Salaam Paris

by Kavita Daswani

  Chapter Sixteen

  Dimitri said he didn’t want to lose me, that I was his best client, that my future was as bright as the moon and that I would be his nest egg.

  But he said that to me as he handed over a plane ticket to New York. His eyes sincere, one palm pressed against his small face, he told me how much he would miss me, but that his cousin Stavros, who ran the New York branch of his operation, would look after me.

  “Your future is there, not here. Of that I am sure,” he said. “It’s what the Viva people want. The campaign is global; the brand is booming. New York is the center of the world. When this contract finishes, there will be no end of opportunities, but you must be there to exploit them. Stavros will see to it. Don’t worry about anything; from the time he picks you up at the airport, he will take care of everything. You will be to him like you have been to me, his number-one girl.”

  The girls threw me a farewell party, although only Dimitri and Mathias were invited. We sat around the apartment and ate miniature quiches and vegetable terrine on crunchy toast, all courtesy of Café Crème. I drank apple juice while they had champagne, begging me again to have one little sip, just one, to properly bid them farewell. I shook my head, joking that I was in enough trouble with Allah to begin with, and they laughed as I cried.

  Stavros was gorgeous. He had salt-and-pepper hair and pale gray eyes, and he was tall and tanned. He gallantly took my baggage cart from me as soon as he saw me, whisking me through the chaos of the terminal at JFK and into a waiting black car. Inside, he lit a cigarette, looked me up and down, and smiled through straight white teeth.

  “You are going to have quite a career here,” he said.

  I turned to look out the window, trying to take in the roughness and speed of the city.

  “So everyone keeps telling me,” I said.

  “Because it’s true. Compared to Dimitri, I run a totally professional organization. I even have an office these days. I have some fabulous girls on my books, but nobody quite like you-nobody as exotic, delicate, and strong at the same time.” He reached over and pulled aside my hair, which had fallen like a curtain over one side of my face. I caught the driver’s eye in the mirror, and he averted his gaze, turning up the volume on the radio.

  “Please, you’re making me uncomfortable,” I said, moving over closer to the window. “I’m not accustomed to this kind of attention.”

  “Well,” he said, shuffling back over to his side of the car. “Get used to it.”

  He had found me an apartment in a building with an elevator and a glass door in the front through which access could only be gained by pushing a code into a keypad. We were on the Upper West Side, a nice neighborhood, a place where I would be safe yet from where I could easily travel to shoots. He had put down two months’ deposit on my behalf, which he would eventually deduct from my earnings. He handed over an envelope containing my schedule for the next day, five crisp hundred-dollar bills, and a subway card. Inside the small furnished apartment he had left a folder containing menus from nearby restaurants that delivered, along with a list of emergency contacts, his home and cell-phone numbers at the top. He told me to get some food brought in, to go to bed early, and that he would send a car for me in the morning. Then he shook my hand, stopped for a second to stare at me some more, and left.

  I stood and looked around. There was a bedroom off the living room, the bed covered with an orange chenille blanket, a Chinese lantern shading a lightbulb on the ceiling. The attached bathroom was small, but done up in a pretty shade of lilac, and had been freshly cleaned, the smell of ammonia coming off the tiled floor. In the kitchen a cupboard held spices and cans of food, a partially filled fruit bowl rested atop a small corner table, and two large bottles of water took up part of the counter. There were stamps, extra keys, flashlights, a notepad. Stavros, it seemed, had thought of everything.

  I wasn’t sure what to do next, nor even what part of the apartment to venture into. It occurred to me that this was the very first time, in all my nineteen years, that I would be going to sleep under a roof where nobody else slept, that I would be completely alone, vulnerable to being attacked or killed. That somebody could break in, in the middle of the night, could rape and maim me, just like my grandfather had cursed. I closed the windows tight and made sure the door was locked. Then I called Shazia, comforted by the thought that she was only three hours behind me. I gave her my new number and made her promise to stay in touch. Then I retreated beneath the comfort of the chenille.

  Madison, Fifth, and Park. Stavros told me that I needn’t concern myself with any other parts of New York than those, with the exception of a party or two I might want to attend in an area he called the Meatpacking District, and which made me wrinkle up my nose at the vision of pork carcasses being hung up on large iron hooks, baffled that anyone would want to throw a party there.

  But for now, I was going with him in a Town Car to meet someone from Pasha de Hautner, a famous fashion designer who was as wealthy as the women he dressed, and who might pick me to be one of his girls at his upcoming runway show.

  “We have to shake things up a little,” said Stavros, explaining his strategy. “Viva has been great for you, but we don’t want you to be known for just one thing. The international catwalks are where all the action is, all the exposure. Pasha likes to select the models for his shows himself, especially the new ones. And those are the girls who eventually land on the cover of Vogue. We’re overrun by Eastern European models at the moment-you know, those emaciated types who suddenly blossom once they land in New York. But you, Tanaya… you are something quite different.”

  Perhaps jet-lagged, perhaps still a little sad and confused, I didn’t feel much like talking. It was if we were sitting in a huge parking lot that stretched across the city, the traffic barely moving. I had thought that only Mumbai had gridlock as bad as this. Even on the occasions I would accompany my grandfather from Mahim into the metropolitan areas, when he had had some banking or legal matters to take care of, I would always be amazed at the numbers of people crammed onto the streets, spilling out of buildings at lunchtime. Those were the only times I could see another India, the one that was new and modern, the tall buildings lined up along Nariman Point, barely any space between them, looking as if at any moment they might fall on top of one another. This was the place where black Mercedes-Benzes were filled with young men in suits, talking urgently on their cell phones in the back while a uniformed driver carried them around the city to important meetings. This was the place where girls who had been born with looks, money, and slightly more permissive parents would stop for lunch at restaurants with names like Jazz by the Beach, dressed in colorful tops and tight jeans, sunglasses perched atop henna-dyed hair. I would gaze at them as I waited for Nana to finish whatever he had come into town for, and then he would take me by the arm and we would walk to Churchgate Station, my shoes getting stuck in the creviced roads, Nana taking care not to trip over a man heaving his torso around with handless arms. There, we would crowd into the second-class carriage, pressed into the thousands of workers who were making their way home from the business zone to the outskirts where they, like we, lived. If I was lucky, I would find a seat, and Nana would push me into it as he stood protectively in front of me. He would tell me to look at no one, talk to no one, to keep my eyes on the floor and a smile off my face. And when we arrived back at Mahim Station, covered with grime and sweat and soot, I longed to be back in the city, close to the perfumed girls and their handsome boyfriends.

  New York, I decided, was like Mumbai, only cleaner. It didn’t have the rainy-day prettiness of Paris, but the people could be as gruff. Everything felt rushed, as if time was slipping away and everyone had to eat, move, talk, and think faster than if they were anywhere else.

  At Pasha de Hautner’s office, it didn’t appear that anyone ever ate. All the girls I encountered, from the receptionist who sat behind a glossy wood desk to the flurry of females who glided down the carpeted corrid
ors, were mere slivers of womanhood.

  Stavros had insisted I wear one of the Viva outfits that he had hung ceremoniously in my small closet, and I had selected a pair of rose pink corduroy pants, a chocolate brown jersey top, and a thick belt with a pink buckle. We sat on a beige suede couch to wait while one of the dozens of assistants who seemed to appear and vanish within seconds said she would let her boss, who was in another casting, know that we were here.

  “Probably with one of those stick-thin Muscovites,” Stavros said cynically. “Fashion needs curves again, which is why those girls should be out and you should be in,” he said, casting an eye toward my bosom. “You are the young girl ingénue and the sophisticated woman. You have it all.”

  Forty minutes later, we were told that Pasha de Hautner was ready for us. We were led down a white-carpeted corridor and into a corner office that had full views of the city below, the people seventeen floors down looking like tiny alien creatures bobbing along the gray grid that criss-crossed the city.

  “Don’t get too close, might give you vertigo,” said an unfamiliar voice behind me. I turned to look at the designer, who was staring straight at me, a slight smile lingering on the edges of a thin mouth. It was hard to tell how old he was; he could have been a tired forty or a young sixty or anywhere in between.

  “Thanks for coming. Pasha de Hautner,” he said, extending a hand before turning to give Stavros a kiss on each cheek.

  “How was St. Bart’s?” Stavros asked. “Nice tan.”

  “The island is always lovely, but it’s just all those people,” he replied. “Is there no place in the world that is safe from the tourist on the package deal? I thought St. Bart’s would be the last refuge, but the bargain-hunter has managed to infiltrate that also. Of course, they’re run out of town after a couple of days-can’t bear the cost of a glass of wine with dinner-so I suspect eventually we’ll have the place back to ourselves, thank heavens.

  “So, what do we have here?” he said, turning his attention back to me.

  “This is Tanaya Shah, new to the scene,” Stavros replied. “She’s lived in Paris before this, India before that. I thought she had a beautiful and exotic new look that might be perfect for your fall collection runway.”

  Pasha was ignoring Stavros and instead approached me directly. He gazed at me up and down, circling me as if I were a car in a showroom. When he stood behind me, I felt his eyes move from the nape of my neck down to my behind, and I was suddenly appreciative of the coverage that ultra-traditional Muslim women had on their bodies. At least they wouldn’t have to contend with this gawking and mental undressing.

  “Well, let’s try her on for size, shall we?” he said to Stavros, a sly smile returning to his lips.

  In another room, one of the girls handed over one of Pasha’s creations, and I gasped at the beauty of it: fluid chiffon pants and a long tunic, covered with a heftily embroidered waistcoat, which the girl told me had been made in India. I lifted it up to my face, the wooden beads and sparkly sequins pressing into my skin, just to see if I could detect a scent of my country, perhaps a micro-drop of sweat from one of the workers who had toiled on it or a whiff of dust from the factory in which it was made. I held up the flowing, extravagant ensemble, and said to the girl, smiling: “Now this I can wear.”

  Pasha booked me for his next catwalk show based on seeing me in that outfit alone. But as a jubilant Stavros and I were about to leave Pasha’s office, he whispered something into Stavros’s ear. In the elevator, I pressed my agent to tell me what Pasha had said.

  “He needs you to lose weight,” Stavros said, eyes on the floor. “Ten pounds at least. Oh, and the gray hair thing? He thinks it’s a gimmick; says it has to go, that you’ll look too different from the other girls on the runway.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Stavros, I could tell, felt ashamed instructing me to lose weight, especially after his earlier speech to me, the one that celebrated my relatively curvaceous figure, at least compared to the reed-thin girls who he was convinced would hate me now.

  “They will despise you because there are too many of them, and only one of you,” he said. “You are their worst nightmare.”

  But while I had no real objection to losing weight, I put my foot down at Pasha’s insistence that I cover over the pearly strands in my hair. I told Stavros to tell Pasha as much, and that if he was inclined to drop me from his show because of something that made me different, I didn’t want to be part of it, not really believing the sudden strength of my convictions, but knowing that my Shah streak was far more important than a few minutes in the spotlight. I watched Stavros as he nervously dialed Pasha’s number and spoke to him hurriedly, mentioning something about how the streak was my good luck charm. Then he nodded, smiled in my direction, and replaced the receiver.

  “You win,” he said. “But the weight still has to come off.”

  I had three weeks left until the start of New York Fashion Week, and while I had only been booked for one show, Stavros said this was going to be my New York debut, the one that would open the doors for me to fame, fortune, and endorsement deals.

  “And you should start having some fun, too,” he said. “What model has no fun?”

  Almost as soon as Pasha had delivered his weight-loss directive, Stavros booked an appointment for me with a nutritionist who, in her sleek office on the Upper East Side, measured my body fat and wrote down everything I liked to eat: lentils and eggplant, chicken in butter sauce, and cardamom-infused rice.

  “You don’t actually have a weight problem,” she said. “You’re exactly where you need to be. Your caloric intake is a little on the high side, but your metabolism rate is high. In short, you can afford to eat,” she said, smiling.

  “It’s in the genes,” I replied, recalling the long, lean frames of my aunts, and their ability-like mine-to eat as they pleased without gaining an ounce.

  “She’s making her catwalk debut,” Stavros interjected.

  A frown appeared on the nutritionist’s face.

  “Ah, one of those again. Always happens this time of year. I don’t like it, but I’ll help you, if it’s what you really want.” She looked over at me again, a glimmer of disapproval in her bespectacled eyes.

  “Start by giving up your morning lassi, and we’ll go from there, OK?”

  After stocking up on celery sticks and flax crackers, Stavros took me to meet with Marco, a personal trainer who had worked out with some of the best bodies in the business. He had close-cropped hair that reminded me of a military inductee, perfect bone structure, and muscles that bulged through a thin, light blue T-shirt. I felt self-conscious as he stared at me, asking me to stretch my arms out like a scarecrow, checking for muscle tone, telling me I didn’t have much of it.

  “You’re not fat, and you have back fat. What’s that about?” he asked, looking unimpressed.

  “I’ve never exercised before,” I said. “Well, maybe a little yoga with my grandfather. Does that count?”

  He ignored me.

  “Tomorrow, six a.m., we begin,” he said, writing down my details on a clipboard.

  I met him in Central Park. He showed me how to warm up, bending over to touch his toes. Meanwhile, I could barely reach my knees. He twisted his torso from side to side, grabbing me by the waist as I flinched, helping me to do the same. He strapped a little band onto my wrist that he explained would monitor my heart rate, then suggested I start walking slowly, increasing my pace as I went. Everyone else around me looked as if they had been doing this all their lives, sprinting and talking with their running companions as they went, while I could barely go fifteen minutes without needing to stop and take a breath.

  “Three weeks, girl,” he said. “No time to be dragging your feet.”

  Afterward, he took me to a private gym where he worked me out on elaborate weight machines, laid me on the floor to do stomach crunches, and made me squat and rise repeatedly. Even in Mumbai’s sultriest summers, with no air-conditioning in our
home, I had never sweat this much. I couldn’t believe that people actually enjoyed doing this.

  In between all of this, and remembering to bake chicken and shred spinach leaves, I had to schedule fittings at Pasha’s office. I was going to model four outfits, which had to be systematically taken in until the day of the show. Thankfully, I had no time to mope about being alone. And when I told Shazia, she was positively envious.

  “What I wouldn’t do to have someone care about every ounce I had on my wobbly behind,” she sighed. “Tanaya, you don’t know how lucky you are.”

  “Nine pounds, three ounces. Bravo!” Stavros said, peering down at the weighing scale in my bathroom. “You’ve done it!”

  It was six a.m., and our call time was in a couple of hours. The show was one of the first of the day and, as Stavros pointed out, because it was only the second day of Fashion Week, the style crowd hadn’t yet developed the cynicism they were noted for, and thus it would be much easier to love a new and fresh face before the toll of the week had been taken.

  I shrugged my newly slenderized body into a pair of jeans and a light sweater, and Stavros pulled out a pair of high heels for me to wear, telling me that I had to look like a model, even before the show. He was beginning to behave like the ayah I had when I was growing up, my pudgy Gopibhai, who fussed over me like I was a wounded bird.

  Initially nobody backstage looked my way. We were at the Bryant Park tents, or “fashion central” as Stavros called it. Men with bright blond hair, buff arms, and high-pitched voices were fussing with curling irons. Women wore aprons around their T-shirt-and-cargo-pants-clad bodies, brandishing everything from fluffy makeup brushes to spritz bottles. Music coming from a sound system behind me was louder than it needed to have been, a string of rhymes and four-letter words rat-tat-tatting in my ears. The other models were immersed in their own world, reading glossy magazines or listening to their iPods or texting messages to some lover who might be awaiting them on the other side of the runway. Stavros was asked to leave and, telling me that I was in good hands, disappeared into the cavernous darkness of the long room I would soon be walking into.