On the other hand, Justine thought, wandering over to the window, the fact that the girls had made it through the snowdrifts, like huskies bounding for the Pole, was a good sign of their mental and physical health. The moment that it was time to become seriously worried about a model was if she didn’t come in to get paid.
For certain girls who were halfway—or more—to becoming problems, payday was the only fixed point in a week that was a dizzy, high-thrill, addictive confusion of work, attention, flattery, free clothes, parties, gossip, sex and drugs. Or maybe, if she were halfway smart, just too much to drink instead of drugs. But when a girl forgot payday, it was the equivalent of a fire alarm, a hundred times more dangerous than a dozen hangovers, any amount of weight gain, an inexplicable refusal to go on location, bookings canceled at the last minute, weeping on the set or even a black eye or a missing tooth. Forgetting payday usually meant cocaine. Or, in the last year, heroin.
There was so little she could do about it, Justine admitted with a feeling of rage and frustration that never grew less. All the lectures and horrible examples in the world could no more protect a girl from choosing a sadistic, tormenting boyfriend than they could stop her from taking drugs, if that was the direction she was destined to take. Even if they were in high school or college, in 1994 all teenagers were, to some degree, in harm’s way.
What was making her think such gloomy thoughts on a morning after the most wonderful weekend of her life, Justine wondered. Maybe it was a natural letdown from too much happiness, maybe it was some sort of hormonal revenge, but now, back in her sanctum, instead of basking in memories of the weekend, a free-floating bad mood had abruptly descended on her. Justine probed her feelings and decided that she felt an impression that something was infuriatingly missing, something she couldn’t exactly put her finger on, but connected with Frankie. The feeling was mostly anger rather than worry. Was it Frankie’s inexplicable lack of communication or merely her physical absence? The office simply didn’t feel right without her gay profusion of emotions. Frankie had a basically upbeat take on the modeling profession. In spite of any evidence to the contrary, she still saw every new girl as an exciting challenge, rich in potential, a Cinderella story asking to happen, a marvelous opportunity for a girl who hadn’t known it was there for her. But then Frankie had only been in the business a mere seven years, compared to her own seventeen, eight of them as a working model, nine running Loring Model Management. Frankie hadn’t seen as many girls self-destruct.
Could she possibly be suffering from burnout, Justine wondered? Was that the reason that whenever she signed a promising teenager her heart constricted as she asked herself where that girl would be in ten years? Was burnout the reason she could barely bring herself to read the beauty pages of fashion magazines with their maddening reversals of position: one season touting the pale-lipped, big-eyed vamp, the next the strapping German blond, quickly followed by the glamorous brunette bombshell, soon overshadowed by the ail-American freckle-face until the frantic editors, desperately trying to keep the readers’ attention, came around to insisting that the new look and only look was that of yet another version of the vamp, this one red lipped, with damaged hair and eyes that had seen too much?
What normal woman, in the name of God, would pay good money every month to have it rubbed in her face how far short she fell of a ridiculous, impossible, manufactured ideal that was constantly changing? What kind of collective insanity allowed the magazine editors to get away with the manipulative crap they wrote to sell cosmetics and clothes? And it wasn’t just an American phenomenon, there were some thirty fashion magazines published by the supposedly sensible French.
Wouldn’t it feel wonderful to turn her back on it all and let it slip away, Justine asked herself? Wouldn’t it be bliss to refuse to spend another hour judging the chances of a young hopeful, to throw every bloody awful fashion magazine into the wastepaper basket—not even glancing at the cover, lest she be entrapped in spite of herself—to pack up and move to New Zealand, apparently a place in which you could immerse yourself in a more sensible and placid past, something that resembled a better version of the 1950s? She’d never buy new clothes again. She had enough for an Auckland lifetime. Her only makeup would be sunblock and sheer lip gloss. She wouldn’t even watch Elsa Klensch on CNN, Justine promised herself. She’d sell the agency and put the money into a good old-fashioned New Zealand bank and retire to the wonderfully green countryside where she’d … she’d … raise sheep.…
Justine flung herself on the couch, shaking her head at her ridiculous fantasy. She’d seen sheep shearing in a movie once and it didn’t look like her idea of fun any more than it had looked like the sheep’s. She was in a weird mood, for sure, but New Zealand wasn’t in her future.
Was it Aiden? Was it because all the world, for almost three days, had been framed by one man and one cat in a secluded forest of peace and passionate discovery? She’d been all but physically unable to leave the apartment this morning. Aiden had literally been obliged to drag her out of bed … just because he had to go fix her furnace. Couldn’t it have waited? Aiden—Justine was conscious of her mind scurrying over the weekend, trying to find how it fit into a list of possibilities, when it was light years beyond whatever was nagging at her. Whatever Aiden was going to mean to her, whatever he meant already—and she wasn’t about to try and deal with that—he wasn’t the kind of problem that would drive her to buy a ticket for Auckland.
Did her mood have to do with the basic nature of the agency business? Had the weekend, which had removed her totally from her daily preoccupations, shone a new spotlight on the aspects of sleaze and pimping that some people thought modeling was all about? Sometimes she felt that she’d never be thought of as representing and protecting talent, or as providing girls vital direction in managing their career—there was always an undertone of, “yes, but what else do they have to do to make good?”
Justine tightened her lips in a familiar irritation. She knew that she ran as straight and shipshape an agency as there could be in a business based on renting women. At least she was a woman too and sexuality never determined a girl’s chances with her. Almost every one of the traditional abuses in the modeling industry stemmed from men owning agencies. Obviously no heterosexual male should be allowed to have such power over females.
Yes, she mused, there ought to be a law about men in the agency business … yet, how could there be a law that said that beautiful girls were prohibited from selling their images? A law that said that businesses were forbidden to use those images to attract customers to buy their products? Imagine pages and pages of ads with no photographs … not even illustrations by a modern version of Charles Dana Gibson? The American way of life would grind to a halt. At the very least the industries of advertising, publishing, fashion and cosmetics would have to shut down for lack of consumer demand.
No, Justine told herself, once she’d made the decision to go into the agency business what else could she do but stick with it and run it as well and as honestly as she could? No one now had the luxury of delicate shades of discrimination such as those, years ago, that had prevented top models from doing lingerie ads. She could only establish rules that the girls would break and police the obvious abuses of a system in which reigning models proudly posed stark naked so long as the money was right and the photographer was professional. Or her boyfriend.
Abruptly Justine buzzed her secretary.
“Phyllis, are you positive there isn’t a fax from Frankie?”
“I just checked the machine. Nothing yet.”
“Thanks, keep checking.”
“You taking calls yet? Dart Benedict called again.”
“No, I’ll let you know.”
Is this the way you’ve picked to get back at me, Miss Severino? Is this your idea of revenge? Is this my punishment for not forcing myself to go to Paris? No fax since you arrived? Just because I chose to stay home is no excuse for your silence. And after all those thousands of
dollars worth of Donna Karan, you utterly ungrateful, horrifyingly dressed, overweight, arrogant wench?
Anger took over entirely from depression, as Justine paced around her desk. Didn’t Frankie realize that she wanted to know how things were going? Was such disregard of her feelings humanly possible? She had three girls at risk in Paris, for heaven’s sake. How were they doing? Had they met any of the hideously wrong guys who hung out wherever models could be found? How had Lombardi welcomed them? Were their accommodations okay? She should have heard something by now. Anything. Had their plane disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle?
Furiously Justine scribbled on a yellow pad.
What’s going on? How’s everybody? Where are you and what are you doing? Send information the instant you get this. Justine.
“Phyllis, come in and take this fax for Frankie, please.”
Justine’s secretary picked up the yellow sheet. “I’ll type it up.”
“Don’t bother, send it that way.” Oh, she knew perfectly well what that vicious slut was up to, Justine thought, raging back and forth. Just because she’d refused to tell Frankie the details of how she came to be Necker’s daughter, Frankie was trying to smoke her out by starving her of information, playing the cards close to her chest, trying to get her to reveal that, after all, she had a little natural curiosity about … what time was it in Paris now? More or less dark, she calculated, but before dinner … they’d all be at the hotel … for two cents she’d pick up a phone … Justine lost herself in a heated recital of what she’d say to Frankie if she wanted to communicate by voice instead of using the protection of a fax, which gave you speed but could effectively screen your mood.
Phyllis returned.
“She must have sent this as soon as she received yours. It’s only been minutes.”
Your eloquent message delivered this instant. Thought you’d forgotten us while having a swell time with your “friends.” Since you ask, everyone is in good health, accommodations perfect, girls happy and busy, no really major problems seem to have fully developed yet. In reply to your question about my activities, I’m in suite giving my hair a henna treatment. Will be busy at this for next hour or two. Call if you want more details. Frankie.
Intolerable! Frankie knew exactly what she was doing. “No really major problems seem to have fully developed yet!” That meant “major problems looming” in any language! Justine crumpled the fax and threw it at the door. Naturally there’d be problems. Send three inexperienced girls to Paris and you could only have problems. It went with the arrondissement. Any arrondissement, but especially the eighth.
But why hadn’t Frankie said anything about Necker? She knew damn well—she wasn’t that stupid—that of all the things Justine wanted to be informed about, Necker was the unmentioned, unmentionable, far and away most important item. Just because she’d quite properly refused to let him put pressure on her, just because she’d been smart enough to figure out a way to keep him at a distance, didn’t mean that she didn’t want to know—well, for instance, how he’d reacted when she hadn’t shown up, what impression he’d made on Frankie, what they’d talked about … all sorts of little things like that, things that would be … well, obviously fairly interesting to learn, details that Frankie, relishing her power, wallowing in righteousness, was leaving out on purpose.
She would not call Paris. There was such a thing as maintaining her dignity. But weren’t friends supposed to know when to bypass your dignity, Justine wondered, miserably? Now that she knew why she’d felt so horribly out of sorts all morning, she felt even worse. She’d thought she wasn’t curious enough about Necker to even care what Frankie thought of him. So much for the healing power of inner knowledge.
Two hours later, choosing a moment when almost everyone had left for lunch, Justine left Loring Management as unnoticed as when she’d entered. A cab dropped her at the end of her street and she wallowed almost waist-high through snowdrifts until she reached her house. It was as cold as ever inside, she thought, as soon as she arrived, but there were encouraging sounds of men working steadily in the basement.
“Mademoiselle Loring?”
“Yes?” Justine looked with surprise at a man waiting in her hallway, dressed in a dark uniform that had a vaguely official look. He thrust a pegboard at her, with several sheets of paper attached to it.
“If you please, Mademoiselle, sign each sheet to indicate safe arrival of the case,” he said politely.
“What’s this about?” Justine asked, confused, looking around for Aiden.
“A delivery from Kraemer,” he said with a smile, indicating a tall packing crate that had been left on the floor next to the front door.
“I haven’t ordered anything from Kraemer, whoever that is,” Justine said impatiently. “Take it away … come on, just take it away.”
“Impossible, Mademoiselle. My orders are specific, to deliver it to Mademoiselle Loring in person.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, I don’t have time to stand here arguing … all right, leave it wherever.…” Justine said distractedly as she tried to distinguish Aiden’s voice in the basement. She scanned the papers briefly, signed them with a scribble and waved the man out of the door. She didn’t bother to inspect the crate—probably some trick of Frankie’s—with luck it would contain all her unspeakable old wardrobe and the entire lot could be picked up by Goodwill, if they weren’t too picky. Justine walked quickly to the top of the steps that led to the basement.
“Is Aiden down there?” she shouted.
“He’s on the second floor,” someone called back.
She rushed up the stairs and then suddenly stopped as she heard Aiden humming as he tapped on a pipe in her bathroom. She didn’t know what to say to him, Justine thought in a rush of shyness. Her morning at Loring Management seemed to have put a year between waking up in his bed and this moment. She turned away abruptly, went into her bedroom, sat down at her dressing table and took off her cap. She picked up a hairbrush and automatically began to do something about the tangles, her heart beating heavily, not daring to look at herself in the mirror. The sound of humming stopped and she heard footsteps approaching behind her, but she continued to apply herself, single-mindedly, to the disorder of her hair.
“What a mess,” Aiden said, gently taking the brush from her hands and uncovering her face. “Probably best if we cut it off. Very short, like a little boy. It’s all my fault, not having a blow-dryer, so I’ll cut it for you, I’m quite handy. And no extra charge.”
“You fool.” She leaned back in his arms, laughing for joy.
“Will it hurt if I kiss you? Your lips do look a little … bruised. But I’ve missed you so much, I’ve been thinking about you all morning, just let me show you how gently I can kiss.…”
“I don’t know,” Justine murmured pitifully. “It even hurts to walk.…”
“Oh, there’s only one remedy for that,” he said. “Hair of the dog.” He picked her up and carried her over to her bed as he licked her lips with a soft and careful tongue, over and over.
“Aiden!” Justine said, struggling, “Aiden, for God’s sake.…”
“Yes, my darling?”
“Lock the door!”
“Done. Can I take that to mean you’re feeling a little bit better?” he asked smiling, busily taking off her coat and tucking her under the blankets in the glacial room.
“If you’re teasing me I’ll—” she threatened him, opening her arms.
“I’m not that kind of guy, I’m not a tease my little sweetheart, I just wanted to make sure I was welcome. Now, let see—do you want it slow and easy—very very slow and very very easy—or could you possibly be in the mood for a quickie?” he asked, considerately, pulling her sweater up just far enough to reveal her nipples. “Or would you rather toss a coin?” he continued as he stripped her of her fur-lined boots and her pink leggings, and started to take off his own clothes, apparently not feeling the cold.
“Oh … oh.…” It was impossible,
given the weekend she’d just spent, Justine thought, but she wanted a quickie and she wanted it immediately and desperately, with no more talk, or he’d make her come just discussing the possibility, while she looked at his body.
Aiden got under the blankets, next to her, his big body radiating warmth, and tried to peer into her eyes. “I have a better idea,” he said, “I’ll just touch you very lightly between your legs and that should give me a general idea of exactly what you want, hmmm?”
Dry mouthed, Justine nodded. She felt his possessive hand cover her pubic hair and his middle finger move with the utmost caution over her clitoris until he’d worked it with almost reluctant gentleness into her vagina. Suddenly she squeezed her thighs together so that he couldn’t move, and in a violence of total gratification, rubbed herself quickly, greedily and hard against the large, callused finger. Within a few exquisite seconds she screamed out her orgasm.
“That was fairly informative,” he said after she’d returned to her senses and lay limp in his arms, still panting.
“I’ve never done that!” Justine cried, wide-eyed and embarrassed.
“Now you have.”
Justine thought it over. “It was all your fault,” she muttered, still abashed.
“I hope so, my sweetheart,” he said, grinning at her flushed face. “At least you’re warm now,” he added, guiding her hand down to his penis.
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