“Are you coming?” Tiffany asked, holding a box of look books and programs. “They’re going to like, freak out if we’re not there.”
“What happened to André?”
Tiffany shrugged. “Maybe they moved him to a new desk?”
“Did you see him this morning?”
“Yes. Now, can we go before he kills me? I have his books.” She indicated the box in her arms.
Laura helped Tiffany to the elevators. With her arms full of look books, she’d forgotten she usually had something warm and comforting in them. “Dammit, I left my coffee on my desk.”
“Do you want to go back and get it?” It was a borderline rhetorical question. The elevator doors were closing, and Laura didn’t have a hand to spare. She huffed and did without.
Chaos.
People everywhere. Mink, fox, and sable coats. Cashmere. Supple leather and sparkly accessories. Laura muscled through the press of dead animals and lit cigarettes, phone pressed to her ear as she listened to Buchanan’s voice mail. She left a quick message about André and his pattern hooks before some cashmere-clad elbow found her cheek and made her hang up.
Tiffany stood at the front gate with her arms full of look books. Typically, André handed out the books, as he was on the front line between the store buyers and the design team. He took the orders and managed the relationships. Not Tiffany.
“Where’s André?” Laura shouted over the din, feeling as if she’d just asked that question. Tiffany shrugged and looked at her watch. The show started in an hour. The doors opened in forty minutes.
Backstage stank of hair spray, cigarettes, and steam. The stylists readied their boxes of makeup and hair slime. Jeremy was all about smooth and glossy this season, with every girl’s hair blackened and slicked back. Even the blondes were going brunette.
Mom was employed at a regular rate to do any hand-basting and alterations necessary at the last moment and, as Laura watched her manage a skirt hem with nimble fingers and a calm demeanor, she hoped she could be just like her when she grew up.
Jeremy was head model wrangler, as he called his contacts to find out what they had been doing the night before, and where they were at this very moment. They were all accounted for, working the afternoon shows, relatively sober and healthy. They drifted in, bringing their cigarette stench with them, and Jeremy gave them a double kiss and acted as though everything was already going smoothly, giving comments on the hair and nails they wore from the previous shows. He inspired confidence and security, and the giraffes, who generally felt that the success of the entire show rested on their shoulders, loved him for it. They swarmed around him tightly before dispersing to the makeup tables. Laura couldn’t look, because she found herself watching Thomasina a little too closely, even though nothing in what she or Jeremy did should have raised an ounce of suspicion. They were models. They gaggled. It’s what women did when their brains were disengaged from their work.
Noë was among the missing. She had called an hour earlier to assure Jeremy that, even though she would miss a couple of shows in the morning, possibly ruining her reputation, she would make his by hook or crook. She wouldn’t say where she was, or why she was missing one of the two most important mornings of the year. But she swore she’d be there.
“And none of the agencies have a girl who’s five-seven?” Laura asked.
Jeremy shook his head. “Have you ever seen a runway model that short besides Noë?” His patience ran as shallow as his breathing. And she had to agree that, in her five years, she had seen no such thing. Noë was borderline midget.
It took her a second of staring at Noë’s rack for a solution to come to her. It was a poor solution at best, and would create rumblings and fussing. There would be talk of how you couldn’t just pluck anyone out of the world and put them on a runway, because you needed to know how to walk, and how to look, and how to wear the clothes so that they didn’t wear you. And how one girl with the wrong stride could ruin a show. The word “attitude” would come up a thousand times.
Jeremy was at the opening to the runway, peeking out. Half the audience was seated already, and the first models due out were already lining up. Above them, a handwritten sign they all swore they obeyed, but never did, or forgot how to, read: SMILE!
And Laura knew someone who could smile, if nothing else.
“Jeremy!” He turned to her. He looked like hell. “I know someone who can take Noë’s rack.”
All the giraffes pretended they weren’t listening.
“Get her.”
“Don’t you want to know who it is?”
“No,” he said, peeking out again. “Just get her.”
Laura looked for Ruby in the crowd. She entered the press of flesh, noise, and tanning creams while texting furiously:
—Need u in back—
The response came in less than a second —why?—
—Where are u?—
—nosebleeds— Laura looked up. Her phone vibrated again. —why?—
She spotted Ruby, typing on her cell phone and glad-handing someone at the same time. Laura waved and, when Ruby saw her, she apologized to whomever she was talking to and headed down.
Laura grabbed her by the upper arm and pulled her to the back.
“Ow!”
“This is the best thing that ever happened to you,” Laura said. “I dare you to complain.”
“What am I complaining about? Besides the bruises on my arm?”
Laura loosened her grip. The Amanda gown was sleeveless. “You’re walking, that’s what.” When Laura looked back at Ruby, she realized her sister had no idea what she was talking about. “We’re short a model, and you’re it, skinny bones.”
“No way!” Ruby said, yanking herself from Laura.
“Are you saying you can’t do it? Because I have never heard that out of your mouth.”
“I can’t just do something without being prepared. I mean, there have to be a hundred models in the audience, why can’t you—”
“Negotiate a contract in fifteen minutes? Forget it. This is you. You owe me.”
“For what?”
Laura heard her name and knew the voice—Detective Cangemi. She had no time for him now. “For Frank Yaris, Bennet Mattewich, Hank Dunbar, and the other five or six I can’t even remember right now.”
Ruby’s face darkened, and Laura knew there were at least three thefts of ex-boyfriends, dates, and crushes Ruby had kept to herself over the years. Laura heard Cangemi again and saw his tuft of sandy hair between two shoulders. She had to stay ahead of him. He’d likely want to drag her to the precinct again. Laura and Ruby looked at each other and knew what to do.
Ruby pushed Laura to the back. They dodged behind a mink coat, a pashmina wrap, a pink poodle, and leather “it” bags the size of Thanksgiving turkeys. Laura pulled Ruby behind sometimes, and sometimes Ruby pulled her. Then, they came to a blockage, a group huddled in secrets and silicone. Botoxed faces shiny with makeup and stretched skin. Hair primped to perfection. Five of them, and their entitled posture told Laura they weren’t moving for the likes of her.
The only clear way to the back was on the runway. Laura stepped up to the stage and ran the rest of the way, returning a wave from Pierre Sevion a second before she made it to the changing room.
Ruby slammed into Jeremy.
Laura took a breath. “We need to measure her.”
Jeremy looked Ruby up and down as though kicking her tires. The giraffes within earshot did much the same. Thomasina giggled derisively.
“She’s half an inch big in the bust,” Jeremy said. “Could be worse. Dress her and get her in line.”
Laura pulled Ruby into a makeup chair and told the assistant stylist, a quiet, skinny guy in his forties named Manny, “Go.”
Manny went, dragging a brush across Ruby’s head without so much as a how-do-you-do. Ruby cried out, and Laura stood in front of her.
“I don’t know how to walk!” Ruby shrieked. “This is crazy.”
> “Ruby, you are gorgeous. Just being you, you’ll knock them dead from contrast alone. You’re the normal girl in the lineup, even though you’re not. Around these women, you are. So I need you to do this. You go out. Walk to the end. Pause—”
Ruby cut her off. “I’ve seen shows before.”
“I’m in charge of your rack. So you come right to me, and I’ll help you change. Mom’s here, so if you don’t want me, she can help you. You have six minutes between walks. And you have three exits.”
Ruby still looked confused as Manny put the black in her hair.
“And,” Laura said, taking a deep breath, “you have the big finale in Mom’s gown. It’s all you. So put a smile on your kisser.”
Ruby looked at herself in the mirror, as Manny did the best he could in the short time he had. Behind them, the music started.
“You’re going to do great.” Laura meant every word of it.
“I wish Michael was here.”
Then, the lighting changed, the music got serious, and it began. The giraffes quieted and plastered what they considered smiles onto their faces. Jeremy watched the front rows from the back to see who was taking notes and when.
Ruby cleared her throat repeatedly. “How do I look?” Her hair was slicked and black, in a tight bun at the nape of her neck. White powder dusted her cheeks, and her black eyeliner was at least a quarter of an inch thick.
“As freaky as the rest of them.” Laura guided Ruby to her rack and helped her out of her shirt. “Just be beautiful, okay? It’s what you’re good at.”
“Really?” Ruby seemed truly moved by her statement of the obvious.
Laura helped her into a fourteen-inch miniskirt and the dotted Karen cardigan with the neckline that had preppy slut written all over it.
“I’m falling out of this thing.”
Laura responded by pushing her toward the exit. Jeremy glanced at her, pulled her cardigan open to give her a disheveled, got-lucky-last-night sort of look, and threw her to the wolves. Behind Laura, the giraffes stood in stone silence, and Ruby walked. She walked like a normal girl with a little extra swagger. No stomping, no serious swaying, as if she had decided not to imitate the giraffes at all.
“Oh, my God.” Laura put her hand over her mouth.
“I see it,” Jeremy said. “The left.”
Laura had forgotten to buckle Ruby’s left shoe. The gold buckle slapped her ankle with every step, and the strap dragged on the stage.
“She’s going to fall flat on her face.” Laura suddenly regretted putting Ruby in such a position, stolen boyfriends or not. But her poise carried her and, though Laura could only see her sister’s back, the smiles of the people in the front row told her Ruby wore her most infectious grin. “No, she’s going to be all right.”
When Ruby reached the end, she paused and turned, soaking up the love of the flashing cameras. The giraffe before her returned, and Thomasina Wente walked out like she was stamping out lit cigarettes. Ruby turned, smiling and looking as though she were having the time of her life. In that second, Laura felt nothing but pride and warmth for her sister.
Thomasina strutted ahead, momentarily blocking Laura’s view of Ruby.
Ruby smiled at the nosebleed section and waved, looking generally delighted. As Thomasina moved out of Ruby’s way, Jeremy groaned a little, and Thomasina’s bony elbow jutted out just enough to catch Ruby’s rib cage. Between her precarious shoe situation and her inexperience, Ruby lost her balance, pirouetting on the flat part of her loose shoe and twisting out of it.
Laura ran toward the klieg lights to catch her sister, but Jeremy grabbed her forearm and held her back. She was forced to watch Ruby drop like a diver in an open pike position, right into Pierre Sevion’s lap.
Thomasina, for the first time on any runway, in any show, smiled.
As Ruby’s outfits were the last of the group, the music paused like a punctuation mark, which gave everyone a chance to look at Ruby, akimbo on Pierre Sevion, being hauled upright by a laughing Hortensia.
Sevion brushed himself off, while Ruby straightened her skirt. Then, Sevion gave Ruby a double kiss and offered his arm like a courtier. She took it, and he escorted her back up to the runway, a flamboyant gesture that sent the audience into waves of applause.
Ruby waved, blew a kiss, and trotted back to the dressing room with a shoe in her hand, just as the first giraffe went out with the new group. Laura gathered her into her arms and pulled her back to her rack.
“You okay?” Laura scanned her for bruises or abrasions and found none.
“I’m good. That was fun. Even the falling part.”
“You did what they all dread, so it’s out of your system.” Laura pulled Ruby’s skirt down and tossed it aside. “And that woman is such a bitch. I’m leaving a pin in her pants next season.”
“That detective’s in the audience.” Ruby pulled off her cardigan and slipped into the Hannah dress, a shoulder-to-toe leopard skin sheath guaranteed to be an ex-husband killer. Ruby slid her hands over her sides. “And this feels awfully nice. You’re good at this.”
“Thanks.” Laura dragged her to the stylists table for a touch-up. Her phone buzzed and, seeing Ruby was in good hands, she looked at the caller ID. It was Cangemi, but she couldn’t pick it up in the middle of a show. He’d just have to wait until it was over.
Ruby went back to the line, in front of Thomasina, who Jeremy was in the process of tearing a new rectum in sotto voce. Laura caught the words “childish” and “petty.” Gorgeous, she might have been. Rich, she might have been. But she’d tried to damage his business, and for that, there was no forgiveness. If rich beautiful women were a threat to Laura, okay. But Thomasina was out of the picture.
Ruby walked. Laura had made it a point to tie both shoes tightly, and she was rewarded with a drama-free walk down the runway. Thomasina cut her a wide berth when they crossed, and Laura’s only fear was that Ruby would try to retaliate.
“You sent Thomasina down crying?” she whispered to Jeremy. “Her mascara’s all messed up.”
“They all saw what she did. It’ll satisfy their sense of justice. And the pictures of her face will be on the cover of everything.”
He’d made her cry for the drama. Because with such a short show, he needed space in the papers. Still a jerk, Laura thought, even though she wanted nothing more than to see Thomasina cry. She peeked out in the space between Ruby’s return and Thomasina’s walk back to them and glanced over the audience for Cangemi.
She saw Sheldon instead. “He’s out?” she whispered to herself. Jeremy must have seen him, too, because he froze like a stone. Laura squinted to see, and found he was sitting next to Shonda Grovnitz, the owner of Centennial. She leaned over and whispered, “Thick as thieves, aren’t they?”
Jeremy, appearing worried and distracted, looked over at them a second longer than normal. “Childhood friends,” he said. “Gracie couldn’t stand her.”
“Laura!” It was Ruby. Laura headed back to the rack and helped Ruby get the leopard number off and get the Amanda gown on.
“Mom,” she called out, and Mom appeared with pins still sticking to a little fabric tomato on her wrist. “Help me with this thing.”
Together, they laid out the white gown as Ruby slid into the crinoline. It was surely the dream wedding gown she had always envisioned, but without the douchebag to go with it.
“Did you see Sheldon?” Ruby asked, as Mom did a final adjustment, and Manny did a last blitz on her makeup.
“They probably can’t place him in the freight elevator that morning. Too bad.”
“Olly has a good memory.” Laura stiffened when she felt Jeremy behind her, breathing in her ear.
“There’s a lighting change before she goes on. Don’t let her go too early.” He put an arm around her waist and kissed her cheek before slipping away. Ruby and Mom looked at her, and she felt prickly heat on her face.
“We’d better make sure those shoes are on right.” She double-checked the
snaps for security.
Ruby said, “I wonder who they placed in the elevator, then.”
Laura tapped the side of Ruby’s foot to let her know she was prepped for the walk. Laura decided to think about it tomorrow, or later at the after-show party. At the moment, she had to get her sister on the runway in a twelve-pound gown. She held the trail and walked behind Ruby as any straggling giraffes looked at her from the corners of their eyes. They were too good, too perfect, and too envious to look at her directly. Getting looked at was their prerogative, not hers, and none of them conferred the privilege.
Ruby obviously couldn’t have cared less. She made her way to her exit in her crocheted, silk, gorgeous thing, holding up the sides, wearing it as though it had been made for her.
Jeremy wasn’t at his post under the SMILE! sign, so there was no one there to tell her when to go out. The last giraffe came in from the runway and nodded at Ruby before disappearing into the back. Ruby stepped forward, but Laura held her.
The theater lights dimmed.
“I think there’s a lighting thing,” Laura said. The lights came up again in stark white, which at the time was meant to highlight Noë’s black skin, but there was nothing to do for it now. “Okay, go.”
Ruby went out in her beautiful white gown. Her crinoline crackled, and her shoulders swayed with the pure joy of being watched in that gown. She spread her arms wide, unrolling her fingers, presenting herself in all her glory, as she wanted to be. Angelic. Even though Laura could only see her back, with its shimmery crocheted beading, she knew her sister was smiling.
Mom patted Laura’s shoulder. “Good job.”
Laura absently put her hand in her pocket and found a folded piece of paper. She opened it and read, “Meet me at the office,” in Jeremy’s tight block writing. He must have slipped it in her pocket when he kissed her. Of course, it hadn’t been just a bit of unmotivated affection. Everything with Jeremy was motivated.
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