"Blue hair?" I turned and inquired with shock to my friend Javier, almost hitting him with my bag which contained an antique shawl that had once belonged to Mary Todd Lincoln.

        "Yep! He has blue hair now!" Javier replied.

        An antique shawl that had belonged to the 16th First Lady herself was not the kind of thing you usually bring to lunch, but I was on my way to do just that. I was visiting a special someone who invited me to an afternoon meal at his studio.

            His West Village loft was a seventy-room "eighth wonder of the world" loft overlooking the Hudson. The rooms were all painted in different colors and contained massive collections of art, as well as Gothic revival and antebellum furniture which was dispersed with live, fluttering ornithological collections in fantastic cages.

            He also owned, amongst other things, a large mansion up north that was apparently haunted by the ghost of the 16th American President himself, and that's why I was carrying the shawl, as a kind of friendly talisman. I wanted to bring it along. This person was a great artist, and someone I was just getting to know. He was a new friend.

        Anyway, it was when I was stepping onto the platform of the downtown E train en route with the haunted gift that I ran into a ghost from my past: Javier. I hadn't seen him in almost twenty years, when we used to work together. He was from Trinidad–a gifted, talented and artistic boy, brimming with personality. As we rode along we settled into conversation with ease, as if the two decades separating us meant nothing. But when he said the words "blue hair" it caused my jaw to loosen for a few seconds, and my bubbly how-are-yous to turn to instant interrogation.

        "You mean like punk or something?" I asked.

        "I guess so... but it's really just blue actually." He answered.

        "Blue hair" I said pensively, turning to face forward again.

        "Yep! Blue hair." he repeated.

        I clutched the haunted shawl inside the bag to my chest. My mind began to drift back into my childhood. I remembered seeing little old ladies who had giant spun orbs of bouffant hair, dyed in that oh-so-subtle shade of blue and wrapped in a thin tulle scarves, teetering down the streets of New Orleans like walking light bulbs.

        "How old is he now?" I asked.

        "Oh... sixty, or thereabouts." Javier said.

        I clutched the bag even closer to my chest as we rode along. Wow. Absolutely everything about that moment (except for the blue hair announcement) took me back... back to the day it all began, almost twenty years ago.

        When the genesis of this entire collection of events happened, I was sitting in the middle of my New York apartment. It was a very, very different New York. I was rocking back and forth in a broken swivel chair. I was unshaven and in boxer shorts–which is how you're usually dressed when you're smoking pot and getting stoned out of your head alone in your room in a swivel chair. I dressed like that a lot in those days.

        On this day however, the phone suddenly rang. My answering machine picked up and I heard "Marc, this is Jack. I'm calling from the office of José Maligno."  I stopped rocking.  Inside my head, my mind told my eyes to widen in amazement and, after what seemed like thirty minutes, my eyes actually did widen. Yet the brief message played on in real, non-stoned time; "If you're there, pick up the phone." I sat there immobilized, wide-eyed and stoned (quite literally). Why would someone who didn't even know me ask such a thing? And, more importantly, why was the office of José Maligno, one of the most respected designers of the time, and one of my all-time heroes, having one of his interior designers calling me? Was I hallucinating? Did my dealer sell me the wrong thing by mistake? My entire being was now frozen, so that my ears and brain could hear every millisecond of sound that came out of the answering machine's tinny, plastic speaker (just to give you an idea of my situation; this was the same tape player I used to play music on when I had guests over, because I didn't have a stereo system).

            I then recalled that a friend of mine was also a friend of the firm's shopper, Brian. He must have told Jack about me.

        The message continued to say that they had looked me up, and since it was Friday and they had some free time, they were wondering if they could interview me... oh, and please bring my portfolio. By this time I decided  that yes, this was really happening. That's when the anxiety began to creep in. Half of my being sat there soaking in the moment, but the other half of me was already mentally projecting myself out of my apartment and onto the sidewalk.

        I quickly got showered, shaved, dressed (tight alligator shoes, my tight suit, a loose tie and a big smile) and hit the streets, leaving in my wake curlicue wafts of smoke streaming out of my apartment and into the New York air as I exited.

            My focus was at a finite point. I went to the Decorator and Designer's building (the 'D&D' for those in the trade) on Third Avenue. I shopped for two hours. I filled bag after bag with the most luscious fabrics, the chic-est trends, the most divine velvets and most expensive silks. I was on a mission and spending too much time futzing over each choice was not an option. My mind worked like a calculator, adding up what I already knew, divided by what I thought they wanted, and subtracting what I thought they would expect me to know.  I worked like one of those multi-armed contraptions from a Dr. Seuss cartoon, robotically rolling down the aisles as my many extend-o arms reached out–grabbing, yanking, con-yopling and ter-floping.

        When I had everything acquired, I stopped to take a deep breath. Then I took the next step. I drew from my experience as a photo stylist and put my camera's eye to work. I actually photo-styled my bags. Everything I had taken out on memo (borrowed) was now hanging out oh-so casually and oh-so visibly. But not too casually and not too visibly and, most important, not too obviously. Like a lot of great things, it's what you don't see but think might be there that makes the greatest impression. So I  find it's best to scream with "nuance."

            The bags were ready. They were beautiful, and I had three on each arm. I looked altogether like Marco Polo returning from the Orient and ready for his close-up. I rushed over to José Maligno's office and announced that I needed to see Jack.

        "No I don't have an appointment, but he called me.” I said to the receptionist, drawing no attention whatsoever to my bags.

        The man who had introduced himself on my answering machine as Jack came out to greet me, and I smiled. As he led me into the library I told him that, while I had just been out shopping for clients, I stopped to call my answering machine and received his message. He was glad.

            We quickly got to the matter at hand. As I placed my bags carefully down on the carpeted floor, he told me they were looking for a shopper to replace someone who worked there. The person they were looking to replace was named Brian. I'll confess now that I actually knew that all of this might happen, I was just not aware of the timing. Brian had gotten the job a while ago because of his connections. Of course everything was due to a connection back then, and landing a job with José Maligno through a circuit of connections was not hard – as long as those connections had labels, or titles. Anyone who worked for him had met him through some sort of glamorous or spectacular series of events. I say glamorous and spectacular with a hint of irony because the man who was in charge of everything surrounding me at that moment, José Maligno, was a clamoring poseur. Now twenty years later, I learn that he has blue hair.

            Back then he wore Armani suits, Hermes bow ties, carried a fancy crocodile briefcase, wore Belgian loafers (also a favorite of mine; they're like wearing bedroom slippers all day long), all of it terribly important. He would say that if he hadn't become an architect he'd have been an English professor. He purchased an apartment with rooms worthy of a palace. That is, if you didn't count its unobstructed view of the on-ramp to the Queensboro Bridge, which leads to the place he hailed from. He had run so fast and so far, only to see the threshold of the shadowed sections of his beginnings. While the apartment was being designed, it was realized that his dressing room entrance into the hall would not meet the handicap requirements demanded by law. "It's really okay." he quipped, "I promise I'll never have crippled people over." The custom-fabricated dressing room closets were filled with the hand-made loafers, Hermes bow ties and Armani suits. Years later these items would be replaced when, like Karl Lagerfeld, he would "butch up" his act and re-fill the closets with sleeveless leather tunics, leather biker pants, leather hats, biker boots and chrome chains that would hang from hip to hip. A fashionable Hells Angels look, tres chic.

            He would return inter-office memos with spelling and grammar corrected in red. But then he would open his mouth and you could heard that sort of faux British accent that he had somehow developed (via his hometown of Bayside, Queens, no doubt).

            But back to Brian. Brian had been ripe for the picking because, well, he had been traveling in Europe a few years earlier with his girlfriend and one day, while riding rented bicycles in London, a Duke (and cousin of the Queen) ran into him with his car, severely injuring Brain's leg. The Duke took Brian back to his home to nurse him to health, and he never really left. When he was better the Duke took him to various places and introduced him to his inner circle of friends. In the course of that time, Brian and his girlfriend broke up.

        Divorced of his romantic ties, and under the friendship and care of one of the most important society people in England, Brian inevitably found himself being introduced to everyone who was anyone in England, even shaking hands with those in the outer reaches of Europe.

            By the time the day came for Brian to return to the States, he was on a first name basis with everybody. When I say everybody, I mean exactly that. And, of course,  the ties Brian made in Europe acted as a signal flare for José Maligno, who at that time was always, in his mind, picking and choosing the people he would hope to get to know one day while calculating his rise to the top step by step and person by person. Many of those people José hoped to meet knew and adored Brian. So Brian was given a golden ticket to move in permanently under Mr. Maligno's wing, and there you have it.

        But that boisterous soap opera was, quite appropriately, all in the early 1980's. Time went on, and with it the world. Although nobody knew then, the reason Brian was now looking for a replacement was because he had been diagnosed with AIDS. Thus, he had given my name to Jack, and there I was.

        During our meeting in the library, Jack was soon joined by a man named Russell. The three of us went over my selections, all of which they adored. They helped me put schemes together for my imaginary clients. Questions popped up throughout our meeting, and I had answers that lit up their faces. I, in turn, asked questions that sparked more discussions and ideas amongst them.  The conversation flowed like great wine and the cornucopia just snowballed. That moment was akin to the feeling of finally placing the final piece of a giant jigsaw puzzle into place, stepping back, and taking a sigh of relief.

            Jack walked out of the room to go speak with someone, and I talked alone with Russell (who would later become my nemesis (he kept a bottle of spring water under his desk and I can't tell you how many times I yearned to pee in it while he was out). After a few minutes Jack came back in and said, "When can you start?"

        They probably thought I was going to say "Well with all this work I'm obviously doing, let's say one month?" But just three hours earlier I had been seriously contemplating going to D'Agostino's grocery to apply for a bag-man job. So I planted my tongue firmly in my left cheek, holding back my initial impulse (which was 'Right now!'), paused and calmly said, "Monday?" My cards were now on  the table, but so what? I had played a winning hand, and besides, it was a lovely table.

        So thus began my career with the most illustrious, the most famous, the most coveted architectural and design firm in the world. Lucky me. And I wasn't stuck in the office either, I was an "independent," as a Cuban aristocrat who worked there at the time once dubbed me. I was allowed to roam, explore, and find adventure within the rich avenue corridors and hidden canyon-like streets of the city and beyond, hunting for the treasures that Mr. Maligno's clients would want to possess.

        When I was back at the offices. I witnessed the unveiling and re-packaging of some of the  most magnificent objects that could possibly make their way in and out of any place. Their brilliance was matched only be the people with the appropriately refined tastes to be let in to select them. In the beginning I learned to suppress my shocked gasps of surprise as these masterpieces were unveiled before me again and again during the span of a day. But I never got used to it. Not once. It was simply fantastic.

        I'll give you one example. There was a client, the daughter of a luggage baron. Her collection included the last Dowager Empress's inlaid tables, Peter the Great's silver tureens, Catherine the Great's libation cups, and an assortment of Fabergé frames. The client was of Russian stock, but despite appearances was from the other side of the fence. She was of peasant Russian stock, particularly Jewish peasant village stock. It is of note that these same people who might have inspired the famous play, Fiddler On the Roof,  now had become high society New Yorkers. Their family had risen to prominence in New York and lived rich lives in what had been Doris Duke's  former New York digs. There, they collected the treasures of the Czars, great paintings, and priceless artifacts from history. Almost every exchange that took place at the office was filled with that level of global intrigue.

        Everything there was something that you felt required a moment of silence, if only to look at it, let alone handle it. It wasn't just a Louis XVI fireplace screen, for instance, it had belonged to Marie Antoinette in the Petit Trianon. It wasn't a beautiful bust of Thomas Jefferson, it had been the Jean Antoine Houdon bust that had been posed for by Thomas Jefferson himself while in Paris. The things that I saw, the things that I held, the things that I handled, the things that I brought to be repaired, they were hallowed beyond measure. I was constantly remarking to myself in private how honored I felt to be in the presence of these fine treasures, which probably contained traces of molecules from the people who had once owned them. It was the closest I ever felt to being able to travel back in time.

        But now all of that faded away upon hearing that this man now had blue hair. Blue hair! Back then Mr. Maligno had crunchy hair. It was kinky brown and framed a pale face. José was not an overly unattractive person, but he possessed a Slavic face, with a pasty completion–one might mistake his head for a bread loaf unless it moved. He had an ugly laugh, and his debasing jokes, which usually amused only him, were at the expense of others. Making others tense was like breathing oxygen to him.

            His acid-tinged, megaphone mouth was his skull's centerpiece (which his head also sometimes resembled, a skull with flames shooting out behind it), usually aiming itself at some unwilling office victim. At the drop of a hat, he would use profanity in that inexplicably talented and toxic way that could leave one horrified, dismayed and above all without a retort. I would stare in curious awe as avalanches of words like "You fucking mongoloid shitfaced fuck! How could you make such a mistake?" would tumble from his teeth and permanently seize the ears of some poor, helpless person–sometimes during their first day on the job.

            He never looked them in the face when attacking, but looked down at his feet, often shaking  his head and hands. This made the verbal attacks all the more surreal, or perhaps brilliant. What an experience in abject horror those moments were.

        For reasons I should have been suspicious of at the time, I was immune to that kind of behavior from him. Whether he felt no need to treat me that way, or perhaps he did and I just didn't realize it, I don't know.

    Many often wondered behind his back how someone with such abominable people skills could developed a stunningly successful business. I have my own theory. I think he actually made a deal with the devil, and I almost have proof. One part of my job was shopping for precious textiles. They were often beautiful 17th, 18th or 19th century scraps of cloth with stitching, or embroider velvets with threads of gold and silver running through the weave. These delicate pieces probably belonged in a museum, but instead would be used to upholster stool seats and cover throw pillows. I remember often shouting at work "Hey, don't throw that pillow! It may disintegrate in mid air!"

    One afternoon while shopping for these kinds of things at Dalva Bothers (an amazing townhouse on East 57th Street, the best shopping street in Manhattan), I unearthed some dusty old boxes of material. In them I found piles of unbelievably gorgeous textiles. They all had stunning embroidery and were very old. I returned to work to show José my discovery. As I unfolded one rather large piece in his office, it wasn’t until the thing was opened that I realized it was a cope, or church vestment for a catholic priest. Jose took one look and let out an uncontrollable shriek, screaming, "Get it out, get it out!" I nearly leapt out of my skin! I grabbed the textiles like a pile of wet newspaper and scrambled out of the room, shocked and disappointed, and wondering what had happened. Then I put it together. Those church fabrics–none of which were hand worked with in any Christian motif, but were from a church–caused a violent reaction in him. That explains his rise to the top, his guardian angel is a demon.

            Actually, after I pondered that event, I realized this demonic force might also explain another mystery. Often while in José’s office during meetings, a smell would suddenly permeate the air, unannounced. Obviously, it was José causing it. It happened all the time, but of course no one ever said anything. It was an obnoxious odor, the distinct smell of wet sulfur–a sure sign!

            But, Satan's little helper found me amusing I suppose, he seemed to genuinely like me. This all in turn meant that I got along very well there. I flourished. Well, I flourished there until I met a blond boy in the elevator that I would eventually fall in... 

Part two of Blue Hair, next week