Free From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant: A Novel by Alex Gilvarry

man, through and through, and it was dresses I kept returning to between fits and starts of composing Ahmed’s suits.
    The dress is a performance—its only responsibility is to the moment. It is elegant and ephemeral. It can’t sustain a woman’s body for very long. Women’s changes are far too radical. In couture, some dresses can be worn for only a few hours, max. What’s the saying? Elegance is a dress too dazzling to dare wear it twice. 1
    Whenever I finished a garment I needed to see it in action, moving around, before I could put it on the rack. This was all part of the creative process. I needed the opinion of a woman’s body before I made my revisions. Each dress was a work in progress, even after the catwalk. Not until a dress landed in the showroom was it truly finished. Here is where I had already formed the habit of deferring to Olya. My darling Olya, who most recently appeared on the cover of
Maxim
. She was my fit model, coming all the way out to Bushwick to try on my clothes. By the end of September 2002, in addition to my white, fine-layered dress, I had enhanced two or three other looks from my Manila days that I wanted to see on her.
    “I have to tell you, Boy, this is not so nice, this neighborhood,” Olya said, on her third visit to my studio. She was getting undressed.
    “What do you mean? It’s not so horrible. It’s close to Williamsburg,” I said.
    I gathered the layered dress as Olya held out her arms. Together we put it on over her head. I zipped her up in front of the mirror and made some adjustments to the skirt so that it assumed its intended shape. This would become my inside-out dress, a hallmark of the (B)oy Fall Collection ’04, though the resemblance would be apparent only to the most trained of eyes. 2
    “I saw a drug peddler outside,” she said. “A hideous man with an eye patch. He was distributing pills from a prescription bottle. People formed a line, holding out their hands like it was holy communion.”
    “Oh that’s just Roddy, he’s harmless. It’s methadone he’s selling. It’s prescription.” It made me uneasy, imagining her prancing around Bushwick, but I was trying to make the best of it.
    “Addicts make my skin crawl,” said Olya.
    “Try walking,” I told her.
    She paced the room in heels.
    “You have any blow?” she asked.
    “I’m out.”
    “We should get some if we go out tonight. There’s a party at Spa. Steven Meisel will be there.”
    “How does it feel?”
    Olya stopped in the mirror and looked at herself. “It’s beautiful. I love it.”
    “Seriously?”
    “Yes. It’s totally elegant, you know? Not like slut.”
    “How does it feel in the waist? Is it too snug?”
    “No, it’s perfect.”
    I felt so happy at that moment I started to weep, something I did whenever a real friend complimented my work. “I’m so glad you like it. Take it off and let’s try on something else.”
    “Look at you, darling,” she said. “You’re such a bitch. Don’t cry.”
    “I’m just so happy. I can’t help it.”
    Someone knocked. There was only one person it could be. Ahmed had a way of interrupting the purest moments of my ambition.
    “Oh shit,” I said under my breath.
    “Who is that?”
    “Guess. It’s probably Ahmed.”
    “Who’s Ahmed?”
    “He’s a client. I’ll get rid of him.”
    As soon as I opened up, Ahmed said, “You’ve been crying. What’s the matter?”
    “Sorry, I have a friend over. We’re doing a fitting.” I stepped back so that Ahmed could see Olya in the white dress.
    “My dear,” Ahmed said to Olya, “my most sincere apologies. Allow me to introduce myself, and then I will be on my way. I am Ahmed Qureshi, garment salesman.”
    “Olya, international model.”
    It was like they were speaking the same language. Olya held out her hand and Ahmed took it and bowed his head. With Olya so elegantly dressed and Ahmed in his same soiled dishdasha, the moment gave me an impression of a child’s fairy tale.