Chapter 10 The First Carpet #2
Naomi's face revealed nothing until the moderator moved on. Then her knee touched mine beneath the table.
Not an accident.
Not a reward.
Contact.
After the presentation, we walked through the finalist displays separately. I spent fifteen minutes with each designer. Naomi joined the students who wanted her opinion and declined those whose work she had not examined closely enough to judge.
Near the dye room, Renata intercepted me.
"The clip is moving," she said. "The vendor question and your answer. Sentiment is favorable, though some accounts are calling the marriage a reputation strategy."
"It is partly a governance strategy. Do not deny what is true."
"Do we confirm the trust requirement?"
"Not tonight. Naomi decides when her side of the agreement becomes public."
Renata nodded. "One more issue. The reporter who asked the question is telling colleagues you threatened him with your expression."
"Did my expression purchase advertising?"
"Not yet."
"Then no threat occurred."
Naomi appeared beside us. "Do not punish his network."
I looked at her. "I have not."
"You considered it."
"My face is being used as evidence."
"Your face has been used to sell fragrance. It can survive testimony."
Renata stepped away with the discretion of a woman who wanted to hear everything from a safer distance.
"He tried to erase your work," I said quietly.
"He gave me a chance to name it."
"That does not make the question acceptable."
"No. It makes my answer necessary."
I closed one eye, a habit Naomi had once informed me made every problem look like a fitting issue.
"What?" she asked.
"I am measuring the distance between protection and retaliation."
"How many inches?"
"Currently one advertising quarter."
"Increase the seam allowance."
I opened both eyes. "No commercial response. No access retaliation. But Renata sends him the audited figures and requests a correction to the nine-million-dollar claim."
"Good."
"And if he repeats it after correction?"
"Then we answer publicly with facts and better typography."
"Marriage has made you ruthless."
"It has been thirty-one hours. Imagine October."
A photographer approached, walking backward while shooting the workroom. Naomi shifted out of his path before he struck a cutting table. I caught the man's elbow and redirected him without interrupting the image.
For one second, Naomi and I stood close beside the unfinished ivory dress.
The photographer raised his camera.
"May I?" he asked.
Naomi looked at me.
I waited.
She slid her hand into mine.
The flash went off.
The gesture was public. The heat that moved up my arm was not.
We released each other after three seconds, exactly as no schedule had instructed.
Dinner for the finalists took place at long worktables cleared of patterns and irons. No assigned seats. No sponsor wall. Naomi sat between Amara and a menswear designer from Queens. I sat across from them and listened as they argued about whether luxury required rarity or care.
"Rarity is often artificial," Naomi said. "Care is harder to fake."
"Spoken like an event producer," I said.
"Spoken like someone who has watched people order endangered flowers for a room they leave after dessert."
Amara looked at me. "What do you think?"
The easy answer was both. Beaumont sold limited production and obsessive craft. The honest answer was less flattering.
"Luxury becomes corruption when scarcity exists only to make another person feel excluded," I said. "But scale without care becomes premium-priced convenience. We spend most of our time pretending the line is cleaner than it is."
Naomi watched me over her water glass.
"Private truth," she said.
The students did not understand the ritual.
I did.
After dinner, the snow had thickened. Cars moved slowly along Madison Avenue. Renata suggested we leave through the service entrance to avoid the press gathering under the canopy.
Naomi shook her head.
"The students leave through the front," she said. "So do we."
Outside, the questions returned.
This time one reporter shouted, "Naomi, when did you know he was the one?"
She stopped beneath the canopy.
I expected her to continue walking.
Instead, she looked at me.
The answer could have become easy performance. A date. A joke. A romantic fiction large enough to hide the contract.
"I knew he was the man I was marrying when he accepted my first no," she said. "Everything after that is still being decided."
The cameras erupted.
I did not touch her until we reached the car.
Inside, with the privacy glass raised, I turned toward her.
"That was not a conventional answer."
"A conventional marriage was unavailable."
"You gave them more truth than we planned."
"Did it harm you?"
"No."
"Then survive it."
I smiled.
She removed one velvet shoe and flexed her foot.
The image struck me with unexpected intimacy. Naomi had spent six hours standing on stone and wood while every camera examined whether she belonged beside me. She had not complained once.
"May I?" I asked.
She followed my gaze. "Take off my shoe?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because your left foot hurts and you are pretending it does not."
"How do you know it's the left?"
"You have shifted weight to the right since the second interview."
Her expression softened by a degree.
She extended her leg across the space between us.
I removed the second shoe carefully, holding her ankle without turning the gesture into ownership. A red line crossed the back of her heel.