by Pavia, Peter
Was that a nervous giggle he heard? He believed it was.
Her name was Whitney and she was nineteen, a real corn-fed, hand-spanked, all-American type with either blue eyes or green eyes, a tough call from behind the shades.
Pretty was not Whitney’s problem. Height was. She wasn’t tall enough to model any kind of clothes, and she had the wrong shape for it besides, her plump titties touching the tabletop. Leo imagined she was thick through the waist and the hips, too, stealing a glance downstairs without being too obvious. The girls who got work were all starvation skinny, five-nine at least (a sixfooter was not unusual), all legs and necks and big flat feet that held them up.
Leo took a look through her book. A natural disaster, it was, in a way, better than he could have hoped. The pictures were poorly lit and the styles were so whack the clothes must’ve come from her closet. A photo of Whitney wearing a floor-length gown chopped a muchneeded three inches off her height. Somebody sausaged her into a one-piece bathing suit with a horizontal pattern; she looked like a zebra-striped fire hydrant. There wasn’t a single tear-sheet, not one shot from a magazine or a catalogue or any actual job she had done.
But toward the back of the book things got interesting. Whitney had a banging body she wasn’t bashful about showing off, and there was no denying those boobies, flowering fully in one photo, no annoying bathing suit blocking his view. The last few shots — the whole cheesebucket, woolly little pubic patch and everything. If her sights were set on the pages of Ass N’ Bush, this was a fine example of her work, but she’d get laughed out of every office on the Beach.
“This is a terrific book,” Leo said. “You’ve got a lot of talent.”
“I’m glad you think so,” Whitney said. “Now all I’ve gotta do is convince those agencies.”
“You know, I just might be able to help. You’d be surprised,” he said, trying to get his mouth around this outrageous lie, “you’re better off than most. But I’ll tell you what.”
Leo took a card from his wallet. He had them printed when he rented the house, cards that said he was associated with the Top Girl Agency, a completely false claim, but if the play was ever going to work, Whitney was the type of girl he had in mind for it.
She swallowed a sip of wine from her fresh glass. “You’re so nice. I wish I’d met you a couple weeks ago.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Leo said. “The important thing is, we know each other now. I could be an important contact for you.”
“Your hair is really cool,” Whitney said. “Take off your sunglasses so I can see your eyes.”
Leo drove her back to the house. She didn’t have any clothes with her besides the cut-offs in her knapsack, but stripping off the bikini was Whitney’s idea. Leo let her run with it. Hunting down a roll of Kodachrome, he realized Vicki could’ve passed him ten times while he was out there on the Drive charming the pants off of Whitney and he never would have known it, but Vicki was going to have to wait. He was having too much fun right now to worry about Vicki.
Whitney put on a CD that featured the Iggy Pop oldie, “Real Wild Child.” She ignited a spastic dance around the living room, throwing a kick that knocked over a lamp and broke the lightbulb, Leo snapping away at the action. She kept right on moving, ending up in his face, giving him her tongue. He carried her to the couch, his fingers squeaking on the sweat-slicked small of her back, and fucked her wearing all of his clothes. She wanted to quit and videotape it, but Leo didn’t own a Handicam. He promised her he’d buy one, and he promised himself the same thing. A camera and a tripod, too.
That Top Girl front he laid on her came back to haunt him. Even though Whitney checked out the competition and had to understand her brand of sexy was not what the agencies were looking for, she’d taken what he said to heart. Leo moved things around to let her know, not in so many words, that she wasn’t going to be modeling fashion in this or any foreseeable lifetime. What client wanted those big rounds boobs blowing his product off the page? But if they required a face, for cosmetics or jewelry, maybe Whitney had a shot.
Her eyes came off violet, Elizabeth Taylor-eyes in the right kind of light, blue-grey in another, slate-grey from a third angle, slate-grey and sparkling. Leo didn’t think she’d be that tough of a sell. It’d involve calling in favors and creating some he’d owe, but Leo had the juice to get it done.
First things first. That dirty picture book masquerading as a portfolio had to get kicked to the curb, and in a rush, if Whitney was going to get anywhere in the business. But she had to replace it with something. He called Stuart A. Homes-Leighton. A monied Brit who fancied himself a homeboy, Homes-Leighton had been kicking around the Beach for the last few winters, arriving at New Year’s, breaking out after Easter for destinations north. He got a lot of shit for his receding hairline and his double chin, for his fire-engine red hair and the pasty English skin that turned a luminous lobster in the sunshine, but mostly, he got shit because he was from a rich family and the other scenesters were jealous of him.
He had a raft of shortcomings, weaknesses that played right into Leo’s strengths. He would do anything to be around models. Professionally, he was vulnerable: He was a solid photographer, but the agencies all treated him like a troll. And he was a wicked blowhound. The mere suggestion of lines was enough to bring him running. There was no way he was going to refuse this job. He didn’t, calling Leo back ten minutes after Leo left a message with his service.
Homes-Leighton rolled up in a 1974 Oldsmobile Delta 88, red with a white convertible top. The odometer had flipped at least once, but the engine ran smooth and her body was solid aside from a raggedy patch-up somebody slapped on her left rear quarter panel. He could afford any car he wanted, but he went out of his way to look like he was struggling. This was a Homes-Leighton thing Leo didn’t get. The way Leo saw it, the more money, the better. Why hide it?
He had a delicate creature named Fraunces in tow, and when Leo said, “Hey, Francis, what’s up,” Fraunces cued him to the phonetics and spelled out the name for him. He was as tall as Leo and he might’ve weighed a hundred and thirty pounds with lug bolts in his pockets.
Leo went out to the Olds to help Homes-Leighton hump in his gear. He said, “Where’d you get this guy?”
“Fraunces is the mack-est of all make-up daddies.”
“I’m not paying him,” Leo said.
“No, I am. By the hour. So if your girl’s good to go, let’s set this shit off.”
Leo introduced everybody, fumbling Fraunces’s name again. He thought the living room would make a good set, and Homes-Leighton agreed, stalking the corners, rearranging the furniture, opening the windows and fluffing the shears. Homes-Leighton was wondering what kind of shots Leo had in mind.
“Concentrate on the face,” Leo said. “Let’s get some head shots, do a few, I don’t know, three-quarters? You’re the photographer, killer. What do you think?”
“I’m with that,” Homes-Leighton said, though he didn’t mention which part of it he was with.
“What we’re trying to do is demonstrate that she photographs well. Am I right?”
“No diggity-doubt,” said Homes-Leighton.
“Stuart? Nobody says that any more. The whole Etonhomeboy thing, it’s over. Okay?”
Fraunces sat Whitney in a dining-room chair. She had what looked like a stainless steel poncho draped over her shoulders, and he was working on her with a brush, stroking powder under her cheekbones.
“Honey,” he said, “your eyes are flawless.” He had a clamp on her eyelashes, teasing them up and out. Applying mascara that made a sharp contrast with her blonde hair, he frowned. “Who did this to your hair?”
A hurt look hit Whitney’s face. “My cousin,” she said. “He’s a licensed cosmetologist.”
“If this is any indication of his work,” Fraunces said, “his license ought to be revoked.” He flipped her hair forward and back, dissatisfied with both positions. “What do you expect me to do with this hair?” He push
ed it away from her face and gathered it up in back.
“What’s wrong with my hair?” Whitney said.
“Besides the color, the cut and the style, nothing at all.”
Homes-Leighton was peering through the lens of his camera. “That’s a phat look for her.”
“Fat?” Whitney said.
“Cool,” Leo said. “He means cool. That’s a good look for you, with your hair up. Really shows off your features. Just pin it up,” he said to Fraunces.
“I am a make-up artist,” Fraunces said. “I am not Anne Sullivan.” He let Whitney’s hair fall.
Whitney said, “Who’s Anne Sullivan?”
Fraunces turned back to Whitney. “A few more hours, I’d dye that hair. Blue-black, honey. Those eyes would shine like diamonds.”
“I don’t want black hair,” Whitney said.
“What’re we shooting here,” Leo said, “the cover of Vogue? This is a test.”
Homes-Leighton said, “Word.”
“But I don’t want black hair,” Whitney whined.
Leo shut her up with a stare.
Fraunces went into his kit and came up with a mouthful of bobby pins. Covering her hair with a silk scarf, he knotted it at her forehead. It gave Whitney a Twenties kind of glamour. Perfect.
Homes-Leighton posed Whitney in front of a screen, chattering instructions. He snapped pictures, providing his own soundtracky babble, like he was starring in a TV commercial.
“Look left, that’s it, chin up. Gorgeous. Okay, chin down, eyes right. Beautiful, baby. That’s the way.”
Whitney got loose and started to have a good time, and while Homes-Leighton changed rolls, Fraunces attacked with a brush or a cloth, or his naked finger, a swipe, a stroke, a dip or a dab.
Homes-Leighton dove in. “Okay, give me a sexy look.”
Whitney took a stab at a fuck-me stare.
“Sassy-sexy, pouty.”
Whitney plumped her lips.
Leo thought, if he says, Make love to the camera, I’m gonna hit him with a chair. He lost track of how many rolls Homes-Leighton had shot, but they’d been at it for over an hour.
“This is fun,” Whitney giggled.
Homes-Leighton said, “You’re a natural.” A line of sweat stained the band of his backwards Kangol cap.
“I think we’ve got what we need,” Leo said.
Fraunces said, “I should hope so.” He was looking at a wristwatch with a transparent casing and a transparent strap.
Leo pulled a full vial of coke out of his pocket. “Lunch time,” he said. “Who wants to do a bump?”
“Two hundred,” Homes-Leighton was saying, “what’s up with that?”
“What’s up with that is, your memory sucks, buddy. I told you two and that’s what you’re getting.” Leo stuck two new hundreds into Homes-Leighton’s hand.
“What about Fraunces? I gotta hit him off.” He made a fist around the bills. “That’s gotta come out of here?”
“Stuart, Stuart,” Leo said, spreading his fingers into a stop sign. Arguing over money with a guy whose family could buy the town. “Let me ask you a question. You have a good time today?”
“That’s not the point,” Homes-Leighton sniffed, rubbing his nose.
“Then let me ask you another question, blue-blood. When was the last time anybody hired you to do a photo job at any rate?”
Homes-Leighton tilted his double-chinned face into profile.
“What you get out of this, besides the two hundred, which, by the way, is the going rate for tests, and also by the way, you could wipe your ass with and I know that, is some quality prints for your book. How do you know Whitney isn’t going to be the next Christy Turlington?”
“A little short for that.”
“Okay then, Kate Moss.” Leo knew this was a stretch, but fuck it. “What I’m saying is, here I am, doing you a solid, and you gotta force me to make you feel bad.”
Homes-Leighton caved. “Alright. But you gotta throw for the lab fee.”
“Not a problem,” Leo said. “Just like we talked about.”
Leo looked out at Fraunces, who was in the front seat of the Olds with his arms folded. Leo’d broken out all the blow he was going to do with them, and he needed them to get lost so he could get high the way he wanted to get high.
“So listen,” Leo said, “if you got everything you need, there’s a few things I wanna take care of around here...”
Homes-Leighton got the message. He put Leo through the mechanics of a handshake that started with a hug and ended with Homes-Leighton snapping his fingers.
Leo was almost rid of him when Homes-Leighton turned around and said, “Oh, shit. Did you hear? Remember that grotty white trash guy?”
Leo said, “Which one?”
“You remember,” Homes-Leighton said. “He was short and he had an ante-bellum name. He was tight with your Cuban homeboy. Beauregard, Beaumond. That’s it, Beaumond. Remember him?”
Leo felt like he had a golf ball blocking his windpipe, saying, “Yeah?”, but it came out a squeak. He cleared his throat. “What about him?”
“I heard they pulled his body out of the Glades. Somebody popped a cap in his ass and dumped him out there.”
“How’d they know it was him?” Leo’s limbs went cold.
“Dunno,” said Homes-Leighton, suddenly sounding very English, “dental records? Why’re you wearing that look? If you ask me, it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.” He said a few more things Leo wouldn’t remember, Leo just staring as he backed the Olds out of the driveway.
Chapter Ten
The bus hissed into Port Authority and circled up a number of ramps before coming to a stop with a jerk. Harry wanted to check out the overhauled Times Square that had been making all the network newscasts, but today wasn’t the day for it, so he walked east a block to Seventh and jumped into a cab.
One of the last of the Single Room Occupancies, the Downtowner was home to assorted lowlifes and deadbeats, drifters and hustlers in pocket for a week or two. The building was still warehousing its share of welfare barnacles until the government installed them in plusher digs, but one lifer, subsisting on a shrunken trust fund, was the grandson of a shipping tycoon, and on any given week, the register featured a handful of nine-to-fivers, hanging on till they found apartments they could afford. For extra flavor, the Downtowner was a favorite landing strip of Midwestern rockers grinding out Econoline tours.
The glow from the sidewalk warned him, but now, standing in the lobby, Harry was blinded by a bank of lights aimed at three girls on a sofa, primped to pose. They were young, but they were not tender, huffing lowtar cigarettes and bitching about the cold, their clodhopper platforms and knobby knees sticking out from under their mini-skirts.
The front desk was formerly boxed off behind scratched plexiglass that had a cash slot and a two-way speaker. But the partition was gone, and so was the old desk. In its place stood a sleek modern model, fake mahogany buffed to a high gloss. The dingy wallpaper behind it had been stripped off and painted over. Harry’s shoes sunk into new carpeting. It looked like the Downtowner had swallowed a stiff shot of its own cutrate publicity.
Harry was relieved to see Davey Boy, not too much of a boy any more, but still front and center. He was looking horribly pleased with himself. He had his hair done in a South Beach bob, that all-one-length hairdo Leo wore, grown out from the bristle cut that had been trendy the last time Harry saw him. His eyes were riveted straight ahead, and he was fussing with that idiotic haircut like he was waiting to be called for his close-up.
If he planned on fronting like he didn’t know Harry, he was going to need some straightening out, but on the other hand, Davey hadn’t seen him in a while, and people did tend to forget you when you weren’t around all the time.
Harry said, “Hey, Davey Boy, what’s up?”
No change in his expression, Davey said, “What’s up, Harry?”
Davey was mesmerized by the glare reflecting off the models’ shin
s. Stepping out from behind the desk, one eye peeled on the girls, he walked Harry a few paces back toward the door.
“Listen,” he said, “things have changed around here.”
“Yeah, you got rid of that ugly wallpaper.”
“I mean no more of the old stuff,” Davey said. “No non-paying guests flopping in your room, no hookers, no drugs.”
“No phone, no pool, no pets. You just stock the lobby with third-rung models, or you still rent rooms?”
Davey cut a nervous glance toward the photographer’s assistant, who was trying to get the lights right. “You know what I’m talking about,” he said. He pushed a lock of hair behind an ear, repeating the motion to make sure it was secure. Harry’d seen Leo do the exact same thing. “All I’m saying is, we can’t have what we used to have.”
As far as Davey was concerned, Harry was a degenerate drug dealer, and Harry couldn’t blame him for thinking that. Through most of his last stay at the Downtowner, Harry was moving blow.
“What do you mean, we? You were dead on a jones, Davey Boy, and if you weren’t copping from me, you would’ve been getting it somewhere else. Is that my fault?”
“Do me a favor,” Davey said. “Lower your voice. Management has taken great pains to change the image of this place, and we don’t need your kind of trouble here. Really.”
Harry was close to slapping Davey Boy, but he held back. He was exhausted and he needed to sleep. Plus the Downtowner’s location was ideal, directly across the park from Julia’s co-op. So instead of saying any of the things he could’ve said to Davey Boy, in the end he just said, “I need a room with a toilet and a shower.”
“I got one,” Davey said, all proud. “Top floor.”
“How much is it gonna run me?”
“Five hundred for the week.”
Harry peeled five Franklins off his knot. “Is that all?” he said. “Haven’t you got something a bit more expensive?”
Davey handed him the key to room 801 and another key that would get him through the front door they locked after midnight. Harry headed toward the elevator, past the lights and the light stands and the photographer’s assistant and the photographer and the girls.