R. Hernández - An Innocent Fashion

“You need one too, Ethan,” she said, as she offered up the cone from her own head. I accepted, and was flabbergasted that she remembered my name.

Clara turned. She fingered the elastic band around her jaw, grimacing like a person who had been strapped into a restraint collar as the others blinked at each other, unsure what to do next. “You shouldn’t have,” Clara said once more to Jane, “you really shouldn’t have.”

“But I did,” Jane said. “Come on, everyone,” she instructed, “have a cupcake!”

My mouth watered, as I hoped that “everyone” included me. Sabrina had not yet authorized a lunch break.

Jane plucked a cupcake off the platter and leaned roguishly back against Clara’s desk, rocking her foot over her high heel. “Oh, go on,” she urged the others, unpeeling the cupcake liner, “eat!” She savored her first bite and waved her hand in a circular motion, which seemed to include me.

I took this in good faith and hastily picked up a cupcake, my mouth pooling up with saliva. The editors followed, with visible reservation. Their hands clashed over the platter.

“Oh — sorry.” Christine blushed.

“No, I’m sorry.”

“Go ahead.”

“No, you go ahead.”

Clara finally gave in. She held out her palm like a dish — careful not to drop any sprinkles — and placed the cupcake on top, blinking. Hovering her other hand over the chocolate frosting, she took a breath, like she was about to do a daring thing, then lost courage, and deflated. She turned her head almost imperceptibly to the side and whispered to Christine from the corner of her mouth, “Do you have a knife?”

Christine shook her head. Her cupcake was cupped between two upturned palms like a sacramental wafer.

“I’m going to save it for later,” Clara said at last to Jane, smiling like a person who had been hit in the stomach and was trying to disguise their pain. “I hope that’s all right?”

“Suit yourself.” Jane shrugged amicably, and licked a dollop of frosting off her own finger. “How are you celebrating tonight?”

Clara had carefully returned the cupcake to the platter, and was folding her hands on her lap like a Sunday school girl. “Oh, it’ll be a quiet night. Julian is just taking me to dinner — you know. ”

Down the hall, Edmund’s head poked out from his corner office. He came billowing down the passage in a linen chemise and clapped his bony hands together.

“Happy birthday, Clara, do you have any contact solution?” he said, rubbing his eye. “Dry eyes again.” He prodded a fallen chocolate sprinkle on the crystal platter, and raised his finger to his nostrils for a suspicious sniff.

Relieved by the temporary distraction the task presented, Clara reached into her drawer, and pulled out a bottle of contact solution. He took it from her and said to Jane, “Do you have a moment to discuss this business with the Asian model?” while he jabbed at his eye and walked away.

Jane nodded, pulling the last chocolaty lump off the cupcake liner. She popped it into her mouth and asked through a mouthful of frosting, “What’s wrong? Is it another scheduling thing with Lui Wen?” She folded the liner into a heart shape and tossed it into Clara’s trash bin. “If you need her to be Asian, why don’t you try out Soo Joo, like I suggested?”

They walked away — Edmund fast ahead, and Jane strolling behind. “Because Choo-Choo is not famous enough,” he declared, rubbing his eye again. “I don’t want to shoot some nobody.” And he closed the door behind them.

A moment passed in silence before I realized the only sound was me licking my fingers. I suddenly stopped, and the moist cupcake paper wilted in my hand as I glanced up at the fashion editors. Christine, who was between the others, looked at Clara, then bit her lip and turned to Will. All of them blinked.

Will and Christine still held their cupcakes intact.

“Do you—?” Will began suddenly.

They turned to him.

“Never mind,” he said.

More blinking. Christine raised a finger like she had a thought, then recoiled. I was struck by the strangeness of the void between them. They were three of the fashion world’s most exemplary models of taste and social grace, each one embodying the person you wanted most to be — a powerful, perfect person from whom you would take any advice, and on whose suggestion you would invest several thousand dollars in an Hermès bag, or a pair of Ferragamo slippers, and who always knew what expensive thing went just right with another expensive thing, and whose conviction in these matters you would regard more highly than your own — yet they could not figure out what to say to each other over a simple plate of cupcakes.

I waited for them to say anything : to share some bit of pointless, silly gossip, or even, maybe, to crack a joke. Surely Will would say, “ It’s almost three — let’s wrap up, and catch happy hour somewhere! ” Clara would blush, while Christine prodded her playfully, “ Yes, it’s your special day — we’ll go somewhere tacky and fun, just for laughs! ” It would have been normal, even for them. After all, they sat next to each other every day, all day, for at least eight hours. Presumably they knew each other very well — better even, most likely, than their respective lovers — yet none of them stirred or said a word. The lives they had chosen dictated that they simply couldn’t.

Clara finally put an end to it. “All right, well that was fun,” she said, with an almost prayerful clap of her hands.

“Yes, we’d better get back to work, hadn’t we?” agreed Will.

“You can go now, Ethan,” Christine allowed. “Leave the trunk.”

I savored the last of the chocolate frosting in my mouth, which I had allowed to dissolve slowly on my tongue for a whole minute.

“Can you — take these away?” Clara added, pointing at the cupcakes. She peered over toward Edmund’s door, to be sure nobody would witness her ungrateful disposal of Jane’s thoughtful gift. “See if anybody else would like them, just please — don’t bring them back,” she said, urging me with a wave of her hand to hurry.

They all turned simultaneously to work, and the whole space seemed to drift foggily back to a state of normalcy.

GEORGE WAS SITTING THERE WHEN I RETURNED TO OUR DESK.

“What are you getting for lunch today?” I asked, as I laid down the cupcakes between us.

“Probably salad,” answered George, not looking up from his article about a reality TV star’s infected breast implant. The most I had been able to gather from our stilted exchanges thus far was that George was from New Jersey, and had a relative who worked in Régine’ s Advertising Department. Ever the optimist, however, I was hoping to conspire with him over the strange scene that had just unfolded.

I said, “I think I’m going to get a salad too,” even though what I really wanted was macaroni and cheese, preferably not from the just-add-water packs awaiting me at home, which my shoestring budget had ruled were my only option for affordable dinner in New York City.

But before I could initiate a friendship over salad, he commanded, not even looking at me, “Hey, Polka Dot, I need you to do me a favor. Can you get me this volume from the archives library?” With an intense scribble of great significance — still not looking at me — he wrote Jan — Mar 1964 .

“Um, sure,” I said. “Now?”

“Yes,” he replied, bored, staring at his screen while stretching his hand out toward me, the sticky floating off one finger. “Now.”

The volume George asked me to retrieve was not exceptional in any way. I couldn’t be sure what he would do with it, but I brought it to him.