I'll Eat When I'm Dead

by Barbara Bourland

  This would be a career-defining day for Lou: months of planning finally realized, which she now knew they needed desperately. October, out on newsstands this week, was a piece of shit. Paula and Margot had made it clear the blame rested squarely with Lou; her half-digested versions of Cat’s work had come out just plain boring, their efficacy cut in half because Cat hadn’t been there to help her understand what she’d meant to do. The October issue seemed a pale imitation of the high-concept high fashion that RAGE was known for, and Lou was, frankly, embarrassed—and furious with Cat for leaving her without any help.

  But that wouldn’t matter. Today’s shoot would put the November issue over the top, and they’d be back on track; the visuals, of earthy, logoless garments, seamlessly matched their new efforts to promote sustainably made clothing; all the fabrics Callie would be wearing were undyed, a small step toward adjusting fashion’s position as the world’s second-largest polluter of drinking water, thanks to the chemicals required to dye and treat most textiles. Lou’s tanned legs pumped up and down with energy and she couldn’t keep a reasonable pace, ripping through her miles, passing every runner she encountered and even lapping a few. She felt her legs go numb, the muscles and sinews swelling with use and adrenaline. Sweat poured down her back in rivers and she grinned, taking a huge swig of her coffee. Yes—today will be my day.

  She checked her watch, a thin little slip of platinum from Cartier, and realized she would need to turn back now and get changed if she wanted to be at the Museum of Natural History to greet the crew at five thirty.

  She turned back and let her legs loosen, her gallop slowing to a canter when she reached Central Park West and spied the facade of her building. She nodded to the doorman, leaped into the elevator, and rushed back into her apartment for a quick shower, furiously scrubbing her skin clean.

  After she hopped out and slathered herself with alternate layers of jasmine- and honeysuckle-scented lotions, Lou felt focused and calm—completely ready to tackle the most challenging day of her life. She surveyed the three outfits she’d set out the night before and felt her instincts pull her toward the middle one: the pair of cuffed, slightly oversized jeans she’d been wearing the day she got into Cambridge, though her first husband had eventually convinced her not to go; a pale blue shantung tank top; and a gauzy cream sweater from Japan, the stitching full of artful holes.

  She pulled her running sneakers back on—today she’d need stamina, not style—and searched for a bag big enough to carry everything she’d need, settling on an old single-strap WWI RAF rucksack that had once belonged to her grandfather. You’re a survivor, she thought, staring at the bag. Me too. For the first time in years, Lou didn’t bother to apply any makeup; she didn’t want to think about it today. You’re going to look old, a nagging voice told her. At least put on some concealer. She turned and looked in the mirror, but as soon as she saw her own face—tanned, healthy, glowing—she thought, I look beautiful. It’s fine. She resisted the urge to smash the mirror on the ground.

  Lou untied her headscarf and pulled the pins and foam rollers from her hair before brushing out the curls with a handmade wooden brush. Her hair floated around her face, the fine, honey-colored strands shining with health and vitality. She snapped a hair tie onto her wrist and dumped the contents of her handbag into the backpack on her way out the door, adding some bottles from her personal supply—a heavy, shiny cream and a lighter, sparkly body milk that contained actual gold dust.

  Today was the first day of the rest of her life.

  Hutton hadn’t intended to keep stalking Cat.

  Not really.

  But Mania made it really, really easy. He didn’t even need to leave his apartment.

  The night before he hadn’t seen her text—whatcha doing later—until he’d already checked Mania and seen photos of her kissing an actor in some kind of Finnish restaurant that served only crackers. He’d been on the verge of responding to her when more photos showed up of her laughing an hour later with Grant Bonner, Bess’s preppy lawyer brother.

  After that he didn’t see the point in responding—not now, and maybe not ever. It wasn’t that his feelings were hurt, he told himself; she was welcome to kiss anyone she liked. No, it was the quickness with which those kisses made their way online.

  It would be humiliating enough for Hutton to admit almost anything about his life to his colleagues at the NYPD: that he’d gone to Hampshire, a college that didn’t have grades, or to an Ivy League graduate school, or that he now owned a five-bedroom penthouse apartment on Prospect Park when his boss could barely afford Staten Island. He’d done such a good job of keeping his background hidden. If he dated Cat, that anonymity would be gone, and not only would he lose the respect of his team, he’d never be promoted again, and he’d probably get suspended for dating a witness in an ongoing investigation.

  She sure is a beautiful girl, though, he thought, scrolling through picture after picture of her, for an hour longer than he intended to, smiling in spite of himself when he spotted any photo where she looked annoyed, or frustrated, or suspicious, or bored. Those were the ones he couldn’t stop looking at.

  But Hutton knew, deep down, that he didn’t want to lose any ground in the career he loved. He didn’t have any hobbies; he’d left a tsunami of broken friendships in his wake when his last girlfriend had caught him sleeping with Callie not once but a truly unforgivable four times; and Callie…he didn’t know how that was supposed to work out. They hadn’t spoken in months. Hutton’s career had become his entire world.

  So when his new boss in the Major Case Division called ten minutes later and asked if Hutton was still awake, if he could make it to a crime scene down in Battery Park City, he said no problem, on my way—then closed Mania and deleted it from his phone, as well as all the texts they’d exchanged over the past week.

  I’ll just have to get over it, he told himself.

  Lou counted the shots in her head. They had thirteen—no, fourteen—incredible shots so far of Callie Court as their very own RAGE Gaia, each more special than the last. The earthy, logoless clothes that Lou styled her in before each take had a magical quality that was both past and present, simultaneously formidable Anasazi warrior and intrepid Mars colonist. Lou knew they’d captured not only the November cover shot, but an entire feature that would get ripped out around the country, posted equally in teenage scrapbooks and on production designers’ inspiration boards. She very nearly burst with pride. They had only one more shot to go.

  The day had started at the American Museum of Natural History, where Callie had “woken up” inside one of the dioramas in the Native American wing, breaking the glass—they’d been allowed to install a temporary sheet of breakaway—using just her fists. As the glass rained to the ground, Callie’s face showed a terrible rage. At that moment Lou had known that this extraordinary model would carry the day, that it would make both of their careers, that she was about to be a privileged witness to magazine history. She let the girl take the lead, stepping in only occasionally to coat Callie’s gleaming skin with layers of the shiny lotions she’d brought from home.

  As Callie strode through the museum, tracking the progress of human evolution, they’d captured her riding the elephants in Akeley Hall, sobbing beneath the blue whale, devastated that someone would take it so far away from the ocean, and lying on the floor of the Hayden Planetarium, her eyes as wide as a baby’s. Paula had stopped by briefly, and she seemed impressed.

  Their next stop had been the Central Park Zoo, but en route Callie had spontaneously scaled the walls of the Belvedere Castle, looking every inch the conqueror—another spectacular shot. She’d rolled down a hill with a group of children in their prep school uniforms, bam, another one. She dived into the remote-controlled boat pond; touched noses with a tiger at the zoo; rode the carousel; stepped in for an at-bat on the baseball fields; and smashed a tea set at the Plaza Hotel, her face dripping with queenly disdain. She had changed unself-consciously in public between
every shot, stripping down without a single glance to see who was watching.

  Then she shoplifted from the MoMA store, slipping nonsense into her pockets with the deft hands of a practiced thief while Lou had casually paid for it all at the register, before hailing a taxicab and convincing the driver to let her ride on top as though the cab were her horse.

  She’d peed in the Columbus Circle fountain, kissing the police officer who tried to reprimand her, and marched up Broadway to a Sprinter van filled with three hair and makeup artists waiting to apply her final look.

  Lou now sat in the driver’s seat, examining Callie through the rearview mirror. Their work was almost complete: the model wore a leather bikini, handmade in Japan from Kobe beef hides, underneath a linen-blend cape that appeared to be equal parts beach blanket and queen’s robe. Her hair had been braided with huge extensions into waist-length braids, their girth ridiculously large. Her face and body were coated in dirt held fast by the heavy lotion.

  “Are you ready?” Lou asked.

  Callie smiled. “Absolutely,” she replied. Lou jumped onto the sidewalk, where she watched Callie leap from the van and run straight toward Lincoln Center.

  There were huge crowds in front of the various sponsor tents, but Callie forced her way through as Lou and the camera crew followed breathlessly, waving their badges and elbowing strangers out of the way.

  Callie stole the first cellphone within three minutes, rotating her cape around and using the corners as an ad hoc burglar’s sack. In the following ninety seconds she scored over a dozen, snatching them with ease from the plaza’s population of human mannequins, who were all so aware of being watched that they didn’t respond at all. But the crowd responded as crowds do, instinctively forming a circle around Callie’s zigzags to give her an arena.

  Standing in the middle of the plaza, the model looked around with satisfaction at the hordes of strangers watching her. She wrapped up the cellphones in the cape and threw the bundle on the ground, pulling Lou’s solid-gold Dunhill lighter out of her bikini top before setting the edges of the cape on fire.

  “People of Earth!” she yelled. “Free yourselves! Throw your phones on this fire!”

  A few moments passed. No one did anything at all.

  Lou stepped forward to give Callie her cellphone and tablet. “Here,” she said. “I don’t want these anymore.”

  Callie hurled them toward the cape, where the first cellphone was starting to catch fire. It popped dramatically, the cover flying off in a rather impressive miniature explosion, and suddenly another woman stepped forward—an editor at IQ.

  “I don’t need it anymore either,” the editor said. “I’m so goddamn sick of Fashion Week.”

  “Me too,” said another woman in a black cocktail dress. She handed her tablet to Callie while the second phone exploded. The crowd flinched.

  “Then take off all your shackles,” Callie ordered the woman. “Give me your dress.”

  The woman in the black dress looked around. Tired, a little drunk, and extremely overheated, she was tempted to give in to this random performance—to finally take part in one of the spectacles that had surrounded her all week. It’s your time, the woman told herself before unzipping her dress and handing it to Callie.

  The crowd cheered. Callie kissed her and threw the dress into the fire. The woman felt loved.

  In moments it became an epidemic. Dozens of women unzipped their dresses, throwing them into the fire while the crowd around them raged, their cheers turning to chants in the space of seconds. Someone pulled the BP flower sculptures out of the fountain and threw them on the pile, turning it into a real bonfire. Callie’s face, lit by the flames, was simultaneously beautiful and terrible, a Homeric sibyl made real. Forty women, all of them boldfaced names, were standing in their slips and bras watching their clothing and cellphones burn. The very air of the plaza sizzled with the iron taste of menace while cameras flashed, and flashed and flashed.

  And all of it was because of Lou, because of her vision.

  Lou heard the shutters going off, and she visualized the fifteen shots that only RAGE’s photographers would have, including the last, of Callie running into the crowd before anyone noticed her.

  Lou smiled. Her huge teeth gleamed, the orange flames reflecting in miniature on their bright surface.

  She was so pleased.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Cat woke up after her night out with Grant and felt like herself again. The first thing she did was text June and Raphael to relieve them for the day; she wasn’t in the mood to be poked and prodded and costumed. Cat did her own hair and makeup for the first time in months—plain face, thick black eyeliner, hair brushed and left down—before donning a floor-length black dress, the neckline cut in a rectangle across her collarbones. She threw an oversized black blazer and brass necklace on top, and wore the biggest, chunkiest eyeglasses she owned, then attended a whirlwind of fashion shows, promising herself that she’d take advantage of the next two weeks. Maybe she’d even write something. Constance, Paula, Margot, and Janet would all be in London and Milan, so Cat, the most senior employee after Lou, had no real reason to continue being out and about. There was plenty of work to do in the office. She resolved to bring it up with Lou if she saw her today.

  The first official afterparty for New York Fashion Week was uptown on the ivy-lined terrace of the Howard Hotel. After a day of shows, she went straight there to meet Bess and found her flirting with Jent Brooks. “I’ll tell you later,” Bess whispered. All anyone else had been able to talk about was Lou’s insane bonfire—the Gaia shoot—and the gorgeous, previously unknown plus-size model who’d started it all. Cat realized how close she was to losing her own place in the RAGE hierarchy.

  It didn’t take Bess and Jent long to sneak out early, and Cat found herself suddenly alone. She checked her phone for the hundredth time; no text from Hutton, but she did have an invitation from Lou. Impromptu celebration at my place for RAGE staff, it said. Get your buns over here: 150 Central Park West penthouse.

  There were easily three hundred people milling through the apartment by the time she arrived, including most of the RAGE staff, a group of models, and various hip-looking young people. Lou’s now-infamous plus-size model was at the center of it all, surrounded by admirers and hangers-on in a corner, wearing a textured, strapless burlap gown.

  Cat spent most of the party on the terrace smoking cigarettes and trying to catch up with her coworkers. She managed to work her way into a lively conversation about the mayoral race with Janet Berg and Rose Cashin-Trask. During a brief lull after everyone agreed it might be nice to have Bloomberg back for a fourth round, Lou strategically appeared.

  “More wine-o?” Lou boomed, her jaw unhinging and jutting forward as she grinned.

  “I can’t. I’m so partied out,” Cat explained. “Besides, I think I need to start changing gears. I’d really like to get back to the office,” she said, putting Lou on the spot in front of the two colleagues who’d had to pick up much of her slack.

  “Oh, it hasn’t been all bad,” Lou replied. “We’re paying you to party and wear beautiful clothes! Don’t be a Deborah Downer,” she chided in a fake American accent. “That used to be my whole life. You can’t fool me. It’s not very hard, partying all the time, being the center of attention.” She winked, elbowing Rose and Janet in an overly jocular way.

  “Oh, it’s been lovely, really it has,” Cat agreed. “But I’m sure my colleagues want to get back to doing only their own jobs,” she persisted, using the people around her as graciously as possible.

  Janet and Rose—both of them four glasses of wine–deep—nodded enthusiastically.

  “You can say that again,” Janet had replied. “Honestly, if you don’t bring her back permanently, I’m going to ask for double the salary.” Her voice was steely.

  Lou, still just five months into her very first paying job, looked shocked; she obviously didn’t know how seriously to take Janet’s comment.


  “Me too,” said Rose, holding up her glass in a toast. “To more money or more Cat!”

  “Cheers to that,” Cat said, clinking her water glass.

  “Well, I’ll see what I can do,” Lou said quickly before hurrying off to another group.

  “I think we got her,” Cat whispered conspiratorially, feeling the tension between them finally dissipate.

  At that exact moment, the now-famous model in the burlap gown stepped out onto the balcony, a small plastic bag in her hand. Cat watched her tap out a pile onto the hollow next to her thumb and take a surreptitious sniff.

  A second later the woman’s eyes rolled back into her head. Her balance wavered.

  “Excuse me,” Cat said to Janet and Rose. “I’ll be right back.” She hurried over and grabbed the model by the arm, steadying her while she pried the bag out of her hand.

  “Are you okay?” Cat whispered, hiding the bag of brown powder in the pocket of her jacket.

  “It’s none of your business, Cat,” the woman said, her voice trembling slightly. She stumbled as her ankle rolled underneath her. Cat looked at her face, finally, and realized who she was—Callie, the bartender from King’s Landing.

  “I think you need to sit down,” Cat said.

  “Okay,” Callie agreed, allowing Cat to lead her inside and down the hallway into the apartment’s private quarters. Cat opened the first unlocked door she found. It looked like a small library, the walls lined in bookshelves and the only furniture a button-tufted chaise longue upholstered in delicate gray linen. She helped Callie sit down on it. The girl lay back right away before closing her eyes and passing out.

  Cat sat on the floor next to her for a few minutes trying to figure out what to do. She still had the bag in her pocket. Get rid of it, she told herself, standing up and walking to the adjacent powder room. The little plastic bag disappeared down the toilet with just a single flush. She sat down and peed, trying to think about how to help Callie get out of the party without anyone seeing her, before flushing the toilet a second time and walking back into the study, where she stopped, shocked.