Summer Intern (4 page)

O
kay, I have a newfound respect for models. I used to dismiss them as genetic mutants who were born blessed with killer bodies and perfect faces, and that was all they needed to get any guy they wanted and to secure enormous amounts of money. But believe it or not, there is work involved. Okay, don't cry them a river; it's not as tough as canning anchovies on an assembly line or mining for coal thousands of feet underground, but the catwalk is no cakewalk. Besides the actual standing around wearing skimpy clothing in freezing temperatures, people tell you
that you look like crap all day. My self-esteem couldn't take it.

James and I arrived at the
Intrepid
, that ginormous ship that's famous for some reason or another, and we found the ten-thousand-dollars-a-day girls in bikinis contorting into unnatural poses. Some of the sailors were in the pictures, so they had their hands on the girls' butts or were holding some girls in their arms. Ick, it all seemed so uncomfortable. I'm sure the pictures will turn out amazing, but the idea that you'd be dangled over the Hudson River by some pervy sailor who hadn't seen a girl in ten months because he was out at sea and you're all oiled up in this embarrassingly teeny bathing suit—yuck! You couldn't pay me. Even ten grand. Okay, maybe for that fee I'd consider it. Not that anyone would pay ten
dollars
to see me in a bikini.

That aside, it was incredible to see all the action go down. For years I'd flipped through the pages of
Skirt
and been amazed by their magical photos, which were more creative and original than any other magazine. And to actually be there and watch the assistants running up and down, tucking in a collar, or tying a string on a bikini, or brushing aside an errant hair, was so interesting. I was psyched to see that the photographer was Jenny Toushé (pronounced
Touchay
), whose pictures I had always admired.

On the cab ride down to the army surplus store, James and I really didn't have a chance to chat much because his cell phone was ringing off the hook, first with photographers, then with editors, and so on. I was waiting for the moment when Daphne would call, but she didn't, and I was glad. It wasn't until we had
successfully distributed the berets to the sailors and helped the fashion assistant pick up the entire rack of flippers that she had knocked over that James and I were able to sit back, watch the action, and talk.

“Thank you so much for bringing me to the shoot. It's amazing,” I gushed as I watched Jenny snap away at a model with a snorkel in her mouth, walking the plank.

“No prob. Glad you could come. Thank
you
for saving my ass with the army surplus lightbulb.”

“I could just sit here all night,” I said, sighing and taking a sip of the coffee that James had so nicely brought me from the craft service table—a gigantic spread with a delicious catered buffet that, natch, no one but us had touched.

“Really?” asked James. “You don't find it boring?”

“Boring? Are you crazy? This is like a dream come true.”

James looked at me and smiled. God, he was cute. The more I looked at him, how he was clad in the most well cut black pants I had ever seen and a Radiohead T-shirt, the more I resented Daphne and her ability to lay claim to everything I wanted.

“I love photo shoots also,” he said. “Oddly enough, though, a lot of people find them boring.”

I wanted to say “You mean Daphne?” but I had to bite my tongue. I wondered how he and Daphne had connected. What would she see in a photo assistant? Wasn't that beneath her?

“So how did you end up at
Skirt
?” I asked, feeling bold. He hesitated.

“Um, let's see…well, I've worked a lot on photo shoots…”
I nodded, and then he looked at me closely and leaned in.

“Okay, full disclosure. My stepfather's a photographer, he's done stuff for Hughes, and I got a lot of experience working for him.”

“Aha!” I said with a sly smile. “So you're like a Trumpette?”

“Me? A Trumpette?” he asked with mock horror. I think he was about to defend himself and then changed his mind. “God, I guess so. Gross, I never thought of that.”

“Denial,” I said mischievously.

“Okay, okay, but let me defend myself.”

“Go ahead,” I said. God, I couldn't believe I was being so flirty with this guy. It was so not me.

“Yes, I got experience through connections, but I have worked my share of photo shoots, and I did toil away every summer during college paying my dues as a lowly assistant,” he said, hand to heart.

“What, you worked for your stepfather?” I asked with a smile.

“Not only him,” he said with a smile. “Avedon, before he died. Scavullo, Mario Testino. And then Wayne Priddy, this up-and-coming guy who rocks.”

“Wow, you're lucky,” I said. “That sounds amazing.”

“But I also worked for Frank DeLine. You can't tell me that was a walk in the park. The guy only likes taking pictures of young gay guys, not to mention that he sexually harasses every guy who works for him. That was torture!”

“Okay, but who's your stepfather?”

“Victor Ledkovsky,” he said almost meekly.

Victor Ledkovsky? He was, like,
the
photographer of all time. He did everything for Hughes Publications. I had torn his photos from magazines hundreds of times, worshipping his elegant pix of Natalie Portman on a horse, or his hilarious shot of Maya Rudolph getting doused with orange soda. The guy was talented and prolific; he made Annie Leibovitz look like a lazy amateur. The fact that James was related to him was a whole new ball game.

“I don't know what to say,” I said,
really
not knowing what to say. God, now it all made sense. James was one of
them
. No wonder he and Daphne were together. They'd probably known each other since they were fashion fetuses.

“Come on!” he said. “It's not like that.”

I think he could see that my expression changed. To hear that James was one of them, it almost made me think he was a little lame.

“Don't be unfair,” James said, reading my mind. “I want you to know that even though I knew Mortimer Hughes and Genevieve West, I applied for my job at
Skirt
without any help from them. I have a different last name than Victor, and I didn't call Mortimer or use strings. I just sent in my application to human resources.”

“Well, you seem to know what you're doing, so they obviously could sense a winner,” I said, shrugging, giving him the benefit of the doubt. “And how did you meet Daphne? By a catwalk in Dior swaddling clothes or something?” I teased.

He laughed. “I knew her when we were young—not quite the diaper years, but in grade school tangentially—and then I went to boarding school in Europe. I met up with her again only when she came to visit the offices in December, when I started working here.”

“Mm-hmm.” I nodded.

“Kira, I know sometimes people think stuff when someone's going out with the boss's daughter. It's not like that. She's great and we have fun together. I just hope the rest of the office doesn't think that's how I hold on to my job. I'll probably end up having to work twice as hard to move up the ranks as it is,” he confessed.

So Daphne was “great.” Knife to my heart. No one wants any guy to tell them how crazy he is about another woman.

“You know,” he said, flashing his huge grin. “I don't say these things lightly, but I have a feeling that you're going to do really well in this biz.”

“Really?” I asked, instantly feeling my cheeks flush to a shade not unlike a strawberry.

“You're someone who's obviously got her stuff together and you have the confidence and taste to succeed. Not to mention that everyone is loving you,” he said, standing up.

I looked up at him. Loving me? Everyone? Taste?

“More coffee?” he asked, holding out his hand. I handed over my cup.

“Thanks,” I said.

I dreamily watched him walk over to the food table. God, he was cute. And he said I would do really well. And I really felt like he wasn't giving me a line, that he appreciated my style and me. And hell, it made me want him so badly. Why was Daphne Hughes the luckiest girl in the world?

I
came home, starry-eyed but exhausted. I hiked up the stairs, thrilled to get to the top, as if I'd just scaled Everest, only to find a note affixed to our paint-chipped door: “Yo, Kira! We're around the corner at Milk & Honey—you better meet us there, beeyotch! XO G ‘n' T.”

I smiled and stood there on our doorway perch for a second. On the one hand, I felt so tired I was convinced I'd be comatose within seconds of hitting my prison cot. But on the flipside, I was in New York! I was young! I had the coolest job on earth! I
could sleep when I was dead.

Milk & Honey, an unmarked speakeasy, was virtually impossible to find. I paced the whole block, peering down several rat-infested alleyways, before two giggling lovebirds emerged from a doorway. I watched them mack against a graffiti-covered wall as I squeezed by them into the hidden, crowded narrow bar. A DJ spun old-school eighties music as a cool crowd got down to the tunes. As I busted through to the back, I saw Teagan sipping a concoction and Gabe, naturally, dancing on his chair, voguing better than half of Madonna's dancers.

“
Yaaaaay!!
You made it!” he screamed ecstatically over the music, as if I were Angelina Jolie bringing foodstuffs to Sudan. “Girl, you get your butt up here and shimmy with me
this instant
!”

I looked at him, knowing there was no way I could muster up the energy to shimmy.

Teagan saw my face and laughed, offering me a seat next to her.

“Where have you been?” she asked.

“Well, I—” Just thinking of James, I was suddenly the purple rose of Cairo. “James took me to a shoot. It was so amazing…”

It took Gabe exactly 1.3 nanoseconds to jump down and sit next to me. “
Girl!
Oooooh, you got it
bad
. Look at her, Teags!”

Teagan nodded, her plum-painted lips curled into a sly smile. They so had my number.

“Guys,” I said, shaking my head. “It's
sooo
not happening.
His dad is Victor Ledkovsky!”

“Shutterbug numero uno,” Gabe marveled.

“Yeah, so that makes James fashion royalty.” I sighed. “Just the perfect match for Princess Daphne.”

“She blows,” said Teagan with arms crossed. “She took three editors out for lunch today to Osteria del Circo! I mean, hellooo, buying the good recommendations for her Genevieve internship at all?”

“Total white-truffle-risotto-as-bribery,” agreed Gabe.

“Well, there's nothing I can do but stay focused and plug along,” I said. “That's what I came here to do—slave away, not chase some office crush.”

“Yeah, but don't get your hopes up,” said Teagan, before turning her back to Gabe and changing the topic to a dissection of some band.

Teagan's words stung. I liked her and Gabe, but it rubbed me the wrong way that they had already cast themselves as sort of renegade outsiders and made no attempt to ingratiate themselves to the Trumpettes or any of the editors who favored the Trumpettes. It's like they had chips on their shoulders. I didn't want Gabe and Teagan to classify me as one of them. It was too early to make allegiances. My sole focus right now was to get that internship.

 

And slave away I did. The next day I was sent to pick up CeCe's dry cleaning. Not from the dry cleaner. From the JFK Airport customs warehouse—she shipped her clothes to Paris because they
had “the best dry cleaners on planet earth,” according to her. Sheesh, talk about clothes being the love of one's life. I had never been to Paris, but all of CeCe's jackets had.

I was doing other various menial tasks throughout the morning when I heard Alida on an intern patrol. Sometimes, when a crisis would arise, Alida or some editor would yell, “Does anyone have a spare intern?” All the other interns suddenly made themselves scarce, pretended to be busy, or just plain hid in the bathroom. But not me. That morning I'd just finished calling twenty-three agency bookers to confirm go-see appointments for their models and was free to heed Alida's call.

“Hi, thanks, Kira,” she said, frantic. “There is an emergency.” She was breathless. “Liv Tyler's makeup artist's assistant's dog walker got sick with food poisoning from sushi and is foaming at the mouth!”

“Oh my gosh, what should I do?” I asked.

“I need you to go to the Carlyle, pick up the dog, and walk it before they get in the limo for the shoot.”

I subwayed uptown in the scorching heat, got the pooch who was in the lobby with the second assistant waiting for me, and we strolled through the burning, sweat-inducing humid haze as I stopped every few steps to pick up the pellets of poo. Glamorous!

Back at the office, CeCe demanded I go buy her three pairs of panty hose. I know interns are the lowest level of scum at a fashion magazine, but I still resented the way she asked me—sorry,
ordered
me. At least have the common decency to say please. I trudged to Bergdorf, almost being mowed down by fanny-pack-wearing
tourists, and finally returned with the goods and was about to collapse.

CeCe carefully examined the wares, nostrils aflare. “No! No! No!” she cried as if I'd just cut up her family pictures. “
Nooo!
I asked for Donna Karan
Collection
, not DKNY! This is the bridge line! You
idiot
! I have to do everything myself!” she scoffed before storming out into the hallway.

Standing by in head-to-toe Roberto Cavalli and Valentino, respectively, were none other than Daphne and Jane, who bore witness to the dramatic exodus. While Jane took a phone call on her rhinestone-studded cell, Daphne lingered by the doorway as I tried to retrieve the hose that CeCe had flung around the hall in her rage, raising her eyebrows in a condescending manner. “Don't worry,” she said patronizingly. “You didn't know about bridge lines; it's okay. That means it's the designer's lower-priced, B-level line,” she said.

“Yeah, I kind of knew that. I just didn't see anything but DKNY,” I said in my defense. “She didn't really specify…”

“Here at
Skirt
,” Daphne said as if she were ruler of the universe (though, stupid me, I guess she was), “just assume that editors don't need to specify. They
always
want the best.” She smiled and nodded, happy to toss me the precious kernels of her wisdom, and sauntered off. I saw James had turned the corner and had seen the scene, so I turned on my nondesigner heels and retreated to CeCe's office.

Still fuming over first CeCe's and then Daphne's attitudes, I sought out something to keep my mind busy. I soon found Alida, who was on her hands and knees going through files. I took over,
alphabetizing them perfectly so she could go get a blow-out before meeting her boyfriend. Before I knew it, it was eight o'clock. I was about to leave when I saw a light on in Richard's office.

“Hi, sweets!” he said, surprised to see me. “Where's your posse?”

“Oh, they left. Everyone's gone, I just thought I'd check if you need anything.”

“No, no, it's okay,” he said. “I have to take Polaroids of all these new accessories and I'm wiped out working on my new story.”

“I can take them,” I offered, content to distract myself from the embarrassing debacle by plunging into work mode. Before Richard could object, I sat down to organize the piles of bags, hats, scarves, gloves, and wallets for fall. I snapped away and catalogued the goods for an hour as he worked at his desk on jewelry layouts for a big bling story.

The entire time, I was brooding over the mishap with CeCe's stockings and how irate I was that Daphne had witnessed the whole scene. I knew that Daphne would always have an easy life, getting everything she wanted without ever trying, but I prayed that this internship wasn't part of it. There had to be some karma somewhere out there, right?

After a while, we heard footsteps coming down the hall.

“That you, whore?” Richard asked.

James appeared in the doorframe. “Oh, am I whore now, Richard?”

“Ooops, sorry, James. Thought you were that skank Fifi. Why're you here?”

“I went out for a bit but had to pop back to finish up, and was
about to head home when I saw your light,” James replied as he caught sight of me on the floor. “What are you still doing here?” he asked. “I think you just may be the most devoted intern in the building, Miss Kira.” Why did hearing my name come from his mouth give me chills?

“Just helping Richard.”

“You're a lucky man,” James said to Richard. “Kira is the best. They just don't make 'em like you. I wish my intern stuck around past four o'clock! Well, bye, guys,” he said, and left to go as he caught my eye. “Have a good night, Kira.”

Two beats later, Richard launched. “Can you believe that hottie is banging that little brat?” he said. “Gagsville.”

I smiled, not wanting to tip my hand about my would-be swoonfest over James, but nodded knowingly and kept working.

“Genevieve's been in Paris and I just know when she gets back she'll give that Daphne whatever post she wants,” he said. “What a brat.”

“You really think Daphne will get the internship?” I asked.

Richard smiled at me sympathetically. “You want it?”

“It's, like, my dream job,” I confessed.

“I will totally put in a good word for you, sweets. I hate to be a heartbreaker, but you should know that Daphne really rules the roost here. It's lame, but true.”

“So you think it's not even worth trying?” I asked, dreading his answer.

“You should totally try. You never know,” said Richard encouragingly. But I had a sinking feeling that he
did
know.