An Innocent Fashion Read Online Free Page B

Vogue issue while she bit into a green apple.
    â€œMs. Walker!” I exclaimed.
    She looked up at me for one second (that was one second longer than Ms. Christian Dior, from the elevator) and uttered, simply, “No,” before calling the elevator and returning to her magazine.
    â€œI’m sorry.” I recoiled like a gustless paper party horn. “I’m just waiting for Ms. Walker.”
    Evidently she had been looking forward to her apple all morning; a series of crunching noises was her response. When she disappeared a second later into the elevator, the fruit was no more than a fragile stem. She tucked it like a bookmark into her magazine, and the doors closed.
    A second woman appeared after five minutes (black secretary blouse, black pencil skirt, black kitten heels—not Ms. Walker), and a third another five minutes after her (gray silk jumpsuit, black stilettos—also not Ms. Walker). As I waited, I mentally sifted through all the answers I had practiced the night before, like index cards before a midterm: my accomplishments and my strengths and my career goals, all of which I would share in a humble yet confident tone while also reminding them I went to Yale, Yale, Yale at every opportunity. The only other interviews I’d had were for library posts in high school and college, and both times I’d just entered with a big smile and the fresh-facedease of a person who has just returned from a summer holiday. But this wasn’t just any interview—it was the most important interview of my life. When Ms. Sabrina Walker asked me about my strengths I was prepared to bubble up, like champagne from a just-uncorked bottle, about my imagination and my great eye for beauty—then, before I came across as too frothy, I would bow my head with a sober crinkle of my brows and add that I also knew how to “get things done,” that I was smart, and resourceful, and had received high marks from all of my professors at Yale .
    In my mind, Ms. Walker would nod her head agreeably at this, and smile. Even after observing several of her colleagues in dark monochrome, I inexplicably maintained my belief that, like an angel, she would shine very bright—the hallowed gatekeeper who would admit me to my fashionable destiny. When, after a series of my well-pitched responses, she asked me why I wanted to work at Régine , I would reply, “Because my life’s purpose is to make the world more beautiful,” and she would open her arms to me, with a pearl-like tear in her eye, and say, “Come, child: you belong here,” and the cream-colored lobby would glow like blond hair in a shampoo commercial, and a wreath of laurel would descend from the air onto my head, while around the world everybody laid down their guns and cancelled the bombings and all the hungry children got an organic fruit basket with my name on the calligraphed gift tag.
    I TOOK A MOMENT TO REARRANGE MY PINK TIE, WHICH WAS held by a tortoiseshell pin to a crisp white shirt curtained by the velvet lapels of my suit. My younger self would have been amazed. Years of devotion to the crowning principles of Régine had inspired an insatiable pining for beautiful new clothes; growing up, I wanted a suit most of all—the standard, it seemed, for any man who wished to love a Régine -caliber woman. I didn’t dare ask for such a frivolity, however, at least not within earshot of my father, whose only aesthetic indulgence was “extra-soft” toilet paper and whose single biggest complaint about America was the insufferable flamboyance of its men. He possessed extremely traditional Hispanic views of masculinity, believing that a man’s worth was determined by his strength and earning power, and a woman’s by her merit in the domestic sphere. Consequently, any man who defied these conventions (his tirades against pretty-boy actors and limp-wristed television hosts were particularly pointed) must be a