Los Angeles

“If she asks whose jacket that is, tell her mine.” Nico had a pin between his lips and one hand under my arm, and he talked around the pin like a man who’d been doing it since grade school. “Not wardrobe. Mine.”

“Who’s she?”

“Vivian. Don’t turn. You’ll get stuck.”

I stopped with my shoulder halfway to the mirror. The jacket was cropped higher than anything I’d packed, dark on the outside and copper underneath, so every time I moved it flashed at the waist like it had a secret and wanted credit for keeping it. I wanted somebody to take my picture before Nico decided the left sleeve needed scissors.

“She knows you made it?”

He took the pin out. “She knows I make things. It’s the owning them she gets flexible about.”

“Then tell her not to come,” Imani called from the cutting table, not looking up from the chalk line she was walking her ruler down. “We were about to close.”

“She says she’s around the corner.”

“Everybody’s around the corner when they want me to stay late. Which corner? Fresno?”

I laughed, the pin caught my shirt, and Nico swore and made me hold still while he freed it. I liked him too much already. We’d met over coffee at my hotel that morning, where he’d introduced himself by telling me to open my collar one more button and stop looking like a deacon, and by sundown I was standing in his unfinished collection hoping he’d forget I’d come in my own clothes.

The Side Room was a long room with good windows, a broad passage through to Doreen’s shop out front, and a steel door at the back onto a little service court where people parked to load. Imani had it propped with a brick for the air. I’d been in Los Angeles less than a day, and Ellis had already texted twice for proof his garment carrier had survived the flight. I’d sent him a picture of it in the hotel closet. He’d asked why it was touching the wall.

“You’re smiling at your phone,” Nico murmured. “Is that the boyfriend?”

“The roommate. He wants his luggage brought home in a procession.”

“And the boyfriend?”

“Less emotionally attached to luggage. He wants a picture of me.”

“Then hold still and let me finish arguing with your arm.” He stood back and looked. “Who’s he?”

“Khalil. He’s a photographer.”

“Oh, so he’s going to have notes.”

“He always has notes. He just asks before he gives them.”

Nico looked up at me instead of the sleeve, mostly approving. “Hold on to that one.”

“I’m trying. We just got back from my mama’s in Durham. She hugged him before I could introduce him and then cussed me out for putting him in a hotel.”

“You took a man home and didn’t let him sleep in the house?”

“The guest room has an exercise bike in it wearing a coat. I wasn’t putting him on a mattress next to a bike in a coat. And she was gonna be up at six asking him what church he grew up in.” I spread my arms, carefully, so the pins stayed where he’d put them. “I told her, Mama, I’m trying to keep him. Let me have a door that locks.”

“What’d she do?”

“Hit me with a dish towel and fed him till he couldn’t stand up.”

Imani laughed without lifting her chalk. “That’s love. That’s the whole definition.”

“Could you take a picture?” I asked Nico, holding the phone out. “For him. I won’t post it.”

He checked the cuff before he answered. “The jacket isn’t ready.”

“Neither am I. We’ll make an honest pair.”

Imani put down her ruler. “Give me that before he makes you undress out of principle.” She took the phone and backed toward the passage. “Stand where you were.”

I moved toward the window instead, where the last of the light was coming in gold off the building across the street.

“Where you were, Jace. I didn’t ask you to locate a campaign.”

“The light’s better here.”

“Then the light can have its picture taken. I was doing yours.”

Nico laughed hard enough that I turned toward him, and she got it right then, on the turn. The copper showed at my waist, my head was turned away from her, and I looked like somebody whose evening had already turned out better than he’d planned.

“Send me that one,” Nico said, coming round my shoulder.

“Now the jacket’s ready?”

“The jacket looks good. You’re hiding the sleeve I hate.”

Imani handed me back the phone. I sent it to him and then to Khalil. Out in the court, a car door slammed and an engine started up close, and Imani went to the steel door.

“Hold this for me? I’ve got two bolts in my trunk and I’m not making three trips.”

So I held the door. She went out to her hatchback, and I stood in the frame in Nico’s unfinished jacket with my phone in my hand and the door against my hip, and that’s where I was when the headlights swung into the court.

A dark sedan came in backward, fast, the way people back into a space they’ve parked in a hundred times and stopped looking at. Imani was bent into her trunk with a bolt of cloth on her shoulder. The car’s back corner was coming straight at the gap between her legs and the door I was holding.

“Hold!” It came out of me in Rafi’s voice, the one for a case rolling on a ramp. “Hold, hold, stop the car!”

I let go of the door, grabbed Imani’s waistband and hauled, and she came over backward into me with the bolt between us, and the bumper went into the steel door where my body had been. The door banged back against the wall, came off its brick and shuddered. Something in the top hinge made a sound like a bone.

“Jesus,” Imani breathed. She was still sitting half on my thigh on the concrete step with her bolt in her arms. “Jesus Christ. Are you good?”

“I’m good.”

“My cloth’s good.” She looked up at the door hanging crooked. “My door’s not.”

The driver’s door opened. A woman got out with a coat over her arm and a paper cup in her hand, looked at the door, then at us on the step, and then at me in the jacket, from the copper at my waist up to my face. I’d been looked at like that by people who paid for it.

“Is everybody all right? I didn’t see a thing in that mirror. This court is a cave.” She set the cup on the roof of the car. “Well. Sophie wasn’t exaggerating.”

“About my mouth or my measurements?”

“She had quite a bit to say about both.” She held out her hand to help me up, and after a second I took it. Her grip was dry and strong. “Vivian Rusk. You’re Jace. Welcome to Los Angeles. I nearly ran you over in it.”

“You nearly ran her over,” I told her.

Vivian turned to Imani, who was getting up on her own. “I’m so sorry. Rusk will take care of the door. Send me the bill.”

“I’ll send it to you personally,” Imani told her, flatly pleasant. “This court’s for loading.”

“I was loading. I was bringing a compliment.” She smiled and went past us into the workroom like she’d been invited, and Nico was standing by the dress form with his arms folded.

I knew her voice. I’d heard it in Ellis’s kitchen in New York, the morning after a Los Angeles number lit up the floor by my bed and I let it go to voicemail. I’d called back with coffee and Khalil listening, and got her office and then her, asking for my measurements before Sophie had even sent me the contract, saying WHIT like she’d already printed it somewhere.

“Nico.” She kissed the air near his cheek. “You didn’t tell me you’d finished it.”

“I haven’t.”

“It doesn’t look unfinished. Turn for me, Jace.”

“Careful with the left sleeve.” Nico didn’t move from the form. “It’s only pinned.”

I turned. The jacket stopped above my waistband and left the rest of the line to my trousers, and in the mirror I watched Vivian watch exactly what I wanted her to see. She asked for the turn again, slower. I did it before Nico could tell her this wasn’t a fitting.

“There.” She sounded pleased with herself. “That’s an opening.”

Nico’s smile changed. “An opening for what?”

“Thursday. The first group. I’ve looked at the order all afternoon and everything begins politely. That doesn’t.”

“It’s mine. It’s my own collection. It isn’t one of the Harlan looks.”

“I can see it isn’t. That’s why I’m interested. What does it need?”

He touched the cuff. “This. The shoulder. The lining. And the rest of the collection it belongs to. I haven’t even decided how I want it photographed.”

“We’ll have people in that room who could solve that for you.”

“A photographer could solve the photograph problem,” Imani said from the door, where she was trying the hinge with both hands and a face like a bill.

Vivian smiled at her without taking her eyes off Nico. “I’m saying they should see it. He should be proud of it.”

I wanted to help him hear the compliment. That’s the part I’d have denied if anybody asked.

“It moves,” I offered. “Even unfinished.”

“I noticed.” She came closer, keeping her hands off the cloth. “Would you be comfortable opening in it?”

The first place. Out in front, with their attention still new enough to spend on my face.

“Yes.”

Nico looked at me. I heard the word after I’d let it out.

“If he wants to use it,” I added.

“Of course,” Vivian told us both, gently reasonable. “I’m asking whether the two of you like the idea.”

“You asked him,” Nico pointed out, very quietly.

Nobody moved. Through the passage, Doreen was explaining to a customer that ready by the weekend did not mean before she unlocked the door that morning. Vivian picked up the cup she’d carried in off her car roof and set on the stool.

“Then I’m asking you now. Bring it in tomorrow. Let me see it with the other clothes before we rule out something that might be good for you.”

He rubbed the lining between his fingers. “I can bring it. That’s not me giving it to the presentation.”

“Nobody asked you to give anything away.”

Nico went still in the shoulders. I wanted to take his jacket off, and I wanted her to ask me for another turn.

She took out her phone. “May I have a picture? Just to show the shape.”

“Imani took a picture,” I told her. “I’ve got it.”

Nico hadn’t answered. My thumb was already on the picture. I held it where she could see it, and she leaned in beside me, her shoulder warm against mine for a second.

“Send that. That’s exactly what I mean.”

I sent it. The little swoop on the screen, and then there wasn’t anything to call back.

Nico took the phone out of my hand, not rough, and gave it right back like he’d only wanted to hold the fact for a second. “Not for posting,” he told her. “Not for a client deck. It’s unfinished work.”

“I heard you.”

“I’m making sure.”

“You don’t have to talk to me like I’m a stranger who wandered in off the street.”

“Then don’t make me repeat myself like one.”

Vivian held his eyes long enough that I started thinking of things to say to make everybody like me again. Then she thanked Imani for letting her interrupt, and Imani said she had a door to see about, which was not you’re welcome. Vivian pulled out of the court nose first this time, slow, brake lights on the whole way, while Imani watched every inch.

We listened to the engine go. Nico undid the fastening at my waist.

“Arms.”

I eased out of it. My own shirt felt thin and ordinary without it.

“I’m sorry. I thought you wanted her to see it.”

“I wanted her to ask me.”

“She did ask.”

“After you were already opening a show in it.”

I looked at Imani for help. She wasn’t offering any. “I said if you wanted to.”

“You said yes first, Jace. People hear that part fine.”

My phone buzzed. Khalil, answering the picture. I turned the screen down and stood there with a man I’d known since breakfast who’d just got disappointed in me, with nothing to offer that wasn’t another offer.

“I can tell her not to use it.”

“You can stop doing things for a minute,” he murmured, tiredly exact. “That would help.”

He put the jacket back on the form. Neither of them looked at me while they covered it, and I made myself stand in that without buying my way out.

Ruben came in through the shop with a bag of oranges, older than Nico, broad and slow-moving, in a transit jacket he hadn’t taken off yet and looking tired enough to object to the entire room. Nico kissed him and took the bag and Ruben took it right back.

“Half are for my sister.”

“Then why’d you bring them here?”

“Because I came here.” Ruben looked at the hanging door. “What happened to that?”

“Vivian,” Imani told him.

“Did she pay for it?”

“She said she would.”

“Mm.” He set the oranges on the only clear corner of the table. “Then you got a door that’s gonna stay like that. We eating? Nearby or nowhere. I drove a bus all day. I’m not traveling for a chair.”

“Jace is coming,” Nico said, looking at Ruben when he said it.

I wanted the invitation to mean I was forgiven. I settled for invited.

* * *

Khalil had waited up. It was late in New York, and he was in bed with the lamp on low and his face too close to the camera, and the first thing he did was put his thumb to the gap in his front teeth like he was trying not to grin too soon.

“There he is.”

“Here I am. You’re up.”

“You sent me a man in a copper jacket at bedtime. What did you think was gonna happen?” He leaned back so I could see more of him, the white T-shirt, the shoulder, the plant on his windowsill behind him that was still going through something. “Where are you right now?”

“Hotel bed. They gave me the kind of pillows you have to negotiate with.”

“Show me.”

I tipped the phone so he got the bed and the lights out on the hill, then propped it against the lamp, the way we’d learned to do it when I was in Paris and the phone got old.

“You looked like somebody whose night turned out better than he planned,” he murmured.

“It did, for about five minutes.”

“What happened after five minutes?”

“A lady backed her car into a door.” It wasn’t a lie. It just stopped before the next part. “I yanked the woman who runs the place out of the way by her pants. She thanked me. Then the lady with the car got out and told me Sophie wasn’t exaggerating.”

“About your mouth?”

“Or my measurements. She couldn’t decide.”

“Who’s the lady with the car?”

“The producer. Vivian Rusk.” I watched it land. “The number I called back with you listening.”

“The one who asked for your inseam before your agent sent you a contract.”

“She called it the waist.”

“Mm-hm.” He didn’t push. He looked at me a while instead, which is worse. “Did she hurt you? With the car?”

“No, baby. I yelled hold like it was a load-out. Rafi would be proud.”

“Good. Come here.”

“I’m three thousand miles from here.”

“Then come closer to the phone.”

I came closer. I’d been half hard since the shower, where I’d been thinking about how close that car came, and his mouth, and the way Vivian had looked at the copper and then at me. The other one, the part of me my mama prays about, doesn’t sort those out before it gets interested.

“Can I see you?” he asked.

“Ask me right.”

He smiled with the gap and all of it. “Take that shirt off for me.”

I took it off over my head, and he watched like the hotel had made me somebody new.

“Lie back.”

“You don’t get to boss me from New York.”

“I’m not bossing. I’m asking you to lie back so I can see the rest of you without looking up your nose.”

I lay back against the pillows and turned the phone so it got me from the chest down to the band of my boxers, and he went quiet in the way he goes quiet on a shoot when the light finally does what he’s been waiting on.

“Now that,” he breathed, “is a picture I keep.” His hand had gone down out of the frame. I could see his shoulder moving. “Tell me what you’re doing.”

“Nothing yet.”

“Liar. Your hand’s on your stomach.”

“My hand’s resting.”

“Then let it rest lower.”

I let it. Over the cotton first, slow, my palm flat along the length of myself, and I heard the change in his breathing come through the little speaker like he was in the room. That’s what gets me about him on a phone, every time. He makes a sound when I touch myself like I’ve touched him.

“Take them off,” he murmured. “Can I watch you take them off?”

“You already asked.”

“I’m asking again. I like hearing you say yes.”

“Yes.”

I pushed the boxers down and kicked them off the end of the bed, and my dick came up off my belly hard and I got my hand round it and the whole room went warm. Khalil made a sound I’d have paid twenty-two dollars a drink to hear in a club.

“Slow,” he told me. “You’re always in a hurry on the first night somewhere.”

“Because the first night somewhere is long.”

“Then it can be long. Use your thumb. The way I do.”

I did it the way he does, thumb over the head where I was already wet, the slick of it down the length and back, and my hips came up off the sheet on their own. His own shirt was off by then, his forearm working out of frame, and I wanted him so bad my teeth hurt.

“Tell me about the jacket,” he said, rough.

“You want to talk about clothes right now?”

“I want to hear you talk. Anything. Tell me what it felt like on.”

“Short. It stops right here.” I drew a line across my stomach with my free hand, above the hair, and watched his eyes follow it on the screen. “Nico’s mad at me.”

“Why?”

My hand stopped. Just for a second. “Because I told the producer I’d open the show in it before he said I could.”

“Mm.” He didn’t stop. “That’s a fix-it-tomorrow problem. Is it a fix-it-tomorrow problem?”

“Yes.”

“Then put your hand back.”

I put it back. I didn’t tell him about the picture leaving my phone. I could feel myself not telling him, like a skipped stair, and the other one turned that into heat instead of shame, which is the only trick it knows.

“Faster now,” he murmured. “Can I hear you?”

“You can hear me.”

“Louder than that. Nobody knows you in that hotel.”

I let him hear me. The sound I make when it’s good and I’ve stopped performing it came out of me, and he cussed, quiet and filthy, the way he only does when he’s close, and told me what he’d do if he was in that bed, that he’d have his mouth on my stomach right on the line where the jacket stopped and he’d take his time getting lower, that he’d make me ask him for it the way he has to ask me, and I was right there at the edge, heels dug in, hand full, when the screen went bright over his face.

A call. A banner across the top of him, white, with a name.

Vivian Rusk.

My hand stopped. I didn’t decide to stop it. Khalil was still talking and then he wasn’t, because he could see my face, and my face had gone somewhere.

“What.”

“Nothing.”

“Who is it?”

“Work.”

He heard it. I heard it too, the word I’d said to him on a staircase the first night I ever met him, with a man in a suit saying my name. He sat up a little.

“At this hour?”

“It’s not late here.”

“Then take it,” he said, very even.

The banner sat there with its two buttons, the red one and the one that would end him to answer her. I could feel the pull in my stomach, the same one from the workroom, and the thing about the other one is that it doesn’t only want sex. It wants to be chosen. It doesn’t care much who’s choosing.

I hit the red one.

The banner went away. Khalil’s face came back, and he was looking at me hard, the gap in his teeth gone because his mouth had closed.

“You wanted to,” he breathed.

“I didn’t take it.”

“I know. I watched you not take it.” He was quiet a second. “Your face wanted to.”

“My face wants a lot of things. Look at my face now.”

He looked, and his shoulders came down. Not all the way. “Put your hand back,” he murmured, “and look at me. Not at the top of the phone. At me.”

The screen buzzed once more while I was looking at him. A text this time, a smaller banner, and I read it before I could not read it.

First look tomorrow. Bring that energy.

“Eyes, Carolina,” Khalil murmured, and his voice had a hand in it.

That did it. That name in his mouth, Keon’s name for me off a sidewalk my first night in New York. I looked at him and nothing else, and he started talking again, lower, slower, about my stomach and the line and his mouth, and I let him have the rest of me. It went fast once it went. I came hard up my own chest with his name in my mouth and the hotel’s thin wall at my back, and he came right behind me, saying mine, and for a while all either of us did was breathe at a phone.

“Clean up,” he said eventually, sleepy and pleased with himself. “You’ll stick to the negotiating pillows.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t sir me at this hour. I’ll get ideas.” He rubbed his eyes. “Call me tomorrow? After the fitting. Tell me how it went with the jacket man.”

“I’ll tell you.”

“And Jace.” He was half under the blanket already, the phone tilting. “Tell your work they can call before ten.”

“I’ll tell them.”

He fell asleep with the call open, the screen full of his ceiling, and I lay in the mess I’d made and listened to him breathe before I hung up. Then I opened the message again.

First look tomorrow. Bring that energy.

Nico had agreed to bring the jacket in for somebody to look at. I knew the difference. I’d been standing right there when he made it.

I typed He hasn’t said yes to the jacket and looked at it a long time. The lights on the hill didn’t care. I erased it.

I didn’t correct her.