R. Hernández - An Innocent Fashion

“Well, like I said, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this. I’ve told you before that I have the utmost respect for your personal style, and I still think you have a hopeful future. It’s going to be tough finding a job in magazines, but maybe, you know, you’ll find a great position in PR, and of course, I’d personally be happy to write you any recommendations you need.”

“PR.?” I trailed off. “Wait, what are you talking about?”

“Or anything you’d like, I don’t know. People who leave Régine find jobs in PR without much trouble, and I mean, you went to Yale, so. ”

I closed my eyes and shook my head. “I — don’t — understand. Aren’t you hiring me to be Edmund’s new assistant? I thought that’s what you just said? That there’ll be no more unpaid interns and he needs an assistant — a real one, like on the masthead. with a salary,” I croaked.

“Well, yes, it’s a paid position, with a salary, and line on the masthead, but. I’m sorry, Ethan, really, but it’s just that we’re. ” Clara paused, then started over. “ Régine is hiring Sabrina to be Edmund’s new assistant.”

My jaw dropped. “Wait, what?” I could think of nothing worse than Sabrina profiting from a misfortune with my name on it. “But Sabrina is already an assistant. What will happen to. ” I was shaking — horrified — couldn’t go on.

“There will be two — Edmund will have an assistant, and Jane will have her own as well. Jane has thought for some time now that Sabrina’s personality does not fit her editorial vision. She is looking for somebody more creative, with a background in art.”

I let this settle over me, as relieved as if I was standing in a parched field and it had started to rain.

Maybe I was supposed to end up with Jane , not Edmund! As Jane’s assistant, I would work every day with someone who shared my appreciation for beauty, true beauty — my heart’s purpose and the real reason for my desire to work at Régine .

“Can I apply to be Jane’s assistant?” I almost whispered. “Who can I talk to?” I thought of how Jane had described me last night: “ Somebody with life in them! ” I was perfect for her. We were perfect for each other. This journey couldn’t end here. It wouldn’t end here.

Clara took a deep breath.

Even half-blind, I could tell something was wrong. She started fiddling uncomfortably with her skirt, and she must have felt a twinge of guilt, or pity, or something — because she couldn’t look me in the eye. Instead her eyes focused on the door, while my own clung to her lips. I saw a mirage of hope shimmer over them, then—

“I’m afraid that position is already taken.” She swallowed. “ Régine is hiring Dorian to be Jane’s new assistant.”

She reached forward and placed her hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Ethan,” she said. Then with a helpless shrug, she stood up, and left me there alone.

TOMORROW MARKED THE START OF JUNIOR YEAR. MADELINE and Dorian were sprawled on the sagging Victorian sofa in our living room while I sat on the floor — all of us exchanging stories from our summer vacations apart, waiting for the ecstasy to take effect.

It was a sunny summer day — one of those by which we would measure all other summer days: blood flowing with sweat through our veins as we gazed at each other through heavy-lidded eyes, intoxicated by ourselves.

Dorian hung his arm around my neck. As in every place where our limbs crossed — Madeline’s hand on my shoulder, Dorian’s leg on her knees — a pool of slick sweat was beginning to drip between us. Moist, mismatched pillows moaned beneath our weight, while a futile breeze blew through the open bay window. A glass saucer glistened beside my feet, having moments earlier passed between our sweating fingers. We had all reached in — the pills were robin’s egg blue — and swallowed together on a count of “One — two — three — forever young.”

I had only swallowed one tab, even though we’d each bought two. I always planned to “hold on” to a second pill, to take when the first was wearing off. I also always changed my mind.

No matter how many times I’d done ecstasy, I always worried that the effects just wouldn’t hit me. That maybe this time, this batch — fifteen dollars a pill, and “explosive,” according to Ted Hamilton, who had been selling to us from his dorm since freshman year — would have the same effect as a daily multivitamin. I was terrified that, like Blake and his lager-blooded Pi Phi brothers, who required entire kegs to feel merely “buzzed,” I would one day have taken too many drugs, and would never be able to get high again — the precursor to the more serious fear I would eventually feel at Régine , that I’d reached the highest level of joy that was permitted in a single life, and God, or the President, or whoever kept track of these things, would say to me, “ Now, now, you’ve had enough ” and I would never feel happy again.

Now I slipped the second pill in the oyster-like crevice between my gum and my bottom lip where, thanks to my prestigious education, I knew it would dissolve into my bloodstream fast. Madeline was telling us about her summer vacation in Nice. I gazed beyond her at a poster of Frida Kahlo on the far wall, crowded by eighteenth-century botanical drawings of flowers. Names like Trillium grandiflorum curled all around her braided head in the heat.

“. and I guess I just believed him. ” Madeline was saying. “Anyway, it turned out fine, because I’d never seen a green motorcycle before, and. ” She blinked, forgetting what else. “Will you give me a back massage?” she asked me.

The sun in her blue eyes, she unstuck herself from the couch to join me on the floor. I edged backward to make room for her, while a drop of sweat fell from the tip of her nose. She sat between my legs; hung her head forward, sweeping her dampened gold hair to one side, and I lowered my hands upon her spine.

Above us, Dorian strummed a guitar, his latest hobby. He began to sing. I whistled through parched lips, and Madeline patted her own knee to the lumbering beat.

Rock me mamma like the wind and the rain,

Rock me mamma like a southbound train.

One minute I was massaging Madeline through a sweat-soaked silk blouse, and the next my fingers were pressed against her milky skin, the blouse strewn inexplicably to the side. Her lace bra was loose around her midsection, straps hanging to the side of her body. She cupped her hands over her breasts as I rubbed my thumbs in circles over her skin, smoothing away the imprint of her bra strap. She had a few freckles on her shoulder, stars in a white sky.

“Can I massage your face?” I asked.

She wordlessly rolled her golden head back over my shoulder. With her eyes closed to the ceiling, she relaxed her hands over her breasts and the sun fell through her slackened fingers.

I pressed my thumbs, lubricated by her perfume-like sweat, over her brow bone, and became aware of her skull beneath my fingers — her eye sockets and sloping cheekbones, the hinge where her mouth opened and closed. I contemplated which was more extraordinary: that strange, complex bone, or her skin, which draped perfectly over it like a veil.

“How magnificent you are,” I said, and rubbed my cheek against hers.

A laugh escaped her lips as she reached back with one hand and touched my head, her fingers weaving in and out through my hair.

I heard a hollow smack of saliva as Madeline’s deep breath swelled in my ear: “I think — it’s happening, darling.”