“Who’s that guy at the counter? The one with the big black satchel,” he asked Sal in a low voice.
Sally turned around and looked. Then he smiled and waved.
“That’s Michel Denon. He’s a fashion photographer. One of the biggest. He shoots the cover for Vogue every month. I work for him a lot. Has his eye on you, does he?”
“No offense, Sal, but I think I told you once or twice—I like girls and it makes me nervous to have so many guys giving me the once-over. Is everybody in New York, uh, like you are?”
“A little too many for some people’s taste. Not quite enough for mine. But not Michel. He likes girls. Boy, does he like girls! Maybe he’s had the odd guy or two—who can know, really—but basically he’s straight. Ooh. He’s coming over.”
“Good morning, Sal. Who is your friend?” Michel had a French accent that went well with his long dark hair and expensive, butter-soft leather jacket.
“Hello, Michel. This is Lale Hardcastle. Lale, meet Michel Denon, fashion photographer extraordinaire.”
“Lale. What a charming name. Who are you with?”
Lale looked at him with surprise.
“Well, I’m with Sal, here. I thought you knew him.”
Michel laughed. “Of course I know Sal. No, I mean who is your agent?”
“Agent for what?”
“He’s fresh from the farm, Michel. That is no lie.”
“How marvelous! You have such a healthy, all-American look. You have to let me shoot you.”
“Shoot me? What do you mean?”
“No, no, no, my darling, not with a gun! I mean with my camera! How delicious!” Michel laughed as if Lale had said something particularly funny. Lale’s face turned red.
“Here, let me give you my card. I am legitimate. Our friend Sal here can vouch for me. I’ll take some pictures of you and send you up to Ford Models. They are the best in town. You will be in the pages of GQ before you can pick the hay out of your ears. Call me. I am serious.”
“If you’re serious, Michel, how about this afternoon? I can get the boy in shape and be there by three.”
Michel raised an eyebrow. “Three? Are you sure? All right. See you at three, farm boy.” He went back to the counter, still chuckling.
“Way to go, sweet cheeks. In town fifteen minutes and already you have been offered a freebee from a tough street girl who doesn’t do anything for nothing, and now you’re given the chance to become a star model!”
Lale had had enough. He felt like he was going to explode, but tried to keep his voice low and not yell and cause himself more embarrassment.
“What are you doing, telling him I’ll be up at his place this afternoon? Wouldn’t it be nice if you talked it over with me first? What if I don’t want to get my picture taken and be a model? It sounds awful sissy to me. And why does everybody have to call me names, like ‘sweet cheeks’ and ‘farm boy’? I hate that! I’m not an idiot! Everybody from Arkansas is not stupid! I could have gone to college if I wanted to. I still could! I made all A’s my senior year!”
“Oh, my dear—I mean Lale—I’m sorry! Don’t get your jockeys in a wad! It’s just my way of speaking. I don’t mean anything by it, and I’m sure Michel didn’t either. I promise to stop. I know you’re not an idiot. In fact, I’m the idiot! I am! I admit it! But you should be happy I leaped right in to set up this shoot. Do you have any idea how many men and women in this town would shove their grandmothers in front of a truck for a chance to shoot with Michel Denon? I know it’s sudden, but when doors open, you have to run right through because they close just as fast. Don’t you believe in fate? Like, for instance, ask yourself, Why was Miss Sally put right in my path, just when I needed her most? Think about it. Your guardian angel had to do overtime to set this whole thing up: arranging to have me meet that hunky singer from Nashville at Max’s Kansas City—I could just as easily have gone to another club that night—and then fall for him and actually go to Nashville with him, against my better judgment, I want you to know, have him dump me—yes, I confess it was he who asked me to leave and not the other way around—in the middle of a party, no less, so that I packed my things and, crying and hurt, absolutely ruining my makeup, drove my little Mustang up Highway 70, of all the roads I could have chosen, through the night, all in order to be at that particular truck stop at five in the morning when Mr. Lale Hardcastle was shot like a bean in a flip from the back end of an eighteen-wheeler! It had to have been your guardian angel doing it all! Consider the odds of that happening! Astronomical! Besides, what are your options? I mean, really, Lale. Let’s be serious for a minute. Do you think you are going to leave me in this diner and go get a job driving a tractor in Manhattan? What else are you qualified for? Thank God you have that face and body! Not to mention the hair. And eyes. Don’t make me go through it all piece by piece! You would be crazy not to go to Michel. If nothing else, it might be a way for you to get enough money to pay off my tab, which is now hovering around twenty-five dollars, and buy a Greyhound ticket back to the Ozarks and that poor lovely little thing you left at the altar, if that’s what you still want to do.”
“Don’t talk about Cassie. I mean it, Sal.”
“Sorry. No bad memories, right? My lips are sealed.”
Sal made a motion of zipping his lips, leaned back, and looked at Lale, not speaking, which was definitely an effort for him. The silence finally got uncomfortable, and Lale took a sip of his coffee, then cleared his throat.
“What would I have to do, if I decided to go get…shot by this guy?”
“Just let someone, well, frankly, me, scrub you and dress you up and then you simply stand and get your picture taken. Nothing to it. You don’t have to have a college degree. Just the God-given face you are wearing on top of that body.”
“What does it pay?”
“Top models get seventy-five an hour. Assuming Ford takes you, and I can’t imagine they wouldn’t, since they are blonde-obsessed. You would probably start out at sixty.”
“Sixty? Hmm.”
“What’s wrong?”
“That don’t sound like a whole lot.”
“Really? How much are you used to making?”
“I think minimum is a dollar forty-five, isn’t it? At least it is in Arkansas.”
It was all Sal could do to keep a straight face, but he made a mighty effort.
“I didn’t mean sixty cents, Lale. I meant sixty dollars.”
“Dollars?”
“Dollars.”
“An hour?”
“Yes, my dear. Sixty dollars. An hour.”
Lale was dumbstruck. The most he had ever made was fifty dollars a week. He knew for a fact that the richest man in town, a lawyer, made twenty-five thousand a year, because he talked about it all the time. Twenty-five thousand a year was…well…less than seventy-five or even sixty dollars an hour. A whole lot less.
Freda brought the food, and Lale bit into his bagel, lightly toasted with melted butter dripping off the side. It wasn’t biscuits, but it wasn’t bad.
15
* * *
GHOST IN SUNLIGHT
Rouge magazine came out. I saw it on the newsstand on the corner near my apartment. I couldn’t miss it—on the cover was a face wrapped in my red-and-white Indian-print scarf with a makeup job that had all the finger marks of one Salvador de Vega. But it wasn’t my face. It was somebody I had never seen before in my life, somebody who had the same big red lips and green-and-blue eye shadow, only her eyes were blue and her eyebrows were black, and she looked cheap, like some off-duty hooker. I was in such shock I couldn’t move. Normally I would have cried, but I was not the girl I was when I first came to New York. A red curtain of rage fell down in front of my eyes. I thought Ron really liked me. I trusted him! I felt so betrayed, like he had cheated on me with some other woman. Before I could even think, I marched over to 830 Broadway and barged into his studio, waving the magazine.
Ron was in the middle of a shoot, and the girl must ha
ve thought I was nuts. I didn’t care.
“Ron Bonetti, how could you have used me like this? All you had to do was tell me you were trying out lights for another girl for the cover and it would have been all right. I knew it was just a test. But noooo, you said you were going to do a cover try, and wouldn’t it be great if I got a cover on my first test, and…”
“Hold on. Hold on, Cherry. Wait a minute. Let me explain.”
“Yeah, right, explain! How many times have I seen you since we did that shot? Three. And you knew all the time, didn’t you, that it wasn’t going to be me! You could have at least warned me! I saw this on the newsstand, for Pete’s sake!”
“Calm down. I was going to tell you. I was. I just didn’t find the right moment. The art director loved the pictures. He really did. It was just that the girl on the cover was his girlfriend and he made me do the exact same picture with her, same makeup, same everything. Same scarf, and I am really sorry about that. I had it cleaned for you.”
It was so raw and painful. My scarf. Sal, using the same lipstick brush on those big hooker-y lips that he had used on mine.
“Excuuuse me, Ron, but I can’t wait here all day. I have another booking at three,” the girl standing on the seamless paper said in a whiny voice. I glared at her. Here he was, cheating on me with her, too. I wished he’d go back to food pictures.
“Take a break, Rhonda. I’ll be right back,” Ron said. The model stomped out to the dressing room, giving me a filthy look. It was all just too much and I started to cry then. I couldn’t help it. I went to the window, taking big gulps of air, so Ron, or God forbid, Rhonda, wouldn’t see the tears, but it wasn’t something I could hide. Ron came up behind me and put his hand on my shoulder. Then he tried to give me a hug, but it was a little awkward, since he only came up to my chin.
“I know it’s a big disappointment, and I’m really sorry I didn’t tell you, but didn’t you see the other picture?”
“What other picture?” I sniffed. I always seemed to be crying around him and never had a Kleenex. I wiped my nose on the back of my hand.
“In the back. The last picture in the magazine. They call it ‘Fini Rouge.’”
He held out the magazine, and on the last page, there was me, dancing in front of the window with the two white chairs, pale light outlining my body through the white gauze dress. You couldn’t really see my face too well, since it was a soft shot, but you could tell it was lit by a big smile. Underneath was a little poem:
How strange it seems
To think this little photograph
On common paper lightly cast
May look into your face and laugh
When I myself have wholly past
…When I myself am a Ghost in Sunlight
—ANONYMOUS
There I was, in the pages of a magazine. It wasn’t the cover, but my goodness, I had never seen myself in print before. I had a tear sheet to put in my book! I started to cry all over again.
“Don’t cry, Cherry. It’s a beautiful picture. The ‘Fini Rouge’ page is noticed. You’ll get a lot of attention.”
“I know it’s a beautiful picture. I was just crying because…because…it is so beautiful.”
“Yeah, well. Look,” he said, clearing his throat while still patting me clumsily on the shoulder, “I wasn’t kidding that you were going to be a big star. I’ll tell you what. I have a little job to do for Vogue. It’s shoes. But you can do it, and that’ll give you a foothold in Vogue, so to speak. Will you do it for me?” I sniffed again and he fumbled in his pocket, this time producing a handkerchief.
“I can’t do shoes. I wear size eleven.”
“Oh. Well, I’m also doing socks and stockings for the same layout. I know you can do those. Okay?”
“Okay. Call Liz and book it.” I blew my nose. I had already gotten several more jobs doing pantyhose for various ads, like the little cardboard things they fold around the hose in Kmart. I had tested for a few lingerie ads, too, and was booked for a Vanity Fair nightgown one, with a great photographer named Neal Barr. I was fast becoming the queen of underwear, it seemed, which was fine with me. We got paid more for lingerie. Still, I’d like to have my face in a picture. The Vanity Fair layouts always had the girl’s face turned in shadow, her hand in front of it or something.
“And I’ll tell you what else. How about you go out to dinner with me?”
“You mean like a date or something?”
“No, no, nothing like that. Just friends. There’s a great Italian restaurant on Hester Street called Puglia’s. Authentic. Just like Mama used to make. It’ll cheer you up.”
“You’re just trying to bribe me. I’ll never get over seeing that ugly girl in my outfit on the cover of Rouge, you know, bribes or not. She wasn’t even classy—she has rusty elbows, I bet.”
“Okay. Be that way. I’m sure Rhonda wouldn’t mind going with me to Puglia’s.”
I looked over at the dressing room, where Rhonda was staring at us.
“All right. Fine. I’ll go.”
“Great. I’ll pick you up at eight tomorrow night.”
I think I had a date, whether he called it that or not. He was most certainly not my type, but then I wasn’t too sure what my type was, or even if I had one. But he was able to give me work, and that I desperately needed. I’d have to tell him right up front, though, that I wasn’t going to sleep with him. And the dinner might be fun. I’d liked Little Italy that time Lana and I went there. It seemed like Aurelius wasn’t going to make a move anytime soon, although the day we found out Janis Joplin had died he had left me a copy of “Piece of My Heart” and a note: “I guess white singers can be hell on themselves, too. XX A.” But he hadn’t tried to ask me out or anything. Maybe I’d read it all wrong and he just wasn’t attracted to me. He may even have had a girlfriend or three, for all I knew, although I never saw any girls coming out of his place. I certainly would have heard them if he had anybody sleep over, the walls were so thin. But as far as that went, I didn’t know if Ron was single or not. He’d never said. Well, it would be a night out. A nice change of pace from writing letters or reading. I had gotten pretty far in James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain, which I could relate to, since it was about a preacher and a boy who had a conversion experience that totally equaled St. Paul’s wrestling with the angel on the road to Damascus. Lordy, that Baldwin could write! There was one long passage where he was fighting for his soul that hit you like hard rain falling until you could barely breathe, and you couldn’t get yourself out of it. It was so familiar to me, and made me feel guilty for not even trying to go to church. Just not quite guilty enough to go and find one.
I had no idea if Aurelius was a reader or not, but if he was, Baldwin was somebody he most certainly would have read, and if he did ask me out, I wanted to be able to talk to him about black literature. It was a whole new world for me, but then every day in New York seemed to be the start of a new adventure, and although I missed home a little, so little I was ashamed of it, I was thrilled when I woke up every morning in my little bed under the eaves in the attic on Twelfth Street and felt such gratitude just to be able breathe that electric New York air.
16
* * *
CASSIE’S PLEA
Dear Cherry,
Baby gave me your address—I hope you didn’t care. I guess you have been too busy to write, but she keeps me up on you. We all saw your picture in Rouge. Eileen down at the drugstore found it, and Father Leo has it up on the wall in the art room. Mama says to tell you you’re the prettiest one in the magazine, and she thinks you are going to be bigger than Twiggy. We all miss you.
I’m doing all right, still working at Flyin’ Jack’s, although I’m as big as an elephant and Bernadette has to do a lot of the work. It’s hard for me to even reach the sink to do the dishes. She says every day she is going to fire my butt, but she won’t. The doctor says it could come any day now, and my feet are so swollen I can’t wear anything but house shoes. You would
n’t even recognize me, I’m so puffy. I hate how I look. As soon as the baby is born I’m going on a diet. I’m almost glad Lale isn’t here to see me. Almost. Ha.
Snuffy has been to New York on a Freyaldenheimer’s run a time or two since you left, but he would never look you up—he’s too shy. I asked him to keep an eye out for Lale, and he said he would, but he won’t. It would be a miracle if he saw him walking down the street anyhow, and he wouldn’t tell me even if he did see him. Snuffy and Bernadette and everyone else think I am better off without Lale, except for me. You haven’t run across him by any chance, have you? I hated to ask you to look, but you are in the best place to find him. I saw him again in Playboy, one that Chet saved for me. This time it was him all right, no doubt, full face. It was an ad for L&M cigarettes, and he was standing close beside a skinny blond girl with her hair done up in curls and a lot of false eyelashes and makeup on. Underneath, it said, “A cigarette for the two of you.” His hair is shorter now, brushed over to the side. It is so thick! He always had the thickest hair. The picture is in color and his blue eyes just shine.
Oh, Cherry, I hate myself for writing you when you haven’t even written me one time, but I’m desperate. I need to talk to Lale. I need to talk to him so much that it’s making me sick. Everyone in town is gossiping about me and it’s just hard to hold my head up and go to work every day knowing that they’re all whispering behind my back and feeling sorry for me. It is especially hard on Mama. She is at St. Juniper’s every morning at six for mass before she goes to work, and she has cried a tub of tears and lit a huge box of candles. I don’t think God is listening to her.
Lale’s mother and daddy won’t talk to me, like it was my fault Lale ran off, and outside of Bernadette, my friends act funny, like they don’t know what to say, and none of them ever calls for me to go to the movies or out to eat with them anymore. Baby is the only one who acts normal around me, but she is pretty busy at school and I don’t see her much. I don’t know why I had to be so stupid. I have prayed to God for forgiveness and confessed to Father Leo, but forgiven or not, there is still this baby inside me, rolling around, part of Lale that will forever be part of me.
Cheap Diamonds Page 14
