R. Hernández - An Innocent Fashion

The next time I looked around, a swimming pool had been unveiled in the middle of the room, while a burlesque queen was dancing on an adjacent platform. In a black bustier and fishnet stockings, she resembled a French courtesan at a funeral, her white-blonde hair held up in a towering bouffant by a spiderweb of ornate black pins. Slowly unfastening her corset, she let it slide to her feet, and stalked back and forth in her high heels like a black-cat shadow on Halloween, before, suddenly — she leaped over the pool.

Catching hold of an upholstered leather swing I hadn’t seen, she went swooshing through the air like a nude pendulum, heels gleaming behind her. Her white fingers rippling over the water, she perfumed the air with the scent of chlorine; then swinging back and forth, back and forth, she began to splash.

“Come on! Come on!” Dorian’s voice rushed past me, as if I was zooming by on a roller coaster. The whole room was like that — one minute loud, as the roller coaster plummeted toward the populated ground, then whoosh! I went shooting into the silent sky and it all died away.

I saw Dorian jam my suit jacket between the couch and the window—“Nobody will take it,” he said, even though I had scarcely felt him undress me to begin with. He began to unbutton my shirt — fast, like we were running out of time. I let my head drop back and my jaw fall slack. A laugh escaped my throat. Dorian wrestled the shirt away, and the coolness of the air-conditioned room fell upon my chest. I felt a yank around my sleeves — evidently the buttons on my sleeves had stumped him — then another set of fingers was pressing down my bottom lip.

“Open up,” Kaija cooed into my ear, nudging the cold edge of a glass against my teeth. Champagne filled my mouth — I choked a little, laughing blindly, then let the bubbles spill down my throat while Dorian gave one last tug and stumbled away with my shirt. When I lifted my head, he had tied it around his head like a turban—“Look, Plum, I look like you.”

Bubbles trickled like sweet acid rain down the corners of my smiling mouth, dripping down my neck, filling my clavicle like an overflowing stream.

Dorian giggled into my face. “Are you happy?” he asked. He wrapped his arm around my neck and pressed our foreheads together, and I remembered thinking the first time I’d seen him after his return from Paris — across the nightclub, with a martini against my lips — that Dorian Belgraves was so far. that after he had left, he would always be so far .

Now he was all I could see. Everything about him was as I had remembered it: his lips, his strong hands, that incredible feeling of being somehow connected to him.

By this point, his shirt was off too. He glistened with champagne, froth running down the middle of his chest. We were both stripped down to our boxer briefs, and for the briefest second I wondered where my pants were, and my shoes, and how any of them had gone away. Dorian pulled me to the pool’s edge. We sat with our legs in the water for a minute, maybe ten. The temperature was cool: I was reminded of bygone summers, licking popsicles and standing in front of the open refrigerator door. Then I was inside. We were inside.

It was only a few of us in the beginning — me and Dorian and Kaija, while Plum complained about having nowhere dry enough to put her expensive clothes. More heads popped up around us like grapes. In the dark the sofa adjacent to the pool began to look like a cutting board, with discarded clothes piling up like fruit rinds — and in no time the pool was brimming with everyone from the pink-haired stylist to Plum, who had given up resisting and was gliding around in her cornucopian headpiece and a waterlogged white lace slip.

The topless burlesque dancer drifted with nymphean serenity in front of me. Behind her, a shout was heard from the sofa, as a pair of arms flailed over the water: the pool’s first casualty. He teetered — the surface of the pool surged as a swarm of bodies escaped from underneath his lunging shadow — then splash! the air sparkled, and a rain-like pitter-patter descended over the crowd. Too late, the dancer shielded her painted face with a forearm. An upward surge of bubbles at the site of the collision produced a drenched head and a shout about “my fucking Gucci shirt, man!” Not a minute later, another shout rang out, and the perilous pile of clothes on the sofa tumbled inevitably into the water. The expensive mass bobbed on the surface, then began to sink as the garments unstuck amid the pressure of the pulsating jets.

A stranger’s face appeared before me. Too much champagne, combined with the mystery of their long, clinging hair, made their gender unclear: he or she came nearer, just two glassy eyes and a pair of searching lips. Bodies all around — the pool was too popular. In all the commotion, I had tried to keep my glasses dry, but now pressed them against my face and escaped with a deep breath in the only direction I could think of: downward.

Water lopped over my head. My hair floated. Sudden quiet, except for bubbles pouring apocalyptically out of holes in the wall. All around I saw stammering feet and clothing grazing like catfish along the murky bottom.

When I came back up for air I realized I was still holding my champagne flute. I pushed my hair out of my face and took a breath, gazing through the empty glass. I guided it bobbing along the surface, like a crystal buoy, then pulled it under by the stem; filled it with water; and dumped it out again.

It was a game Dorian might have liked too.

Dorian . Expecting to find him right behind me, I swirled around, only to find people I didn’t know at all. I tried to remember when I’d last seen him, but the only memory I had was of the male model with the square face, and this made me sad. I began phasing in and out of consciousness. The contents of my stomach bucked in the water. I felt like throwing up. The lights in the pool had started flashing now, and every time they came on I found myself peering up at a new face, each one dripping and cool and different from the last. As I drifted it was like a slideshow — the faces flashing one after the other, just darkness BEAUTIFUL FACE darkness BEAUTIFUL FACE darkness BEAUTIFUL FACE darkness BEAUTIFUL FACE darkness.

All the voices faded in and out, like before. Behind my ear I heard. just drink more, it’ll make the pain go away. then a creak! as the roller coaster of my own wavering cognition took off again, and I was up and down, and up and down again — soaring through the sky, and swooping down past all the never-ending voices. there are two kinds of girls, those that know they’re fucked and. whoooshhhhhhhhh silence in the sky, just birds chirping and. so I look over and he’s practically face-raping her, with his . clouds drifting coolly by, while the sun beams, and the. best part about it is I can talk shit to her, about her, at her . air is so perfect and still, and the people below look like. they’ve been chasing their liquor with wine, it’s disgusting, like . little ants, tittering over a peaceful hill, and. won’t you go with me to the bathroom.?

The mention of the bathroom jolted me. I’d had a lot to drink.

I emerged from the water into a haze of bodies and manufactured fog — shivering, bumping into shadows.

Sticky floor. My shoes — where are my shoes? Actually, where are my— wow . Naked. I’m basically naked and everyone can see. Calm down, naked is all right — you’re young and reckless and bohemian, remember? Yes, but — is that broken glass? No, just ice. Is that Marc Jacobs? Is that Sofia Coppola? Is that George? I wonder what George is doing now. I hope George hates his life. I hate George. I shouldn’t hate anyone, but I do — I hate him, I hate him, I — definitely broken glass. That’s what I get for hating George. I don’t hate George, I don’t hate George — what am I doing right now? Dorian. Where is Dorian? I like Dorian. I love Dorian. Of course I love Dorian. And he loves me too, except he’s probably with that model, that cardboard-box model. I’m going to find Dorian. I’m going to find him and — Bathroom. Excuse me, where’s the bathroom? Hey—!