Ata glances at the sewing guy. Three other machines around him are empty at this time of the evening. He had chosen to remain and work into the night.
“What yuh want, child?” Firerago brandishes the hot gun at the gofer. “Don’ upset nothing on dat table, yuh hear?”
The boy is beating the donkey rhythm on the edge. “Slinger say he coming in a hour, to see de bridesmaid costume.”
Firerago steups her teeth even louder and launches into an explicit tirade about Slinger unreasonable ass and the flicking impossibility of the flicking flowers and wretched straw hats. Why the brim have to be so wide? And who tell he it go be ready in a hour? “Look! You, move from here — out!”
Gofer shoots out the door and the flower-making pace picks up. Firerago stapling the blooming frou-frous onto the hat on the mannequin’s head in a vengeance, shooting the Styrofoam face every now and then, just for so. She is vicious with those guns — plastic staples, glue sticks, and bad-bad cusswords her bullets, interspersing the hour and intricate handwork.
The manager enters and goes over to gently check on the sewer. Ata watches him double-checking carefully, to see if he’s feeling well enough to stay on. The guy smiles and nods peacefully, without pausing the electric hum or taking his eyes off the piercing needle. Ata, like everyone else in the camp, knows that this worker, in the prime of his fashion design career, is dying of AIDS. He comes and goes quietly, to and from the busy mas camp, but mostly he stays, taking the shit longer than everyone else without a word of complaint. It is his choice, Ata reminds herself. His way of spending his last days.
“Can you put on the costume?” the manager asks Ata.
Her first thought is that she cannot be seen in one of those fluorescent spandex bodysuits. Skintight skinny legs and big feet — no! And, she objects, he could have asked one of their models or dancers.
When he assures her that the big netty skirt goes on as well — the whole costume, to show off the hat — she agrees.
“There,” the manager says as Firerago nestles the extravagant hat on her curls. “La Belle Creole. You look like a Boscoe Holder painting.”
“A blinding fluorescent one! Everybody can see still? Or youall need shades?” Ata looks around but there is no mirror.
Firerago tips her head, admiring. “Is nice, yuh know. You should see the effec’. But is A HUNDRED FUCKING FLOWERS! On that hat — one hundred blasted flowers, not to mention the freaking leaves and shoots!”
God of Design lopes through the door at that moment. He stops abruptly and drops his hands and bottom jaw. Theatrics again, just like how conversation drops to absolute silence whenever he walks in. “Oh … my … God. Good God. Isn’t it perfect? The skirt, that is — look at it! Just the right amount of fullness, move a little please, and bounce, and unh … Where is the shoulder piece?”
“Right here.” Someone loops the ruffle of flowers and net and spangly sequins over one breast and fastens it on Ata’s shoulder.
“Wonderful! Magnificent! Isn’t it?” He forces the others to agree. “Walk around, my child, move. You look lovely, by the way, quaintly old-fashioned.” He takes the offered stool to the middle of the room. “But it’s the hat … the hat…”
Firerago clenches.
“Why am I seeing patches of basketry?”
“Basketry?”
“Yes. That is bare patches of straw hat I’m seeing, isn’t it?”
“Of course! You wanted bunches and height on it too, right?”
“Depth, yes. But we can’t have bare patches of straw-colored basketry. The underside of the brim is bad enough. Ah — maybe we could cover that with satin! The flash of shine against beautiful faces in the sun would be the ultimate … once the whole hat is covered in those blooms and leaves and things.” He isn’t even looking at Firerago.
She has her hand with the gun on her hip, akimbo, breathing hard. “Slinger!” she shouts. Firerago is the only one who ever shouts at him, and everybody believes he accepts it because she is crazy and hysterical, but good at what she does. That is why he likes her, mad attracts mad. And she must be, to stick with him all these years and return after quitting upon the completion of each band. “Laws of attraction,” she explained, her girlfriend who reads runes had told her, after the breakdown.
“How much of the freaking ‘lovely blooms’ you think there on de blooming hat? EH? Take a guess. ONE HUNDRED! One freaking hundred and now you looking at wanting to cover de whole entire hat? You can’t afford to put more flowers on one hat. You can’t afford to pay me…” She brandishes the gun again, gesticulating between Slinger and Ata.
He keeps leaning aside, to see round her.
“Impossible! Unh-unh, never! We could maybe spread them out instead of bunching them up—”
“No, no, that would lose the exotic shape you’ve created.”
“Or we could cover the hat first with satin … then the weight…”
“That would look cheap — too much plain satin. It would only take a few more to fill in … maybe about thirty—”
Firerago starts hopping. “One hundred and thirty mad flowers?” she screams, banging the table with the gun. “NO, no way, NO!” Stamping her foot in time with the banging, fabric and tools bouncing on the table, she refuses point-blank.
Everybody stares, admiring her bold tantrum. While Design God chills on his stool, marveling at his creation — the shivering gold lamé leaves, pipe-cleaner tendrils, the flounce and textures, layers of net dangling a large sequin here and there. Sparkle, on top of shine, outdid the solid yellow spandex against dark skin. Alive — before his very eyes. Everybody could see he was imagining five hundred such bridesmaids.
After he leaves, Firerago breaks down in tears. Ata and the manager comfort and console her, assuring her of Slinger’s lunacy. The manager promises to work out the costs and hours of labor, not only for this but for other impossible designs, and present it to Slinger the very next day.
“I not letting this band buss me,” she sobs. “Even if it buss, it ain’ go buss me, ah swear. You know how many hours I spend here already for today?”
Too many, they all agree. They should pack up now, even though they had prepared to work late into night. The sewer quietly insists they leave him there, he would like to continue.
* * *
Pierre strokes Ata’s hip bone and pulls her closer to him in bed. He inhales the scent of her thick curls and sighs. “Mermaid’s Brush”—her hair and vetiver. She feels him stir and slides her thigh against his warm flank. Neither of them likes getting up early, but as the morning warms, Ata’s strength thickens and she listens to Pierre’s arrogance and impatience fire up. As he gets ready for work he can’t keep it in — the vacillation, the lack of responsibility, he thinks, is the problem with these people in the first place. It is simple.
It is not. Ata insists, “Nothing is black-and-white, you know that. And wishes must be respected. Give him time.”
“Time for what? Other people have rights too and he made his choice. A week has passed and his friends are just pussyfooting around, like you.” But as he kisses Ata goodbye for the day, he knows she was caught between worlds, between black and white. He can’t say this, though. Or talk about his complex love for her, how it puzzled him and his logical, straightforward heart. “I love you,” he says as he kisses her, and it will suffice. She must feel the reliability of his steely support. “Be strong,” he tells her, pulling out of the garage.