“Whatever you decide. Just make it whatever length you think is best. I don’t care. Fashion doesn’t mean anything to me.”
What ridiculous things Consuelo said.
I pulled out the skirt and stood up, holding it in front of me enticingly—a matador with a cape tempting a capricious bull. “Just wait until you see how well it will look on you now. No one will be able to take his eyes off you. I would love to see it for myself. You should really put it on.”
Consuelo pulled on the skirt over her pajama bottoms, then maneuvered the bottoms off. Hoisting the skirt to the height of her knees, she stepped onto the coffee table. “Hem me.”
First I had to check the fit of the alterations at the waist, back, and hips, assessing with eyes and hands. Consuelo lifted her pajama top high above the waistband to give me a clear view of the top section of the skirt. I tried to ignore the span of smooth olive skin, but Consuelo repeatedly glided her fingertips across her ribs, and it took a concentration of will to keep my focus where it should be.
“So we’re agreed that the skirt stays long,” I said, kneeling on the floor.
“Such a clean, simple design,” said Consuelo. “It sets off the jacket perfectly.”
I nodded. “After designing the butterfly dress, I realized that—”
“No, Mignonne.” Consuelo put her hand on my head. “One wears Fiche. Not Lachapelle. You will ensure that the labels in this ensemble say Atelier Fiche.”
I swallowed. “Yes.”
“Fiche has a name, a presence in the industry. Good things are expected from her. You have a lot of nerve, trying to promote yourself to me. Loyalty is a virtue; you should learn it.”
“Of course.” Loyalty like Consuelo’s to Antoine? Or to her paramour?
Consuelo crooked her fingers into my mane. “Keep doing what you do, darling, and one day you will rise above your mentor. One day you will be my designer.”
It troubled me to feel the hope rise in my blood.
“I will be your muse,” said Consuelo. “The Garbo to your Valentina. They are inseparable, you know.” She hooked a lock of hair and coiled it around her fingers in a slow, lazy twirl. “They are at each other’s side through the day, every day. And all through the night.”
When I stepped from the elevator into the lobby, the concierge said, “Miss Lachapelle? Mr. Saint-Exupéry asked that I ring him if I see you. Would you mind waiting?”
In a few minutes, Antoine appeared, smiling broadly. He led me outside to stroll along the sidewalk. “Consuelo told me you were expected. I’m glad the concierge caught you. I wanted to ask: May we work together tonight?”
I needed to hem Consuelo’s skirt. More importantly, I had to get the silk dress done and I didn’t want Antoine to see it before our dinner at Le Pavillon tomorrow night. I was heading straight back to get started, and needed to have the space to myself. “I can’t have you come to the studio tonight.”
“You are going home? Then may I borrow your key so I can write? The book refuses to come to life in my apartment. I keep writing about the prince’s disappointing encounters with men who are as stuck as I am. I cannot seem to transcend it, to make it go anywhere.”
“I can’t give you my key. I’ll need to get into the studio in the morning.”
“True.” He rubbed his jaw. “I will slide it under your apartment door at home after I lock up.”
“No. Leo gets up early. He’ll be all over me with questions.”
“You have not told him about me?”
“Are you serious?”
“I’m sure you have your reasons.”
“Leo would go crazy. You’re married and twice my age.”
“These are trivial things! One an inconvenience and one irrelevant.”
“Maybe if you’re French. They aren’t trivial to Americans.”
“You can’t live your life on the basis of what America thinks.”
“You do. You told me you would never send for Consuelo. But the minute your reputation was at stake, you had her come to New York. Better to pretend you’re a devoted husband, even if you’re both miserable, than to have people think you deserted your wife.”
He walked silently for a while. It was not easy to match his long strides when we were not arm in arm. Finally he said, “It is like that, then? She tells you her side of the story, and you forget everything I confided to you? Our marriage may be little more than paper, but I have signed my name to it. I do not entirely abdicate my responsibilities.”
“But you don’t even want her here.”
“Of course not. We were estranged already in France. Try to understand, I didn’t tire of her as a boy tires of licorice. She exhausted me in every way. It kills us both to be together, not just me. It is only when we are apart that we understand each other and long for each other. Everything is better when we are apart. It has always been this way.”
We stopped to wait for a traffic light to change. I said, “So the more time you spend in my studio, the better for your marriage.”
Antoine only lifted his head stiffly to look at the sky, his expression growing cold.
I continued, “No wonder you’re trying so hard to go away. Back to having heroic adventures and writing romantic letters to each other.”
“Mignonne.”
“And longing for each other.”
“Listen to yourself! War is not an adventure; it is a disease. My people are starving in the streets.”
I was silent.
Antoine said, “A man does not go to war for the purpose of reviving his marriage.”
“Nevertheless.”
He stood with me until the light turned green. “Good night.” He bowed slightly and began to walk away.
“Antoine!”
He paused.
“Will I see you tomorrow night for dinner?”
“I would not wish to disappoint Yannick.”
Along the way to the studio, I used a pay phone to inform Leo that I would be working late into the night.
Finishing Consuelo’s skirt was a straightforward matter. I ran a long length of thread through a block of beeswax to prevent it from catching and curling into knots, then I bound and blindstitched the hem, taking care to pick up only one or two threads of the fabric at a time with the needle, and not to draw the thread too tightly. When I was done stitching, the hem lay flat without rippling. I checked the heat of my iron and tested the steam, nerves speeding the blood through my veins. Maybe one never became inured to velvet’s demanding, sensitive idiosyncrasies. I concentrated as I aligned the hem on the prickly needle board that would protect its pile, then steamed the fabric lightly, tapping the hem with the bristles of a brush to get a good, clean edge without bruising the gleaming nap.
With Consuelo’s garment done and carefully put away, I turned finally to the white silk. I bent to scoop it up from the floor. As I straightened, a flurry of wisps detached themselves. They wafted to the floorboards and caught in the dark, splintered cracks.
I froze. In my arms, flimsy bits of fabric began to disassemble, skimming over each other in all directions at once. With a cry, I spun toward the table and let the yardage spill onto it.
It was a snake’s nest of twisting, tortured planes. Slender swatches curled around my fingers as I spread the fabric across the tabletop. The bodice pieces had been cut and hacked. The long shapes of the arms had been pierced, and bore slashes. The broad swath that was to have swept along my shoulders and drape unbroken down my back had been hewn to barely connected panels of indiscriminate lengths and widths.
The cuts had been made without symmetry or pity. It was as though Madame had simply dipped the points of her shears into the fallen fabric, again and again, closing the long blades on the silk, reducing it to shreds, fraying swaths, and long, jagged strips.
33
I woke late on Tuesday morning, took a bath, and didn’t hurry over breakfast. I had brought home all evidence of Madame Fiche’s silk chiffon.
One o’
clock: Madame would have arrived hours ago, and registered the absence of the fabric, and would be sitting unsettled at her desk wondering what would happen next. She would have noted my drinking glasses still on the ledge, and my cardigan still hung on the back of my chair, and—most of all—my thread snips and bent-handle shears, and would know that I would return. No seamstress, no designer, would abandon her favorite shears.
It was midafternoon when I entered the studio, taking care to smile as though I was not only untroubled but well rested, too.
Madame Fiche was indeed at her desk, her mouth an unbent line. She shifted her jaw as if to loosen a deadening grip. “You’re late.” Her voice was dry and choppy. I wondered if she had spoken since yesterday afternoon.
I asked, “Are you having a nice day?”
Madame watched warily as I continued to my table.
“Glad to hear it,” I said, though she hadn’t replied. “You need a break, after all the work you did last night.”
There: a slight smirk. Madame could hardly wait to get into the ring with me.
I said, “I came in after you left. In fact, I was here almost the entire night.”
“You expect me to feel sorry for you?”
“No, but thanks for offering.”
“I warned you, Mignonne. I was very clear.”
“I don’t mind putting in the extra hours. That’s how one learns: by making the time to try something new. Did you learn anything new yesterday? I noticed you played with the white chiffon.”
“This is not a joke.”
“I agree, Madame. You’ve taught me an important lesson with your shears.”
“That was my intention.” Madame waited, her expression tight as wire, until it became clear that I was not about to continue. “You have learned what?”
“That sometimes the only way forward is through destruction.”
She slammed a hand on her desk. “The way forward is through discipline and self-control.”
“I guess I’ll have to learn that one some other time.”
In the evening, Yannick came to the apartment and Leo let him in. When I walked out of the bedroom wearing the white silk dress, Yannick removed his hat. “Holy Toledo. I’ll be the envy of every man at Le Pavillon.”
Leo faked a dramatic stagger. Hand on his chest, he stumbled backward until he banged into a wall. “Jesus, Miggy! Will you put something on? You make Ready Hedy look like she’s wearing a barracks bag.”
A wide grin had spread across Yannick’s face. “Leo, my friend, your sister would upstage even Rita Hayworth in that dress.”
The dress I had built was a series of bands salvaged from the remains of what Madame had wrecked. I had snipped clean and rolled under the uneven edges, sewn swatches together into ribbons, combined ribbons into rivulets that wanted to curve and flow. I had studied how the long swaths could twist and move like water around stones. I had stood in the studio wrapping my body, testing the lie of the fabric on my breasts, across my belly and my hips. I had passed panels of silk over and under each other, trusting the fabric and my eye—drawing strength from my year of learning to make do in Montreal, thankful for lessons of resourcefulness.
The dress left my arms and shoulders bare, save for a rope of fabric that came curving down from my nape and bisected my collarbones before spreading open to sheathe my breasts. All down my midsection, horizontal bands drew in from each side and met in the center, where they linked together and bent back upon themselves, wrapping my rib cage in separate, softly pleating planes that left spaces between them where my torso was exposed. The skirt portion, spared injustice as it had hung stretching in a dark corner of the studio, draped straight down from my hips. It broke gently in an elegant wave where the fabric met the floor.
The long corridor of tables down the center of Le Pavillon was reserved for truly prominent guests—a couple of whom I recognized from the newspaper, and one legendary diva from the opera. Heads turned as Yannick took me past them to a table that had a banquette seat along one side and chairs on the other. I settled into the banquette and Yannick fidgeted in a chair, turning this way and that to watch the goings-on in his restaurant.
Bernard’s murals surrounded us on the walls. They made it seem as though we had gathered to dine alfresco at a French seaside town. Sunshine danced on water. Seabirds perched on dock piles and sailed through blue skies. Their depth and perspective made Le Pavillon feel larger and more open than it had when I’d last been here. Good for Yannick for seeing what could be achieved through the use of artistic trompe l’oeil.
But even as the murals were bright and sunny, they were also slightly and inexplicably sad. I wondered whether Bernard, like Antoine, missed his homeland. Maybe he, too, was planning to go back.
At the front of the restaurant, the maître d’ greeted Antoine and Consuelo and began leading them to our table. Antoine stopped several times to shake hands with this or that patron, while Consuelo either sidled up to or stood stiffly behind him.
As they neared, Consuelo was chastising her husband in a low, rapid voice. “Can’t we go out without running into one of your girlfriends? It’s like walking through a hallway in hell. No wonder you never—”
“Consuelo!” interjected Yannick. He took both her hands in his. “My God, you look stunning tonight!”
Her scowl fell away. She glowed as Yannick kissed her cheeks. I shook her hand while Yannick greeted Antoine.
Consuelo said, “Such a strong grip for a willowy girl.”
I loosened my hold, but Consuelo’s hand lingered.
“Your dress, Mignonne.”
“Do you like it?”
“It’s terribly alluring. Move over.”
She slipped in beside me on the banquette. The two men were already talking. Antoine had not even looked at me. He was usually unfailingly polite, I thought; how livid he must be.
As the waiter was taking our drinks order, I slid my foot over and tapped Yannick’s ankle. When he looked at me, I indicated Antoine with a tiny tilt of my head.
“Saint-Ex,” said Yannick as the waiter left, “I am monopolizing you. I haven’t even given you a chance to say hello to my niece.”
Antoine turned mechanically. As his gaze fell on me, some sort of disjuncture—a disturbance or a thrill—rippled through his expression. His Adam’s apple bobbed. His gaze slipped down the front of my dress, descending the triangles and diamonds of my bare skin between the bands of silk.
He said coolly, “Please excuse my lapse of manners. You have been well? Consuelo tells me that your work with Madame Fiche is progressing smoothly.”
“Madame has been generous. She gave me this special silk, which is impossible to come by these days.”
To any other observer, Antoine might have looked angry, his eyes intense and his nostrils flaring. But his lips opened as he inhaled, and I saw that he was remembering the intimacy with which he had moved the fabric—and me.
34
Consuelo took note of the effect Mignonne’s dress had on the restaurant’s patrons. Fashion at its best was the most subtle and complicated of aphrodisiacs, and the girl had a witch’s instinct for the nuances of desire. Of course, every young flirt knew that dominance lay not in the ability to give people what they want but in making them want—but few knew how to govern their own power. Consuelo had known from a prepubescent age, and had perfected it over three decades. Now it was all she had. And Mignonne was besting her; Consuelo was on the other side. The girl’s flawless skin half sheathed, her expression both dewy and determined, her blood pulsing too quickly where the fabric touched her neck: it all took the air from Consuelo’s lungs.
These fleeting flecks of girl-lust that pricked like shards weren’t the same as Consuelo’s love for men. She didn’t care if she never touched a woman’s breast. She would hardly care if she never again consummated the sexual act with anyone.
But she would be wanted as Mignonne was at this moment wanted. To be wanted was everything. To make oneself
wanted by those who think they are in control: this was ecstasy itself.
She reached over to feel the weight and texture of the silk. Tonio was watching surreptitiously as her fingers slid along Mignonne’s collarbone and into the gap between the fabric and her skin.
She thought, He envies me my liberty. Even as he turns away, he finds it necessary to demand of himself that he mask his emotions and become stone. And the girl is no different—staring blankly around the room, crossing her legs and swinging a foot as though oblivious to the tornado of desire that swirls around her. Damn her.
Consuelo reminded herself to relax her face. It was unflattering to grit the teeth; it made the jawline uneven.
She could never have imagined a dress such as Mignonne wore now. She would not even have been able to commission it; she didn’t have the vocabulary. Decades of mastering the politics of want, years of wielding clay, a lifetime of getting what she desired, of making miracles out of mud and a countess of a country girl, and Consuelo was reduced to this: child’s words.
“I want it. Make me one.”
35
A commission from Consuelo! Madame would be impressed; the rent would be paid; everything would be fine. I tried to keep my voice nonchalant. “Of course. When can you come to the studio again?”
“Christ. What’s wrong with Véra Fiche, that she doesn’t have a salon?”
“She had one before,” I fibbed. I had practiced my tale. “It was the parlor of her ex-fiancé’s apartment. He was an art dealer. Apparently he had a bit of everything, from the Pre-Raphaelites to Dalì.”
“It’s true that the right apartment could make a very good salon.”
“I’ve heard that Valentina holds shows in her own parlor, very in demand.”
A waiter came to take our food order. I chose madrilène en gelée—a cold clear soup—to start, and a lobster entree.
“Tonio.” Consuelo reached across the table to tug on her husband’s cuff. “I have too much space in my apartment. You know I rattle around in it.”
Anio Szado Page 20
