“I had no idea.…”
“Most people don’t,” Jordan said, “I didn’t know I was going to make such a speech.”
“Now tell me something about your parents,” Necker asked, “tell me about how you grew up.”
“My father’s a career military man, Colonel Henry Dancer. He was a brilliant West Point graduate who realized that he’d found a home in the Army, so long as he followed all the rules. He’s tough, authoritarian and totally career-minded. He insisted that I graduate from college before he’d allow me to work—that’s why I’m twenty-two—and then he checked Loring Model Management out thoroughly and grilled Justine for two hours before he’d let me sign with them. He doesn’t like my being a model. I was brought up to be decorative and educated and a credit to the family. My mother’s main passion is her own ambition for him; she sees him as a future general and she’s probably right. Today she’s the colonel’s lady and one day she’ll be the general’s lady—she’d like me to have the same structured, safe life of a military wife—I get the creeps at the thought.”
“What would be so terrible about it?”
“Ah, you Swiss! I want options, not an insurance policy. I’ve lived on eight different Army posts and I know the drill, I know how to charm the wife of the commandant of any post and I don’t want to ever have to do that again!”
“You find it demeaning?”
“More boring than demeaning. It’s all about authority and pleasing people who have it. If I were to marry the kind of promising black officer my parents would approve of, all my friends would be the wives of other officers of his rank. We’d move up the ladder together for the rest of our lives, trading dinner parties and recipes, unless one of the husbands was promoted above the others, or left behind, and then that wife would have to make all new friends. Can you imagine that?”
“It sounds incredibly constricting. Even for a Swiss.” Necker laughed at her seriousness.
“Being black is more than constricting enough. My roommate at college was a terrific girl named Sharon Cohen. We used to talk for hours about being Jewish and being black. She said that just once she’d like to see what it was like to be introduced as Jordan Dancer, to see how people would relate to her if they didn’t know, the minute they heard her name, that she was Jewish. I told Sharon I’d like to live inside her skin for a week and find out what it was like not to be put into a definite category the split second I walked into a room, long before I was introduced! That was one argument Sharon didn’t win!”
“What kind of social life do you have?” Necker probed soberly.
“In college I only dated black guys, frankly it made life easier. I didn’t have to be on guard all the time in a dorm atmosphere where everyone knew everyone’s business. Now that I’m out of school I can date pretty much whoever I want to. That’s not the problem. The real question is what will I do when I get older, when my modeling career, whatever it turns out to be, is over? I have to plan for that now,” Jordan said fiercely, “not in six or seven years from now.”
“Isn’t that true for every model, black or white?”
“Sure it is, but most of them assume that something good will turn up. White girls have the luxury of easy expectations, they’ve had that all of their lives. But I don’t dare to think that way. To get anywhere in this business I have to be so much better than a white girl because there are hundreds of places for them and only a few for me. I have to be special beyond special to begin to qualify, and I have to accept that fact and absolutely not let it eat at me because no one wants a black model who makes them feel self-conscious about the whole race thing. I have to seem to not know I’m black, so they can relax about it and feel comfortable with me.”
“That must be incredibly complicated.”
“It is,” Jordan said ruefully, “trust me on that.”
“Have you made plans for your future?”
“Not seriously, although I know I should. Do I try to lay the foundations for a business of my own? As an example, take Iman, Monsieur Necker. She worked for twenty years and now she’s starting a cosmetic business. She’s a legend, she’s married to David Bowie, at thirty-nine she still gets forty thousand dollars to do a single runway show and if Iman’s on the runway you might as well forget about the other girls. Now there’s a black woman who has it all, but she’s unique, one in a billion, a goddess from Nairobi. Do I dare to hope to start my own business too or do I take the easier road and look for a husband? Do I turn seriously stupid and marry a rock star or an actor or a sports hero and discover that the marriage doesn’t last because those marriages usually don’t? Or do I marry a black millionaire, marry for money and position in the black upper class?”
“Have you ruled out the idea that you might simply meet someone average, some nice guy who isn’t a celebrity or a millionaire and marry him and lead an ordinary life?” Necker asked, his eyes twinkling at the serious way Jordan had assessed her marital possibilities.
“Sure, that could happen,” Jordan said gravely, “but I don’t think I’d be satisfied with it for long. You don’t really get it, do you? You still don’t realize how incredibly lucky I’ve been, how rare a bird I am to have been given a huge package of advantages—family, education, looks—every last one of the things most black girls can’t even dream of! I’ve been specially blessed and I admit it’s spoiled me, it’s opened my eyes to possibilities beyond an average life. Everyone I know has expectations that I’ll make something of myself, become more than a housewife and mother. And so do I! Do you think I can drift along heedlessly, hooking up with the first vaguely suitable man who comes along, or even worse, maybe falling in love with a white guy and creating nothing but problems, for him and for me?”
“Why are you so sure of that?”
“Because everyone’s a racist somewhere inside,” she answered in a matter-of-fact voice.
“Jordan, do you truly believe what you’ve just said?”
“Damn right I do. I’m a racist too, damn it! I have hateful feelings about rednecks and Puerto Rican gangs and black gangs and the kind of white groupies who get hysterically excited around black jocks, so if I have these feelings, how many times worse would it be if I married into some white family and became my mother-in-law’s worst nightmare?”
“Could you be exaggerating? Wouldn’t people simply have to see past the color of your skin after they got to know you?”
“ ‘After’ … maybe. I’d like to think so—I know Sharon did. and lots of mv other friends at college. and some of the girls I work with, but we aren’t marrying each other’s brothers.”
“Wouldn’t your looks, Jordan, help to get you over the hump of the racial thing?”
“Ha! You’ve got to be kidding! I didn’t think even a Swiss could ask a question like that. I’d never expect looks to count for a second. You don’t understand how sensitive the whole thing is without adding interracial marriage to the pot. Just in daily life in New York there are plenty of other beautiful black girls around. I’m not instantly recognizable, not yet. I’m no Naomi Campbell or Tyra Banks or Veronic Webb—no, make that only Naomi, she’s the only black model everybody, more or less, knows by sight—so I’m very careful about things you’d never think about. I don’t like surprises.”
“What exactly do you mean?” Necker frowned in incomprehension.
“At college, for instance, I didn’t join a sorority … I didn’t want to be one of the few token blacks in a white sorority or limit myself to a black sorority, so I concentrated on the things I could do well without joining one group or another.”
“Do you think you might be oversensitive?”
“Probably,” Jordan shrugged, “but it simplifies things. For instance, in New York I only go to places where they know me or where I have the right introduction. For example I’d never go to a strange hairdresser without someone who knows the owner or operators there. I’d never go shopping in a good store without a white girlfriend. If I’m taken to a
fine restaurant by a white friend it’s okay, but I wouldn’t let a black guy make a reservation and show up with me unless he knew the headwaiter and had been there before. You look stunned, Monsieur Necker.”
“I am.”
“It isn’t your problem. But it does me good to talk about it, especially to someone who listens as hard as you do. I’ve answered a lot of questions this morning, I’ve told you a lot of things I never dreamed I could discuss with you, because you were so interested. What I still don’t understand is why? Why do you care? I’m one of the three models in competition for a contract with your company, is that the reason?”
“No it isn’t.”
“I didn’t think so somehow … well … what is the reason?”
“I was just thinking … if I had a daughter … if she had an entire life I didn’t know anything about … I’d want to know everything about her, what her problems were, what she hoped for, what her deepest thoughts were about … it’s genuine curiosity, not idle curiosity.”
“But you don’t have a daughter?”
“My wife and I never had children.…”
“I’m sorry,” Jordan said.
“So am I. Deeply. I’m not like your father who’s more interested in boys than in girls. If I’d had my choice of just one child I know I’d have wanted a daughter above all, a daughter I could have made sure was … happy and safe.”
“Well, if you did have one, she’d tell you she was hungry,” Jordan laughed, puzzled by the look of loss in his eyes.
“So am I,” he said, getting up suddenly. “Let’s go back to the car. There’s an excellent place to eat in the town of Versailles. And I know the owner.”
“Hey, in France I feel right at home. Maybe I’m a reincarnation of Josephine Baker.”
“I rather doubt it. You’re not nearly black enough,” Jacques Necker said with a grin.
“Details, details.”
13
I’d already had breakfast when this fax was delivered to my room.
Assume you know that all New York is paralyzed by storm. Tried to phone several times but you were already out having fun. Lucky lucky you enjoying yourself like mad in gay Paree while I freeze. Don’t try to call me, I’m staying with friends because of unspeakable furnace problems at home. Office closed for duration, photo shoots canceled, flights canceled, people staying home until emergency over. Envy you in nice warm hotel. Hope girls are learning fast and giving no trouble. As for you, try to behave yourself no matter what the provocation.
Love and kisses, Justine.
Behave myself! Tinker had disappeared with some unknown guy, April had been spirited away by Maude, Necker had designs on Jordan, and that untrustworthy bitch, Justine, tells me to behave myself?
Even worse, Justine had put herself beyond my wrath. How come she hadn’t told me which of her friends she was staying with? I knew them all and I could reach any of them, as she damn well realized. And so what if the city was paralyzed, you don’t just close down an office! I’d decided not to phone her anyway, but there should be a way to communicate with her in case of an emergency.
What had happened to Justine’s common sense? She’d cut me adrift just when my worries about Tinker had more than doubled. Two days off the plane and she’d already spent last night with a stranger. This, friends, was not happy news, especially in view of how vulnerable she’d been after the fiasco at Lombardi’s yesterday. What kind of thug had taken advantage of her? The stage-door Johnnies who lie in wait for models are beyond slime. And there wasn’t even anybody to ask since the other girls had slipped the leash too.
I was crumpling the fax in my hand and cursing to myself when I bumped into Mike Aaron in the lobby.
“Ah ha! There you are, Frankie. Listen, things can’t go on like this!” He grabbed me by the arm so that I had to stop and listen to his beef.
“Good morning, Mike, is something bothering you?” I asked blandly. As I see it, I’m the anointed grown-up in our little group, I supervise the homeroom, I’m the one who cleans the erasers, I can’t act like a kid too. “Rise above it” is my motto when I’m in public.
“Have you looked outside today?” he asked furiously.
“Yeah, why?”
“The light is extraordinary! This may never happen again while we’re here, given the kind of weather Paris usually has. There’s going to be ideal light all afternoon for me to shoot the girls on the streets discovering the city—and I can’t dig up one of them, much less three and three is the story. I can’t even find Maude. What the hell is going on?”
“They’ve run amuck, whatever that means. You saw what happened last night.”
“I thought you were in charge,” he said accusingly.
“So did I. Apparently fate had other plans.”
One thing I wasn’t going to do was cover up for Mike Aaron and pretend I knew where the girls were. I was keeping enough secrets as it was. If he couldn’t get pictures of them in the sun he could get them in the driving sleet or down in a coal mine, as far as I cared. Zing’s problems weren’t my problems.
“What kind of chaperone are you?” he said, looking at me accusingly.
“A total failure.” I threw up my hands in a gesture refusing to be conscience-stricken. “Chaperoning was never a primary career move for me in the first place. I don’t have the basic training for keeping tabs on three healthy but not necessarily obedient young animals.”
“This whole thing is like working with a film company on location,” Mike said in high irritation. “Take actors off a set, transport them away from home, put them in a hotel and they behave as if their normal lives don’t exist, as if nothing they do has any consequences. Once they don’t have to sleep in their own beds, no holds are barred—the bastards turn into wild animals roving the range. It’s an attack of mass hysteria, focused on the genitals.”
“But even wild animals, unlike models, behave in predictable ways,” I added helpfully. “And a nice peaceful range isn’t Paris. Well, I guess they’ll show up before the Lombardi show even if worst comes to worst.” I took a perverse pleasure in painting things in their darkest colors, in seeming not to care what had happened to my charges. Insouciant was the operative word here. “Chaperone” is a title I particularly dislike.
“Oh, fuck it!” he said in disgust, giving up on the subject. “Want to grab some lunch?”
“I wouldn’t mind. Here or somewhere else?”
“I’ve got to get out of this hotel or I’ll suffocate. Let’s go for a walk and get a sandwich or something. Maybe we can get into the Louvre for an hour. Might as well do something useful.” He looked utterly disgruntled.
“Swell. I was actually planning to take April to the Louvre today.”
“This is probably my twentieth trip to Paris and I’ve never been there yet … something else always comes up.”
“I’ll go get my coat and meet you back here.”
“Wear comfortable shoes,” he said gloomily.
On the way back to my suite I considered the enormous gallantry of his grudging invitation. Lunch with me was obviously the booby prize of Mike Aaron’s wasted day. I didn’t even know why I’d accepted except that I had nothing better to do. I went to the closet to find my coat and unexpectedly met my eyes in the mirror. Oh, balls! Who was I kidding? I was as excited as if I were back in high school, I looked as brimful of expectancy as if I were waiting for my first prom date.
I looked at myself in horror. Horror mixed with a kind of thrill. A thrill mixed with a kind of defiance. I was sick and tired of being cast in the character of reliable Frankie-the-twenty-seven-year-old-duenna, something Justine had lumbered me with only a few days ago, thank you very much. Give a dog a name … it wasn’t fair!
It certainly wasn’t the bad-tempered, bad-mannered Mike Aaron of today who got to me, it was the memory of the kid I’d been who would have given anything to take a walk in Paris with the Mike Aaron of her fourteenth year, that much I was certain of. Ah, give
yourself a break, I thought. How often does one get to realize an old fantasy, even when it’s been long burnt out? Go for it!
Quickly I stripped off my clothes and homed in on the Donna Karan black cashmere sweater worn with her black stretch pants, a combination that guaranteed lithesomeness, if there is such a word. It looked a little severe, I thought, studying the result. Almost too thin, if there is such a concept. I needed to balance all that seamless stretch of enticing, classic black with hair. And, thank you Lord! Only yesterday I’d washed my hair and braided it damp so I could pin it up out of the way.
I pulled out the tortoiseshell pins that held up my topknot and brushed my hair out as quickly as I could considering how thick it was, all in ripples from being braided.
Oh, most definitely, yes! Maybe Justine was right about my hair, maybe I had been neglecting a natural asset. What’s more, this was a look Martha Graham herself wouldn’t have disapproved of. She’d been known to use her hair in her dances as if it were a fifth limb. My long camel’s hair coat with the red shearling lining, worn swinging open, its belt dangling, a red cashmere muffler flung around my neck, the ends trailing down my back, and my favorite, well-polished, low-heeled black boots that reached to my knees, completed the outfit. The beauty part was that although the finished effect was intensely dramatic, there was nothing flashy or dressy or come-hither about the whole getup, even though I’d spent another ten minutes on my eye makeup. I looked like a dangerous highwaywoman on a supreme hair day, yet all I’d done was dress sensibly for a walk and a sandwich.
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