by Barbra Novac
“Of course”
“What is your art? Explain it to me.”
Flirtatiously, Chloe detailed the process in making her creations to Max. Just the talk was liberating. She described a joyous, autonomous freedom, the way that she approached her costume making. It started with admiration for a certain woman -- always women -- and moved through to the search to find the quintessential article of clothing that summed her up. That meant this is me for that woman. It was deeper than what did she look good in. It was more about who she was in her life.
“The idea is,” Chloe stated, her heart racing, and sweat sitting in a satin sheen on her skin, “what can I wear to be her?”
Chloe then went on to explain how she collected materials that were probably used at the time to make the original clothes, but even in this choice, she did not want to be bound by historical accuracy. She explained how she was looking for the essence of the woman. The thing that has lived on and may not have been obvious at the time that the original dress was made.
Then she built the dress, lovingly and with great care and detail, according to the feeling she had developed for the woman. Eventually Chloe was left with as full a representation of the iconic female and all she symbolised.
“The costume is a way to transcend time and place and even the ugly circumstance of not accurately being her. When I put on her clothes, when I adorn my cells with everything I can about her and get as close to the spirit of her that I can get, a little part of me becomes her.”
Max was deeply interested in all Chloe was saying. “Does this mean that the costume allows you to leave your own little world and enter another?”
“Yes! I think this is part of the attraction of costume parties, etc. But I take this further. I want the clothing to make the woman, à la Coco Chanel. I want the wearer to have the actual experience of being that woman. It’s an artistic moment.”
Over the next few nights, Chloe got to know this eccentric masked man on the computer. She felt strangely understood, in a deeper sense than was provided by patient listening. This man felt her. He knew her complications and had an acceptance of them. He was her, as if he had taken out a dress made of Chloe and worn it to their meetings. He seemed to be acquainted with her already, before she revealed herself to him.
One night, the hot Sydney air swirled about Chloe, and she wore a thin dress beaded with jewels -- her Mata Hari outfit -- and Max asked her about her mother and what happened to her. In the safety of the anonymity of her room, immersed in the persona of Mata Hari, Chloe let Max know her terrible fear.
“To tell you about my mother, I have to tell you the story starting back further, with my great-grandmother.”
Her great-grandmother had lived in Australia, but went to the United Sates as an artist. She’d tried to live off her art over there, but it had been too difficult. She’d gotten herself pregnant out of marriage in Australia and tried to raise her little girl. The town that she had moved into shunned an unmarried mother and considered her a slut.
She’d had to make a living, so she worked behind the counter of any store that would have her. Her daughter turned out to be just like her, a wonderful painter and a brilliant artist. “It’s in the genes,” her great-grandmother used to say to her grandmother. “Always respect and care for your genes.”
However, her life had become more and more difficult, and when her daughter had grown old enough for work, Chloe’s great-grandmother died of a coronary condition, very rare in women so young. The doctor had declared it a genetic defect. However, so many years later, when speaking of her great-grandmother, Chloe’s mother always told Chloe she’d died of a broken heart, because an artist can’t live without her community.
As a small-town girl, Chloe’s grandmother had tried to make money from her art, but again this life proved difficult. In the nineteen forties in California, only successful art was respected. She worked hard in a small painting studio, as an assistant, trying to put enough money and time together to buy paints and time for her work. Desperate for community, she attempted to connect with the artists who came through the studio.
Finally, Henry Miller befriended her, and eventually took her to his bed. Even though he was not well known then, he was known to the local community, and Chloe’s grandmother hoped for a longer connection than the one she got. After a week in his bed, he’d moved on, leaving her pregnant and alone.
Much to her horror, she gave birth to a girl and a scorching reputation. Having been bedded and abandoned by Henry Miller, she fast became the talk of the small town. It seemed everyone knew her whole story and her mother’s story, and no one was kind.
Because of the plight of her mother and her own sorry fate, she adopted the little girl out as soon as she was born. She tried to give the baby a new life, free from its burdensome history, but a nurse in the hospital was a rare fan of Henry Miller’s work and told the new young couple about the remarkable father of their child and her slatternly mother and grandmother.
Years later, in the late 1970’s, the couple, with three children of their own now, shouted the truth of her heritage to Chloe’s mother, declaring her wild roots always made her a difficult child and the bane of their lives. Having never connected properly with them, Chloe’s mother took the opportunity to separate herself and went in a desperate search for her real mother and some connection with her history. She never found her.
Enormously talented like the women before her, she carried too much emotional baggage and rejected through quarrelsome ways any offer of support for her art, which left her regularly penniless and continually struggling.
For a while, she worked as a waitress at Studio 54. At that time, about the age of twenty-six, she fell pregnant. Chloe didn’t know who her father was. He could be a bouncer, a waiter, or Andy Warhol himself. By the time Chloe could have had the conversation with her mother, she’d taken her own life.
Alone in the world, Chloe was sent by the local authorities to an orphanage and remained in the care of the state until the age of eighteen when she was free to leave and live her life.
Chloe had lived alone for several years after that, avoiding any artists. She’d put all her mother’s paintings away and promised herself that she would have nothing to do with the life that had caused so much pain for the women in her history. If it was in the genes, Chloe would have nothing to do with them and would get on with her life.
But the blood did flow in her veins, and she could only pretend for a few years. She wasn’t able to face the canvas again, but she did move to fabric and started to design and make her beautiful costumes. She soon found herself becoming addicted and wanting to do nothing but her art. It affected her work and encroached on every aspect of her life.
But worst of all was her inability to connect to the artistic community. Like her mother before her, she felt disconnected. Deep in Chloe laid a fear also, a consuming dread, that if brought to close to a community, she’d suffer the fate of her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. If her costumes were too successful, she’d lose herself in the wild, unfettered life of the artist, no doubt ending with her own self-destruction.
At the same time, she ached for the minds of fellow artists.
Chloe’s life with any artistic community always ended up in some sort of relationship breakdown as she subconsciously sabotaged any strong connection she could create.
Then, two years ago, she decided to pack everything up and move to Australia. Her mother always said that her roots were in that country, and there was the promise of a fresh start and some hope for a new life. It was so far away, the farthest civilised place Chloe could think of. She wanted a way to remake herself. To have the costuming take a backseat and devote herself to a day job and maybe even settle down to a husband and children.
The drive for community thrived in her still, but she managed it by directing her attentions to the Internet. The comfort and safety of her anonymity and the actual distance helped Chloe feel safe.
“And now the artists I connect with are all illusionists of some kind. Folk who don’t feel connected to reality. They all hide on the Internet, and that is where I connect. It has some pleasures, but most of all it is safe, and I feel blessed to be there.”
“You know there are women in history who have lived the illusion as if it were reality. They have stood in the face of reality and refused to accept the roles allocated them. They have refused to acknowledge what is called reality.”
“But that’s an illusion. They are just rejecting it rather than rising above it. Reality will come to get even them in the end.”
“I don’t agree. I think they just reject reality as another form of illusion. It is definitely hard to live according to one’s own rules, but I don’t think it is impossible.”
They talked this way for several nights in a row, exciting Chloe to a new kind of optimism. She worked hard on her clothes, finding that she had so much more energy than ever before. Even the daily grind of turning up at work and obediently following through on all her duties there could be accomplished because of the brilliance of these conversations. Chloe was coming alive. Something about this talk was setting her subconscious free even though she still maintained that her conscious needed to be chained.
Then, after a few nights of electrifying conversation, flirting, and pretending online, Max said to Chloe, “I want to meet you.”
Fear gripped Chloe immediately, and she told him she couldn’t. She loved their talk on the computer, but this would die with time when they became tired of this kind of conversation. It was better to enjoy it for what it was.
Without arguing against her fear, Max suggested, “Then can I offer you a gift? I want to give you two books that I think you will enjoy.”
Chloe told him to send them to her work, but Max didn’t want to do that.
He told her that he would leave them in a cafe for her. “I won’t be there when you go to pick them up. I know the cafe owner well enough. I can leave the books there, and they will be available for you.”
Chloe couldn’t ignore the rush through her veins. This sounded like an adventure. And it was an adventure she felt brave enough to have.
Chapter Eleven
Chloe was nervous. Even though Max had told her, and told her clearly, that he would not be there, and even though she trusted him, she still felt excited and afraid about what could happen to her when she went to the cafe.
He wanted her to have two books. He’d told her already that one was a book about Anaïs Nin. Chloe objected, saying that of course she had all the works of Anaïs Nin, but Max had told her to accept his gift of analysis of her costuming and the way she used it to indicate multiple realms of femininity and reality. The second book was one about Leonor Fini, surrealist painter and another woman who loved costuming. Chloe felt that the offer of these books was a romantic gesture, and she thought the excitement of going to a rendezvous to pick them up even more exciting.
The cafe was one she knew of in town. A popular cafe in the old mint building, it had high ceilings and was styled after Cafe Les Deux Magots, although few artists could afford to drink there too regularly. They served alcohol as well, a nice touch, making it more like a Paris cafe.
Chloe took two hours off work especially for the occasion. Max told her to be there sometime after noon. The excitement had her wriggling in her seat at work all day. She’d worn a dramatic ensemble for the occasion, even though Max wouldn’t actually see her. Ross looked twice at her outfit; the long, flowing red hippy skirt coupled with the capelike shirt did stand out in the crowd. Chloe knew that she looked striking, and she walked with spirited confidence.
Finally, three p.m. arrived, and Chloe leapt up, packing her bag as Ross goaded her about where she was going and what she was up to. Happily and easily, she prodded him in return, claiming he would never know because she wouldn’t tell him anything about her mysterious life.
And now she’d arrived. In this lovely cafe. As agreed. And soon she would hold the books Max had prepared for her. It was thrilling.
Approaching the counter, Chloe told a waiter her name and said that someone had left some books waiting for her. The waiter looked puzzled for a moment and then asked another waiter what he thought. The second waiter seemed to know immediately about the books, indicating they’d been left on a table toward the back of the cafe.
Frustrated, Chloe turned to the table. Two books perched invitingly on the table, but a man sat there drinking coffee. Irritated, Chloe turned back and argued that they must have made a mistake because that table was occupied. The waiter shrugged and walked away.
Chloe felt she had no choice but to approach the man and find out about the books.
As she walked closer, Chloe could see that they’d been left by Max. She interrupted the man at the table, asking if she could take the books, as another gentleman had left them there for her. The man looked at her evenly as she spoke.
Chloe had prattled out her request innocently enough, but by the time she’d gotten to the end of it, the way he watched her gave her a strange mixture of feminine pride to be able to solicit that sort of look in a man’s eye and the feeling that perhaps the neckline of the outfit she’d chosen was too low. She supposed he was a little older than her, perhaps forty, but she could see as she’d approached that he had a heavily muscled chest. A little too much muscle for a man who frequented cafes.
When she’d completed her request, he’d kept staring her right in the eye, and then he smiled, showing very white, animal teeth beautifully encased in a smooth grin. He had the look of an old soul; he’d been here many times before. He had an outdoor tan, dark and swarthy, as if many centuries ago he had his own ship and pirated the high seas. He had eyes as any pirate frequenting a girl’s dream. They flashed bold and proud at Chloe.
A carefree recklessness in his face and that sexy smirk on his lips had Chloe catching her breath. Somehow, this stranger’s looking at her this way should have been an insult, but she wasn’t insulted, and that worried her even more. Chloe had no idea who he was, but “good blood,” as her mother used to say, was written all over him. It showed in his finely shaped nose, over those full, bloodred lips, to the well-kept black hair and the toned, glowing skin.
She dragged her eyes away from his beautiful smile to the books on the table without smiling back, trying to retain her composure.
“If you want your books, you’ll have to take coffee with me.” His smile seemed to know for sure she was going to have coffee with him.
“The books will be fine,” Chloe said. “If you think I am going to waste my time with a man who likes to take advantage of situations that have been set up around him but do not involve him, you are sorely mistaken.”
“Your haughtiness doesn’t interest me. But the books do. And now that you’ve told me just a little more, the story of why they are here does as well.” His eyes flashed wicked warmth, curling his lips up a little on the side in a twisted sort of smile that Chloe found worked its way instantly to a place inside her. “How about you just sit with me for one coffee. As a way of apologising for leaving your books at my table. If after one coffee you are not interested in talking to me, you can go.”
Chloe wished she knew a way to resist him. Expecting talking to him and immersing herself in his arrogance would work to turn her off, she agreed to sit.
He ordered two cappuccinos from a passing waiter and then turned to her. “Now. I’m sorry for such a brash introduction, but you are terribly beautiful, and I wanted you at my table here. I know it is arrogant, but I meant what I said. Say the word -- after this coffee -- and you never have to see me again.” He smiled at her again and Chloe noticed his eyes and started to think of pirates once more.
She blushed. “It’s okay. I think the circumstances threw me.”
“My name is James.”
“Chloe.”
“So tell me about the circumstances that bring a beautiful woman out of the office to a coffee sho
p to pick up books that are not hers when the wait staff don’t know her. I have a strong feeling this will be a good story.”
Chloe related almost the entire story of Max and what she was doing in that cafe that afternoon. Curiously, at least Chloe thought so to herself, she didn’t tell James about the sexual attraction of her online relationship. True to his word, James was fascinated and asked many questions, including why she didn’t want to see this man in person. “You never know, you may really like him.”
“That’s the difficulty. I have a little problem with immersing myself in art. He is a talented, brilliant kind of man, and I am very scared that I would like him a great deal.” She took a breath that sounded more like a sigh and looked through the cafe out to the street. “I think it is better to be safe and avoid artistic men. One can only get disappointed if one tries to fulfil one’s deepest desires.”
She turned back to see those pirate eyes had turned soulful and focussed on her with even more intensity than he had displayed before. He watched her for a full thirty seconds, until Chloe felt almost that she’d have to break the mood with something foolish, when he said in a whisper tinged with sadness, “Tell me about these books.”
So Chloe told him a little about her life. James wanted to know immediately why Chloe felt afraid to embrace an artistic existence. Keeping many details private, she told him about her mother and the troubles she had trying to build an artistic life for herself. Despite her attempts at secrecy, she found herself telling him about her mother’s emotional troubles… In the past, Chloe found it easy to be cagey, preferring to keep details sparse. But having told Max her story, she now found it less painful to give certain details to James, as if in some way Max could have prepared her for a coffee with James.
A pregnant pause followed Chloe’s second telling about her mother in a matter of days. She suddenly felt tired, and she reached out for the two books sitting on the table.
Spotting her move, James leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. Chloe stopped and then automatically pulled away, feeling stunned by this new turn of events. She blushed heavily and looked around to see if anyone was watching. As if ignoring her reaction completely, James said, “I would like to take you to dinner. Please say you’ll come.”
