The Blue Dress

A Fashion Ballet

Once upon a time, in a strong North American city, there lived a handsome young man named Marco. He lived in a suitably grimy apartment in a run down, sometimes dangerous, neighborhood of the great city, but nobody was fooled. They knew, from the cut of his rags and from whispered accounts of such things that seep through neighborhoods, that his father was wealthy beyond all reckoning. To use the word “millionaire” would be risible. His holdings and branches and subsidiaries poured currencies of every persuasion into his coffers at an unprecedented rate. He, the father, deeply disapproved of Marco and what he called, his “lifestyle”. You see, Marco was drawn to all things artistic and had at last settled on writing a novel, which couldn’t displease his father more, who figured that, sooner or later, he himself was bound to show up as a terrible ogre in its pages. People who have become ugly hate to sit for portraits. Furthermore, this father, for whom fate had decreed a relatively easy rise to riches, assumed that anyone who “put their back into it” would succeed at their endeavors. Conversely, those who failed at their attempts in life had managed, somewhere along the line, to not “put their back into it”. It was that simple. Since his son couldn’t have failed to learn this from his brilliant father, when he really put his back into writing the novel it would of course become an international sensation. Hence, the imagined ensuing humiliation became more intense as the years passed and the novel failed to materialize.

However, due to pressure from Marco’s mother, the two often traveled from their grim and functional North American city to Marco’s fierce and cultural city, to pay their son a visit. When the father saw the greasy walls and the cockroaches scurrying behind the refrigerator and the half-dead geranium in a chipped pot on the fire escape, his blood would boil. “Why can’t you make something of yourself?” he would cry and proceed to threaten to change his will and leave all his money to a group of more conventional distant cousins who waited breathlessly in a fetid Southern city for news of the old man’s death.

Marco’s mother would quietly slip a wad of bills to her son, and quite large sums they were too. Then usually, and not quite by accident, Winnie would happen to drop by. Winnie was a blogger for the political scene in the great capital city. She knew everybody who was anybody and was full of surprising stories about well-known figures from the news. She was famous for a combination of venomous wit and conventional prettiness but she held back on the wit whenever she met with Marco’s father. Such things were lost on him, and her pert blond bangs and porcelain skin alone worked wonders on his mood. Winnie kept Marco on, despite his lack of prospects, because she knew full well the extent of his great expectations. She, too, was writing a novel, and so labored under no delusions as to the prospects of getting published, let alone recognized. However, she was beginning to tire of the game and felt that a positive outcome might lie far, far in the future, farther than she cared to imagine. She never failed to criticize the wardrobe of Marco’s mother. “Why, she dresses like the sales clerk in a small town Five and Dime. What is the problem?” This made her fear that some fatally bland gene lurked in the family DNA and perhaps all that money, should it ever come to her, might not offset the prospect of glum and talentless children. But Marco was too caught up in his guilt and fear and general haziness to take any notice of such things. However much Winnie might be losing interest, she hurried over when a parental visit was announced, knowing that as soon as Mom and Dad finally left, a recovery dinner at the most expensive restaurant in town would be required and that the wad of cash burned a hot hole in Marco’s pocket. Bloggers, as the type emerged, tended to have small purses and extravagant tastes.

One day however, just after the mother and father had left, Pierre dropped by. Pierre was the pampered son of another great industrialist, but he was from the glittering capital across the ocean in Europe. He kept Marco as a friend, partly because of Marco’s great physical beauty, which tended to create all sorts of interesting situations, and partly because he believed that one could never be too careful about keeping up with one’s wealthy, and perhaps someday-to-be-wealthy, friends. Pierre was only too happy to have arrived just when the fabulous dinner plans were being made. To the latest loud music the three of them set about drinking cocktails and deciding which sumptuous restaurant they would make reservations at, when the wail of sirens and the red flashing of police car lights seemed to converge on the grimy apartment. As if in a dream, the doorbell rang, the police climbed up and the bodies of the dead parents were brought in for identification. It seems that a disgruntled former employee of the great chain of drugstores owned by Marco’s father, had staked out the place and chosen this very day to gun down the poor old miser and his sweet wife in cold blood. The owner of the vegetable store on the corner had told the police where to find Marco. The murderer, clearly mad, was arrested on the spot, and Marco and his cousins were immediately cleared of any suspicion of foul play.

After many more cocktails, dozens of phone calls and visits from several city agencies the three sat down to contemplate the vision of the future, which now shimmered like a Royal Palace before Marco, and, by extension, before them all. They put the music on again and did a gleeful dance even though the Shadow of Death still lingered over the tiny apartment. Pierre, meanwhile, had made a quick decision. He moved to cut Winnie from the picture. Using all the force of the snobbery of those born to riches, he informed her that such a dinner at such a time would be tasteless and that he would see that Marco had some warm milk and was tucked into bed. Marco, sensing something was afoot, played along, and even wept for a while into his pillow.

Given the grisly events of the day, Winnie had no choice but to comply. As soon as she was gone, Pierre whisked Marco off to an even more expensive restaurant than any before imagined. He plied his friend with visions of the pleasures to be sought and won, especially pleasures involving beautiful women, in the glittering capital across the ocean. He himself, it turned out, was an acquaintance of someone who had access to someone who had a friend involved in hemming the gowns for the fashion shows of the legendary designer, Lebenwolf. The models who stalked his runways were said to be the most beautiful women in the world. Invitations to his shows were impossible to obtain but with Marco’s new status something might be arranged. It didn’t take much of this sort of thing to sway Marco, who imagined that he could use it all as grist for his novel and return someday to the waiting arms of the patient Winnie. And so it was that, barely had the old parents been laid to rest and the inheritance settled than Marco set out alone for the glittering capital where Pierre had arranged everything for a stay of indeterminate length.

The glittering capital had for many, many centuries held itself in readiness for the arrival of the newly rich. The countless layers and levels of luxury it had developed each contained in the center of the fruit tasted in the course of its consumption a tiny annoying seed that opened to hint and tease at the next, possibly unattainable, level of luxury just out of reach. Sumptuous apartments could be rented or bought, but how many times must every room be redone by the most expert carpenters, plasterers and upholsterers, overseen by the most fashionable and imperious designers? There was no end to it. As to beauty of face and form, there was no end to that either, but always, maybe next month, was the promise of the show at Lebenwolf’s.

And indeed, as is the nature of such things, just when the appetite had spun itself to the fullest height of fantasy and expectation and was about to plummet into ennui, an invitation arrived. Marco and Pierre set out on a clear April night for a warehouse in a deserted section of the docks. How thrilling it all was. There seemed to be no one about. Even though they were two strapping young men who worked out regularly and played tennis or squash every other day, they feared they would be no match for actual hooligans. But their fears proved groundless. They were admitted to the warehouse and found it filled with the creme de la creme of the young international monied set leavened with a few dozen members of the secret society of fashion pontifs, style savants, color oracles and skirt-length sibyls, with their impeccable suits, impenetrable sunshades and coiled, cautious movements. The young people bubbled and squealed but the elders were careful not to look for more than a half second at any of the sweet, young things for fear that the clothes worn by the recipient of such a prolonged stare would then be rumored to be the basis of the next mega-trend in the fashion industry. Of course the room was alive with the usual sexual currents, but this, mixed with the tang of aesthetic and industrial speculation gives the fashion scene a infectious exuberance that seems to have deserted most of the rest of the world.

Indeed, in Marco’s day, the arts had been commandeered by an avant garde of chilling ideological severity. No displays of beauty or opulence were allowed as they might offend “the poor”, who never came to see such things anyway. The commercial culture was ruled by the fantastic sums paid to actors and actresses to appear in stained yellow polyester in the kitchens of dysfunctional families or in magenta lycra on spaceships in galaxies far away. Money was spent but not seen. Hence, the fashion world began to become more and more the only locus of the kind of unfettered striving for effect and perfection that so marks the products of the ancient civilizations enshrined in museums and fought over by governments.

The warehouse resembled an airplane hangar. It was immense. It was the Pyramids, the Parthenon. Gold painted gauze curtains, hundreds of feet long hung at strategic intervals, transforming the corrugated metal and two-by-four construction to the temple of a forgotten Goddess. Crystal chandeliers, brilliantly designed lighting, high-tech consoles and a black marble floor, installed at unimaginable expense, completed the effect. Ultra-modern orange sofas, resembling paper clips and carved antique thrones made up the seating.

Marco took a deep breath and almost whimpered in his excitement. This is where he belonged. This was the grandeur life had hinted at, but withheld for so long. This was the complete opposite of the sharp-eyed, grasping and usurious world his father had presided over with an iron fist. This was the opposite of firing any employee who looked up from her work or made a personal phone call or had a flirtation with a fellow-worker. This was the opposite of counting the peaches on the vine every day to make sure none were stolen by the servants. He preferred not to connect such practices with the magnificence he was now entitled to and flattered himself by thinking that, when and if he entered business, he would set up a far more humane enterprise. That would show the old man. The father had enforced a strange austerity on his life and on his wife and child to appease the bird of guilt that tore at his liver. He felt he could atone for the misery of those under him by refusing to experience the pleasures his wealth made possible, by sleeping on a cot and rising before dawn, by working each day without rest. He feared the eventual dispersion of his great accumulation worse than death itself. But he was wrong. Death is far more serious than shopping.

The show started with a series of tableaux on a set resembling the treasure chamber of the Calif of Bagdad. The models appeared in astonishing poses involving jewels and animals and worshipping slave boys. Their outfits were fantasy pieces rather than real clothes and the girls exhaled a kind of pouty indolence, a heaviness, almost a lethargy, of beauty that caused them to veer and plod, as though weighed down by the force of their desire to be taken up, violated, kept. This was an illusion since they earned fantastic sums at their work and had, in fact, had no need for anybody. The scene changed to the runway format. This was the Spring Sportswear and Daywear Collection. Lebenwolf had chosen to present a walk through an ancient city culminating in an Easter Parade. Each group was derived from an abstract shape or motif found in the architecture, planting, fountains or statues of the city. A group of dancers would amplify this motif for each creation with the help of the simplest of props. At the end, a donkey was led forward, bearing Katerina. She slid off and danced in a white drape.

Sex has always been inclined to favor the exaggerated. Breasts a little too big and legs a little too long; these things race the blood. It probably dates from spotting the bulge of ripe fruit in the profusion of nature millions of years ago. To the eyes of survival, swelling is life. Art, however, waits patiently for proportion. That is what Katerina had. Proportion in her had reached a climax of expression. Never before had Lebenwolf found such perfection. He spent hours in his studio studying her measurements as if the mathematics of her form could be resolved into an equation containing the secret of life itself. He always kept her for the last.

When she finished her dance it was time for his bow and the room held its breath as an ormolu palanquin borne by six musclemen was brought forward. The lacquered door was opened by a footman in powdered wig. The white gloved hand, the black shades large as saucers, the bouffant tower of white hair, the Spanish fan, the black silk suit; Lebenwolf emerged in all his glory. The crowd exploded. He led the models in a danced finale. Champagne corks popped and the party was off.

The models, stripped of their priceless finery, soon emerged in jeans to mingle. And so it was that Marco met Katerina. As her beauty was not as flashy as many of the others, she was less invited, less approached. In fact, she was somewhat lonely. But this suffering had not been intense enough to open her eyes to the deeper truths of life. Indeed, she was a very ordinary girl from a dreary provincial town who liked nothing better than to conform completely with the trends of the day. She was pleased that Marco had affected to dress in the “emo” style. At that period, the concept of “emo”, short for emotional, had emerged in music and then in dress. It centered on soulful young men wailing about the pain caused by cruel and beautiful women and involved frayed jeans, backpacks, vintage sweaters, key chains worn just so and so on. Katerina was impressed with the care and coyly concealed expense that had gone into Marco’s tenue. Marco for his part, dazzled by her beauty and listening to not a word she said, imbued her with an array of extraordinary character distinctions, not one of which did she actually possess. He failed to be impressed by the ease with which he was able to bring her to his luxurious flat in the finest neighborhood in the city and, within a matter of days, to convince her to move in and become his lover.

But the night of the show, as Marco and Katerina quietly slipped into a waiting taxi, another event took place. Pierre, his mission accomplished, had an intimate exchange with Lebenwolf. It would seem that his connection to the master was not as remote as he had at one time suggested. Indeed, the two were thick as thieves.

A year later Katerina had a dream.

In those days it was the fashion for lovely young women to remember, suddenly, things, terrible things, that they claimed to have repressed all memory of. One of the great favorite things to remember was having been abducted by aliens in spaceships hovering over the earth. Once flown up to such ships they were prodded and violated in various horrible ways then released to live out their days among humans, forever changed.

Katerina, who had been tenderly loved by her parents, was too sensible to fall into such a delusion but it was terribly popular so secretly she kept an eye on it and sometimes it erupted into her dreams. One dream in particular was a recurring dream and it always disturbed her. In this dream she was walking along a country road with an older woman. The woman seemed to be warning her of something. Suddenly a bright beam of light took hold of Katerina and dragged her up into the air and from thence into the opened portal at the bottom of a flying saucer the size of a small city.

She then found herself in a bronze lycra bodysuit suspended by strings over a plexiglass table in the middle of a round metal room with windows showing only the stars in the night sky. Soon a horrible alien, with a snout like an elephant and hands like dangerous spiders entered the room and began probing her in various ways. She screamed and screamed. Often she would wake up at this point. But this time her screaming had a different effect. The alien suddenly changed into Marco. He was so handsome and in love with her and cut the strings and comforted her. They waltzed around the flying saucer, delirious with love. He settled her into a comfortable chair and sat beside her. Smiling he placed his hand on her knee, but with his other hand he hit a large red button on a console. Instantly the ship jumped to the speed of light. The stars seen from the window became a blur and Marco reverted to his horrible alien shape. Katerina ran to the walls, searching for a door and screaming, knowing she was trapped forever. This time she did wake up.

Katerina had a little rule. Whenever she had this dream she needed to change something. Clearly the thing to change here was her relationship with Marco. The sun was just rising and she decided then and there to end it. Marco, hearing her cry out in her sleep had tried to comfort her but she coolly got up and showered. Over coffee she informed him that she had made the cover of Swell Magazine next month and it meant that she was now becoming a supermodel and that she might not have so much time for him. In fact, the editor-in-chief of Swell was on her way over at that very minute. While Katerina dressed, Marco stared into his coffee and faced some facts. The ease with which he had been able to seduce and obtain this great beauty now surfaced from the place in his memory where he had submerged it. It splashed and hissed at him like a sea monster. How could he have overlooked such a thing? Now this ease monster was riding in just as casually as it came to make off with her and he would never see her again. Marco felt a stab in his heart. He resolved at once that he would have to be firm with her. Perhaps this ease thing would just as easily respond to a little pressure. He had no intention of living his life without her. He was even surprised at himself for coming up against this great fact about his own life. This fact had been gaining solidity over the course of the year and he could see now that it had hardened into a great mountain range – a great mountain range in view of which he had built his dream house. It was a substantial investment. No. Something would have to be done even though, as yet, Katerina, had only hinted at a separation.

The doorbell rang. Katerina, momentarily forgetting that she had no more use for Marco, called out for him to answer it. Numbness was pouring into every joint in his body but he made himself get up and go to the door. He opened it and whom should he find standing there but Winnie! Winnie had changed. She wore an impossibly fashionable coat and hat ensemble and was followed by an army of assistants. “Where is she?” she demanded as she swept into the apartment. Katerina made a dramatic entrance and cried, “Oh, Miss Winifred. I’m so excited!” Then they launched into a rush of chatter over the cover and the clothes and all the things such an enterprise entails. Winnie snapped orders to the assistants who hurried in every direction to cater to her whims. When at last Marco confronted her, Winnie seemed surprised, as if she hadn’t noticed him. Then everything had to be explained. Well, let’s see. She had left the great capital after being offered the job at Swell in the glittering capital. What choice did she have really? It was just possible that Pierre had something to do with it and wasn’t that nice of him after all. She’d always been a closet fashion queen even while maintaining her politico role. Hadn’t she always criticized Marco’s poor mother for her dreary clothes? May she rest in peace. And so on.

None of this was lost on Katerina who saw here a clear vindication for her dream and its ensuing action plan and even imagined that it had a prophetic quality. Marco had never mentioned Miss Winnifred when all along it was clear from the darting eyes and quick gestures that they had at one time meant something to each other. perhaps quite a bit more than just something. He even dared to call her “Winnie”. Katerina realized that he was a faithless seducer who would tie her down with babies and houses and all sorts of horrors then run around after who knows what sort of low women. Why should a great beauty and international supermodel submit to such treatment when a perfectly serviceable and after all pretty enough women like Miss Winnifred would be only too glad to take up the slack? Yes, she hadn’t been thinking clearly when she slipped into his arms. She must remind herself in future to think clearly. That was it. Think clearly.

Katerina, who was not one to ponder, announced suddenly her intention to break off with Marco just as he was planning what he would say when Winnie left. The assistants were sent to pack her bags, book a hotel room, engage a taxi and off they went in a storm of excited chatter barely remembering to say goodbye and see you sometime.

Months later, in her new luxurious flat, Katerina plopped herself down on her polka dot designer sofa with a great sigh. Things had not turned out as she planned. Her cover had come out, but so had seventeen others. True, she had been acclaimed, but so had six other new models. She was a super model but only for fifteen minutes, after which the candle of her fame had been snuffed out by the onrushing wave of raw talent greedy for the limelight. She was still working and still earning but for how long? Also, and perhaps more galling, since her break-up with Marco she had been genuinely lonely. No amount of dating or party-going seemed to help. She had even dated a famous movie star for a month, but that had not only fizzled out but had never been the real romance the magazines claimed it was. Instead of going back to Marco, who called all the time, she had run to the arms of her women friends who never gave up criticizing men. “Oh, you don’t need the stupid violent babies!”, they cried. “You have it all. Why do you need a man to ruin it for you?” They quoted the famous feminist who said, “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.” This struck Katerina as deeply moving and she wondered at the folly of women marrying men at all. Then, one by one, these same women friends would drop out of the coffee klatch and get married! No sooner did some wonderful guy come along than they disappeared, never to be heard from again. They did sometimes send a Christmas card with their new baby or their twins on the lawn of their summer house on the lake in the high mountains with the maid in a starched lace uniform holding the toddlers as the woman and the husband beamed up from their champagne glasses.

This was too much, and after all those hours and hours of deriding this very behavior. It was around this time and due to these currents in modern life that Katerina developed a theory about herself. She began to feel that her beauty was entirely of her own making. She began to suspect that the perfection of her form was due to the clarity of her perceptions and to her iron will. Wasn’t it true that her mother had mentioned to her only once when she was ten that she should not eat fats and sugars and that since that day no food of this type had ever crossed her lips? Did this not prove that her powers were beyond the normal, when so many women suffered from lack of will power and grew fat? She looked in the mirror at the feast of beauty her body presented and realized that she was not like the others. If those other woman, gorgeous as they were, could chatter on and on about hating marriage, then pop off to the first church and veil that came along, then it proved that they didn’t have the kind of magical rigor that Katerina did. She would never marry. She would never do something she had declared was stupid. In fact, and here she developed a strange twist to the logic of the situation, wasn’t it true that if she did do something contrary to her beliefs then wasn’t it possible that her beauty would collapse overnight? If her beauty was sustained and had been created by the power of her will, if she broke the rules of that will then it followed that she would instantly fade.

The thought of losing her beauty had never occurred to Katerina before, but once it entered her mind it took hold of her soul with a force that could move mountains. She swore never to speak to Marco again. She shut herself up and lived only for work.

Marco. at the same time, had fallen in with a group of divorced gentlemen who met regularly to complain and rant about the horrors of women. “Don’t do it!”, they cried. “Don’t get married! Women today are nothing but bloodsuckers. They’ll take all your money and they’ll take your pride and self-esteem and throw you out with the garbage. You’ll end up a sniveling wreck without a penny to your name. The equity you’ve spent your whole adult life building will be shattered. Even your children won’t want to see you.” Marco was inclined to see this as sour grapes and wondered that his friends had not chosen their former wives more carefully. However, as time went by, and his passion for Katerina showed no signs of abating and it became clear that she had hardened her heart against him, he began to wonder if perhaps there wasn’t something to these complaints after all. Perhaps it was true that women had changed.

Winnie took her time getting to Lebenwolf’s den. She now knew that she owed her job and its fabulous salary and perks to the great designer. She had wormed it out of a former friend of Pierre’s. But why her? And why would he summon her now so imperiously? Was he unhappy with her performance? Winnie had her flaws but incompetence was not one of them. She let several days slip by after the summons before responding. She knew this was dangerous but what did it matter? Let him fire her. She didn’t care. She had lots to go back to and besides, the glittering capital, with all its luxuries was beginning to pall. She was homesick for her outspoken and disorganized country. Finally, out of curiosity more than anything else, she made her way to the warehouse by the docks.

The vast space was dark when she entered but light shone through a high door at the back. She picked her way to the door as her eyes became accustomed to the light. The crystal chandeliers, having been cleaned and now shrouded in white muslin, sat on the black marble floor forming ghostly blobs in her way. She fancied for a moment that they were warning her. “Turn back. Turn back.” As she neared the open door a strange sight met her eyes. Instead of a designer’s atelier full of dress forms, racks, cutting tables, sewing stations and ironing boards she saw what looked like a mad scientist’s laboratory. There were vats of hot liquid with acrid steam rising from them. There were test tubes and all sorts of chemistry equipment like bunsen burners and extruders and things Winnie had never seen before. Lebenwolf appeared in a long linen lab coat and bowed slowly to her. At that moment his assistants did wheel in a dress form which was placed on a platform in the middle of the laboratory. It had a blue dress on it. The shade was astonishing, electric, like the sky at twilight on a perfect summer day. The dress was heavily jeweled and encrusted with a kind of metallic blue cording and beading. A tendril of cording climbed up and around the neck of the dress form, like ivy. The under layers where of the finest, most ephemeral gauze Winnie had ever seen. She gasped. “Beautiful, isn’t it my dear?” purred Lebenwolf. “But come. Sit. I will tell you the story of this dress and of all that you see here before you today.”

It had begun after the war, when the glittering capital was shattered and there was no money anywhere. The Americans were the only one’s with wealth but they were reluctant to visit the war-torn places. Lebenwolf was starving. There was no heat. He had only a few sketches he had made and he would go around the cafes every day hoping for a commission. But who could buy a dress at a time like this? Finally one day, a nice American lady looked at his sketches and declared herself delighted with them. “I’ve been to all the old houses but not seen anything like this.”, she said. She gave him wine and food and they sat down and dreamed up the dress that she wanted to take home with her. He told her that the cloth would be expensive but she laughed when he quoted the price and said that such sums meant nothing to her. Unfortunately, at the time she had only a handful of bills to slip to him and since her boat was sailing in only a week she would pay him in full when she picked up the dress. Was that possible? Lebenwolf gulped at the thought of borrowing the materials for the dress but when he counted the money she had given him he saw that it was just enough to convince the merchants that he was worth the risk. He looked into her eyes and saw that she was kind and sincere and he decided to trust her.

She was as good as her word. A week later, after he had labored day and night to produce the dress, she appeared at the address he had given her. She was delighted with his work. She couldn’t have been happier. Just as she was making out a check there was a row downstairs and heavy footsteps running up the stairs. The lady’s irate husband burst into the room. He was mad with rage. He slapped her and shouted that he had warned her against such extravagance. He tore up the check. He grabbed a pair of scissors from the table and attacked the dress. Lebenwolf tried to stop him but he turned on him and beat him senseless before returning to the dress, cutting it to ribbons.

It took Lebenwolf years to work his way back from this terrible calamity. In time, he found a patron who helped him pay back the debts which had mounted with each year. His patron, who gave him the name “Lebenwolf”, had also sent him to a Chemistry School. Just at that time the new synthetic fabrics were sweeping the world. He wanted Lebenwolf to understand how these things were done. Over time, and as his fame and wealth grew, Lebenwolf had never given up this scientific approach. He had experimented with many new formulas for new fabrics. At last he had made a significant breakthrough.

And here he stood up, the steam lit from beneath gave his face and towering hair a spectral glow. He went over to the blue dress. “You see, I have at last made a fabric that is sensitive to true love. If the woman who wears this dress can keep her mind and heart free of love no harm will come to her. But if even for one second, love should enter her heart, her body chemistry will change and the fabric will begin to change. It will become a constricting unstoppable vice, like the coils of a python. It will squeeze the life out of her. For this reason I call it “pytholon”. I have already found a woman who is ready to face the challenge of this dress. It is my own star, Katerina. I have but one thing to ask of you, my dear Winnifred. You must bring your old friend Marco to the performance next month. I think you will find reasons in your own heart for complying with my request. “

Winnie did not need him to tell her that the man who had so hurt him all those years ago was none other than Marco’s father. She recognized the style instantly. She understood too why Marco’s mother had dressed so badly. It was a sort of revenge she had kept up all those years for this terrible scene. She knew too now why Lebenwolf had chosen her for this job. She knew that she would always love Marco but that he would never love her. Some part of her longed for revenge. How perfect to see him gape as his true love proved that she had not one shred of feeling for him. Or? How perfect to watch her die in agony if it proved that she did love him with a true love that would shimmer before him like a mirage before being snuffed out forever.

Winnie hurried away, appalled at her own thoughts.

As the weeks went by she planned to leave town a dozen times. She called and made reservations on airplanes only to cancel them the next day. She packed and unpacked. She quit her job. She couldn’t sleep. At last she went to see Marco. He was beside himself over Katerina. He knew that the only way to see her was to go to Lebenwolf’s next show. But no invitation arrived for him. Without an invitation the guards would never admit him. No bribe existed that could change those guards. Winnie pretended to sympathize with him. Yes, he was quite right but didn’t he think it was time to give up on Katerina. She obviously didn’t want to see him. Winnie pretended that she had had intimate conversations with Katerina about Marco. She didn’t actually say she had, but she dropped hints that suggested she had an inside track on the situation, a woman-to-woman inside track. But no matter how often she repeated the story of Katerina’s devotion to her career and her horror of marriage he just couldn’t believe it. Finally, exasperated, and frankly somewhat annoyed with the whole thing, she produced his invitation from her exquisite, tooled leather handbag. “I lunched with Lebenwolf the other day and he asked me to hand deliver this to you. I can’t imagine what it is. I’ve been so busy that it slipped my mind for a few weeks. I’m terribly sorry. I hope I’m not too late.” Marco took the envelope, creamy white and heavy with rag content, and, with a beating heart, ripped it open. “It’s my invitation!” He almost fainted. He made cocktails for both of them. He poured out his happiness, his hope, his memories. Winnie drank it all in for a while then made her excuses and called for a cab.

The audience for the second show was somewhat different. There seemed to be some older people there who were not fashionable. No. They were just people. Perhaps people that Lebenwolf had known for many years. There were also more serious intellectual types, more of a mix, as they say. Marco’s invitation had been quite clear. “White tie and tails required.” This had put him into a whirl of activity with a tailor and a rental house to gather the proper ingredients for this, the most formal, romantic and glamorous of men’s attire. Now he stood, with his white gloves, top hat, cane and cape gaping at the rest of the crowd. They wore the usual bohemian casual that one finds these days in industrial cultures. Two ushers flew to Marco and showed him to a gold throne where they insisted he sit. They brought him a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket. Pierre showed up with a couple of friends and soon they had a gala party going on. Marco managed to forget that he was dressed differently. He did look devastating.

The show this time was The Evening Wear Collection. The warehouse had been redone. The floor was gold, the chandeliers modern, the seating was tattered couches from thriftshops with outrageous retro lamps. Lebenwolf had chosen to set it at a strange, fractured sort of ball. As the guests arrived one by one, each women in a new piece of the collection, they seemed to gossip about somebody who wasn’t there yet. “Is she coming?” the seemed to ask. “Have you heard anything.” Groups would dance for a time, showing off the sweep of the gowns then stop to gossip. The tension built. At last, to a great fanfare and a flash of light, Katerina entered in the blue dress. All eyes were glued to her. The women greeted her cautiously. One by one the men came and danced with her. She moved with consummate grace but gave not one of them any hope. Her eyes were like ice. Her composure, complete. Each of the other women came to reclaim her dazzled man.

A spotlight glowed into life over Marco’s head. All the models and dancers made a runway directly to his throne. They urged him to get up and dance with Katerina. Transfixed, he complied. Slowly at first they moved around the floor. She looked right through him. As the music gathered in force and tempo they flew from front to back. He did a passionate solo for her. She responded with a glittering display of coldness. He returned to take her in his arms again. Expertly turning she swooped into a back bend. Without thinking, his hand was there, under her back, supporting her. She froze.

Flowing from this simple hand, this simple gesture of support, was the most basic thing in all the universe. Love. The scales fell from Katerina’s eyes. What had she been thinking? All the chattering and nagging of movies and soaps, of magazines and girlfriends, of pop songs and talk radio shows, stopped. There was a vast silence in which only the clear bell of love tolled with an infinite sadness. This was a love that said, “I have nothing to do in my life but to be by your side. Everything else is decoration.” She ran at Marco and threw her arms around him and kissed him. With a fevered passion she clung to him as they danced and danced. She tried to tell him what was happening but already the dress had choked off her powers of speech. He didn’t notice anything wrong. When she gestured that she couldn’t speak he thought she meant she was speechless with joy and he copied the gesture. Now he knew that she loved him and always would he was overcome with happiness.

And then, she died in his arms.

Later, after the inquest, where they decided she had died from dieting too much, and before she took Marco to the airport for their flight home, Winnie had the satisfaction of saying to Pierre, knowing it would go straight to Lebenwolf, “By the way, when Marco’s mother died, in her will money was left for the unnamed dress designer who helped her many years ago. I guess, once he emerged, he had changed his physical appearance so much with the hair, the glasses. You know, she never recognized him even though she poured over the fashion magazines, hoping to make up for the terrible thing that happened. Now that we know the whole story, I’ll see to it the is money wired. It’s well over a hundred million.”

Peter Wing Healey

Athens, Greece

April 2007