White Leather and Flawed Pearls

by Susan Altstatt

  I understood, intellectually, what he’d done, sewed a full circle without screwing the silk full circle through the machine. Skill of that kind leaves me cowed and speechless. All sewing machines hate me on sight. Needles shatter, bobbins jam. Gordian knots form in their insides.

  Tim broke his threads and positioned the second disc. Then the third. After about the sixth, he washed up again.

  I saw Harlan absorbed in working with him, easing and expediting the flow of cloth into the master’s hands, deftly as an apprentice of many years.

  Curly Locks, Curly Locks, wilt thou be mine?

  Thou shalt not wash the dishes or else feed the swine,

  But sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam,

  And feed upon strawberries, sugar and cream—

  My inner voice and I are not always on speaking terms. I got out, quick, through French doors at the back of the shop, onto the sun deck (tar and gravel inside a solid wooden parapet). I was now on top of Valerie’s apartment with my dumb plastic sack of mending.

  She was still singing in her kitchen down below.

  A giant eucalyptus overshadowed me, dropping shreds of bronzy bark, green sickle leaves, drifts of bloom and woody seed pods onto gravel, a few dusty metal chairs, and a chaise. Big redwood planters filled the corners, man-high jade plants thriving in them. Next to the sunnier one was a cardboard carton with an arch scissored in its side.

  Somebody’d taken felt pens and written in a rainbow round the arch the name “Shadrach.” From the arch, the front end of a large land tortoise eyed me placidly.

  My inner voice, completely unrepentant for “Curly Locks, Curly Locks,” sang “O-o-oh, they all walked around in the fiery furnace, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego-o—”

  The boook of Daniel’s “three children in the furnace,” walking up and down and singing praise, with that shadowy fourth, “like an angel to God” to keep them company. Add the bass line to their harmony. Keep them from burning up. I think all the grown-up children of this town are walking in the furnace, with no asbestos angel anywhere.

  Shadrach rose high on his legs and surged to meet me, sedately grand, a miniature colossus. He solemnly checked each Eucalyptus dropping in his path, ending with the toes of my shoes. The eyes that looked up into mine were gold as Harlan’s. Oh, look out. Suddenly there’s no place safe from Beauty Incarnate.

  I said, “Hold it right there,” to Shadrach, dumped my mending, zipped in, across the room, and down the banister, averting eyes from Harlan and all his works.

  Old city houses have kitchens like ships’ galleys, narrow, wooden, and dark. Valerie’s isn’t hard to find. Just follow the Rodgers and Hammerstein.

  Sure enough, right above the sink is an antique picture of the Sacred Heart, one of the disembodied kind the New Church banned as heresy. You wouldn’t expect her to pay much heed to that.

  Mama had its double—flaming with love made visible, rose-wreathed, wound with thorns and dripping blood, in sweet, faded nun’s embroidery on padded silk—stuck behind our own front door at home. Where we’d have to deal with it going out, but visitors wouldn’t have to coming in. It always fascinated me, even before I knew it was anything radical. I remember being very small and asking, “Is that a heart wrapped in barb wire?” Mama said, “Yes.”

  “’Scuse me, Mrs. Lagomarsino, who feeds the tortoise?”

  Took her a moment to catch up. Then she turned this most amazing smile on me, big, silly, sloppy-loving as a dog. “Why dear,” she said, “you do!”

  She fixed me up a blue and white bowl full of lettuce and tomato. I knew exactly now why old Tim hired her.

  Saturday, August 30

  “Well, it is fun,” I conceded. Ms. Pachyderm and her Titanic parties filtered uneasily through my mind.

  Harlan nodded sagely.

  White silk isn’t white.

  It’s beeswax color: new wax comb nothing’s been laid in, no brown honey, no orange pollen, no white bee-grubs.

  They used to melt that virgin wax for church candles.

  Candles the color of white silk. Work of insects, both: the bee queen’s nursery, the caterpillar’s shroud. They have to kill the worms to get the silk off. Wax and silk and candlelight, all the same magical-mystery color. (Don’t look now, I think I’m being seduced.)

  Some thrift shops harangue and flirt and giggle in Spanish. Some buzz Vietnamese. Some operate on Island time, weighty, bright colored and Samoan slow, while some are witty black as Africa. Some keep the books in Tagalog. Some hire the handicapped. And their wares? Oh. Just everything, from K-Martian ticky-tack to Paris originals. Come in, friend, and see if you can tell the difference.

  And add to those the tribe of vintage clothes shopkeepers and the flea market and antique show gypsies with the wonderful shady gauderies they buy and sell, you have the whole City of Man on parade. Parade, nothing! For sale! Come by, come try, come buy! Tim’s old Charlie, the vintage clothes guy, must have enjoyed one incredible fun life while it lasted.

  I don’t just think I’m being seduced, I know. Like an insect victim with one or two more seconds of thrash left, before the spider poison gets me.

  “However,” I said. “However, there is something still just basically, morally unsatisfactory about spending all day every day shining myself and playing games.”

  He looked perfectly shocked. “Humankind was designed and placed here for the express purpose of playing games! The fate of the universe hangs upon how well we do it! Holy Wisdom—” he waved a finger at me, “‘Holy Wisdom says:

  The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His ways,

  before he had made anything from the beginning—

  I was with him forming all things: and was delighted every day,

  playing before Him at all times;

  Playing in the world: and my delights were to be with the children of men—

  So the Devil can quote scripture.

  I surveyed myself in the mirror again, full length front, back, and side, in my latest vintage clothes shop treasure, bought with wild excitement, washed and pressed and mended with endless loving care at Tim’s this morning. A midnight blue silk ’30s dress, a print of small gold clockwork spangled over it like innards of a watch.

  “No, this is absurd. I look like shit.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I can see.”

  “Thomas is a lover of beauty, and I mean a lover, not a critic. His taste in human flesh is kindly (as he is), and eclectic, but excellently high. Thomas doesn’t bed ugly people. And, since he is, first and last, a slippery bugger, ugly people don’t bed him—”

  Feeling more and more bitterly at risk, I sneered. “Not even the rich ones?”

  “The rich are seldom ugly. No, I assure you, keeping close check on Thomas’s activities yields an almost frighteningly formidable catalog of human beauty. In which your own is, to date, the latest entry—

  “If your self-evaluation is so lacking, shouldn’t you honor his? You’re built like a thoroughbred filly; most all Thomas’s women are. You could do high-fashion modeling. In an era capable of fueling its fantasy on Princess Stephanie of Monaco, you could rule the school. There is nothing wrong with your looks: you just weren’t properly brought up, that’s all.”

  What I wanted, what I wanted very badly, was to punch him in the mouth. “I was very well brought up; I was raised to use my head!”

  “Ah,” he said, “That is exactly how you look. And I do understand: for so was I. Fortunately, such things are—not past remedy. Every mutually agreeable bargain wants a buyer and a seller, hmm? Buyer says ‘Here’s my cold cash, serve me one of those.’ Seller strikes a pose and says ‘If you want my services, bid high.’ And you do want your services to be required, don’t you? Buyer sees, and makes advances, seller advertises, and, when the desired offer is received, accepts. With grace. You’ve been taught so far to see, and make advances—”

  “‘Worked, hasn’t it?”

  “Granted. But now y
ou intend to marry—”

  “Have married,” I put in.

  “—You are marrying—” He paused to check my expression.

  I nodded. “Better.”

  “—What is known in the common parlance as a Rock-and-Roll Star. You are about to be seen.”

  “Look,” I said. “I told you, I’m the kid whose blouse was always out of her skirt and whose socks came down, but I was a great two-miler. There’s only so much you can do.”

  “You’re the kid married to Thomas.”

  “Well maybe I shouldn’t be married to him! Is that what you’re trying to say?”

  “No. I’m asking what he saw in you.”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Think!”

  “Whatever it was, I’d better not mess with it, had I?”

  “Ah. Which you are in constant proximate danger of doing, just as long as you don’t know what it was. In order to defend, you must evaluate—”

  “There’s bound to be more to self defense than learning to keep your clothes straight!”

  “Quite possibly so, and when we’ve accomplished the matter of the clothes, we’ll turn our investigations in that direction, but—”

  “Clothes first?”

  “Clothes first. Well, who ever told you there was anything wrong with ‘shining’ yourself? It’s only the most human and humane of pastimes, even for the sanctified: one of the Fathers (Bernard, I think) said, ‘You wouldn’t want a Bride of Christ to be dull?’ Games are the stuff of life.

  “Oh, and you do play them; only the name of yours is ‘Unobserved Observer,’ while I say: in order to observe, or know to the full, one must oneself be known, seen, observed. Choose your term. You’ve loaded all the world’s glamour onto poor Thomas and kept none for yourself, a form of self-denigration he’d be the last to ask for or approve. You’ll have to stop it soon; you’ll make him dreadfully uncomfortable, and you don’t want that. You want the Parr Short Course on Grace and Advertising. Let’s have a look at you.”

  I stumped around in a blind fury.

  “Ah,” he said, “problem. You need shoes.”

  “I have shoes.”

  “Heels.”

  “I can’t wear heels.”

  “Why not? Have you trouble with weak ankles?”

  “Certainly not!”

  “The paper-thin flats young stylists are affecting, aside from enriching the shoe men by being unrepairable, are nothing in origin but witless imitation of our Princess Diana, who has, after all, extraordinary reasons for wearing them. Standing taller than one’s mate ain’t politic, when one’s mate is the future King of England. But you are not five-foot-ten, and Thomas (thank God) is not the Prince of Wales. You should dress in two-inch heels. They convey authority.”

  “Bullshit! They convey sore feet!” Going barefoot always was my mode of choice. After that came the best running shoes I could torque my near-and-dear into buying for me, and after that, the cheapest canvas tennies going: good honest things according to their kind.

  But force me to look civil, it was paper-thin flats, and even those worn in—to the point of worn out—before they felt acceptable. Princess Diana never entered the picture. And I kept on wearing them, till mere fragments of sole remained between my grubby little toes and the pavement and the uppers looked like spats.

  He practically bum’s-rushed me to a dancer’s supply store. “There,” he said. “Sturdy, sensible, old-fashioned, wicked all at once: athletic gear for medalists of stage, boudoir, and silver screen: a genuine, authentic pair of Fuck Me Pumps.”

  Character shoes. Tap shoes minus the taps. Suggestively displayed on a Lucite shelf shaped like a grand piano, with blue sequin shorts, a top hat, and a telescoping cane. I would gladly have killed him. He had the shop girl snickering already.

  “How many pairs of her size have you? In the white, that is?” They came in black, white, and tan. Harlan took one pair each of the blacks and tans, and all four whites. “Three white pairs we’ll have dyed. One red, one blue, one—you name it?”

  “Lavender,” I said.

  “Lavender it is.”

  “I really don’t care what color you have ’em dyed, I don’t intend to wear ’em anyway.”

  “I think you will.”

  “Nobody makes you run around in heels!”

  “Perhaps not, but I can. Thomas is quite elegant in them.”

  Feeling almost unendurably spiteful, I said, “Just too slow to catch the boys, huh?” God, what a mistake.

  “You don’t understand. Thomas doesn’t chase ‘boys.’ Thomas chases girls. ‘Boys’ chase Thomas.”

  “Do they catch him?”

  I got an amused look out from under that mass of hair. Just a trifle mocking. “Well that depends, doesn’t it, on whether or not he runs—”

  “Does he?”

  “—And how fast.”

  “Does he?”

  “More often than not.”

  “Not in stupid uncomfortable old heels!”

  The sales girl had come back with all the boxes.

  “What’s the largest size in these?” asked Harlan.

  “We have tens, I know.”

  Harlan had his sock foot on the measuring gadget. Dumb girl was giggling up a storm now. “Good heavens, tiny feet! That’s a ladies’ nine and a half! (giggle giggle giggle).”

  “In the black, please,” he said. And when she’d gone, “I’ll wear them just as long as you will. Is it a wager?”

  Damn. His shoes were a full size bigger than mine. So why should they seem so small? How, in fact, did he get off seeming small? He was exactly the same height as I was. Exactly. And he got off being this elegant little creature. He didn’t have to wear panty hose: he had plain masculine socks, little tweedy ones that bagged around his ankles. They looked just darling. I saw no justice in that.

  I longed to promenade him by some flock of Japanese tourists with their cameras out. So fixated on his shoes, I hardly noticed my own: only the sound we made together coming briskly up the sidewalk: clop-clip, clip-clop, like the two ends of a horse. Fairly sharp thoughts I had, too, about which end was which. I wondered if there’d ever been such a phrase (or such a concept) as an “homme fatal.”

  It was his face. Nothing human deserves a face like Harlan’s—not the perks or the burdens of it, either one.

  Women with beauty like Harlan’s warm the beds of princes and tycoons and presidents; their faces hog the covers of the magazines. People want to know the last small thing about them, how they live and love, and how they die. And if they drug or drink themselves to death, if their lovers bash or their husbands divorce them, when they get fat or go crazy and die young, well, everybody’s interested, but not too very much surprised. It had to be paid for someway. People are obsessed, fascinated, and scared as hell of a woman with looks like Harlan’s.

  But what about a man?

  I knew this guy at school who kept a poster of The Doors’ Jim Morrison on his wall. He said, “I thought I was an atheist, but whenever I look at him, I’m not so sure—”

  Morrison was the ultimate Black Romantic, all doom and gloom, but, supposing you don’t fall for it completely, just a hair—(Say it in a whisper) stodgy. Even before he wasted it. Harlan had it over poor Jim Morrison every way. And he was anything but wasted. Drugged out, at one time, he may have been (I wasn’t sure I understood that, even now): his face was still a museum piece of ivory and ebony and gold inlay, a treasure out of Tutankhamen’s tomb. Perfect preservation.

  Damn his eyes.

  The rest of the day I spent sneaking my own eyes shut, times when it didn’t matter, pretending I was blind. Wondering how it would be simply to enjoy Harlan’s company. Wondering how it had been growing up inside his face. He couldn’t’ve ever spoken with a person, male or female, not for a minute—before he’d see their eyes begin to slide around his face like melted butter.

  And my husband said the rest of him matched it.

  ———
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br />   We spent the afternoon on Polk street, the place to go for bootleg music. Whenever a shop gets busted, a better one takes its place. Where we went had the good stuff individually priced in racks up front. After it sat there long enough, it was half-priced in boxes underneath. The truly high mileage crud was banished at a buck an album to the back room and finally, tied in newsprint, forty or fifty to a bundle, was disposed of, ten bucks each, as “Mystery Mounds.”

  But with the really, really interesting stuff, only the cover was in the rack: you asked for the vinyl at the desk.

  Young guy behind the desk was the kind who couldn’t stand still very well, and practiced drum riffs on everything. So Harlan found himself a Belshangles bootleg, Hard On Belshangles, plain white jacket with the oddest contents list you ever saw, 129 of a limited 500 edition, on clear orange vinyl. And he wanted to write a check.

  “Could I see your driver’s license, please?” Then the guy saw the license. Then he saw Harlan. Unlike Tom, all he had to do was tack his hair back: nobody knew him. But today he had his shades on, and his hair was looser than Medusa’s.

  Holy shit.

  Oh my God.

  Could I take you to lunch?

  The Hot Szechwan place next door was closed for the lull between lunch and dinner, but he hauled us in there anyway. Food began appearing. A whispered word, a phone call, and weirdo music guys began appearing too, like so many dwarves on Bilbo Baggins’s doorstep. They spent the rest of the afternoon enthralled, listening to Harlan pontificate. And he could do it for hours without telling anybody anything.

  Food came in three speeds, brewed mild for American taste, hot, and lethal. I went for lethal, as usual (as did Harlan), and had the usual disappointment. “Lethal” was only mildly warm. “I wish,” I whispered in his ear, “like just once, somebody’d lead me to something that’s genuinely too hot.”