Lessons in Heartbreak (32 page)

‘Figures,’ Carla said, returning from the window to put her things down beside the table. ‘I can just see a group of anal-retentive ad types arguing over who gets the biggest desk space and where to put the basketball hoop, because they have to have a hoop so they’ll look like homeys, even though the nearest they get to a basketball court is wearing Air Jordans.’

‘Do I detect a note of bitterness about advertising men?’ Lola asked naughtily.

‘Bitterness? Me? Not at all,’ Carla laughed. ‘But if the ad agency guys who are interested in this place are called WorkIt
Ads, then tell me so I can buy a couple of tuna steaks and hide them under the floorboards where a guy called Billy sits. Oh yes, and I want a standing order with the local porno video shop to send round dominatrix movies every afternoon. Come to think of it –’ She paused. ‘Billy’s probably weird enough to like that. Strike the porno movies.’

Everyone laughed.

‘Pity we can’t afford this for more than a day,’ Izzie sighed, mentally shaking her head to get Joe Hansen out of it. It was a futile gesture. He inhabited her every moment and it hurt more than she’d thought possible. If she hadn’t had the new agency to think about and all the organisation it involved, she’d have gone crazy.

So much had happened in the past month. She and Carla had given in their notice, Lola had said she wanted to join them, and suddenly, they were raising money, looking for premises and ready to cast their new models.

They had just signed the contract for the SilverWebb Agency’s first office suite. It was lovely but the location was so perfect that something had to suffer, and that something was floor space.

There was enough room for reception, a small conference room and a four-desk office, along with a tiny kitchen area. But there was no space for a start-up casting, hence their presence in the yoga studio.

‘If there’s anyone else you can wangle money out of, Izzie, then we can rent it,’ Lola said. ‘Where are all the
Fortune
500 moguls now, huh?’

Carla shot Izzie a sympathetic look. They both had a certain
Fortune
500 mogul in mind, but neither of them cared to phone him up and ask for a cheque.

‘When a man’s the answer to your question, you’re asking the wrong question,’ Carla joked, checking that the Polaroid camera was working.

Normally on a casting, the models had their own portfolios and model cards. Today’s was the result of a lot of adverts looking for ‘plus-sized’ models – Izzie hated the term with a vengeance as it summoned up visions of women too big to walk – so lots of the prospective models wouldn’t have model cards. Both Izzie and Carla liked Polaroids for instant memory-refreshing.

Izzie laid out sheets of paper and pens so everybody could write down their contact details.

‘I hope we get a good turn-out,’ she said to Lola anxiously. ‘There’s nobody here yet.’

‘There’s half an hour to go before the start time on the adverts,’ Lola said. ‘It’s only nine thirty. We said ten.’

‘Yeah,’ Izzie fretted, ‘but I’ve been to find-a-model castings where girls have been queuing all night to be first in line.’

‘That’s ordinary models,’ Lola shrugged. ‘They’re a whole different story. Too much caffeine and nicotine makes them jittery. Being normal makes you less desperate.’

Izzie laughed. ‘Hope that’s true,’ she said. It was so simple, it probably made perfect sense.

She thought back to her first casting years before when she’d been utterly in love with the world of fashion and modelling, and watched endless leggy gazelle-like creatures sway in and out of the room, each one more beautiful than the last.

When one girl had erupted into tears as they looked at her and the panel had raised collective eyebrows, the girl had rushed from the room and Izzie had hurried out after her.

‘It’s the zit, isn’t it?’ the girl had said, shaking with nerves and misery. She’d pointed to an almost invisible bump on her cheek, which she’d expertly hidden with concealer. ‘I knew they’d notice it, I knew it. And I’m so fat. Look!’ She’d reached down and tried to grab non-existent flesh around her concave belly.

She wore tight, low-rise jeans that revealed her bones jutting out like knobs on a Braque sculpture.

In a shoot for designer clothes, with her hair carefully windswept and a dusting of St Bart’s tan over her body, she’d look amazing. In the flesh and with tears on her hauntingly thin face, she looked like a fragile child-woman. Izzie had been horrified at the girl’s obvious self-hatred and by the easy way the other people on the panel were able to dismiss her.

‘But she’s so upset, Marla,’ Izzie wailed afterwards to her colleague from Perfect-NY when they all took a coffee break.

‘That’s why we’re not seeing her again,’ Marla whispered. ‘If she cries in front of us, what’ll she do in front of the client? It’s about more than looks, Izzie. She’s got to toughen up if she wants to make it.’

That was the first time Izzie had seen the reality of fashion. For her, it might be an exciting female-friendly industry where women’s beauty and brilliance was prized. But it could also be cruel.

By eleven that morning of the first SilverWebb casting, Izzie knew she’d made the right move. This was genuinely unlike any other casting she’d ever been at. It was like being in the backyard of Goddesses R Us, where Zeus was trying to find the perfect example of womanhood.

Women of every shape and colour crowded down one end of the loft, and whereas at normal castings wariness was a tangible currency, these women squealed and laughed and chattered at full blast.

‘I can’t believe I’m here!’ shrieked one woman.

‘This is what I’ve been waiting for all my life!’ yelled another.

‘I’m never going to be 00 but my daddy says I’m OhOh!’ laughed a third.

‘I’m going to get coffee.’

‘And cake?’

‘Better get some for everyone.’

Izzie and Carla grinned. At normal castings, diet soda, black coffee and cigarettes were the only staples. Here, muffins, non-skinny lattes and candy might work better.

Seven hours later, they had signed up eight models and the last one was a triumph. Six foot, statuesque and blonde, Steffi had been a school gymnast and cheer-leader, but she’d always been too big for ‘normal’ modelling.

She moved with the grace of a lioness and her face was poetry with a sexy smile that lit up the room. When they’d finished, Steffi had said she wanted to treat everyone to a drink to celebrate. Her boyfriend wanted to come over and celebrate too.

‘Sounds good to me,’ said Lola, rubbing a stiff neck.

‘Sure,’ said Izzie, who had nowhere else to be. It had been a very successful day and they had another casting tomorrow: SilverWebb was due a little downtime.

‘There’s a nice bar around the block,’ Carla said.

Steffi, Lola, Izzie and Carla piled in the door of the bar.

‘Hey, I like this place,’ said Steffi delightedly. She really was gorgeous, Izzie thought, and everyone in the bar clearly agreed with her, because they all stopped what they were doing to look at the tall blonde with the long legs and wide, all-encompassing smile.

‘Now where will we sit? Over here by the window and we can see what’s going on?’ She walked over to a banquette by the window and sat down, beaming out at everyone, happy with the world. Her happiness was infectious. Grinning, Izzie went and sat down beside her.

‘You do realise that every man in the bar is staring at you?’ she asked.

Steffi laughed, a rich, sexy, throaty laugh.

‘I know,’ she said mischievously. ‘And I like it! Hey, girls, let’s celebrate my new career, I can’t believe I’m going to be a model!’

‘You should believe it,’ said Lola, sitting down beside her. ‘You’ve got a great look.’

‘You say the nicest things.’ Steffi squeezed Lola’s arm happily. ‘It’s gonna be such fun working together, and I can’t wait for you all to meet Jerry. You’re going to love him!’

Carla came back from the bar carrying a tray with four glasses and a bottle of white wine.

‘This moment deserves champagne but this was all they had,’ she said. ‘I got peanuts too. Wine and peanuts are major food groups, right?’

‘Right.’ Izzie nodded.

‘Fantastic,’ said Steffi, grabbing a pack of peanuts. ‘I’m starved.’

The three SilverWebb women looked at each other and laughed.

‘You are so different from most models we know,’ Lola remarked.

‘You mean that I eat?’ said Steffi, between mouthfuls. She even ate sexily, Izzie thought with admiration. ‘I hate girls who don’t eat. Like, why?’

By the time Steffi’s boyfriend, Jerry, arrived with a couple of his friends to celebrate, the girls had finished their bottle of wine and were dickering over the idea of ordering a second.

‘Jerry!’ squealed Steffi when she saw him.

He was tall, good looking, maybe six or seven years older than Steffi and clearly besotted with her. With a brief hello to everyone else, he caught her and grabbed her in a bear hug, whirling her around the bar floor, not caring who saw him.

‘I’m so proud of you,’ he said.

‘Baby, right back at you,’ Steffi beamed and they kissed, slowly, with the burn of real passion.

‘Way to go, man,’ said one of his friends, clapping.

‘Isn’t she something?’ Jerry said, still holding on to Steffi.

That was when the emotion of the day finally got to Izzie. Gorgeous Steffi seemed to symbolise everything the Silver-Webb Agency stood for: beautiful real women who were at peace with who they were.

And yet finding Steffi for their agency highlighted just how much of an outsider Izzie felt and how badly she’d got it wrong. Steffi was hugging the man in her life on this special day and Izzie was sitting there, smiling, drinking celebratory wine – knowing that when her glass was empty she’d be going home to an empty apartment.

Izzie guessed there was probably the same age difference between Steffi and Jerry as there was between herself and Joe Hansen, but Joe had never whirled her around in pride at her achievements or showed her off to his friends saying, ‘Isn’t she something?’

Instead, he took her to quiet, out-of-the way restaurants lest they met anyone. She’d been essentially hidden, whereas Steffi was fêted and adored in public.

How ironic that, as one of the bosses of the new SilverWebb Agency, she was supposed to be the wise, clever one, running models’ careers and yet, right now, she felt like the novice who knew nothing. Pre-Joe, she’d been so shrewd and sensible, but not any more. It had taken Joe, and Gran’s stroke, to show her that she didn’t know diddly squat.

‘I have to go,’ she said, reaching around for her handbag.

‘No,’ shrieked Carla, Lola and Steffi in unison.

‘You can’t,’ said Lola. ‘We haven’t celebrated enough.’

Then she corrected herself: ‘But if you have somewhere to go…’

Izzie thought of where she had to go: home, then maybe to the launderette. She needed to buy a few groceries. She was out of coffee filters and granola.

‘You don’t need to rush off, do you?’ asked Carla gently, gazing at her friend with worry on her face.

Carla knew that Izzie had no vital appointments except with her television remote control.

‘OK,’ Izzie said. ‘I’ll stay for one more.’

An hour later, Carla was getting on like a house on fire with one of Jerry’s pals and even Lola, who had never quite decided whether she preferred men or women, was talking animatedly to his other friend.

Somehow Izzie had got stuck in the corner seat and she felt like a spiky, uninhabitable island in a sea of loved-up couples. She couldn’t do small talk any more: she’d lost the knack, along with her sense of humour and her sense of knowing what life was about.

Two glasses of wine had given her a headache and she thought maybe some orange juice would help. She wriggled out of the corner, hauling her handbag after her, and went up to the bar, where the bartender proceeded to ignore her.

‘Hey,’ she said loudly, ‘seeing as how I’m invisible, should I use my superpowers for good or for world domination? What do you think?’

The bartender turned around and she noticed, in a dispassionate, model-agency-scout kind of way, that he was pretty good looking. Younger than her, of course: everyone was younger than her now. He was mid-thirties and athletic. Once upon a time, she might have expected him to flirt mildly with her but not any more. Nobody was ever going to flirt with her again because she couldn’t bear it and they seemed to sense that.

‘Superpowers, huh? What sort of hero are you precisely?’ he asked, leaning against the bar.

‘I don’t know, possibly Really Bad Flu Woman,’ Izzie said. ‘Or else Shield Woman, in that I have an invisible shield that keeps people away from me. It’s a
Star Wars
vibe, very modern, very technological.’

‘Right,’ said the bartender, stretching the word out into several syllables.

‘Yeah,’ Izzie went on. ‘It’s an invisible shield and people bounce off it if they get too close, so they just stop coming. Invisible Shield Woman, that’s me. Could I have an orange juice, by the way?’

‘Do you want that with a side of Xanax?’ he asked.

‘Oh, what the hell, give me a side of Xanax too.’ She sat on a bar stool. This was clearly the way her life was going to be: no relationships, but possibly lots of interesting, if strange, conversations with bartenders and waitresses in coffee bars. That was what happened to women on their own, she decided. They talked a lot to strangers.

‘You’re not feeling the party spirit?’ the bartender said, slapping down the orange juice.

‘No,’ Izzie sighed. ‘I have an anti-party shield thing going on too. Do you ever sit and watch people having fun and just not be able to join in?’

The guy raised his eyebrows. ‘I’m a bartender,’ he said. ‘That’s what I do for a living – watch people party and not join in.’

‘Yeah, sorry,’ she said. She drank her juice quickly. ‘Could you send over another bottle of wine to the party crew in the corner?’ she said. ‘I’ll pay. I better get out of here before I destroy the atmosphere altogether.’

‘Is this a work party?’ the guy asked.

‘Sort of,’ said Izzie, and then the confessional nature of the bar stool got to her and she blurted out: ‘We run a model agency and we’ve just had our first casting. Steffi,’ she gestured over to where the beautiful blonde woman was sitting, ‘is our newest signing.’