Michele Forbes - Ghost Moth

“So. . what should we do?” She was surprised at how nervous she felt.

Tom took his time to answer her. “Just stay here, I suppose.”

“Yes, I suppose.” She could feel her blood pumping through her veins. “Or. .” she continued, trying to appear matter-of-fact, “you could walk back up the stairs and wait, or I could walk down the stairs and I could wait and then you could go back up. . ” Her words drifted. Tom moved his face a little closer to hers.

“I’ll walk with you Katherine,” he said gently.

They did not pull away from each other, but stayed in the soft, dark nearness, his face moving even closer. Their breath was mingling in the perfumed heat that now existed between them. Doubt coursed through her veins in hot flux.

“So,” Tom whispered tenderly, and he waited.

Suddenly, the door of the rehearsal room above them opened and the sound of voices spilled down the stairwell toward them. Footsteps could be heard on the stairs. As though guilty of a crime, Katherine reacted by clumsily pushing up into Tom in an attempt to move past him. He made no effort to make the passage any easier for her. On the contrary, as though out of his solicitude, he took some furtive pleasure in witnessing the tight swell of panic he saw rising within her and he placed his leg squarely and firmly on the step above her, widening his stance to curtail her movement. She continued regardless with an inappropriate and edgy determination and attempted to squeeze her body through the tiny gap that remained between Tom and the balustrade, placing her two hands on his chest and pushing herself against him. She made her way up the stairs and didn’t look back.

On the night of the second costume fitting for Carmen, Katherine watched as Tom placed his hands on the costume templates on the table as though picturing their final arrangement and then lifted his head to look at her. He held his gaze on her. Had he scanned her body with his eyes, she would have assumed that he was, in fact, imagining her wearing the finished costume, assessing it, criticizing it. But his eyes rested only on her face. Just as it seemed he was about to say something to her, a junior tailor came into the room, loped straight over to the worktable and began inserting pins into the pieces of fabric.

The young tailor turned to Katherine and asked her to remove her jacket, which he then proceeded to hang on the coatrack by the door. He lifted the costume templates from the table and placed them over her blouse and across her upper body. He pinned two or three of the pieces together, which appeared to form the basque of the costume, and then, unfolding a larger piece of cotton, asked her to step into it and to pull it up to her waist. This was the section that would form the skirt. She slipped off her shoes and stepped into the mock-up, taking care not to loosen the tacking. The young tailor worked away pinning and adjusting the material around her body while Tom watched. Even with her head lowered, Katherine could sense his eyes burning into her.

When the mock-up costume had been fitted, albeit loosely, the young tailor stepped back to wait for the assessment from his senior.

A moment or two passed before Tom spoke. “Now, the sleeves, Mr. Agnew. They mustn’t be too tight, too restricting, so make sure that when they’re attached that you leave room without losing the line.” Tom’s voice was animated as he stepped toward her. “The bodice needs reshaping just there for the skirt to flare out more at this point.” Here, Tom used his hands to indicate to Mr. Agnew exactly how and where the material should be gathered and contoured at Katherine’s waist. Then Tom knelt down at Katherine’s feet to examine the length of the skirt. “Bring the hem of the skirt to mid-calf. We can get a proper sense of that later when we have the shoes, and”—he stood up again—“now the overskirt — the overskirt should fall no lower than here.” Again he indicated what he wanted to Mr. Agnew by placing his hands on the cotton material and pulling it close against Katherine’s legs. Tom’s hands brushed against her stockings and this time stayed awhile. Katherine felt a tender chill.

Mr. Agnew nodded silently.

Tom continued. “I want the buttons down the center and the trim around the hips to converge lower than where you have indicated here. The overskirt is not to conceal the buttons or the trim, but be brought underneath them, but still worked high at the back. See, see here.”

Tom stretched over to the worktable, brushing back some layers of material, and thumped an urgent finger on the costume designs, which were revealed underneath. “See what I mean? I want the buttons echoed on the cuffs and the coat — do you have the rough cut of the coat?”

“Not yet, Mr. McKinley,” muttered Mr. Agnew.

“Why not?” asked Tom a little impatiently.

“I’ve work to do!” Mr. Agnew replied, lifting his head to give his senior a hard stare. The door clicked open and in walked the young woman Katherine had seen sitting on the ledgers in the outer room. The young woman still wore her blouse with the ivy pattern on it. She held a cup of tea precariously in her hand, as though she were carrying something unpleasant that had to be disposed of.

“Tea for the lady,” she said severely, hardly seeming to move a muscle on her face at all.

“Just put it there.” Tom pointed to the table by the window, “away from the rolls of fabric.” The young woman put the tea down and then left the room.

Katherine cast her eyes over to Tom, who was now writing something in his black notebook. She felt excited by everything about him. The strong angle of his jaw. The broadness of his back and shoulders. The fairness of his skin, his hair, the soft expression in his eyes when he smiled. The large expanse of his palms when he touched her. The coarse strands of chest hair, which were now sticking out over the top of his shirt where he had pulled his tie loose a little and which she probably should not be seeing. Everything about him.

Tom indicated to Mr. Agnew to come over to the worktable and continued to issue instructions to him.

“The coat needs to fall lower than the dress, of course—”

“I’m busy, Mr. McKinley. I’ll see what I can manage,” Mr. Agnew replied sharply, interrupting him.

However, Tom kept talking, as though Mr. Agnew had said nothing. “—have a mock-up of the coat for the next fitting and follow the designs exactly as I have laid out here. Understand?”

With that, Tom left Mr. Agnew reluctantly studying the designs at the table and walked toward Katherine. As she looked up at him, he kissed her full on the mouth and then, pulling away from her, he whispered to her quickly, “Meet me at Corn Market on the corner of Arthur Street at seven.”

Then he turned back to Mr. Agnew and said, “And help Miss Fallon out of the mock-up. We don’t want her to stab herself on the pins — we’ll leave that to Don José in the last act!”

Tom emerged from the crowd on Arthur Street precisely at seven, and Katherine felt herself shrink at the sight of him, as though she was pure heart and nothing else, her body a pulse.

“Am I late? I walked the town for a while and I lost track of time,” he said.

“No you’re not late at all. You walked the town?” Her voice was light, surprised. “How lovely.”

He smiled.

It tilted her world.

“And what would you say to a cup of tea?” he said.

The noise of the tearooms at the Café Royal appeared to exist independently of its makers. It hung like a weighty halo of sound. Like a clamorous, constant din no matter how the arrangement of people changed beneath it. Even had the tearooms emptied in a single rush, it felt as though the gabble would continue unabated — a vaporous, omnipresent tearoom music.