Chela squeezed my hand. “Do you,” she whispered. Inside a corner office, as big as a loft apartment, there were two desks. Leslie was seated at the main one. Sitting on a gray velvet chaise lounge was a pretty Asian woman, older than me, younger than Leslie. She stood up and extended her hand. I shook it.
“I’m Caroline Kim,” she said.
“Bee Wilson,” I said, trying not to mumble. When I was little, I used to have a hard time articulating certain words, especially the letter s. My aunt Zo made up this song—“I like to smile and I like to smoke.” For ages, I would sing, “I like to ’mile and I like to ’moke.” I think about it now because I feel like I’m about to revert back into a five-year-old who can’t say an s or anything else.
Leslie shook my hand. “I’m so glad you could come in. Sit down.”
Caroline said, “So, Leslie discovered you at the Dean and DeLuca. How very Lana Turner at Schwab’s.”
“Who?” I asked. The question jumped out of my mouth before I could stop it.
Caroline just laughed. “How old are you, Bee?”
“Seventeen.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m a student at Columbia.”
Leslie smiled. “So you’re smart. Miuccia Prada likes smart. What are you studying at Columbia?”
“I’m premed,” I said. Not adding that I was going to be pre–Cinnabon employee of the month if I didn’t get my act together and pull up my grades.
Caroline said, “Very impressive. So why do you want to be a model?”
I thought then of all the girls I’d seen who had left the office, fighting back tears. This must be where it all falls apart. They ask you a question. You give them the wrong answer, and they send you on your way. Somehow, I sensed that “I don’t know. I never wanted to be a model” was the wrong answer. I thought about what Aunt Zo always said about her auditions—you’ve got to be hungry. You can’t have a backup plan. So I just started making stuff up.
“I never see girls in ads that look like me,” I said, which was true. “In my high school, they had to replace the plumbing in the girls’ bathroom because so many girls were throwing up, the acid was actually eating away at the pipes.”
This, as a matter of fact, was also true.
Leslie nodded. “So you’re comfortable with your shape?”
“Absolutely,” I said, semi-lying now.
“What if we needed you to lose a few pounds, just to tone up a little?” Caroline asked.
Again, another trick question. Was I supposed to stick to my guns, in a “fat is a feminist issue” kind of way? Or should I be flexible?
“I think exercise is good for everyone,” I said. Then kicked myself. What must I have sounded like? A robotic candidate for Miss America?
Leslie stood up. “Let’s Polaroid you, Bee.” She took a camera off her desk, stood me against the wall.
I did a big old Kool-Aid smile.
Leslie said, “A little less teeth, Bee.”
I turned it down a notch. She snapped my picture.
“Now closed mouth. Thoughtful.”
I thought about Brian.
“Thoughtful happy, not thoughtful sad, Bee.”
I thought about salsa dancing with Chela’s friends at the Copa.
“Very pretty,” Leslie said, and snapped my picture again.
Caroline said, “Now, let’s see you walk.”
I walked across the room.
I did it badly. I knew it right away from the look on Caroline and Leslie’s faces.
“Can you try the walk again, Bee?” Caroline said. “This time, pretend that your favorite music is on.”
“Don’t be shy, Bee,” Leslie said. “Pretend we’re not even here. You’re out with your friends on a Saturday night.”
“Do you,” Chela had said. But I knew at that moment, what I needed to do was Chela, strutting onto the dance floor at the Copa. I summoned all the South Bronx and South Philly I had ever seen and I shook my hips as I walked across the room.
Leslie and Caroline were both smiling, but I couldn’t tell if it was a real smile or a fake smile.
“That was really fun, Bee,” Leslie said. “Thank you.”
Then she looked down at her desk and started writing. I wasn’t sure whether I should wait or leave.
“Should I go?” I said.
“We’ll call you if we’re interested,” Caroline said. She was texting on her BlackBerry, and she didn’t look up either.
I walked out of the office, knowing now why some girls looked like they wanted to cry. The whole “Don’t call us, we’ll call you” thing was pretty brutal.
Chela gave me a thumbs-up, then a thumbs-down. I just shrugged. We walked to the elevator in silence.
“You got the job?” she asked me once we were out on the street.
“I have no idea,” I said.
“Did they give you any hints?” she said.
“Not a one. They said they’d call me if they were interested.”
“Well, that sucks.” She looked indignant.
I thought, She doesn’t know the half of it. No modeling career, no Brian. Then I remembered how Brian had just about flipped when he found out that Shakira was a goodwill ambassador to the UN. Maybe if this whole modeling thing didn’t work out, I could look into that. I mean, it wouldn’t be just to get Brian back. I really believe in the issues, and as the Good Humor ice-cream man in my old neighborhood in Philadelphia can attest, I’m a girl who’s just full of good humor, which is kind of like goodwill, right?
8
Bee-lieve It or Not
You know, it’s a good thing, a really good thing, that I wasn’t born a gypsy and that I don’t have to make my living telling fortunes like the girls you see with their crystal balls in little shops on Sixth Avenue. Because the truth is, I couldn’t predict the future if my life depended on it. I thought Brian loved me and wanted to be with me forever. NOT. I thought I’d totally blown my modeling audition and I’d never see or hear from Leslie Chesterfield again. NOT.
Leslie Chesterfield called me that very same night and asked me to come in the next day for another audition. I called Aunt Zo, and she said that this is what is known in show business as a “callback.” Did I ever, in my whole entire life, or at least since I started gaining weight like a polar bear getting ready for hibernation, ever think for a nanosecond that I’d be getting callbacks to be a model? NOT. NOT. And oh yeah, DOUBLE NOT.
I went back to the Chesterfield Agency the next day, and there were only three of us in the waiting room. The stick-up-her-butt receptionist was slightly less disdainful. When I was called into Leslie’s office, three other people were there—one woman, two men—sitting on chairs. Leslie and Caroline shook my hands but didn’t introduce me to the new folks. I said hello to them, but they just kind of nodded. Caroline asked me to tell my name, age, and what I did for a living. Then they asked me to walk again. I did my best Chela.
“Maybe a little less bounce,” Leslie said, not smiling. She seemed friendlier the day before. Now she sounded exactly like the kind of icy society blonde that she looked like.
So I did it again.
Then Caroline said, “Thank you, Bee.”
And it was over. So I said the only thing I could think of, which was, “Ciao.”
Aunt Zo always said even when it’s clear they’re not going to hire you, always leave the audition with a smile on your face. Sometimes that’s the only thing a conductor remembers, but it may be enough to get her to hire you for the next gig. So I smiled, said my “ciao,” then went back to Dean and DeLuca for a jumbo chocolate chip muffin.
I was sitting in the window when this cute guy stopped right in front of me. Then he made a brushing motion, and I thought, Great, some weirdo. He did it again, and I realized he was telling me I had chocolate on my face. I wiped it off with a napkin. He winked at me and kept walking. Memo to self: Next time I sit in the window seat at Dean and DeLuca be in full makeup and sipping a cup of gree
n tea. My cell phone started to ring, and I knew who it was, Chela calling for an update. Of course, I had to dig through my giant bag to find it. I thought I was so cool, rocking a fake Louis Vuitton bag to class instead of a knapsack, but this bag is like a pond—everything sinks to the bottom and gets all scummy. Memo to self: Stop being so cheap and get one of those cute Japanese cell phone holders that clip on the shoulder strap of the bag.
“Wassup, Chela. I blew it,” I said, when I finally found the phone.
“Hello, Bee?”
It wasn’t Chela.
“This is Leslie Chesterfield. You didn’t blow it. You’ve got the job.”
I know. You totally saw this coming, right? But you have to understand. Things like this don’t happen to me.
“Bee, are you there?”
“Uh, yes.”
“Are you at Dean and DeLuca?”
“Uh, yes.”
Now I was starting to get nervous. Were they spying on me? If she mentioned the chocolate chip muffin, I was totally going to lose her number and forget all about this whole modeling thing.
“Great. Then maybe you can come over in about half an hour. We’ll discuss all the details, and I’ll draw up a contract.”
I said okay, hung up the phone. Then called Chela. She wasn’t there; I left a message. Feeling just a little bad for betraying our pact, I left a message for Brian and another for Aunt Zo. Desperate to speak to a real live person, I called my mom.
“Don’t you have physics on Thursday afternoons?” my mother said.
Trust her to memorize my schedule.
“Mom, I’m being offered a modeling contract for Prada.”
“Hmm, Prada,” she said. “Let me do some research on where their factories are and how the World Bank assesses their manufacturing policies.”
“Mom, do you even know what Prada is?”
She was quiet for a second, then she said, “They’re not coming up in my database. Maybe I’m not spelling it correctly.”
“I’m hanging up now, Mom.”
Which I did. Which tells you everything you need to know about my mother and why Columbia is not nearly far away enough from Philadelphia to spare me from her misery. I did get into Stanford. I could’ve gone there, I thought as I tried, very daintily, to finish my chocolate chip muffin.
I pulled out my phone and called my dad at his office.
“Dad, I got a modeling contract.”
“A part-time job at a department store? That’s great, Bee. Your grandmother used to go see the models at Wanamaker’s. I think they served sandwiches.”
“No, Dad, it’s not that kind of modeling. This is for a photo shoot. I think it’s going to be in a magazine or something.”
“Well, that’s great, Bee.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“I’ve got a meeting next Tuesday at the Natural History Museum next week. Can I buy my best girl lunch?”
“Absolutely.”
“You know I always told you that B stood for ‘beautiful.’”
Which is true. I liked to joke that the B in my name stood for ‘below average,’ but my dad always says the same thing, “I call you Bee ’cause you’re beautiful.” Which tells you everything you need to know about Dad.
In high school, I knew this really rich girl named Siohbahn. Her mother had done something really incredible like invented the BlackBerry. Anytime someone asked her a question like how much her boots cost or if it was expensive to go skiing at Vail, she always said that it was “gauche” to talk about money. Aunt Zo says only people who actually have money think talking about it is so déclassé. This is all to say that I’m going to give you the real scoop. I don’t give a rip if it’s gauche or déclassé.
I walked into Leslie’s office, and she told me that they were booking me for three days at “five a day.” She said, “It’s not much, I know. But you’ve never done this before, so you don’t have a quote. Hell, you don’t even have a portfolio. Technically, the advertising agency is taking a big chance on you. But the upside is that while the money is low, the perks are high. The shoot is in Italy. They’ll fly you business class and put you up for four nights at the Villa d’Este.”
All this time, I’m thinking the free trip is cool. But these people want to pay me five dollars a day. If I wanted five dollars a day, I could’ve stayed at home and done household chores for my mother, who, not for nothing, is not too busy for third world causes but is too busy to take out her own recycling. So I decide to try to negotiate. “Can I bring a friend?” I ask.
Leslie looked seriously bothered, “Bee, this is a business trip, not a social trip. It’s very important that you don’t get that confused. Everyone thinks that modeling is so glamorous, but as you’ll soon discover, it’s really hard work.”
This is the point where I should’ve just shut up, but I figured what did I have to lose? “But if you’re only going to pay me five a day . . .” I said.
Leslie smiled. “I think I can get seven. Which after commission means you still clear more than twenty.”
Okay, Bee, I thought, you’re good at math. They couldn’t possibly mean seven dollars a day. They must mean seven hundred a day. But seven hundred a day for a three-day shoot is a little more than two thousand dollars. That’s a lot of money, especially for someone who’d never modeled before.
I looked down at the contract and saw all the zeros and then it hit me. “Five” was five thousand. A day. American. And I’d just negotiated my way up to “seven,” which was seven thousand. A day. American.
“Cool,” I said, trying to play it off as if I made that kind of cheddar all the time, when in reality they were going to pay me half of my tuition for three days’ work. I took a deep breath and said, “Where do I sign?”
I walked all the way from Bleecker Street in SoHo to my apartment on 118th Street. I passed a gazillion stores, and I kept wanting to run in and buy something. It was freezing cold, but I didn’t feel a thing. I was rich! I was filthy, stinking rich! I didn’t have to worry about charging that stuff from Victoria’s Secret, Laura Mercier, and Forever 21 on my dad’s card. I could pay him back.
Seven thousand dollars a day. Three-day shoot. One day of travel on either end. I got paid for those days too. That was thirty-five thousand dollars. The agency took fifteen percent, and Leslie said I’d have to put a third away for taxes, but still. I’d clear twenty thousand dollars for five days’ worth of work. No wonder rich people thought it was gauche to talk about money. I didn’t tell a soul. Could not get the words—twenty thousand dollars—to come out of my mouth.
At Fifty-ninth Street, I decided to walk through the park. Central Park is the best place in New York to go when it’s cold and snowy. It’s always packed, like an urban Disneyland—full of kids and people sledding and ice skating. I even saw this guy on cross-country skis once. I thought about going to Italy: flying business class, staying at a fancy hotel. It sucked that I couldn’t bring a friend, but it was worth a try. Leslie had said that with the money I earned, I could “take my boyfriend to Puerto Rico.”
Maybe that’s what I would do. When I did the job and showed Brian the magazine, he would take me back and I could invite him on a romantic weekend getaway to Puerto Rico. I wouldn’t even have to tell Chela until I was sure that Brian and I were completely solid. If things worked out with me and Brian, she wouldn’t get mad at me. She was my friend, and your friends always want what’s best for you, right?
The next day I went to see my adviser. She said that she couldn’t excuse me from a week’s worth of classes but that students with professional careers were not uncommon at Columbia. She said that I needed to go to each of my professors, explain that I had a job in Italy, and ask if they could please give me the course work to complete in advance. This was fine with everyone except for my physics prof, Petra Trotter.
I’m not just saying this because physics is kicking my ass. Prof Trotter is a strange bird. She’s Canadian, which means she speaks English perfec
tly fine, but she says things like “aboot” instead of “about.” She also grew up in the wilderness of Canada, which she talks about all the time, like it’s the reason she’s a math genius. Actually, her childhood in the wilds of Canada is the reason she’s such a freak. She’s always making faces, weird, exaggerated faces like the kind you make behind someone’s back or when you’re mimicking an animal at the zoo. Case in point:
I said, “Professor Trotter, I’ve got a job in Italy, and I need to be gone from Monday through Friday of next week.”
Professor Trotter scrunched up her mouth and sniffed, like she smelled something terrible or she was a baboon at feeding time. “Well, what’s that aboot, eh?”
I said, “I’m going to miss two of your lectures next week and was hoping that you’d give me the assignments in advance. I know I only got a B on the last quiz, but I’m going to hire a tutor as soon as I get back from Italy.”
She rolled her eyes and let out a big exaggerated sigh. “But that’s a little like a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound, isn’t it?”
A few FYIs:
One, there’s no way in Hades I’m not going to Italy.
Two, I would hardly call a 3.2 average a “gunshot wound.” It’s a B. It’s not great if you’re on the major track, like I am. But it’s not that far off, and I’m going to fix things.
“Well, Professor, what do you suggest I do?”
Her mouth twitched from side to side. She raised an eyebrow. She threw both hands in the air. The woman was incredible, like some sort of fanatical mime. After a few more facial tics, she said, “Well, you’d do well to skip the job and come to class, wouldn’t you?”
I took a deep breath and then told the itsy bitsiest of lies. “Professor Trotter, I have to take this job in Italy. It’s my only source of income, and I have to work as much as possible if I want to be able to come to Columbia next year. This is a very expensive school.”
This made a dent. She shrugged. She puffed up both cheeks, then moved the air around from cheek to cheek. Then finally, finally she gave me the assignments.
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