The Home for Wayward Supermodels (7 page)

Just when we were finally ready to shoot, the caterers arrived and set up lunch along the endless expanse of black countertop in the kitchen. There was more food than I’d seen anywhere outside the Fireman’s Picnic—dishes unlike any I’d seen before coming to New York: plates of sushi as wide as the tires on Tom’s truck, a mountain of vegetables as tall as Mom’s Thanksgiving turkey, a salad like a pile of fall leaves just after raking, plus muffins and pies and cookies and candy that everybody ignored.

I imagined how much my mom would enjoy this spread, and then had to work to push her out of my mind so I didn’t start feeling too sad. Now that I wasn’t with her, I realized how often I thought about her, how many things—like, practically everything—reminded me of her.

Just think about what you’re going to have for lunch, I counseled myself. But I suddenly felt self-conscious about eating with all these people standing around. Instead of filling my plate, I decided, I would only eat the one thing on the table I really wanted: the candy.

When I thought everyone was too busy with their sushi and their salad to notice, I slipped one of the dark chocolate balls from the pile and popped it in my mouth. But as I chewed, I saw that everyone was looking at me.

“These are really good,” I said, figuring an explanation was called for.

They all kept staring until Yuki, Alex’s assistant, finally reached out and took one of the chocolates, then lifted the sharp knife that was lying beside the bagels and sliced into the candy, popping a tiny wedge into her mouth.

Now it was my turn to stare. “I didn’t know you could do that,” I said finally.

“What?”

“Cut a piece of candy like a pie.”

I noticed the others exchange glances.

“How long have you been working?” asked the hairdresser, a nice fellow who reminded me of my music teacher and dressed like him too.

I was so thrilled that someone had finally asked me a question that I wanted to give him a complete answer. “Oh, golly, I’ve been working as long as I can remember,” I said, casting my mind back. “I was probably five when I started digging night crawlers for the bait shop.”

Everyone took a step back, as if I had hit a fly ball.

“Amanda has recently arrived from the Midwest,” Alex said.

“Ohhhhh,” everyone said, as if he had explained that I’d recently been released from a mental hospital. I glared at him.

“You shouldn’t be eating those chocolates if you’re going to squeeze into the Charmeuse,” said the British editor, who was the stylist—translation: person who got me dressed for the shoot.

“Now I’m going to have to redo her lipstick,” said the makeup artist.

“You’ll redo it twenty times anyway,” Alex said, popping one of the chocolates into his own mouth. “Relax.”

But British, whose name seemed to be Minty, was not to be deterred. “Come along, Amanda,” she said. “Let’s get you dressed.”

When the actual shoot started, an hour later, I stood teetering on heels so high I couldn’t actually walk, with a fan blowing my hair back and lights making me squint and more than a dozen people standing in a semicircle staring at me. Alex took only a few shots before Minty called, “Stop!”

I blinked.

“She has to move,” Minty said to Alex, loudly enough for me and everyone else to hear. “Will you please talk to her?”

He approached me. I stiffened. I mean, I stiffened more.

“Amanda,” he said, leaning close. I swayed backward. He brought his lips to my ear. “She’s got a stick up her behind, don’t pay any attention to her,” he mumbled.

In spite of myself, I smiled.

“Just do what you did the other day,” he said.

“But it was only you and me then,” I explained. “Plus, I didn’t do anything.”

“Wait here,” he said.

He went over near where his equipment cases were stacked and fumbled around until he found what looked like a few sheets of paper, then returned to where I stood waiting.

“You probably haven’t seen these,” he said, handing them to me.

They were the contact sheets from the test shoot we’d done. I knew that was me in the photographs, but it was some far more beautiful, elegant, otherworldly version of me.

I looked at Alex, my eyes wide.

“How did you do this?”

He shrugged, that smile on his lips again. “How did
you
do it?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t do anything.”

“That’s exactly it: Don’t do anything. But don’t stand there waiting for me to take your picture either. Ignore everyone. Even ignore me. Just do what you want to do.”

I knew what I wanted to do. Instead of going back into the spotlight, I headed to the food table. Minty started to protest but Alex shushed her. I got a chocolate. I came back to the light. Alex moved behind his camera. I stuck my tongue out and licked the chocolate.

“Great,” Alex laughed, clicking. “That’s beautiful.”

“But the dress…” said Minty.

“Fuck the dress,” said Alex. “You’ve got the most beautiful new girl in New York. Nobody gives a shit about the dress.”

The most beautiful girl in New York? That made me want to laugh out loud, but not just because I thought it was ridiculous. I felt myself relax, and then the longer we worked, the more relaxed I grew, the happier Alex got, and the quieter everybody else became. I still didn’t completely
like
him, but having him take my picture reminded me of going to the special dentist in Milwaukee who’d made me a new front tooth after I fell off my bike. I didn’t exactly like the dentist either, but I trusted that he was good at his job and that he would be able to take care of me. That’s the way I felt with Alex.

Things I Thought About While Alex Was Taking My Picture

1. How I was making enough money on this one day to take a trip to Europe, which I thought I would never be able to afford to do in my entire life.
   
2. Desi, and how great it would be, for both of us, if she were here.
   
3. How the silver sequined dress felt like chain mail on my body.
   
4. The princess in one of my favorite movies when I was a kid,
   The Princess Bride
   . (Fantasy inspired by the dress. Fantasy also inspired by the chain mail fantasy.)
   
5. Ice skating on Big Secret Lake with Tom. (This was when the air conditioner was turned up especially high and I started twirling to get warm.)
   
6. The pizza I’d eaten for dinner last night.
   
7. The other appointments Raquel had lined up for me this week.
   
8. Lipstick: how much I hated it.
   
9. Chocolate: how much I loved it.
   
10. Tatiana, who’d slept in her bed when I was out yesterday, refilled the apartment with cigarette smoke, and disappeared again before I got home.
    

By the end of the shoot, when everybody started packing up, relieved and happy because it had gone well and because it was over, I finally let go, really let go. I scrubbed all the makeup off and ran my hair under the faucet to rinse out all the spray. Then I realized I was finally and truly hungry, not just candy hungry, but buffalo burger ravenous. Forget sushi, salad, and vegetables; I piled my plate with roast beef with mayonnaise slathered on it, and helped myself to one of the beers in the refrigerator.

Alex sat down at the kitchen counter beside me as I wolfed down my food.

“Did you have fun?” he asked.

I shrugged. “A little.” Then I let out the last of the breath I’d been holding in all day and finally smiled at him, for the very first time. “Thanks for helping me.”

“My pleasure,” he said. “I really like working with you. And I—well, I remember what it was like being new in New York.”

“You do?”

“Of course. With this accent, you can tell I haven’t been here forever, can’t you? Listen, do you want to take some of this food home? It’s going to take ages for you to get your check from this shoot, and I know Raquel’s kind of stingy with the allowance she gives you girls.”

“Wow,” I said, “that would be great.”

“And there’s some other stuff we could grab too. Stockings, eye shadows, samples the editors always leave behind.”

It was like Christmas at the Rotary Club. Somewhere in the middle of packing up the fifth container of food, Alex looked at me and said, “Are you sure you and Tatiana can eat all this?”

“Oh, it’s not all for us,” I said. As Alex and I packed the food I’d been hatching a plan. “I’m going to take everything down to my friend Desi’s building on the Lower East Side and hand it out to the people who live there.”

Alex looked at me, surprised. “Well,” he said, packing faster, “that sounds like a very nice idea.”

When everything was together, he helped me carry it downstairs, where he hailed me a taxi.

“So,” he said, when I was about to step into the cab. “Would you like to have dinner with me sometime?”

I was about to say no because I was so used to disliking him. Then I was about to say no because of Tom.

As if reading my thoughts, he interrupted the silence to say, “Come on, I mean as friends. I feel a little bit responsible for you being here on your own. I’ll take you someplace
magnifique.
”

Who could resist
magnifique,
or a new friend, especially one who’d proven he had such friendly intentions?

“All right,” I said.

“Saturday night?”

I nodded my agreement, but I was thinking about the plans I’d already made with Desi for Saturday, and scheming how I could keep one date without breaking the other.

S
o all this stuff
was just free?” Desi said, as we knocked on another door in her tenement building.

“Yeah,” I said, shaking my head. “They were going to throw it out.”

“Who is it?” came a suspicious voice from behind the door.

“Mrs. Alvarez, it’s me, Desi, from five. I have some free stuff for you.”

“What is it?” Mrs. Alvarez said.

“It’s food, Mrs. A. And treats. No tricks, I promise.”

The door cracked open and a thin woman, a baby on her hip and a toddler clinging to her leg, peered out.

“My friend here got this food for free and we’re giving it out to people in the building.”

“Is it spoiled?”

“No, Mrs. A, it’s totally good. Look, we got cakes, we got breads, milk, all these vegetables.”

“I’ll take some milk.”

“Okay, take something else too. Take this cake. Some muffins.”

“I don’t need too much.”

“Just take it.”

When we moved on down the hall, Desi grinned at me and said, “I feel like Robin Freaking Hoodette.”

I laughed. “It feels great to do something that actually helps somebody after how I spent my day.”

I couldn’t deny it: I loved luxurious clothes and expensive shoes and high fashion for its own sake. But I also knew how many essential things that much money could buy for people who had nothing.

“Hey,” said Desi. “The world needs beauty too.”

She knocked on the next door and handed an elderly neighbor a wedge of Brie, a bag of fruit, and several pieces of chocolate.

“You’d never believe it,” I told her, “but it was that French photographer who took my test shots who suggested I take all this food and everything.”

“He’s got a thing for you,” Desi said, heading up the stairs to her own apartment. “I know it.”

“Noooooo,” I said, but feeling myself blush. “Besides, it doesn’t matter, because I’m not interested in him or anybody else. I love Tom.”

“Tom’s at the freaking North Pole. And you’re here at the center of the universe.”

“That doesn’t change the way I feel about him,” I said, taking the few remaining goodies from her so she could unlock her door. “Which reminds me: Want to go out to dinner Saturday after we hang out?”

“Sure,” said Desi. “Where should we go?”

“Alex is taking us somewhere great.”

“Alex is taking
us
out to dinner?”

“He invited me,” I admitted, “but I need you to come along with us. So he doesn’t get the wrong idea.”

The door to Desi’s apartment was open now, the usual family party in full swing inside. “I’m your friend,” Desi said, “not your security guard.”

“Please, Desi.”

“Are you sure he isn’t gay? I thought all guys in the fashion business were gay.”

I’d never met a gay man, not that I knew of anyway. But if Alex Pradels was gay, why did I get such a funny feeling when I was with him?

“Come on, Desi. What are best friends for?”

She brightened. “I’m your best friend?”

“Of course!”

“In that case,” she said, “I’ll be there. Want to come in and kick it for a while?”

“Not tonight,” I told her. “I’ve got to go home and crash.”

I was fast asleep, dreaming that I was giving pies away to people on a ship, when I felt someone shaking my shoulder, hard. Thinking it was my mom waking me up for school, anticipating her soft voice and a gentle kiss on the cheek, I mumbled and rolled over.

“Wake up, new girl,” said an accented voice. “I need you to come out with me.”

“Huh?” I said sleepily, blinking up at a face that I slowly recognized as Tatiana’s.

It was the first time I’d seen her since Raquel had introduced us, and I was having trouble piecing together what was going on, even after she switched on the bedroom lamp. She was dressed in the tiniest of denim work shirts—OshKosh B’Gosh children’s wear, perhaps—with the sleeves hacked off, over a short white skirt with big iridescent sequins shimmering on it. On her feet were bright yellow high-heeled slides of the type worn by Barbie. Her copious honey-colored hair was piled high on her head, and her mascara was smudged—although on her it looked so good I could imagine thousands of fourteen-year-olds copying the look the next day.

“Let’s go out,” she repeated. “We make party.”

Blearily I consulted the clock on the narrow table wedged between our two narrow beds.

“It’s after midnight!” I said with alarm. “I thought you were coming home.”

“Am coming home,” she said. “But now going out again. Come on.” She tugged on my arm, lifting me from the bed. “Come on, lazy girl.”

“But Raquel said…”

Tatiana laughed. “Raquel is old lady. We are hot babes. Come.”

“I don’t have anything to wear,” I said. At least not anything like a tighter-than-skin denim shirt and the sequined headband Tatiana was wearing as a skirt.

“Yes you have,” Tatiana said gravely. “Today, I test-drive all your clothes.”

I thought everything looked distinctly messier than it had when I put it away. She opened the top drawer of my dresser and without hesitation pulled out one of Desi’s creations, the short dress made from vintage material she’d been working on the night I stayed at her house.

“This,” she said, “is butchin’.”

I figured she meant bitchin’, but I didn’t really think it would be any better if she said it right.

“My friend Desi designed that.”

“Desi is genius,” Tatiana pronounced. “Wear this, I style you.”

Instead of a jewelry box, Tatiana had a tool kit as big as the ones guys hauled in the back of their pickups. It was so heavy she actually couldn’t lift it, but had to slide it out from the floor of her closet, where it had been buried under a heap of dirty clothes and jumbled shoes. Her idea of “butchin’” accessories were gold hoops so big they rested on my shoulders and sandals so high I couldn’t stand in them, never mind walk.

“The earrings are cool,” I told her. “But I’m sorry, Tatiana. I can’t handle these shoes.”

“Call me Tati,” she said. “And you
will
handle shoes. You are supermodel now.”

My first day out, and I’d already been promoted from model to supermodel.

Downstairs, I was stunned to find an enormous stretch limo, as shiny as my black patent leather confirmation shoes, idling at the curb in wait for us.

“Did Raquel send this?” I asked, my eyes widening.

“Raquel, ha! This is boyfriend’s car. Or maybe—” she said, darkening, “ex-boyfriend’s.”

From the looks of it, a party had already been in progress in the back of the limo. Just like our apartment, it too was filled with smoke, and it too had discarded champagne bottles on the floor. Once we were inside, Tati didn’t have to say a word and the car glided purposefully into the traffic.

“Where are we going?” I asked her.

“Hot club,” she said, popping the cork on a fresh bottle of champagne and pouring me a crystal glass full. “We’re hunting.”

“What are we hunting for?”

“For
boyfriend
”—that word seemed to automatically cause her brows to knit and her mouth to turn down—“of course.”

I was nervous that Raquel would call to check up on us in the middle of the night, or that maybe the agency had security cameras installed in our apartment, but then I told myself no, that was impossible. As long as we got up on time, as long as we showed up for our go-sees and our bookings, we wouldn’t get in trouble. Heck, Tati didn’t even seem to do that and Raquel hadn’t put her on a plane back to Ukraine.

The car glided to a stop in front of a dark building, marked only with a large gold number 13, where there was a crowd of people congregated on the sidewalk. Without waiting for the driver to open the door, Tati pulled me out of the car, champagne glass still in hand, and toward the building’s door. The crowd parted for us as if we were radioactive. A flash went off.

“Look cool,” Tati ordered.

I had no idea how to do that, especially not with these torture devices strapped to my feet, so I decided that as long as I didn’t visibly sweat or say “Golly” too often, I’d be okay.

Barely pausing, Tati kissed the cheek of the extremely large man guarding the door. “Hello, Rocco,” she said, gesturing to me. “This is Amanda, new girl.”

Rocco nodded to me and held the door open, slamming it shut behind us.

Inside, it took a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. Tiny candles flickered everywhere. Everyone, it seemed, was thin. Everyone was young. Everyone and everything was cool.

“We dance,” Tati said, taking my hand.

Wasn’t that uncool, dancing with your girlfriend? At Northland Pines, it would get you talked about big-time in the halls the next day. But there was not necessarily a lot of crossover, I was learning, between what was cool at high school in Eagle River and what was cool in Manhattan.

Things That Are Cooler in Eagle River Than in Manhattan

1. Having a neck that sticks out wider than your head.
   
2. Having tires that stick out wider than your car.
   
3. Drinking beer till you pass out.
   
4. Snowmobiling.
   
5. Wearing a cheese head, drinking milk, tipping cows—basically anything related to cattle or dairy products.
   
6. Skinny-dipping, wearing shorts in winter, going barefoot—though I couldn’t extend that to include every kind of nakedness, judging from the amount of bare skin around me in the club.
   
7. Lip gloss.
   
8. Blow-drying your hair so that it looks like you blow-dried it.
   
9. Having a baby and thinking up a name for it that all your friends think is cute but that’s spelled differently than anyone’s ever spelled it before, like Ryeleigh.
   

Things That Are Cooler in Manhattan Than in Eagle River

1. Spending a lot of money on a haircut that looks like you chopped it off yourself with an ax. And without a mirror.
   
2. Black clothing. Black anything.
   
3. The word “actually.”
   
4. Saying you’d love to have a baby but then never actually getting pregnant.
   
5. Therapy.
   
6. Being alone.
   
7. Being gay.
   
8. Being French.
   
9. Vegetables.
   

Tatiana leaned close to me. “Oh, good,” she said into my ear. “Boyfriend is here. Dance closer.”

She shimmied toward me and bumped her hip against mine, putting her hands above her head and rotating her pelvis like one of those girls who dance in cages. Somebody in the crowd whistled, and Tati ripped open all but one of the snaps on her denim shirt. My own dancing was hobbled by my high shoes, but that didn’t seem to matter to Tati or the enthusiasm of what had turned into our audience. People were clapping and more and more flashes were going off.

Suddenly a man in a gray suit pushed between us, facing Tati. He looked wealthy, conservative, like a businessman, but he was gorgeous too, dark and muscular, somehow managing to make his gray suit and white shirt look sexy. And the even more remarkable thing was that he also looked nice, his handsome face sincere, his gaze focused adoringly on Tatiana.

Tatiana kept dancing, her eyes cast down, but he spoke urgently into her ear. She continued to pretend to ignore him, but I could tell she was listening. I continued to dance, but only so I could stay close enough to hear them.

“Goddamn it, Tati, I love you, you know that,” the man said.

Tatiana turned determinedly away from him, dancing in a circle so that she was facing in the other direction. I wiggled over so I was facing her, and was astonished to see that she was blinking back tears.

“Are you okay?” I asked her.

“He don’t care,” she said.

I turned to Mr. Billings (that turned out to be his name), who looked at me mournfully with his big chocolate brown eyes.

“She doesn’t think you care.”

“Please tell her that I love her,” he said into my ear.

I danced back to Tati. “He says he loves you.”

“Tell him I don’t believe him,” she said back.

“She doesn’t believe you.”

He rolled his eyes and practically groaned in desperation. “Ask her what I have to do to persuade her.”

“He wants to know…”

“Tell him to go freak off!”

Well, I wasn’t going to tell him that, so I just smiled and shrugged, and he smiled and shrugged back at me. He was so suave-looking, except he had a little snaggle tooth, which to my mind was the thing that made him really irresistible. He seemed like a great guy to me, and I couldn’t understand Tatiana’s problem with him, though he didn’t seem any more enlightened than I was.

After a moment’s hesitation, he moved close to Tati and put his hands on her hips. When she didn’t swat them away, he moved closer to her and started dancing in rhythm to her. He was a really great dancer, almost as good as Tati herself. She began dancing away from me, her boyfriend holding tight to her tail, both moving farther and farther from me, like a train chugging west.