R. Hernández - An Innocent Fashion

Still, this was hardly reason enough for Madeline to renege on her oft-articulated dislike of Dorian — until one weekend in November I was struck with the flu, and unable to join her for the opening of a new exhibit at the Metropolitan.

“For the love of God, just take Dorian,” I’d implored, blowing my nose. “It’ll give you a chance to get to know him, and I promise,” I lied, “if you don’t like him, I’ll never bring it up again.”

We quibbled for twenty minutes, and in the end they went together, and what came next was as predictable as a numerical sequence. According to Madeline’s breathless retelling, they talked about Marxism, the origin of consciousness, Ernest Hemingway, North African tribal art, The Myth of Sisyphus ; blithely wandered eight times around the Egyptian gallery, twelve times around the statue of Aphrodite in the Greek gallery, and fourteen times through the arch with the banner that read “Incan Treasures,” leading to the reception party. Between them they had nine glasses of champagne and seven pastries, the start of a habit. It was Dorian who always pointed to the open bar, and Madeline who always suggested “a nibble” at the dessert table — although she only ever took a single bite, and deferred the rest to Dorian’s lips.

By the fourth pastry — a bite-size cheesecake, topped with powdered sugar and an orange twist — the exchange from Madeline’s fingers to Dorian’s lips involved a lick of her fingers. After the first incidence of this guileless indiscretion, Dorian apologized (“Too eager,” he ambiguously stated, through a mouth full of cream and graham cracker crust) while Madeline wiped her hand with halfhearted embarrassment on her cocktail napkin. After the second time, Dorian just stared at her as he licked his tongue deliberately over her French manicured nails, holding her by the waist, while Madeline let her fingers linger there and finally tucked them into the hair on his nape.

Three hours of conversation and pastry-facilitated flirtation led them to the museum steps, where they stood face-to-face in the center under a banner that flapped COMING SOON with a painting by Gauguin. Enveloping her in his arms on the top step, he kissed her — and it was as though their lips had tied a knot between the three of us.

Iwas counting garment bags in my sleep like sheep when Madeline prodded me awake. “Ethan?”

The last garment bag slumped lumpily over a white picket fence into the fashion closet as I yawned and rubbed my eyes. The lights were on in the club. Dorian’s head was on my shoulder, and except for a few lingering clusters, all the people had cleared out. A teenage busboy was leaning over the table, collecting watered-down glasses.

“I have to go.” I stirred. “I have Régine tomorrow.” I pushed off Dorian with a priggish finger and slid away from him and Madeline on the couch.

“You can’t just leave us,” she said. “What about Dorian?”

At the invocation of his name, Dorian groaned, “I can’t seeee straight any- mooore . ”

“What about him? He’s fine,” I assured Madeline. Dorian slumped over. I propped up his head like a mortician presenting a corpse, and said, “See?”

She whimpered and tried to shake him, as he collapsed once more with a snore, his breath reeking of gin and tonic.

“For the love of God!” My nostrils flared at their presumptuousness — that despite Dorian’s yearlong estrangement, it should now be me saddled with the burden of his drunk body. “Where are all your model friends to help you?” I scowled, but the famous faces were all gone, like pages in a magazine that had been torn out. “All right, Madeline, you grab him on that side.”

Madeline just sat there limp, like a bouquet of wilted flowers, and blinked. “Don’t look at me—” hiccup! “—like that. I’m going to play—” hiccup! “—the Queen of Scots.”

With a scowl, and a flash of self-hatred — Why? Why was I doing this? — I tossed Dorian’s lazy arm around my neck and excavated him, half-dangling, out of his luxurious burrow. His fingers moved graspingly over the front of my shirt as he moaned again and dragged his feet against the wooden floor. I held him by the waist and guided him past the sweating ice bucket of empty Belvedere bottles.

“Hey, what’s the rush?” Madeline whined. “Don’t you—” hiccup! “—think we should say bye at least?”

We passed two reed-thin girls that had lingered behind. “Happy birthday, Dorian,” they said. One of them tipped over like a Chinese bamboo fountain to kiss him on the forehead, and he smiled with the blithe appreciation of a baby being put to sleep.

We stumbled outside into pouring rain. Water rushed down the cobblestone streets in rivulets, and as the ground churned, I was reminded of something I had heard once about the Meatpacking District — that a hundred years ago, when all the butchers had their shops there, the streets used to puddle with blood.

“Madeline, get that cab!”

Teetering just below the nightclub awning, she pressed her hand against the brick wall and swayed there with her face to the ground.

“Hey,” I prodded at her, “can you—”

The cab’s lights whirred right past us while Madeline moved away from me a little, staring at her feet.

“Why are you so useless?” I groaned. I ventured out into the street and squinted through the droves. One arm clutching Dorian and the other outstretched for a cab, I was punished for my resentment by a merciless onslaught of wet lashes.

A yellow cab pulled mercifully up to us. I pushed Dorian inside, and tumbled closely behind. “Come on,” I shouted to Madeline, holding the door open.

She clopped blindly toward us, eyes closed as the rainfall draped her like a veil. Her billowy sleeves fused like papier-mâché to her outstretched arms, and when her hands collided with the side of the cab, she yelped in surprise. She tilted her head back like she was about to sneeze, then suddenly keeled forward, vomiting all over the car door.

“Dear God, Madeline, we’re not at Yale anymore!” I yanked her inside the cab and the driver turned to us.

“She gonna puke in here?” he barked.

“No, she’s not,” I said, and pulled at her arm, which was dangling in the rain.

“I don’t wanner in here if she’s gonna puke. She could puke in some other cab.”

“I told you , she’s not going to vomit in your cab.” I finished yanking her errant limbs into the cab before he could protest, and slammed the door. The sound of the rain subdued, and I recited Dorian’s address by heart.

Madeline’s sopping head started to tailspin toward me. “No,” I instructed, as though she was a misbehaving dog, and nudged her upright with a callous jerk of my shoulder. Her hair was plastered to her face with an ambiguous blend of vomit and rain, blonde strands lining the contours of her cheekbones.

She blubbered, and I wiped off her cheeks like a child’s with the back of my sleeve. The first time we had gotten drunk together was at a Pi Beta Phi party, where we had our introduction to “jungle juice.” “ It’s just like Kool-Aid ,” she had marveled, having been denied all “sugary drinks” in her youth by her mother, before gulping it down in droves. Back then, it had been funny; now I was tempted to redirect the driver to my own apartment and leave both her and Dorian stranded in the cab when we arrived.

The driver kept giving me sidelong glares while the others dozed away. Despite constant propping, they seemed determined to undermine me: Dorian’s head ended up on one shoulder, and Madeline’s on the other. We arrived twenty minutes later, and I prodded them awake. “Wake up. It’s twenty dollars.”