R. Hernández - An Innocent Fashion

“Elián.?”

I flew back into the common room, where my mother remained with her flabby arm upraised, defenseless Madame X curling dejectedly onto her brown, ponytailed head. Across from the Gothic triptych of arched windows my father had collapsed into a lump onto the pile of suitcases, and was yawningly picking at a back molar with his finger.

“Looks great!” I shouted with a half-glance at my mother, while I poked my head in and out of closets and made a full pointless revolution around the common room.

I just wanted to go outside and smile and nod and shake more hands and collapse onto the feet of one of the noble bronze men standing prim and poised throughout campus, whose job it was to remind us that if we did it right, one day we too could be immortalized forever on a pedestal.

I rushed to a corner, crossing my arms over my chest, and tried with a deep breath to collect myself. I paced to one side of the common room, then the other, then back, then glanced out the window and, throwing my hands in the air, I bolted out of the suite door — a whole world to explore! — and crashed straight into a mirror.

“It’s about time, Daddy,” rang out a voice behind the mirror, as resonant as a tap on a wineglass, followed by a “Hear! Hear!” in a crowded ballroom.

It was an antique standing mirror, a white oval frame fastened by a wrought iron pivot to a dainty pedestal. Aside from my own reflection, the only visible sign of a human presence was a pair of feet below, sheathed in patent nude Ferragamo ballerina slippers, each with a chunky one-inch heel and matching grosgrain bow on the front.

“Why do you always let the Powells trap you?” came the voice. “It’s all money talk with them — brokers and blue chips. it makes me want to just—” the voice faltered under her reflective burden, “— scream .” This last word resounded as the bearer of the mirror teetered like the poor, unpracticed cousin of world-bearing Atlas. My reflection swerved toward me. With a clatter of heels, the patent-sheathed feet staggered dangerously backward near the landing’s edge.

“Careful!” Reaching out I caught a slender forearm, and the floating mirror swayed blindly toward safety. “Can I help you with that?”

My voice evidently was not the expected baritone. “Oh!” the mirror exclaimed, “I thought you were. ” She poked her head out from behind the glass.

My heart, which had just a moment ago been racing, came to a halt, like a galloping horse suddenly digging its hooves into the earth. My grasp on her arm reflexively tightened. The mirror’s clawed feet pawed the hallway in a series of scrapes, then gave in at last with the crunching finality of wrought iron on stone tile.

The girl blinked her blue eyes, spread apart across exultant cheekbones. Her jaw was wide, almost square, with a shadowed cleft in her chin. A long, unbrushed tangle of thick blonde hair dangled like raw silk around her face.

My grip on her arm slackened. “I’m sorry.” I jerked my hand back toward my own body, where I struggled to find an appropriate place for it, and after patting the length of my suit jacket — I must have appeared to have lost something — I gulped, and jammed it awkwardly into my front pocket.

Her hands were on either side of the mirror. Her grip relaxed, and her palms slid down the length of the oval as she cocked her head and drew her gaze toward the orchid on my lapel. Her shiny lips split open like two halves of a ripe, pink fruit, and she burst into a laugh that filled the air with color.

Her eyes wandered next to the buttons on my suit. “Double-breasted!” she remarked. She had a small gap in her front teeth.

With a sidestep from behind the glass, she revealed herself in a toile-patterned sundress, with a knee-grazing skirt blossoming outward from a black satin bow around her waist. She extended her hand toward me. “I’m Madeline,” she said, the syllables falling like raindrops onto a lily pond.

“Elián,” I managed with a gulp, slipping my hand into hers. I was overwhelmed by the sensation of her pulse against my fingers.

“Ethan?” In the absence of her supervising grasp, the mirror pivoted absently on its hinge like an hourglass. A sudden flash, as the surface caught a sunbeam through the window.

“Did you say — Ethan?” she repeated. But downstairs the entryway door swung open, and suddenly voices were floating up and down the steps again, all the hellos and how are yous , inquiries about names and hometowns — then someone was upon us: Daddy, or, as I’d come to learn, Mr. Dupre.

“Darling, you’ve gone up too far,” he informed her. With his tucked-in shirt and tasseled loafers, and his blonde hair swept neatly to the side over one ear, he was one of those “ locos ” who had earlier so amused my father. “This is the fourth floor. Your room is on the third.”

Madeline turned to him — her hand was still in mine — and started, almost accusingly, “But the Powells. I didn’t. how was I to know?” Then a silly laugh.

He hoisted the mirror onto his chest. “Good morning,” he nodded at me, and faced downstairs.

Attempting a noble gesture, I broke the connection between Madeline’s hand and my own. “Can I help you with that?” I asked, stepping toward her father.

But he didn’t hear me as he concentrated on his labored descent. With a wordless wave to me, Madeline clattered down the steps behind him. She reached out for the mirror’s edge, as though her halfhearted touch might alleviate the weight of it.

“I’ll see you around?” I called after her.

She turned toward me and shrugged, before disappearing around the corner of the staircase, her footsteps echoing on and on away from me. and when I had come to my senses, my mother was calling, “Eliaaán!” and the whole landing smelled like elderflowers.

PAST THE GLASS DOORS AT RÉGINE, EVERYTHING WAS WHITE, and everything was quiet. The air felt heavy — thick with an invisible gas. I could sense the faint movements of human beings, tinkling as if they were insects trapped in jars.

I looked behind me as— clang! — the doors sealed me in.

George and I were at the beginning of a long passage, with cubicle walls on either side but no view of the people behind them. He heaved through the white hall as if he were walking on a conveyor belt, compensating for his middling stature with colossal strides, never looking back. I struggled to catch up, to breathe. In a lowered voice, he began reciting first-day fundamentals with the ceremony of a twelve-year-old boy giving a presentation in science class — some explanation of the earth’s orbit copied verbatim from the Internet.

“Earth’s orbit is the motion of the Earth around Régine , from an average distance of approximately 150 million kilometers away. A complete orbit of the earth around Régine occurs every 365.256363 solar days. On average it takes one month — an editorial cycle — for Earth to complete a full rotation about its axis relative to Régine magazine so that Régine returns to the meridian .

“Hey!” George snapped. “Are you getting this?”

“What?”

On one side the cubicles were replaced by a wall, displaying magazine covers in staggering, larger-than-life dimensions. Each frame contained a cover girl from my dreams, a modern Aphrodite, yet captivity had stripped away their collective power. They gazed out vacantly, a collection of nymphean specimens flattened out and pinned up behind glass for inspection.

“I said , we have to prepare for a run-through this morning.”