Spring Collection (26 page)

“Basketball either. When they go, it’s over.”

“Is that why you’re not a professional player?”

“God, that is so sweet!”

“No, I’m serious, I’m not trying to make a crack.”

“I know you’re not, that’s what’s sweet about it. Listen, Frankie, I hate to disillusion you, but I was a high school hero, that’s all. There are maybe a quarter of a million high school players as good as I was in the country at any given time. About fifty thousand of them go on to play college ball. Then, out of those fifty thousand, only fifty get into the NBA lottery each year. Fifty rookies, that’s all, get picked by any professional team out of a quarter of a million high school hot shots. And out of that fifty, you may find a couple of dozen guys who are never heard of again and a half dozen who become starters one day. That’s how hard it is.”

“It’s almost as bad as the odds of becoming a top model.”

“I never thought of it that way.”

“Does that give you more respect for them?”

“I guess it should,” he said thoughtfully. “But great athletic skill still seems more … meaningful … than looking good in front of a camera.”

“Forget meaningful, think of the sheer determination required to get to the top.”

“I guess you’re right. It’s just that models never seem to be doing necessary work.”

“Mike, that’s not fair. Top models lead fiercely competitive professional lives for which, I admit, they’re overpraised, overindulged and overpaid. But, while that’s happening, they make an essential contribution to a huge industry and they turn it into one compelling, exciting show—like fireworks—for the world, and when it’s over for them, it’s over awfully fast and unless they’ve invested their money wisely, all they have are their scrapbooks. Like basketball players. Think of
Claudia Schiffer as the female equivalent of Shaquille O’Neal.”

“Whew! I’m glad Bill Bradley made it in politics.”

“Me too.”

“Do you want cheese or dessert?”

“No thanks, I’d like to wander around a few more hours before the sun starts to set.”

And wander we did, along the river which, with its fourteen major bridges, will always be the most beautiful street of the two-thousand-year-old city. Whenever we were half-tempted to venture into one of the side streets the Seine lured us back, exercising that hypnotic fascination that is irresistible not only to tourists but to people who have lived in Paris all their lives.

We didn’t buy anything except a couple of cups of coffee, we didn’t go into a single historical building, we didn’t enter a gallery or browse in the open-air bookstalls or look at anything more significant than the window of a birdseed store, we talked a lot of nonsense and sometimes a little sense and at the end of the afternoon, when the sun set, I had the notion that we had become something close to friends.

“It’s getting cold,” Mike said. “Let’s get a cab and go back to the hotel for a drink. Maybe there’ll be a message for you there from the missing person bureau.”

“Hooky’s over,” I sighed. “But it’s been a wonderful day.”

“One of the very best,” he agreed. It seemed to me that he sighed too, but I could be wrong. Which would amaze me.

When we walked through the revolving door into the brightness of the Relais Plaza, filled with its usual elegant crowd, sitting at a table near the bar were Tinker, April, Jordan and Maude.

“Well, there you are!” April called accusingly.

“About time you showed up,” Maude frowned at Mike.

“And just where have you two been?” Jordan asked, indignantly.

Tinker had the native wit to squeal, “Frankie, fabulous hair!”

I looked at Mike and he looked at me.

“We went to the Louvre, of course,” he said.

“And I didn’t notice any of you there,” I added severely.

Yes, I think I could say that we had made friends.

J
ustine took a deep, listening breath as she paused in the hall corridor in front of the closed door that led to Loring Model Management. Inside she heard the unmistakable sound of a large group of models, a high-pitched babble, punctuated by outbursts of semi-scandalized shrieks and thoroughly wicked laughter. They couldn’t be allowed to see her like this, she realized in a sudden panic, and dug in the pocket of her coat for her old knit cap. Although it was warmish in the hall she tugged the cap down as far as it would go and still give her a minimum of visibility. She pulled her hair around her cheeks, raised the collar of her white coat and wound a white muffler around her face so that only the tip of her nose was visible. Thus disguised, almost indistinguishable against the white walls of the agency, she slipped into the reception room and skirted the furniture until, unnoticed by anyone, she slid quickly into the refuge of her own office. She breathed a sigh of relief as she reached safety and locked the door behind her.

She knew what she looked like. Lips puffed and swollen, cheeks and chin covered with whisker burn, eyes languid and almost unfocused, with circles under them from lack of sleep, tangled hair that had only been towel dried, since Aiden didn’t have a blow-dryer. She looked utterly fucked-out, completely, thoroughly fucked, up, down and sideways. It felt one hell of a lot better than it looked. They’d never tried to make the
Knicks game, they’d never changed the sheets, much less made the bed, they’d barely stopped to eat and she’d resented the showers they eventually staggered into together because soap dissipated the way Aiden smelled.

Stop it this minute
, Justine told herself firmly, as she tried to make repairs with the cosmetics in her desk drawer. Nothing worked. She took one of the iced bottles of champagne from the bar, where it was always kept ready for celebrations, and rolled it around on her flaming cheeks, knowing that only a good night’s sleep alone in her own bed would begin to help. And she didn’t want to sleep alone in her bed.
Stop it!
Justine buzzed her secretary.

“Phyllis, good morning.”

“Oh! I didn’t see you, Justine. I’ll be right in.”

“No, stay out there and hold the fort. Just slide the faxes from Frankie under the door.”

“There aren’t any, Justine. I just checked the machine.”

“But that’s impossible!”

“I couldn’t understand it either. They’ve been gone four days. I called the phone company to see if there was anything wrong on the lines from Paris to here, but everything’s normal. Do you want me to phone her at the hotel?”

“No, not yet. I’ll tell you when. Anything else I should know about?”

“Another call from Dart Benedict wanting to make a lunch date.”

“Ignore him. Listen, Phyllis, unless it’s an emergency, just take messages for me. I have a lot of stuff to catch up on in here, and since nobody’s up to speed yet, this gives me some necessary time.” Even without the evidence of her face, Justine thought, she’d never be able to explain her outfit to Phyllis. Pink tights and a Giants sweater weren’t her normal agency-head garb. She’d have to rush home at lunchtime and change.

“Will do, Justine.”

The city was slowly digging itself out of the
blizzard but most of the side streets were still impassable. However, the noisy chatter outside her door was loud enough to indicate that every model who hadn’t been paid last Friday had managed to show up for her check, mobbing the bookkeepers’ office, clutching the book of vouchers that would indicate exactly how long she had worked, for whom and at what rate. This weekly rite was usually spread over a period of hours late on Friday, but last week most of the girls had gone directly home to escape the storm and today was a holiday for them since the photographers’ studios were only now beginning to attempt to function.

Damn! It was, as Frankie would put it, a snatch convention out there. One of the chief Catch-22’s of the agency business was that the more successful she was—the more bookings her girls had, and the higher their rates—the more she stretched her already frighteningly large line of credit. She could never, never,
never
relax about her credit, Justine brooded. She tended it as carefully as a prematurely born baby who was the only heir to a throne; kept it constantly warm, free from the slightest contagion and religiously fed on time. Loring Model Management, like all other agencies, paid their girls weekly, but collected far more slowly from their clients. However, every ninety days there was that huge note due to be paid, and recently everyone’s clients had been holding on to their money longer than they ever had since she’d started in the business. It was something to be concerned about. But not until tomorrow.

On the other hand, Justine thought, wandering over to the window, the fact that the girls had made it through the snowdrifts, like huskies bounding for the Pole, was a good sign of their mental and physical health. The moment that it was time to become seriously worried about a model was if she
didn’t
come in to get paid.

For certain girls who were halfway—or more—to becoming problems, payday was the only fixed point in a week that was a dizzy, high-thrill, addictive confusion of work, attention, flattery, free clothes, parties, gossip,
sex and drugs. Or maybe, if she were halfway smart, just too much to drink instead of drugs. But when a girl forgot payday, it was the equivalent of a fire alarm, a hundred times more dangerous than a dozen hangovers, any amount of weight gain, an inexplicable refusal to go on location, bookings canceled at the last minute, weeping on the set or even a black eye or a missing tooth. Forgetting payday usually meant cocaine. Or, in the last year, heroin.

There was so little she could do about it, Justine admitted with a feeling of rage and frustration that never grew less. All the lectures and horrible examples in the world could no more protect a girl from choosing a sadistic, tormenting boyfriend than they could stop her from taking drugs, if that was the direction she was destined to take. Even if they were in high school or college, in 1994 all teenagers were, to some degree, in harm’s way.

What was making her think such gloomy thoughts on a morning after the most wonderful weekend of her life, Justine wondered. Maybe it was a natural letdown from too much happiness, maybe it was some sort of hormonal revenge, but now, back in her sanctum, instead of basking in memories of the weekend, a free-floating bad mood had abruptly descended on her. Justine probed her feelings and decided that she felt an impression that something was infuriatingly
missing
, something she couldn’t exactly put her finger on, but connected with Frankie. The feeling was mostly anger rather than worry. Was it Frankie’s inexplicable lack of communication or merely her physical absence? The office simply didn’t feel right without her gay profusion of emotions. Frankie had a basically upbeat take on the modeling profession. In spite of any evidence to the contrary, she still saw every new girl as an exciting challenge, rich in potential, a Cinderella story asking to happen, a marvelous opportunity for a girl who hadn’t known it was there for her. But then Frankie had only been in the business a mere seven years, compared to her own seventeen, eight of them as a working model,
nine running Loring Model Management. Frankie hadn’t seen as many girls self-destruct.

Could she possibly be suffering from burnout, Justine wondered? Was that the reason that whenever she signed a promising teenager her heart constricted as she asked herself where that girl would be in ten years? Was burnout the reason she could barely bring herself to read the beauty pages of fashion magazines with their maddening reversals of position: one season touting the pale-lipped, big-eyed vamp, the next the strapping German blond, quickly followed by the glamorous brunette bombshell, soon overshadowed by the ail-American freckle-face until the frantic editors, desperately trying to keep the readers’ attention, came around to insisting that
the
new look and
only
look was that of yet another version of the vamp, this one red lipped, with damaged hair and eyes that had seen too much?

What normal woman, in the name of God, would pay good money every month to have it rubbed in her face how far short she fell of a ridiculous, impossible, manufactured ideal that was constantly
changing
? What kind of collective insanity allowed the magazine editors to get away with the manipulative crap they wrote to sell cosmetics and clothes? And it wasn’t just an American phenomenon, there were some
thirty
fashion magazines published by the supposedly sensible French.

Wouldn’t it feel wonderful to turn her back on it all and let it slip away, Justine asked herself? Wouldn’t it be bliss to refuse to spend another hour judging the chances of a young hopeful, to throw every bloody awful fashion magazine into the wastepaper basket—not even glancing at the cover, lest she be entrapped in spite of herself—to pack up and move to New Zealand, apparently a place in which you could immerse yourself in a more sensible and placid past, something that resembled a better version of the 1950s? She’d never buy new clothes again. She had enough for an Auckland lifetime. Her only makeup would be sunblock and sheer lip gloss. She wouldn’t even watch Elsa Klensch
on CNN, Justine promised herself. She’d sell the agency and put the money into a good old-fashioned New Zealand bank and retire to the wonderfully green countryside where she’d … she’d … raise sheep.…

Justine flung herself on the couch, shaking her head at her ridiculous fantasy. She’d seen sheep shearing in a movie once and it didn’t look like her idea of fun any more than it had looked like the sheep’s. She was in a weird mood, for sure, but New Zealand wasn’t in her future.

Was it Aiden? Was it because all the world, for almost three days, had been framed by one man and one cat in a secluded forest of peace and passionate discovery? She’d been all but physically unable to leave the apartment this morning. Aiden had literally been obliged to drag her out of bed … just because he had to go fix her furnace. Couldn’t it have waited? Aiden—Justine was conscious of her mind scurrying over the weekend, trying to find how it fit into a list of possibilities, when it was light years beyond whatever was nagging at her. Whatever Aiden was going to mean to her, whatever he meant already—and she wasn’t about to try and deal with
that
—he wasn’t the kind of problem that would drive her to buy a ticket for Auckland.