From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant: A Novel (4 page)

Cunningham was no longer ignoring me.

“I’ll tell you if you let me look at that magazine,” I said.

“Not a chance.”

“Then never mind.”

After a moment’s hesitation he caved. “Okay. But you look at her spread only, and then you give it back. If you don’t give it back, I’m gonna call the CO. And then you’re fucked.”

“That’s all I would want. Just her spread.”

“Tell me her real name first.”

“Her real name is Olga,” I said. “Olya is just a nickname for Olga.”

“Olga?” He looked disappointed, flipping the magazine over to look at Olya’s image on the cover.

“That’s her real name.”

“Olga is a terrible name.”

“But she only goes by Olya. She has since she was a little girl. But you don’t have to believe me,” I said.

Despite his mean streak, Cunningham was a man of his word. He slid the
Maxim
through the slot in my cell door as promised. He was suddenly very interested in what I knew.

And so I began to tell him more about Olya. If a character witness is needed at my tribunal, let Olya Rubik be the first to
swear by my harmless intentions. She knew me from my very first day in America. She introduced me to models and stylists as I tagged along with her on castings. She walked in nearly every one of my shows, my debut in Bryant Park included. When I needed a fit model on short notice, Olya was always there. She adored my clothes, my sense of style, and remained loyal and true over the years. Cunningham was only interested in our nights in bed together, and so I told him about how she read aloud the story of Holden Caulfield, the severely depressed boy runaway. I threw in what she wore to bed, the brand of cigarettes she smoked, her taste in men. “You think she’d be into me?” he wondered. Yes, I said. It wasn’t a lie. Cunningham was very handsome. He could model catalog if he wanted to, I told him. Before I went to bed, I added one more memorable detail: the smell of her unwashed hair on her pillowcase at the end of a long day. Like dead roses.

Nay! I swear by the whole of New York City, by the begetter and all whom he begot, that I was created so that I could be tried with afflictions. For it says so right in my Qur’an. (Underlined courtesy of D. Hicks.) Now, as I’ve said, I’m no Muslim. In fact, with the exception of a weekly Vinyasa class I took back in New York, I’ve never gone in for anything spiritual. Glamour, fashion, sex, drugs—these were all too alluring for me. How could I subscribe to any organization that pointed its righteous finger at a hedonist?

Back in 2002, I had financial afflictions of a certain variety. These pains would come to haunt me for most of my career, and it would be my hunger for money, as they say when it comes to the immigrant mind, that would feed me into the hands of Homeland Security.

During fashion week I was still staying with Olya, and I snagged a few freelance gigs as a stylist’s assistant. One was for the insurmountable Vivienne Cho, a designer of such elegant women’s clothing that no one in New York at this time could topple her leaning tower of ready‑to‑wear. Behind her, in close second, was Philip Tang, who was a friend of mine from Manila. We both attended FIM, only Philip transferred after a year to Central Saint Martins in London, leaving me behind to fend for myself among all the other lame‑os who were so intent on doing bridal wear for the rest of their lives.

Because of the impression I’d made on Vivienne I got hired on to do a few other designers’ shows that week—Catherine Malandrino, who I absolutely adored; a young Zac Posen. Even Philip paid me to assist him during what became his most hectic season. He had received a grant from the CFDA
¹
and was being courted by the president of Louis Vuitton – Moët Hennessy, Yves Carcelle. All of the supplies I needed to set up a workshop I was given by Philip at this time: a portable Singer, a form mannequin, a rotary cutter. The rest, thread and fabric and linings, I purchased on Fashion Avenue.

As the work petered out, I became intent on finding an apartment of my own. Since money was still tighter than the skinny jeans I wore around my size 30 waist, I settled for a tiny studio apartment in Bushwick, Brooklyn, right off the Kosciuszko stop on the J, M, Z. For anyone who worked in fashion, this was a kind of exile. Bushwick was a dangerous neighborhood on the cusp of hipster Williamsburg, my north star. It was unlike Williamsburg in that it refused to let go of its roots in high crime, to the dismay of the Corcoran Group real estate agents who were so determined to turn it into Bushwick
Heights
. Still, there were plenty of hipsters around cohabiting with the poverty-stricken natives, and I, fortunately or unfortunately, qualified as one of the former, because I was an artist and fashionable.

I first met Ahmed Qureshi, the benefactor, the mover and shaker, the bane of my existence, on the day I moved in. I was hauling Philip’s form mannequin up the front stoop when a man in a white dishdasha opened the door. His gown was draped to his
ankles, and I saw that he was sporting a pair of fluorescent aqua socks, the once popular alternative to beach sandals.

“New tenant?” he asked. He was a foreigner too. Our skin color was the same deep sienna. From his accent I guessed that he was Pakistani. My family once had a maid from Karachi with similar inflections. But unlike her, this man had an additional British lilt that gave his speech a great deal of authority.

My own Filipino accent was slight. I spoke English with the rhythmic singsong of Tagalog punctuated by a California rise picked up from years of watching American television. Particularly the show
Beverly Hills, 90210.
Only when I was nervous, as I was at that moment, did my pronunciation stagger. I’d immediately slip into speaking like my parents—unable to pronounce the F or V consonants. I’d worked for years to correct this deficiency, but you can’t fight who you are. “Just moobing in,” I said. In my head I repeated the proper pronunciation.
Move. Moving. Moved
.

“Welcome to Evergreen Avenue,” he said. “You’ll find nothing evergreen about it. Who’s this?” He tapped the mannequin I had tucked under my arm.

“Oh, this is a dress form. I’m a designer.”

“Fantastic. I’m in the garment business myself. Imported fabric from Egypt, India, all over. Ahmed Qureshi. Pleased to meet you.”

“Boy,” I said, and we shook.

“Come, let me help you with your things.”

“It’s really not necessary.”

“Don’t be silly. A man extends his hand you should take it. After all, we’re neighbors. I have the entire first floor.”

I told him I didn’t have much, just a few personal items like my suitcase, the Singer, a sewing kit, four or five bolts of fabric.
He grabbed what he could from the curb where the cab had dropped me off and followed me up to the second floor.

That first apartment wasn’t much bigger than the cell I find myself in now. The kitchen boasted a cast-iron tub bolted to the hardwood floor. “Classical prewar,” the Corcoran agent who rented it to me had called it. And for the price of six hundred dollars a month it came furnished with a full-size mattress, a bureau, and a decrepit old fan, all left behind by the former tenant. Because we were still in the midst of a heat wave this late in September, the agent threw in a preowned air conditioner as a signing bonus.

The little fan had been left on and was blowing hot air. Ahmed followed me in and placed my things down onto the floor. He said: “Your predecessor met a rather unfortunate end.”

“Oh no. What happened?”

“He was executed. Right where you’re standing now.”

I sidestepped, instinctively.

“Two men broke in, tied him up in a chair, and ransacked the apartment. They found nothing. What do you expect? He was a street merchant. He sold little trinkets. Cell phone cases and the like. He didn’t have anything. So they put two in his chest.”

“Jesus.”

“They left a note too, which they pinned to his forehead with a thumbtack. ‘Go home Arabs’ it said. The idiots. The poor guy was a Bangladeshi. And turning an ordinary homicide into a hate crime in this day and age will only get you an additional ten to fifteen. Am I wrong?”

“That’s terrible.”

“It’s all true. Every word of it. This is the world we live in. I
think that was his.” Ahmed pointed to the fan, and it somehow took on a greater significance as it clicked twice and then jammed at the end of its 180-degree rotation. I turned it off.

“How did they get in?” I asked.

“How else? They broke down the door. I wasn’t home, I was in Port au Prince with a young lady. Not my wife. But if I had been home I would have heard them. I’d have called the authorities. And who knows, that Bangladeshi could still be here today. Anyway, look at me going on. I’m scaring you. This kind of thing is a freak occurrence. In this building, ever since the homicide, we watch out for each other.”

We shook hands. I didn’t know if I completely believed the story about the Bangladeshi. As I would soon learn, Ahmed had a taste for embellishment.

Over the coming weeks I found work here and there for lesser designers through the connections I had made during fashion week. I dressed models and took Polaroids. I helped with impromptu shows, showcases, even trunk shows, ironing fifty pounds of crumpled dresses and pinning them on twenty Russian models in no time flat. It was all very repetitive, frankly, but I was excited by the contacts I was making in New York. Everyone worked or partied or slept with each other. The designers, the stylists, the makeup artists, the bookers, the models, the photographers, we were all part of an incestuous machine with one purpose: to create beauty.

Getting set up in Bushwick also enabled me to embark on my own enterprise: the collection I had been planning since I left Manila. I sewed at night and on my days off, starting with a fine-layered white dress, the skirt a matte satin over a soft wool slip.
The wool hairs adhering to the satin produced a natural clinging pattern. I felt I was on to something completely original.
²

In Bushwick I was surrounded by struggling artists and musicians who came from middle-class backgrounds similar to mine. The neighborhood was an artsy barrio. We bartered things on the streets, gathered found objects. I acquired a full-bodied mirror from a man on McKibbin for a carton of Camel Lights. My worktable had once been someone’s front door. It looked as if it had been kicked in by the cops. I loved the rough urban contrast to the elegant fabrics I’d cut on its surface. I was assimilating, you see. I wasn’t just some fly‑by gentrifier.

At night one could hear the real Bushwick come alive. Arguments abounded from the neighbors above or across the street: men calling women bitches, women calling men liars and cheaters, children wailing, and then all of them being momentarily drowned out by sirens.

One learned to tune all of this out.

Ahmed stopped by unexpectedly on a night when the couple above me were really going at it. It was late when he knocked, after ten, and I had been working since the afternoon and had no intention of letting up.

“You hear this upstairs?” he said. “How can you work through it?” He invited himself in.

“Should we do something?”

“Like what? There’s nothing we can do. She’ll call the cops, that’s usually how it ends. Or she’ll throw him out, and he’ll be
gone for weeks. What’s the point, when she always takes him back? It’s been going on for years.” He helped himself to a look around my apartment. The cotton sheets strewn on my bed, my laptop, an iron steaming on my work table. Then there was the form draped in the fine-layered dress.

“Oh my, you really are in fashion. Are you a homosexual?”

“Excuse me?” I was so taken aback by his bluntness I grew defensive. “No,” I said. “I like women. Blondes,” I specified.

“Easy, I didn’t mean anything by it. I know plenty of fashion people in my line of work, mostly male homos. I see that you’re offended. Let me make it up to you. Since you’re a designer—a talented one at that, as I can see from this lovely dress—allow me to offer you discounted fabrics at a bottom price. Consider it, when the time comes.”

“Right. You said you were a fabric salesman.”

“Of sorts. I don’t like to put limitations on what I do. I have a finger in many pies. I do a little importing-exporting. I move things from point A to point B, with little interference from variable X. I’m a businessman. And yes, sometimes I have one of those fingers in the fashion pie. Lucky for you I have plenty of contacts in the industry. Especially in New York, London, and Dubai, the latter of which I am no longer welcome. A discrepancy with me and the sheikh’s youngest daughter—a misunderstanding, naturally.”

Each of Ahmed’s stories seemed incredibly far-fetched to me at the time. But I never suspected I was dealing with someone who wanted to harm America. An arms dealer, please! I was a designer of women’s wear. What would I know about arms? I saw through his stories, of course. I wasn’t stupid. They were so obviously embellished, but his manner never struck me as dangerous. As
he went on about the sheikh’s youngest daughter and all the virgins he had had in Dubai, he claimed that he was also a wanted man in Yemen. “But who isn’t these days!”
³
Ahmed made ridiculous comments like these all the time, and one had to learn to pay them no mind.

Especially when, say, dishes in the apartment above us were being smashed. We listened as a door slammed. The man was leaving. Suddenly there was a period of quiet that I wanted to take advantage of if Ahmed would only get out. But he turned to the form mannequin and began admiring my dress, rubbing the skirt with his dirty fingers.

“Careful, please,” I said. “It’s quite delicate.”

“You’re talented, Boy. I like the texture. What about men? I’m looking for a stylist myself.”