The Currency of Love

by Jill Dodd

  “Look, let’s start over and forget any of this ever happened,” he begs. “Please, let’s pretend you just got here. Please calm down.”

  I could see him eyeing his briefcase, so I dart over and grab my ticket from the outside pocket and run out the door. He’s naked, so I’ve got a head start. I push the elevator button, but he’s running, so I bolt down the stairs. I must have run down six stories without looking back.

  I beg for my passport at the front desk, and I turn around and see him emerging from the elevator. As I run for the valet, I turn to catch a glimpse of him running at me in his Speedo with his robe flapping, yelling, “Come back, let’s start over!”

  I jump in the taxi yelling, “Puerto Banús! Puerto Banús, por favor!” The only thing I know to say, from the radio.

  He takes off, but begins arguing with me in Spanish about something, saying, “No no! Puerto Banús—la bomba!”

  I keep looking back behind us on the road, sure that Brian is chasing us. The driver keeps warning me in Spanish, and I wish to God that I’d taken it in high school so I could understand him. Thankfully, he keeps driving. He eventually and reluctantly drops me between three massive army tanks that are blocking the entrance to Puerto Banús. I have no money, so I bolt from the car, crying out, “Gracias, señor! I’m so sorry!”

  I run through the twisting streets toward the water. I’m still worried Brian is following me, so I zigzag all the way to the sand. Finally, I reach the beach and plop on a lounge chair. I lie back, look up at the stars, and try to calm the fuck down. I tell myself, I’m okay, I wasn’t raped. I’m gonna be alright. I think about the fact that if something really terrible had happened and I disappeared, no one would notice for a long time and wouldn’t know where to start looking. The agency doesn’t even know I’m in Spain.

  Soldiers patrol the beach, machine guns swinging from their hips. Great, a bunch of guys in the dark with guns. I’m going to be attacked by the Spanish army. As I try to get that thought out of my head and focus on the stars, a big German shepherd, like a police dog, comes over by me. I hope he’s not vicious. He’s not. He curls up next to my lounge on the sand and protects me all night long, barking at the men patrolling the beach and laying back down next to me.

  While I stare up at the sky full of stars, I’m sure that something is watching over me. How else could I have escaped? What was that bolt of energy that threw the photographer across the room? That definitely wasn’t me. If we live among angels, I think one just shoved that dude against the wall. I start to grasp the strange reality that some powerful force has the whole situation under control. I’ve never felt this way in my life. I’m in awe and, by some strange miracle, I feel totally at peace. I stare at the stars, feeling more alive than ever.

  In the morning, I decide that I’m not running back to Paris screaming “victim.” Instead, I will take care of myself by staying in Spain for a much-needed vacation. I have my Visa card with me for emergencies only, and my need for a break is an emergency right now. I book a room at the hotel I stayed in with Captain Terry and the crew the night of the bomb threat. Since I don’t have any cash, I charge everything I eat or need to the hotel because they keep my credit card. For the next eight days I relax, pondering the feeling that I am being looked over.

  I swim, lie in the sun, and even have dinner with Mark, the cute guy from the crew of the prince’s yacht. One morning, wandering through the village, the aroma of freshly baked bread wafts through the air. When the baker notices me, he comes out of his stall to offer me a loaf. I say, “No money,” showing him my empty palms; he smiles, looks into my eyes, and puts the small, warm loaf in my hands. Nothing ever tasted so good.

  Back in Paris, at the agency, Pepper isn’t surprised when I tell her what happened. She calls London, demanding payment for the job. Of course, I never get paid. I bet Brian wasn’t even a real photographer. I never saw those trench coats I was supposed to model either.

  The inner peace that hit me on that beach in Spain had my attention, and when I got back to Paris it didn’t stop. I had a new perspective on life. Nothing was more important than retaining the peace in my soul. A near-rape experience was a weird way to get peace, but whatever. I was sure of one thing: It didn’t come from me. It came from something more powerful than me. I began going to the gorgeous cathedrals more often, lighting candles and praying. I didn’t have a clue how to pray, and was positive that I was doing it wrong. I just didn’t want the peace inside to fade away.

  The experience in Spain has changed me. Not the gross guy in the Speedo, but the bolt of energy that came from inside me and the dog that watched over me all night. If some good, protective power knows where I am, then maybe I should relax and stop worrying.

  I decide to immediately stop obsessing over modeling, and instead focus on making a peaceful, happy life for myself. Being protected and cared for in Spain gives me the confidence to loosen up my budget, so I begin my new worry-free life by purchasing a Walkman, even though it’s five hundred dollars. It is a huge splurge. I use some of the money I had brought with me to Paris from selling my car in California. I need to have music back in my life. I buy cassette tapes and blast Queen, Bowie, and Roxy Music into my ears while I walk all over Paris and everywhere else I go.

  Then, I make another huge shift. Instead of using the dirty, dark Metro, I figure out how to ride the bus, which gives me a front-row seat to the beauty of Paris. I am literally out of the dark, and into the light.

  I stop checking in with Paris Planning for constant updates. Instead of thinking about Gerald and Pepper, I do what I want.

  I waste hours on purpose, reading novels at the English bookstore WH Smith on rue Rivoli in its cozy upstairs tearoom, dipping biscuits in hot tea, knowing this is what I choose to do instead of worrying about work. I wander through all the different flea markets, searching for treasures. I buy flea market clothes that suit my personality instead of guessing what the agency wants me to wear.

  I even change my eating habits. I seek out and discover new, delicious food. I start eating things I refused to eat before, so worried about gaining a pound. I enjoy apricot crepes overflowing with whipped cream instead of starving myself; salade vert with mustard dressing; shredded celery root with mayonnaise; pizza topped with a fried egg; and Kir, wine with crème de cassis. I discover a vegetarian restaurant, where I can get baked vegetables topped with golden-brown, melted cheese. I even eat chocolate bars with hazelnuts. I treat myself and buy flowers at the big flower stand by the Madeleine Church.

  Scarlett and I hang out at the park on weekends with bread, wine, cheese, and a blanket. We go to the Louvre and the Pompidou. My life is not on hold. I’m here now, living in the present.

  The noise of the city is the background music for my peace of mind while I sit in cafés or walk for miles. I listen to my thoughts. They’re simple, profound, and peaceful.

  Sometimes it’s a conversation, and sometimes I hear a voice. I’m a world away from everything I’ve ever known before and am falling more in love with Paris every day.

  I stop to watch the old ladies feed pigeons in the park. I get to know café owners and study the beauty of the foam on my café au lait. Have you ever really looked at the simple beauty of a pure white sugar cube? How, when the sun reflects on it, it sparkles like a cluster of diamonds? I slow myself down to enjoy each moment, knowing I may never have another quite like it.

  Red wine baby bottles, Montmartre, Paris, 1980

  DREAMING IN FRENCH

  Pepper seems to get more pleasure from hanging out with me than she does from promoting me. It is hard to keep friendships with my model friends because all of us are always in and out of town, yet Pepper is always here working. We go to lunch together often at Le Roi du Pot au Feu, across from the agency, where I have a front-row seat to her cabaret of sexually charged flirting and exaggerated French. I hate to admit it, but I actually love the sound of her voice. It’s entertaining, to say the least.

  As
we walk in, the men behind the bar shout, “Bonjour, petite Poivre et grande Gilles!” (Hello, little Pepper and tall Jill!) It is a typical French bistro, with wallpaper on the top half of the wall and wood paneling on the lower. It has black leather booths and small black and white hexagon tiles on the floor. Wineglasses hang from brass tubing over the zinc bar. The vibe is always friendly and happy here. The waiter brings us red wine and water and already knows we’re having the stew.

  “Oh, Jill, if you’d be willing to cut your hair super short, I’ve got a great editorial job for you,” Pepper says.

  “Seriously? I can’t. It’s finally getting longer!” I say.

  “Yeah, I get it. Okay.”

  “Why does every good shoot have something difficult about it?”

  “I don’t know. . . . This business is crazy.”

  “So, what brought you to Paris originally, petite Poivre?” I ask in my half-English, half-French way.

  “To teach English at the Sorbonne,” she says.

  This sounds like a bullshit answer. She’s damaged. I think she uses her overly perfect French to mask a dark secret, and I want to know what it is. “Wow. The Sorbonne? How long were you planning to stay?”

  She looks at the men at the bar. “I don’t know.” She drinks her wine, lights a cigarette.

  I keep going. I’ve got nothing to lose. Neither she nor Gerald care about me. I’m just commissions to them. “Did you speak French when you got here?”

  “No.” She holds up the empty wine carafe, jiggling it, signaling for more. “I learned it over time.”

  “How about your family in the US?” I lean in and pick at the bread.

  She looks right at me. “What family?” she says abruptly.

  “Oh, sorry.” I change the subject. “How did you get involved in the agency? Did you work for one in the States?”

  “No, just fell into it.” She digs into her stew.

  She shuts me down even faster when I ask why my paychecks are so small. She’s hiding something. She’s a tough girl, scarred from I don’t know what. I can tell she doesn’t have a formal education. It’s so confusing because I really like her, but I can’t trust her. Moreover, her promiscuity makes me nervous and triggers my own issues and traumas around sex.

  One night we go out to dinner and to see Robert Palmer in concert. She brings a date so there are three of us. She wears a red mini-dress under a black leather biker jacket with fishnets held up with a garter belt and red spike heels. Oh, and no panties. As the wine goes down, she reminds us for the second time that she’s pantyless and guides her date’s hand under her dress. I sit opposite them in the small booth, kind of stimulated, but even more nervous. They start making out, while he fondles her pussy.

  Yes, it’s hot, and if I were more in charge of my own body, and decisions around sexuality, maybe I could have chosen to enjoy this moment. Maybe even join in—or not join in. As I look back, it would have been nice to be free to make that choice, rather than chained to my strict code of sex, the rules of which I didn’t even know.

  Scarlett has been working primarily in Germany, and we haven’t gone out to dinner together in way too long. We decide to go to Le Refuge des Fondus in Montmartre, famous for its fondue and red wine served in baby bottles.

  Multicolored graffiti covers every surface of the tiny restaurant. French jazz fills the grimy, happy room. A singing waiter with a thick brown mustache helps me onto and over the table to the bench on the other side. Another brings us old-fashioned French baby bottles, filled with red wine and topped with rubber nipples. Sucking on a glass baby bottle is embarrassing at first, but after half a bottle, I feel like all wine should be drunk like this.

  A group of American college girls enters the restaurant, immediately pissing me off because college students in Paris are spoiled brats living a cushy life on their parents’ bank accounts. Yes, I’m jealous.

  They end up being so nice and so much fun that they break down my foolish preconceived opinions. Soon we’re all dipping bread and sausages in the melted cheese, talking, and screaming in laughter. They mention that a room in their apartment is up for rent. I had wanted an apartment for months but was too afraid to commit to that financially. This one is so reasonable that we jump at the chance. Scarlett and I move in.

  Our new home, number 76 Boulevard Magenta, is a five-story Haussmann building built around 1850, elegant and filthy with limestone walls, a zinc roof, and ornate iron balconies. It faces the wide boulevard with speeding cars and is close to the Gare du Nord train station. No tight-woven streets full of tourists like our hotel homes in Saint-Germain.

  A skeleton key opens the massive wood courtyard door and another opens our apartment on the fourth floor (American fifth floor, no elevator, of course). The teeny kitchen is next to the landlord’s bedroom, which she has set up in the apartment’s original living room. Layers of dirty white paint cover the wood and plasterwork. There is a beautiful yet dirty marble fireplace with an antique trumeau mirror hung above it. She’s got a small TV on a rolling tray and her bed is in the middle of the room.

  A bath at the end of the hall has a pistachio-green sink and miniature tub. One bedroom is divided in two, so the landlord can rent both sides. Selim, a Turkish man, lives on one side, and my new friend Ruby would soon move into the other. Down the hall is the bedroom where the American college girls sleep. Scarlett’s and my room is opposite theirs and has tall windows that open to the sky above and courtyard below.

  French oak floors laid in a herringbone pattern are deteriorating gracefully on the floor. Faded red geometric wallpaper peels from the walls and a beat-up sofa sits under the windows. A wood rod works well as our closet, and next to the bedroom door is a small card table for our supplies: peanut butter, Swiss army knife, two electric coils to boil water, and two mugs. A tiny room in the corner holds a miniature sink and toilet, and we sleep in child-size French twins with soft, faded turquoise sheets. I’m thrilled to be out of the hotels.

  Madame, as my landlord likes to be called, is from Vietnam. Her sweet, humble smile lights up a room. She’s fortyish and nowhere near five feet tall. Her floral cotton dresses are always covered with bulky sweaters and an apron. Magnifying glasses hang from a chain around her neck.

  Her thick Vietnamese accent causes choppiness in her French, which I think is adorable. Because she’s a seamstress, we bond easily and enjoy our evenings hanging out in the tiny, simple kitchen, cooking and laughing. I make salade vert with Dijon dressing, while she makes homemade tofu with cinnamon and sugar. The two of us can finish off a whole potful.

  Madame and her family had fled the Vietnam War in the sixties for safety in Paris. Yet, one terrible morning she woke to an empty house, with her husband and children gone. He had taken them back to Vietnam. She must have felt totally helpless—I never had the nerve to ask why she didn’t follow. She stayed in Paris with a broken heart, yearning for her children. After we became friends, I think she was afraid I would leave her too. I could tell because it took her a long time to open up to me. She wanted to be sure I was a permanent fixture, not just a renter passing through.

  On my first night in Madame’s, I dream completely in French. The next morning, I am totally switched to thinking in French—even when I’m awake. It is effortless and natural. I no longer think in English and I love it. This apartment feels like a real home, private, like my own secret world, off-limits to anyone, especially non-French-speaking people. I finally bond with so many people I live among in this city. We know we have something in common, our own language. I’m a member of an exclusive, private club. A French club.

  Finally a page in Vogue Paris!

  REVOLVING DOOR OF MODELS

  May to June 1980

  Just as I’m reaching my stride personally, Scarlett leaves Paris to work in Milan. Living with her makes me feel safe, and even though we’re different, she’s a good friend and I love her. We always laugh at our crazy circumstances together and share our trials and triump
hs. I miss her terribly and am shocked as I realize how much I depended on her emotionally.

  A model’s life can be lonely, and relationships difficult. Constant travel makes it hard to build trust and nurture friendships. It seems like right when I meet a girl I like, she leaves town unannounced. I never find out if she’s given up and gone home or what. Some models only come to town to do the couture shows. They’re the nearly six-foot-tall beauties who rule the runway. Then there are the “perfect” ones who come for magazine shoots and fly back to New York. There aren’t many like me who just stick around, stubbornly trying to make it. I have funny memories of crazy, drunken dinners with other models that end in smashing plates on the floor and of the time a model flung a huge clump of whipped cream onto a biker dude’s black leather jacket—he didn’t think it was funny though.

  After Scarlett leaves, a male flight attendant for Air France becomes my closest friend. Alain holds parties at his apartment, where we models cook meals from our native countries. Bitten, from Denmark, makes meatballs with boiled potatoes; and Anna, from Sweden, makes crepes with lingonberry jam and whipped cream. After dinner we all stroll together in the Latin Quarter, entertained by street musicians, fire-eaters, knife swallowers, and mimes. Still, it is hard to coordinate time together with all of us traveling so much. Mostly, I am alone.

  Finally, Ruby, a new American girl from Atlanta, moves in, sharing the other side of Selim’s room that Madame divided in two. Ruby’s wavy red hair and big breasts are unusual for a model. I hope we can become close friends, but it’s not long before she moves in with an English photographer. Meanwhile, my room with the extra twin bed is a revolving door of girls. Most steal my clothes, skip out on rent, sleep their way to magazine editorial, and leave. Each one reminds me that the traditional way to the top in this business is to use your body for more than modeling.