by Judith Gould
“S-something like that,” he said.
“And she caught you in the midst of it? In flagrante delicto?”
“Liz saw it too.”
Anouk suddenly burst into peals of glissant laughter. “Shame on you.”
“This isn’t funny! You know how thick Doris Bucklin is with Rosamund Moss! They’re old school friends or something. I’ve practically been promised that I’ll dress the new First Lady. But after this . . . well, Roz Moss might go to Bill Blass or Adolfo!”
“That’s only if Doris talks.”
“She will. She’s got a mouth like—”
“Darling, she’ll keep quiet. I can almost guarantee it. Now, don’t worry your little head about it. Get back to work and do your design magic. I’ll take care of everything.”
“How?”
“Just leave it all to me. I’ll fix it.”
“But I don’t know how I’ll be able to face Doris . . . or even Liz . . .”
“Like I said, I’ll take care of it. So don’t you worry, all right? Just tell me one thing. Was Doris drunk? She so often is.”
“I . . . I don’t know.”
“Well, don’t worry. Now, I’d better start making calls. I’ll see you later, at the memorial service. So cheer up, cheri, and hold your head high. It’s not the end of the world, you know. Ciao-meow!”
Chapter 6
Twelve hundred CC’s of Made-in-the-USA engine growled malevolently. The Harley-Davidson was caught in the slow-moving downtown traffic. Then, when a tiny opening appeared between the cars on the left, the growl burst to a snarling roar.
Lazing back on the leather-fringed seat of the customized, chrome-laden chopper, his arms extended to accommodate the elongated front fork and his long hair flying back from his Nazi-style coal-scuttle helmet, Snake flashed a birdie at the motorists and, without warning, cut into the left lane.
A businessman in a Cadillac Seville had to swerve and hit the brakes to avoid him, and with a thunderclap bang and the crunch of writhing metal, the Checker cab in back crashed into the rear of the Seville.
Curses and yells flung at Snake were lost in the crescendo of noise and the cloud of blue exhaust as he disappeared unperturbed down Second Avenue. He threw back his head and roared laughter. It wasn’t the first time he had left bent fenders in his wake, and it wouldn’t be the last.
Snake invited fear and loathing on sight. His good-looking twenty-eight-year-old face was obscured by greasy black shoulder-length hair, and his grizzly mustache and foot-long beard would have done a Hasid proud. He wore a huge gold ring through one ear, a gold stud through one nostril, and there was a perpetual squint to his jumpy, tawny yellow eyes. His tattoos started below his chin and went all the way down to his toes. People tended to avoid him as much for his fierce “outlaw-biker” image as for fear of flea infestation.
On Fifth Street he made a left turn and cruised slowly along the East Village blocks, checking out the action on both sides of the street. Most of what he saw made him scowl. Sometimes he didn’t know what the world was coming to anymore. Punks and art galleries were everywhere. It hadn’t used to be like that. These had been meaner streets at one time, and more to his liking. Still, Satan’s Warriors ruled their own block, and that was something that hadn’t changed. Nor would it, if he and his bros could help it.
He pulled his lips back across his teeth and grinned to himself. Another two minutes or so, and he’d be back at the clubhouse. First, he’d grab a Bud and a joint, and then he’d have another go at Shirl, his ole lady. They’d been together for almost three years now, and she still turned him on. He’d taught her well. There wasn’t anyplace she wouldn’t put her tongue.
His grin widened. Just thinking about Shirl was enough to give him a hard-on. She was a great-looking piece of ass, all legs and curves. She had silky ass-length hair just like Crystal Gayle’s, although he had to admit she could have been better stacked in the tits department. Sure, but he wasn’t complaining. She just had to walk down the street and men would start salivating.
He put-putted into that part of the East Village called Alphabet City, past Avenue A and then on to Avenue B. And there was the clubhouse, on the south side and in the middle of the block, a six-story tenement with some twenty shiny Harleys parked out front. The bikes never needed locking. Nobody dared steal a Satan’s Warrior’s scoot. That was like begging for death.
“Hey, bro!” a deep voice shouted.
Snake nodded as he walked his bike against the curb and flipped out the kickstand with his boot. He slapped hands with a heavily built six-foot-five giant who was dressed almost identically to him, except that the dude’s head was covered with a black kerchief, completely hiding his hair. They clasped hands roughly in their ritual greeting, fingers gripping each other’s wrists. “Hey, Trog,” Snake murmured. “How’s it go-innn?”
“Heyyyy . . . not bad.” Trog nodded at Snake’s bike, which was ticking as the engine began to cool. “Ya got it runnin’ again. Carb needs adjustin’, though.”
“Yeah, I know.” Snake sniffled, leaned sideways, blocked one nostril with his thumb, and let snot fly; cold-weather riding always clogged his sinuses. Then he swung off the bike like a cowboy swinging off his horse and stood there slightly bow-leggedly, eyeing the machine as critically as a madam eyeing a whore. “Spent half the night tinkerin’ on her so she’d run. I’m gonna tune her up later, but first I’m goin’ up n’ gettin’ me a righteous fuck.”
“Not with my ole lady, you don’t,” Trog scowled.
“Why’d I wanna have her when I got Shirl?”
“Then good luck, bro.” Trog laughed. “Yuh might as well have yerself a snooze first.”
“Huh?” Snake stared at him.
Trog poked a greasy thumb eastward. “She left a couple, three hours ago. Said she wuz goin’ window-shoppin’, or some shit like that.” Trog shook his head morosely. “Bitches! Never satisfied. Always goin’ out to buy shit. If I’d let her, my ole lady’d have me hock my scoot.”
Angrily Snake kicked his rear tire and shoved his hands in his chain belt. “Shee-it!” He glowered. “When she gets back, there’s gonna be one bitch screamin’ so loud they’ll hear her all the way out to Montauk.”
“Hey, hey,” Trog said equably. “Take it easy, man. Lighten up. Shirl’s a good kid.”
“Yeah?” Snake demanded. “Well, she knows better’n to go traipsin’ off without my permission.” Snake sniffled again, leaned over, pressed his thumb against the other nostril, and cleared it too. Then, hunching his shoulders, he stomped up the front steps of the clubhouse.
Sometimes he didn’t know what got into Shirl. It was almost like she was asking for punishment. Despite his warnings, every few weeks she’d sneak out and go walking off by herself. Like poking around St. Mark’s Place, or heading over to the West Village. Once, she’d even gone uptown, to Bloomingfuckingdale’s, like she was some kind of princess. He’d warned her often enough, and slapped her around a little so she’d remember who was boss, and she’d beg his forgiveness and promise never to go off by herself again.
He stepped over a biker who was passed out in the front hall, headed for the nearest refrigerator, and grabbed a can of Bud. He popped the top and then went back outside. A carful of teens was driving slowly by. Ogling the row of bikes shining in the sun.
Getting a thrill out of cruising past the Satan’s Warriors’ clubhouse. He heard the shrill of female laughter, and that did it. He flung his beer can down to the sidewalk, watching the foam explode.
Christ, sometimes he hated women! They were crazy bitches, all of them! Crazy fucking bitches!
Well, the longer Shirl was gone, the sorrier she would be. Bet your ass on that.
Where the fuck was she?
Chapter 7
Either Olympia Arpel’s office in the East Sixties town house had been designed with Olympia in mind, or else she had been designed expressly for it. Visitors were never quite sure which.
The space was s
everely modern and austerely angular, all black leather, stainless steel, tweedy wall-to-wall, and glossy white walls. The chairs and desk were Mies van der Rohe; a giant glass test tube on her desk held a single perfect bird of paradise. Crisply framed model shots behind chrome and glass, hung with mathematical precision, stared out from the walls. There was no clutter, nothing lived-in looking except a giant glass ashtray overflowing with long lipstick-smeared white-filtered cigarette butts.
It was a room purposely devoid of pretty distractions, a room with fierce, unflattering lighting that had been designed with but one purpose in mind: to reduce visitors to their most unflatteringly flawed physical states.
Olympia Arpel was in keeping with the surroundings. She was spare and minimal, tailored in tweeds, without frills or froufrous. Her face was coffin-shaped, her nose a beak, and above her tiny Ben Franklins, her eyes were a startling sea green. Sharply cut straight salt-and-pepper bangs framed her odd features, and her skin was like parchment that had been balled up and then smoothed back out.
She smoked fiendishly, with nervous, jerky movements, but never took more than four puffs off each cigarette before stabbing it out.
She marched thoughtful circles around the seated girl, her eyes acutely appraising. Then her lighter clicked as Olympia lit another cigarette and was wreathed in smoke. “Do you recognize any of these faces?” she asked, her voice hoarse and gruff. She gestured round at the giant photo blowups with her cigarette.
The girl nodded. “They’re models?” she said.
Olympia shook her head irritably. “No,” she said. “They’re not just models. They’re top models,” she emphasized. “Cover girls. Not one of them makes less than five hundred bucks an hour. Vogue, Sparkle, Harper’s Bazaar. You name it, their faces sold ‘em.” She inhaled with satisfaction, tilted her head back, and spouted a plume of dragon-smoke toward the ceiling. Then she stabbed her cigarette out in the overflowing ashtray and took off her Ben Franklins. She began to walk along the walls, tapping each picture frame with her glasses as she passed it.
“Atalanta Darin.” Tap. “Francesca Kafka.” Tap. “Vienna Farrow.” Tap. “Joy Zatopekova, Obi Kuti, Melva Ritter, Kiki Westerberg.” Tap tap tap tap.
She stopped and turned, crossing her arms in front of her chest, her bangs swaying. Her thin Parasol Orange lips slashed a rare faint smile. “They’re my girls. I discovered them. I made them into the stars that they are.” She gestured with her eyeglasses, and her voice went momentarily soft. “Beautiful, aren’t they?”
The girl sat quietly, turning her head to follow Olympia’s constantly moving hand. “They’re gorgeous,” she agreed in an awed voice.
“You bet your ass they are.” Olympia sat back down behind her desk and the girl had a poker-card image of her: two Olympias—the one above the desk, and the upside-down one mirrored in the polished surface. The Queen of Models. The Ace of Beauty.
Olympia leaned forward and her eyes narrowed. “But you know what I don’t have?” she asked softly.
The girl shook her head and waited.
The lighter clicked and Olympia squinted against the smoke. “Christie Brinkley,” she said, holding the girl’s gaze. “Jerry Hall.” She watched the girl’s eyes carefully. “Vienna Farrow may just have super-model potential; then again, maybe she hasn’t. A few more months will tell.” She leaned even further across the desk and shook her glasses at the girl. “But you have it for certain.” She nodded to herself. “I can smell it!” She sat back and twirled her glasses.
“But . . . but I don’t know if I want to model,” the girl said meekly. She looked very uncomfortable, as if unaccustomed to this kind of attention and this alien world.
Olympia’s eyes hardened. “Of course you want to be a model,” she scoffed harshly. “Every girl wants to become a superstar model!” Calmly she abandoned her Ben Franklins as a pointer and put them back on the tip of her nose. She felt like grabbing the girl and shaking some sense into her, for she was undeniably the most gorgeous creature Olympia had ever set eyes on—and as the founder and sole owner of Olympia Models, Inc., she had seen more than her share of the world’s most exquisite young women. Olympia Models, Inc., though not in the same league as Ford and Wilhelmina, nevertheless had a dependable reputation and a large stable of regularly working, reliable beauties.
However, to Olympia’s chagrin, her agency was forever known as a good starter agency, a stepping-stone for models on their way up.
It irked her to no end that her girls were such a disloyal and undevoted lot; invariably, after she discovered them and polished them, sent them to the right makeup artists and hairdressers and photographers, paid for their grooming, and even taught them how to move and pose, they left her for the big-buck pastures of Ford or Wilhelmina or Zoli without so much as a thank you.
Today, though, Olympia found herself with an entirely different problem, one she had never expected to face, even after twenty-three years of running her agency. Like a prospector who’d been panning nuggets for years, she had never lost hope that somewhere, someday, she would hit pay dirt and find that singular, heart-stopping face that would be the mother lode. And now, with every passing minute, she was fast becoming more and more convinced that the girl sitting across from her was exactly that. Her most important discovery ever. Her very own Koohinoor or Star of India. The find of a lifetime, an unearthed treasure. She had the kind of face and body that a camera made love to. Ruthless bone structure. Flawless complexion. A certain indefinable way of moving.
That pelvis-length hair. Why, it even put Jerry Hall’s to shame.
Jes-us.
And to think it had been a purely accidental stroke of luck that she had run across her!
Olympia didn’t normally venture downtown, and hardly ever set foot in the East Village; she didn’t care how much of a renaissance it had undergone. The only reason she’d gone there this morning was that she had missed a friend’s gallery opening and this had been her last opportunity to see the show before it closed.
But she’d never made it to the gallery. Just as the cab caught the red light at St. Mark’s Place, she had seen this stupendous beauty crossing the street like a mere mortal instead of the goddess she really was.
Olympia Arpel wasn’t about to let Helen of Troy slip through her fingers. At the age of sixty-one she could still move like a lightning bolt. She’d thrust a twenty-dollar bill at the driver, didn’t wait for the change, and jumped out, grabbing the bewildered girl before she could go five steps further.
And now here they were.
And now, too, the thrill of finding the face of the nineties was being whittled away by the girl’s infernal stubbornness.
Christ on a bicycle! Could she have found the world’s most beautiful woman—only to discover she didn’t want to model?
Olympia turned on her most assuring motherly smile. “I tell you what, dear. I’m prepared to sign you to a contract right now. On the spot.” She sat back and positively beamed. “What do you say to that?”
“I . . . I don’t know,” the girl murmured. “It’s so . . . unexpected, you know?” She tilted her head and flipped a curtain of auburn hair aside while her superlative aquamarine eyes, shimmering with slivers of sapphire and silver—large, brilliant, and liquid—looked beguilingly innocent and confused.
“Oh, of course you didn’t expect this,” Olympia purred silkily, sitting forward again. “But these kinds of things happen all the time in this business. New talent comes to town, beauties who never considered modeling get discovered ...” She waved a hand airily. “This is Dream City, kid. The land of Oz.”
The girl squirmed slightly and her dark lashes blinked twice. “But a contract . . .”
“Contract, shmontract. It’s no big deal,” Olympia said emphatically. “They’re standard boilerplate, and all Dolly has to do is type in your name. Then, depending on how well I bribe him, I can probably rush you right over to Alfredo Toscani’s studio to start getting your portfol—” She
stopped abruptly in mid-sentence as she noticed the girl’s perplexed frown. She couldn’t believe it! The girl had never even heard of Alfredo Toscani! Where could she have been all these years? Toscani was, after all, one of the Big Four—along with Avedon, Scavullo, and Skrebneski.
“Alfredo Toscani,” Olympia explained patiently, lighting up again, “is one of this town’s most important photographers. He takes on only the most important clients. Models. Society women. Movie stars. He’s even had shows at museums. You’ve probably seen his pictures without even knowing he took them.” She waved at the walls. “He did a lot of these. Now ...” She clapped her hands together. “Signing a contract needn’t frighten you. It’s really only a formality, and it’s for your protection as much as mine. Then, as soon as your portfolio shots are done, I can get down to business and fix you up with jobs.” She smiled brilliantly.
“And you really think I would make . . .” The girl’s voice trailed off.
“Five hundred an hour?” Olympia shook her head. “Not you,” she said pointedly. “I’d start you off at a thousand.”
The girl looked dazed. “Do you really think I’m worth that much?” she whispered. “A ... a thousand bucks an . . . hour?”
Olympia allowed herself a modest smile. “So a three-day commercial shoot makes you twenty-four thousand. Think of what it gets the client. It’s your face that sells millions of jars of moisturizer or lipstick, or scarves. The client makes the big dough, not you. But you sold the product.”
Olympia sat back and smiled at Shirley. “You don’t have any plans for this afternoon, do you?”
Shirley tightened her lips and hesitated. She hadn’t told Snake she’d be gone, and she knew he’d be very, very angry with her. He didn’t like it when she went off somewhere without telling him, especially for hours at a time. She should at least call him . . . but if she did, he’d probably start screaming and make her come home right away. But maybe—just maybe—if she didn’t call, and surprised him later with the prospect of thousands and thousands of dollars, he would be mollified.
