Blaze (27 page)

As soon as Sally had arrived in Paris, Piste had sent her to a top stylist to be photographed by Bandeau. They had come up with her look and how to market her. Each top model had to define her individual image. And so Sally's frail, exquisite looks were married to a fantasy, futuristic version of a renaissance heroine – Camille in cyberspace.

‘Piste even wanted to change my name to Camille,' giggled Sally to Miche, as they sipped coffee in the soft Parisian sunshine. ‘Not on your nelly, as my mum says. Then they wanted Vivien, but it just didn't feel like me. I'm a fun person.'

‘Vivien?' wondered Miche, not making the connection. Sometimes Sally's conversation tripped like a bee from flower to flower making it hard to follow her train of thought.

‘Mistress of Merlin. I was deep into Arthurian legends for a bit. Knights of the Round Table and damsels in distress. She lived in the centre of a lake.'

‘Ah, the lady of the lake,' said Miche, surprised at Sally's reading interests. ‘Do you study the Arthurian legends at school in Australia?'

Sally nodded and spooned potato salad into her mouth from a plastic tub she'd taken out of her carry bag.

‘Do you read much?' Miche asked. ‘I suppose you have to keep up with the fashion magazines.'

‘No time. And I don't want to copy what other people do. I just go with the flow at the moment. Bandeau told me photographers like to work with fresh blood. I'm not trotting out pose number seven like a lot of the supermodels used to do. They tell me to do my own thing, or try this or try that or what feels right for the outfit. Something sort of comes. I don't know how.' She stuck her finger in the tub, licking the last of the mayonnaise and gave a grin. ‘Seems too easy. But I must be doing something right – they keep paying me.'

‘What about living here? You haven't been here long. How's your French?'

‘Not a word. So they think!' She winked. ‘I did well in French at school, but I'm not telling them that.'

‘Why not?'

‘Dunno. Self-preservation. Just some kinda instinct.' She reached in her voluminous black backpack and pulled out a colourful comic book. ‘Asterix . . . I'm keeping up my French with this. Don't tell anyone.'

Miche was amused. The girl was a mix of contradictions. On one hand, a down-to-earth Aussie kid from a Queensland country town, on the other, a vulnerable young girl thrust into ‘a pool of piranhas' as Bandeau had described the modelling world. While she looked like a little lost kid out of her depth, Sally had remarkable sangfroid, an easygoing attitude to the extraordinary world she'd been thrust into.

Sally tucked up her legs and wrapped her arms around them, dropping her chin onto her knees. ‘So. What's your story? Are you a real New Yorker?'

‘Born and bred. But I'm half Australian. Which is one reason I'm off to Sydney. Bit nervous about it,' she confessed.

‘Sydney is fantastic. You'll love it. Are you going to work there?'

‘Yes. For
Blaze
. It's my first big job.' It suddenly hit Miche how ironic it was that she was starting her career under the hand of the woman who had so tormented her mother. She doubted Ali was aware how much Miche knew and understood of the tensions that had racked Lorraine as Ali clawed her way through the ranks at
Blaze USA
. Most nights at dinner her mother had spewed forth the minutiae of the day-to-day traumas of working with Ali.

While Miche was excited and nervous at beginning work as a first-time professional journalist in a strange country, she was also apprehensive about working with Ali. In her heart, she still felt that the thought of Ali being promoted in her mother's place had sent Lorraine literally over the edge. And while she felt enormous pity for her late mother, deep down she resented her for leaving her alone. It had intensified the need to find her father, to even up the seesaw of emotion that had weighed so heavily on her mother's side.

Sally was looking at Miche expectantly.

Miche felt a need to unburden herself to a young woman out in the world and as vulnerable as Miche was feeling. ‘My mom died recently. I don't know my father. I thought . . . well, maybe it was time to find out about the other side of my heritage. My identity.'

‘Oh, wow. That's so sad. Gee, I'm sorry. It sounds like something on TV. Are you going to write about it?'

‘Gosh no. Besides, I don't even know where he is. If he's alive. He might be an axe murderer or something.' Miche now wanted to change the subject.

‘Will you tell me what happens?' said Sally earnestly. ‘I had a girlfriend whose mother left her with her dad when she was a kid and her father beat her up and abused her. She ran away and found her mother and her mother was on drugs and tried to make her work as a prostitute to bring in money for her habit. I mean, aren't some families awful? Mine are boring, but at least they're ordinary.'

Miche shrugged. ‘What's ordinary?'

‘What I wanted to escape from,' giggled Sally. ‘Hey, gotta go. See ya at the shoot.'

Donald was laid-back and unfazed about the merry-go-round they seemed to be riding. He'd been hired for a week by
Blaze
for this shoot, so the delays at the outset didn't faze him. He didn't mind hanging out with Miche on the fringes of the entourage, understanding he was forbidden to take any candid shots of Sally.
Blaze
abided by the agency agreement, so he spent his time watching Sally – her moods, the way her body moved, assessing her personality.

To Miche, it seemed a crazy way to work. Time, schedules, organisation, whatever she understood as professionalism was abandoned in what appeared to be a pursuit of a good time above all else.

Miche lost all sense of time, order and focus as she trailed along with Sally. She thanked Nina in her mind, day after day, for setting her up to stay in the residence of the Australian Ambassador to France and his wife, Claudia.

When she did return to the elegant, quiet mansion after the raging of the modelling crowd, it resettled Miche, even if she did arrive home at all hours.

One evening, over dinner in the formal sitting room, waited on by a butler, Miche told Claudia and Bernard of the strange world of fashion, models and magazines.

‘I'm sorry to be creeping in so late. I thought I knew about partying in New York, but these people are crazy. I'm certainly discovering stuff to write about. I hope it's printable,' she added with a grin.

Claudia was less amused. ‘I insist you take our driver with my car to ferry you about and act as an unofficial bodyguard. Or use the embassy car and driver. Don't you think that's a sensible idea, darling?' she asked her husband.

The ambassador hesitated. Embassy cars were only to be used for official business. He decided to deal with matters on an as-need basis. ‘As Nina's friends, we feel very responsible for you, Miche. It seems to me I've heard a few bad stories about this modelling business . . . something to do with girls going to wealthy Arabian countries for parties and not being able to leave.'

‘Used as sex slaves,' added Claudia in a low voice.

Miche laughed. ‘Claudia, surely not. Maybe back in the seventies there were stories . . .' She turned to Bernard. ‘That is, unless you know something? Maybe I should accept your offer of a driver.'

‘It pays to err on the side of caution. I can't remember anything specific very recently. Maybe a bit of gossip at a diplomatic reception. Certainly nothing of substance for your article.'

‘We're on call. I'll give you Bernard's private number at the embassy. You phone us any hour of the day or night if you have any problems, and one of us will be there. I don't want Nina to think I'm not looking after you,' said Claudia.

‘Thank you both, very much. You and Nina are very close,' remarked Miche.

‘Oh yes, we were your age when we were best friends. We met in Sydney when we were fancy free and ready to set the world on fire. Nina was in magazines and I was at secretarial college. Then my parents, who were also in the diplomatic service, sent me to Switzerland to a finishing school. Nina came to Paris once back in those early years, to write a story just as you are doing now. I met up with her again and we had such a delicious time. “Our Hearts Were Young and Gay”
,
to quote the writer and actress, Cornelia Otis Skinner. Nina was covering the collections for the first time. She and Lucien were so in love, and then I met Bernard.' She gave her husband a fond look. ‘Our lives started to change after that, but it never altered the friendship between us. The friends you make in your youth seem to stay as the bright benchmarks of your life.'

‘Who is . . . was . . . Lucien?' asked Miche. ‘Nina has never mentioned him. My mother only told me about Paul Jansous, that marriage.'

‘She never talked about him once they went their own ways. Too painful, I suspect. One day you must ask your god-mama the story of her life.' Claudia reached over and touched her arm. ‘We all have secrets in the corners of our hearts,
chérie
.'

Miche didn't need to call on the services of the embassy driver. Sally quickly learned to hire limos, replete with booze, drugs and rock and rollers to ferry them to clubs and parties.

‘It's so cool,' she told Miche. ‘I just ring up and charge it back to the agency.' If this was a new game, she was learning the rules on the run.

Miche and Donald tagged along. This was research? To Miche it was mind-blowing.

They were in a stretch limousine and it was after 10 p.m. They'd been part of a swelling entourage in a photographic studio where Sally and two other top models were shot in evening wear. It had seemed more like a party with loud music, endless liquor and champagne and one model and four guys locked in a toilet doing coke. The French fashion editor had been screaming about the clothes. An assistant kept insisting the group in the loo were doing hair and make-up. By the time the model emerged, she was wildly stoned.

Miche fidgeted on the periphery of this seeming madness. Donald chatted casually to the studio people. Sally cruised through the shoot unperturbed. Her make-up and hair had taken two hours.

Miche nudged Donald. ‘Is this what you spend your time doing?'

He was vague. ‘The fashion stuff is neurotic. So are major movie stars. I only do profiles now. I'm good at them. But I kinda like feature stuff where you have to shoot on the run.'

Sally was ready. She looked like a somewhat mad Alice in Wonderland, sitting cross-legged on the floor, her ballgown heaped around her, holding a sleepy white rabbit. The other two girls – one fair, one dark, in dazzling, clinging dresses that seemed to be cut from rich Indian tapestries – were draped over each other on plush cushions. One held a huge peacock fan, the other the end of a brass hookah. She looked dazed and pretended to drag on the pipe and the next instant rolled on her back, gagging.

For a moment the photographer's assistant thought she was play-acting. Then the other girl screamed, ‘God, she's out of it. Do something!'

There was a rush as everybody dropped what they were doing and someone dashed to the phone. ‘Call the medics!'

The fashion editor started to go crazy as the girl began to gag. ‘Take the dress off her. It's a Valentino, it will be ruined . . .' The dressers leapt in, dragging the gown off the unconscious girl, pulling a baggy sweater onto her thin, convulsing body. Donald slipped outside to wait in the street, leaving Miche standing on the sidelines in the studio. Within minutes, ambulance paramedics rushed in and the girl was carried from the studio.

The fashion editor grabbed one of the male nurses, shouting in French, ‘Can she work tomorrow? We need this picture!'

Sally, still holding the tranquillised rabbit, hadn't moved.

The photographer flung up his hands. ‘
Merde
!'

‘Call the agency. See if they can find another girl. And we're not paying for that stupid bitch,' snapped the fashion editor, who worked for one of the second-rate glossies. They'd blown half the month's budget on this shoot in an effort to boost sales.

‘Is she going to be all right?' Miche tentatively asked the French photographer.

‘Guess so. I've seen this before. Let's wrap it and go to a club.'

‘Here we go again,' Donald said quietly to Miche. He opened his jacket slightly, showing her a small pocket camera and gave a slight smile. ‘There are a couple of shots in here for your story.'

‘God, keep it quiet. If they find out you've sneaked shots of a top model drugged out of her mind, they'll throw us out.'

‘Or worse,' said Donald, and strolled out of the studio to where the partygoers were piling into several waiting stretch limousines. They travelled in a haze from the studio to the club as they'd been doing every night. No one seemed to eat, everyone had their own supply of uppers, downers, poppers, pills and phials of white powder.

Sally seemed unconcerned, finding it all ‘a bit of a hoot', telling Miche, ‘A few of the girls were so wired during the last shows, I don't know how they didn't fall off the catwalk.'

‘What about you?' asked Miche.

‘I started using pot in school. A couple of the photographers on shoots here give me stuff to help me loosen up. Course they then put the hard word on you,' she added with a world-weary shrug.

‘Don't take any 'ludes,' advised Donald. ‘In the old days, they'd give them to the new models who'd pass out and then they'd take porn shots. Those girls were never booked for a serious fashion shoot again.'

‘The old days? You're not over thirty, are you?' asked Miche.

He grinned. ‘So people tell me stories. Some of those old-fashioned guys are legends now. Not nice legends. They've been known to feel bored and horny and call the agencies to send new models – male and female – round for look-sees, make them drunk, drug them and screw them silly. Same with the hairdressers and make-up guys and girls.'