Look at me: (11 page)

“You tell me.”

“I could start making things up.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I save my fiction for bedtime.”

“Call me then,” I said shamelessly. “I tell excellent stories.”

“Somehow I knew that.”

We shook hands. I sensed him waiting for me to go, and yet I lingered, absurdly. Desperation upon desperation, I thought, but was too drunk to care.

Back on Seventh Avenue, I pulled the mask over my face and decided to let it be a lost day. I wandered north, my head down, but the wind clobbered me and the lower part of the ski mask grew soggy and cold with my condensed breath. At Twenty-eighth Street, I turned east, so the wind was behind me. I raised my head in search of some flag of color, some blink of relief from the gray-brown vista of tottering trucks and greasy brick.

And then, as if my eyes had suddenly refocused, I spotted an old painted sign like the one I’d seen a week ago, with Oscar—a series of ads directly across Sixth Avenue, stacked one atop the other in a column on the exposed side of a weary building. “FURS & WAISTS,” I made out in giant letters near the top, and at the bottom, “Hollander Ladies Underwear,” with many illegible others in between. It’s a sign, I thought, the wind gulping my laughter. A sign in the form of a sign.

At the corner of Sixth Avenue and Twenty-eighth Street I stopped and turned slowly around. They were everywhere—signs and the possibility of signs, many faded to translucence, as if I’d gained some new power that allowed me, finally, to see them. “Harris Suspenders Garters Belts.” “Maid-Rite Dress Co.”; mementos of the gritty industrialism I’d come to New York to escape. But today the signs looked honest, legible in a way that the negligéed models I’d seen this morning in
Vogue
, prone in a parking lot surrounded by broken glass, would never be.

East, then south in search of more signs (“Harnesses,” I saw. “Stables.”). Finally, shaking spastically from the cold, I peeled the ski mask from my head and ducked inside one of those bars invisible to all but those seeking alcohol at midday, bars whose stools are sparsely occupied by men with hypertrophied noses and timid, watery eyes. My entrance caused a minor stir that subsided the moment I myself claimed a stool and ordered a drink—a brandy. Brandy was the order of the day. A fish tank gurgled in the window, overwhelmed with algae to the point where the presence of fish inside was anyone’s guess.

Beside the tank was a pay phone. When I’d finished my brandy, I called my voice mail for messages, skipping past Grace (who left one each day to cheer me up), hoping, irrationally, for a call from Anthony Halliday. No such luck. But there was a message from Oscar, left only minutes before. “Call me immediately,” he said. “I have extraordinary news.”

“Extraordinary,” I said, when he came on the line after a mere five seconds (I counted). “Not a word I’ve been hearing too often these days.”

“Lady Luck has arrived and we are in her debt,” Oscar informed me.

Within the last hour, he said, a reporter from the
New York Post
(a real one this time, though at first he’d thought it was me bluffing again) had called the agency. Like every other publication in America, the
Post
was doing a feature on models, but with a twist: they wanted a model whose appearance had changed radically in the very recent past.

“They probably mean a new haircut,” I said, to withering silence. Then I added, meekly, “But I’m sure you already thought of that.”

“Thank you,” Oscar said. “They most assuredly do not mean a haircut; they mean a radical transformation like what’s-her-name in the eighties with the scars. It’s truly uncanny; if you didn’t exist they would have to invent you.”

It was, indeed, uncanny. And it was a measure of my own desperation, and Oscar’s on my behalf, that we never questioned this uncanniness, nor considered the unlikelihood of such a coincidence actually taking place.

“But Oscar,” I said. “If we tell people I’ve had this accident and I look completely different, won’t it be harder for me to get work?”

“No, dear,” Oscar said, almost pityingly. “Because if this article flies, you’ll be a Real Person, a person in the news. From there I can wangle you some TV, maybe a longer feature—a cover, ideally. And that’s your relaunch, sweet. There it is. I have goose bumps, God’s truth.”

I had goose bumps, too.

“Now listen,” he said, “call this girl. Meet her as soon as possible—today, if you can. Her name is Irene Maitlock. I’m warning you right now, she sounds a teeny bit drippy—writers usually do. Be nice, Charlotte. Nice nice nice.”

“Irene,” I drawled. “What a name.”

“It’s the name of an angel who’s descended from heaven to save your ass,” Oscar replied.

Irene Maitlock was one of those women I found difficult to look at without imagining how much they would profit by dropping just a few pounds, wearing a less pointy bra, a minimum of makeup, and clothing that had, if not personality, at least some semblance of an identity. Because the raw material was there! She had thick light brown hair that begged for highlights, a decent figure, lovely blue eyes. She also wore a wedding band, and so, I gathered, was not exactly desperate for my help. But I was less troubled by Irene’s physical shortcomings than the annihilating side of my own personality that raged in the presence of women who invited the descriptive “mousy.” Fortunately, I’d had time to stop at Ardville Wines and Spirits on my way home.

But Irene Maitlock refused my offer of Pouilly Fuissé—five demerits right there—and sat tentatively on my sectional couch. Mousy women felt an instinctive terror in my presence that had the unfortunate consequence of exacerbating their mousiness. Snip snip snip, I thought, watching her. Now you have bangs.

“So, you’re a journalist,” I said. “What do you write about?”

“Oh, all kinds of things. Drugs, cops, the Mafia. I’m fascinated by crime. And law enforcement.”

“Where do I fit in?”

She smiled nervously. “Well, this story is sort of a departure. To tell you the truth, it was given to me. Not that I’m not interested—”

“Obviously you’re not.”

That surprised her. “What do you mean?”

“Obviously you’re not interested in fashion.”

She laughed, and I gave her ten points for sportsmanship. “No,” she said, “I’m definitely not interested in fashion. But this story isn’t about fashion. It’s about identity.”

“Oh?”

“I’m interested in the relationship between interior and exterior,” she said, “how the world’s perceptions of women affect our perceptions of ourselves. A model whose appearance has changed drastically is a perfect vehicle, I think, for examining the relationship among image, perception and identity, because a model’s position as a purely physical object—a media object, if you will”—she’d risen out of her slouch and was sitting up straight, a spot of red on both her cheeks, discharging words in a cannonade—“is in a sense just a more exaggerated version of everyone’s position in a visually based, media-driven culture, and so watching a model renegotiate a drastic change in her image could provide a perfect lens for looking at some of these larger—”

“Beep!” I said loudly, cutting her off.

“Excuse me?”

“That was my boredom meter,” I said, although in truth it was my utter bewilderment, rather than boredom, that had caused her speech to grate on me. “You were nearing a danger point.”

“Oh.” She looked mortified. “I’m sorry.”

Now I was sorry, too. Would it have been such a hardship to let her finish? Why should the fact that she’d flouted an opportunity for natural-looking blondness so offend me?

“So, let’s see …” She was halting, diffident once again. Nice work, I told myself.

“Well, this is my face,” I said briskly, framing it with my hands. “I’ll take off my makeup if you want to see what it really looks like.”

“Okay, or we could—”

“You’re the boss,” I said. “Tell me what you want to do.”

“I thought I’d start by asking you a few questions.”

“Oh,” I said, and was overcome by an abject sensation of dread. “Will it take long?”

“Do you have to be somewhere?”

“No. I just—I hate talking about myself.”

“Me, too,” she said, and smiled. “Luckily, I don’t have to.”

“Let’s be quiet a minute,” I said. “I want to look at you.”

“At me?” She seemed alarmed. I took a long drag on my cigarette and gazed at her intensely. “What do you see?” she asked.

“Stop talking, and I’ll tell you.”

She did, and I looked again, and immediately I saw a light, laughing presence. I saw her leaning against someone, putting her arms around him, kissing his neck.

“You love your husband,” I said.

She looked astonished, then relieved. For a moment the laughing presence eclipsed the hesitant drip who’d occupied my couch thus far, and she looked—I never would have thought it possible—she looked beautiful. “Yes,” she said. “Very much.”

“Okay,” I said, calmer now that I’d seen her shadow self and taken a liking to it. “Fire away.” To prepare myself, I lay flat on my back on the couch, cigarette jutting from my mouth at a right angle. I shut my eyes.

“Tell me how you came to be a model.”

“Oh, God,” I said. It seemed so complicated, such a long reach into the past. “Can we come back to that one?”

“Ah … how large a role would you say your appearance has played in your identity?” She was reading the questions from a notebook.

“How can I answer that?” I asked. I opened an eye to look at her. “Can you answer that?”

“Have you ever been married?”

Ten points for not rising to the bait. “Almost. Once.”

“How long ago?”

“Many years.”

She waited, obviously hoping I would go on. Then she asked, “Do you think your appearance has played a major role in your relationships with men?”

“Not at all,” I said. “The determining factor has always been my intellect.”

No reaction. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“Me, too,” she said, with surprise. “We’re the same age!”

More or less.

“Did becoming a professional model change your feelings about your appearance?”

“I think so,” I said. “It must have.” I strained to recall, but my memory smirked and refused to budge. It was a lazy creature, that memory of mine, and, since its exertions during my Rockford convalescence, more phlegmatic than ever. “Let’s come back to that one.”

I heard her sigh, and peeked to find her rubbing her temples. “Have you participated in the fashion-world nightlife here in New York?”

Trick question, for sure. “Yes …”

“You’ve gone to nightclubs, that sort of thing?”

“Yes … ?”

“And what role do you play? In that nightlife.”

“There’s only one,” I said. “I’m a girl.”

“At twenty-eight you’re a girl?”

Oh, spare me, I thought. “It’s just an expression.”

“Do you feel like a girl?”

“I feel like an old dog,” I told her.

“What kinds of people do you meet in these nightclubs?”

“All sorts,” I said. “Literally, every kind you can imagine.” I looked at her again. “What do nightclubs have to do with it?”

“This almost-marriage you had. Did it begin after you started modeling?”

“I’d rather not talk about that.”

“Why do you dislike talking about yourself?”

At last, a question I could answer. A topic I was itching to address. “I’ll tell you why,” I said, swinging around and planting my feet on the rug so I could look at her directly. “Because everyone is a liar. Including me.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“We lie,” I said. “That’s what we do. You’re selling me a line of bullshit and you want me to sell you a line of bullshit back so you can write a major line of bullshit and be paid for it.” I said this with utmost collegiality.

“What makes you such a purist?”

“I’m not!” I cried. “That’s the irony—I’m the biggest liar of them all! But I don’t pretend to be anything else.”

“What, you tell people you’re lying and then lie to them?”

I laughed. I was starting to like her better. “I avoid pseudo-earnestness. How did you start modeling? How do you feel about your appearance? Blah blah, here’s my sad story, now get out the violins—I can’t bear it.”

“In other words, you’re afraid of serious conversation.”

“Afraid.” I shook my head. “Afraid?”

“Sounds to me like a pretty standard defense mechanism.”

“Irene,” I said quietly, and leaned very close to her. “Can you look at me and swear that everything you’ve said is absolutely true, that none of it is bullshit? There’s no agenda hidden underneath, no ulterior motives—everything is exactly the way you’ve described it? Can you swear to that, say, on your husband’s life?”

She blanched, averting her eyes. There it was: comprehension.

I lay back down, satisfied. I was ready for the next question, but the reporter was on her feet. “I think I’d better go,” she said, slipping her notepad into her bag.

I didn’t move. “Why?”

“Because you’re right. This makes no sense.”

“So you’re giving up journalism?” Languidly, I rose to a sitting position.

“No,” she said. “This.”

“Jesus. You’ve written about cops and muggers and Mafiosi and you’re running away from me?” I was beginning to sweat.

“I’m not running.”

She wasn’t running, but she was definitely on the move. “Thanks for your time,” she called from the door.

I moseyed after her, careful not to look flustered. The locks on my door were many and complex; she wouldn’t get out on her own. I was fighting the sense that I’d fucked up something major, that Oscar would never forgive me. But what exactly had I done?

“Good luck finding another model who’s had eighty titanium screws implanted in her face,” I said, unlocking the door and pushing it open.

She looked impressed.

“Eight-
oh
. Write that down,” I said.

She brushed past me into the hallway.

It was seven o’clock, but it might as well have been midnight. The sky and river were black. To hell with the diet—I ordered a pizza and ate it. I finished the bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé. Sometime later, I opened another bottle and began watching
The Making of the Making of
, a documentary about how documentaries were made about the making of Hollywood features. Against a backdrop of camera crews shooting camera crews, an announcer in pancake makeup intoned his gravelly stand-up. “As movies about how movies are made become more popular, experts speculate that some day, every movie will bring with it a brother, or sister movie: the unique story of its own creation. But how are
these
stories made? What are the technical challenges, the dangers? What are the rewards? In the next hour, we’ll take you behind the scenes … into the studios … onto the locations … where directors face the challenge of filming other directors … making films!”