R. Hernández - An Innocent Fashion

He shrugged. “I wasn’t doing anything else back here except partying, and I was getting tired of making art, so I thought I could try it out, you know, see if I like it.”

I gulped. Of course to Dorian my life’s ambition would be merely an opportunity to escape boredom.

“I knew you’d be here too, so — now we can be together! Isn’t that great!”

I was silent, engulfed by the vastness of my own stupidity — to have blithely thought that because I’d sorted a pile of résumés, and disqualified his, that my actions had any bearing on real life at all.

“Dorian, is that you?” came a familiar voice. “Always so handsome!”

Dorian turned sheepishly to Jane—“I didn’t know what to wear”—and the kindest thought I could offer about his defense was that at least he had the sense to feel embarrassed. In jeans and a white tee, a particularly undistinguished variation of his usual ensemble, he was more appropriately dressed to watch television on the couch while stirring a bowl of cereal than to start a new job, let alone one at the most prestigious fashion magazine in New York City.

“You look wonderful,” Jane said, and I fumed at the unfairness of it — my colorful suits had constituted a violation against Régine ’s unwritten rules, but any garment touching Dorian’s imperial skin was exempt. They embraced and he kissed her cheeks, clasping her influential hands in his.

“I have to let you know — I’ve never worked in an office before.”

“Oh, there’s nothing to it,” she said. “An office is just a place.”

Oh, was it? “But isn’t it a ‘corporation’?” I wanted to interject, just as Clara had said to me, “where ‘we occupy specific roles, with specific ways that we must speak, act, and dress’?”

Jane rubbed the top of his hand like she was bestowing a benediction on him. “Don’t worry. You belong here.”

All I wanted was for someone to say the same words to me—“ You belong here, Ethan ”—and yet there was Dorian, less than five minutes at Régine and already crowned with the wreath of belonging, an honor for which I had been prepared to work a lifetime.

Jane looked over and smiled at me. “Dorian has told me all about your close friendship. Aren’t you glad he’s here?”

With my neck trapped in that tight noose, I could barely nod.

“You two are lucky,” she said, ushering me closer with a flick of one hand. I had no choice but to let myself be drawn toward them as she said, “Take it from me. A good friendship doesn’t come all the time.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but no words came out.

“Dorian used to talk about you all the time in St. Tropez — it was you and, what’s her name? Margaret?”

“Madeline,” I said quietly.

Jane nodded and, smiling, said, “Come here,” before pulling Dorian by the hand into her office. “We must catch up, I haven’t seen you since Cannes.” A moment later her door was closed, their laughter emanating from beyond it in a vivid stream.

I collapsed into my chair and closed my eyes. “ Make him go away, make him go away ,” I whispered to myself, “ please, make my best friend go away ,” I groaned. The question was never “ How did Dorian get here? ” but rather, “ Why didn’t he get here sooner?” With his famous mother — he should have just written her name on a sheet of notebook paper and called it his “résumé”—it was a wonder he hadn’t started at Régine twenty years ago, crawling around the fashion closet on his hands and knees, teething on Yves Saint Laurent heels.

I peeked now through the glass door at Dorian. Our friendship had been one of my greatest seeds of joy, which I had nurtured into a flower, and eventually displayed with pride on my lapel. Surely now he would charm Edmund, and any favoritism I had cultivated would be choked by Dorian’s weed-like presence. I wrung my hands and was looking down when a corner of paper, poking out from underneath my mouse pad, caught my eye. I pulled it out. It was a piece of paper folded in half, with my name written on the outside in permanent marker, in George’s unmistakable block letters. I peeled it open.

BE RÉGINE

Dorian swept out of Jane’s office. I hid George’s note in my pocket when I felt his arms around my neck and his head swooping next to mine. He smiled. “You’re so hard to get ahold of now!”

“Late work hours,” I said dryly, thumbing the corner of the paper in my pocket. The truth was, after my depression had set in, I had been spending all of my free time in bed.

“Well, no fear — I’m here now!” He unhooked himself from me and said, “Is this my chair?” even though obviously it was. With a comfortable sigh, he sat down and started rearranging the stapler, and the mug full of ballpoint pens.

“You know,” I burst, with all the conviction I could muster, “things aren’t going to be like they were before.”

He selected a blue pen from the mug and tested it out on a sticky note, as if he had never before seen office supplies in his life. “No kidding,” he agreed emphatically as he scribbled Dorian —a cavalier swish. With a roguish smile, he declared, “Things are going to be so much better now!” My mouth opened a little in shock as he leaned toward me. “You know what this means now that I’m here? We’ll leave together every day, and go to all the best parties!”

His sheer brainlessness astounded me. To think that Régine would be all fun, and that after a day here he’d have enough energy left to party.

Sabrina entered then in her typical fashion — closet door whooshing, just a rush of black — and I never thought I would be so glad to anticipate her yell of, “ Boys! ” and her delegation of the day’s intense workload. This moment would be Dorian’s rude awakening. Maybe now Sabrina and I could even be friends. She would surely hate Dorian too once she saw the undeserved attention he commanded.

She stopped halfway to her desk. With a smile, she clasped her hands demurely in front of her — no trace of the smoldering girl whose most fervent ambition it was to corroborate with every word the superiority of her status — and said, “You’re lucky, Dorian. It’s a slow day at the office today.” She bowed her head, like she was a maid in his service. “Ethan can answer any questions you have, but if you need anything, I’m over here,” she offered, pointing to her desk with an inviting finger.

I flinched at the refreshing lack of volume in her voice, the alien, almost soothing quality of it — remembering that, of course, Sabrina and Dorian were cut from the same cloth.

The latest issue had wrapped last week, so there was nothing urgent to be done: no garments streaming in for him to inventory, no trunks leaving tomorrow for him to pack. The fashion editors were still developing their ideas for the next issue, and lots of people were on vacation. I looked desperately around for a task to delegate, anything to establish Dorian’s inferiority.

“Let’s organize this wall of hosiery,” I said, even though I had organized it myself the week prior. “Can you make sure all the packages are in the right crates?”

In an hour, when he was done with that, I said, “Let’s dust all the jewelry cases — they look terrible.”

It went on like this all morning. Dorian didn’t seem to think I was bullying him, but then again, I wasn’t as good at it as George had been. Even when I told Dorian to do something, I sort of asked him, theoretically giving him the option to say no. “Can you take inventory of these scarves?” and “These gloves?” and “These hats?”—ending each of these feeble orders with a word so pathetic I wanted to bang my head against the desk. “ Please ?”