Down in the Mine

Evening veiled the sky over English Bay. In her condo on the thirtieth floor, watching the sunsets, La Betty usually would play a memory game: which emerging or dissolving colour had been worn by which supermodel or famous actress? This evening the sun and La Betty were as wan as Bartlett pears, sallow beneath a peculiar scrim of ash gray clouds. La Betty looked down at her Kashkoli Gabbeh carpet. Unlike the sky that night, the number of Kashkoli Gabbeh colours looked infinite. La Betty focused on the darkest colour, the expanse of phthalo blue. Across this blue, crimson squares, scarlet tulips, cerise stars and ruby x’s seemed suspended over an abyss.

The thought of an abyss unnerved La Betty. She impulsively walked toward a closet door and pulled it open. The deep walk-in closet was lightless, which it was not supposed to be. The motion detector had failed. Blinded for a moment by the blackness La Betty didn’t move. But within seconds this blunt darkness reminded La Betty of the Ralph Lauren Grecian-cut black velvet dress Kate Moss had worn for the 1996 cover of Bazaar. The Ralph Lauren noir had been uncompromising. The opaque blackness of La Betty’s closet was the same.

As La Betty stood there waiting for her eyes to adapt to the dark, she gradually perceived a glimmer at the far end of the closet. She walked cautiously toward it. The closet seemed to extend lengthwise until, seemingly a city block later, the glimmer proved to be quite an impressive circle of metallic light. The light flooded a rough wall of a deep cave. The stream of light was gushing from a huge lamp affixed to a miner’s hardhat. The miner was standing motionless, as if he had accomplished something significant just moments before. Another miner was sitting on a nearby rock. At their feet La Betty discerned the word dynamite on a box. The circle of light compacted these figures into silhouettes. La Betty interpreted the scene as a melodramatic ad for safety boots or perhaps rubber aprons.

La Betty’s suspicion surged soon enough. It became obvious to La Betty that invasive entities were creating this dramatic mirage. La Betty surmised from experience that these faceless figures were definitely phantoms with an insulting agenda. Their rugged standardized outfits were evidence of their intent to undermine La Betty’s devotion to the spectacular. La Betty dreaded being taunted or perhaps reproached for yielding to the charisma of haute couture. La Betty asserted a pre-emptive defense, quoting Edith Head, “You can have anything you want in life if you dress for it.” La Betty was proud her way of life was proof of this.

The miners aligned side by side and began to walk toward La Betty. She couldn’t understand how she was once again at the door of her closet watching the two of them march closer and closer. At arms’ length many details became more obvious, especially the canaries. What La Betty had perceived as lamps had been plump gold canaries. They sang,

Union man! Union man! He must have full dinner can! AFL, CIO calling strike, out we go! We all contract, but it expire: union men is mad like fire; Miner strike takes too much time, Uncle Sam take over mines. After striking twenty days we signing contract, we get raise. Grocer comes and ringing bell he raises prices--what the hell! Union man! Union man! He must have full dinner can! AFL, CIO calling strike, out we go!”*

* “Union Man,” by George Korson, sung by Albert Morgan. Recorded in the Newkirk Tunnel Mine, Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, 1946

Shoulder to shoulder the miners shouted with black dust on their breath. They coughed “Solidarity!” in La Betty’s face. And then they began to chant, “Loyalty. Loyalty. Loyalty. Loyalty. Loyalty to comrades a way of life!” La Betty slammed the closet door shut. She fortified herself repeating what Diana Vreeland had professed, “You must have style. It helps you get up in the morning. It’s a way of life”

La Betty would never understand the advice or warnings imposed upon her by these perverse interruptions. To her their harangues conveyed prejudice or envy, or both. These self-righteous undead pests must be spirits from the twentieth century. These deathless losers were dragging around affirmations entire populations had failed to live by. Remembering Coco Chanel’s discovery, “The sky is fashion,” La Betty gazed beyond the window into the Ralph Lauren noir night.