RYDER'S BUILDING

I had given the parking and maintenance attendants instructions to replace the Chang-P's tires, recharge the motors, put in new parachutes, and wash and detail it inside and out. Once the work was settled upon, I jogged two blocks down to Empire Square as a few raindrops, from what seemed like just one malicious cloud, dotted the intricate white and black tiles. Circling around a row of shrubs, iron tables, and benches, a crowd clasping their coffee bags and conversation hats were beginning to scurry for cover. I ducked my head and entered the lobby of the Iron Building.

The Iron was one of the smaller auxiliary buildings at Fashion Plaza and housed lesser mill companies, a few artisanal notions manufacturers, jobbers, and a dozen designers on the decline. Although I hadn't been inside it before, the black sand and sapwood lobby was similar to the others in the complex, if somewhat more shabby. To the left was a store that sold samples. On the right a line of hawkers, dressed in various costumes and representational fabrics, kick-started their smiles when I appeared and began their pitches, trying to press upon me their logoed trinkets and absurd promises of luxury, resiliency, economy, forecasted trends, and even minor acts of fashion sex. Ignoring them, I headed straight for the stairs.

The hallway was dim, the dark floor tiles covered with a thick archeology of yellowed wax and hopelessness. Here and there on the wall hung faded posters of weaving machines and yarn texturizers, each machine accompanied with women in big vests, revealing oiled skin in elf bikinis, and those night hats from a dozen years ago. Most of the doors were covered with ad-heads who smiled and began to describe the services or goods within. I passed them all and came, at last, to the far end of the hallway. In wiggling red letters that spelled out Ryder-Textile Jobber, a female ad-head with livid green hair smiled forcefully. As soon as she saw me, her black eyes met mine and she began speaking with the speed of a jet engine.

"This is the day the ocean speaks to you… that the dreams from sixty-thousand leagues beneath the surface, where memory is still memory and love is what it is supposed to be…"

To my right, I saw a men's room. While the ad-head blathered on, I ducked inside. The ancient walls were fake-citron wood, the floor black mesh. Two emerald commodes sat stiffly within. The heavily perfumed air gave me an instant headache. Above the single crystal sink, where six faucets dripped a slow polyphony, the mirror was warped and, depending on where I stood, alternately made my eyes and ears grow closer or farther apart.

I splashed my face with handfuls of overheated water and then raised my head to my soggy reflection. The mirror's distortion reflected some of my restlessness seeded in my harrowing experience on the Loop, but below that I could see the muddied turmoil of my thoughts about Dad, Vada, and myself.

Vada's appearance at my studio-now just hours ago-had, like a tornado, torn apart the intricate balances, arrangement, and denials of my life.

We had only spent part of a year together, but in my youthful fervor her assurance, her abilities, her contradictions, her mysteries, her love of costume had fascinated and consumed me. I was still so unformed and lacked confidence then. Perhaps that was why I had thrown myself into her request with such fever. I wanted to show her that I had changed. I didn't just have an elaborate showroom, design studio, and a successful business, but had matured in probably exactly the way she had wished for me years ago.

Staring into that fun house mirror, I told myself that the more logical and practical reason why I was doing this was to repay her. She had saved my life. She had rescued and put me back together. This was my chance to save her, if only for a quiet death. That idea-one I hadn't yet fully mulled-pleased me in a way I rarely allowed.

The truth was, of course, that as a tailor I was a maker of men. They came to me, frayed, unsure, and crooked, and it was my work that not just mended, protected, and reshaped their body, but also restructured who they were from the outside in. I could give them confidence, even if they didn't think they had any. I could give them authority, even when they deserved none. My suits could speak for them, if only they kept their mouths closed. And as such I saw myself as a mentor, teacher, friend, and sometimes a father to my clients. I enjoyed the restorative and formational power of the fabric arts, working without the bloody hacks of a surgeon, the elastic vagaries of a philosopher, or the sweaty labors of a coach.

I grabbed a silken towel to dry my hands and dabbed my face. This job was exactly the thing I had been preparing for my whole professional life. What greater goal could there be for clothes than to ease one into the next phase? From what I knew of her life, Vada had rebirthed herself with her costumes- how fitting that another costume would end it.

Throwing the towel into the receptacle, I stared at my face again. The momentary triumph I had just felt in ordering, defining, and congratulating myself on my journey, my payback, my grand quest, faded. There was something else going on. I didn't know what it was, but I was starting to feel its weight, its temperature, and hand.

Returning to the hall, I started toward Ryder's door. When I got within ten feet, the green-haired ad-woman came to life.

"Destiny of design," she said, batting her green-encrusted eyelids, "is the buried treasure of your dreams and Ryder Textile Jobber is the submarine, powered with the relentless velocity of love that is ready to take you to new depths of creativity and material freedom. Won't you come with me, take a dive into the wetness that is pure and clean?"

Turning the knob, I stepped inside.