by Kylie Adams
4
Simone
It was like being in one of those big budget, loud Hollywood disaster movies. As the world fell down all around her, Simone Williams was running as fast as she could.
She burst inside her sunny one-bedroom Upper East Side apartment and flattened her back against the door, chest heaving.
The humiliation was total—possibly her most embarrassingmoment ever.Worse than the flat-on-her-face fall she took on the Paris runway during her first Karl Lagerfeld show. Even worse than the time she vomited on William L. Petersen when she guest-starred on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.
Oh, God, yes, this situation was far worse. Being denied credit on Fifth Avenue. Over and over again.
Chanel, a beautiful silver Egyptian Mau, chortled a soft melody, delighted by Simone’s return. The feline wiggled her tail at great speed as she treaded the hardwood floor with her forepaws.
Simone made a direct move for the antique rolltop desk, lifting it up to reveal a disaster underneath. She fired up her sleek new black MacBook and sorted through piles of statements and scribbled Post-its in a mad search for user names, passwords, and account numbers.
With a steadily rising panic, she logged on to check her balances, card by card. American Express Optima, American Express Blue, Citi Platinum Visa, MBNA Platinum MasterCard, Capital One Visa, and so on. Every account had careened past its approved credit line.
For a moment, Simone struggled to breathe. This was impossible.How could every credit card be maxed out? An internalthunderbolt dropped. Somebody must have stolen her identity!
She retraced her online steps to check recent activity. Hmm. All of the charges looked very much like her own—the same restaurants, retail boutiques, and beauty outlets that Simone had frequented over the last week glowed back on the thirteen-inchmonitor.
For at least two hours, she worked the phone, enduring interminable holding spells for account managers and supervisorsin an all-out bid to have her credit lines increased. Most of them hovered around twenty thousand. Maybe that was an acceptable limit for a college student. But Simone Williams was hardly a struggling coed.
Not long ago she had been featured in the Us Weekly “Who Wore It Best?” contest (against Jessica Simpson). They were both pictured in the same Cavalli black paisley-print empire-waist dress. Of course, Jessica had won with seventy-twopercent of the votes. But only because she was more famousand had bigger boobs. Anyway, the point of the Cingular Wireless assault was to boost Simone’s credit lines to a level commensurate with her celebrity potential.
But not a single request was granted. Apparently, the worst time to ask for an increase was when you were already over the original credit limit. Simone’s frustration was total. On the final attempt with the last card, she called the American Express representative an ugly cow before hanging up.
Chanel was stretched out in grossly indulgent lazy cat slumber. Somewhere beneath her lay the calculator that could add up the debt damage. But why disturb Chanel for such a depressing task? It could be done later. Anyway, Simone knew the ballpark figure was around two hundred thousand—on her revolving credit cards. There were American Express Gold and Platinum accounts totaling about fifty thousand that the companyexpected to be paid in full.
She stared at the messy stack of suffocating bills and let out a groan. If only. If only there had been just enough room left for that Gucci bag. The one with the medium top-handle in black patent leather with zip-pocket detail, goldtone GG hardware, and detachable shoulder strap.Yes. If only that purchasehad gone through, then Simone would be content and able to deal with this crisis like a true princess warrior.
She left the financial crime scene and poured herself some Chardonnay. Followed by another. Wine could be a brilliant problem solver. By the end of a third glass, she usually had answersfor all the squabbles in the Middle East, not to mention ways Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger could get along.
Money. So yummy. So yucky, too. It had definitely been a glorious solution and epic problem over the years, simultaneouslyproviding her great comfort and total destruction. She stroked Chanel’s smooth, spotted coat, feeling the impact of the wine as the memories bubbled to the surface.
Simone grew up with money. Plenty of it. Her father had been a corporate executive, her mother a Junior League dynamo.Their only child possessed toffee-colored skin, emerald green eyes, straight hair, and a tall, lithe frame. By the time she turned three, Simone knew she was gorgeous. Everybody gushed about it, and even at that age, she had to agree with them.
In the cosseted enclaves of Atlanta’s Buckhead area, Simone had basked in a privileged, preppy environment, thinking of herself more as an individual than as a member of any particularrace. The pro-black mind-set completely escaped her.Yes, Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream. But Diana Vreeland, the legendary fashion editor for Harper’s Bazaar, had epic style.
When Simone read that DV had once declared pink the navy blue of India, she considered it a vastly underreported moment in cultural study, wrote a paper on the subject for her world history class, and turned in the manifesto on pink paper. Mrs. Boozer gave her an F. That was the day Simone decided to be a model. She was twelve.
By thirteen, she was a professional poser, already the perfectsample size and modeling for catalogs and upscale retail trunk shows, in addition to commercial work, some of it national,like the Sprite television ad that had her dancing in the street with wild abandon. At fifteen, Simone was already livingoverseas without her parents.
DV had once proclaimed, “the best thing about London is Paris.” And she was, as always, spot on. Simone adored France. It was a fast lane life of go-sees, runway work, champagne and cigarettes, and modelizers on the make. By sixteen, she had made herself available as the mistress of a rich married man (for great gifts) and the girlfriend of a hot young club promoter(for great fun).
But at seventeen, she was back in Atlanta, no longer a fresh face for the Paris agencies and having offended Karl Lagerfeld by pulling a no-show at a dinner party in his honor. At the time, she had been kidnapped by her married lover, who was coked out of his mind and paranoid that she was cheating on him with his nephew. As it turns out, the club promoter was his nephew. Really, though, how could she have known? It seemed like everybody in France had the same last name.
Simone’s homecoming was fraught with rude awakenings.In her absence, the company that her father worked for had imploded in financial scandal, wiping out retirement accountsand inciting a federal inquiry that buried top executives,including her father, in legal bills. Without Simone’s permission, her parents raided her savings, depleting every dollar she had ever earned. And yet they still lost the house and were forced to move into an apartment.
Ultimately, the stress and humiliation proved too much for her father. He died of a heart attack at the age of forty-six. Her mother moved into a smaller rental unit and accepted a job behind the Guerlain cosmetics counter at Neiman Marcus. And Simone moved to New York with less than a thousand dollars to her name.
The stateside modeling opportunities turned out to be middling at best, and playing agency hopscotch did nothing to improve the situation. It was infuriating to settle for departmentstore catalog work while Queen Latifah signed on with CoverGirl for millions. Where was the justice?
On a lark, Simone had signed up for a one-day acting class taught by Pamela Anderson at The Learning Annex. It was two hours well spent.With her new thespian skills she vaulted into acting and got lucky with a semi-regular series of one-offguest shots on episodic TV shows, most of them hourlongprocedural dramas of the Law and Order variety. Usually, she got selected for uppity model or junior society type parts. Casting agents did not see her as the gritty prostitute, the stone-faced government worker, or the around-the-way girl with an out-of-wedlock child by an NBA star, which accounted for ninety-nine percent of available roles for black actresses.
For the past few years, Simone had been cobbling togetherincome from random modeling
assignments and bit player acting jobs, subsidizing cash, lifestyle, and clothing needs with credit card accounts that seemed to grow like sea monkeys.
An envelope emblazoned with the words YOU ARE APPROVED seemed to arrive in her mailbox at least every other day. It had actually been good for her self-esteem. On a morning when you got passed over for Burn Victim Number Two on Rescue Me, sometimes a girl needed a pair of Christian Louboutin platform Mary Janes in red leather, even if they did cost seven hundred dollars.
Simone’s cellular hummed to life to the tune of I Dream of Jeannie. Cautiously, she checked the ID screen, saw TILLY CALLING, and felt a moment’s relief, followed by a frisson of irritation.
Tilly was arguably her closest friend, but sometimes Simone struggled to get past the fact that Tilly came from a wealthy family (that managed to hold on to their fortune), married a rich husband (who was also gorgeous), had been blessed with a gorgeous baby (with no stretch marks to show for it, thanks to obsessive slathering of belly balm by Biggs and Featherbelle), and earned a mint as an endorsement model for 24/7 Cosmetics, a job that required ten days of work per year at the most, five of which (all in-store appearances) Tilly refused to show up for because she hated to shake hands with strangers. It was not just an embarrassment of riches. It was obscene.
“Hi, Tilly,” Simone half-sang, half-sighed.
“We just got back from Starbucks and barely escaped with our lives. Some horrible woman touched Cantaloupe’s face with her icky fingers. She seemed like the sweet grandmothertype, but she could’ve just as easily been a terrorist. I’ve already given Cantaloupe a bath. It’s her third one today already. I feel like I’ve been assaulted.” She breathed a dramaticsigh. “How are you?”
“Not so good. I was sitting here—”
“Dean Paul’s show is about to be cancelled any minute,” Tilly cut in. “Which means I’m now the major breadwinner for this family. As if I need any additional pressure! Thank God my parents bought us this apartment. Otherwise, I don’t know what we’d do. Cantaloupe needs stability at this age. I couldn’t bear a move right now. Are you nervous about tomorrow?”
Simone had scarcely thought about it. Her first official day to report to the set of The Beehive. All she really cared about was the regular income and the chance that maybe—just maybe—it would lead to some kind of lucrative long-termspokesmodel gig, even if it was with a budget retailer like Kohl’s that merchandised apparel in large sizes. “I haven’t really thought about it until now.”
“Promise that you’ll call and tell me everything,” Tilly insisted.“I want to know what she looks like without makeup. My guess is that she has bad skin like Cameron Diaz.”
Simone rolled her eyes skyward and refilled her Chardonnay.She was Emma Ronson, Dean Paul’s most recent ex. As always,Tilly’s inquiry about Simone’s life really had everythingto do with Tilly.
BEEP. The sound was precisely the exit opportunity that Simone needed. “Someone’s calling on the other line.”
“Oh, well, I can’t talk anyway. It’s time for Cantaloupe’s Japanese language lesson.”
Simone tensed at the sight of UNKNOWN CALLER on her cellular display. She hesitated, then realized that it could be one of her credit card companies calling back with a change of heart, so she answered abruptly. “Hello?”
There was no response. But in the background she heard what sounded like bar noise.
“Hello?”
Still nothing. Finally, the line went dead.
Tears sprang to Simone’s eyes as she slammed the phone shut. “Crazy son of a bitch!”
It did not matter that she had changed her number six times in as many months. He always found a way to get to her.
Damn Tommy Robb. Damn him to hell!
THE IT PARADE
BY JINX WIATT
Fill in the Blanks
And you thought The View once had its share of dysfunctions. No set is in need of an on-the-premises therapistquite like that new show generatingoodles of honey buzz. One cohost was recently dumped by her ex. That ex is now dating another cohost, who is still smarting from her breakup with America’s prince. Another cohost is the new BFF of America’s prince. And still another cohost is BFF to America’s prince’s new wife. Got it? If not, start from the top and read again.
5
Sutton
Three soft knocks rapped the dressing room door.
“What is it?” Sutton snapped.
Jay Lufkin poked his head inside. “They need you in hair and makeup.”
Sutton glared at him. “Have them come to me. I’m not sitting in the same room with her.”
Jay sighed. “You’re about to share a set with—”
“That’s something I have to do,” Sutton cut in. “Don’t get the two issues confused.Tell Joey and Olivia I’m ready wheneverthey are.” She turned her attention to the background material for today’s guests. “Are you serious about these Japanese twins?”
“Faith Hill has a sinus infection,” Jay explained. “This is an eleventh-hour save.”
Sutton gave him a withering look.
“Okay, save may not be the right word. But ‘Bee in Our Bonnet’ is already running for two segments.We need them.”
“Good-bye, Jay,” Sutton sang dismissively without so much as a glance upward.
Mio and Mako Kometani were the identical twin daughtersof a billionaire industrialist father and celebrated in their country of origin for being crowned Miss Japan (Mio one year, Mako the very next) and successfully marketing a line of products ranging from noodles to bust cream. Now their desperatebid for stateside, Paris Hilton–like fame was catching on with a hit reality series on the Oxygen network called Deep Inside M&M.
Last night Sutton had attempted to screen an entire hourlongepisode but gave up after the first thirty minutes, which chronicled Mio and Mako’s bikini wax appointment and their attempts to change the outgoing voice mail messages on their cell phones.When Sutton saw that the remainder of the show would feature the twins doing little more than countingthe shoes in their closets and fighting over a D&G dress, she promptly powered down the DVD player.
Sutton’s stomach did a complete revolution as a realizationbecame clear. A few months ago she had been grilling Condoleezza Rice about Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Today she would be lobbing questions to Mio and Mako about the number of shoes in their closet.
Just as the door to her dressing room opened, Sutton heard Jay cry out from the corridor, “No! Not that room!”
But it was too late. In front of her stood a confused delivery boy holding an explosion of mango and burgundy calla lilies in an antique silver vase. The arrangement was from Ariston Florist on Fifth Avenue. Sutton instantly recognized the meticulouswork of owner Thomas Barbagianis. Garrison kept the Greek-born florist on speed dial. For one stupid, vulnerable moment, Sutton’s heart lifted with emotion. Was he wishing her good luck on what would be her first show? Maybe he ...
Suddenly, the sight of Jay’s pained expression triggered the intellectual truth that Sutton already knew. The flowers were not for her. Garrison had sent them to that bitch.
Sutton betrayed nothing as Jay quietly ushered the delivery person out of the room and down the hall, returning momentslater with an effusive apology.
She halted him. “It’s okay, Jay.” Then she gestured to her packet of research. “I need to see someone about the graphics for the ‘Bee in Our Bonnet’ segment.Would that be Candace?”
Jay nodded, searching Sutton’s eyes for more. “What about the graphics?”
“I just want to go over the image sequence and make sure we’re in synch.” She smiled at him. “Jay, I hope you have more pressing matters than intercepting flower deliveries and micromanagingthe work of a production assistant. Otherwise, this show is in trouble.”
Jay conceded her point with a sigh. “Be nice to Candace. I don’t need her to quit. She’s too good.”
Sutton drew back dramatically. “Am I some kind of monster?”
>
“You made the set designer cry,” Jay pointed out.
Sutton shrugged. “Allowing Sarah to go on thinking she’s talented is ultimately a disservice. I care about her.”
“Well, in that case, when it comes to Candace, try to be as unfeeling as possible.” Jay rolled his eyes, darting out of the way as the hair and makeup team bounded inside Sutton’s sanctuary.
“Okay, Queen Bee,” Joey intoned breathlessly. “Let’s make you the most fabulous of all.” He positioned himself behind her and began finger-styling her hair, studying the results through the dressing mirror. “Nervous?”
“Amateurs get nervous,” Sutton informed him grandly.
Joey, his tanned, toned, tattooed body packed into a tight T-shirt, shared a secret smile with Olivia, the plump makeup girl with unbelievably gorgeous skin.
Sutton smiled. “I take that look to mean the others are absolutelyterrified.”
“Maybe a few pre-show jitters,” Joey murmured. “I wouldn’t say they were terrified.”
Sutton ran a hand along the wisps of hair tapering her neck. “I’m thinking of letting it grow out.”Through the mirror,she searched Joey’s eyes for approval.
He seemed to be considering her announcement when Olivia squealed, “Are you going to tell her, or should I?”
Sutton merely waited for the nugget to drop. Hair and makeup people could give the CIA lessons in sensitive intelligencegathering.
“A bill collector called Simone,” Joey offered. “Isn’t that tragic? She tried to play it off, but it was so obvious.”
“I don’t get it,” Olivia put in, sorting through her Trish McEvoy brushes. “Her last boyfriend was playing for the Yankees on an eighty million dollar contract, and this girl can’t make a minimum payment on her Visa bill.”
“Tommy Robb,” Joey said dreamily. “Honey, that man is welcome in my dugout anytime.”