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Fashion Victim
Esther M Freisner
It was my big break--an exclusive interview with the top force in U.S. fashion design, the One, the only, the Original: Totzi! Imitated But Never Equaled. At least that's what it said on all his business cards. As my editor kept telling me while I wrapped up my research before heading out the door, I was lucky to get it.
"Totzi doesn't talk to just anyone, Richards. As a matter of fact, he seems to have a tendency to restrict his interviews to reporters who are still wet behind the ears. And let's face it, yours are positively soaking."
I absentmindedly rubbed the back of one ear and asked, "Any idea why he does that?"
My editor shrugged. "None. Maybe he likes to give new kids a break. Hey, who cares why? Count your blessings, do the job, and be grateful--this interview will make your career."
I gave one final glance at the data on my screen. I was a good girl; I'd done my homework. Every previous interview ever written about Totzi was now neatly stored away in my laptop. I even had a special file containing any really interesting details I'd noticed while reading those articles.
Funny thing, the details: there weren't all that many, and they weren't all that interesting. Every interview the great designer ever gave tended to dwell on his work, not his life. Okay, I could understand that: some people like their privacy more than others. I understood, and yet... it still bothered me, somehow.
Oh well, worrying about such stuff wasn't going to help my career. In fact, if I wasted any more time on foolish thoughts and didn't get over to Totzi's showrooms to do the interview, I probably wouldn't have a career. I entered one last question on my laptop and left the office running.
__________
The receptionist at House of Totzi reminded me of the lunch lady at my old elementary school, the one who always used to give me dirty looks if I made any jokes about the Mystery Meat or how many rats were in the ratatouille (which I always pronounced "rat-a-ptooey!"). I told her I was Tina Richards from Le Slic magazine, I even showed her my I.D., and she still glared at me as if I'd announced, "Hi, I'm your friendly neighborhood homicidal maniac. Got a minute? I brought my own chainsaw "
"Totzi is very busy today," she told me, biting off every word as if it tasted bitter. "He has a full schedule."
Translation: you are a cockroach. Go away.
I smiled. "I know," I said. "I'm part of it. Eleventhirty, see?"
I leaned over the desk and stabbed my finger down on the open pages of the appointment book. Actually I couldn't see where the eleven-thirty appointment slot was, so I pointed at random, but it did make the receptionist look down and find my name. She wasn't happy about that.
"Have a seat," she muttered.
I did, and it took about as much luck to find an empty chair as it did to get the interview in the first place. The reception area at House of Totzi was crowded. The receptionist was telling the truth about Totzi being very busy. This was no surprise--it was the height of the fashion show season. I was sharing the great designer's schedule with models and agents and buyers and even a number of aspiring young designers, nervously balancing their big, black portfolios full of sketches on their laps.
I glanced up at the clock on the wall. It was only a little after eleven. I'd arrived early, just in case Totzi's appointments were running fast. If so, maybe he'd agree to see me ahead of schedule, so I could squeeze in a few additional minutes with the great designer.
When his personal secretary had called to tell me I'd gotten this appointment, I was also told that it absolutely could not last longer than half an hour. At noon, Totzi had to leave the office for the convention center where the biggest fashion show of the season was going to take place. Twelve o'clock sharp--no excuses, no exceptions. I didn't argue. Why bother? His secretary made sure to remind me that with so many people for him to see and so much work for him to supervise, Totzi really had done me a humongous favor by agreeing to an interview at all.
I watched the hands of the clock inch forward. People in the reception area came and went. Most of them got three minutes in Totzi's office, although some of the luckier ones got five. I felt very special to have an entire half-hour set aside for me.
I thought I had an entire half-hour. The minutes ticked by, the faces in the reception area changed, eleven-thirty came and went, but my name wasn't called. I started to get antsy. I had plenty of questions prepared, but the longer I sat there, the more I realized that I'd have to cut a lot of them. I'd just set up my laptop and was jiggling it impatiently on my knees, eliminating most of my planned interview, when the receptionist growled my name.
By this time it was a quarter to twelve. I told myself that wasn't so bad, I could still fit a lot of questions into fifteen minutes. But then, just as I walked into Totzi's office and got my first up-close look at the great designer, he stood up from his desk and swept past me, out the door I'd just come in.
"I will be right back, darling," he called as he rushed off. His voice had a strange, foreign accent that I couldn't place. "Forgive me, it is an emergency." As he dashed by me in a blur, I saw that even though he had a reputation for bizarre clothing designs (some of which were a little too bizarre for my taste), he himself wore a simple black suit, a matching shirt, and no necktie. With a smile and a farewell wave of his hand, he was gone.
I was alone in his office. It was an impressive place, as I'd expected it to be. The walls were covered with expensive art except for the one right behind his desk that was one gigantic floor-to-ceiling window with a great view of the park. I set up my laptop and started making some notes about the office itself. Since I wouldn't have time to ask all my carefully prepared questions, a description of the great designer's office would be a good way to fill up the interview.
Suddenly, I stopped short. A disturbing thought hit me. I recalled all the interviews I'd read while preparing for this assignment. Could it be...? I scrolled through my files rapidly, skimming one article after another. My suspicions were confirmed: In every previous interview, the reporter spent more than half the article talking about Totzi's office!
Why was that? I wondered. Could it be that I wasn't the first reporter to be given a short time slot, then to have that slot made ever shorter? Was that why there was almost nothing in the earlier articles about Totzi himself, because there'd been no time to ask the great designer any personal questions?
Somehow, I had the feeling that Totzi's "emergency" was only another trick to keep me shut out. I'd have to put together an article like all those that had gone before: sixty percent description of his office, thirty-five percent repetition of the "official" life story his secretary had FAXed me (a life story that didn't even say where or when he'd been born!), and maybe five percent answers to my questions, if he wound up giving me any time to ask them at all.
And I couldn't even object. I was a new reporter, still "wet behind the ears," as my editor enjoyed reminding me. Everyone kept saying how lucky I was to get this assignment. If I made any kind of a stink, it wouldn't take much for Totzi to change my luck for good. He'd spread the word to other designers that I was ungrateful, "difficult" to work with, and, in short, a pest. I'd never get another major interview, which meant there was a very good chance I'd lose my job.
So that's why he only gives interviews to new reporters! I realized. We're so happy to get the work that we never notice we're actually getting nothing. And he gets to hide everything about himself while he makes it look like he's got nothing to hide. Well, guess what, Totzi? They may be your rules for interview hide-and-seek, but I don't feel like playing.
With that, I set aside my laptop and headed straight for his desk and started snooping around. I'm a reporter-snooping's what I do. If he came in and caught me, I knew I'd be thrown out on my ear. I might even lose my job, but it didn't matter. Either I was a reporter or I was nothing, and a reporter's real job is to discover secrets.
Did I ever!
It was a plain manila folder like so many others. It was buried in the middle of a stack of fashion magazines shoved under his desk. I might never have found it at all if I hadn't accidentally kicked the pile while struggling to get one of Totzi's locked desk drawers open. The folder went skidding out from between two magazines, the papers in it scattering across the rug. I sprang up and pounced on them, gathering them up and taking them back to my chair for closer inspection.
There were about ten pages in the folder, all with some sort of writing on them. As soon as I saw that weird scribbling, I realized that there was something definitely strange about it.
Strange? Try alien.
At first I thought that the writing was Japanese or Chinese. It certainly wasn't English, and after a closer look, I got the gut feeling that it was nothing earthly. The longer I stared at it, the colder I felt. It wasn't the office temperature, it was a chill of dread. I also heard a strange, high-pitched sound. I believed it was just my imagination, but then I realized that the sound was coming from the writing itself. I put the page up to my ear, to double-check, and yes, it was the writing. It was humming-humming something that sounded like a cross between the "Macarena" and the theme from Beverly Hills 90210, as a matter of fact. Talk about alien!
If the alien script tied my belly in an icy knot, that was nothing compared to the fear I felt when I looked at... the drawings!
There was one on every page in that folder, all of them sketches of men's and women's fashions. I know it sounds odd, but those fashion sketches were so weird, so ultrabizarre, so downright freaky that they made the alien writing look almost normal by comparison. Would any sane human being wear something that grotesque? And yet I knew that once these styles were turned from sketches to actual pieces of clothing, there'd be millions of people not only ready to wear those fashions but willing to pay top dollar for the chance! I stared in horror, unable to tear my eyes away.
"Well, Ms. Richards, enjoying yourself?"
A sarcastic voice broke the spell of those fearsome drawings. I looked up sharply to see Totzi standing in front of me; an alien weapon in his hand. Too small to be a gun, it still looked capable of doing serious damage.
"You're quite right, Ms. Richards, , it is dangerous," the great designer said, as if reading my mind. "It's a visibility reductor. If I were to shoot you with it, you would not die, but you would become one-dimensional."
"One-di--?"
Again, he seemed to know my question before I asked it. "You would become no wider than the thinnest line you can imagine. So very thin that no one could see it... or you."
"Well, everyone knows you can never be too thin," I replied with a sickly grin, trying to break the tension with a bad joke.
He turned for a moment and aimed the device at the pile of magazines I'd knocked over when I discovered the fatal file. There was a brief whining sound and they vanished.
"Thin enough for you?" Totzi smiled an evil smile. "You see, Ms. Richards, I am not cruel. If you decide to try being a heroine, at least you will have something to read waiting for you when I zap you through to the other side. So, unless that is your idea of happiness, I suggest you put down the Master Plan--carefully!-and come with me."
I obeyed. What choice did I have? He took a moment to dispose of the sketches the same way he'd zapped the magazines, then escorted me briskly out of his office. He linked his arm in mine so that no one could see he was holding the visibility reductor against my ribs. We strolled to the elevator as if we were the best friends in the world.
"Where are you taking me?" I whispered as we rode down to the lobby. He'd used his master key to override any requests for stops on other floors. No one could disturb us; I had no chance to escape.
"To the fashion show, darling," he replied. "It will be so much easier to deal with you there, where I will have friends to help me."
"Friends?"
"The other designers. You saw the sketches. Surely you don't believe that such outlandish clothing was ever the work of you puny earthlings?"
I couldn't help gasping in astonishment. "You mean-you mean that Earth fashions are the work of... aliens?"
Totzi threw back his head and laughed. "Not all Earth fashions, dear girl! We haven't been here for that long--only about eight hundred years, perhaps nine. I'm terrible with dates; that's why I have a secretary. Have you ever studied the history of fashion? Ah, that's a foolish question--you work for Le Slic. Well then, didn't you ever wonder why clothing suddenly went from being a practical way to keep the human body warm and dry to... something more? Something... silly?"
I thought about that as we left the elevator, exited the House of Totzi, and got into his waiting limo. Totzi was right. I remembered seeing old paintings of people in the Middle Ages. The women wore tall hats that made them look as if they'd grown horns. The men wore shoes so terribly long and pointy that they had to tie thin chains under their knees to hitch up the toes so that they could walk without tripping.
And that was only the beginning. I also remembered pictures of men and women wearing powdered wigs so high that barbers had to stand on ladders to style the tops. Some of the wigs were decorated with model ships or miniature castles, others held cages full of live songbirds. As the years went on, there were more ridiculous fashions: bustles and spats and corsets and hoop skirts and paper dresses and bell bottoms and--and--
--and what is a necktie good for, anyway?
"Why?" I asked. "Why have you done this to us?"
Totzi checked to make sure that the soundproof glass partition between us and his driver was in place before he replied. "Why?" he echoed as we sped through the city streets. "To see how far you'll go. Or should I say, to see how far you'll let yourselves be led? It's an experiment. You see, one day we mean to invade this world, when we get around to it. We don't need it right now, and you have messed it up pretty badly, but you never know when a fixer-upper planet will come in handy. It always pays to plan ahead."
"I don't understand," I told him. "What does fashion have to do with conquering Earth?"
"Well, as I said, it's an experiment: we want to find out just how dumb you earthlings are, how ready to go along with the crowd. My fellow designers and I are scientists, sent here to determine whether you have any limits when it comes to following the herd."
"Do we?" I asked. I was afraid I already knew the answer.
He laughed again, louder. "I've seen lemmings with more independence and sheep with more backbone. It's gotten to be a contest among us, trying to come up with a fashion so ridiculous, so laughable, so senseless that no one on Earth will buy it." He shook his head, grinning, and added, "So far, no one's won. For a while there we thought we had a winner with pre-torn jeans, but..." He shrugged. "When we finally decide to take over, you're going to be pushovers."
The limo came to a halt at the convention center's stage door. Totzi poked me in the side with the visibility reductor, just as a friendly reminder, and steered me backstage. The place was a traffic jam of garment racks, a jungle of clothes in every color and fabric imaginable. Incredibly tall models stalked through the confusion like tigers, followed by chattering monkey swarms of makeup artists and hairstylists.
Somehow Totzi managed to find us a tiny room, away from the chaos. "I didn't see any of my friends around when we came in, but they're probably busy putting the finishing touches on their own new styles. You're not in any hurry, are you?" He gave me a terrifying smile.
My mouth was dry with fear. "What are you going to do with me?"
"I'm not sure." Totzi looked thoughtful. "I could always simply use the visibility reductor on you, but that would be wasteful. You're a reporter. We could use your powers of media influence to further our cause... if we felt we could trust you."
"Oh, you can trust me, all right!" I said eagerly. (Anything rather than having to spend the rest of my life in the one-dimensional world with nothing but a pile of old fashion magazines to keep me company!) "I've been thinking about it and, well, what's wrong with being a fashion slave? Everyone does it. Hey, I remember back in high school when the P.T.A. suggested making us wear uniforms. The kids who protested the loudest were the same ones who wouldn't be caught dead in any clothing that wasn't absolutely solid Goth black."
"Nice try," Totzi said drily. "Of course, you'd say anything to keep from being sent into the one-dimensional world with nothing but a stack of old fashion magazines for company."
So he was telepathic! Dang!
"No, I'm not," said Totzi.
"But we are!" came a loud, commanding, female voice. The door to the little room flew open and Totzi and I looked up simultaneously to confront a group of five supermodels, all of them aiming pink plastic hairbrushes right at the great designer.
"Fashion police!" their leader announced as one of her minions discreetly shut the room's door behind them. "Freeze!"
Somehow I didn't think she meant me, so -I took the chance and jumped away from Totzi. Unfortunately for him, Totzi reacted automatically to my escape attempt. "Stop!" he cried, raising his visibility reductor.
Five hairbrushes went off at once. Four beams of bright purple light struck the great designer, freezing, him where he stood. The fifth brush only sputtered out a few pathetic blue and red sparks. The supermodel holding it looked annoyed as she examined her faulty weapon.
"Wouldn't you know it?" she remarked crossly. "Dandruff."
The leader of the commando supermodels smiled and patted me on the shoulder. "You're safe now, Tina," she said. I remembered her face from hundreds of glossy full-page fashion and cosmetics ads: her name was Vikki, and her teammates were the equally famous faces Myndi, Romi, Lynda, and Steffi (the on with the dandruff problem). I looked at Totzi, stiff and still as a statue.
"He's not... dead, is he?" I asked. I got brave enough to reach out with one hand and touch his arm. It felt hard, as wood through the sleeve of his jacket.
Vikki shook her head. "He's only in indefinite suspended animation. Don't worry, Tina, he'll still have a career in Earth fashions--as a mannequin." The five supermodels laughed.
"You're--you're not from this planet, are you?" I asked. I already knew the answer.
"You already know the answer to that, Tina," Vikki said. "But don't worry we mean you no harm. We come from a different world than his." She nodded at Totzi's frozen body "We do not believe in conquering worlds that are more primitive than our own," she went on.
"We hate the idea of controlling the behavior of others," said Romi.
"We think that all alien species have the right to independence," Myndi chimed in.
"We must save you from any influence that makes you do something without thinking just because everyone else is doing it," Lynda added.
"It's like my mother always told me," Steffi said. "'If all of your friends jumped into a black hole, would you do it, too?"'
I shook hands with all of the supermodels who'd rescued me. "I can't thank you enough," I said.
"No thanks are necessary," Vikki assured me. "But if you insist, then what you can do--what you must do-is warn your fellow earthlings. Totzi's under control, but his evil allies are still out there. We can't deal with them all the way we dealt with him."
"There are too many of them," Steffi said.
"It would provoke an interplanetary war," Romi added.
"So you see, it's up to you," Myndi concluded as together they all escorted me out of the little room.
Their words were inspiring, but I'd never thought of myself as a crusading journalist before. Would I be up to the task? I glanced around backstage. A woman glided by wearing an evening gown made entirely out of aluminum foil and red feathers. A man walked past in the opposite direction dressed in a purple suit with green neon trim and shoulders so wide you could skateboard off them. The aliens were right: this was evil, and it had to be stopped!
"I'll do it!" I declared. "I'm going to use my power as a reporter to get out the message that thinking for yourself, respecting yourself, being yourself is way more important than blindly following the latest styles and trying to be like everyone else. I'll see to it that the days of us earthlings acting like a bunch of sheep are over. And I also promise you that from now on I will resist the influence of any aliens who would dare to--"
"You know what, Tina?" said Vikki, very softly and sincerely. "You need to be strong to resist evil alien influences. You'd be much stronger at it if you'd lose just a teensy bit of weight. It would make you stronger."
"And cuter," Myndi chirped.
"And much more popular," Romi promised. "You can't resist evil alien influences if you don't have enough friends."
"And we'll help you do it," Steffi offered with a great big smile. "We've got diet books and exercise videos and--"
"It's good for you to be thinner than you are," Lynda said, putting one arm around my shoulders as the five of them led me away.
"Um... how much thinner?" I asked.
They all laughed. "Oh, Tina!" Vikki exclaimed. "You can never be too thin."
I guess they're right. I mean, it must be true because it's something that everyone knows.
Everyone.
Right?