A Fake History of Guiseppe the Tailor     There once was a tailor called Guiseppe who was known throughout all Los Angeles for beauty of his quinceanera dresses. They were beautiful mountains and fountains and showers of tulle and lace and sequins, so stiff they could stand on their own.

    One day, the king of Los Angeles ordered Guiseppe to make quinceanera dresses for his twelve beautiful daughters, each more lovely than the last.

    Guiseppe locked himself in his workroom. He buried himself under a mountain of tulle, swam in a lake of lace, and danced in a whole meteor shower’s worth of sparkling sequins. He labored night and day, in moonlight and sunlight and by the light of his MacBook Pro.

    Finally, it was the night before the twelve princesses’ fifteenth birthday. As the clock struck nine, Guiseppe put down the needle. The twelve quinceanera dresses were finished. They shone brightly in the darkened room, seeming to glow from within.

    But... tragedy! The dresses were perfect - the mountains of tulle, the fountains of lace, the lavish showers of sequins...

    But Guiseppe had forgotten the zippers.

    Distraught, Guisseppe made his way home, passing the closed shops and empty alleyways. He got on the Metro towards Long Beach, and called his wife on his cell phone.

    “Dolores,” he said, “We are ruined! The princesses’ quinceanara dresses have no zippers, and all the shops are closed! What good are mountains and fountains and showers of tulle and lace and sequins, when there is no way to keep the dresses SHUT?”

    Dolores tried to comfort her husband, but he was inconsolable. He leaned his head against the window, and dreamed of the beautiful dresses that would never be worn, and the disappointment of the twelve beautiful princesses, each more lovely and rage-filled than the last.

    Suddenly, the train rounded a bend, and what should appear on the horizon but the U Can Zipper zipper factory, shining in the floodlights, more beautiful in Guiseppe’s eyes than Shangri-la, more lovely than El Dorado, and with more power to save this poor tailor’s bacon than Heaven itself. They made every kind of zipper imaginable - metal zippers, invisible zippers, plastic zippers, and nylon zippers in every color of the rainbow. It was Avalon and Xanadu and Atlantis all in one.

    “Dolores,” Guiseppe said to his wife. “I believe our problems are solved.”