“I will.”
“You bet your ass you will, sweetie.”
The phone buzzed and the receptionist’s voice announced, “Sorry to interrupt, but Kate’s going crazy back there. Two more castings came in and she is fuh-reaking.”
“All right, help’s on the way. Come on, Allee, you might as well see my hideout. We’ll finish this meeting later.”
She took me across the booking room and behind the staircase to a boxy little room with two cluttered desks, some chairs and filing cabinets, a fax machine, and stained carpeting. “Welcome to the TV department.” She sat down at one of the desks, waving me into a chair. “Monique hides us back here like a bastard child.”
The walls were wallpapered with actors’ head shots. There were people of all ages and ethnicities, and some most definitely didn’t look like models. Momma noticed me looking. “My division books movies, videos, commercials, you name it.”
The Keira Knightley clone was typing and talking into her headset. “Heidi, Kate. Got a national for a Lexus spot. I need a yummy mummy twenty-eight to thirty-two years old. No carpool types. They want a MILF. It’s right up your alley. Call me, love.” She turned to Momma. “I’m going mad.”
“Time slots?”
“Only four.”
“Did you call Sandy?”
“Nah. She’s jumped the shark lately. Ever since she cut her hair.”
“What else?”
“Progresso beans. Latina Mom and high school daughter, no dialogue. Nonunion for Mexico. Three days, fifteen hundred a day, buyout.”
“What about Allee here?” Momma said.
“Brilliant. Welcome aboard, Allee.”
The phone rang. Momma picked it up. “Claudette. Casting tomorrow. I need you to be a teen prostitute for a new crime show pilot, mmm-kay?”
Another line rang. Kate pushed a button on her phone and said into her headset, “Hey, Michael, can you belch on request?”
“No, not a Pretty Woman type,” Momma said into the phone. “Think Biscayne Boulevard crackhead, dirty hair, clumpy mascara, white spandex.”
“Can you belch the alphabet?” Kate asked into her headset. “It’s for Alpha-Bits cereal. The script says, uh, let’s see here, ‘Alpha-Bits is so fun to eat, it turns grown-ups into kids.’”
“Just one line,” said Momma. “You have to say, ‘Hey, Daddy.’ Say it real sexy. Right. Just like that.”
“Right, the whole alphabet,” said Kate. “You can? Brilliant. Let’s hear it.”
Somebody’s phone buzzed and the receptionist’s voice called out, “Brynn’s on line two again.” Brynn. There goes my heart, going into manic, kerblanging rhythm. It was as if she was in the room. “Should I put her through?” the receptionist asked. “She wants to know why you won’t submit her for that L’Oréal casting coming up.”
Momma pounded her desk. “Dammit, I told her a thousand times. She’s not right for it. Her hair isn’t thick enough and it’s too dry. I can’t talk to her right now. Get rid of her.”
My hair was thick and shiny. The scouts loved my hair. Jay went on and on about it at the mall. Excuse me, great hair right in front of you, ladies. What about me for that L’Oréal thing? I pulled my hair out of its ponytail, shook it, played with it. Come on, Momma, eyes on me, stop looking at your computer screen.
Kate noticed me. “Hey, Momma, what about Allee for L’Oréal?” she asked.
Momma’s jowls spread into a smile. “As a matter of fact, Miss Allee, you’d be great for it.”
Nobody was home in the apartment. It was neater than the last time I’d seen it. It actually looked cute. Before, I hadn’t noticed the pretty aqua-colored carpeting that matched the futon, or the paintings of Mediterranean islands everywhere.
Miguel came over to deliver some cleaning supplies and stayed for a while. He went through my suitcase with me and pulled out a few things he thought would be good for castings. There wasn’t much he liked. “Your biggest problem,” he said,
“is color.” He held up a gray tank and wrinkled his nose. “If a fart could be seen, it would be this color. Blech.” Then he flung it across the room, adding, “It doesn’t do you justice. Your hair, your skin, your whole you is too fabulous for gray. You need jewel tones, Allee girl. I’m talking ruby, emerald, topaz.”
After hanging out and making himself a cup of coffee, he’d had to leave for some dinner meeting with Dimitri, so now I was alone. Okay, back to my notes. I wrote down everything Momma had said: Keep nails short and clean. No brightly colored nail polish. Don’t get too tan. Little color okay, no tan lines. Go easy on jewelry and makeup for print go-sees. Want to look like blank canvas, healthy, fresh. Image is light, fun. Think happy virgin.
Must wax eyebrows and do Brazilian down below!!!!!! Take two Aleve fifteen minutes before appointment. Be careful when smiling not to show too much gum. Practice smiling with tongue pressed behind teeth to hide any black space. Hair is fab, don’t change a thing, want to run naked through it. (????) Buy slinky dresses, body-hugging clothes—try Urban Outfitters, Sixth and Collins. Wear bright colors, def show midriff. Don’t wear black tops for TV castings, will look like floating head on tape.
This beanbag wasn’t that comfortable. Or maybe it was just me who wasn’t comfortable. If only the knot in my stomach would go away. I was waiting for something to happen, but I didn’t know what. Forget about that rich-and-independent sensation I’d had earlier. I was the new kid on the first day of school and I was feeling lost. I kept thinking about my sister. She was probably dying to know what had happened to me on my first day in the modeling biz, but she was so stubborn, no way would she pick up the phone first.
I started to dial home, but hung up quickly when I heard a key turning in the lock.
It was Brynn. Her face was professionally made up, smoky eyes, red lipstick. She was wearing that NEW JERSEY CHARM SCHOOL sweatshirt again, with black leather pants and pointy boots. “Well, well, well, if it isn’t my competition. What’s your name again?”
“Allee.”
She stretched out on the futon, put her feet on the coffee table and her hands behind her head. My beanbag was next to the futon. She looked down at me on the beanbag and I looked up at her on the futon.
Seconds ticked by. This was stupid. Someone had to say something. I tried to start a little conversation going with, “I like your makeup.”
“Thanks.”
Why did I compliment her? Why, why, why? “Where are you from?” I asked. She smirked and pointed to her sweatshirt. “New Jersey? Oh.” Long, awkward silence. “I’m from Cape Comet. It’s here. In Florida.”
“Never heard of it.” She lit up a cigarette, blew smoke in my direction. Thanks for asking if I minded. Which I did.
“Um, I didn’t unpack yet. Do you know where I can put my stuff?”
“Well, let’s see. We all share the closets, but they’re pretty full right now. The top three drawers of the dresser are mine. Bottom three are Summer’s. Claudette uses the kitchen. Vodka and Tonic had stacked milk crates, but they took them when they left. Wish I could help you.”
Yeah, I bet. “Who are Vodka and Tonic?”
“The Russians. You met them.”
“Where did they go?”
She shrugged. “I heard they’re waitressing somewhere. Monique gave ’em the boot. They were deadweight. Couldn’t book any jobs.” Irina and Vlada got the boot? They of the long legs and porcelain skin and stunning beauty, the most perfect-looking humans I’d ever seen, got the boot? If they got the boot, what chance did I have?
Brynn tossed her head toward the bedroom next to the kitchen. “I got their room.” She pointed her cigarette at the bunk beds across from us. “You’re sleeping out here.”
She smoked. I sat. I decided to try a conversation one more time. “Were you on a casting today?”
“No. I had a booking, actually.” Her eyes narrowed. “Were you?”
“What?”
“On a casting.”
; “Oh, no. I don’t even have a comp card yet.”
“So you’ve never modeled before?”
“Uh-uh.”
“You’ve never done anything?”
“No.”
She looked satisfied. She was obviously really experienced. “Do you always wear your BlackBerry clipped to you like that?”
“Why?”
She shrugged, blew a smoke ring. “It’s just very Revenge of the Nerds, that’s all.” I felt my mouth open a little, beyond my control. I didn’t know how to respond to someone like this. “Sorry, I don’t filter well. You’ll have to get used to it, Allee.”
And then it occurred to me how to respond. “I didn’t have any castings today, but Momma said she’s going to send me to the L’Oréal casting coming up.” Now it was her jaw that dropped. I’d caught her off guard. It gave me a charge, made me feel stronger. “My comp should be ready by then. Momma says I’m perfect for it.” Ha! Maybe I was finally getting more assertive. “So I guess I might get some of the castings you don’t. You’ll have to get used to it, Brynn.” I ruled!
She raised an eyebrow. ‘How old are you?”
“Almost seventeen.”
For some insane reason, she was smiling. “You talk a pretty good talk for almost seventeen. I’m nineteen, in case you’re wondering.” She put out her cigarette in the ashtray. “Just be careful. This market is pretty cutthroat, you know. It’s competitive out there.” She yawned and gently pulled off one row of false eyelashes. “Take me, for instance. I’m not about to let some girl who looks like me walk in here out of Cape Hicksville or wherever the hell you’re from, and take what’s mine. Mine, as in, my castings, my clients, my bookings, you hear what I’m saying?” Now she was pulling off the false eyelashes from her other eye. “That’s just not going to happen. Believe me. I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure it doesn’t happen.”
Omigod. Was that a death threat?
The front door opened, and a model I hadn’t seen before came in. “Hey, y’all,” she said, smiling. “You must be Allee.” She was in a bikini and a mesh cover-up that covered nothing. Her body was a perfect ten, athletic and curvy at the same time, like a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model. Maybe she was a Sports Illustrated model.
“Hey, Summer,” Brynn said. Summer. That’s exactly what she looked like. She had yellow hair, thick, with white-blond highlights, wide-set blue eyes, full lips, and a sprinkling of pale freckles. Like with Irina and Vlada, it was hard not to stare, but there was more than beauty to this girl. I couldn’t say why, but it was like some mysterious force was pulling my eyes to her, as if she was plugged into a secret light source the rest of us didn’t have.
The phone rang. Brynn answered it, “Hi, Ma,” like she was expecting the call. She went into Irina and Vlada’s old room, shutting the door behind her. Wow. It was weird to think of Brynn having a mother. Her mom probably wore leather jackets and carried a switchblade.
“’Scuse the way I’m dressed,” Summer said. “I just came from a casting.”
“For bathing suits?” I asked.
“Nope, for a Ludacris video.”
We were quiet for a few seconds, listening to the muffled sounds of Brynn talking on the phone in the next room, followed by her shouting, “Ma, what the hell’s the matter with you? You can’t eat ice cream every night. You got high cholesterol.”
“Miguel says you’re from Florida,” Summer said. She pronounced Miguel Mee-gayal. “Zat right?”
“Yeah. I’ve never been away from home before,” I found myself telling her. I was totally mesmerized by her smile, her warmth, her everything.
“Me either. I’m a Georgia girl myself. It’s hard at first, but you’ll get used to it. How old are you?”
“Sixteen. I’ll be seventeen next month.”
“I’m eighteen.”
“Ma, I don’t want to hear it!” Brynn belted out from behind the door. “Shut your pie hole and get on a treadmill already, or stop complaining you’re fat.”
“Well, I know how scary it is to be away from home for the first time,” Summer said. “I’ll show you the ropes.”
“Thanks.”
“Where’s your stuff? I’ll help you unpack. I got some drawer space you can use. It ain’t much, but…”
“Thanks,” I said again.
She had the energy Monique was talking about. She was bubbly and sweet and cheerful and all the things I wasn’t. If we were back in Comet I’d have hated her on sight, or at the very least, lumped her in with Hillary High Beams and her crew, or been intimidated by her. I’d definitely keep my distance.
But Summer’s smile looked real. “If there’s anything you need, any questions, jest give me a holler, ’kay? When I came here I didn’t know nothin’.”
I wanted to hate her, but I couldn’t. She was just nice. It was that simple. Okay, so maybe I wouldn’t be having intellectual discussions with her, like on the use of double negatives, for example, but I could live with this girl. She was a relief after Brynn. At least she was kind, and kindness was always a good thing to have around.
From the other room, I heard, “Ma, you shoulda seen that new girl just now when I told her she better watch it. She almost crapped her pants!”
Especially when you thought you were going to need it.
chapter 8
We were on a five-minute break, and thank God for the blanket. Underneath it, all I had on was a wet, flowered bikini and tiny cover-up shorts. It turned out the beach was freezing at seven a.m. Well, freezing by Miami-in-January standards. It was about fifty-five degrees. “Can’t have a comp card without a bathing suit shot,” Momma said when I asked why I had to pose in a bikini for my first test shoot. Not that I had anything to hide. I’d been a runner since middle school, so my butt and legs were pretty tight. But just on principle, why did my very first set of pictures have to be all about T and A?
Momma also told me I’d love the photographer. She was right. Sean was thirtysomething, bearded, and overtanned, and I liked the quiet way he was giving me directions. He was also probably the first straight man I’d met in the three days I’d been here. The handful of men in the booking room were all gay, but it was a wide range of gay, from totally obvious to not at all obvious. Miguel registered a ten on the gay-o-meter, and gorgeous Dimitri a one or zero. Dimitri seemed so straight, the way he talked to me and how he kissed me hello, but Miguel assured me he was “gayer than Christmas.” Anyway, I knew Sean was straight because a) he kept grabbing the stylist’s butt, which was okay because I was pretty sure she was his girlfriend, and b) I saw a Stuff magazine in his van, and c) he was listening to Black Sabbath, which I highly doubt was a musical fave among the gay crowd here.
Momma told me this was a very major test with a full crew, that most new faces had a more simple test with just a photographer and an assistant, and some even skipped a test altogether and went to castings with just a Polaroid. She said the agency had a lot of faith in me and wanted to send me out with the best card possible. It was getting me nervous. I mean, they seemed to think I was going to be some great model. What if that didn’t happen?
Yesterday we went to three different locations before the rain cut our shooting schedule short. The first was of me sitting on a vinyl-cushioned stool in front of an outdoor window at Cafeteria Café Cubano, sipping a teensy cup of Cuban coffee. Lily, the stylist, put me in a real cuchifrito outfit: red flared minidress, gold heels, flower in my hair, hoop earrings, plastic bangles. Talk about a hispana mamá stereotype. The shoot was going great until I felt those damned bugs in the flower. My scalp was all bumpy where they stung me.
For the second shot, I had to walk in front of a parked school bus and pretend I was talking on a cell phone. Every few steps I looked up and said “cheeesebuuurger” real slow into the phone, then walked back and did it again, over and over. This time Lily let me wear my own clothes: favorite Levi’s, green polo shirt, Yale backpack. I guessed this look was supposed to be Anglo Allee as opposed t
o Latina Allee.
The last location was the pink sidewalk right in front of my apartment. I had to ride a bicycle barefoot in a skirt and tank top while smiling and holding up a soda with one hand. Excuse me. Who would do this in real life? The biggest challenge was not crashing the bike into any of the cars that are always parked bumper to bumper along the curb, and also not letting the wind blow my skirt up too much because by accident I put my thong on sideways yesterday, so the shoot could have easily gotten embarrassing if I wasn’t careful.
The whole thing got easier when Sean let me sit on the bike and blow giant bubble-gum bubbles. I was actually getting into it until Brynn opened the window and hung her head out, watching. Just my luck, she was home. It threw me off and I couldn’t blow any more big ones after that, especially because she was shouting things like “Come on, Allee, you can do better. Sean, tell her she blows.” For a pro, Brynn seemed pretty unprofessional.
Today she was nowhere in sight, so I was feeling pretty good. “The light at this hour is amazing,” Sean said, adjusting his ponytail and fiddling with his camera. “I’ve shot all over the world, but I tell ya, the color of the light in Miami is the most beautiful.”
“One more round, boss?” asked Sean’s assistant. He was Jamaican, and his dreadlocks were tucked under one of those striped knit hats that look like a Jiffy Pop microwave-popcorn bag.
“Yeah,” Sean answered, still fiddling with his camera. “Check the exposure again, will you? And hold the reflector facing the water this time. Allee, go stand over there.” I took off the blanket and stood in front of the round silver disk that Jiffy Pop was holding up. He held a light meter to my face as Juan, the hair and makeup guy, touched me up with some powder, lip gloss, and blush. Earlier, Juan had done my hair in two Dorothy braids, and Lily had put a canvas hat on me in the same flowered fabric as the bikini top. Okay, so this bathing suit was more cutie-pie than T and A.
Braless in Wonderland Page 6
