“Nope what? Nope it isn’t a girl, or nope she didn’t catch you with another girl? Did she catch you with a boy, perhaps? Please, Lord, let him say yes!”
“Nope she didn’t catch me with another girl and she especially didn’t catch me with another guy. I told you I’m not like that.”
“Ah, that’s too bad, but we’re getting warmer. So…there was this girlfriend you were totally true to, and you ran away from her because…she was stifling you?”
“Nope.”
“Nope you weren’t totally true to her, or nope you didn’t run away from her because she was stifling you?”
“Look—I really don’t want to talk about it, okay?”
“Fine. I am not one to pry. Never was one to pry. Never, never, never. I have six brothers and sisters, and they can vouch for me on that. Every one of them would come to me when they had secrets because they knew that their brother, Salvador de Vega, could keep a secret. Yes, I certainly can keep a secret. Was she pregnant? That must be it. That, of course, is the oldest reason in the world to run away. Tell me, Lale. Ooh, I bet she was pregnant. Am I right?”
Lale looked out the window at the passing trees along the highway.
“So she was pregnant. Hmm. Well, were you going to marry her? I would imagine she already has the cake and the dress, doesn’t she? Was the wedding going to be today? My God, you didn’t leave her standing at the altar, did you, you naughty boy? What does she look like? No, don’t tell me! Let me guess. She is a cheerleader with a long blond flip. Big blue eyes, perfect teeth fresh out of their braces. Cute little buns. Wears those adorable white cotton panties called Lollipops. Am I close?”
“Nope.”
“Nope. Nope to what? I’ve lost track here. You really have to give me something to work on. You’re as bad as the lonesome cowboy I just left.”
“Nope she ain’t a cheerleader. She’s out of school. She works at a café. And nope she ain’t blond, but her teeth are pretty good. I don’t think she ever needed braces. She is a tad overweight, but she’s got blue eyes. Nose is a little long, but not too bad. She’s a good girl.”
“I see. Well, that’s better at any rate. Lale, darling, you are in a mess, yes indeedy you are. You know you should be there at the wedding, but it seems that here you are instead. So. Do you have any idea of where you’re going? I can let you out at the next bus stop if you want to catch a bus back home and do the right thing. I’ll even float you a loan for the ticket. No one can ever say that Miss Sally doesn’t rally to the cause of young love. It’s your last chance. Going once…going twice…”
“That’s great, thanks for the offer, but I’ve got to work it all through in my head first. I don’t think she’d want to see me after what I done last night, running off like that in the middle of her shower and all. And my daddy would take a strap to me, and I’d have to let him. I better just keep on going for the moment, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, I don’t, mind, sweet cheeks. You can go all the way to New York with me if you want to. New York is absolutely made for boys like you. But you left in the middle of her shower, did you say? You mean you left her wet with soap in her eyes? My, what a time you picked to leave! I can’t imagine.”
“Let’s not talk about it for a while, okay?”
“Okay. As far as I’m concerned, you never said a thing to me. My lips are sealed. And I’ll never bring it up again unless you want to talk about it. I have absolutely no curiosity. You have no idea what kind of secrets I am holding in this brain of mine. You probably don’t know it, as how could you, being buried your whole brief life in the Ozark Mountains and all, but I’m a famous makeup artist for fashion shoots and movies, and, honey, let me tell you, those stars have more dirt buried in their closets than you ever plowed back on the farm. And I guess there is something in me that just brings out the confessor in them. Or are they the confessees? Whatever. I should have been a priest. My mother, God rest her soul, wanted me to become a priest, but can you imagine! Wearing the same outfit day after day? I’d go stark, raving mad! Not that I don’t like black—actually I look quite good in it, but…”
Lale leaned his head against the window and slept as Sal’s voice continued like rain on a tin roof, lulling him into dreamland.
13
* * *
CALLING THE HOGS
After I did the test at Ron’s, something must have happened, because it seemed to take the cork out of the bottle and I began to get some more tests. Ron, bless his heart, came through and gave me several 11-by-14’s of all the poses, some in black and white and some in color, some in a wonderful old-fashioned sepia tone. They didn’t look stiff and posed at all, like I was afraid they would. I was so thrilled that I went out and splurged on a new burgundy-red leather portfolio that zipped and had carrying handles, and Liz helped me arrange the shots. We opened up the book with a black-and-white in the baseball cap and melted ice cream cone, and then built up to some of the more dramatic ones in color. Toward the end, there were a few of me dancing in front of the window, which were my favorites. I was never much of a dancer, as my friends who had been stepped on and bumped into at dances would tell you, although I begged like crazy when I was little to take ballet like some of the other girls did, but dancing was on the sin list so I never did get a pair of those pink satin toe shoes. Still, in the picture, I almost looked like a dancer, arms spread out and legs silhouetted through the gauzy dress, the focus as soft and grainy as the ones Father Leo had done. Ron must not have been kidding about liking those. At the end, I put in Father Leo’s. I didn’t care if they weren’t fashionable. They were beautiful. And I had a book! Even Suzan didn’t have much negative to say about them, and grudgingly said, “These will do for a start.”
Now on go-sees the photographers would at least stop and flip through my pictures, and I began to get booked for more tests. Most of the time I had to bring my own clothes and jewelry, which I was beginning to find at flea markets and the antique-clothing stores that were opening up on every corner in the Village. I got some great stuff, especially down on Canal Street, which was in a part of town called SoHo that was mostly factories and warehouses. Even though the area was a little creepy, full of big trucks and huge garbage bins, and it was sort of illegal, there were artists and people like that actually living there, because artists could get a whole unfinished loft in an empty factory for really cheap, as it seemed like a lot of the manufacturing was moving out of town and the owners didn’t want the buildings to just sit empty for somebody to break into. While there weren’t many restaurants or anything, just a few lunch places for the factory workers, like the Broome Street Bar, it was beginning to get a few stores, and there was even a small Italian grocery on West Broadway that had fourteen different kinds of olives and fresh balls of mozzarella cheese that came in little tubs of water. Because of all the artists, an art gallery had opened up on Spring Street, and you could tell more would be coming—it just had that feeling.
One of Lana’s boyfriends was a painter who lived in a loft on Spring Street so she knew the neighborhood really well. She took me down there for the first time on a Saturday and we went shopping. Canal Street was the southern boundary of SoHo, and it was packed with people crowded on the sidewalks and cars all lined up, trying to get to or from the Holland Tunnel and the bridges to Brooklyn. Most of the stores along the street were supply places for the factories, but anybody could go in and buy. There was a store that just sold rubber stuff that smelled so good I just stood and breathed until I got light-headed, and one that sold nothing but plastic, sheets and shapes of every kind of plastic in every color, some that were iridescent and some that were patterned. For some strange reason I’ve always loved hardware stores, too, and on Canal Street there were several, with long aisles full of any kind of tool or paint or nut or bolt you would ever need. My favorite one, though, was a big store that sold art supplies called Pearl Paint. I bought a folding easel, which I set up in my little apartment, and wrote to Mama
to send up my paints and brushes so I could paint when I had time. Still, I couldn’t resist buying a few tubes of this great paint by a company I’d never heard of called Bloxx that was creamy smooth and had the most fantastic colors—periwinkle blue and deep Chinese red and a green the color of new willow leaves—colors so beautiful you wanted to spread them on bread and eat them. I loved living with the smell of fine oil paint and linseed oil, and I realized I really missed painting. Maybe I’d get Aurelius to sit for me. He’d make a great portrait, with his headband and all, his skin a mix of burnt sienna, raw umber, yellow ocher, and brown-pink.
Canal Street was just a few blocks from Little Italy and Chinatown, and Lana and I walked around all afternoon, looking through windows painted with red-and-gold Chinese letters, at whole ducks, braised crispy brown, hanging in rows by their necks, and small fragrant pigs roasting on spits. We ate spaghetti at an Italian place with red-and-white-checked tablecloths and candles stuck in Chianti bottles; we bought black velvet embroidered slippers for a dollar from an old Chinese woman on the street, and yellow egg-custard tarts in little fluted pastry cups from a Chinese bakery. We goggled at the live turtles and fish and squid swimming in big tubs at the outdoor Chinese market, and ducks and chickens in cages. People actually took them home live and killed them for dinner! I could imagine somebody walking a fat duck home on a leash and then whacking it with a cleaver to make Peking duck.
Just walking down the street with Lana was a trip. She was tall and dark and skinny, and if I do say so myself, we made an attention-grabbing pair. Everyone turned and looked at us, and I heard the word “models” whispered, which I can’t deny gave me a thrill.
The best place to find clothes and jewelry and stuff was an outdoor flea market on Canal and Wooster where I spent every bit of a check Mama had sent to me on a brown velvet monk’s cape with a hood, a black fringed Spanish shawl embroidered with red and green and yellow flowers, a turquoise Japanese kimono that was real silk, hats from the thirties and forties, old jewelry, and tons of scarves, all for really cheap. A step above flea markets were the antique clothing stores, and we found a great one called Harriet Love, where I got a black straw cartwheel hat trimmed in ostrich feathers that must have been from around 1915, and a black velvet coat lined in softest ivory satin from around the same period that was trimmed in lush black fox. My room was beginning to fill up and I hung the stuff around the walls like art. I packed away most of my Arkansas clothes, all the ones I had made, for sure, and my look started to change from mod to more…chic hippie, I guess, for want of a better term. I began to wear hip-hugger bell-bottom jeans with skinny turtleneck sweaters and scarves tied around my head, little rose-colored granny glasses, and big hoop earrings. I had never been so happy in my life.
Sometimes the photographers I tested with would have makeup and hair people, who were also working for free to get experience, contacts, and photos for their books, but most of the time I had to do my own and I was getting pretty good at it. I hadn’t run across Sal again. He was too famous, I found out, and hardly ever did test girls unless he was paid or was a great friend of the photographer, but I always hoped I’d see him. He was fun, and was also the best at makeup I’d had, even though he took so long. In fact, most of them tended to take a long time, even on a test. On a job, they were probably being paid by the hour, like models, and liked to stretch it out. I hated what some of the other makeup artists did, though, the ones who were practicing, and sometimes I would sneak into the bathroom to fix it the best I could before the photographer started. The makeup artists didn’t like it, but it was my face in front of the camera, not their artwork. One of them obviously had no idea what color my skin was and put on makeup that made me look like I was wearing an orange mask, and one put dark blush in the hollows of my cheeks and made me look like a skeleton. It was awful. A few of them tried to color my eyebrows darker, but it never looked good and I always made them wash it out. I was getting used to the white eyebrows. It was becoming my trademark.
Liz began to send me out for jobs, too, as I got more pictures in the book, and one of them was for pantyhose. On the go-see, the photographer did Polaroids of my legs in different colors and designs of tights, and later in the day Liz called and told me I got the job! I couldn’t believe it. I was going to be making sixty dollars an hour, and they booked me for two hours! That was as much as I’d made in two weeks at the Family Hand! Of course, I had to take out for the agency’s commission and taxes, and then…well, it was still more than I’d made in a week at the Family Hand.
Even if it was just the lower half of me, I finally was making money as a model! Mama and Daddy would be thrilled, I can tell you. Or on second thought, maybe they wouldn’t. In spite of Mama slipping me a little money from time to time, Daddy had been writing and asking when I was going to make some money and said I could come home when I finally realized this wasn’t going to pan out. Now they’d know for sure I was going to stay. At least for a while.
I had just gotten my daily schedule from Liz and was coming out of the lounge at the agency when Freddy cornered me. I hated it when he did that, trapping me by putting his arm against the wall and leaning in to talk like we were alone and had some secret. I know he did it to all the girls, but somehow they knew how to handle him better than I did. I always got flustered and acted like I was scared, which I think he enjoyed.
“Well, Cherry, I heard you got your first booking. Congratulations.”
“Thanks, Freddy. It’s just stockings, but it’s a start.”
“I told you you’d do well. Those legs.” He smiled his little off-center wet smile. “Say, we’re having a little party this weekend in the country, and Suzan and I would like you to join us. It’ll just be a few of the models, some friends. I’ll cook.”
“Well, I don’t know. I don’t have any way out there.”
“Lana’s coming. I think she’s borrowing a car. You can go with her.”
Freddy and Suzan’s weekend parties were legendary among the models. To be invited was a sign they thought you were going places. Lana usually went, and of course all of the more famous models, but this was the first time I had been invited. It was a big step for me, but I was a little nervous. Suzan always managed to intimidate me, even when she was trying to be friendly, and I wasn’t looking forward to being in her house for the weekend. But I couldn’t say no.
“All right. Thanks, Freddy. That will be nice.”
Suzan and Freddy had a country house at Sneden’s Landing, up on the Hudson River, forty-five minutes from New York. It was made of native stone on a quiet street, set well back from the road, with a long driveway leading up to it and a sloping back lawn that went down to the river. They had an indoor swimming pool and eight bedrooms, and every weekend there were houseguests. Suzan was a vegetarian, if she ate at all, so everyone else had to be, too. Freddy liked to say he cooked, but I later found out it was really a woman from Ireland who made the meatless meals, which were underseasoned (certainly no salt, which made you retain water), so bland you wouldn’t want to eat much. There was plenty of liquor, though, and cocktail hour started at lunch, with Freddy handing out bloody Marys almost the minute we came in the door. I asked for something nonalcoholic and he gave me a virgin Mary with a stick of celery in it, which was tasty, and then we had lunch. Suzan didn’t appear, but the guys and several other girls gradually drifted in. Most of them were well known, and it was weird to see them without much makeup, wearing jeans and sweaters. They all looked younger than they did in pictures.
Lunch was pretty casual and we didn’t formally sit at the table, just got our food from the sideboard and sat around the table or out on the patio. It hadn’t gotten too cold yet, although there was a nip in the air. I sat with Lana, a little shy of talking to the others. These people were all so beautiful and famous that I felt awkward. Back home, ever since I was a kid, I had always been seen as strange-looking, too tall, too skinny, too pale. In the high-fashion world, tall and skinny and pal
e were good, and all of a sudden I was in a whole world with people like me, or people who thought people like me were beautiful. But old insecurities die hard and I wished I was as confident as the rest of the girls.
After lunch, we went to our room to get settled. Lana and I shared a small bedroom with twin beds and white lace curtains. A chest and ladder-back chair were the only furniture, but it had a great view of the river. I put my clothes in one of the drawers and went outside across the back patio to look at it. I had always loved the Hudson River School of painters, and wished I could paint the river and all. I’d bring my camera next time if I was invited back and try to get some good pictures, which wouldn’t be the same as painting plein air, but I might try it. Lana came out and joined me and we sat watching the sun light up the orange, red, and yellow leaves and turn the river to gold.
“Beautiful, no?” she said in her cute, funny accent.
“Beautiful, yes,” I said.
“Did you bring your swimsuit? The guys are already in the pool.”
“Are you kidding? I’m not going to go swimming in front of five male models and have all my makeup wash off. You know what I look like without it!”
“Don’t be silly. You look fine without it. You don’t sleep in it, do you?”
“Of course not. I scrub it off with soap and water.”
“Soap and water? But that is horrible for your face! You have to use fine cream to take it off!”
“I have some Pond’s I put on sometimes.” I never really thought about my skin. It was just there and I’d never had much trouble with it, not even too many pimples, thank the Lord.
“Pond’s! Oh, no, no, no, no, no, my dar-ling, I’ll have to take you to Saks and get you something good or you’ll look like an old lady by the time you’re twenty-five! The best is Elizabeth Arden eight-hour cream. You can use that for everything—your face, your elbows, your heels, even on your lips. When we get back, we’ll go.”
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