Blood Relations (9 page)

“Oh, wow, I wish you’d told me that before.”

I did tell you.”

Marty Cassie seemed perplexed. His brow creased. “The resort development office is closed today, and they have to approve all the checks. Hey, I don’t like it either.

You know, these guys have put me off, too, Caitlin.

They brought me in to do publicity and gave me a share instead of a salary. A share of what, I ask you. The city was supposed to approve a zoning change, but I don’t know what’s going to happen now. They could get real nervous about what happened at the Apocalypse. I mean, Ruffini’s the main player on the project.”

“Poor Klaus,” Caitlin said. “Pay me for the brochure, Marty, but don’t suggest I do anything else for him.”

Marty Cassie moved closer. “Did he rape that gifl? Or is she making it up? What’s the story? You were there, rightT’ “Yes, but I didn’t see anything.”

“Right. But what happened? Between you and me.”

“I don’t know.”

“Yeah. If I were there, I wouldn’t know either.” He stopped walking. “Listen. Was my wife at the shoot this morning?”

“Of course. Uta designed the brochure.”

“Who’d she come with?”

“She came in the production van with the models.”

Marty gazed through his sunglasses, then slowly smiled. His teeth were small and even. He said, “I drove by, thought I’d see how it was going, and there was that faggot model-excuse me for being incorrect here-you know who I mean.”

“He was there to speak to me,” Caitlin said.

Marty smiled again. “Are you protecting Uta, Caidin?

Did she ask you not to tell me where she was, what she was doing?”

“Come on, Marty.”

“We broke up. I don’t know if Uta mentioned it or not.”

“No, she didn’t.”

“Yeah, well. I lay it at the door of our mutual friend.

He’ll get his one day.” Marty unzipped his bag and allows dropped his tiny telephone inside. “She married me to get her green card. I should have known better.”

C-Caitlin said, “Marty, my check.”

“It’s as good as done.” He glanced at his watch. “Wow, I’m late. Look, call me next week.” He was walking backward. “We’ll get together for lunch and you can show me the proofs. I can’t wait to see them. Call me.”

“I will. Monday morning. Early.”

Four years ago, Caitlin had exhibited her blackand-white decadence-and-decay prints at a gallery on Lincoln Road owned by a friend who liked such stuff. She sold three prints. There were wine and fruit and a platter of cheese cubes on ruffled toothpicks. People she knew showed up and kissed her on both cheeks and said the exhibit was marvelous. Caidin wore tight jeans and a denim vest and smoked French cigarettes. She listened to a fashion editor describe the Karl Lagerfeld spring collection he had seen in the company of Paolo di Niscemi. Had Caitlin met Paolo? He had just opened a restaurant at Ocean and Twelfth, which had tirarnisu to die for.

Then Caitlin saw Sam Hagen folding his umbrella by the door. The hems of his suit pants were spattered with rain. He saw her, smiled quickly, then went to look at the pictures mounted on the gallery walls. He put his glasses on. The pools of light from the ceiling fell on his shoulders and slid away as he moved through the exhibit.

Caitlin was standing there with her elbow on her hip, smoking. She tossed her hair back. Watched him look at her photographs, at each one.

When he came finally to speak to her, she said he didn’t have to buy anything. He did anyway, a grainy shot of an empty beach. The gallery closed early, and they went next door for cappuccino. Setting down her empty cup she pointed out that he hadn’t said what he thought of her show, be honest.

“I don’t know much about photography.”

She laughed. “Say it. I don’t care. They’re pretentious and shallow.”

“No, I didn’t think that. Why don’t you tell me what they’re about?” His face was serious; he wanted to know.

With his umbrella over their heads, they walked the length of Lincoln Road and back again, and she told him what she saw when she looked through a camera, and how it made her happier than anything she’d ever done, and, no, she never wanted to stop.

ullivan took Tommy Chang to the Seahorse Grill on Ocean Drive. He had offered-rather generously, he Sthought-both lunch and an insider’s look at the top end of the fashion industry.

They sat at a small sidewalk table, one of a dozen, their backs to the polished coral rock wall of the hotel terrace behind them, looking out at palm trees and beach through pedestrians and across two lanes of traffic. Some tables had red Cinzano umbrellas fluttering over them, but Sullivan chose one without. He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it loose at the waist. The sun felt gloriously warm on his skin.

He told the waiter, “Grilled salmon. A green salad with balsamic vinegar. And cranberry juice. No ice.” He looked at Tommy Chang, seated to his left.

The kid was still reading the menu.

“It’s on me, Tommy. Whatever you want.” When Tommy only nodded, Sullivan said, “Hamburger and fries?”

“Okay. Sure. And a Coke.”

“Naturally.” Sullivan handed the waiter their menus.

The kid sat back in his chair, looking around, one knee bouncing.

Reaching into his pocket, Sullivan pulled out the small plastic vial that contained his vitamins. He counted out four different varieties and took them with water. Tommy Chang watched him. Sullivan asked, “Tell me. How were you hired by Caidin Dorn?” He tossed back the last capsule.

” My photography teacher at Miami-Dade knows her, and he recommended me when she needed somebody to help out and stuff.” Tommy shrugged. “Not like it’s any big deal or anything.”

“But it is. Everybody starts somewhere. And so you’ve decided to become a fashion photographer.”

“Well, I’m exploring my options. Maybe get on the staff of a magazine someday.”

“That’s ambitious.” Sullivan wondered if he himself had ever been so naive. “Where are you from?” he asked.

“From? Like maybe China?” Tommy smiled broadly.

He had clear, long-lashed, almond-shaped eyes. “My dad was born in San Diego.”

‘You still live at home?”

‘For now. They don’t make me pay rent.” Tommy laughed.

Sullivan settled back into his chair, angling away to make some room for his legs, which he crossed at the knee. “Well, let’s see what I can tell you. I’ve worked with the best fashion photographers in the world. Avedon, von Wangenheim, Arthur Elgort, Helmut Newton, for instance. I could show you my book if you want. I know several local photographers. Caitlin is all right but not very imaginative. Well, can anyone be imaginative with catalog, I ask you? Learn what you can from her; then move on. And for God’s sake, get out of Miami if possible. It’s full of has-beens, mediocrities, B-list celebrities, and all the fame-fuckers who tag along after them.”

The kid grinned. “What are you doing here?”

Such a clever boy. Sullivan smiled. “I come for the sun, not the social life. Genuine social life in Miami Beach is dead. When you see the Gap and Taco Bell, you know it’s over. This town after dark has become as phony as Bourbon Street, as tawdry as Daytona Beach during spring break. Tourists come to gawk at the transvestites. Fraternity boys throw up their beer and piss on the pavements. The Beach can’t decide between debauchery and commercialism, but either way it’s the walking dead.”

The kid was staring at him.

Sullivan stared back until Tommy lowered his eyes and worked at unfolding his napkin.

“Have you ever done any modeling?”

“Me?”

“You’ve got the looks. No, honestly, I’m not kidding you. I’ve seen, oh, God, hundreds of young models.

Thousands. Most of them haven’t a chance. You do. I would know, believe me.”

Sullivan turned in his chair to study Tommy Chang’s face. “The ethnic look is strong right now. You’ve seen it for years in Benetton ads. Good profile. Great cheekbones. Must be the Chinese blood.” He reached out and took off Tommy’s bandanna headband and tossed it into his lap.

“Hair’s a bit long. You’re tall enough, good muscle definition. Asians tend to photograph as rather fragile. I don’t think you would, though.”

The kid drew back as if Sullivan might go for his underwear next. The edge of his boxers-dear God, a Miami Hurricanes motif-showed over his denim shorts, and a darkish line of hair sprouted between his pecs and vanished below his navel. Sullivan raised his eyes.

Tommy had put on a defiant glare.“I’m straight, man.

You’d better know that up front.”

“Marvelous, but so what? Most models are straight, in case you wondered about that. But what does it mean?

Straight. And don’t use labels-it’s not polite. Labels don’t tell you what a person is, deep within himself. A person is anything he wants to be.” Christ, what drivel.

Chastened, the kid said, “Sorry.”

Sullivan gave him a comradely slap on the back. “Forget it. Listen, you wanted some advice. Stay out of fashion photography. There are too many people in it already.

Take Caidin, for example. She’s not without talent, but she couldn’t survive if she didn’t have a lover who provides some ready cash now and then. He’s a lawyer. Am I telling you things you don’t know? Oh, take pictures if you have to, but then what do you live on? I’d try modeling if I were you. It isn’t hard, and you could fit it around your classes in school.”

Tommy took a long swallow of Coke, then put down his glass. “Nah. I see these guys posing, making faces. I don’t think I could do that.”

“Of course you could. It’s fun. It’s like acting. Watch.”

Sullivan had a repertoire of attitudes. He demonstrated a few of them. The moist-lipped desire of cologne ads; the arrogance they wanted for Italian menswear; the breathless intensity from the jeans ad where he had simulated screwing an anorexic teenage girl against a rusty water tank on a New York rooftop. Then a blue-eyed grin for innocent fun, just the thing for Father’s Day, kid-on-theknee shots.

“Cool.” Tommy’s eyes made crescent-shaped slits.

“That’s pretty good.”

There was something in his laugh that reminded Sullivan of Stavros’s laughter: full, open, nothing fake about it. Whatever else Stavros might have been-sullen, angry, selfdestructive-he hadn’t been phony.

Sullivan raised his hands, which he knew were graceful and strong, then spread his arms wide, like wings. His white Emporio Armani shirt lifted, then opened, showing everything from neck to belt buckle. He was aware that people on the sidewalk were slowing as they walked by, but he was used to that.

“Look. No tattoos, no rings through various parts of my body. No cosmetic surgery-not yet, anyway.” He laughed. “Although I’m thirty-one, and it won’t last much longer, will it?”

Tommy shrugged.

:‘You mustn’t get into drugs,” Sullivan said.

‘I don’t.”

“Good. Don’t drink either.”

The waiter brought the food.

Sullivan watched the kid splatter ketchup all over the beef patty. Averting his eyes, Sullivan picked up his own fork and flaked off a wedge of grilled salmon. Fresh and pink. A sprig of basil on top. How much of this damned fish had he consumed on South Beach?

“You’re eighteen, aren’t you?”

Tommy nodded and chewed.

“It helps, at your age, to know someone who’s been around. I’ve been lucky that way. You remember the TV ad a couple of years ago for Polo cologne, where the man was riding a horse along the beach in slow motion?”

“You did that?”

“Yes. I got the job because I knew someone. I made over a hundred thousand dollars in residuals.”

The almond eyes were fixed on him, and Sullivan felt a little electric jolt of connection. He had Tommy’s attention now.

At age fifteen in London, Charlie Sullivan had been on one of his customary pilfering expeditions, this time at Harrods, where he’d found a smashing silk shirt. Someone spotted him, a pockmarked man of about forty.

A clerk saw him at the same time and grabbed him by the back of the neck, but the man told the clerk he was this boy’s uncle, to let him go. The man paid for that shirt and two more besides. He turned out to be a baronet who lived in a townhouse in Kensington with six bedrooms, all of which Sullivan got to know intimately. His benefactor bought him clothes, paid for speech lessons, and taught him which fork to use and other sorts of useful, pretty bits of information. When Sullivan was eighteen he took a gold-inlaid Victorian music box from the baronet’s house, pawned it for two thousand pounds, and flew to the Bahamas with some pals. After three months he was broke and starving, pondering whether to crawl home or sell his sweet white ass, wh6 someone saved it for him-a forty-five-year-old woman on vacation from a New York art gallery. She took him to the States and got him a green card. More polishing, more money, more clothes. Et voild! But she liked to be tied up and beaten, and she was a junkie besides. Sullivan began making the rounds of modeling agencies with a few head shots, as one of his girlfriends had suggested. It had taken him five hard years to become established.

Sullivan looked at Tommy Chang and felt a sudden desire to toss his napkin on the table and go home. He took a deep breath. Cold, gray melancholy would descend upon him out of nowhere lately, for no reason at all.

Last night he’d gone out with three friends he’d met in Milan last year, even taking one of them to his flat. And then … nothing. He had preferred falling asleep, and after he’d heard the door slam he’d lain awake for hours, his chest aching as if he might at any moment burst into tears.

The kid was talking about money now. Then a question, and Sullivan had to think of what it was.

“No, men don’t make nearly as much as the girls, of course, but we manage well enough.” He could see the question in Tommy’s mind. “I average about two thousand a day plus expenses, depending on the job. For runway modeling it’s less, but you do it for the exposure.

I can always find work in Germany or Scandinavia because of my coloring, but it keeps me from a lot of jobs in South America. Oddly enough, the Japanese like blonds. The French are okay to work with. The Italians don’t pay as well, but I have a good time. What’s really cool-” Oh, God, could he get his mouth around these juvenile speech patterns without gagging? “You get to see places. And meet girls. Lots of them. Do you have a girlfriend?”