R. Hernández - An Innocent Fashion

“Do you get to see a lot of women?” Bert asked me a second time.

“No.”

“You mean you’ve never worked with Claudia Schiffer?” He turned a little to Harvey. “You know, I asked Claudia Schiffer on a date one time.”

“You ain’t serious,” Harvey scoffed. He warned me, “Don’t listen to Bert. He’s just old.”

“I swear,” Bert insisted. “I used to be a busboy at an Italian restaurant — was wipin’ up some minestrone soup when she came in. She was with another lady, but I wasn’t interested in her. Went right up to Claudia and gave her my phone number on the back of somebody’s receipt.”

“What you think Claudia Schiffer gonna do with you?” Harvey laughed.

“I was real good-looking then, Harvey! Didn’t have a busted leg. I said to Claudia Schiffer, ‘ Now ma’am, I don’t mean to intrude on your dinner, but I gotta tell you, you even prettier in real life than in the magazines. ’ She took my number and said ‘ Thank you ’ like a real lady, didn’t make me feel bad or nothin’. Never called, though. She was like my fish that swum away. Ever heard that?” he asked me. “Or maybe it’s the one that goes, you feed a fish once, you feed him just once, but you feed a fish twice—”

“I–I’m sorry,” I said, getting serious, “but I really, really need this package, like— now .”

Bert squinted, like he wasn’t certain what package I was referring to.

“Look,” I said, leaning forward, “I’m not technically allowed to tell you this, but you seem like nice guys, so. this package I need—” I pointed at the number on my sticky note “—it’s actually for Claudia Schiffer .”

Bert’s and Harvey’s eyes widened.

“You kiddin’!” Bert said.

“Nope, I’m not, and she really needs it this second, so—”

Bert got to clicking — I could tell he was trying very hard to concentrate — and the next minute he burst, “One thirty-four!”

“One thirty-four?” asked Harvey.

“Claudia’s package is in truck one thirty-four! Now what you waiting for? Take the feller out back!”

There must have been a hundred trucks in the lot. Harvey murmured to himself as he scoured the lot for the right one. “Two fiddy-four. that ain’t it. Two fiddy-three. that ain’t it. Two fiddy-two. that ain’t it. we must be in the two-hundreds!” he exclaimed. “Follow me! I know where your truck is!” I followed him through the maze — he was sort of hobbling — and he began once more, “One thirty-nine. that ain’t it. One thirty-eight. that ain’t it. ” until at last, “Here it is!” he shouted, with a paralyzed finger in the air, and I breathed an incredible sigh of relief. “Help me up, will ya?”

I held out my hand so he could scramble onto the back, and he initiated a wrestling match with a large red lever. When after a struggle, which I could tell was intense from the bead of Harvey’s sweat that spattered onto my face, it appeared he had emerged victorious, Harvey began to spool up the steel door, then— SLAM! — an ungodly crash sent me reeling backward against the hood of another truck.

“ HOLY MOTHER OF JESUS DID YOU SEE THAT? ” yowled Harvey. “That thing almost sliced my fingers clean off!”

“Wait, what?” I cried.

“Looks like the spring in this truck just gave up! Door weighs about a hundred pounds, and without the spring, it just slams shut!”

Bert had joined us limping at our side — poor, confused Bert, who had no hope of understanding my predicament — and, like the spring of their van that had just inexplicably burst, I just. burst.

“ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND THAT MY FUTURE DEPENDS ON THIS PACKAGE? IF YOU THINK I’M GOING TO END UP LIKE YOU, CONTENT WITH MEETING CLAUDIA SCHIFFER AT A RESTAURANT WHILE I CLEAN UP OTHER PEOPLE’S SLOP, THEN YOU ARE FUCKING CRAZY!”

Five minutes later, I was holding a package from Chanel on my lap, and I was in a taxi en route to Régine .

Madeline answered the phone just as I was preparing to give up. “Darling!” she exclaimed.

The sounds of a fine restaurant filled my ear: A clatter of dishes and glasses and voices, over the playing of a string quartet.

“I was wondering when you’d finally call me back. Dorian and I are always trying to invite you places, but you never—” She let out a little yelp of surprise, then humming to a companion, marveled, “Mmm, that’s delicious.”

“Madeline, listen to me, I—”

“I’m sorry, darling,” she chewed. “Is everything okay?”

“No,” I declared, “Everything is not okay.” I lay tangled up in bedsheets with my head upside down off the mattress, a wounded victim in a Goya etching. “I’m going crazy— Régine , New York, everything is just driving me crazy.” I hastily sat up in bed and locked my arms around my knees. Under its four-foot ceiling, my room felt like a solitary confinement cell as I rocked back and forth, demented. Was this where I was living now? Where was I? What was I doing here?

She held the phone away from her ear and asked her waiter for a lemon wedge. “Darling, can I call you back? They just brought out the entrées and—”

“Madeline, I’m not kidding — if you don’t come hold me right now, I swear I’m going to die.”

“Why are you being so dramaaaatic ?”

“I’m not being dramatic! I’m serious. I need help,” I whimpered, at the precipice of tears.

She made a drowned-out remark to her companion. I heard the scrape of a chair against the floor. Conversations droned rising and falling like mixed radio signals as she traveled through the room, then—“Okay,” she said at last, and she must have withdrawn to the bathroom, because a door shut and — silence.

I thought I recognized the echo of a lipstick tube popping open. “Why don’t you meditate?” Madeline suggested. “That used to always help you.”

“I can’t concentrate.”

“Just close your eyes, I promise.”

I covered my eyes with my hand, and squeezing hard, counted, “One. two. ”

“That’s better,” Madeline said, gently smacking her lips together. “Just take a deep breath. ”

Three. Four.

“. picture us luxuriating in the grass, laughing and drinking wine. ”

Five. Six.

“. passing around oysters and caviar, while the sun shines and violins play all around. ”

Seven. Eight.

“. just breathe, and imagine it all in your head—”

“I don’t want it to be in my head!” I blurted. “Why can’t things be real?!”

“Ethan, relax!”

“Really though — what do I have to do to make it real?”

“Why don’t you just—”

“I caaaaannn’ttttt. ”

“Well there’s no use comforting you when you’re like this. Remember what you used to always say — the world’s just a reflection of our minds, and you can accomplish anything if—”

“I don’t believe in that anymore,” I wailed at my cheerfully striped sheets.

“Oh, for God’s sake, darling, we haven’t even been out of college for three months yet.”

Madeline’s invocation of the pet-like “darling” was suddenly as irritating to me as Dorian’s “babe”: a frivolous, hollow word, full of indiscriminating intimacy.

“Of course you’d say that. You don’t have to work for anything!”

I heard a sharp gasp, and the whip of her lipstick into the bag. “Not that you’d know,” she muttered bitterly through clenched teeth, “but I have been working very hard on my auditions.”

“You don’t even care about acting.”