Plus

by Veronica Chambers

  “That one’s pretty good,” I said hopefully.

  Leslie clucked and said, “My point exactly. One good shot out of a day’s worth of film. If I were the client, I wouldn’t book you again.”

  Doesn’t that sound kinda harsh? Trust me, it sounds worse when you’re hearing it from a rail-thin British woman with a razor-sharp tongue. Out of Leslie’s pursed lips, the words “I wouldn’t book you again” sounded an awful lot like “Off with her head!”

  “Day two of the shoot,” she said, putting up a picture on the flat screen of me on the speedboat with the male model, Lucho.

  “He was cute,” I said, trying to make conversation. But Leslie didn’t say a word. She was too busy studying the photograph like she was a scientist trying to identify a rare strain of the Ebola virus.

  “The smile is better here,” she said. “But what is wrong with your eyes? For heaven’s sake, why are you wincing in this photograph?”

  The way she said, “For heaven’s sake, why are you wincing in this photograph?” had this, “My God, not in civilized society!” tone to it. Almost like when you’re on the subway and you see a drunk, homeless guy taking a leak onto the track.

  “Well, I think the sun was in my eyes,” I said.

  She pulled out a picture of Carolyn Murphy in Vogue, holding a surfboard on the beach. “Do you see her eyes?” she asked. “The way they are engaged totally in the camera? Do you know how she achieved this feat of physical prowess?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe she wore tinted contacts?”

  Leslie looked as if she was about to lose it. Big time. “No, no, no,” she said. “When the sun is in your eyes, you turn your head. You turn your whole body if you have to. Your eyes are your most important tool as a model. They’re more important than your smile. You’ve got to engage the camera with your eyes and then move your body accordingly. I’m going to have to add movement lessons to your schedule.”

  Movement lessons? I knew how to move. And what schedule was she talking about? “Do you mean my class schedule?” I asked. “’Cause I can’t; I’m taking eighteen credits as it is.”

  “We will discuss your schedule after I’m finished with your portfolio critique,” Leslie said.

  You know it sounds all good when some woman walks up to you in Dean and DeLuca and asks you if you want to be a model. Then you get a business-class ticket to Italy and they pay you a bunch of money. But when you come home and you have to sit in an office with said fancy-pants British woman and she puts picture after picture of you up on a big-screen TV to tell you how much you suck, well. It’s like my kindergarten teacher used to say, “It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye.” I really wished Leslie would stop poking me in the eye.

  “What on earth was going on here?” she asked.

  I looked at the photo on the screen. I was supposed to put my arms around Lucho’s chest, but there was a big wave of water coming right at us. I was kind of crouching behind him, and all you could see were two scared eyes, my arms holding on for dear life, and some not so flattering shots of my jelly belly.

  “Another boat was going by really fast, and I totally got splashed.”

  Leslie took out a stainless steel letter opener, and I wondered for a second if she was going to throw it, like a dart, at the screen or at me.

  “There are all kinds of problems in this photograph,” she said. “Your eyes are like a dead fish’s. Your jaw, what we can see of it, is clenched. Your arms are locked. And the rolls around your stomach are extremely unattractive.”

  Now, I was getting cranky. It was one thing for me to notice my own jelly belly; I didn’t need to sit in this life-size aquarium and let Leslie Chesterfield feed off of me like a shark.

  “Fine, then, I guess I should go,” I said, reaching for my fake Louis Vuitton. I looked at my watch. It was two p.m. In an hour, Chela would just be finishing her shift at Balthazar. There was a free basket of pomme frites (that’s French for french fries. Hilarious, right?) and a Coca-Cola with my name on it if I could get out of this torture session and get myself over there.

  “Even thin models sometimes have cellulite,” Leslie said. “It’s a fact of female life. But every single model worth her salt learns to pose in a way that accentuates her attributes and masks her flaws.”

  At this point, I just wanted to scream, “You try it! You try being a wardrobe-challenged, big-boned beanpole whose absolutely perfect boyfriend just dumped her. I never said I was a model, lady, you did. I can’t mask my flaws because there are too many. I can’t play up my ‘attributes’ because I don’t have any! I just want to go and eat french fries with my best friend in peace!”

  I wanted to say all of that, I really did. But I have this genuine medical condition in which I think up all this great stuff but never have the actual courage to say it.

  So what I actually said was a really lame, squeaky, “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry, Bee,” Leslie said. “Do better or I’ll be forced to drop you from the rosters.”

  I could feel my palms getting sweaty. It was one thing if I quit, if I walked out of the door in the pursuit of life, liberty, and french fries. But I really couldn’t handle failure when it was being doled out by an authority figure. Take, for example, physics. I may complain about the absolute inanity of signing up for advanced physics. But even I know that a B is not failing and that if Professor Trotman would cut me just the tiniest bit of slack, I could pull it up to a B+ by the end of the semester.

  A week ago, I’d never even thought about modeling. I’d never heard of the Chesterfield Agency, and I had no burning desire to go to Italy. But now that I’d had a taste of it, I couldn’t bear to give it up. I mean, I skipped a year of high school and got into the premed program at an Ivy League university. Certainly, certainly, I could learn how to smile so I didn’t look like a horse.

  “Are you serious about wanting to be a model?” Leslie asked.

  “I’m very serious,” I said. And all of a sudden, I really meant it.

  “Then I need you to devote yourself to this fully,” Leslie said. “I don’t want to ask you to drop out of college just yet. Although if things go as well as I’m hoping, then we might have to revisit this conversation.”

  Yeah, right, I thought. Drop out of college to volunteer in the Sudan? No problem. Drop out of college to be a fashion model? My Peace Corps–loving mom would jujitsu my butt.

  “I’ve asked Caroline to print out a copy of your new agenda,” Leslie said, handing me a piece of paper.

  I looked at it.

  “How’d you get my class schedule?” I asked, dumbfounded at the reach of Leslie’s superpowers.

  She looked bored. “I’m your employer. I simply had Caroline call the registrar and request it.”

  I raised an eyebrow. I’d been practicing one eyebrow, then another since I was twelve years old, but this was the first time it had really come in handy.

  “You can’t just call the registrar’s office at Columbia and request my schedule,” I said. “That’s totally illegal. You could be a stalker or something.”

  Leslie gave me her best Dr. Evil smile. “Caroline can be very persuasive.”

  I was kinda freaked, but I had to keep my eyes on the prize: Become a model. Get Brian back. Become a model. Get Brian back.

  Weekly Agenda for Bee Wilson,

  Chesterfield Models 12+ Division

  Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays

  6 a.m. to 7 a.m. Personal trainer, Sistrunk Fitness, Columbus Circle

  10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Go-sees/shoots

  6 p.m. to 9 p.m. History of Western Music: Middle Ages to the Baroque (arts requirement; I figured I might as well knock it out early.)

  Tuesdays, Thursdays

  6 a.m. to 7 a.m. Personal trainer

  8:15 a.m. to 10:15 a.m. Advanced physics

  10:30 a.m. to 11:15 Phys-ed requirement: lap swim

  11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Swahili

  (Side note: I signed up for Swahili to
impress my mother, champion of oppressed people everywhere. Was she impressed? Not really. All she did was give me a lecture about how Swahili is the lingua franca of East Africa and the only African language spoken in the African League of Nations. Do the words “Good job, Bee” mean anything to her? I mean, would it kill her to say “nzuri” or something?)

  1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. American Modernists

  3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Frontiers of Science

  I was a little shocked, seeing as Leslie’s “agenda” left me no room at all for studying, eating, or, most important of all, chilaxing.

  “But I normally have physics from two p.m. to four on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays,” I said.

  Who could possibly expect me to wrap my mind around quantum mechanics at eight in the morning??!???! Leslie Chesterfield, that’s who. I mean, yes, she runs a big, powerful modeling agency. And yes, she knows all of these fancy fashion designers. And yes, she has this perfectly waved chocolate brown hair and always wears the most adorable shoes. But has Leslie Chesterfield ever tried to analyze the Rydberg constant before her first cup of morning coffee? I don’t think so. “We’ve taken the liberty of changing your schedule to accommodate go-sees and shoot days,” Leslie said.

  Did you hear that? They’ve “taken the liberty” to change my course schedule. Doesn’t that violate my privacy? Has the registrar at Columbia never heard of the First Amendment? Who does Leslie Chesterfield actually think she is?

  Maybe the Chesterfield Agency is not really a modeling agency at all. I mean, think about it. The acronym CIA stands for “Central Intelligence Agency.” The full name of Leslie’s company is the Chesterfield International Modeling Agency. The CIMA. CIA. CIMA.

  Coincidence? I don’t think so.

  11

  Busy Bee

  No lie. The new schedule that Leslie had me on kicked my butt. Don’t even get me started on my trainer, Jenisa. She is like five feet, two inches of pure muscle, and even at six in the morning, she is wide awake and cheerful. I don’t know what made me more nauseous, having to do thirty pop-ups in a row (dropping into push-up position, then jumping straight up into standing) or the fact that Jenisa always wanted to have philosophical discussions about the meaning of life before the crack of dawn.

  Tuesdays and Thursdays were jam-packed with classes, then on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I had to take my portfolio around to potential clients on “go-sees” all day. Then after a whole day of hearing, “Too tall/too short/too thin to be a plus/too big to be a plus,” I had to rush back to school for my six p.m. History of Western Music. Sometimes, in the middle of the professor playing a baroque chamber orchestra, I took a little nap. Luckily, it was a big class and I don’t snore. Well, if I do, nobody’s ever told me.

  It kinda sucked not being able to tutor Kevin anymore. We met at Starbucks for our last session, but instead of being Minnie the Moocher, I actually treated for the caramel macchiato and a double chocolate chip frappuccino for him.

  “So Kevin, I can’t tutor you anymore,” I told him, setting the beverages down on the little table between us.

  “What’s the dealeeyo?” he asked. “I got a B on my last exam. With your help, I’m tearing up this math thing.”

  I could see that a B meant a lot to him. Considering the D he’d been at when we started, I had to agree.

  “It’s just that I’ve got this other job,” I said.

  I don’t know why I didn’t just come out and tell him. I guess it was because I knew that I was already twenty pounds more than when I met him. I didn’t want him to burst out laughing when I said that I was a model. But he kept pressing.

  “What kind of job?” he said. “You’ve got other students you like better than me?”

  Honestly, besides Chela and of course Brian, there’s no one I really hung out with other than Kevin. So I decided to fess up.

  “I’m doing some modeling,” I said.

  “That’s kinda fresh,” he said, flashing me one of his butter-melting grins. “I always thought you were a dime piece.”

  “A dime piece?” I asked. Being from Philly, I knew a lot of hip-hop lingo, but Kevin was always one step ahead of me.

  “You know, a perfect ten,” he said. “A dime piece.”

  My whole face went red. Kevin was just trying to make me feel better. Was it national “be nice to a chubby girl” day? I knew Kevin was bad at math, but I didn’t know just how bad until that moment. I was a ten plus four: a perfect size fourteen, maybe.

  “Whatever,” I said. “You know, it’s not real modeling; it’s plus-size modeling.”

  Kevin put down his drink and looked really bothered. “Bee, I’ve been in show business for a little bit longer than you, so let me tell you now,” he said. “There’s a lot of people in this industry that’s going to try to pull you down just because they think you’re trying to steal their shine. You’re never going to succeed unless you believe you deserve everything you’ve got.”

  “Okay,” I said, opening his textbook and trying to change the subject. “Now, let’s talk about polynomials.”

  But he closed the textbook and said, “I’ll get another tutor. Let’s just talk. You’re coming to my album release party on Thursday night, right?”

  “Oh yeah, definitely,” I said uncertainly.

  “And if you can’t come, then call me,” he said. “This is a VIP pass, so you’ll go straight to the front of the line.”

  “Really?” I said, which is what I always say when I can’t quite believe something and which my mother calls the painful elaboration of the obvious.

  I looked at the invite. The party was at Bungalow 8. Chela and I tried to get into that club once, and we stood outside for two hours before we gave up. And believe me, that’s saying something. Chela has never met a bouncer she couldn’t charm.

  “Bungalow 8. So many people will be there you won’t even notice,” I said, slipping the invite into my fake Louis Vuitton.

  “I’d notice,” he said.

  “Oh yeah?” I asked coyly.

  “I notice everything,” he said, raising an eyebrow.

  Then he left. And I sat there in Starbucks for a long time, staring into my four-dollar beverage. What did Kevin mean when he said he noticed everything? Maybe he meant it when he said I was a dime piece. Did he really care if I came to his launch party? And if he didn’t care, why did he give me a VIP pass? This may seem like the painful elaboration of the obvious, but I’m just going to go ahead and say it: boys are confusing. After a while, I realized it didn’t matter what Kevin wanted. I wanted Brian, and that was all the confusing boy drama I could handle.

  By the time I got home, I’d talked myself out of going to the party. One, I was in love with Brian, and as soon as he learned that I was a model, he was going to figure out what a dime piece I really was. Two, Kevin was a rapper and was probably going to end up dating some kind of video hoochie.

  On Wednesday, I got booked for a Thursday shoot. Which meant I’d have to miss Kevin’s party anyway. Which was partly a relief and partly sucked because it was probably my one and only chance to get into Bungalow 8. I gave my VIP pass to Chela under the express condition that she find Kevin and explain to him that I had to work. She promised. That is, she promised after she jumped up and down and screamed, “Get out! VIP passes to Bungalow 8? Get out!” about a dozen times.

  My shoot on Thursday was for Lad, a British men’s magazine. The concept for the shoot was that I was supposed to be some sort of sexy farmhand. The location was a real farm in upstate New York. They sent a car service to pick me up, but still it was a haul. It was a two-hour drive up there and a two-hour drive back. The photographer wanted to shoot at the magic hour, right before sunset, which means I wasn’t going to get back until really late.

  My call time was two p.m., and when I showed up, there wasn’t a single person I knew. The photographer, Laurence Goodman, was a big bruiser of a guy who looked more like a football player than a fashion photographer. He was also
a mind reader because five seconds after shaking my hand, he pointed to his knee and said, “Bum knee. Ruined my chances at pro ball. My best friend plays for the Giants, but I get to hang out with a lot of pretty girls.”

  Then he introduced me to the whole crew: Rosie, the stylist, Teresa, the makeup artist, and Sonia, who did hair.

  I almost fell over when I saw the wardrobe: super-tight Daisy Duke shorts, brightly colored gingham blouses, and super-high Candie’s wedges.

  “I don’t know if I can fit into that stuff,” I said nervously. Leslie had me meeting with a nutritionist once a week and I was on this Zone meal delivery service. But Chela and I had gone out for burgers and fries the weekend before, and I was already feeling a good two pounds heavier.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Rosie said. “I pulled a bunch of sizes, and you are going to look super-cute.” She gave me a sympathetic smile. Cute, maybe. But I’d be freezing. It was already late November, and we were shooting a feature for the June issue.

  Laurence and his assistants had prepared three setups: one with me milking a cow, one of me grooming a horse, and the third of me wearing galoshes and throwing handfuls of corn at a pen of pigs.

  Did I mention that I grew up in Philadelphia? That in my world, milk came from cows, horses were for driving carriages around Central Park, and don’t get me started on pigs. Ever since I read Charlotte’s Web in third grade, I tried really, really hard not to think about where bacon came from.

  I went into hair and makeup, and I have to admit they did an amazing job. Sonia sewed all these hair extensions into my own hair, giving me these long ringlet curls like a Botticelli goddess.

  I was admiring myself in the mirror, something that I do like never, when it occurred to me that maybe I could make Kevin’s album release party. I’d call him as soon as the shoot wrapped and see if he could leave me an extra ticket at the door. After all, it would be a shame not to go out when I had this all this fake, fabulous hair and diva makeup on.