R. Hernández - An Innocent Fashion

It was different for me and Madeline, of course. We were the Kübler-Ross couple, carrying out our grief in the five predictable stages. Denial, because Dorian “could’ve never”; then anger, because of course he did; then rationalization; depression; until finally, when we should have felt acceptance, just a deep, black lull, as Madeline relied for a few weeks on half-sputtered words and I finally realized that, if once I had loved him, now I hated Dorian Belgraves.

Dorian had stolen my own dream. He’d gotten the life full of glamour and excitement, at least ten years sooner than I could even hope for, if it ever happened for me at all, because of things he hadn’t even worked for — wealth, beauty, and a disposition whose sweetness could attract no enemies — while I prayed every day for a chance at the smallest bit of it. And sure, if you want to know the truth? If I was him maybe I’d have done the same, just left and become fabulous and forgotten everybody. But the difference was that I knew that, if I was him, if I was the lucky one and he wasn’t, at least I would say sorry . I knew I would turn around and say something , anything, to acknowledge the unfairness of it; that despite the obstruction of my silver spoon in my hand I would make some self-deprecating gesture toward those I had one-upped, to clear the air of that evil illusion that somehow I had earned it all.

Madeline at least had devoted herself to a higher cause. For every hour we spent together, she spent a dozen in solitude, poring over books that might help her change the world somehow. Even if in the end she never made a real change in the world at all — just chaired a high-profile charity, or funneled money into a leftist nonprofit — at the very least she was conscious of something outside of her immediate self. But Dorian never was. He was never conscious of anything except living his enchanted life, and something about knowing that, it just dug into me, as if all along Dorian had been a silver knife that, in my ignorance, I had allowed to pierce me, pushing deeper and deeper, until finally, the only thing to do was just rip it out for good and bandage up the wound with the tattered shreds of my own dignity.

After I realized all that, I was glad I would never see Dorian again.

Dorian is a brat , I told myself. He was too beautiful, too rich; without Dorian it would be one less beautiful person standing between me and the life I believed was my birthright. When I applied for the internship at Régine , the thought thrashed viciously across my mind that maybe I should reach out to Edie, Dorian’s mother. To work at Régine was my truest dream, and I knew that to guarantee my internship there I only needed to ask for a single phone call from the woman whose face had countless times graced its pages. Edie Belgraves would have happily done me the favor, having on several occasions taken a superior liking to me (apparently I was the spitting image of her first high school boyfriend) — yet to gain any privilege with the utterance of Dorian’s family name would be like balancing my life’s dream atop a hollow house of cards. I preferred to build a shack from scratch, using my own incomplete deck, than to ever think of him again.

THE ELEVATOR DOOR SLID OPEN TO THE FOYER OF THE BELGRAVES’ private apartment. They owned the entire floor, and the one above. Despite the newly minted origins of their wealth — hundreds of exorbitantly paying fashion campaigns resulting in six-figure checks to Dorian’s mother, combined with a fortune made in Silicon Valley by his stepfather — their decor spun an illusion of old money, with all the trappings of anyone with blue-blooded relations. We dripped rainwater onto a Persian carpet as Madeline sniffed at one of the potted palms, watering it with her swinging wet hair.

I fished in Dorian’s pockets for the keys while he groaned and pressed his forehead against the toile wallpaper. Captured in a perennial pastoral bliss of fluttering aprons and swinging apple-bearing baskets, the French countrywomen were duplicated every three inches in the same arrangement, their bonneted faces always preferring the peaceful contemplation of produce and pillowing haystacks over us.

“Do you realize where we are?” Madeline whispered wondrously at the houseplant. “Dorian lives here!”

A click, and the door creaked into a grand entrance hall.

I reached for Dorian’s waist, tore him away from murmured small talk with his Gallic neighbors. “We’re home.”

It was quiet in the apartment. Light swirled in from the foyer like cream into black coffee. My eyes adjusted to the phantom before us: Edie, gazing out from a blown-up cover of Vogue . All around glowed ghostly eyes that belonged alternately to Dorian or to his mother. I had never realized how similar they both looked; the same timeless almond-eyed countenance, a beauty rooted in the finest sensitivities of both sexes. It made sense that Dorian and his mother had always been extremely close. Most people are, when they remind one another of themselves.

A majestic staircase loomed ahead, shadows from a curlicued wrought iron railing writhing like ivy over the marble steps. Dorian smacked his lips and seemed to regain a bit of his senses. “Do you think you can climb up yourself?” I asked. I gestured to the stairs and his knees crumpled beneath him.

I took a breath, and held my hands around his waist to steady him. The handrail was polished wood, but it felt like ice.

“Darling. ” called Madeline from behind us, her voice echoing like a penny into an empty wishing well. “Darling, why don’t you show Ethan your piano.?”

Having already seen Dorian’s piano a dozen times before, I rolled my eyes as she caught up to us at the foot of the stairs. With a tug at my arm, she cooed, “Before I met you, I’d never seen such a marvelous piano.” She gazed fawningly at me through crescent-moon lids — evidently, she thought I was Dorian — then let me go, drifting back into the light like a ballerina who had forgotten her steps.

Dorian hung on, wringing his arms around my torso while I began to drag him up after me. His legs twitched in earnest, but his feet always missed the stair — after a few tries he just gave up completely, and it was like carrying a piece of furniture. Halfway up, I took another deep breath and leaned against the rail for relief. His whole body pressed obliviously against me and I wondered, as his heart beat serenely into my ribcage, if this had not been the state of our entire friendship.

“Come on, babe,” I urged, not realizing that I had adopted Dorian’s habitual pet name.

“Are we—?” Dorian lifted his head up from me with a faded sense of recognition — he loosened his grip around my body and started to slip away. He was coming undone, like a loosely tied towel, and— flash! — his head rolled back and his Adam’s apple caught the light with a bladelike glint. The stairs below us wavered. My body tensed as Dorian’s whole weight rested over my arm, and with a strong heave I jerked him back onto me.

With one hand on the banister, I adjusted him across the front of my chest and tightened my grip around his waist. He buried his face into my neck. He snorted. Snored. We swayed for a moment there and I gazed up into the darkness, which like a black hole in a recurring dream felt both terrifying yet familiar. Then he fastened his arms around my body once more — hugged me, really — and we continued upward into it.

The whole time Madeline lingered behind us, a hand holding onto the banister and the other conducting an invisible orchestra as she swayed from side to side with her eyes closed, a concerto trapped inside her head by her wet blonde hair. “Boys. ” she called out musically. “Why don’t we all go on a double date this weekend?”