Facets

by Barbara Delinsky

  His eyes didn’t leave the men. “They’re staring. Like I’ve got horns.”

  “If they’re staring, it’s because you’re a gorgeous hunk. You really are, Cutter.” She grinned and raised her glass to her lips. “Maybe you turn them on.” She took a drink.

  “Shit, here they come. I’m leaving.” He started to get up, but Hillary’s hand was suddenly like lead on his arm.

  “Sit. We were here first. I refuse to be chased away by two ignominious creeps. If they cause trouble, I’ll hail the bartender. He’ll toss them out.” She grinned. “Create a little excitement. Might do us good.”

  The men reached their table. One was taller, darker, leaner than the other. Both wore business suits with the jackets off, sleeves rolled up, ties loosened. They looked clean-cut, if hassled, and they continued to stare at Cutter.

  “I wonder,” said the shorter of the two, “if we could talk with you for a minute.”

  “What about?” Cutter snapped.

  “Who you are,” the taller said, “where you’re from, what you do.”

  Only two people had ever expressed as much interest in Cutter in as short a time—Eugene and Pam. Neither of the men struck Cutter as having the heart Eugene had, and neither of them in any way, shape, or form resembled Pam.

  “That’s none of your goddamned business,” he answered. The men exchanged quick grins. Cutter didn’t like the looks of it.

  “If you guys are queer, get the hell away from me and stay away.”

  The taller man reached into his pocket and handed Cutter a business card. The name on it was Douglas Verrana, and it claimed that he was the vice president of a firm whose name meant nothing to Cutter.

  He turned the card forward and back. “Nice feel.”

  Hillary took it from his hand. Her response was more respectful. “I’m not familiar with your name, Mr. Verrana, but I am with Wald, Newcomb.” To Cutter, she said, “It’s one of the leading advertising firms in the city.” She extended her hand to the man. “I’m Hillary Cox, and my friend is Cutter Reid. What can we do for you?”

  “Your friend,” Verrana said. “Is he new around here?”

  “Relatively.”

  “Where is he from?”

  “Maine.”

  “Hillary . . .” Cutter warned, but she silenced him with a hand on his arm.

  “What line of work is he in?”

  Hillary hedged. “Why do you ask?”

  The second man answered. “My name’s Pete Shorb. I work with Doug. We’re looking for a model. Your friend has the face we want.”

  The face in question donned a look of distaste. “Model?”

  “For an ad campaign we’re doing.”

  “An ad campaign for what?” Hillary asked.

  Cutter couldn’t believe it. She actually sounded interested. “Hillary—”

  She tightened her hand on his arm. “What are you advertising, Mr. Shorb?”

  “A collection of clothes by Girard Jondier. He works out of Paris. His line has a loyal following on the Continent, but he’s only now thinking of going for the American market.” He regarded Cutter assessingly. “The idea is to get one man with the right look—the right American look for the clothes—and make that face instantly identifiable with the line. You look different. Independent. Like a rebel.” He lowered his gaze to Cutter’s shoulders and chest. The table cut off the rest. “How tall are you?”

  Hillary spoke up before Cutter could tell him to get lost.

  “What are his clothes like—this Girard Jondier?”

  “Elegant. Expensive.”

  Verrana elaborated. “He got his start in informal wear, but he’s recently branched into sportswear. He’s introducing both lines in this country. We’re talking high fashion. The man who wears Jondier’s suits is affluent and self-assured. He’s a leader. His clothes make a statement, but it’s a subtle, classy one.”

  Cutter liked the sound of that hypothetical man. He was everything he wanted to be but had virtually no chance of in the immediate future unless something drastic happened. Being discovered in a bar and turned into a model, though, went beyond the drastic to the absurd.

  “How tall are you?” Shorb repeated.

  The thought of being a pretty-boy model was ridiculous to Cutter. But Hillary was listening as though there might be something to it. He figured he could go along and listen, too, at least until he heard the bottom line. Somewhere along the way he’d read that models made big money. He could use big money.

  “Six-two,” he said.

  “Weight?”

  “One-eighty.”

  “All in the shoulders,” Hillary put in. “He’s narrow from the waist down.”

  “What does he do for a living?”

  “I’m a miner,” Cutter declared.

  That seemed to please the men immensely. Again they grinned at each other. “Are you just visiting here?” Shorb asked.

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “Depending on whether you can find a job,” Verrana guessed. “You won’t find much here by way of mining. And I can guarantee that nothing you find will come close to matching the kind of money you can make if you work with us.”

  “What kind of money is that?”

  “Fifty thousand a year.”

  Cutter was thinking that fifty thousand was more than four times what he’d been getting and had to be too good to be true, when Hillary burst out with an indignant, “Are you kidding? If you want Cutter Reid’s face, you’ll have to pay a lot more for it. And then there’s the rest of his body to consider. He’s worth a lot more than fifty thousand a year.”

  “I’m not adverse to negotiation,” Verrana replied, but to Cutter.

  Cutter said nothing. It occurred to him that Hillary had been taken as the more sophisticated of the two and therefore the more shrewd. Indeed she was. But he was a quick study. A minute before, he’d have taken the fifty thousand and run without any idea that there was more in the pot. Now he knew better.

  “We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” Verrana went on. “Before we can talk money, we have to know how you photograph. Have you got a portfolio—no, of course you haven’t. Sorry. We’re used to working with professionals.”

  Cutter heard the put-down and knew it was deliberate. The message was that as a novice in the profession, he shouldn’t expect the fee of an experienced model. What Verrana didn’t know was that he didn’t give a damn about modeling. The money was the only reason he’d do it. If he was going to demean himself by being photographed in designer clothes, he was damned well going to be paid as much as possible for it. If that turned out to be fifty thousand, fine. All the better if it turned out to be more.

  Shorb was jotting something on the back of his business card. “Can you be at this address at ten o’clock tomorrow morning?” He handed the card to Cutter.

  “What for?” Cutter asked, handing it on to Hillary as if she were his business manager. He liked that idea. John would have a fit if he knew.

  “Photos.”

  “Who’ll be doing them?” Hillary asked.

  “Brian Webster.”

  The name meant nothing to Cutter, but he could feel the excitement radiating from Hillary’s hand. “Brian Webster usually works on location. Are you sure he’s in the country?”

  “He’s here.”

  “And he’ll have time for us on the spur of the moment?”

  “We’ve paid him a hefty retainer to do this ad campaign,” Verrana said. “He’d better.”

  Shorb was looking at Cutter. “Will you be there?”

  After a long minute, Cutter nodded slowly.

  Shorb beamed at Verrana. “See the defiance? It’s what we need.”

  Verrana wanted to know how they could reach Cutter if there was any change of plan. Hillary promptly produced a business card of her own, which he pocketed. “You won’t regret this,” Verrana told Cutter.

  Cutter didn’t say a thing as he watched the two leave the bar. The minute they were
out the door, he sent Hillary a hard look, then drained his beer in a single chug.

  “Sure beats playing chauffeur,” she said.

  Cutter agreed, but it took him a while. He didn’t enjoy the photo session the next morning. Too many people were there—the photographer and his assistants, a clothes person, a hair person, a makeup person, Verrana and Shorb and half a dozen of their associates—all looking at him. For the private person he was, it was unnerving. Moreover, he didn’t like having to wear strange clothes or have his hair fiddled with or his nose powdered. He felt like a fool on parade.

  But he did like the photographer. He was a straight sort of guy who talked quietly as he worked. He sensed Cutter’s awkwardness and dealt with it in subtle ways that made an uncomfortable situation bearable.

  So that was one good point. The other was the sum of money Cutter was offered to spend a year working exclusively as the man in the Girard Jondier suit. John Torvall, an agent whom Hillary contacted when it became clear how excited Verrana and Shorb were with the preliminary prints, negotiated a contract that made it well worth Cutter’s while to put up with embarrassment and discomfort.

  So there he sat, studying his bank statement, indulging in dreams. He already had his own apartment, taken immediately after he signed the contract, and although it was small, it had everything he needed. It wasn’t far from Hillary’s, but even if it had been, he’d have seen her often. He liked her. He was grateful to her. And she was still his link to Pam.

  He knew that Pam had graduated from high school, that she had spent the summer in Europe, and that she was studying at the Museum School in Boston. Classes would have started the week before. He thought of calling; she was rooming with two other art students, Hillary said, and he was sure she had the number. But he didn’t call for the same reason as he didn’t fly up to Boston to visit. He didn’t trust what John would do if he found out.

  Occasionally he wondered whether things might be different now that Pam was eighteen and he was gainfully employed in New York. All he had to do at those times was finger the raised ridges on his back, and he knew he couldn’t take the chance. Not with a man as prone to violence as John. In the nightmares he still had about the beating, two things always stood out: the first were the sounds John had made with each blow, the grunting that had been almost sexual, and, in that, obscene; the second were the last words John had said, muttered in his ear in a venomous voice.

  If I can’t have her, you sure as hell can’t either.

  The words haunted him. He tried to think back, to remember anything Pam might have said or done to hint that John had molested her, but there was nothing. It was a good thing. If John ever abused her sexually, he would strangle the man. Literally. Even if he ended up in prison.

  There were, though, other ways to handle him, and those were the ones Cutter most fantasized about when he considered the money collecting in his bank account. He let his mind wander two years, three years, four and five down the road. If during each of those years his income remained steady, and if he lived simply and banked every spare cent, he would have a substantial amount of money amassed. If he invested that money, the amount would grow even more substantial. The greater it was, the more power he would have, and the more power he had, the better a position he would be in to get back at John. He didn’t know exactly what he wanted to do. He had wild visions of riding in on a black charger and stealing the St. George Company, but things didn’t happen that way, he knew.

  Still, Cutter would do something. John was going to live to regret what he’d done.

  While Cutter’s dreams were broad and sweeping, Hillary was attuned to the smaller satisfactions of life. “I’m going to show John the ad,” she announced. It was late September. Cutter’s face was in every classy magazine on the stands.

  “Don’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’ll wonder how you knew to look.”

  “No, he won’t. I read fashion magazines all the time.”

  “Don’t, anyway.”

  “But I’d think you’d want him to know.”

  They were eating breakfast, danish and coffee to go, on a bench on the east side of Central Park. Cutter set his coffee on a worn wood plank. “It’s enough that I know for now. There’s satisfaction in that. Don’t worry. People talk. He’ll find out. Maybe he’ll choke on his caviar in the middle of some important party.”

  “Shhhh.”

  Cutter gave her a dry look. “He’d wish the same on me.”

  Hillary didn’t argue. “What about Pam? I talk to her every few weeks. I see her when I’m in Boston.”

  He already knew that. Like a starving man begging for crumbs, he grilled Hillary on every detail of those visits.

  “She asks, Cutter. She asks if I’ve heard anything about you. I feel lousy not telling, and it’s not even so much because we’re friends. She thinks about you a lot. She worries. It’s only a matter of time before she sees those pictures. She’ll be hurt.”

  “She won’t recognize me. I look completely different.”

  “It would take a lot more than shorter hair and fancy clothes to disguise you from Pam. She’ll know it’s you the instant she sees one of those ads. Let me tell her. Prepare her. Better still, you tell her. Give her a call.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “John forbid me to do it.”

  “Screw John.”

  “That’s your job.”

  “Oh, Cutter.”

  “I can’t call her, Hillary. Not yet. There are too many people John can hurt if he wants to get back at me, and I’d be helpless to stop it.”

  “Don’t you miss her?”

  “I miss her so much I hurt, and it’s not for sex.”

  “So see her.”

  “I will.”

  “When?”

  “Soon.”

  And soon it was. Barely a week later, when he had a rare free day and was feeling rash, he flew to Boston and staked out the path in the Fens between the museum and Pam’s apartment. Late in the afternoon, she walked by with a friend. Cutter’s chest tightened. He was leaning against a tree, separated from her by shrubs, people, and several hundred feet, but he took in every detail of her appearance.

  She looked beautiful. Young, but grown-up. Artsy. She was wearing loose pants, a voluminous blouse, and a long vest, and she carried a canvas satchel over her shoulder. Her hair was in a thick braid that fell from the nape of her neck to the middle of her back, secured so that the breeze couldn’t ruffle it, as it did her bangs. Large gold hoops swung from her ears.

  Once she looked up and around. His heart started to hammer—he was sure she sensed his presence. Then she looked back at her friend and laughed at something the other had said. A minute later, the two went into their apartment building.

  If she’d been alone, Cutter might have followed. But seeing her with someone, seeing her smile, seeing how comfortable she looked in her new life, he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t take the chance. They had no future yet. One day, dammit. One day. . . .

  So he returned to New York. Fall became winter, and by the time spring arrived, Cutter had seen more of the country than he’d ever thought to see. He was photographed wearing Girard Jondier suits in San Francisco, sweaters and slacks in Aspen, cruise wear in Key West. If the fall line was well received, the spring line was even more so. Girard Jondier was pleased with Cutter. In turn, Cutter was pleased with his new contract.

  There were still times when he wondered if he was crazy to be doing this. Real men didn’t model. But he wanted to be rich enough to ruin John, and given that he wasn’t trained for much, modeling seemed the fastest way to wealth. He abided the graceful male hands that smoothed suit jackets across his shoulders, the hovering of makeup artists and hair stylists, the glare of lights. He even abided the innuendos about his sexuality. All that was less humiliating than what he’d suffered at John’s hands, and this time around he was being handsomely compensated for the indi
gnity.

  His private life was quiet, modest, and brief. Big bucks brought big demands, he learned. There were different clothes to model each season, different ads to shoot, then reshoot if the prints weren’t just right, different stores to visit as Jondier’s representative. At times he felt he’d made a bargain with the devil. But the devil wasn’t Jondier, it was John, and regardless of how tired Cutter was at times, he was determined to triumph.

  His face became known in high-fashion circles, more so with each season. He was invited to parties, where he became known—but only to a small extent. He remained a private person, carefully picking his points of exposure. He didn’t make friends idly and had no use for large groups or shallow ones. He chose friends for their intelligence, their success, and their sense of discretion. They were, by and large, businesspeople. They became his teachers.

  Through them, he connected with a financial adviser, a stockbroker, and an investment banker. By the time he’d been in New York for four years, the portfolio of which he was most proud wasn’t the one filled with glossies that his agent kept on hand. It was the one that listed his financial assets.

  Throughout those four years he ached for Pam. He had seen her many times—glimpses similar to the one on the Fens that day, only at places like Symphony Hall or Locke-Ober’s or even, when he had been daring enough to hang out on Newbury Street, around Facets. There was a Facets New York now, too, opened two years before, and she had come down for the festivities. He had seen her. He had seen John. Neither of them had seen him, and as far as he could tell, neither had been interested in seeing the other. Hillary confirmed that they barely talked. Cutter wanted to know more.

  Mostly, though, he wanted to hold Pam. The need was so great that there were times in the night when he was bent up in pain. He found satisfaction in other women, but it was brief, strictly physical, and offset by the agony of opening his eyes and seeing a face that wasn’t Pam’s.

  That was why, shortly before she graduated and left her apartment on the Fens, he drove up to Boston and, cloaked by the night, broke into her room.