mignonne, immédiatement!”
I was easing the jacket off its hanger. Consuelo looked expectant—but not for the prospect of trying on the garment. She was interested in seeing how willingly I would submit to Madame.
Now Binty said, “Aren’t you done yet, Consuelo? Let’s go. There’s nothing more tedious—”
I rushed across the studio to serve him. “There’s a liquor store just around the corner. Sit tight for a second, Binty. I’ll be back before you can breathe.”
When I returned with the bottle, Consuelo was standing on the coffee table wearing the first combination I had modeled, with Binty and Madame standing nearby. Madame was assessing the effect from every angle, her hands held up as though she were molding the fabric onto Consuelo from several feet away. Binty had been pressed into action to hold a full-length mirror, which he did with a scowl, as Consuelo directed him.
“A little lower and step to the right a bit. My right, Binty. Move that edge toward me. Will you concentrate?”
“Just decide if you want the damn clothes and let’s get out of here.”
I came forward with the bottle extended. “Let me do that. You pour yourself a drink. There are glasses on the ledge by the table.”
Consuelo pouted at the mirror. She asked, “Why does it look the way it does on Mignonne, and on me it’s dead?”
Madame Fiche said, “It is magnificent on you! Very suitable for a countess.”
“It’s true,” I told her. Her coloring, her dark hair and eyes, gave the jacket’s jewel tones greater depth. “It suits you very well. We just need to make a few minor adjustments so it will drape as it should. The size is basically right. We’ll just take it in a little there”—I tried to point and almost dropped the mirror—“and around the waist.”
“Come show me,” said Consuelo.
I carried the mirror to Madame Fiche, who swore under her breath as she took it, and resumed explaining the alterations.
“Stop gesturing and pointing,” said Consuelo. “Just do whatever it is you’re planning to do, so I can see what you’re talking about.”
“I’ll get my needle and thread.” I hurried over to my table, where Binty was drinking.
As I was returning, I heard Consuelo say, “Higher, Madame Fiche. You’re going to have to hold it higher and tip it back. I already know what my lovely feet look like.”
30
Consuelo loved standing on tables. All the more so when her audience was Mignonne. The girl had a light touch, like that of a tentative kitten. Or a pickpocket.
“You have such lovely wrists,” Mignonne said as she folded the butterfly jacket sleeves.
“As do you, darling,” said Consuelo, and felt pleased by the kindness of her lie. Of course the girl’s wrists were slender—everything about Mignonne was—but they weren’t particularly notable; the
y weren’t frightfully, delightfully delicate like Consuelo’s. Nobody’s were.
“Let’s show them off with a three-quarter-length sleeve.” Mignonne used a quick tacking thread to mark the desired length. When she had finished, she peered at the fit of the rest of the jacket.
It was delightful to have Mignonne reaching up to Consuelo’s shoulders as though inviting her to dance. If it weren’t for the probing glare of Véra Fiche, or the effects of the fumes from the hallway that were making her sinuses ache and swell, she would encircle Mignonne’s waist and lead her in a tango across the floor.
The girl pinched the fabric atop Consuelo’s shoulders and lifted it slightly, then let it drop back into place to see the jacket’s natural lie on her frame. “That isn’t bad at all. Just a few more minor adjustments.”
Mignonne was certainly meticulous in her work. Consuelo tried to take enjoyment in the routine—the fingers sliding down the front center edging of the jacket closing, the girl checking how the sides aligned, inspecting for imperfections due to idiosyncrasies of structure or posture—but it was quickly becoming too much for one day. She needed a break from all this concentration. Too much standing still.
Why was Binty the only one with a drink?
Time for mischief. She leaned down to Mignonne and said, her voice low, “Visit me again in my apartment. It’s a much more comfortable place to play with each other’s clothes.”
She was rewarded with the instant hot reddening of Mignonne’s cheeks.
That was good fun, but it made Consuelo feel even more unsettled. “Forget the jacket. I don’t know if I want it. I don’t have all day. Just fix the fit of the skirt.”
Mignonne spread her hands over the fabric at Consuelo’s waist and hips, shifting the velvet until it lay properly against Consuelo’s magnificent curves and eased smoothly into the waistband. She walked around the table to view the garment from the back.
“Binty,” called Consuelo, “bring me a goddamn drink.”
He came over with a half-full glass. Stingy bastard.
“Now help me down.”
Mignonne said, “It’s better to be up on the table when we do the hem.”
“We’re not doing the hem. I’ll think about the skirt. Pack it up and I’ll try it on at home.”
“Mignonne,” Madame Fiche barked, and the girl hurried over to take the mirror. “The skirt is outstanding on you, comtesse. Divinely inspired.” The crow seemed to believe all could be set right with a little simpering. She went on and on, accelerating the spread of pain in Consuelo’s head. “Should you wish to purchase it, Mignonne can make the alterations tonight. You could be wearing it as early as tomorrow, and decide on the rest of the ensemble at a later date. Or simply choose to purchase the skirt and the jacket; it is not necessary to pair them with this particular blouse. The skirt goes with so many things.”
“As we’ve seen,” said Binty dryly.
“Then we will indeed continue with the hemming?” asked Madame Fiche, clasping her brittle hands together.
Indeed we would not. Not here, not now. “Send Mignonne to my apartment with the skirt tonight. I can just as well climb onto a table there.” Consuelo lifted the hem and started across the studio to change.
31
When Consuelo and Binty had left, Madame turned on me. “This is how you present my work? Clothing for the promiscuous? An outfit to turn a wife into a whore?”
“It was all in fun.”
“You are an embarrassment!”
“How else was I to keep their attention?”
“A model does not draw attention to herself. She walks. She turns around and returns. It may be insipid, but that is what women expect and applaud these days. The girl does not open her mouth or throw off her clothes like a trollop—and yet somehow department stores sell truckloads at their fashion parades.”
“That’s all fine if you’re selling copies of some other designer’s work. But if we’re going to make a name for ourselves and our own designs, don’t you think we should try to be original?”
“Your vanity is unbecoming and unwarranted.”
“Consuelo is used to being entertained. Valentina’s shows aren’t traditional. They aren’t stodgy. They amuse people. She makes women laugh.”
“Oui, I laugh at Valentina, too. She is precisely what I do not wish to be.”
“It’s the way things are headed. She turns fashion into theater, and her clients love it.”
“Valentina Schlee prancing around her parlor is not theater! You think I don’t know about theater? It was my life at your age.”
“You worked on the stage?”
“I apprenticed to a costume designer.”
“You went from costumes to haute couture?”
“That was my master’s path and it became my own.”
“It seems like a strange shift.”
Madame looked disgusted. “There was a time when knowledge of costume and stage was still valued and in demand in the fashion world. We didn’t just send out girls to walk up and down. Instead of parading, there would be a dramatic production, with a narrative. The story of Napoleon and Josephine. The Golden Slipper. The Princess of the Peacocks.”
Each collection would be about a story? An existing story. No wonder Madame struggled to develop concepts of her own.
“Fashion theater is hardly a new invention. Neither was your cheap spectacle. At least the fashion parades do not pretend to be what they are not. What you did today was nothing better than burlesque. I have had enough of you exposing and prostituting yourself in the name of Atelier Fiche.”
Madame’s face gathered like a drawstring handbag. Efficiently, decisively, she spat on the floor.
32
I spent the rest of Monday afternoon working silently on the alterations I had basted earlier. Then, with Madame’s curt approval, I headed home for a quick supper before my nine o’clock appointment with Consuelo.
It was a different Consuelo who answered the door. Her eyes were puffy and pink-rimmed as though she had been crying. She was wearing seersucker pajamas and grey high-heeled slippers with ostrich-feather tendrils that oscillated as she walked.
“I’ve just been across the hall speaking with Tonio,” she said. She sat on the sofa, and I took the same chair as before.
Consuelo pulled a handkerchief from a pocket and wrung it in her hands. “My husband doesn’t want me here. He doesn’t want me to take care of him and try to keep him safe. He won’t let me. All he wants is to leave. He would rather die than be anywhere close to me!”
“That can’t be true.”
“It is! Look how he treats me. He puts me in a separate apartment, like a dog in a cage to be thrown a scrap once in a while.”
“You have a very lovely and large apartment.”
“Tonio gave me the nicest and biggest one so that I wouldn’t complain. He wants me to have no possible excuse to insist that I have to move in with him. The superintendent colludes with him, too. Every time I have something wrong here, the man comes and tells me there’s no problem. Just today I had him checking the temperature. Tonio’s apartment is always comfortable. Feel how stifling it is in here. Tonio must be bribing the man to pretend that everything is fine in my apartment. That’s where his money goes! It doesn’t matter how much it costs, Tonio will do anything to keep me in my overheated, gilded cage.”
“Maybe he thinks it’s best for you to have room for your own projects.”
“And why should he get to make that decision for me? Am I not a human being? He says his apartment is too small for me, that he would have no space to write, and he refuses to join me in mine. I need to find us a larger place where we can be together. This isn’t the only building in Manhattan!”
But this one was extremely attractive: modern, thoughtfully designed, with pleasing proportions. The parlor was spacious and had high ceilings—and those big windows overlooking Central Park. “You have a view that is very difficult to come by.”
&n
bsp; “A bunch of trees. What do I care about trees? I grew up in the jungle. Trees don’t give me what I need. Only one person can do that. And he wants nothing more than to torment me. He wouldn’t even have let me come to New York if I hadn’t forced him. He would have had me stay at the commune in Oppède while he enjoyed all the parties and celebrations here. I knew when Wind, Sand and Stars became a Book-of-the-Month Club pick that it was my ticket to America. My friend Robert said to me, ‘Your husband writes of responsibility; if people only knew he has a wife, abandoned across the ocean, just waiting for his word!’ I knew that Tonio couldn’t deny me my passage then. His reputation would be ruined.” She tugged at her pajama top. “But he just hides me away. He doesn’t take me to anything. He goes to see his famous friends without me. They probably don’t even know he has a wife! He makes me ill with his cruelty. Look how thin I am. I could die at any moment! He doesn’t want to admit I exist, even here under his nose in Manhattan.” She sniffled.
Then she ran her fingers through her hair and asked, her voice suddenly clear, “You weren’t at the big fête in Montreal a few months ago? There was an enormous party in honor of Tonio. I wore a stunning red dress, to the floor. Everyone was agog over it. They all wanted to tell me how much they admired me and my husband. It was a terrific evening.” She lifted her chin defiantly. “The people have a right to celebrate having a count and his countess in their midst. Most of the time he doesn’t even want to go out to these things himself!”
“Maybe it’s just that he needs solitude and space to write.”
“An artist needs to be seen and to promote himself, too. You know this. Coming here, that first time, presenting yourself in a dress almost worthy of Valentina at her best.” She smiled. “Then your naughty little fashion show this afternoon.”
“I brought the skirt. I made the changes I tacked earlier. If they’re fine, we just need to mark the hem. I assume you want to keep it at evening length? If we shorten it, we’ll also have to narrow it. Shorter dresses are categorized differently in the regulations.”
Anio Szado Page 19
