Braless in Wonderland (18 page)

What I didn't get was how this girl worked all the time. She was shorter than me and didn't even have good skin. “Now how does she do so well?” I asked Miguel. “She's always booked.”

“Easy. She's a ready Betty.”

“A what?”

“A minuteman model. That's her ticket. Always ready to replace a girl if there's an emergency or a last-second cancellation, like when April had that allergic reaction and her face blew up an hour before the booking. That girl was there in two minutes to take her place.”

“Wouldn't they reschedule?”

“Not always. Sometimes they can't. That girl is great when you need her there in a pinch, or when it's off-season and all we have are nothing jobs. Clients love her and she'll do anything. Naked? No problem. A
mierda
rate?
No problema.
She's a
puta
and we love her.”

“What's my ticket?”

“I'm still figuring it out.”

Beep.
Momma's cigarette voice came through Miguel's speakerphone. “Allee, you there?”

“Yeah, she's here,” Miguel yelled from the floor.

I stepped down off his back. “What's up, Momma?” I called.

“You booked the national for Taboo! The client loved your dancing.”

“Cha-chingalingaling!” Miguel sang, jumping up to hug me.

 

“Guess you'll be even more uppity now,” Summer said to me when I got home.

“Hey, Summer, lose the attitude,” says Brynn, trying on the new strappy sandals she'd just bought. She was in a good mood today. “Give the kid a break. She got the national, you didn't, stop being such a friggin' baby. Congrats, Allee.”

“Thank you.” I turned to Summer. “I wish we could both do the job.” It was the kind of thing you were supposed to say.

Summer pulled out a suitcase from under her bunk and started throwing clothes inside. “It don't matter. I'm gonna be so famous someday, a little uppity bitch like you won't make no difference.”

Stung, I backed away from her. I knew she wanted to book it, probably just as much as I did, but what was her problem? Did she turn on anyone who took a job she wanted? I mean, she wanted the Uta Scholes editorial and when I got that she didn't—

Wait.

Omigod.

Something went
ping
in my brain.

A realization was unfolding inside me. It was knocking around in my head, my stomach, my chest.

I knew what she had done.

“You took my book, didn't you?” I asked her. She stopped packing, unzipped her gym bag, pulled my portfolio out, and threw it at me. Claudette and Brynn looked like they'd turned to stone. “Why?” I asked. “Why would you do that to me? Someone as successful as you.”

“'Cause there's always a new girl. Before you there was Issa, and I didn't let her get in my way either. Maybe the Uta Scholes job was just a fluke, like you said, so I didn't give it no nevermind. But soon as you came out lookin' like you did that night you came out with us, I knew. I didn't think you was no match for me till that night. Now this national. Momma's pushing you more than she's pushing me. There's tons of competition at castings. I don't need it from my own agency.”

Brynn said, “Geez, I used to think Allee was a threat too, but steal her book? That's low, man.”

“Just crabs in a basket, that's all. Gotta pull one down to stay on top.” Summer smiled that bizarre, icky smile and pulled out a stack of composites from her gym bag. She chucked them at me. They were mine. “If you can't play with big dawgs, git off the porch.”

I picked one off the floor. “Why do you have all these comps of mine?”

“I took 'em after print castings, if I could get to 'em. Pulled 'em right off bulletin boards, desks, right outta the client's pile. And I didn't even think you was a threat then. I just wasn't takin' no chances.”

Claudette gasped. “You did not.”

“She did,” I said. That knocking feeling was going away. I was dead calm, watching the past few weeks flash by in my mind. “And you messed with my alarm clock. And you took my chicken cutlets. I bet you even tore down the sign at that German catalog casting so I wouldn't find the Polaroid room.”

“All that studyin' made you real smart, Allee.”

I was so angry, I could have hit her. “All that ‘I'm just as sweet as molasses.' It was all an act.”

“I act”—she picked up her suitcase—“because I'm an actress.”

A red Mercedes convertible pulled up in front of the window. A man was driving, a midlife crisis type with a gray ponytail, at least fifty years old. Summer was eighteen. “I'm leavin' Finesse and I'm leavin' y'all. I was plannin' on leavin' next week. Been makin' so much money, I don't even know why I stayed so long.”

She started to walk out, then dropped the suitcase and whirled around to face me. “You know what, Allee? Some of us didn't just go to the mall one day and fall into modeling. Some of us worked hard to get here. Some of us want this real bad.”

“I know that.”

“No, you don't. You act like this all don't mean nothin', like it's below you 'cause you're too smart for modeling, too high-and-mighty for all of us.”

“I don't—”

“You do. But you jest wait. I'm gonna be so famous, so fierce,
Entertainment Tonight
will be calling you up for interviews just 'cause you lived with me. That's how come I was so nice to you, so you'd tell them reporters I was real helpful on the way up.”

“Man,” Brynn said. “You're a friggin' wack job.”

“Delusional,” I whispered.

“Y'all can make fun now. Someday I'll be a household name.”

“What name is that?” I asked. “Darlene Mole?”

Hearing her real name threw her. Her eyes blazed. “You know why they changed your Jew last name, don'tcha?”

“What?”

“For the European clients. They don't like bookin' Jews.” I froze, completely paralyzed. A creeping sensation spread across my skin, like I was covered with a million ants. “Ain't smart enough to figure that one out, are ya, Yale? Too busy correctin' me like I'm a dumbass. Well, there's all kinds of smart and there's all kinds of stupid. Guess which one you are.” She picked up her suitcase. “I'll be back tomorrow to get the rest of my stuff.”

She slammed the door. We watched her get into the car and drive off. I sank onto the futon, limp and numb, and put my head in my hands. My hands were shaking. Claudette put her arms around me. Her shoulder was warm and soft. “That's not true,” I said. “About my name, is it?”

“No,” said Claudette. “There's Blaine Cohen on the fashion men's board. And Monique wouldn't do that. Neither would Momma or Dimitri or any of them.” She gave my hand a squeeze.

“I never knew you had a set, Allee,” Brynn said, rubbing her nose. “You got balls. What a psycho.” Imagine
Brynn
telling me
I'm
the one who had balls. But I guess I did. Maybe my assertiveness problem was officially cured. She stepped toward me and I thought she was going to hug me, maybe the way I'd hugged her that day she was crying, but then she thought better of it and gave me a light punch in the arm. “Hey, I'm getting a glass of wine. Claudie, you want one?” Brynn knew better than to ask me. I hadn't touched a drop of anything since the night I got sick.

“No, thanks,” Claudette answered. “Summer comes from a dirt-poor family, you know. Like, not having enough to eat poor, no shoes in the winter, no electricity, coal miner's daughter poor.”

“How do you know?” Brynn asked.

“I met her sister once, when she first came here. I thought it was her mom. She's got like twelve brothers and sisters or something. It explains a lot, like why, when she goes home, there's no address to send her checks to. Just a P.O. box she has to drive to.”

“Why wouldn't she give out her address?” I asked.

“Because where she lives it's so remote the mailman doesn't even go there.”

“Oh.”

“Well, there is some good news for you, Allee,” Brynn said, giving me another punch.

“Ouch. What?”

“Less mess for you to clean up.”

“Yeah,” says Claudette. “And now you can sleep on the lower bu—”

She was about to say “bunk.” But the word got stuck in her throat.

Because a trickle of blood was seeping out of Brynn's nose.

I talked to Brynn that day, like Momma wanted me to. Claudette did too. Brynn got really angry at first, called us names, flipped over the coffee table. Later, she agreed she needed to get her coke habit under control. She really seemed to turn over a new leaf too. I was starting to like her more. I thought she'd gone off the stuff. She probably did, for a while.

My modeling really took off in March. In this business, when things started happening, they happened fast. The national commercial for Taboo got me into the Screen Actors Guild and entitled me to residual checks. After I did Taboo, I got another national for Dentyne Ice gum and a regional for Florida Power & Light. In April, I flew to Costa Rica for a deodorant commercial and Mexico for a shampoo commercial, and had a few print jobs in between. The money was coming in.

By April, I was the “It” model in Miami for commercials this season, even though I'd come on the scene late. Casting directors called to request me, sometimes e-mailing agencies for an “Allee Rose” type. I could have left the apartment and gotten my own place if I'd wanted to. I was making more than Claudette or Brynn.

My passport was filling up with stamps, my chart was filling up with options, my agenda was filling up with voucher receipts and Polaroids from jobs. Still, I wasn't making the really big bucks the fashion types got from beauty campaigns, like cosmetics and fragrance. April the Great booked a perfume campaign for some insanely huge amount of money, like six figures, a real feat these days considering celebrities usually book a lot of that stuff. And I didn't get any magazine covers like Summer did.

Summer. Yech. I could barf just thinking about her.

Anyway, I was in this for the money, and I had a good, solid stream of payment coming in. The agency advanced some of it because it took print clients thirty to ninety days for clients to pay. If the Taboo and Dentyne Ice spots ran as much as the clients said they would, I would make great money.

Honestly, though, it wasn't about the money or Yale anymore. It wasn't even about trying to beat Brynn and Summer at their own game, even though that's exactly what I did. Brynn had tried to psych me out when I first got here, and then Summer tried to sabotage me when she realized I was her biggest competition. But it didn't work, either time. That victory wasn't what excited me, though.

What excited me was the job itself. I was really into it. I liked moving in front of the camera, feeling beautiful, seeing myself in pictures and on TV. And the competitive part of me lived for that
yessss-I-did-it
feeling of nailing a casting and then finding out I beat the other girls out and booked the job. I even liked the camaraderie I had with Brynn and Claudette and all the other models I was competing against. Back home, I'd been so wrapped up in my routine of intense studying, after-school activities, and working, I had never slowed down and just hung out with people. Now I did that all the time. I relaxed at the apartment talking to Claudette or Brynn, if she wasn't out with Luca, or I met Miguel at the News Cafe. At castings and even jobs, most of the time we models sat around waiting and talking, just chilling out.

I liked having friends.

And for all my feminism and academic achievement, I was a sucker for this business.

I felt like a star and I loved it.

 

We were in the conference room so we could watch my Taboo commercial. The advertising agency had e-mailed it to Finesse and Miguel was putting it up on the computer. Momma, Kate, Claudette, Brynn, and even Monique were all sitting around the table. Monique had just finished telling everyone about her Botox treatment this morning, which explained why she looked like a glazed robot. Oh, good, it was starting.

There I was, wandering in the jungle (Fairchild Tropical Gardens), wearing a two-piece outfit made of leaves (fabric with leaves glued on). The guy who got booked with me (Blake didn't get it) was behind me. Our footsteps crunched on the leaves and branches. The sounds of rattlesnakes and jungle animals surrounded us. Then we saw cans of Taboo, growing out of a bush. Our faces were full of surprise and joy. He took one, drank with gusto while I watched, smiling. Then the techno blips and bleeps of dance music took over and the screen was filled with me doing a dance of happiness.

Or what was supposed to be a dance of happiness. Or what was supposed to be a dance. Or a sane movement by someone not demented.

Okay, I knew I might be bad, but this was…this was…

Oh, God.

Everyone was in hysterics. Claudette was bent in half. Miguel was choking on his Pepsi. Momma's jowls were quivering with laughter. Monique's face was statue-still. Or she could have been smiling. It was hard to tell.

The recorded voice-over was loud and clear: “In some cultures, girls are forbidden from dancing.” Cut to a close-up of the guy's stunned face. Then there was a freeze-frame on me in a totally uncoordinated move with my butt going one way and the rest of me going the other way, my eyes rolling up into my head (how did that happen???), my mouth squinched up worse than when Abuela didn't have her teeth in.

Voice-over: “Maybe some girls
should
be forbidden from dancing.”

OH. MY. GOD.

I AM SO EMBARRASSED.

I
knew
I'd sucked at the casting. I
knew
it. I knew it I knew it I knew it. But they booked me anyway.

Of course. Of course they did. Because they obviously wanted someone who really sucked! And I was perfect! Because I sucked! I blew! I couldn't dance. Not even a little bit. Not even remotely.

Now it was the house party scene and God help me, I was trying to drink Taboo and bust a move at the same time. While all the extras around me were busting a gut. I remembered now the director ordering them to “Laugh! Laugh!” But I just thought he meant laugh like have a good time laugh, like in those wine commercials where people were at a cocktail party chuckling and having fun. No, he meant laugh, specifically, at
me.

Summer was right. There
were
all kinds of smart and all kinds of stupid. And I was some kind of stupid, all right. My cheeks must have been as red as my M•A•C Viva Glam lipstick.

The voice-over ended the commercial with: “Taboo. Not forbidden.”

And it was over.

As was my commercial streak after this.

Because now I was finished. Finito. Done. Toast.

“Allee, you are so talented,” Monique said.

WHAT DID SHE JUST SAY?

“So talented,” she said again. “You're a natural comedienne. Imagine, I thought you had no personality when you first came here.” She looked at Momma. “It's always the quiet ones.”

“We have to get her reel together right away,” Momma says.

“I think I wet myself,” Kate sputtered, still laughing.

“Yeah,” Brynn said. “Forget Yale. You should be on
Saturday Night Live
.”

Miguel was wiping tears from his eyes. “
Qué cómica
, you are so funny. I didn't know you could do physical comedy. Why didn't you ever tell us?”

They thought I was acting. That I'd
tried
to suck. Because nobody could be that bad naturally. Except, of course, me.

I cleared my throat. “I didn't know I could either.”

Claudette was the only one not saying anything. She just gave me a kitty-cat smile and winked. And after everyone was out of compliments and we were filing out of the conference room, Claudette whispered in my ear, “Babygirl, you are a rhythmless nation. But don't worry, your secret is safe with me.”

 

I got recognized all the time. People stopped me in the street and asked me to do the dance. I didn't, though. I'd never dance in public again. Unless, of course, they made another spot using me, and it was looking like they might because this commercial was a huge hit, the kind that everyone talked about.
Deco Drive
, Miami's local gossip show, featured me in an interview. Momma wanted to put the TV interview on my reel, along with my commercials. Dad called and said someone he worked with asked if the funny Taboo girl was his daughter. Imagine me, having a rep as a funny girl! Me, of the former Queen Serious, Wednesday Addams rep.

It took me a while to realize I was funny. I mean, I knew everyone else thought I was funny, but I was secretly super-duper embarrassed. After all, I was the butt of a joke. Miguel noticed I wasn't laughing one night while he was over watching a “Which one is the guy?” drag queen modeling contest on
The Tyra Banks Show
with me. It was a commercial break, and then there I was, dancing in the jungle, freeze-framed in all my royal spazziness. So I confessed that I didn't think it was funny, that I wasn't acting, and that I really dance like that when no one's around. I had to give him props because he didn't ask to watch me dance. He just stared at me for a few seconds, shrugged one shoulder, and said,
“No importa
. If you can't laugh at yourself, laugh at other people,” and we went back to making fun of the tacky drag queens.

I was starting to laugh at myself now, though. There was no doubt about it, I did look hilarious. I
had
to laugh at myself. Not for being a rhythmless nation, which, it was painfully obvious to me now, I totally was, but for being so clueless, for not realizing why they'd booked me. How could I have been so stupid, not to see where they were going with me? Obviously, I was not the Jane Brain I thought I was.

But you know what? It was okay. Because, apparently, I had other good qualities. I was a pretty good commercial model. And a pretty good print model. And a pretty good friend.

From now on, I was going to try not to take myself, and everything, so seriously. Of course, it was easy for me to say that since I wasn't in school, worrying about test scores and papers I had to write. But I did take the
WHAT WOULD WEDNESDAY ADDAMS DO
? bumper sticker off my car. The Taboo commercial and everybody's reaction to it had me thinking that there was something to be said for lightening up.

 

“You better stay away from him, or you're going in,” I said angrily with my hands on my hips.

“Go ahead,” Brynn shot back, stepping closer to me in her metallic bikini. “I've got my Seagull on.” We locked eyes and got closer, almost nose to nose. But as hard as we tried to concentrate and keep a straight face, we just couldn't. It was too funny. We lost it. The director was not amused. We had to rehearse it again.

This was the first time Brynn and I had worked together. It was a commercial for Seagull waterproof suntan lotion. We'd just finished the first scene where the extras were dancing and we were all pretending to have a great time at this poolside barbecue. The director was playing Black Eyed Peas to get us wilding out. I was in a red-and-white-checkered half shirt with denim shorts. The only drama so far was that the director had screamed at the stylist because my shirt matched the tablecloths and they weren't supposed to, so they removed the tablecloths.

“Just don't push me too hard,” Brynn warned me. “These bottoms are loose and they'll fall right off.”

“Good,” I said. “You'll get a higher rate for nudity.” Her bottoms looked like they might fall off anyway, she'd gotten so thin. She was starting to get that heroin chic look that was so in style in the nineties.

“Not a bad idea. Hey, I'm taking a ciggie break with the crew. Be right back.” She got a light from a gaffer, and I was amazed at how friendly she was with the crew. None of the other talent talked to the crew. I was scared of them. Some of the electrical technicians looked like they'd done hard time in prison, and the others bore a resemblance to Comic Book Guy from
The Simpsons.

They turned the music off when they were ready to shoot the next scene. “Action!” That was my cue to walk alongside the pool holding hands with this hot guy who had great cheekbones (think younger David Beckham). He and I were acting all goony-eyed with each other until Brynn came into the scene, strutting by with a hot dog in her hand. Young David, distracted by Brynn, lifted his eyes off me to check her out. Brynn gave him a sizzling look as she bit into her hot dog. I then stepped in front of him and made my expression go from goody-goody girlfriend to royally possessive girlfriend.

“Cut!” Time to do it again. Brynn took this opportunity to spit out her hot dog. We did a few more takes, and every time, she spit it out into a napkin, refusing to swallow even one bite. A bottle of Crystal Light was all she'd had today. I honestly didn't know how she stayed alive.

Next came the fun part, where I had to say to Brynn, “You better back off, or you're going in.”

“Go ahead. I've got my Seagull on.” I looked at her forehead, not her eyes, or we'd lose it again. Concentrate, we were rolling…no laughing…count 1…2…and push! She fell back with a cute splash.

“Cut!” Everyone clapped. The director, the crew, the extras, everybody. Poor Brynn. She had to go back to hair and makeup now so we could do it all over again.