The Home for Wayward Supermodels Read online

  “Where are you?” she snapped—or more accurately, Wheh aw you?

  I looked around, surprised. “I’m in the Dancing Chicken,” I said. “Where are you?”

  “I’m in the Dancing Chicken,” said Desi, “and you’re not here.”

  “Just a second,” I said.

  I stopped the first person walking by, an Asian man wearing a dirty apron and carrying a pink tray loaded with clean glasses.

  “Excuse me, sir,” I said. “Is this the Dancing Chicken?”

  He nodded. “Yes. But no more chicken.”

  “Did you hear that?” I asked Desi. “We are definitely in the Dancing Chicken.”

  “Near the entrance?”

  “Right next to the entrance, in front of the place with the parasols hanging out front.”

  There was a moment of silence, and then she said, “What do you look like?”

  “I’m tall,” I said. “Skinny. And like I told you, I have monkeys on my feet.”

  Now I noticed that the dark young woman wearing the red flower, the one I’d tried to talk to when we first came in, was standing directly across from me. Holding a cell phone to her ear. And looking straight into my eyes.

  “You didn’t tell me,” she said.

  It was her. The words coming out of the phone were the same ones I could read on her lips.

  “Didn’t tell you what?”

  “You didn’t tell me that you were freaking gorgeous.”

  I was so dumbstruck that I was still working my mouth, trying to come up with a response, when she flipped her phone closed and strode over to me, right up close, so she had to crane her head back to look up at me, and I had to peer down to where she stood with her chin jutting into my chest.

  “But I’m not gorgeous,” I stammered. “The kids call me giraffe. I drink a milkshake every day and my bones still stick out. My teeth are crooked. Tom is the only guy who has ever even wanted to kiss me.”

  Desi pursed her lips and looked at Mom. “She’s gorgeous,” Desi said. Gawjus. “Am I right?”

  Mom nodded, surveying me. “I’ve been trying to tell her so for years.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You have to say that. You’re my mom.”

  “She comes by it naturally,” Mom explained to Desi, ignoring me. “I was a model myself, back in the eighties.”

  “Wow,” said Desi. “So do you think Amanda could be a model too?”

  “Mom was a model in Milwaukee,” I interrupted, before they could get too carried away with this ridiculous conversation. “Come on, we’re wasting valuable shopping time.”

  A smile began to spread across Desi’s face. “So you’re dying to hit the downtown thrift stores?”

  “Can’t wait!”

  The main passion Desi and I had in common was clothes. She loved to design them, and I loved wearing them.

  “You also want to see the fashion hot spots of SoHo and NoLita?” she asked.

  “You know I do.”

  “But first you’d like to stop for maybe some shrimp lo mein or tagliatelle bolognese?”

  “Mmmmmm,” said Mom.

  Which was my only clue that what Desi was talking about was food. And suddenly I was totally hungry. “Whatever you say.”

  “So what are we waiting for?” said Desi. “Let’s go.”

  Here are some stores that did not whet our shopping appetites:

  A Chinese butcher shop that sold ducks’ feet and pigs’ snouts.

  A Chinese fish shop with eels hanging in the window like slimy black ribbons.

  Prada. Gawjus, as Desi would say, but about a bazillion dollars out of our price range.

  A gallery showing photographs of nude people in Third World countries who were missing limbs or eyes or were even more voluptuous than Desi or bonier than me. I couldn’t stop staring at them in the gallery but couldn’t imagine wanting to face one over my cereal every morning, even if they hadn’t cost $8,000.

  Hideously Ugly Hooker Shoes. That’s not what it was really called, but should have been.

  Smelly Clothes Last Worn By Dead People. See above.

  Chanel. See Prada.

  A tiny store presided over by an even tinier Japanese woman, where all the clothes were minuscule, far too short for me and way too narrow for Desi. They looked like chihuahua clothes. We laughed and laughed.

  After the chihuahua-clothing store, Mom said she was really exhausted and that Desi and I should go on without her. We dropped her back at the hotel, figuring we had only an hour left until the stores closed.

  “We’re going wild now,” Desi informed me, as soon as we were back on the street. “I’ll take you to all my really favorite places.”

  Desi’s legs may have been nearly a foot shorter than mine, but she managed to move a lot faster than me, weaving her way through the people and the dogs and the garbage like some kind of urban athlete. I had to trot to keep up, and kept tripping over things and bumping into people, spending a lot of time saying “Excuse me,” which made people look at me as if I were totally loony. Which made me want to say “Excuse me” for saying “Excuse me.”

  Here are some stores we went to where we did buy something—and what we bought:

  A tiny shop on Canal Street, where I bought a Rolex (Desi called it a Fauxlex) plus a fake Marc Jacobs bag for twenty dollars, total.

  Pearl River Trading: flip-flops to walk in (good night, monkey slippers!), a sari, and a straw bag big enough to be my new suitcase.

  Canal Jean: four XXL T-shirts—orange, turquoise, yellow, and magenta—Desi promised to recut into dresses for me.

  A shoe repair shop piled with dusty shoes no one had ever picked up, where we found a rack of sunglasses from the seventies with bright blue and taxi yellow lenses that were a dollar each.

  A clothing-and-music trading store, where I traded my House O’ Pies T-shirt (don’t worry: the fishing vest covered everything) for ten CDs.

  A funky pharmacy: false eyelashes. Plus a toothbrush, shampoo, conditioner, and white lipstick.

  An Italian coffee shop, where I ate my first cannoli. Which tasted so good I ate another one.

  A shop called Frock that had the most amazing vintage clothes, everything from Comme des Garçons to Balenciaga and pre-Ford Gucci, where Desi went to get inspiration for her own designs.

  I didn’t actually buy anything there, but that’s where it all started, or at least the New York part of it.

  I’m talking about my modeling career, and it’s ironic that the thing that launched it was my overindulgence in the cannolis.

  What happened was that I took two dresses into the changing room. One was this very simple but extra-clingy Halston I thought I might actually ask Mom to buy for me, and the other was this amazing zebra-print Patrick Kelly gown that looked like something someone would wear in an opera but that I couldn’t resist trying on for the fun of it, though I was afraid I was too bony to pull it off.

  But because of the cannolis, my stomach was all pooched out so that the clingy Halston looked just plain embarrassing, but the Patrick Kelly fit perfectly. The skirt was so big I had to ease out of the dressing room sideways, and the dress itself was so spectacular that as I stood in front of the mirror, Desi straightening the bodice and flouncing out the ruffles, everyone in the store turned to look.

  And kept looking.

  I smiled into the mirror, and stood up straighter.

  Suddenly a woman stepped forward, a woman who was maybe my mom’s age, but who was nearly as thin as me, wearing a baby-doll top and high-heeled pink sandals and a pair of those bleached and torn $300 jeans. Her hair was very black and very straight, as if she’d just come from a blowout. The closer she got, the older she looked.

  “Have you ever thought of modeling?” she said, holding a card out to me.

  I felt myself blush. “I couldn’t,” I said. “I mean, I’m from Eagle River, Wisconsin.”

  Desi took the card and said, “She might be interested.”

  The woman looked at De
si in a way that finally made me understand what it means to “look down your nose” at somebody. She raised her eyebrows, and turned back to me.

  “I’m Raquel Gross of Awesome Models,” she said, “and you’re the kind of girl we might be interested in.”

  “Wow,” I said. “I mean, is this a joke?”

  I laughed and turned to Desi, expecting her to laugh right back. As long as I could remember, everyone had always made fun of the way I looked, to the point where they did it right in front of me. I was so tall, so skinny, so gawky and weird-looking, they figured, if I was any kind of cool I’d be able to laugh about it myself. And I had, I had even when it hurt.

  But Desi wasn’t laughing. She wouldn’t even meet my eye. Instead she was alternately looking seriously at Raquel and peering down at the business card.

  “Awesome Models,” she said. “I’ve read about you. Don’t you represent Fiona and Fernanda?”

  Raquel nodded, not taking her eyes off me. “We represent all the hottest girls working today: Kaylee, Christiana, Ludovica, My Lan. And don’t tell anybody”—here Raquel leaned closer and spoke in a stage whisper—“but we just signed Tatiana.”

  I laughed again. Who was I going to tell? Tom? All Tom was interested in was fish, football, and sex. Oh my gosh: Tom. I was supposed to call him when we arrived, and I’d completely forgotten. I guessed if he got worried and called the hotel, Mom would fill him in. I’d call him when I got back to the room, before I went to sleep, to tell him I loved him and missed him, at least when I had a second to think about him.

  When I refocused, I saw that Desi was nodding vigorously, her mouth open. “Oh my God—Tatiana,” she was saying. “She’s amazing. But I’ve read that she’s really difficult. How did you manage to sign her?”

  Finally Raquel turned to Desi, obviously impressed that she had the inside scoop. “We can offer girls the most comprehensive security, financial as well as emotional, along with complete benefits and the most creative work with the best photographers in the world. Everybody wants to sign with us.”

  Desi nodded, examining the card again. “And so you’re offering all this amazing stuff to Amanda?”

  “I’m offering Amanda the opportunity to be considered by Awesome Models,” Raquel said. “I’d like to send her for some test shots with one of our top photographers, see whether she really has what it takes to make it in the New York modeling world.”

  “I don’t have what it takes,” I said. “Besides, I don’t want to move to New York. I’m going to marry Tom.”

  “You’re engaged?” cried Desi, her eye darting to my ring finger.

  “Not officially, but I will be, as soon as I get back home, right after I turn eighteen. We’re going to get married in September.”

  “But you have such fabulous cheekbones,” Raquel said. “And those lips. That height. I even adore your little pouch of a stomach.”

  “That’s the cannolis,” I mumbled.

  “Maybe you should think about this,” said Desi. “I mean, September is three months away.”

  “If we sign you, we’d pay you a twenty-thousand-dollar signing bonus right away and guarantee you a hundred thousand dollars in income in your first year. That’s minimum; it could be much more. We’d set you up in an apartment, pay all your expenses. Physical trainer, clothing allowance, expense account…”

  But my brain was still stuck on the signing bonus. Tom’s dream was to buy a fishing boat. If he had his own boat, he could guide whole parties fishing out on the lakes, not just individual clients. That could mean four or six or eight times as much income for him, for us. Just imagining the look on his face was priceless.

  “So this twenty thousand dollars,” I said. “I’d get this up front, immediately?”

  Raquel nodded. “But first you have to do the test shots. I’d send you to Alex Pradels, who’s a fabulous photographer. If those pictures worked out, and if you signed with us, then you’d get the twenty thousand dollars.”

  “Twenty-five,” said Desi.

  “What?” said Raquel.

  “We want twenty-five as a signing bonus, and another twenty-five if Amanda’s income in the first six months exceeds fifty thousand dollars.”

  “What are you, her agent?” Raquel asked.

  “Yes,” Desi said, at the same moment I said, “No.”

  I looked at Desi. What the heck? This was all pretend anyway. And I certainly had no idea what I was doing. “Okay, yes,” I said.

  “We’re open to negotiating the terms,” said Raquel, “depending on the results of the shoot.”

  “And I’m assuming,” said Desi, “that you cover all the expenses of the shoot, and that Amanda is entitled to prints even if we don’t come to an agreement.”

  Raquel hesitated only a moment before nodding.

  Desi turned to me. “You should do it,” she said. “Alex Pradels is one of the best. It’ll be fun. At the very least, you’ll get a great picture to put in the newspaper when you announce your engagement.”

  That sounded good, though I still couldn’t imagine that this was something that in any way was going to become real—and if it did, that it was anything I’d ever want to do. Though I sure would love to be able to buy Tom that boat.

  “What if I want to quit?” I blurted.

  Desi glared at me. I knew she would have liked the opportunity to make my question prettier. But then I was afraid I’d get a prettier answer, which might not necessarily be as true.

  Raquel laughed and squeezed my arm. “This isn’t slavery you’re signing up for,” she assured me. “It’s the most glamorous job in the world! All you have to worry about is staying as beautiful as you already are, and let me take care of the rest.”

  But somehow, instead of calming my fears or getting me excited about the possibilities, she was only making me more nervous. It was like when it hits you that the big fish on your line probably has teeth.

  two

  There was a moment when I could have run, when I wanted to run. I was sitting in front of the makeup mirror in Alex Pradels’s studio, staring at my reflection. Someone I didn’t know stared back at me. She had eyelashes like spider legs, and skin made of latex, and a mouth that looked like somebody had socked her and then rubbed raspberries all around for good measure. Her hair was ratted and teased and sprayed; it felt like cotton candy, the kind that’s been hardening inside a plastic bag for months.

  This was the result of two hours of hard work by a British makeup artist who wore no makeup herself and refused to meet my eye, and a hairdresser named Glenn, who looked pretty much like a guy except he was wearing high heels, and I don’t mean cowboy boots.

  Out in the studio, Alex and his young Asian assistant, who looked like she was in grade school, were setting up backdrops and carting around lights and fiddling with the music, alternating it between loud and louder. Every once in a while, Alex, who looked like the guy who played Julia Roberts’s best friend in that old movie My Best Friend’s Wedding, but who was not at all a nice person, would pop his head in and look me over as if I were a friend’s pet that he’d promised, against his will, to take in for grooming.

  “How’s she coming along?” he’d ask the makeup artist or hairdresser, or the stylist who was wedging me into one ridiculous piece of clothing after another. The one part of this experience I’d been really excited about was getting to wear the kind of fabulous designer clothes I’d been drooling over in the pages of magazines, but these clothes were from the bizarre-o side of fashion: shirts with sleeves like wings and skirts with snakelike pieces of fabric hanging from them, coats made of rubber and pants with snakeskin laces down the sides.

  “Fabulous,” they all said.

  No one asked me, but if they had, I would have told them I thought I looked like something in a field you really did not want to step in. Ordinarily I did not consider myself the least bit beautiful, but compared to this mess, I was Miss Wisconsin before I even brushed my teeth.

  Hating the way
I looked wasn’t the only problem. It was my birthday. When Raquel and my mom tried to schedule this sitting, I said I’d do it any day but my birthday—and then this turned out to be the only day when all the other people could be there. Mom talked me into it, told me it would make a memorable way to spend my eighteenth birthday. Even Tom said I should do it, though he went silent when I told him that if it worked out I could buy him the boat. He wouldn’t admit it, but I guess that was an offense to his male ego. And now this was turning out to be even more dismal than I thought it was going to be.

  Suddenly I realized I was alone in the dressing room. The red-painted door that opened to the stairs that led one flight down to the street was to my left, slightly ajar. I could even see a sliver of daylight through the glass door at the bottom of the stairs. I could stand up, walk down the stairs, push my way outside, find a phone booth, call Mom back in the studio to let her know I was gone.

  I peeked into the studio, where Mom was camped by the buffet table, helping herself from the mountain of bagels that had gone otherwise untouched. Glenn and the makeup artist were sniggering in the corner. The stylist looked to be licking the edge of a piece of chocolate while staring vacantly toward strobe lights kind of like the ones they’d had at the Northland Pines prom, which kept popping off as Alex took test shots of the assistant.

  I could go. They’d never notice—or at least not until I’d made a clean escape. Shouldn’t a person do exactly what she wanted on her birthday, especially on her eighteenth birthday?

  It wouldn’t take a minute. I’d scrub my face with soap and water and then I’d stick my head under the faucet. I’d pull on one of my refashioned T-shirt dresses, slip on my flip-flops, and I’d be history.

  And that’s just what happened, until the part where I pushed open the red door and started to step out into the hallway, the stairs just ahead, when something stopped me. It was my mom’s voice. She hadn’t spotted me; she wasn’t calling me or anything. No, she was doing something far more alarming. She was speaking French.

  At first I thought maybe I was mistaken. As far as I knew, my mom spoke not a word of French or any other language besides English. Maybe it was Makeup Woman or Child Assistant who was chattering away in French with Alex. But no, I’d taken enough French in high school to detect a distinct Wisconsin accent in such telltale words as beaucoup and croissant.