Couture

The sun had set when Theo appeared at Alexis’ office door.

“Ms. Winters,” he said. “We should try to be on time.”

Alexis checked the time. Six-thirty. She folded her laptop, shoved everything into her bag, then reached under her desk. The scent of leather from the boots wafted up as she took the shopping bag.

Theo’s gaze lingered curiously on the bag, then flicked to Alexis. She caught his look, smirked, and handed him the bag, a spark of mischief and anticipation in her manner as she strode past.

They rode the elevators in silence. Outside, a car waited. Theo gestured to it.

“I worried we might not get a cab.” He held the door for her.

She settled in as Theo entered on the other side.

“You’re not going to tell me where we’re going?”

“74th Street,” Theo smirked.

She raised an eyebrow. “Getting cocky.”

His expression faltered, and he tapped his thigh. “Not even a little bit.”

The car stopped before what looked like an apartment block. Theo leaped out and opened Alexis’ door. He led her to a lobby and pressed a buzzer next to a simple brass plate. The plate read: Edith Vane.

A middle-aged woman’s voice answered. “Yes.”

“Ms. Winters and Theodore.”

“Come on up.”

An elevator door opened, and they rode up thirty floors. The doors opened into controlled silence. Theo pulled back a curtain, and they entered the studio.

Edith Vane had been cutting fabric on a lighted table, her glasses perched on her nose. Half-bolts of wool and cotton lingered at the table’s edge. She set down her shears at the sound of their footsteps, removed her glasses, and tucked them into a pocket.

She saw Alexis first, and Alexis felt as though Edith’s eyes applied a tape measure, sizing her throat, shoulders, bust, waist. Then, she found Theo, and the precise eyes became warm. She walked towards him with her arms held out, pulling him into a maternal embrace and patting his back.

She pulled back and looked at his face as she stroked his forearms. She beamed at him. “Working out. You look good.”

Theo smiled back. Edith’s eyes went to Alexis.

“This is Ms. Winters,” Theo said.

“Theo, you lied to me.” Edith scolded.

“No-“

“A good friend.” Edith pursed her lips.

Edith approached, both hands extended, folding Alexis’ hand in both of hers when they shook hands.

“Alexis.”

“I’m Edith.”

Edith, still holding Alexis’ hand, looked to Theo. “What did you all have in mind?”

Theo’s eyes drifted to the bag from the leather shop, his cheeks flushing with nervousness and excitement. Edith leaned in, sensing his internal struggle, and peeked into the bag.

A moment passed. Edith looked between Theo and Alexis, and the calculation worked behind her eyes.

“Well, let’s get your measurements.”

She walked to a low pedestal and gestured for Alexis to step onto it. Moving with practiced speed, she swished a tape measure over Alexis’ body, writing down each measurement.

Once finished, she pondered the list of numbers.

“You can step down, dear.” Edith didn’t lift her head.

Theo stood apart, his hands fidgeting and his restless gaze betraying a mixture of hope and anxiety.

Alexis came to the table. Edith retrieved and pulled a thick portfolio, lifting the mass of pages and flipping through. Designs of dresses, gowns, skirts, and every kind of clothing flicked past.

Edith stopped on a page and glanced at Alexis.

The sketch showed a model wearing an ankle-length skirt. Her pose held one leg apart, and the dress parted, showing her bare leg to mid-thigh and revealing the red lining of the skirt. The top was a severe hourglass corset, which left the shoulders bare. The model stood with one hand on her hip, chin lifted in fierce pride.

Alexis had to catch her breath.

“Could I-“

“You have more curve,” Edith tapped the sheet. “And aren’t quite as tall.”

Alexis wanted to scream with longing. She’d never seen anything so beautiful, and insecurities fought with her desire. Who cared over an inch this way or that?

Edith leaned close, focusing on the lower right of the page. A list of numbers had been scribbled.

“Theodore, would you mind going to the racks? B-12 should be tagged Nocturne.”

Theodore moved off towards the back of the loft.

“You have this?”

Edith put a hand over Alexis’s. “Sample size, dear. But, it might give you a sense of it.”

A swish of fabric began behind the curtains. Alexis managed to break away from the sketch. Edith was looking at her.

“Be kind to Theodore,” Edith said. “His mother shoved him into that finance job when he should be doing this or painting or playing music, anything but those endless numbers.”

Alexis began to speak, but Edith’s hands squeezed.

“I imagine it suits you. But it could not be worse for Theo. When he was little, he’d come here with his mother, melancholy and timid. But, this,” Edith tapped the sketch. “Beauty, art. Everything about him changed, and it broke my heart when she dragged him away. He would have sketched, helped cut fabric, and been happy forever. This place was a fairy tale, and he looked at you like he looked at these sketches when he was ten. Don’t hurt him for that.”

“I’m not this,” Alexis said and looked at the sketch.

“Stop it,” Edith scolded with a sharp look.

The curtains parted. Theo appeared, holding a pair of hangers: the skirt and the corset.

Pulled towards them, Alexis approached, excitement and uncertainty warring in her expression. Hesitant to touch, she put a hand to her throat and felt the necklace beneath her shirt to steady herself.

Theo presented the hangars. Alexis took them. Theo stepped aside and gestured.

“The dressing room is over there.”

Alexis’ hand trembled as she walked toward the room, her mind swirling with nerves and wonder, as if stepping into a dream.

Fumbling inside the dressing room, she unbuttoned and unzipped her own clothes and struggled with the dress, unable to figure out how to get the corset on. She settled for sliding it over her head.

Edith had been right. The skirt was too long, the hem dragged on the floor, and the corset dug into her rib cage while feeling loose at her waist.

But, she didn’t care.

Powerful, beautiful, and impossible to ignore. She looked in the mirror, her expression a dare, inviting and intimidating at once.

Her hand drifted to the necklace. The gem caught the light, flashing red and warming her breast. Alexis felt her posture straighten and her chin lift. The model in the sketch had nothing on her.

She opened the dressing room door and stepped into the studio.

Edith lifted her head from the lighted table.

“Goodness.”

Then, her eyes focused and went over the details of the dress. Theo put a hand over his mouth, his eyes wide.

Striding towards Edith, the dress moved and flowed with Alexis’ movements, the flash of the red lining and her leg appeared at the lower edge of her vision. The lining made her think of a matador’s cape, flaring red each time she took a step.

Edith put on her glasses and met Alexis halfway across the floor. She knelt and picked at the edge of the skirt.

“Yours will fall better. We could add a gather at the top of the slit to create texture?”

Alexis shook her head. She couldn’t imagine making this better.

“A silk wrap could emphasize your hips.”

Alexis had stopped before a set of three mirrors, and she saw herself from each angle. A well of emotion rose inside: pride, disbelief, and fear. This wasn’t her. Tears tried to form.

Edith stopped and looked up from over her glasses. Her voice dropped, “You ok?”

“Never felt this beautiful,” Alexis whispered.

Edith rose from her knees and bent close to Alexis’ ear. “Stop it. When you walked out of that dressing room, the world shifted, and you know it.”

Alexis shook her head, her tears glistening in the mirror.

“Yes.”

Edith glanced back at Theo, drawing Alexis’ eye, before dropping to one knee and sliding pins into the skirt.

Theo looked like she’d turned him to stone. He gaped, a hand over his mouth.

A flicker of her hunger suggested ideas for how she might torture him. Instead, she straightened her posture and stood like the model in the sketch, shoulders back, chin raised with ferocious pride.

Edith glanced up, a bemused smile on her face, before she stood and looked over the corset.

“We’ll get this right.” Edith put a hand on Alexis’ waist. “Yours will conform to your shape.”

She stepped back and made a final evaluation. “Ok. You can take it off.”

Take it off. Never. Alexis shook her head, then stopped herself. She couldn’t live in the dress no matter how much she wanted to. She glanced at Theo, who still hadn’t moved, before going to the dressing room.

“You can take a breath, Theodore,” Edith called as Alexis closed the door.

Sliding back into her own clothes felt like climbing down from a mountain, each step a kind of retreat.

With her work clothes back on, she draped the skirt and corset over her arm and looked in the mirror. Just Alexis again.

Edith was back at her table when Alexis appeared. Theo took the hangars and disappeared behind the curtains.

“Because it’s for Theodore, we should get it done in a few weeks.”

“Thank you.”

Theo emerged from the curtains. Edith looked from him to Alexis. Edith’s expression carried the warning not to hurt him.

“Thanks so much, Edith.”

Edith’s smile became maternal. “Of course.”

“Thank you,” Alexis said.

Edith embraced Theo and returned to her work table.

They didn’t speak on the ride down. Another car waited by the curb when they emerged from the building. Theo opened the door and stood beside it. Alexis settled in, and once Theo got in the other side, the driver turned and asked where they wanted to go.

“May I take you to dinner, Ms. Winters?”

Alexis nodded. Theo gave an address, and the car began to move.

They’d gone several blocks, the city noises distant and muted.

“Theo, what are you doing?”

“I don’t understand, Ms. Winters.”

Alexis frowned. “Alexis.”

Fear worked across his features. “No. Ms. Winters. Please.”

Alexis touched his hand. “Alexis. What are you doing with me, Theo?”

The car stopped at a traffic signal, and the red light cast a glow across the car’s interior. Theo swallowed.

“I hate my job,” Theo said. “Like, really hate it.”

“Then quit. You have money.”

He shook his head. “Everyone says that, and parts of it are nice, like knowing Edith. It also means I’ve been told I had to be a certain way forever.”

He pulled his lips back into something pained. “They told me I could do anything… As long as it was law or finance.”

“Go your own way. Quit. I started from nothing.”

“I wish. There’s nowhere I could get away. They’d find me. I’d never get out.”

The car began to move, thumping over the transition in the intersection. Theo looked out the window.

“Each day feels like a little color gets drained out, a little bit of the volume gets turned down. When I walk into the office, it’s like living in black-and-white silence. Then, whatever happened that night at the club, you changed.”

The hair on Alexis’ neck bristled, and the weight of the necklace pressed against her skin.

“But, that night, it was like you decided to be beautiful, not pretty, not cute. Beautiful, and for a minute, black-and-white silence became 3D technicolor with surround sound.”

“Because I embarrassed you.”

He shook his head. “No, because you had the right to, like men should throw themselves at your feet. Because you deserved it.”

“Or because you wanted to throw yourself at a woman’s feet.”

He laughed. “I know it’s a dream. I drove home terrified and wanting to turn around and ask you to treat me that way forever. When I saw you the next day, I hoped and noticed that being at the office wasn’t silent and gray. Most of it was, but I could look at your office door and feel something scary was inside, something I wanted to be near.”

“Even when I embarrass you?”

“Especially then. You know a secret no one else does. I don’t know how you figured it out, but you did, and everything about you when you tease me with it,” he said, then shivered. “I feel like I’d agree to anything, like there’s a hunger that won’t let me ignore it.”

Hunger, the demanding need. It had driven her for the last week.

The car pulled to a stop at the curb in front of a restaurant. Alexis was supposed to meet Rook the following night and either pay the price or return the necklace.

She didn’t know what she was doing any more than Theo did.

“Alexis,” Theo said, “Is seafood ok?”

She looked at the restaurant façade, then back to Theo.

“I think Ms. Winters fits a little better, don’t you?”

Alexis could taste the thrill it gave him as well as her answering rush.

“Thank you, Ms. Winters,” Theo said.