Taylor plays with the collar of my black Gap T. She looks up—her green eyes shimmering, her lips pink and tempting—and part of me is considering the gentle sex option. But after that much tequila, gentle sex is an impossibility.
But it’s not only the risk of a cock cataclysm or the potential embarrassment of explaining the purple bruise—which if history is any indicator, she’ll for some reason, think is genital herpes—that is stopping me. It’s that doing anything with Taylor in her drunken condition, I don’t want to say it’s wrong, but somehow, it’s not right.
She gazes at me, so wanting and sensual, that it’s painful when I peel her hand off my shirt, and say, “You’re drunk. You probably haven’t thought this through.”
“You’re hilarious.” She grins, placing her hand back on my chest as she moves in to kiss me. But I turn, focusing on the circular lighting fixtures and letting them once again sear into my retinas.
Taylor pauses. “Seriously?”
“I mean, you’ve had a lot to drink—”
“Oh, shit. You are serious.” She takes a step back, her face turning red as her drunken swagger fades. She can’t look at me.
“Uh…” she says, crossing her arms like she’s suddenly cold. “…Sorry…” Taylor wavers, moving to the adjoining door while mumbling something. But all I can make out is: tequila, stupid and Marcel. Then I know this was Marcel’s plan, his final idiotic gift to me: Drunken Loose Morals Taylor. The road to hell really is paved with good intentions.
She opens the door and pauses, looking over her shoulder at me, wet strands of hair obscure her face. “See you in a magazine… or something,” She says. “Whatever.”
Then she’s gone, and for the first time in human history not having sloppy alcohol fuelled sex has wrecked any chance at a meaningful relationship.
CHAPTER 20
Colin Bryce Hamilton
Out of Africa. #JetSetLife
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HONG KONG WELCOMES me back with a lingering grey overcast that may or may not be a pollutant-filled cloud from factories in Southern China. Apple welcomes me back by taking me to dim sum.
She opens a long red container that looks like a necklace box and pulls out a pair of chopsticks with the Hello Kitty logo inscribed on them.
“Found these in a little stall in Mongkok last week.” She grins. “Cute, right?”
“Unbelievable.”
Apple picks up a piece of siu mai with her chopsticks, dips it in soy sauce, takes a bite and says, “You’re not hungry?”
“Ate on the plane.” Six hours ago. I’m starving, but arriving in HK also meant the return of my model priorities. Gorging myself on oily dim sum isn’t one of them. “What’s the word with Milano?”
“Still working on it,” Apple says, while chewing.
Maybe I’m getting used to being slapped around by life because despite Apple’s nonchalant admission of doing absolutely nothing, even though she practically swore on everything she holds dear—which is probably an apartment full of Hello Kitty crap—that she would get me an agent in Milano, I somehow don’t feel like screaming abuse at her. “I thought you were going to promote me while I was gone?”
“I did.”
“And?”
“And the response hasn’t been good.”
Apple puts an entire char siu bao in her mouth. She looks like a contestant at a marshmallow mouth-stuffing contest and I feel what little Zen I have left dissipating.
“What agencies have you tried?” I say, controlling my tone. A couple of rejections from the top agencies in Milano is surprising, but it happens. “Next, Fashion, Why Not, H2O, Flash, IMD, Joy.” Apple’s eyes roll up into her head as she takes a much-needed break from stuffing her face with dim sum. “And Ice, Elite, Zoom, 1&1. Think there were a couple more but I forget the names.”
She just recited a who’s who of agencies in Italy, and a few more that would only be on my back-up list.
“They all said no?”
Apple nods. It feels like a knife is twisting deep in my gut.
“Don’t worry,” she says, sucking the skin and black bean sauce off a chicken foot. She spits the little bones on the paper-covered table. “I’ve still got a few ideas. I’ll get you an agent in Milan.”
Apple pushes her Hello Kitty glasses up her nose then her phone begins vibrating on the table making the dangling collection of Hello Kitty shit attached to it clank against each other. What was I thinking trusting a person named after fruit, who has a fetish for Japanese paraphernalia, to hook me up in the fashion capital of the world?
There’s only one thing for me to do.
She’s checking the message on her mobile when I say, “Look, Apple, I think it’s time for me to find new representation in Hong Kong. I’m not happy with One Models.”
She stares at me, oyster sauce dripping off a strand of bok choy pinched between her chopsticks.
“But we just got you a great job. Why?”
“You can’t get me an agent in Milano,” I say, congratulating myself on my composure. “It shouldn’t be this hard. I have a strong book, campaigns, covers, editorials. It’s not like you’re working with some loser model with a book full of tears from C-class markets.”
“Colin,” Apple says like she’s talking to an Alzheimer’s patient. “It’s not your book.”
“Of course, it’s not my book.” Way to state the fucking obvious. My portfolio is the shit. “What is it then? These agencies haven’t heard of One Models and they don’t want to deal with you or something? Because if it’s—”
“It’s you, Colin,” she says. “The agencies are all saying they don’t need your specific look. That it’s not now. It’s not fashion right now.”
I’m at a loss. I can change my walk and my poses, but I can’t change my look.
“But all my campaigns, all the magazines I’ve shot for…” I say, not wanting to believe what Apple is saying.
“They don’t question you as a model, but they don’t need you,” Apple says chewing her food. “Your book is quite strong, and I probably could have gotten someone to rep you if you were willing to pay your costs but… honestly, it was that YouTube video. It went viral.”
Never failing, only succeeding—fuck.
“The agents I spoke to thought it was a joke.” That knife is shredding my guts now. Apple’s Hello Kitty-bedazzled phone starts vibrating again and she says, “No one in Milan wants to represent a joke.”
Pulling the hair out of my head with duct tape, walking barefoot on a catwalk of broken glass, watching professional cricket, these are a few things I’d rather be doing right now than a set visit to a ramen noodle commercial, but that’s where my sister’s been all day.
The set is a warehouse size soundstage. Gaffers set up tracking for a camera, grips are adjusting lights. And I walk into the makeup room and find my sister wearing pink plastic wings and a little tutu, sitting with her head in her hand.
“Hey,” she says, standing and giving me a hug. I concentrate on her face looking for signs of irritability or guilt—both symptoms of post-traumatic stress—which she would definitely be suffering from if Maxwell has randomly exposed her to his testicles. But all I can spot is disappointment. “How was Africa?”
“It was okay.” I nod. “Nice outfit.”
“I know,” She pouts, looking like downtrodden Tinkerbell. “I’m like, the prawn fairy number three. The other two prawn fairies are on set right now. They told me to take a break. I don’t think the director likes how I was waving the wand.”
She picks a wand up off the table and flicks her wrist as if casting whatever spell prawn fairies cast. Jasmine frowns.
“What if this is the best I can do, Colin?”
I’m about to comfort my sister with lies about how being the third prawn fairy in a Chinese noodle ad, isn’t so bad, when there’s a knock at the door and Freduardo—or whatever his name is—walks in. He’s wearing yet another tank top, and his arms look like h
e just finished six hundred bicep curls.
“Jasmine,” he says, in a voice that is ridiculously deep for his wiry frame. “I bring you phone charger.”
He sets a white cable on the make-up counter.
“Thank you so much, Eduardo!” She grins, and gives him a hug.
I watch as the Neanderthal-like Brazilian receives my sister with his pumped veiny arms hanging at his side and, a big dumb grin etched on his face. He catches me watching and says, “Oh, hey bro.”
“Isn’t he sweet?” Jasmine says, as she plugs her phone into the wall. “All I said was my phone was dying and Eduardo offered to bring my charger to the shoot.”
“Jasmine is like a little sister.” He shrugs. Fuck that.
Half the time, when a guy says a girl is like a little sister, they end up fucking her. The rest of the time, they want to fuck her but never manage. I hate it when guys tell me a girl is like a little sister, especially when the girl is my little sister.
He grins. I fake a grin back and watch as my sister says goodbye and Freduardo meanders out the door moving with the urgency of plate tectonics forming mountain ranges.
“How nice was that?” She says. “I keep forgetting my charger. That’s why I couldn’t talk to you the other day at my Elle shoot. My phone was dead.”
“How did that go?”
“It went good,” she says. “And Damian was so nice. He’s super-hot and so down to earth! Like he would pick the lint off my outfits while we posed and brush the little bits of hair out of my face so the stylist didn’t have to come on set. What a gentleman!”
“Great,” I say, noting that Damian’s excuses to touch my sister are straight out of the amateur’s guide book for picking up girls. I expected better of him. “How about the test shoot after?”
“Yeah.” She looks away and suddenly I’m wondering if I wasn’t looking hard enough for those signs of PTSD. “Have you seen Maxwell’s work?”
“Of course,” I say. A Maxwell Chen photo is easy to spot. Always shot on a black backdrop, always with one light source, usually a three-quarter to full length shot, and more often than not the girls are showing more skin than clothing.
“Do you like it?” Jasmine says.
“His stuff is cool,” I say automatically because that is the generally accepted truth in fashion. Though if I really think about it, his stuff is repetitive and increasingly boring. But with famous photographers, the actual shots don’t matter. In fashion, Maxwell Chen is a made-man. He could put a blindfold on, stumble around an empty room snapping shots, then sell them for a hundred grand a piece.
“Well, yeah, I guess his stuff takes some getting used to because he’s so artsy,” she says. “He drank a couple glasses of wine really fast before the shoot. Then he offered me some, but—eww—wine. He said he needs it to get loose. It’s his process. Just like Hemingway!”
It takes every ounce of strength not to roll my eyes up into my head and keep them there until I pass out.
“We started the shoot and he was moving all over the place trying to get a good angle on me. Then he ripped his shirt off! Like literally ripped it off with one hand and threw it away. He said it was messing up his concentration.”
Jasmine says this like it’s a good sign when the photographer starts getting naked. I’m going to be as mad as she is happy when she gets to the part about Maxwell ripping his pants off.
“But then his assistant gave him some message.” She frowns. “And he apologized. He looked really upset and he left. We had only been shooting for about twenty minutes…”
Jasmine stares at the floor. I’m trying to hide my smile. It has to be my Hail Mary pass. It actually worked. Maybe my French-trying-to-beCantonese accent wasn’t as bad as I thought. It got Maxwell away from my sister and not a second too soon. Twenty minutes into the shoot he had his shirt off, that put Jasmine on a collision course with full frontal nudity at the thirty-minute mark.
“You only need one shot from Maxwell Chen to make your book,” I say. “You probably don’t need another shoot with him.”
“More shots would be awesome.” She says. “But as long as I get the prints of the stuff he’s already shot, I guess it’s Ok, and he’s really busy…”
I breathe a sigh of relief.
“Maxwell’s so busy…” Jasmine pauses as she wiggles in her tutu, adjusting the straps on the harness. “He can’t meet me at his studio to give me the prints. I’m going to have to meet him at his place.”
CHAPTER 21
Colin Bryce Hamilton
Sometimes I think the world is out to get me.
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Damian Bruckman
#JetSetLife bru!
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MODELS OF EVERY race and creed are waiting around me in peace and harmony, which is a really sweet if we were going to hold hands and sing Kumbaya—but for a casting it sucks. I’m sitting alone watching the other guys slapping hands while talking about partying and which fashion week shows they’ve casted for, and I realize being absent for one week has left me a fashion leper. I’ve been forgotten.
Taylor seems to have forgotten me, too. I followed her on Instagram, but she hasn’t followed back and my friend request on Facebook has gone unanswered. I haven’t heard anything from her since I landed in Hong Kong. She’s probably still jet lagged.
Just when I think things can’t get any worse, Damian strolls out of the casting room with his book under his arm. He bumps fists with a bunch of guys, and when he sees me a smile spreads across his face that reminds me of a piss stain spreading on the front of a pair of grey sweatpants. “Hey, bru, you’re back.” He puts a clenched fist out for me to bump. “Yeah,” I say, tapping it.
“Sorry about getting cut off when you called.” Damian grins. “We were fucked up.”
“Sounded like it.”
“Always, bru,” he grins. “Hey, the shoot with your sister was awesome. Your sister is cool, I think she liked me!”
He says this like I’m supposed to bump his fist. I don’t.
“Good.” I nod and look away.
“Grats on booking that Mauritius gig,” he continues for some reason. It’s like he enjoys talking to me. “That’s a big one.”
“Yeah, too bad I had to miss a bunch of the fashion week castings,” I say extra loud for everyone in the room to hear. “I’m sure I can reschedule but in the end, shooting that campaign was the best way to go.”
“Wasn’t the shoot for a resort or something?”
“Yeah, Beachcomber,” I say a little more quietly.
“Cause you said campaign, bru,” Damian smiles. “That sort of hints it was a fashion campaign or something.”
“It was an advertising campaign,” I say, wishing Damian didn’t want to argue semantics in front of a room of eavesdropping models.
“Yeah but it’s not like it was the Armani campaign or a Calvin Klein underwear campaign. It was an advertising campaign for Beachcomber Resorts.” He flinches when he says Beachcomber, as if it’s an unholy union of a conventional word and urban slang like chillax.
Damian’s backed me into a corner. You don’t back anything into a corner. In nature, a cornered animal will bite, claw, piss and shit their furry pants in an effort to defend themselves, so it’s his own fault that I break out the fangs and say, “It paid 30,000 USD.”
Damian’s mouth drops. “Fuck, really?”
There is a communal whisper as the surrounding models soak it up. “Yeah, it was decent.” I shrug like I don’t get out of bed for less than thirty thousand.
“Grats, I knew it was going to be a good budget but that’s fucking crazy,” Damian gives me his fist, and this time I bump it like I mean it. “Yeah, and it was a week at this awesome resort,” I say. “Lucky bastard.”
Suddenly I’m the envy of every model in the room, including Damian. But he doesn’t know the best part. There’s one last detail that would make him lose his shit completely. For all his bullshit about just b
eing friends with Taylor, I know that me shooting intimate couple stuff with her for a week would wipe that perpetual grin off his face.
“What made it better was working with a cool girl,” I say, beginning a nicely crafted segue into mentioning my ace in the hole.
“You worked with Taylor, right?” Damian blurts wrecking my surprise. He was probably stalking her on Instagram the entire time we were gone. “She told me it was only you two and the crew over there.”
“You knew?” I say. “I forgot that you guys were chatting over snapchat or whatever.”
“Nah, it wasn’t online, bru,” Damian grins. “Taylor called me this morning.”
CHAPTER 22
Colin Bryce Hamilton
Blending. #Spy #secretagentman
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Jasmine Verano Hamilton
What are you blending? A smoothie? Wait. This is a guy thing, isn’t it? Nvm.
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THE CASTING ANTI-CLIMAXED in a table full of Brits who kept glancing at my book, then suspiciously back at me like I may be an imposter. This confirms my career crippling weight gain in Mauritius. I need to get to the gym, but I’ve got something else to handle first. This casting was a cattle call, meaning every model in Hong Kong will make an appearance here today, which means Taylor.
Staking out a building for the chance to talk to a girl seems like the move of a desperate loser, but I’ve got no other options. I’m wearing my Incognito-Wealthy-Aristocrat look while sitting across the street from the casting at an open-air noodle shop. Marek walked right by my table fifteen minutes ago and didn’t as much as glance in my direction.
I’m a freaking chameleon.
“Hey, it’s him.” I turn, and two boys wearing glasses are standing and gawking at me, their grade school uniforms hanging off them like drying laundry.
“Run along, kids.” I say, shooing them with my hand.
“Yeah, it is him!” One of them grins. “The lightning before the thunder model guy!”
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