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I, on the other hand, was a loser and had fallen back to the ranks of poindexter whence I’d come. But I had all this money in my savings account making three percent interest and I knew that Elsie, more than anyone, would know exactly what to do with it.

“Um, Elsie,” I said after punching in her number. “I was wondering if you wanted to meet for lunch sometime so I could get some financial advice from you?”

“Sure,” Elsie said. “How about today?”

“Um, okay,” I said.

“I’ll meet you at Pastis at one thirty,” she said. “I’ll make a rez.”

Then she’d hung up the phone.

It was already ten a.m., which gave me a full two and a half hours to obsess about what to wear and how to answer if she asked what I’d been up to. I decided on wearing a pair of cute jeans, a pair of leopard print Louboutin wedges, and a red halter top with my red Kelly bag. As for what I’d been up to, I would not tell a lie: I’d been studying, not working, and it looked like with the help of my tutor, I was going to make dean’s list.

I got to the restaurant fifteen minutes early because no matter what, I could still hear Leslie chirping, “Better to be early than late, Bee,” in my ear.

When Elsie arrived, looking gorgeous in a white crotchet minidress and a big floppy hat, she took off her sunglasses and gave me a huge hug.

“Bee, where have you been?” she said. “I haven’t seen you since Prageeta’s engagement party.”

Now was the moment of reckoning. So I told her how my career was pretty much over.

“Well, first, my ex-boyfriend crashed this really expensive Bentley on the Bond Number Nine shoot,” I said.

She nodded. “Heard about that.”

“And you know that Savannah Hughes was totally hating on me,” I said.

“Ugly is as ugly does,” Elsie said.

At this point, I started to feel so sad and anxious, all of my words came out in one big nonsensical rush. “Well, Savannah put out this underground video of me with the guys from Guess Again Girl and I got in so much trouble. Everybody thinks I’m a drug addict and I’ll never book another modeling job again!”

The waitress was hovering, so Elsie took a quick look, then put the menu down in a move that I recognized as the thirty-second rule. If you stare at a menu for more than thirty seconds, you’re bound to choose something fattening. So the idea is you keep your eyes on the soup and salad section, pick one, and then put the menu down before you change your mind and order something that your hips will regret.

Elsie ordered a frisée salad and a bottle of Perrier with lime. I had totally been planning on ordering the steak frites, which, of course, came with a ginormous side order of fries. However, being with Elsie kind of shamed me into ordering healthy, so I ordered a frisée salad too. But just to show that I no longer cared about the modeling world or my figure, I ordered my salad with a poached egg and lardons, which is just a fancy French word for little pieces of bacon.

I was glad to get the ordering out of the way because I was anxious to get back to my pity party. Since Chela wasn’t speaking to me, I hadn’t really had anyone to vent to, and Elsie was a good listener.

“So anyway, like I said, this video is a total nightmare and it has totally ruined my reputation—” I was mid-vent when I just started crying, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop. At first it was just tears, but you know how sometimes you’re crying so hard, your nose starts to run too? Well, it was a full-on snot fest—worthy of one of my father’s grossology exhibits at the science museum. But not worthy of a fancy restaurant like Pastis. So I ran off to the bathroom to deal with the leakage problem I was having with my eyes and my nose.

When I came back, Elsie said, “Bee, I was trying to tell you, but you didn’t let me get a word in edgewise. I just saw the Guess Again Girl video on VH1 when I was getting ready to come and meet you. You look totally gorgeous in all of those scenes from paintings. I thought you’d invited me to lunch to celebrate.”

To say that I was in shock would be a stunning understatement along the lines of saying that Ashlee Simpson had a “little” plastic surgery.

I explained to Elsie that I’d actually invited her to lunch for financial advice. The smile on her face was so big, you’d think that I’d just told her Adam Levine from Maroon Five had walked in the room. Adam Levine being number eight on her list of ten favorite people in the world.

While we chowed down on our frisée salads, she explained all this stuff about mutual funds, IRAs, Roth IRAs, exchange-traded funds, fixed income securities, and private banking.

I didn’t understand a word of it, but she promised to send me an e-mail explaining everything along with the name and number of her broker.

“I fired my last broker,” she said, scowling. “When I told him that my goal was to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, he told me a pretty little girl like me could just marry a man with an exchange seat.”

“He didn’t!” I said.

“He did!” she said.

And the way we went back and forth like that for a good five minutes reminded me of Chela and how she’d say, “Get out!” And I’d say, “No, you get out!” and we’d go back and forth that way forever.

Elsie insisted on treating for lunch, making me swear that in the future, when I paid, I kept all of my meal receipts for deductions. Then we made plans to get together soon. She wanted to take me to the stock exchange in the morning for something called the ringing of the opening bell. Elsie was so stoked about the stock market, it was pretty thrilling to realize that I wasn’t the only model geek out there.

We kissed goodbye on both cheeks, fashion style, then I hailed a cab home. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t ask the cabdriver to drive me through Times Square. I didn’t need to see a billboard of myself to remember what it was like to just be me.

25

Queen Bee

When
I got home from my lunch with Elsie, there was a message from Leslie. “Beatrice, darling, call me,” she said in a breezy tone like it hadn’t been nearly a month since I’d heard from her.

I called her back, happy to have news from the modeling world but happy that I hadn’t been sitting around waiting desperately for her to call.

“Your video is going to debut on TRL at number one this afternoon,” Leslie said. “But that’s not all. Sports Illustrated has decided to use a plus-size model for its swimsuit issue for the first time ever.”

“And?”

What did I care about some stupid sports magazine?

“And I sent over your book last week, and they’ve narrowed down their decision to two models,” Leslie said.

“I’m one of them?” I asked.

“Yes, you and Savannah Hughes.”

I sighed. “You know what, Leslie? I really appreciate it, and I’m not going to lie. The phone not ringing has been a first-class bummer. I miss modeling, and I’d love to work with you again as long as it doesn’t interfere with chem lab. But I could care less about some sports magazine for guys, and I want to stay as far away as humanly possible from Savannah Hughes. The girl has chopped off my hair, had me drugged, and sent the paparazzi to photograph me half naked. She’s not right in the head, and frankly, I’m a little bit of afraid of her.”

Now it was Leslie’s turn to sigh. “Sports Illustrated is not just some sports magazine for guys. It’s a publication with a sterling journalistic reputation and the awards to back it up. The swimsuit issue is iconic. It’s never been just about pretty girls in bathing suits. This is how a model goes from being merely a girl with buzz to being a bona fide supe. It is the most prestigious cover in the industry, and every girl who has graced the cover is not only guaranteed a million dollars’ worth of bookings for the year to come, but she sets the standard for beauty in the industry. The
SI
cover was the turning point for Cindy Crawford, Elle MacPherson, Tyra Banks, Heidi Klum, Daniela Pestova, and Marisa Miller.”

“Oh,” I said. Because what could I say to joining that legendary rank of supes and making a million dollars during my sophomore year of college?

“I understand that Savannah Hughes has proven herself to be an unstable individual, which is why I myself will accompany you to the interview,” Leslie said. “But I urge you to consider this opportunity if you ever meant a word you said about loving your ‘baby phat’ and wanting teenage girls to have attainable body ideals. This is not just any old go-see; you have to go in and give them everything you’ve got. Are you committed?”

I was.

“Very well,” Leslie said. “My car will pick you up at nine. Get some rest.”

You’re not supposed to wear makeup to a go-see; the idea is that the client wants to see your face as a blank canvas. But when I called Andy and Syreeta to tell them about my meeting with SI, they insisted on coming over the next morning to hook me up.

They arrived at seven a.m., and even though I’d gotten used to early calls, I still wasn’t especially cheerful first thing in the morning. Andy was another matter entirely.

“The glam squad is here!” he announced as soon as I opened the door. He had bags and bags of hairpieces, straightening irons, curling irons. I’d seen the whole kit and caboodle but never in my own house before.

Syreeta came in behind him with a bag of organic blueberry muffins. “Just eat the top,” she advised. And while Andy fussed with my hair, she made us all a big pot of green tea.

Syreeta never goes anywhere without her music, so she had Leona Lewis blaring from her iPod, and the whole event started taking on a party mood.

In the end, Andy gave me a really simple hairdo. He clipped my bangs so they were on the short side and then hot curled the rest of my hair so it fell in ringlets around my head.

Leslie hadn’t mentioned anything about actually modeling a swimsuit at the interview, but Syreeta assured me that they were going to ask me to try one on. “It’s the cover of
SI
, girlfriend,” she said. “They’re going to want a peek at the goodies.”

So she waxed my legs. OUCH. OUCH and oh yeah, DOUBLE OUCH. And rubbed them with Skin So Soft. Then she mixed a handful of glitter with the oil and rubbed it into the area right above my bra. She called it my “décolletage.” Which I think is French for the tops of your boobs.

I wore a purple peasant top with a long gold Temple St. Clair necklace, some khaki capris, and these really fabulous purple and gold kitten heels that I’d gotten at Bottega Veneta.

When Leslie came to pick me up, she said, “You look very nice.” Which in Leslie language translates to, “You are one babelicious model and I’m happy to be your agent.”

When we arrived at Sports Illustrated, they took me into see “the team.” There was Doug, the photographer; Steph, the cover editor; Frankie, the stylist; and Malia Mills, this really cool swimsuit designer who was going to be designing all of the swimsuits in the issue to custom fit the plus model that they chose. Did I mention that with the exception of Malia Mills, they were all English? It was all I could do not to run from the room screaming, “The British are coming! The British are coming!”

I was standing in a boardroom, and even though they were all sitting, no one offered me a seat. I felt a little bit like I was on the witness stand, but I did what Prageeta always called the red carpet pose: one leg slightly in front of the other, hands relaxed at your sides, head held high, spine straight.