Plus

by Veronica Chambers

  Another doorman led me to a private elevator and hit the button that said Penthouse. When the doors opened, we were in the penthouse itself. There were huge floor-to-ceiling windows, and there must have been two hundred people milling about. I spotted the Baby Phat girls immediately. It helps that models are tall when you’re scanning a super-crowded room. Elsie and Melody were in a corner near a giant piano. When I got closer, I saw that Diana Krall was playing it.

  “It’s Diana Krall,” Elsie whispered.

  “That’s pretty cool,” I whispered back.

  I asked where Prageeta was. Melody laughed and gestured to the corner, where Prageeta was talking to Bill Clinton.

  “That is the former president of the United States,” I said, in a painful elaboration of the obvious.

  “You think?” Elsie said, laughing.

  “Go over and say hello; I know she’ll want to see you,” Mel said.

  “No way,” I said. “I’m not going to interrupt Bill Clinton.”

  “Well, I will,” Elsie said, grabbing my arm. Did I mention that Bill Clinton is also on Elsie’s list of top-ten favorite people? I was beginning to think that if we stayed at this party long enough, we’d hit all ten.

  “I’m going to throw the bouquet right at my girls,” Prageeta said. She looked gorgeous in a purple sari halter top and a long skirt embroidered with purple and green peacocks.

  “Me? I’m only seventeen!” I said.

  “In India, girls get married even younger,” Prageeta said.

  “At this point, I’d settle for a great boyfriend,” I explained.

  “School first, career second, boyfriend third,” Elsie said. “Let’s go check out the sunset.”

  “Yes, the terrace is magnificent,” Prageeta said.

  I gave her another hug.

  “I love my Baby Phat girls,” I said.

  “And we love you right back,” she answered before Hanif whisked her away.

  I was talking to Elsie about whether facials really help your skin. She swears by them, but Melody won’t let anyone near her face. Then Elsie saw number nine on her top-ten list of favorite people, Jon Stewart.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said.

  “No problem,” I said.

  They were serving canapés on the terrace, and a champagne fountain spouted the bubbly stuff as if it were water. But the main item on the menu was New York itself.

  It’s so easy when you’re in the midst of things to think of New York as this gray, ugly mess—especially when it’s winter or raining and you’re stuck on the subway on the smelliest car ever and it seems like there’s trash everywhere and all the really nice places have tuxedoed doormen, like the ones downstairs, who you think will never, ever let you in. But when you do get in—to a fancy party or even just to the observation deck on the Empire State Building after you’ve been standing in line for hours—you can stand from someplace high up and see that the city is magic. Pure magic.

  I watched the boats along the Hudson, the people skating, running, and walking through Central Park, and I wondered, Did I use up my share of the magic? Does everyone get a little box: a few nights of dancing salsa with a friend like Chela, listening to Kevin talk about Cantor’s theory of sets in Starbucks, then seeing his album debut at number one on the Billboard charts, getting my own moment of the spotlight as a Baby Phat Girl. Was I greedy to want more? To want it all?

  I was thinking about it, taking it all in, when I noticed that Prageeta was standing next to me.

  “Look at this view,” she said, leaning on the railing. “I’m going to miss New York.”

  She and Hanif were moving to London, where he had this big-time career as a novelist.

  “So you’re just going to give modeling up completely?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “It was never my calling or anything. It was just something fun to do while I waited for my grown-up life to begin.”

  “But doesn’t it make you feel grown up? The creativity of the designers, the amazing places we get to travel, seeing your picture in a magazine or on TV?” I asked. I know I sounded superficial, but the more I talked about it, the more I realized how much I’d fallen in love with modeling. I’d fallen out of love with Brian, but I was really in love with modeling.

  Prageeta smiled. “My family and Hanif’s family have known each other for generations. I’ve had a crush on him since I was probably eight years old. The fact that I’m going to get to be his wife, that we will continue this link and someday our children will also be linked, that excites me. Besides, I haven’t told anybody except for Hanif, but I’ve been doing some writing myself.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  “Just some short stories about being a woman in India and New York and London,” Prageeta said. “I’m very excited about moving to London and having the time to work on them.”

  “I have the perfect title for you,” I said.

  “And what is that?” she said with a smirk. “Because Bride and Prejudice has already been taken.”

  “Pink Is the Navy Blue of India,” I said.

  Prageeta smiled. “That’s pretty good.” Then she kissed me on the cheek. “We must make our own decisions,” she said. “But remember that this is a tough business. Very few do it for the rest of their lives. Every model I know who is happy has a passion that has nothing to do with physical beauty. Melody has her yoga and photography. Elsie dreams of that seat on the New York Stock Exchange. I know you’re premed, Bee, but I don’t sense the dream is deeply rooted in your heart.”

  I winced a little. Months ago, Kevin had made the same observation.

  “You’re only seventeen; you’ll figure it out,” Prageeta said. “Why don’t you come inside so I can introduce you to some nice Indian guys? A couple of them are really good looking, and all of them can dance.”

  “In a minute,” I said, and I turned to watch Prageeta go back to the party. I envied her for being so beautiful, for being so smart, for having it all sorted out.

  Even though it had grown chilly, I stood outside for another half an hour. I was gob-smacked by the river. I kept thinking that the way it flowed, moving so quickly and powerfully through the city, was like my modeling career. That day in Dean and DeLuca, when Leslie handed me her card, it was like modeling was my river. I could jump in and see where it took me or I could sit and watch it pass me by. But it was my river.

  24

  Humble Bee

  I guess the thing is that I thought when I got chosen to be a Baby Phat girl, I was in there like swimwear. I mean, I had a billboard in Times Square. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned these past months as a baby supe, it’s that while shooting to the top can be really easy, it’s much harder to stay there.

  When I first started modeling, all I could think about was Brian and how neat it would be if he could see me in a magazine, looking supa-dupa fly. Then he’d want me back in an instant. It never really occurred to me that maybe I didn’t really want him. It was more like the idea of him—a cute upper-class man with a mission to save the world.

  The first time Chela and I went out dancing, she had quoted me that Spanish expression Un clavo saco otro clavo. One nail takes out another nail. Well, modeling took out the Brian nail. But I’m not sure what’s going to take out the modeling nail. I used to think that modeling was all about conceited girls, the pretty ones who were always so popular that now they got paid to stare into mirrors and pose in front of cameras all day long.

  But now that I’ve been on the other side of the camera, I know that modeling is so much more. I mean, look at me. I was never the most gorgeous girl in the room. Then I got dumped and depressed and became a really, really good customer at Krispy Kreme and the top modeling agent in the world picked me out and signed me up. She said, “We need more girls like you, who represent real women.”

  I thought my life was over when Brian dumped me, but it turns out, it was just starting. And the most exciting part of it all wasn’t the fancy trips or the T
own Cars or the free clothes, it was the day that Savannah Hughes cut a big chunk of my hair and with a new haircut, I discovered the real Bee—the one that loves fluid mechanics as much as she loves a really cute pair of kitten heels.

  For months, I’d been living like Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde: premed student by day and baby supe by night. (Okay, more like baby supe by afternoon and early evening.) But now it was time to get back to the basics.

  I’d actually fallen so far behind in physics lab that I had to hire a tutor of my own. I also applied for a few summer internships: a Barbara Jordan Health Policy internship in D.C. and an apprenticeship with Doctors without Borders in Kenya so that I could actually use my Swahili. My mom even got her boss, who’s apparently some do-gooder superwoman, to write me a recommendation letter. “I’m really proud of you, Bee,” she said when I called to tell her about my plans for the summer.

  I hadn’t heard from Leslie Chesterfield in a while. She never officially dropped me, which is just as well because I didn’t need a whole panel of judges and Leslie Chesterfield holding a picture that was NOT mine to realize that I was no longer in the running to be America’s Next Top Model.

  The Baby Phat commercials were still going strong, and I continued to get residual checks every other week. Finally, I decided to call Elsie for some advice. I was kind of nervous. I saw Melody twice a week for yoga classes, but she was like total om girl. She never talked about work. Calling Elsie took more guts. She would know for sure that I’d been blacklisted and wasn’t getting any work.

  Prageeta had quit the business, but Melody and Elsie were everywhere. Aerin Lauder had chosen Elsie to be the new face of the Estée Lauder fragrance line; it was the kind of juicy cosmetics contract that plus girls never get. I mean, the previous faces of Estée Lauder had been Elizabeth Hurley and Gwyneth Paltrow! And ever since some exec at Nike had heard that Melody was a Zenned-out human pretzel, she’d been doing an exclusive campaign with them alongside all these cool athletes like Michelle Wie and Serena Williams.

  I, on the other hand, was a loser and had fallen back to the ranks of poindexter whence I’d come. But I had all this money in my savings account making three percent interest and I knew that Elsie, more than anyone, would know exactly what to do with it.

  “Um, Elsie,” I said after punching in her number. “I was wondering if you wanted to meet for lunch sometime so I could get some financial advice from you?”

  “Sure,” Elsie said. “How about today?”

  “Um, okay,” I said.

  “I’ll meet you at Pastis at one thirty,” she said. “I’ll make a rez.”

  Then she’d hung up the phone.

  It was already ten a.m., which gave me a full two and a half hours to obsess about what to wear and how to answer if she asked what I’d been up to. I decided on wearing a pair of cute jeans, a pair of leopard print Louboutin wedges, and a red halter top with my red Kelly bag. As for what I’d been up to, I would not tell a lie: I’d been studying, not working, and it looked like with the help of my tutor, I was going to make dean’s list.

  I got to the restaurant fifteen minutes early because no matter what, I could still hear Leslie chirping, “Better to be early than late, Bee,” in my ear.

  When Elsie arrived, looking gorgeous in a white crotchet minidress and a big floppy hat, she took off her sunglasses and gave me a huge hug.

  “Bee, where have you been?” she said. “I haven’t seen you since Prageeta’s engagement party.”

  Now was the moment of reckoning. So I told her how my career was pretty much over.

  “Well, first, my ex-boyfriend crashed this really expensive Bentley on the Bond Number Nine shoot,” I said.

  She nodded. “Heard about that.”

  “And you know that Savannah Hughes was totally hating on me,” I said.

  “Ugly is as ugly does,” Elsie said.

  At this point, I started to feel so sad and anxious, all of my words came out in one big nonsensical rush. “Well, Savannah put out this underground video of me with the guys from Guess Again Girl and I got in so much trouble. Everybody thinks I’m a drug addict and I’ll never book another modeling job again!”

  The waitress was hovering, so Elsie took a quick look, then put the menu down in a move that I recognized as the thirty-second rule. If you stare at a menu for more than thirty seconds, you’re bound to choose something fattening. So the idea is you keep your eyes on the soup and salad section, pick one, and then put the menu down before you change your mind and order something that your hips will regret.

  Elsie ordered a frisée salad and a bottle of Perrier with lime. I had totally been planning on ordering the steak frites, which, of course, came with a ginormous side order of fries. However, being with Elsie kind of shamed me into ordering healthy, so I ordered a frisée salad too. But just to show that I no longer cared about the modeling world or my figure, I ordered my salad with a poached egg and lardons, which is just a fancy French word for little pieces of bacon.

  I was glad to get the ordering out of the way because I was anxious to get back to my pity party. Since Chela wasn’t speaking to me, I hadn’t really had anyone to vent to, and Elsie was a good listener.

  “So anyway, like I said, this video is a total nightmare and it has totally ruined my reputation—” I was mid-vent when I just started crying, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop. At first it was just tears, but you know how sometimes you’re crying so hard, your nose starts to run too? Well, it was a full-on snot fest—worthy of one of my father’s grossology exhibits at the science museum. But not worthy of a fancy restaurant like Pastis. So I ran off to the bathroom to deal with the leakage problem I was having with my eyes and my nose.

  When I came back, Elsie said, “Bee, I was trying to tell you, but you didn’t let me get a word in edgewise. I just saw the Guess Again Girl video on VH1 when I was getting ready to come and meet you. You look totally gorgeous in all of those scenes from paintings. I thought you’d invited me to lunch to celebrate.”

  To say that I was in shock would be a stunning understatement along the lines of saying that Ashlee Simpson had a “little” plastic surgery.

  I explained to Elsie that I’d actually invited her to lunch for financial advice. The smile on her face was so big, you’d think that I’d just told her Adam Levine from Maroon Five had walked in the room. Adam Levine being number eight on her list of ten favorite people in the world.

  While we chowed down on our frisée salads, she explained all this stuff about mutual funds, IRAs, Roth IRAs, exchange-traded funds, fixed income securities, and private banking.

  I didn’t understand a word of it, but she promised to send me an e-mail explaining everything along with the name and number of her broker.

  “I fired my last broker,” she said, scowling. “When I told him that my goal was to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, he told me a pretty little girl like me could just marry a man with an exchange seat.”

  “He didn’t!” I said.

  “He did!” she said.

  And the way we went back and forth like that for a good five minutes reminded me of Chela and how she’d say, “Get out!” And I’d say, “No, you get out!” and we’d go back and forth that way forever.

  Elsie insisted on treating for lunch, making me swear that in the future, when I paid, I kept all of my meal receipts for deductions. Then we made plans to get together soon. She wanted to take me to the stock exchange in the morning for something called the ringing of the opening bell. Elsie was so stoked about the stock market, it was pretty thrilling to realize that I wasn’t the only model geek out there.

  We kissed goodbye on both cheeks, fashion style, then I hailed a cab home. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t ask the cabdriver to drive me through Times Square. I didn’t need to see a billboard of myself to remember what it was like to just be me.

  25

  Queen Bee

  When I got home from my lunch with Elsie, there wa
s a message from Leslie. “Beatrice, darling, call me,” she said in a breezy tone like it hadn’t been nearly a month since I’d heard from her.

  I called her back, happy to have news from the modeling world but happy that I hadn’t been sitting around waiting desperately for her to call.

  “Your video is going to debut on TRL at number one this afternoon,” Leslie said. “But that’s not all. Sports Illustrated has decided to use a plus-size model for its swimsuit issue for the first time ever.”

  “And?”

  What did I care about some stupid sports magazine?

  “And I sent over your book last week, and they’ve narrowed down their decision to two models,” Leslie said.

  “I’m one of them?” I asked.

  “Yes, you and Savannah Hughes.”

  I sighed. “You know what, Leslie? I really appreciate it, and I’m not going to lie. The phone not ringing has been a first-class bummer. I miss modeling, and I’d love to work with you again as long as it doesn’t interfere with chem lab. But I could care less about some sports magazine for guys, and I want to stay as far away as humanly possible from Savannah Hughes. The girl has chopped off my hair, had me drugged, and sent the paparazzi to photograph me half naked. She’s not right in the head, and frankly, I’m a little bit of afraid of her.”

  Now it was Leslie’s turn to sigh. “Sports Illustrated is not just some sports magazine for guys. It’s a publication with a sterling journalistic reputation and the awards to back it up. The swimsuit issue is iconic. It’s never been just about pretty girls in bathing suits. This is how a model goes from being merely a girl with buzz to being a bona fide supe. It is the most prestigious cover in the industry, and every girl who has graced the cover is not only guaranteed a million dollars’ worth of bookings for the year to come, but she sets the standard for beauty in the industry. The SI cover was the turning point for Cindy Crawford, Elle MacPherson, Tyra Banks, Heidi Klum, Daniela Pestova, and Marisa Miller.”