If Angels Fight (22 page)

SAVAGE DESIGN

E
arly one evening last September Lilia Gaines pulled open the metal gates of Reliquary on West Broadway at the shoddy Canal Street end of Manhattan’s Soho. As she did, she murmured to herself:

“
In the city with sleep disorders styles get old fast. But old styles never disappear. They lay waiting for a kiss or a love bite . . .
”

She trailed off. Lilia’s copywriting skills had never been a big strength and she found herself groping for a punch line.

A really young couple appeared wearing knock-off Louis Vuitton sunglasses and looking like they might be at the start of a long Nightwalker romp. His jacket collar was turned up; she had a wicked, amused smile.

Lilia could remember being like them, a brand new walker in the dark with eyes just a bit sensitive to sunlight. They waited while she unlocked the door, came inside with her, and headed for the relics table at the rear.

In the last few months, this kind of eager customer had started reappearing. Twenty-five and thirty years ago, Reliquary was open all night, closing only when full daylight fell on the storefront and the customers fled.

“Reliquary—Boutique Fashion—So New and SO Undead!” was the slogan in those glory days. Then as now one could find capes in a variety of lengths, elegant black parasols to keep the sun at bay, tops designed for easy exposure of the neck and throat. Some of the stock was a bit shopworn.

There had been good years when Nightwalkers were THE fresh thing. Then there were the lean years when vampires were afraid to show themselves, and Reliquary became a dusty antique store while Lilia worked part time jobs and held on tight to her rent controlled apartment on East Houston Street.

This evening, Lilia watched the boy select a red silk handkerchief displaying a black bat, the long-ago emblem of Bloodsucker Night at the gay disco The Saint. The girl slipped on a pendant with the logo of the Gate of Night, that brief legend of a blood bar on Park Avenue South three decades back. Reliquary had always specialized in memorabilia of past Undead revivals.

Another customer, a man in running clothes and shades, entered and went over to a rack of capes. A woman stepped inside and glanced around, found a repro of a poster for
Fun and Gore
, a scandalous 1930s Greenwich Village “Transylvanian Review.”

As the young couple approached the register, the girl pulled the boy’s jacket and shirt off his shoulders. She smiled at Lilia as though offering her a piece of expensive white fudge.

This was very young love. Their teeth still looked normal; the small bites on his neck had barely penetrated the skin. Fangs and puncture wounds still lay in their future.

The boy’s smile was blank. He knotted the kerchief over the bites but left one showing. Lilia guessed that his first blood buzz had been last night and that he’d be bitten again very shortly.

The girl looked at the photo behind Lilia, raised her sunglasses and said, “That’s you!”

The kid was sharp; Lilia nodded. The picture was from the 1980 Mudd Club Undead and Kicking Party where Lilia and Larry had introduced Downtown Manhattan to Nightwalking.

She was front and center along with Larry Stepelli, the bisexual boyfriend who designed all her clothes. In black with faces white as bone, they stood out among the graffiti artists, stray freaks, and Warhol Factory stars.

Lilia knew she should warn these kids where blood sucking was going to lead. She remembered her own addiction and the horrors of Ichordone Therapy. But too many years of marginal living left her unwilling to risk endangering the chance she saw coming.

Instead she gave them a double discount because they would tell their friends about the place. Then she told the girl that she was hiring sales help and took her name. It was Scarlet Jones (an invention, Lilia assumed). The boy was just plain Bret—too paranoid to leave a last name or so blood-dizzy he couldn’t remember it.

The phone rang as the kids left and someone with a heavy European accent asked for directions to the store. Lilia felt the good years coming back.

“Staff called in sick?” Even before raising her eyes, Lilia recognized from long ago the throaty, sly voice that somehow made every comment sound dirty but also chilling.

The one called Katya must have come in as the kids left. Well over six feet tall, she stood near the door in a jacket and slacks of fierce gray suede and high heel ankle boots of raw leather.

“Other’s shoes are man-made,” it was said in certain circles, “but Katya’s are made out of men.” Maybe it was her imagination, but Lilia could almost see the outlines of ears and fingers in the heels.

“Just me alone, tonight,” she said, though that’s the way it had been for a long time. “To what do I owe this honor?” It had been at least twenty years since she’d gotten anything but a fraction of a nod and an amused stare from this woman. And it was a rare occasion when their paths had crossed.

Katya glanced at the Mudd Club photo and frowned. Lilia knew she’d caught sight of her young self, a supporting player in Lilia and Larry’s big moment. Katya was off to one side with Felice, who had mood swings, and Paulo, who worked part-time as a professional boy. In that intense instant, all five of them were kids without a dime trying to break into the Fashion Trade.

Katya glanced around, and Lilia saw her registering the somewhat tired capes on display, the costume jewelry necklaces with what on second glance turned out to be drop-of-blood motifs.

“Happened to be in the neighborhood,” Katya said. “Some intriguing things are to be seen in these quiet little nooks. It’s the essence of our business, isn’t it, keeping an eye on what is being worn on the streets?”

Katya turned to go as a male couple came in. “I’ll tell Paulo and Felice about all this,” she said. “I know they’ll want to see you too.”

The time when they were new in the city and broke was well past. Now Larry was the domestic partner of a rich lawyer. Katya, Felice and Paulo ran Savage Design, which had been a power in New York fashion for as long as that scene’s short memory ran.

People in the business went in such fear of the trio that they called them The Kindly Ones and prayed for their help. Before any enterprise was launched, it was considered wise to offer them tribute. The Kindly Ones were THE arbiters and always hungry for something new and perverse or at least hot and retro.

Of their little group, only Lilia had failed to make it. Katya’s visit could mean a break for her, one last desperate chance.

Through the window, she watched Katya take in this dark sliver of the neighborhood. A small, elegant hotel a block and a half north marked the start of trendy Soho.

Next to Reliquary was a shop that sold spray paint and other graffiti supplies. The storefronts across the street were dark and empty; the building upstairs was a tenement. This gritty little block was a bit of pre-gentrified New York preserved in a new century.

Next Monday morning, Lilia sat in the conference room of Savage Design sipping coffee. She couldn’t decide whether she was more ashamed or bitter when she compared her current life to those of the Kindly Ones.

The Kindly Ones’ initial expressions when she arrived left Lilia with no doubt that they found her an amusing curiosity. She kept silent and studied the walls, which were decorated with photos of last spring’s coup.

An emblematic black and white photo taken at what might have been dawn, but was more likely dusk, showed a blonde figure wearing an ostentatiously plain dark dress and the slightest smile of triumph.

All was shades of gray except for the handbag. That was in the red and orange tones of an October bonfire.
A Satanic Possession of One’s Own!
was the caption.

Around the room, ads displayed belts, scarves, wraps. A photo was headlined,
For the One Willing to Exchange a Flawed Soul for Perfection
.

Satan’s Bag,
read the caption on the
Harper’s Bazaar
double page spread,
Designer Fashion from inside the Fiery Gates!

Paulo noticed her interest. He still had the face and body of a kid. But now he had the eyes of an old, bored lizard. He wore a short pants suit of navy blue cheviot wool. A yo-yo spun constantly on his right hand.

“Last Spring’s triumph,” said an ancient voice from inside him. “As of yet nobody knows what to do about next year.” His yo-yo slept at the end of its string, looped the loop as he spoke.

Years before, his allowance from a mysterious sugar daddy who insisted he dress like an English schoolboy was often all that kept them in their daily cappuccino and crème brulee.

“The year hasn’t even begun,” said Felice, whose face today was the mask of tragedy, “and it’s already dreary, tired, lacking a defining moment.” She was whip thin and dressed in black.

Her mouth appeared to curve even further down. Her eye sockets seemed hollow. It was whispered in the fashion trade that in moments of emotional stress she cried tears of blood.

Katya yawned and said, “Nothing like the designer suicide followed by the show of his work at the Met last year.”

“Brilliant timing, yes,” said Paolo as the yo-yo spun through the intricate hop-the-fence trick, “but significant because it was one of a kind. If something similar happened now, would anyone be interested?”

Katya said, “We’re being rude to our guest. Lilia, darling, understand that we all change over time. With us, Paulo’s Sugar Daddy decided it was easier to become a permanent live-in guest and share Paulo’s youth at first hand. Felice got tired of trying to suppress her feelings and allowed them to come forth for everyone to see. I went from thinking men were useless to finding a use for them. Perhaps you never wanted to reach that kind of resolution.”

She put her feet with the sling-backs like no others up on the table. “Everyone talks as if we had dark powers. But Savage Design is quite a simple straightforward business. Paulo handles the finances, Felice does the promotion, and I’m the scout.”

Then she asked, “How’s Larry?”

Lilia’s answer was careful. “Still hooked up with the rich lawyer. They adopted an Asian child, and are talking about getting married now that it’s legal.”

She left out the fact Larry and she were talking again and that he’d provided money to keep Reliquary open. Lilia wondered how much they knew about her business or if this was just idle curiosity mixed with bitchiness.

Paulo said, “I understand he’s breaking up with that lawyer.”

Lilia hadn’t heard that.

“I brought Lilia here,” Katya told the others, “because her shop is still in business and showing signs of life. I’ve seen a glimmer on the street that could go semi-major. A Nightwalker revival,” she said.

Paulo’s ancient eyes closed. Felice looked away.

“Round and round we go,” Paulo said. “Remember the Boom when everyone was high on blood and being a vampire was utterly hip? Recall the Bust a few years later? Nobody became Dracula and immortal. Everyone was a blood junkie and went into therapy or jail.”

“Yes, Katya said, “we’ve all been there and back. But in one afternoon in Tribeca and Soho I saw a couple of dozen people under twenty-five wearing Blood Sucker artifacts.”

“Cyclical but inevitable,” murmured Felice, but her mouth was now a straight line.

“Before a look can be revived it must die!” said Paulo thoughtfully. “Or at least be presumed dead!”

“Then there’s the boutique itself,” said Katya as if Lilia wasn’t present. “Reliquary is so passé it’s almost tantalizing. And it’s on a block that’s this kind of time bubble from the old, bad Manhattan of thirty years back. The sort of place people who weren’t actually there get nostalgic about—all grit, grunge and decay!”

At the word grunge, Paulo’s reptile eyes lit up with old memories and he used both hands to make the yo-yo do “Buddha’s Revenge.”

“Delicious decay,” Felice murmured. The others looked away before her face slipped into the mask of comedy pose. It was said, with reason, that none who saw the laughing mask lived to tell about it.

They discussed what could be done with Reliquary. Lilia stayed very still and alert, determined not to let this opportunity pass her by.

“
Reliquary
—
Open Dusk to Dawn
” read the store’s new webpage headline: “
Costumes and Accessories For Long After Twilight
,” it promised.

A dozen customers were in her store at 3:30 AM and Lilia stood behind the counter keeping an eye out for shoplifters, watching Scarlet Jones greet friends. Lilia knew all about history—especially fashion history—repeating itself the first time as farce, the second as camp.

She noticed that Scarlet’s teeth were changing, getting sharper. Her boyfriend, Bret, worked in the stockroom and looked paler and dizzier each time Lilia saw him.

The story was unfolding much faster this time than the last. Thirty years back the cult grew little by little. Word was spread in print, “
Something REALLY Old Is Very New Again!
” a New York Post gossip columnist had said.
“They Walk By Night
—
Creepy and DELICIOUS!”
read the
Women’s Wear Daily
headline as things got underway.

Suddenly Reliquary’s door opened and the room stirred. Magnetic, wonderfully turned out in an antique black cape and dark red top, seemingly untouched by age, Larry Stepelli entered with an entourage of models, minor celebrities and star bloggers—all young and male.

Thirty years before, Lilia would have been the one beside him. The flamboyant bisexual guy and plain, serious girl was the perfect pairing of that moment. They were in the vanguard of the trip into the night.

Now they were distant friends and the arrangement was financial. A few months before, she’d sensed Larry’s boredom. The rich boyfriend, their adorable adopted child, the art gallery in Chelsea, weren’t doing it for him.

So she’d turned him on to the Nightwalker revival she was trying to create. It only took a couple of reminders of their initial encounters with the dark mysteries. His curiosity and desire kicked in. Larry advanced money to pay off the back rent and restock the store.