Pablo F----mann was his name – is his name, as far as I know. A percussionist, composer and graduate student at school with me in the late 1980s.
Handsome, coolly sexy: a slightly wolfish face, gray eyes, always a bit unshaven. He grew up in South America – and yes, I know what you're thinking, I always thought it too: German last name and features, Spanish first name, from South America? – oh lord it's an Ira Levin novel, and his father fled to Buenos Aires with Hitler's head in a box under his arm.
Anyway... Pablo was scruffy, no two ways about it. This was L.A., so T-shirts and ripped jeans were manageable daily wear. Despite his arresting profile and evident competence, no one took Pablo very seriously – he was smart, knowledgeable, passionate about his work, but not significant. (Yet good-looking... did I mention that?)
Perhaps this is kind of an 80s story... in any case, one day early in his final year, Pablo stalked in (there is no other word for it) in a handsome, quietly tailored jacket and tie; and over it all was a handsome, long coat, a charcoal duster, with all the deep unreflecting resonance of fine wool. Shades of darkness accented with deep winter hues, a touch of gray at his temples – he was transformed into a stylish and authoritative force to be reckoned with. For the rest of that last year, that was how he dressed – everything had changed for him, and in his wake, permanently, like magic.
I told you this was an 80s story – think of power suits, of yuppies, of shoulder pads, even of Sigourney Weaver in Working Girl. Although Pablo didn't seem ruthless or manipulative, just suddenly – confident. Professional. Dignified. And, as it happened, quite German. Not to mention way out of my league.
For years, I have complained about a lack of respect, a lack of success. It's been my own neverending story – at so many points in my life, and especially in the demotion and exile and financial collapse that landed me here, I've become once again the youngest of a large Italian family, pushed around, petulant, resentful, demanding. So you can imagine my response when the dean told me not to apply for promotion this year, with the promise-them-anything-but-give-them-Arpège rider that next year I would surely, surely, be successful. All I have to do is keep hopping when they say hop, keep cranking out too-hastily-written research, and do more administration than... well, you get the idea.
Last week, I bought a long coat. Italian-made, cashmere, charcoal black, it reaches to a little lower than mid-knee. I look like a softer version of Angel, or like Hannah at the end of Angels in America, when she has been transformed into a New Yorker – sharp, sleek, elegant, dark.
I wear the coat, and the atmosphere around me changes: there is a shift in the magnetic lines of force, in the flow of electrons. I open my hand and a pen leaps into it, obedient: weather patterns shift, light warps around me into auras of pale rainbow shades. Red sparks fly through the air, and when I walk into a room pencils float, and spoons bend.
And I look forward to – well – magic....
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