Trading Up (50 page)

The door to the shop opened with the tinkling of bells, and Janey went inside.

The shop was tiny, mostly taken up by a long counter that ran across its length—it 18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:24 PM Page 267

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was one of those places where you had to know what to ask for in order to get what you wanted. Approaching the shopgirl stationed behind the counter, Janey asked,

“Vous avez la rouges à lèvres,
Pussy Pink
?”
The shopgirl nodded, and went into the back room.

At the very least, coming to Paris would allow her to stock up on her favorite lip color, she thought wryly. But in a moment, the shopgirl returned from the back room, shaking her head. “I’m sorry, madame, but there is no more Pussy Pink.”

“No more Pussy Pink?” Janey asked in consternation.

“No, madame . . .”

“Well . . . when will you have more?” Janey asked. And then, remembering she was in Paris, added,
“Encore . . . ?”

“It is
finis,
” the shopgirl said with a shrug, as if she’d already lost interest in the conversation.

“What do you mean,
finis
?” Janey said.

“The line. It is finished. No more.”

“But you can still buy it at Barneys,” Janey said, as if this were proof the shopgirl was lying.

“Maybe they still have one or two,
oui,
” the girl said with another dismissive shrug of her shoulders. “But when they run out, it is gone.”

“Do you mean . . . ?”

“That is right,” the girl said. “The color . . . it is, how you say, discontinue?” Janey left the shop in shock. Pussy Pink had
only
been her signature lip color for nearly fifteen years, ever since she’d first come to Paris . . . Her roommate, Estella, had told her that she should always wear the same lip color to help the photographers remember her. And it had helped, although maybe not in the way she’d intended . . .

And now . . . she couldn’t
believe
it. For a moment, she stood outside, completely at a loss as to what to do. She bit off a tiny piece of nail and spit it out. The demise of Pussy Pink meant that some essential part of her identity was gone, and she wondered how she could ever replace it. It was a sign, she thought wildly . . .

but of
what
? And then, as if on automatic pilot, her feet took her up a side street, and in a moment she found herself standing in front of a familiar wooden door.

Yes, she thought, the discreet red plaque with the gold lettering that spelled out zollo models was still on the wall, as was the brass handle on the heavy walnut door that opened onto a courtyard and, at the end, to worn stone steps that led to the Zollo International Modeling Agency. She would, she thought, never forget that first day when she had passed through the red door at the top of the stairs. It was 1985, and she was eighteen years old. “Why is New York still sending me the pretty girls?” Jacques Zollo, one of the proprietors, had cried out upon her entrance.

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Janey hadn’t known what to say as she’d silently handed him her book.

“Tall and skinny,
oui,
” he’d said, nodding and flipping rapidly through the sparse pages. “But zee face, it is all wrong. Too American. If only you come to Paris two years ago,” he said, pointing to a series of framed magazine covers on the wall featuring blond-haired girls with blue eyes. “Everybody want that look then. But now?” he shrugged.

“Please,”
Janey said desperately, tears filling her eyes. She’d just arrived in Paris from Milan, where she’d spent four miserable months trying to get modeling work without much success; her New York agency had decided that she might do better in Paris. She couldn’t speak a word of French and every minute in Paris was an agony: She couldn’t buy food in a shop, for it was always behind glass counters and had to be specifically requested, she couldn’t figure out how to buy toothpaste at the pharmacy, and she didn’t understand the money—not that there was much of it, anyway. She was tired and broke and hungry; if she couldn’t find work in Paris, she’d be sent home, and then her mother would laugh at her and say, “I told you so . . . I knew you’d never be a success . . .”

“Please,” she said again, in a whisper. “I’ll do
anything
. . .” Jacques Zollo regarded her quizzically. He was a handsome young man in his early thirties—almost too handsome, Janey thought—and finally, after what seemed like hours, he said, “You will do lingerie?”

“Lingerie?” Janey said fearfully. Lingerie was the one category of modeling her New York agency had warned her against, but she quickly made up her mind. She was standing here in front of Jacques Zollo, despondent and broke, and with a casual shrug of her shoulders, as if she weren’t afraid at all, she said, “Sure, why not.” Jacques wasn’t entirely convinced. “You haven’t had the . . . ,” he said, cupping his chest as if he were holding breasts.

“You mean breast implants?” Janey said. “No. No, I haven’t even thought of that . . .”

“Good,” he said. “In America, the big breast is very popular. But here in France, we do not like our women to look like cows.”

“Oh, no,” Janey said. “I would never . . . do anything like that to my body.

Ever.”

Janey turned away from the wooden door and looked down the street. Well that, she thought now, was a lie, because eventually she had gotten breast implants.

But it was hardly surprising, since it seemed that she rarely kept her word to herself anyway. And shortly after that first meeting with Jacques, she’d found herself doing all kinds of things she never in a million years imagined she would . . .

You mustn’t think about it,
she scolded herself, especially not now. She turned 18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:24 PM Page 269

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away and began walking again, heading into the Latin Quarter, where there were all kinds of little galleries that might distract her. But her brain, it seemed, had a mind of its own, and now that one little piece of memory had broken through the barrier, others were rushing it as well, threatening to drown her in a flood of memories . . .

There were the go-sees where five hundred young women showed up from all over the world, desperate for work . . . the fashion executives who always seemed to have a “cousin” or a “friend” who needed a date . . . and the agents who would deduct a girl’s wages if she refused to cooperate. Almost every girl’s virtue was compromised to some extent, but the girls who fared best were the ones who just happened to have the right “look” for the moment: A buzz would develop around them and they’d usually manage to snag a photographer as a boyfriend, which ensured them
more
work—and protection from the sleazy men who seemed to be everywhere. Those girls were lucky—they’d end up back in New York in a year or two, and some of them would end up being supermodels . . .

But then there were the
other
girls, the girls no one ever heard from again: The girls who freaked out or slit their wrists or took too many drugs and ended up in the hospital. These types of incidents were well known, and a topic of conversation among the girls and the agents and the photographers, but they were always hushed up, and very soon thereafter, the New York agency would provide a first-class plane ticket back to the obscure town from which the girl had originally hailed.

Janey had been in Paris for just two weeks when one of these scandals erupted involving a girl named Donna Black. When Janey had first heard the news, she was in a photography studio in Le Marais, modeling lingerie for a company called LaBaby. It was the first real job she’d had, and the shoot was for an ad campaign, which meant she would finally make some actual money. The ad was to feature two blond girls wrapped in each other’s arms—selling the fantasy that the two girls were about to remove their (expensive) LaBaby lingerie and have sex with each other.

The other girl was named Estella; coincidentally, Estella’s roommate was Donna Black.

Both Donna and Estella were from Indiana, but while Donna’s father was a doctor, Estella’s father was a petty drug dealer. Estella claimed her mother was a waitress, but there was something in the way she knowingly rolled her eyes every time she said “waitress” that made Janey think her mother was actually some kind of prostitute.

Estella herself was a girl who had nothing to lose. Through modeling, she’d risen much higher and faster than she ever could have expected growing up in Indiana, so that everything was a bonus. Tough-mouthed and funny, she was what Janey’s mother would have called a bad influence. She made fun of the photogra-18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:24 PM Page 270

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pher, who spoke very little English, imitating his pantomimed movements when he attempted to show them what to do, and she asked the client how much he would pay them if they actually did have sex. The client wasn’t upset by this; all he said was “It is a beautiful thing to pay a woman for sex,” which sent Estella and Janey into paroxysms of laughter, and for the rest of the afternoon, they kept repeating the line over and over again, to the consternation of the photographer and his assistants.

Toward the end of the day, a call came in for Estella from Jacques, and Estella returned to the set in shock. “Donna Black just stabbed Antoine DuBourgey,” she announced unceremoniously. Antoine DuBourgey was an executive at a cosmetics company; apparently Donna had been having an affair with him, until she walked into his apartment and found him in bed with another model. These kinds of things happened all the time in Paris, but chaos ensued in the studio; the shoot would have to be continued the next day, the photographer said, as no one could work in the face of such juicy gossip.

Janey and Estella grabbed their things and left, and as Janey followed Estella down the stairs, she thought, from the bobbing motion of Estella’s head, that she was crying. But when they reached the street, she saw that it was just the opposite: Estella was laughing hysterically. “I always knew Donna was gonna blow—did you know that she saved jars?” she asked, clutching Janey’s arm.

Janey’s immediate reaction had been one of horror, but during her few months in Europe she’d discovered that her instinctual response to things was often wrong or considered bourgeois. And so, carefully watching Estella, she did what she’d learned to do in these situations, and copied Estella’s response. Laughing along with her, Janey said that she couldn’t think of anyone who deserved it more than Antoine, adding, “Do you think he’s . . . dead?”

“Oh, I doubt it,” Estella said with authority, as if she had firsthand knowledge of the topic. “It’s not that easy to kill someone with a knife. You basically have to slit their throat or stab them about a dozen times.” She paused to flip her long hair over her shoulder. “Donna wasn’t that strong, you know,” she said. “She hardly did any exercise—that was one of the reasons Jacques was going to send her back.” The two girls looked at each other and laughed; the reality was that models never did any exercise—they stayed slim on a diet of champagne and cigarettes.

“It’s a big pain for me, though,” Estella continued. “I’ll have to find another roommate. Donna never worked but at least her father paid her rent.” And suddenly Janey, flush with the sharp sophistication of knowing and understanding such decadent, glamorous people, found herself volunteering to move in.

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that one entered through a courtyard. The layout of the apartment made no sense to Janey—there were
chambres
that could be reached only by passing through other rooms—but it was a big step up from the apartment she’d been living in before.

Estella’s apartment, which was technically rented by a model who had lived in Paris five years before and had moved back to New York where she was now “the face” for a large cosmetics company, was furnished in what, to Janey’s eye, looked like expensive French antiques, but were in reality pieces of furniture one could pick up at any Parisian flea market. But what was most astounding to Janey was the small
chambre
connected to Estella’s bedroom. It was filled with a modern-day pirate’s loot of shoes, handbags, Louis Vuitton luggage, jackets, dresses, sweaters, and jewelry—all of it designer and costing far more than Estella could ever afford. Janey’s eyes widened at the sight of so many riches; she felt her world expand as if filled with air.

She had been raised in a fairly modest, puritanical lifestyle in which excess was considered an unspoken sin, but seeing Estella’s bounty shattered her childhood values as sharply as an object hurled at a mirror, and suddenly she found herself staring at the other side of the looking glass.

“Oh, borrow whatever you want,” Estella said, seeing Janey’s stunned expression. “Just ask me first, okay? I can’t stand girls who just take things . . .”

“But how . . . ?”

“My boyfriend.” Estella shrugged. “He’s always giving me presents.” Janey stared at Estella in confusion; Frenchmen were known for being notoriously tight, thinking they could make up with words what they refused to spend in francs.

“He’s Arab,” Estella said, fingering a padded suede Chanel handbag that was

“the accessory” to own that season, and which, Janey knew, cost upward of $2,000.

“Some girls don’t like Arab men. They’re afraid of them because they’re so rich. But they’ll buy you whatever you want and take you on trips. Sayed has a yacht and we’re going to cruise around the South of France this summer. It’s the place to be and everyone’s there. You
know,
” she laughed, seeing Janey’s confused expression.

“Saint-Tropez and Cap d’Antibes and Monaco. Sayed’s promised to introduce me to Prince Albert . . .”

This was delivered with such flippant sophistication that even though Janey
knew
Estella was putting on airs, she was speechless. She was completely unfamiliar with the world Estella was talking about, but she could see it, dangling just beyond her fingertips like a glittering diamond bracelet.