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 more pale and dizzy 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.
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 restocked the store.
He walked over and they made kissing gestures. “You must have heard?” he said.
“About your break-up? Sorry.”
“Inevitable. I imagine it will all be very civilized. I’ll get a settlement and visiting rights with Ai Ling.” He looked around. “Business has really picked up.”
Lilia said, “Yes. I was even summoned to Seventh Avenue by the Kindly Ones.”
“My, MY!”
“Remember when telephone gossip was the fastest news on the planet? Now what any kid posts online, the world knows before the next day dawns.”
Larry smiled and turned away. She watched him help a pale young man select a ring with a tiny broken crucifix on it.
Lilia remembered the last Nightwalker scene turning sour. “BLOODY HELL” screamed a Post headline. “Nightwalkers in Rehab,” was a three part series in the Village Voice. But it was years between those first hints and the morning everyone woke up with hideous addictions to blood and biting.
This time the turnaround would be quick. And Lilia knew she had to ride the wave or go under for good.
A few nights later, the Savage Design trio, complete with personal assistants, photographers, a video crew, and a special secret arrived at Lilia’s shop.
Paulo in soccer shorts and jersey repeatedly kicked a ball against the hydrant in front of Reliquary. The kid’s legs did a fast dance step as he stopped the rebound each time then slammed the ball again. Seemingly independent of this, the lizard eyes took in the store and its surroundings.
Felice nodded to Lilia as she went through Reliquary with her face carefully kept in neutral and examined everything while murmuring notes to herself on a hand held recorder.
“Nothing needs to be changed,” she said to the production assistant who followed her. “Treat each dusty corner and gauche display as an asset. Pretend you’re an explorer stumbling on a mysterious if tacky Transylvanian castle.”
Then she said into the recorder, “Time is more precious than blood on this particular project. It’s all a matter of DEATH and death.”
A team of trimmers lighted and dressed Reliquary’s front windows. Katya appeared outside shortly afterwards, towering in dark, rough leather platform shoes with dizzyingly high heels that seemed to be watching when you stared. She herded a couple of long-necked professional models and half a dozen Nightwalker kids whom she’d discovered around the city.
The photography crew did shots of them on the sidewalk. “They’ll be in here shortly,” Katya assured Lilia when she popped into the shop. She also insisted on having Scarlet Jones and Bret in the promotional shots.
“We’ll have them behind the counter like they run the place, darling. They exhibit the proper mix of inexperience and incipient damnation.”
It went without saying that Lilia herself would stay out of camera range—hers was not the look or age range being aimed for. As the crew began setting up inside, the male model said something to Katya that Lilia couldn’t hear. In reply Katya looked down at him and pointed to her shoes. The guy wilted.
Scarlet Jones and Bret wore sunglasses as they basked in the photographer’s lights. Felice had them change into white silk tops that rested off their shoulders. Lilia noticed that the bites on their necks were deeper and thought these new blouses looked somehow familiar.
Felice turned to her and said, “Of course you recognize the original Herrault design from the last Nightwalker go-round. Maison Herrault itself OK’d these knock-offs.
“I was afraid we’d have to go to Indonesia for production. Time delay on a fad like this can be fatal. But Hurrah for the Recession! Suddenly there are sweatshops in the Bronx—fast, cheap, and with passable quality.”
Lilia looked away lest Felice smile. But she heard the other say, “Reliquary will get a six-week exclusivity period after which they’ll be sold at other specialty shops throughout North America and world markets. Then,” her mouth turned downward, “Bloomingdales, Macy’s, and by next summer, Target.” She and the young man adjusting Scarlet and Bret’s clothes both shuddered.
“Here’s a little surprise,” said Katya, “someone you’ll remember from the ‘good’ old days.”
Paulo somewhat gingerly ushered in a tiny, ancient woman. As she entered this woman briskly flicked a cigarette butt on the sidewalk while reaching into the formless smock she wore to draw out and light another one.
Lilia looked on amazed. This was the legendary Marguerite, “The Seamstress Extraordinary,” as she’d been called back in the old Garment District. It was said that Marguerite could, without measuring, without even looking, cut a sleeve or a pant leg to exactly the length needed.
That afternoon Marguerite smoked one Gauloises after another. Requests that she stop were met with shrugs, coughs, and mumbles in barely recognizable English, “A vice like any other!”
“Amazed?” Paulo murmured to Lilia.
“That she’s not dead,” Lilia said.
“Not in the usual sense anyway,” he replied. “She’s become a sort of curator for Herrault. His emissary in this world.”
In the old days Marguerite was employed at the prestigious Maison Herrault’s New York branch and lent out to old friends of the late designer. She would always be brought along on fashion shoots in cases of an emergency.
One had arisen in Reliquary just before she appeared. The lapel of the top Bret wore wouldn’t lay open at the angle the photographer wanted. Marguerite reached up for Bret’s ear, pulled his head down to her eye level and with a needle, thread, and scissors from inside her smock, made three stitches and fixed the lapel in place.
Decades before as a naïve young intern Lilia had first encountered Marguerite. It was in a room slightly larger than a closet at the Studio Building where all fashion photography was done back in that day.
There, with fabric fragments thick on the floor, Marguerite stitched buttons onto a waistband while she squinted at the airshaft outside the window and sipped from a small glass of what young Lilia supposed was red wine.
She had been told to take a pair of women’s flared slacks and have Marguerite turn them into culottes. This was an emergency, a great crisis—the shoot was to feature culottes but the garment in question did not yet exist. Marguerite was present for just such moments. She had looked at Lilia with disgust and disapproval as if she was about to send her back to the kitchen with the demand that she be properly braised.
Then, with scarcely a glance at the design sketch Lilia gave her, Marguerite had snipped off one leg, with a second slice snipped the other and cuffed both with a few stitches. She muttered “voila,” blew smoke in Lilia’s face, and shoved the garment at her.
Recalling this, Lilia watched Marguerite finger the tops Scarlet and Bret wore. “Instant prêt a porter!” the old woman muttered to herself. “For such a venue anything more than off-the-rack would not do.”
Herrault had been a contemporary of Chanel, protégé of Schiaparelli, lover of Mainbocher, rival of Dior. His “Sang Chaud” Collection, the master’s last great triumph, had defined the look of the prior Nightwalker craze.