“Whatever, you’ll end up dumping both of them,” Caitlin said. “That’s what happens when you move to New York.”
Megan rubbed the bracelet. “Well, I’m not giving this back.” She was sixteen like Jenn, from a small town in Minnesota. She had been discovered at an airport, where she had gone with her parents to pick up visiting relatives. The arriving flight was delayed by two hours; her parents went to the bar and gave Megan ten dollars to go shopping with. Ten dollars was not much money by airport prices. At the gift shop, she approached an interesting-looking man (older, long hair, cool leather coat) and asked him if he would buy her a pack of cigarettes since she wasn’t old enough to do it herself. The man turned out to be a fashion photographer flying home from rehab. He bought her a pack of Marlboros and took her to the parking lot, where telephone numbers and various promises were exchanged. In the version of this story later released by Megan’s modeling agency, much was altered. There were no cigarettes and no rehab.
The girls unpacked, eyeing each other’s clothes, comparing notes about hair conditioners and lip balms and emergency cures for the rare overnight blemish. They gossiped about Karen, their theoretical chaperone from the agency, who lived in the smaller bedroom. The girls had a nine P.M. curfew: after that, no visitors, no telephone calls. On the first night they figured out what the curfew really meant. Karen checked on them at nine P.M. sharp and then headed out to a club. Even their parents were not allowed to call them after curfew.
At nine-fifteen they sprang out of bed, pulled on their clothes, made up their faces, and snuck downstairs.
“Where should we go?” Caitlin asked.
“I heard about this restaurant,” Jenn said. “But I can’t remember the name.” They walked over to Ocean Drive. The sidewalk was brightly lit and filled with people. Men called to them from slowly moving convertibles.
“It’s just like on television!” said Megan. They spent two hours walking down ten short blocks and another hour and a half walking back up. “And we have six more nights.”
When they weren’t at a shoot, the girls were supposed to be doing homework: they were all still in high school, and assurances had been made to their parents. But mostly what they did was play the sound track from Reality Bites over and over again. Megan had made a tape with “Baby I Love Your Way” inserted after every three songs.
Caitlin and Megan knew things that Jenn didn’t. They had older sisters and vast high school sexual experiences. They knew how to befriend the older models in a “let me be your mascot” sort of way. They understood how to finagle a seat at the best table, how to get a ride home with the coolest boys, how to get people to pick up the check. They were ambitious in a way that Jenn wasn’t: modeling was their ticket out and up. Their pretty faces were their get-out-of-jail-free cards, jail being the lives of their older sisters: community college, nursing school, a job at the cosmetics counter of the local department store.
Jenn knew things that they didn’t. She knew how to pronounce menu French and how to talk to sales help in Spanish. She knew famous people and dropped their names when she was feeling insecure. She knew, from her mother, that the modeling didn’t last forever, and she knew that there was a whole world waiting for her if the modeling didn’t pan out: college, California, New York. None of this endeared her to the other girls. It didn’t seem quite fair to them that Jenn was already somebody, that her safety net was so much more glamorous than theirs.
And Jenn had a secret, a terrible secret: She was a virgin. It seemed a ridiculous thing, to still be a virgin at sixteen. All the other girls she knew had already slept with at least one boy when they were fourteen. Sixteen was almost too late. Jenn knew boys expected things from a sixteen-year-old, a certain level of skill, various techniques, many of which she had read about in books. This year, she had promised herself on New Year’s Eve. But it wasn’t so easy to find the right boy, especially since there were no boys whatsoever at school. Alice had offered a cousin from Boston, but he had narrow shoulders and a wide butt. Jenn wasn’t quite that desperate yet. Whoever it was, he had to look good in jeans.
Another thing Caitlin and Megan knew that Jenn didn’t: how to flirt. Jenn thought she was supposed to be sexy. The other girls understood that it was all about making the boy feel sexy. Jenn thought she was supposed to be funny. The other girls knew it was more important to let the boy feel funny. When a boy said something clever, Caitlin and Megan opened their mouths and tilted back their heads and laughed. Jenn tried to think of something clever to say back.
And so it was that on the fourth night of their week-long stay, the other girls had already had a few little adventures. Megan had made out with a twenty-four-year-old Swedish model on the Lincoln Road mall and given a blow-job to an actor who claimed to be friends with Johnny Depp. Caitlin had hooked up with an actor who was in town shooting a music video. She told him she was nineteen. When she got back to the apartment, she showed Megan and Jenn the little toiletries she had taken from his hotel. It was the place everyone said Madonna liked to stay. The girls opened the tiny bottles, sniffing the shampoo and pouring the body lotion on the backs of their hands.
On the fifth night, they went to a party celebrating the first issue of a new fashion magazine. Jenn wore a silver miniskirt that wrapped around and fastened with a red leather button. She borrowed a pair of silver hoop earrings from Megan and lined her eyes with black kohl.
They squeezed into a large back booth with a few older models and the various men the older models called over. The older models were doing the kind of work the girls dreamed of: magazine layouts, with clothing by famous designers, shot by photographers whose names the girls had memorized from years of reading fashion magazines. The women talked; the men paid for the drinks. One of the men was teaching Caitlin how to tie a knot in a maraschino-cherry stem using her tongue and her teeth. Megan got drunk and danced on a table.
“You’re very quiet,” one of the men said to Jenn. His name was Gunther. He was a German photographer who she guessed was in his early forties. She had seen his name in Vogue many times. He offered her a cigarette.
“Thanks, I don’t smoke,” Jenn said.
“Good girl,” he said. “You’re a good girl?”
“Sometimes,” she said. “Sometimes not.”
Gunther studied her face. “You should wear your hair back,” he said. “Like this.” He dipped the tips of his fingers in a plate of olive oil, rubbed it around in his palms, and then pushed her hair up and back from her perfect center part. He fluffed the hair at her crown, then twisted a few strands, pulling them across her shoulders.
“Better,” he said. “And your lips, too matte.” He swirled two fingers in the oil. “Open a little.”
She opened her mouth.
“Relax. Make your lips soft.” He smeared the oil across her lips and under her brow bones. “Much better. Are you having fun here?”
“Sure,” Jenn said.
“I am very bored. This is not what I was expecting.”
“Oh.”
“I’m going to meet some friends for a drink. Would you like to join me?”
“Maybe.”
“We can walk there.” He named a good hotel.
“Okay,” she said. “Just give me a minute.” She went into the bathroom and checked her reflection, her wild hair. She took out her lipstick and smudged some color onto her cheeks. On the way out, she waved goodbye to Megan.
His friends were sitting in a smoky bar, chatting about new restaurants in London. Gunther held her hand and ordered Cognac for both of them. She was not expected to talk.
“I am very bored,” he whispered into her ear. “Come upstairs for a drink.”
This is it, she thought. His hands had been gentle. She knew he would not hurt her.
His room was expensively decorated and extremely small. Cameras were piled on the single chair. There was no place to sit except the bed. He put on the radio: Cuban music.
“I’ll get us some
water,” he said. He returned from the bathroom with two glasses of water and some large dark green pills. “This will relax you,” he said.
“What is it?” she asked.
“It’s nothing, it’s safe,” he said. He took one first to show her.
“Okay,” she said, opening her hand.
“Do you like to dance?”
“Everyone likes to dance.”
“Dance for me,” he said.
He turned up the music. She got up and began to dance, snapping her fingers to the beat. He was smiling, nodding, snapping along.
“Consuelo, you dance like a Gypsy!” he said.
She had been watching the other girls dance all week, and she copied their moves: running her fingers through her hair, spreading her open hands across her hips, leaning her head back as she shook her shoulders back and forth.
“Come here,” Gunther said. She straddled his lap. “So beautiful,” he said. “The most beautiful.” He kissed her breasts through her T-shirt, licking the fabric over her nipples until it was almost transparent. “How old are you.”
“Nineteen.”
“Really. Nineteen. I don’t think so.”
“Almost nineteen. Eighteen,” she said.
He pulled off her shirt and tossed it onto the floor. “Tomorrow I will take your picture,” he said.
“I have to work tomorrow.”
“Afterward,” he said. “You know who I am?”
“Yes, of course.” She thought how jealous everyone would be.
He ran a finger around her shoulder, over her collarbone, back and forth across her breasts, down to her belly. “This comes off,” he said.
She unbuttoned her skirt and sat back down. Her black cotton underwear was cut high at the hips. He slipped his hand inside from underneath. She closed her eyes and let her head fall forward onto his shoulder. The pill was starting to kick in. Her body felt loose, she felt it would take all the energy in the world to remain standing, but at the same time she was fully alert: to the music, which was beautiful; to his breathing, which was heavier now; to the warmth that spread out from his touch. He had his thumb in front and two fingers inside her. She did not know what would come next. She had imagined it differently. She thought there would be kissing.
“Have you been with someone like me,” he asked. “Someone older.”
She shook her head.
“Ah,” Gunther said. “You will learn. It takes us longer.” He lifted her off his lap and unbuttoned his trousers, then pushed them to the floor. “A little help, please,” he said. She took him in her hand. He wasn’t hard at all.
“With your mouth,” he said. “There. Nice, very nice.”
This was the part she had read about in books. She wet her lips and began. In a minute he was hard. He took off her underwear. He lifted her back up with one hand, spread her apart with the other.
“Oh, you have to make yourself wet again,” he said. He took her fingers in his mouth, covering them with his spit.
Now she was confused. “I’ve never done this before,” she said.
“Don’t be shy. It makes me excited to watch.”
“I mean,” she said, “I’ve never been with anyone.”
He leaned back on the bed. She slid to the floor. “Christ,” he said. “A virgin.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I need a cigarette,” he said. He lit one for her as well. It made her a little dizzy. “Come here, get off the floor.”
She lay down next to him on her back. He turned onto his side, propped up on one arm. “If I had known,” he said. “You should have said. Really? No one?”
She shook her head.
He stroked her breasts. “You are so beautiful, so perfect. A girl like you is a gift. Don’t you have boyfriends?”
“No.”
“You know, the first one you remember forever. And the first time, for the girl, it’s not so good. That comes later. Do you know what I’m saying?”
“Not really.”
“A man feels pleasure right away. A woman needs to learn.”
She turned and faced him. “Teach me,” she said.
She kept her eyes closed the whole time. He unwrapped a condom and began slowly. His weight was on his elbows. She was afraid to make a sound, afraid he might realize he was hurting her and stop before it was done. He was muttering in her ear, words she could not understand. At the end it hurt the most: he shoved hard three times and shouted.
Afterward he brought her a fresh glass of water and turned on the television. They watched music videos and didn’t talk.
“I have to go home now,” she said. Her shirt was still slightly damp. He gave her a T-shirt with a decal of a cartoon cat across the front.
“Do you need carfare?” he said. She shook her head. He called the front desk and ordered her a cab.
She went into the bathroom and rolled a toothpaste-covered finger around in her mouth. Her underwear felt sticky, but she didn’t want to look. She rolled up some tissues and stuck them between her legs. There was blood on her fingertips. She washed her hands and face with water so hot that it hurt. She looked at herself in the mirror. “Just fucked,” she said aloud. There were various soaps and lotions and hair products in black-and-white-striped containers. She slipped a bottle of hair conditioner into her pocket.
He wrapped a towel around his waist and walked her to the door. “You will always remember Gunther, and Gunther will always remember you.” He kissed her goodbye on the cheek, their first kiss. He didn’t say anything about taking her picture, and she didn’t remind him.
Neely flipped through the catalog, looking for pictures of Jenn. There she was: in a big red cotton shirt and matching flip-flops, in a blue polka-dot sundress, in an oversize sweater that hung loosely around her hips. Neely couldn’t figure out why there was so much baggy clothing in this catalog; the models were all skinny and would have looked wonderful in tight clothes. But apparently that was their specialty, pretty much everything looked as if it had been borrowed from a boyfriend and been through the washer several times already. The models wore almost no makeup. Their hair was uncombed, and in several shots there was sand stuck to their legs and faces.
Neely ripped out the most striking photograph of Jenn, the one where she was looking just above the camera. There was something complicated in her eyes, something like a dare, something knowing and sad. Sixteen-year-old girls aren’t supposed to look that way, Neely thought.
Girls had to be absolutely perfect for these kinds of pictures, otherwise they’d just look like slobs. Neely remembered Anne’s old glamour shots: the foundation, the complicated lip colors, the twenty kinds of powder applied just so, every hair sprayed into place. Jenn was prettier than Anne, and these photographs proved it. Anne had needed so much help, but Jenn could be wearing nothing but lip gloss, they could throw dirt across her face, and she’d still be gorgeous. It gave Neely some satisfaction to think of Anne looking at these photographs of Jenn, realizing how beautiful her daughter was.
Something that gave Neely even more satisfaction: Anne was getting her eyes done! Anne had tried to keep it a secret, but Neely had finagled it out of her. So much for all that talk about aging gracefully! Television wasn’t like the movies; the lighting was terrible, and there wasn’t much you could get away with on videotape. Neely knew it had just been a matter of time. Look at Nancy Bergen—almost seventy, and her skin pulled so tight that you could bounce a quarter off her neck. Neely was dying to be interviewed by Nancy Bergen. All kinds of people won Oscars, and there were over fifty issues of People a year, but only the biggest stars got a full twenty minutes with Nancy Bergen. Maybe it was time to get a new publicist.
It was only seven in the morning, but Lyon had already left for the office. They were both working insane hours, Lyon waking up at the crack of dawn to get in early phone calls to New York, Neely on the set sometimes till eight in the evening. She came home too exhausted to go out and too wired to go to sleep. The cook le
ft meals in the refrigerator that Neely reheated in the microwave and then ate alone in front of the television set. She longed for some wine, one little glass to take the edge off her mood, but she was five pounds over her target weight, so Lyon wouldn’t let her have any alcohol. Some nights she stared at the ceiling for hours before falling asleep.
The movie wasn’t going well. The director had been replaced after the second week of shooting, and the script was being rewritten as they went. The film was set in the forties, and the producer was a stickler for period detail, so Neely had to wear a girdle in all her shots. It was an actual girdle from the forties: no Lycra, no spandex, just rubbery fabric that was hot as hell and stiff boning that dug into her flesh whenever she crossed her legs.
The car would be coming for her in forty-five minutes. She took a quick shower and got dressed. There was a blister on one of her toes (she had to wear period shoes as well) that looked as though it were about to burst. Where were the Band-Aids? She couldn’t find any in her bathroom or the boys’ bathroom, either.
She looked through Lyon’s medicine chest: nothing. Then she remembered that he kept a first-aid kit in his large brown suitcase for overseas trips. The suitcases were stored along the back wall of his walk-in closet, behind a rack of dress shirts. Neely realized that Lyon’s closet was about the same size as her first apartment in New York.
She sat on the floor and opened the suitcase. There were Band-Aids in three sizes; Neely picked medium and gently pressed it around her toe. There were all kinds of other stuff in the kit as well—three kinds of antacid, two full vials of antibiotics, various tubes of lotion, for bug bites, for itching, for burns, for cuts … Geez, Lyon was such a hypochondriac! But then most men were. There were not one but three Ace bandages! Something was wrapped inside one of them. Neely undid the little metal hooks and rolled it across the floor: a vial of large white pills. It was Vicodin, prescribed by his dentist. The bottle was almost full, and the prescription was over a year old. “For pain,” the label read.