The Passion Agency (10 page)

Gigi's boyfriend was quite a bit older. She met him
at one of the local bars she was at using a fake ID with her
friends. She wasn’t overly inspired by him but it was something.
Like so many richly talented girls from poorer backgrounds, her
early years were spent having those abilities discouraged by her
environment.

Her future plainly was rudderless except for the
rudder that others, like a man in her life, could give her. It was
plain astonishing that in these times with all the ability to see
the world and expand a person’s horizons, it actually happened for
a very very small percentage of girls.

GiGi was clinically depressed but didn’t know it. It
was normal life and it was shared by millions of girls just like
her.

She was a product of her discouraging
environment.

One day, she saw Rachel Evans online. She bookmarked
it. Then another day she left a comment. The concepts didn’t really
resonate. She loved the videos. Especially the one where men were
being transformed into hot women.

One day she left a comment that would change the
trajectory of her pretty mundane life and future.

“Wish I was that pretty even after make up...LOL”

The name was her actual name and location her actual
location.

She continued to surf the net dropping comments when
the mood hit her.

Gigi had to get dinner for her brothers and sisters.
She just missed her mom. Why did she die?

…

Try as she might, Donna couldn’t get Brea’s situation
out of her mind. In her view it all came down to one thing: Donna
needed to find money to live so she could really start living.
Running low on money and her daughter operating like a prostitute
wasn’t cutting it.

It was her biggest fear because she had never had
more than a couple thousand in the bank at any one time in her
life. Now she was heading off to Compton, the poorest community in
the area to visit a sight-unseen plastic surgery clinic on the
advice of an old black man she didn’t know but for a couple
hours.

Donna still thought it was a waste of time.

Chapter 16--My Daughter and Her Lover

As she approached the “New You” clinic, Donna
instantly noted that a lot of what she was seeing was expected but
there was a lot that wasn’t. True to her recent more open-minded
approach to things, she was more interested in what wasn’t
expected.

There were nice houses and well-kept neighborhoods in
Compton. There were areas of vibrant commerce already apparent at
about nine in the morning on a weekend. The sun was rising to the
Southeast and the place sparkled in spots.

It was no warzone. Even as financially stressed as
Donna was, she was always trained to see Compton as a place where
no one walked around for long because bullets were flying
everywhere.

This was all very eye-opening and it enriched a mind
that was rapidly opening and looking for opportunity.

“And I am here at this place why?” she said to
herself in the car.

It still seemed pointless.

After finding Rachel Evans the previous evening, she
pushed the roulette wheel button on the radio to see what she could
find.

“We’re here talking to Barbara Corcoran from the
Shark Tank,” the male voice on the same talk radio station Donna
found the previous night. Donna had seen her on TV.

Her attention at that moment was taken to the
windshield and the car crossing in front of her.

It was a late model black Lexus and the driver was
bald but she could see him clearly as the car was coming from the
left. The passenger was a stunning black girl and in the back there
was a teenage black male. He looked sternly and fiercely at Donna.
Their eyes met.

She shivered while her mind raced wondering she had
seen that car before. She felt she was in Compton as everyone told
her it was.

Her fear was setting in. Suddenly getting out of a
car in this neighborhood went from silly to frightening.

She drove through the intersection and then took a
left turn down what looked like a street of homes, not commercial
properties.

“I am horrible with money,” Barbara Corcoran said
with a loud aggressive but unquestionably engaging and happy
tone.

“I think one of the biggest mistakes any person,
especially a woman, can make who wants to make big money in
business, is to look at that as some sort deal breaker about having
money. I hear all the time from gurus about “respecting money” and
I don’t disagree. I respect it because it can be great fun to have
it and spend it. Maybe you can overly respect it. You have to be
great with asking for it because trust me it is everywhere.”

Donna drove by the clinic situated right in the
middle of the string of houses. It didn’t look out of place even
though it resembled a pole barn and not one of the Sante Fe or
Mediterranean style homes common to Compton.

It was clean on the outside, landscaped with grass
with intermittent weeds. There was no parking on the front nor back
of the building. There was a concrete walkway path running right up
to the door that bisected the grounds in the front.

The clinic appeared to be closed.

Donna kept on driving and was overcome with a feeling
like it was best to keep driving right on back to Inglewood. Not
that she felt fear. On the contrary, she felt peace. She just
thought it was all fruitless.

She was battling herself in her own mind. Just like
always.

“Will it ever end?” she thought as she pulled to the
side by the curb.

Now she was battling herself over battling
herself.

She closed her eyes for a few seconds into some sort
of meditation. When she woke, she swore she saw the black Lexus
from the intersection a few minutes earlier. It was peeling past
her at a high speed.

She got the license plate.

Chapter 17-- Real Beauty

“What the fuck are you doing here lady?” the young
male voice said with obvious intent to scare. “Don’t move or I’ll
slit your throat. You don’t belong down in this area and you sure
as hell don’t belong sitting here sleeping with your window open.
Are you nuts?”

Donna had never been threatened like this before in
her life. The only confidence she had at the moment was the man’s
voice gave off the impression he was concerned for a woman who was
in a place she shouldn't have been.

Being that she didn’t have any recent experiences
being threatened by a teenage gang member holding a knife to her
throat, she didn’t have any script on how exactly to act.

“I um..” she stammered. “Could you take the knife
away? I am a woman from Inglewood and I mean no harm. I’ll leave
and I’ll give you whatever you want. I just want to live.”

It was all honest and made sense. She was only hoping
it would it would play well with her audience.

“Don’t play games,” he said taking the knife away
from her neck by a couple inches. “Answer my question.”

Donna wondered if maybe this was the kid from the
back of the Lexus. Strange her mind would be working that way at
this time.

“I met this man at the Forum,” she said. “A black
man. He told me to come to the plastic surgery clinic in Compton. I
looked the place up. No I don’t have an appointment.”

The young man suddenly stood up after being hunched
down over Donna’s shoulder. He walked to the front so she could see
his face and he even smiled. This was absolutely the kid from the
car.

He was tall, sort of lanky. It was hard to tell
because he was wearing baggy jeans and a baggy t-shirt and an
oversized coat better suited for Minneapolis in November. He was
gorgeously handsome when he smiled.

“Well shit,” he said. “You are quite the risk taker.
What was the man’s name?”

“Um Peter,” Donna responded.

The young man could only shake his head.

“Nutty old man,” he said. “Lady, I can take you to
the clinic. The doc doesn’t see strangers though. You can talk to
the doc. Maybe. But I doubt it.”

Donna wasn’t following what he meant, but since she
had come this far and it appeared she had the trust of the young
man she regarded as a thug with a brain, she pursed her lips
together and made eye contact.

“I’m in,” she said trying to sound a little
“street”.

The young man could only shake his head ladened with
corn rows and wave his knife at her as if to say “come on”.

…

The head of the Symington Agency of Beverly Hills was
doing what he did a lot more than what he would ever admit to his
employees. He met behind closed doors in a semi-social environment
with his biggest competitors on the West Coast. There was Image
First Models of Laguna/Orange County. The head was a thin elegant
woman named Candace Morton. There was the other big hitter from
Beverly Hills called Elite Direct. The head was a new person on the
scene from Europe named Devlyn Schwartzau. Then there was New York
making a rare appearance. This agency was also a woman and former
super model named Lisa Dradenton.

The Symington boss took the floor in a conference
room at a secret location in Malibu overlooking the ocean.

Ladies and Gentlemen, our problem is obvious,” he
began. “Though we are competitors, our collective livelihood is
being eroded and eroded fast by the free access to beauty the
general public can find online. Our best faces are being relegated
to mere faces in the crowd. To be elite, you have to be rare. The
internet assures us that rare is dead.”

Although this was nothing the other agency heads
hadn’t heard before or tried to solve in their minds, this felt
different and their collective attentions were fixed.

In an industry built squarely on the illusion, they
all were clearly feeling that it was time to get real. The survival
of what they did depended on it.

“What if I told you I have a way for us to not just
survive but thrive in this totally new media world?” Andrew asked
rhetorically.

Each of the industry titans at the table gave their
approval in their body language.

“We need to own the buzz words and the media energy
behind the “real beauty” movement,” he said. “I am going to ask you
all in seven days time for a pledge of $250,000 apiece to do a deal
with a young woman you likely never heard of. Her name is Rachel
Evans. She is from Ohio of all places. She is coming to L.A. and
should be landing within an hour. Our limo will be picking her up
and she is about to become a very very rich young lady.”

Chapter 18--In or Out?

The knife thankfully was put away.

But Donna knew from the size and menacing glare of
from her guide Dorian, that she better obey all the rules he was
laying down. He took her down to the end of the walk and insisted
they walk the alley way around the back of six houses and
apparently to a back entrance into the clinic building.

Donna had a sensation that the alley would be a great
place to get attacked by one or more of Dorian’s gang brothers.

It was all unknown and it was damn frightening. .

He kept his arm around her shoulder lightly as they
walked side by side past the back of the houses they had just
passed from the front.

Donna was out of her mind with fear. She was a
middle-aged woman who had consciously avoided black people she
didn’t work with or live by. Now she was now in the veritable belly
of the beast and she had no lifeline.

They reached the back door to the clinic. There was
no sign designating it. The area was clean and well-kept, like the
front. She noticed that the building and back fence were totally
graffiti free unlike the fence of every other home they had passed
on both sides of the alley.

Dorian sensed she was taking it all in and processing
it.

“The doc just had to ask and everyone complied,” he
said. “Never an issue. Never even put out a damn sign warning them
about a dog’s gonna attack them or it being a violation of the law.
None of that white person shit.”

Donna stopped about a foot from the door. She waited
for her cue.

Dorian had to be 6 foot 4, maybe more. He towered
over her. l.

“Go on,” he said in an impatient demanding tone.
“Open it. First door on the right, pick a chair.”

She entered to a sterile white hallway with what
appeared to be a closet door to to the left and further down the
hall, the door Dorian had mentioned on the right.

She heard no foot steps behind her as the door
clicked shut. He had not followed her in.

She went into the room and immediately noted how
spacious it was. It felt more like a small classroom or conference
room than an examination room.

Donna didn’t didn’t spend any time gazing around out
of fear she was being watched. This fear was ignited and fanned by
the large wall length mirror directly in front of her as she
entered the room. She found the softest available chair among three
situated in the middle of the room.