thirty-seven

MAY 4

Esther and I headed down the hallway to the stage door to wait with the others. I made sure I was angled so I didn’t have to make eye contact with Tesla.

The models went out, one at a time, and with each, some of my numbness washed away. The outfits were incredible. To think that people, especially these people, had invented and sewn these clothes. To think that I ever thought there was anything lightweight or easy or unimportant about making anything, much less actual clothes for actual living people to wear.

When it was Esther’s turn, I bent down so we were eye level.

“You are going to be so awesome.”

In return she gave me a pale smile.

“You too,” she said.

And then she was gone into the dark circus music of Wax Tailor’s “Heart Stop” from Dusty Rainbow from the Dark. I picked the song partly because Esther reminds me of the girl in the cover art, and because Wax Tailor is a French band, and fashion people have big love for things that are French. The song was exactly strange enough for Esther, and I forgot everything for the few minutes she was out there. It was bliss.

She came back, rolling with the applause.

Her face was lit up like there was a star pulsing behind her head, and I gave her a hug. I caught a glimpse of another model heading out.

Before I could check who it was, Esther grabbed my hand. Hers was surprisingly strong for its size.

“Come on,” she said. “I want to see the other people.”

We ran down the hall, around the corner, and through the doors into the darkened atelier. The stage rose above the audience, who sat on either side in rows.

A guy in a bulky sweater, very rich looking, was walking off the stage. Two seconds later Jason Wong’s model hit the runway. Jason’s model was a skinny, older guy. He wore a bottle-green suit, majorly badass. The music was some redneck-cowboy song about a guy not being as good as he once was. The mix of music, model, and suit was a trip. The suit made the guy looked like a degenerate gambler whose luck had finally turned right side up, the way he always knew it would. I decided that if by some miracle I actually graduated from high school, I would spend everything I had to get Jason Wong to make me a suit.

When the model guy, who wasn’t young or handsome, just kind of weathered and real, stopped in front of the judges, half the people on that side of the room stood up and applauded.

The guy walked backstage, and the lights went down for a ten-second beat, and then slowly came up again as a woman’s voice came over the sound system, whispering, then wailing, something about a disease.

Esther and I edged up to a corner that offered the best view of the stage. The rest of the models and designers had the same idea and crowded in around us.

Charlie Dean’s model hit the stage just as the singer stopped and the music exploded.

Everyone in the place jumped.

The dress was like the exposed infrastructure of a broken dream. It was white and gray. The neckline jutted out and tilted across the model’s chest like she was climbing out of a ruined building. The skirt reminded me of a collapsing scaffolding under a sheer layer painted with shadows and light in graphic patterns. It made the dress look even more like a structure, which I think was the point. The model, the one I’d seen out in the parking lot earlier, still had a bright red scratch down her cheek, and her hair was shaped into a dramatic mound on her head.

One section of the bodice shone with dull sequins, and there was a section on her left side where the sequined section was cut away to show what looked like bandages of satin bands in dull silvers.

There was a piece of narrowly pleated fabric that extended out the side of the skirt, almost like a set of stairs. The dress was completely righteous, as Booker would have said. It was probably one of the most interesting things I’d seen since I started this quest to win the scholarship. Even though it wasn’t practical, it was inspiring, somehow. I wondered how I’d ever looked at Charlie Dean and not seen that she was extraordinary.

The audience started clapping as soon as the model appeared, and the applause got louder when the dress came closer.

I couldn’t imagine the skill that had gone into sewing something like that dress.

“That is so beautiful,” said Esther, loud enough that I could hear her over the music.

The model made her way uncertainly down the runway in her huge, radical gown, pausing to turn this way and that. Her eyes were huge and black in her pale, painted face, and she swayed almost imperceptibly. Her eye shadow extended to her temples like a shadow blindfold. The cement-colored satin gloves she wore were dirty, which added to the effect.

She stopped in front of the committee. When Carmichael nodded, she headed offstage, the singer growling and howling something about strange hellos. I almost can’t express the feeling I had right then.

The clapping kept going, and I knew I wasn’t ever, ever going to look at my oddball classmate in her strange suits the same way again. Charlie Dean was definitely some kind of genius.

I think we were all sort of stunned as the music faded, and we waited for the next model.

The room was silent for several long beats, then a flute sounded, followed by a loon’s call, as haunting and surprising as any noise in the world. Then came a deep announcer’s voice.

“The loon is also called the Great Northern Diver, because of its ability to dive and swim long distances underwater,” intoned the announcer. I recognized that it was one of those old CBC Hinterland Who’s Who PSAs about Canadian wildlife that we’d watched in some old biology class. Then the voice was overtaken by drums and chanting and a deep grungy electric beat that turned the place upside down.

“That’s A Tribe Called Red,” said Esther. “We got to go see them last year. They’re my favorite.”

The model came onstage covered in a see-through coat, embroidered all over. She shrugged it off to reveal a beautiful brown dress, so dark it was almost black, with a beaded section at the chest. It was seriously every kind of excellent. The skirt was split down the side from the hip to reveal an ivory silk panel printed with a series of birds, loons I think they were, in different poses. The model held up her fists and danced as she walked, and the audience clapped in time.

Goddamn. That was the most seriously rock-and-roll piece of art. Contemporary and classic and sharp as hell.

Fashion. Who knew?