White Leather and Flawed Pearls

by Susan Altstatt

  The boys looked at each other, Dave whispered, “Solace.”

  He asked for a metronome. They had a Casio toy synth, the cheapest one with auto accompaniment. He made a quick survey of available rhythms. I couldn’t have begun to set “Solace” over any of them. But he selected, turned the temp and the volume to the lowest click.

  And played. “Solace,” all right. Only he had Tom’s vocal translated to a guitar part and was playing the two at once. Until the solo came. Here came the solo.

  Music towered up from the middle of Pfau’s hilltop. The breeze died, and the freeway’s ocean roar grew hushed. From the dusty and rototilled orchard surrounding, two covered race cars, a parted out hulk, assorted motorcycles, and a tow trailer listened as attentively as ever ox and ass to angelic musicians. No jets whined down the landing pattern to SFO. No dogs barked. No birds sang. When it was over, he lifted his hand. All that sad glory slid back down the sky and vanished in the guitar pickup. He turned it all off. And I’m standing here, trying to hide the tears.

  “That’s not the solo off the album!” gasped Dave Pfau.

  Truer words were never spake.

  “Why, you wanted it the same?”

  “No, no sir. Only, God, that’s not same as anything, I’ve got all the concert—”

  Harlan waited brightly for him to say “bootlegs.”

  Dave messed his Doc Martens around in the gravel. “—I mean, it wasn’t that way on this tour—”

  “Of course not,” said Harlan severely. “Its yours. One off. Record it yourself some day; I’ll remember you.”

  “I’m not much good.”

  “Get good. I’ll leave you to it.”

  Ken and Dave and Ron went off with their prize to phone every guitar-playing kid in Santa Clara County.

  Ed came back with the last of the parts.

  Finally Harlan turned to me. “I understand you drive.”

  “But of course.”

  “Of course. You shovel this load of old codswallop back to airport rentals; I’ll do rearguard in case.”

  The renta-Sentra put on its best show of bucking and farting. In vain. Thirty minutes saw us rid of it at SFO. Harlan signed it off, paid for it, grabbed my hand and cantered jubilantly out toward his new old Porsche in the parking. I cantered with him.

  “Chez Panisse?”

  “But of course.”

  He’d sequestered his little car in a well-defended corner, and had to hand me in through the driver’s side.

  “Thought you might—want to try—new things.”

  “Oh, God no. My Americanism for today—” Having me settled, he settled himself, (tucking my hand he still held firmly in between the seat and his warm brown corduroy thigh), dug out his key, stuck it in the ignition—

  —And froze. We both sat and thought about it. I felt, but avoided, his long slow look. At last he sighed. “My Americanism for today:” and turned the key “‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’”

  So my hand stayed where it was, passively appreciative of the flex and dance of muscle as he heel-and-toed Ed Pfau’s bottle-green Speedster north up 101. At the first good cloverleaf, he took us round the whole thing, gearing down and standing on it, making the little Porsche squat and drift the turns, 360 degrees.

  Papa’s driven old Porsches all my life. He never raced himself, just pit-crewed buddies like Ed Pfau. We used to go to Sears Point and Laguna Seca for the vintage races; his friends’d sometimes tour me round the course at speed.

  Lots of talk, when I got my license, of putting me through Bondurant’s performance driving school. It was just talk, of course. I’m from the Bat-Out-of-Hell driving school strictly. But I know all the mannerisms. Over the city and across the bridge to Chez Panisse we go.

  Chapter 7

  Friday, August 29

  “Louis Vuitton sucks. Four hundred dollars for an itsy-bitsy carry-on with somebody else’s weird initials all over it?”

  “Then solve the problem. You desire luggage—”

  “I can’t see flying to London with that wedding dress in my hand.”

  “—You desire luggage which is out of the ordinary, cannot be mistaken for anyone else’s. What will you have?”

  “Steamer trunks.”

  He fell silent at once, and made one lap of the carpet. Two laps. Head absorbed in concentration, hands absorbed in pockets. “Ah. Too bulky. The airlines should cooperate for a fee, but I doubt they’ll cram into the limo. Being met at Heathrow by a lorry wouldn’t do at all.”

  “Very small steamer trunks.”

  “From what source?”

  “We-Buy-Junk-We-Sell-Antiques shops.”

  “Ah. Mold. Mildew. Dry rot. Fragile handles—” Harlan’s “fragile” rhymed with the river Nile. He pronounced it with infinite relish.

  “Look,” I said, “old steamer trunks are what you call ‘collectibles.’ There’s like, this social stratum—of crafty women in California who make their entire income off restoring old steamer trunks, or antique dolls, or whatever. Strip, paint, shine the metal, new canvas, kill the bugs, new fancy paper, new handles—”

  “Show me.”

  “Okay, Missouri.” I didn’t think he got the reference.

  ———

  I found one lousy lonely steamer trunk, big and gringy, like the hatchet murderer’d use to ship his victims. I said, “No thanks: just looking.” The man at the antiques galleria followed us around anyway. I could feel Harlan’s superior gaze. Modest. Attentive. Insufferable. Right through the back of my skull loud and clear.

  But the man says, “I know what you want, and we aren’t it—” He’s digging out the phone book: good sign in this business, as I recognize already. “There is a shop—” He has it open. “—out in the Fillmore—” Visions of bay breeze and Italian stucco; meanwhile he’s cruising down the page. “—A shop called Pachyderm. Their entire business is restoring trunks.” Vindication is a very sweet commodity.

  ———

  In the window: a white ceramic elephant, waist-high, potted cymbidiums blooming from its howdah. Against it: two elk hide portmanteaux the color of oyster bisque, perfect: loving hands put them away in tissue a hundred years ago. And on them, just casually, as if the owner tossed it at his bags, a Knights of Columbus cocked hat, splendid and blue-black, smothered in braid, gold couched work crosses and a froth of ostrich plumes.

  Ms. Pachyderm is slim, modish, vague, intense, and cross-eyed. Human version of a Siamese cat. Whichever eye you choose to talk to, the other points over your shoulder. She has some vintage clothes as well as luggage, one tall ornate brass rack of them, labeled April 14, 1911. The question, of course: why? And Harlan makes the big mistake of asking.

  “Oh,” she says, “that’s the date of the sinking.”

  I can tell he’s headed for deep water. I head for the back of the shop. Trunks and trunks standing open, trunks of romance, trunks of mystery, trunks full of dreams.

  “You mean you don’t know about Titanic Parties?”

  One is coffin-shaped, and standing upright on the flat end, has a hanging locker to the left and drawers for nameless treasures on the right. Beside it is a gloriously handsome little trunk, its inside and its several trays done in rose-sprig paper, flyspecked just enough to be original.

  “—Well, on the anniversary of the sinking, we charter a Bay Cruise ship, and everyone comes in 1911 outfits; there’s food and champagne and dancing all night, people who get really into it want period luggage so they can change from their deck clothes to their evening wear—”

  Inside the high, bowed lid a label says,

  Nathan Neat & Co.

  Manufacturers, wholesale and retail Dealers

  in the finest quality of

  Trunks and Traveling Equipage

  Saratoga trunks, Eugenie, Continental, Beach, Imperial, French,

  Sole leather Portmanteaux, Sole leather valises,

  Hat boxes, Extension bags,

  Railroad, Mackintosh, Shopping,<
br />
  In Russia, grain, seal,

  and alligator leather

  Trunks and bags repaired and made to order

  at short notice.

  It’s me this time. I want it. Nathan Neat indeed. I’d love to set him up with Joshua Sweet, on whom I laid my extra Belshangles ticket. Nathan Neat and Joshua Sweet’d make a classy pair of Rap MC’s. I’d love to order out one each of everything in Nathan Neat’s hundred-year-old catalog, all held together with alligator leather.

  “—So popular,” she’s saying, “we’ve added another in November and tickets are left for that one—” (Harlan nods in all the right places but his eyes are beginning to glaze.) “—only fifty dollars, everything included; such a sensational fun value for these days—”

  ———

  I took the coffin, Nathan Neat and the two portmanteaux from the window; Ms. Pachyderm looked quite disconsolate at the Titanic Party’s loss.

  But Harlan broke her heart. He paid her price, and took away her cocked hat. Poor bare window: only its elephant and orchids left.

  We belted the coffin in the passenger seat, Nathan Neat sat on the floor, the huge portmanteau eased into the boot (as Harlan called it), much newspaper safeguarding it from jack, lug wrench, and spare tire’s rage. I crammed myself behind the seats, hugging the smaller one. Harlan wore his Knights of Columbus hat. We Porsched home through fog and sun and other San Francisco traffic.

  A bellhop helped us port our treasures: big tall girl in monkey-suit. Long gold hair. Then I checked the shoes. It was the same pretty guy who’d tried so hard to lavish Tom with almond tart. Harlan stopped digging for change, and glancing up sharply, gave him much the once-over he himself had received from Tim the Tailor.

  “What’s your name?”

  The boy shuffled and studied his feet, shyly as any sweet child. “Christopher.”

  “Christopher what?”

  “Grantham. Most people call me Chris.” Small hope raised his eyes.

  “In which case, I shall call you Kit,” said Harlan (and owned him for life). “I need someone for errands—”

  “Can’t sir, during hours—”

  “My name’s Harlan. When are you off? Soon enough. Come in, I’ll give you money; here are the things I need—

  “—now these you can have from a cleaners’ if you ask politely and offer to pay; the sewing thread should be of the following shades; this is from the market; and this—may have been sold. If not, lay it away and cash the second check. Should the bank give you difficulties, call me.”

  ———

  So Harlan called Tom this time.

  We’d been ransacking the hotel newsstand for hype on Rhymer’s Jig. Tom told him where to find the good stuff. Harlan wrote down titles and issues.

  He lay on his back on the couch, telling stories that didn’t need ends, giving cryptic rebuttals to undecipherable questions. He giggled and sang. Tom’s part sounded just the same. Private accent, private grammar, private words.

  Twin language.

  Then Tom puts on some English for my benefit; Harlan leaves us privacy. Look at me: another poorly informed tourist, a stranger in their strange land.

  Damn.

  They don’t need anyone to leave them privacy, they secrete their own, like an octopus does ink.

  And now I have a yet worse guilty conscience. I’ve written Tom’s London phone number in ball point pen on the palm of my hand while Harlan wasn’t looking.

  “I take it you do like white leather?”

  “Women who bought silk frocks didn’t do elastics.”

  “So why didn’t she hand it to her dressmaker or her lady’s maid or something, if it’s such a treasure?”

  “She could afford a new one.”

  “So what am I supposed to do?”

  “The elastics.”

  The item in question was crinkled, yellowed, enormous in the waist as some old lady’s baggy underwear. Harlan found it in a basement Salvation Army Store by his usual method, running a light hand and a jaundiced eye down the shoulders of the garment racks.

  The woman at the register was also old and yellow.

  “Whazzat fabric? Ha? Whazzat? Zat silk! Ha!” She looked at the tag: $2.99, marked down to $1.99. “Those girls in back,” she said grimly, “they don’ know nothin’.”

  I heard her, as we left, vigorously upbraiding the back room in whatever language they spoke.

  “Elastics is all?”

  “Wash it.”

  “All the silk tags I see say dry clean only.”

  Harlan gave his chin that haughty little tilt. “Do you believe everything you read? Washing old silk is a sensual experience. Run your hands through it. Cleanse it of its care. Think about the brown silk moths in their mulberry trees, and the summer moon in old China.”

  Some of the stuff our new liveried retainer Kit was buying vanished, unopened and mysterious, into Harlan’s room. But a scary large amount of it was for me: packaged elastic in several widths, assorted needles, thread in off-white, beige, black, navy, midnight blue, pearl gray, and red—why those colors exactly? Plastic dry cleaner bags, vinyl drip-dry hangers, padded hangers, bottles of Ivory Liquid.

  I hauled the crackly attenuated old elastic from its casing, using it as line to pull the new one in. I sewed it up. The old dress gained a whole new shape, all the sags and bags departed. I dumped it in the sink, as per instruction, with a shot of Ivory. The water turned dirty orange. About ten sinkfuls later, the silk had lightened to the color of dead skin. I hung it in the shower. It clung to itself and shivered.

  “Shake it,” said Harlan.

  “What?”

  “The frock. Repeatedly. Until it dries. It reduces the necessity for ironing.” Like they say in the movies, I got a bad feeling about this.

  But sometime in the night the silk faery came and made a changeling of my withered washee. The top is like a guy’s shirt now: cuffed sleeves, pearl buttons, breast pockets. Only the collar’s long, I can make a small tie of it or let it flow down smoothly on the breast. Then the nipped-in waist with loops for a tiny belt. Kathryn Hepburn could have worn this dress. The skirt’s a half circle (like the one Tim’s making) that shimmers and glimmers around my legs and swings and clings, curls and swirls, shines and twines—Lauren Bacall could have worn this dress. And maybe she did.

  ———

  Tim has the skirt of the wedding dress deployed like a parachute, engulfing his upstairs worktable. Stacked around, all over everywhere like giant communion wafers, are circles or discs of white kid leather. About 2½ inches in diameter, fine, thin, flexible, rich, alive to touch.

  Here I stand, with my little bag of silk stuff that wants mending and pearl buttons, wondering where the merchants live who deal in magic leather. Are they more good friends, and all Tim has to do is call and they deliver? Have they died too, and left it to him? Wondering how Tim cut the piles of discs so cleanly and so round; how long it’d taken him to do it. He must sit up all night at home, working on my stuff.

  I wonder where home is.

  A house within walking distance. Inhabited by him and four boys. I’ve heard its genial uproar on the phone; I’ve never seen the house. I haven’t been invited. Haven’t spied on Harlan’s every move, but I don’t think he’s been invited either. Would he be invited if I wasn’t here?

  I’ve seen the boys, one at a time.

  Cody’s a motorcycle mechanic. Cute cute cute.

  Danny’s going to California Culinary Academy and trails this wonderful aura of onions, garlic, lemon, and sweet basil behind him. Makes me drool whenever he walks in.

  Neil. There’s a priceless one. Neil wears the surplus of several armies, lots of pockets pulled wrong-side-out into flapping tongues, a yellow shower cap with a big pink button asking “What’s Innuendo??” and answering (fine print underneath) “Up your ass in Italian!” and condom packets on earring wires in both ears.

  That’s a game I know well: Cut-Rate Hideous, your most outrage for your
least outlay. The kid is obviously with some rude boy band. Bet I could even guess the name of it.

  Richard is a bank clerk and dresses as straight as the Golden Rule.

  Tim calls all of them “son” and “dear,” but they aren’t his sons. Or are they? They aren’t all his lovers. Are they? What’s he keeping? A boarding house? A harem? A sanctuary for rare and endangered youth?

  “Yes,” I said, “I do like white leather. Very much.”

  He’d turned the hem outward by an inch and a quarter, flattening and distributing the extra cloth along the curve. Over it went the leather disks, tangent to each other and the finished edge. The raw edge vanished. Then in all the valleys, as if they’d sifted down, a rain of precious hailstones, lodging in every depression between the white leather moons, went the pearls.

  “There. Now that’s how it’s going to look.”

  He had the partly finished top already on a hanger in a bare closet. The remnant silk lay carefully re-rolled, enthroned in imperial darkness on the shelf above.

  “I was reading in a paper,” I said, “where this—like, soap opera heroine? —got married in Texas; it took four people three whole months to sew the seed pearls on her dress. Now, I hope that I don’t have three months.”

  “Larger pearls,” said Tim.

  “More people?” queried Harlan.

  “Smaller people.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Tim had enlisted the services of a seamstress, or rather, seamstresses to sew them on: a tiny smiling Thai woman, Lourdes Ng, and her daughters. She spoke no English but introduced them anyway: Lorette, Salette, and Fatima. The Pearl Ladies.

  “I do hope she’s not past the age of childbearing,” Harlan whispered in my ear. “I can hardly wait for Garabandal.”

  “And Medjugorje,” I whispered back. We shared a good long giggle over that.

  Religiously as any surgeon, Tim washed his hands, then spread the long silk semicircle on the cutting table. “I want to do the leather part by machine, and I’ll do it myself.” He’d hefted a portable from another room. Now he positioned it and eased the silk hem into its metal jaw. Gently, he immobilized the discs with hairdresser’s tape. “Stronger tape’ll mar the surface; no pins for the same reason. Can’t re-stitch or alter anything, so—we’ll just have to do it right the first time.” With a tiny regular stitch, he edge-sewed the first disc: from its left, where it covered the raw edge of the silk, in a right-hand arc across its top; then he smoothly pivoted the cloth, punched “reverse,” and sewed the bottom sector backward, arriving where he began.