camouflage.My summer dress is bright blue and I stand out like a beacon against the old Dutch masters.
Roger says, “Vig darling,” and I turn around. Since he and Maya are no longer dating, I’m not required to affect pleasure. I’m not required to affect anything at all, and I give him a look of pure disgust when he raises a hand to indicate that he’ll be off the phone in a second. I did not come to the Met to stand in Roger Childe’s waiting room.
I point across the room to indicate the direction in which I’m going and walk away. My instinct is to scurry out of the building, but I settle with hiding behind a pair of German-speaking tourists who are admiring a Rembrandt. Next to me a woman is drawing the picture with thick gray charcoals and I’m distracted for a moment by her skill. I’m also sketching austere portraits, but I’m using a No. 2 pencil. I’ve never done this before and my clumsy fingers don’t glide across the paper. They stumble and limp and sometimes even fall. I feel self-conscious and silly, but I refuse to let these wayward emotions quell my enthusiasm.
I’m here because I want to be Technicolor. This is the revelation that struck me last night as I was railing against hustle and drying colanders and putting away dishes. I don’t want to write boring service items either. The world is so much more interesting than the type of teeth-whitening strips you use.
Enter Pieter van Kessel, a young Dutch designer whose fashions borrow liberally from Rembrandt and Frans Hals. His fall show impressed me and stayed with me and gave me dangerous ideas above my station. I squashed them, of course. I crushed them ruthlessly beneath my heel because up-and-coming designers are not the sort of thing Fashionista covers. Rising stars are not in our cosmos. At least not under the Jane regime.
But suddenly I’m eager to plan for the best-case scenario. It will mean going back to Keller’s apartment and braving his anger and calming him down enough to gain his compliance. It will mean researching a story idea that has very little chance of coming to fruition. But this is how it has to be done. I still don’t believe in the cultivation of hustle, but you can’t wait for the world to come to you. You have to go after the things you want. And I want van Kessel. I want to meet him and talk to him and write about his designs. I want to publish a story about the making of a superstar before he plays to packed stadiums.
My moment of distraction is fatal. While I’m contemplating the woman’s clean lines and my future, the German-speaking couple moves on to the next painting and I’m left without cover.
“Vig,” Roger says again, either oblivious or unoffended by my hasty retreat. He’s off the phone now and holding the hand of a beautiful redhead in a skintight leather dress. Roger is a creepy guy, the sort who thinks up catchy nicknames for serial killers or peeks into the women’s bathrooms, but I don’t think of him as the type to go for skintight leather dresses. J. Crew only makes tasteful jackets.
Roger is of medium height and build and is plagued by a persistent acne problem that is exacerbated by encroaching baldness—his hairline is receding, followed closely by an army of pimples that cannot march fast enough across the plains of his scalp to keep up with its retreat. Accutane did not help and only made spending time with him and Maya unbearable. Roger is quiet and introspective when he’s drunk.
“Sorry about that, Vig,” he says, kissing me on the cheek. When he and Maya were dating, there were no cheek kisses or darlings. “I was leveraging information. It was a very important visit.”
Roger believes that language is something you bend to your will instead of the other way around. He changes nouns into verbs and invents new usages. He thinks he’s revolutionizing the English language but he’s not. He’s just speaking nonsense.
“Vig darling, meet Anthea,” he says,
Roger says, “Vig darling,” and I turn around. Since he and Maya are no longer dating, I’m not required to affect pleasure. I’m not required to affect anything at all, and I give him a look of pure disgust when he raises a hand to indicate that he’ll be off the phone in a second. I did not come to the Met to stand in Roger Childe’s waiting room.
I point across the room to indicate the direction in which I’m going and walk away. My instinct is to scurry out of the building, but I settle with hiding behind a pair of German-speaking tourists who are admiring a Rembrandt. Next to me a woman is drawing the picture with thick gray charcoals and I’m distracted for a moment by her skill. I’m also sketching austere portraits, but I’m using a No. 2 pencil. I’ve never done this before and my clumsy fingers don’t glide across the paper. They stumble and limp and sometimes even fall. I feel self-conscious and silly, but I refuse to let these wayward emotions quell my enthusiasm.
I’m here because I want to be Technicolor. This is the revelation that struck me last night as I was railing against hustle and drying colanders and putting away dishes. I don’t want to write boring service items either. The world is so much more interesting than the type of teeth-whitening strips you use.
Enter Pieter van Kessel, a young Dutch designer whose fashions borrow liberally from Rembrandt and Frans Hals. His fall show impressed me and stayed with me and gave me dangerous ideas above my station. I squashed them, of course. I crushed them ruthlessly beneath my heel because up-and-coming designers are not the sort of thing Fashionista covers. Rising stars are not in our cosmos. At least not under the Jane regime.
But suddenly I’m eager to plan for the best-case scenario. It will mean going back to Keller’s apartment and braving his anger and calming him down enough to gain his compliance. It will mean researching a story idea that has very little chance of coming to fruition. But this is how it has to be done. I still don’t believe in the cultivation of hustle, but you can’t wait for the world to come to you. You have to go after the things you want. And I want van Kessel. I want to meet him and talk to him and write about his designs. I want to publish a story about the making of a superstar before he plays to packed stadiums.
My moment of distraction is fatal. While I’m contemplating the woman’s clean lines and my future, the German-speaking couple moves on to the next painting and I’m left without cover.
“Vig,” Roger says again, either oblivious or unoffended by my hasty retreat. He’s off the phone now and holding the hand of a beautiful redhead in a skintight leather dress. Roger is a creepy guy, the sort who thinks up catchy nicknames for serial killers or peeks into the women’s bathrooms, but I don’t think of him as the type to go for skintight leather dresses. J. Crew only makes tasteful jackets.
Roger is of medium height and build and is plagued by a persistent acne problem that is exacerbated by encroaching baldness—his hairline is receding, followed closely by an army of pimples that cannot march fast enough across the plains of his scalp to keep up with its retreat. Accutane did not help and only made spending time with him and Maya unbearable. Roger is quiet and introspective when he’s drunk.
“Sorry about that, Vig,” he says, kissing me on the cheek. When he and Maya were dating, there were no cheek kisses or darlings. “I was leveraging information. It was a very important visit.”
Roger believes that language is something you bend to your will instead of the other way around. He changes nouns into verbs and invents new usages. He thinks he’s revolutionizing the English language but he’s not. He’s just speaking nonsense.
“Vig darling, meet Anthea,” he says,
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