Cheap Diamonds

by Norris Church Mailer

  “The concept is going to be all white—a blond man in a dinner jacket and a woman in a white ermine coat and diamonds. We have the man already, but hadn’t found the perfect woman until I saw your picture in a makeup artist’s book.”

  Sal. It had to be him. I needed to give him a call, even if I was kind of mad at him for telling Lale where I lived. I’m sure Sal didn’t know what Lale was really like, or that he was even named Lale.

  “Was it Salvador de Vega?”

  “Actually, it was. Loved some of the shots of you he had. Okay. Let me introduce you to the people from Parvu, who are here from France, and we’ll go from there.”

  I followed her down some more hallways to a room filled up with a huge conference table, where two men and a very chic French woman were sitting in deep leather chairs, looking at stacks of pictures. Their eyes widened a little when they saw me. Nancy introduced me, and the men got up and came around the table. The woman just nodded and smiled from her seat. One of the men kissed the air a fraction of an inch above my hand, and the other one gave me two pecks, one on each cheek that just about touched the skin, but not quite. The hand kisser had a bottle of perfume and asked if he could spray it on my wrist.

  “Mmm! Wow! That smells so good!” I practically swooned over it, although it seemed kind of too heavy for my taste and went all the way up into my sinuses. Well, that would be a bonus if anybody had a cold. They all beamed at my reaction, so I spread it on a little thicker. “I’d buy that in a minute! Where can I get some?”

  “Please,” the air kisser said, handing me the bottle and tenderly wrapping my fingers around it with his own. “Take this one. It is for you.”

  “Thank you so much!” I clutched it like it was a newborn kitten.

  “Where are you from?” the woman said in a cute French voice. “That is an unusual accent.”

  “Arkansas.”

  “Ah. Yes. The South.” It sounded like she said, “Ze Souse.” They all looked at one another, one of the men raised his eyebrow, and I began to get a little uneasy. I wanted to ask if there was something wrong with being from the South, but was afraid to. What difference did it make what kind of accent I had for a picture in a magazine? And why was a French accent so great while an Arkansas accent raised eyebrows anyhow? I just hate that. People are so…provincial. They looked at me some more, then gathered around and went through the pictures in my book, studying each one while I stood there, caressing the perfume bottle. The woman whispered something to one of the men. He shrugged and I thought I heard him say something about dubbing, like the other one. Then they stood up again, and the first man grasped my hand and air-kissed it again.

  “Enchanté, Cherry. Thank you for coming.”

  Nancy handed me my book and walked me out. I had a feeling the perfume was my consolation prize.

  “Not to be nosy, but what was all that whispering about?”

  “There will be a lot of copy with the ad, and it will have to be read in the commercial. The accent might be a problem. Do you think you can work on it? Not that you are guaranteed to get the commercial, even if you should happen to do the print.”

  “A TV commercial? Wow. Well, I’ll sure try. I mean, if I’m lucky enough to get it.”

  A TV commercial! That was a ton of money. Every model in New York would give their right arm to be in a TV commercial. Well, obviously they wouldn’t be able to do a commercial with just one arm, but they would give a lot.

  But they hadn’t said for sure I had it. In fact, I probably didn’t. Still, I couldn’t help but hope. I thanked Nancy and walked out, feeling her eyes on my back as I walked. I tried to be as graceful as they taught me in runway class. A TV commercial! If only I could stop talking like a hick. I was already trying to say words like ice clearly. I-eece. Three people at least had told me an ugly joke about a southern girl who pronounced it “ass.” You’ve heard it, I’m sure.

  A week later, I wrote Baby.

  Dear Baby,

  You won’t believe this, but I’m going to be the new Diamonds & Ermine girl!!! It is a series of print ads in all the big magazines, and I’m going to be in the TV commercial, too! I might not get to use my own voice, though—they might have to dub me because of the way I talk, but I don’t care. Suzan told me from the start that I should take speech lessons, so I called this one guy who she recommended but we got into a huge fight the first lesson and I walked out. The lesson was on breathing. He kept wanting me to breathe in and down my back and up my chest and around my abdomen or something. How stupid is that? You just breathe in and out with your lungs—your back has nothing to do with anything. I tried to do what he said, but I did it wrong and he just kept telling me to breathe down my back and finally he yelled at me so I got my stuff and left. I’m not letting anybody yell at me, commercial or not. I’ll just keep practicing with the TV and maybe some of it will rub off. I don’t want to be an actress anyhow, and if they don’t like my voice they can just dub it.

  Now comes the weird part, and don’t get mad at me until I tell you all of it. I did the first shoot yesterday, and the photographer is this really famous guy, Milton Greene, who does a lot of work for Bazaar and all. He has a big studio on the East Side in a tall skinny townhouse. The house is only about as wide as a trailer house, but has five floors stacked up, with beautiful furniture and chandeliers on every floor. I was really nervous, since it was such a big deal, and I had never met the man. He turned out to be a great guy, funny and easy and so nice to work with, and his wife, Amy, who is a doll, was there. She used to be a model, too, but is tiny. Models have gotten taller over the years, and now you have to be at least five feet seven to join an agency, but you could have definitely been a model in the old days.

  I’m just beating around the bush. The main thing I have to tell you is that there is a male model in the shots with me and it turned out to be—you won’t believe this—Lale Hardcastle. I haven’t told you that I ran into him, literally, at a restaurant here, and the reason I haven’t written you, or part of the reason, is that I haven’t had the courage to confront him about Cassie. In fact, I haven’t written to her to tell her I saw him. I can hear you yelling at me, and I’m sorry. I know I ought to, and I’m going to, but if you will wait and let me do it, that would be better than you telling her, because she would wonder why I didn’t tell her sooner. Oh, Baby. It is just all too complicated. He is a jerk—we know that for a fact—and I don’t like him the least little bit, but it isn’t so easy to tell a complete stranger that you know all about him running off and leaving his girlfriend and all the rest of it about his deformed baby and all. I will tell Cassie. I swear I will, but this Diamonds & Ermine thing makes it harder. I have to act like I like him, at least in the pictures, and if we are fighting I don’t think it would work. There is a lot riding on this for me. So please don’t think badly of me. I’ll do the right thing, I swear it. Just not right now.

  On another note, I finally got to do a fashion show. It was for a group of Italian designers who are trying to get into the New York market but are not famous, so I guess Gerald le Forge, the dictator who teaches the runway classes and is head of the bookings for it, thought nobody would notice if I messed up.

  You wouldn’t believe how chaotic those shows are backstage. Each one of us has a person who is our dresser, and we all sit and get our hair and makeup done, then jump into the clothes the dressers hand us and they shove us out onto the runway one by one when the music starts. It is really hard to do, like a choreographed dance or something, and you have to walk on an invisible straight line, one foot right in front of the other, which isn’t that easy. You go out when the girl ahead of you gets to a certain place, then you have to pass each other as she comes back, you go on to the end of the runway and do your pivots, trying to look bored and sexy and slinky and chic, and by then the next girl comes out and you have to pass by her and go off, run like crazy when you get out of sight of the audience to the dresser who throws another outfit on you, the makeup
artist touches up your hair and makeup, and they grab you and throw you back out there, where you have to look bored and slinky again, although you are really nervous and sweating and hoping it doesn’t show on the underarms.

  You know how clumsy I am, how I used to step on people’s feet on the dance floor? This is ten times worse. The shoes were really high heels, and all I could think of was trying to walk and not look too gawky. I worked and worked on it all, trying to be more graceful, but I can see why Gerald just about gave up on me. Still, at this show I did really well at first. I even got a hand of applause for a great outfit with an embroidered cape and crushed patent-leather knee boots. But when I came out in a chiffon evening dress, I had too much confidence and tried to do a big double swirl so the dress would sweep around, and I turned my ankle and nearly fell off the runway. The crowd gasped. I didn’t actually hit the ground, just stepped on the hem of the dress and staggered, but it was so embarrassing. Everyone said not to worry about it, but Gerald was not happy, I can tell you. I doubt he gives me another show in a hurry.

  So what’s going on in Buchanan? When do you get out for Christmas? Have you seen Father Leo much? I still haven’t gone to bed with Aurelius. Since that night at Max’s, when he was so sweet to me, he has not tried to ask me out at all. I just don’t know what to make of him. We don’t really see each other all that much, since we have such different hours, but I just knew he really liked me. And I really like him. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. And please, please, please, don’t say anything to Cassie about Lale. I PROMISE I will tell her.

  Love you lots,

  Cherry

  27

  * * *

  SUZAN AND FREDDY

  The pool room was quiet, no beautiful young things frolicking, leaving wet towels and glasses everywhere. Suzan loved it when she was all alone in the house at Sneden’s Landing, when Freddy was in the city and all the models had gone home. She didn’t have to pretend to be the den mother, didn’t have to pretend that Freddy wasn’t humping some new girl in his bedroom as she drank and the kids felt sorry for her. Her ribs still hurt from the last beating Freddy had given her. When she was working in front of the camera, he at least would never hit her in the face. She might have to miss a job. But now it didn’t matter, really, and he once had popped her between the eyes, blackening both of them. Thank goodness she was a pro with makeup. She used a special coverup designed for port-wine birthmarks that would cover any bruise. The swelling was a bit of a problem, but Arnica gel and ice usually took that down within a day or so. She almost didn’t care anymore. Had she really once loved this man? He disgusted her, his bad breath and thinning hair and pale flabby belly, the way his tongue quivered when he laughed. Everything about him irritated her, and she supposed he could say the same about her. He hadn’t had a real hard-on in years. Not with her, at any rate. She stared into the blue water and thought about the night she and Cherry had called the Hogs. Freddy looked so funny, it was worth the beating he’d given her afterward. What a pig he was! No, that was unfair to pigs. Pigs are honest in their greed. Freddy had never been honest with her about anything. Not two hours ago, she had discovered he was siphoning off a great deal of money from the agency and putting it into a secret account. It wasn’t enough that he had the lion’s share of the business; he wanted it all. But he was getting sloppy, leaving his desk unlocked. He must have been too drunk to lock it. She had been looking for a contract and almost idly tried the locked drawer in his desk. There were a lot of things in there she hadn’t expected, including the secret bank statement. Love letters, of course, some from women dating back to their early days together. He kept in touch with most of them, it seemed. There were little gifts they sent, nude photographs, poems. One note said, “If you’ll give me a thousand dollars, I will love you.” She was shocked he was still attractive to women, even for money; surprised that they would give him those things. Well, he was the owner of a famous model agency. Why should she be surprised? Suzan tried to remember, like opening a dusty old trunk, when she had been the new young girl he loved. To a seventeen-year-old from Little Rock, he was worldly and suave, the man who wore suits and ties every day, could order a good wine in a restaurant, and had a car and driver. He knew how to make love in ways good ol’ Randy had never dreamed about, took his delight in satisfying her to the point that she cried. He surprised her with little gifts, funny things like a stuffed dog or expensive things, such as a garnet bracelet. The first year they were together a bouquet of pink roses arrived every morning with the newspaper. She thought it was sweet at first, but her apartment began to smell like a funeral parlor. After a few weeks, she hated roses. Roses took over your life. You had to smell them, you had to deal with them, watch them wilt, decide when they were over the top and then throw them out, crushing their petals under coffee grounds. She found herself sad all the time, constantly watching the flowers die. Finally, she begged him to stop sending them. She had begun to break out in hives from all the flowers. Maybe he was trying to kill her even then. Death by roses.

  They had literally met on the street. She’d signed with the Fords a few weeks earlier and was walking down Forty-sixth Street carrying a heavy suitcase after a test. She was hot and tired, and he stepped out of a limousine and offered to carry her bag. He was handsome, older, dressed in an expensive suit and nice shoes, handmade of soft Italian leather and new. Even then Suzan knew quality. Charm wafted off him like fine cologne. What would it hurt to have a handsome stranger carry her bag for a block or two to give her arm a rest? The car followed them and waited when they stopped in front of a coffee shop and Freddy offered to buy her a cup of coffee. Well, why not? It was broad daylight. Coffee turned into a burger, and they sat for three hours talking. He was a producer on the TV show Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour, which she watched faithfully. He was the one who found the contestants. He showed her his card with the show’s logo printed on it, so she knew he was legitimate, but she didn’t doubt it. He was so sincere. He looked at her with an honesty as clear as his transparent gray eyes. He seemed delighted with everything she said, her accent, her stories about sneaking off to the university to see her boyfriend in Arkansas. Riding home in the limo felt familiar, like she belonged in one. It was the swankiest feeling in the world. He called her the next morning, early. He wanted his voice to be the first thing she heard that day. Of course she accepted his dinner invitation. Soon they were seeing a lot of each other. But she was seventeen and a rising young model. Other men were pursuing her, too, photographers, male models, executives—any man who had a heart that pumped red blood was after her; everyone wanted a piece of the new hot beautiful blonde. But Freddy was quietly persistent. He bided his time, becoming the shoulder she cried on, the older man with the love and understanding. By the time she was twenty, he gave her an emerald-cut diamond and they married at Christmas, her twenty-first birthday. By this time she was one of the top money earners in the agency, raking in six figures a year. She had been on twelve Vogue covers, scores of others. She worked constantly, was always on trips, up and out early, working late at night. She never knew Freddy kept a head sheet of the agency’s girls in his desk like it was his own personal catalog to fill in the time while she was gone. He had his pick. Suzan, after a couple of years, was tired of it all and wanted to take a break and have a baby, but Freddy was adamantly against it. She would ruin her career, he said. They’ll forget you and move on to the next new girl. You have to work while you are hot.

  She got pregnant on purpose, and for the first time, Freddy hit her. He forced her to have an illegal abortion. In a garage on the West Side, Hell’s Kitchen, far from clean. There was no sink, even, for the woman to wash her hands. She paid the woman two hundred dollars, cash, and while Freddy waited out in the car, the woman butchered her. She got an infection, spent three weeks in the hospital, and it took months to get her strength back. The doctor told her she would never again be able to have children. Freddy felt horrible about it. He sat by her
bedside and cried. He almost made her believe he was sorry, but she had taken a step away from him in her heart, and although he convinced her not to leave him, she never took that step back. She would never again be so close that he could hurt her that badly. Which, perversely, only made him want to hurt her more. She threw herself into her work, and they maintained a life together.

  Then Suzan hit her late twenties. Work got slower. When she occasionally ran into old clients, they told her they had been trying to get her, but her booker told them she was unavailable. Her booker said she had done no such thing. The fashion world gets bored easily and always wants a new face, a new look, a newer model. They never tell you you’re too old. They just stop calling, like a boyfriend who wants to break up but doesn’t have the guts for a confrontation.

  Though she was slowing down, she was still a star at the peak of her beauty, and she was angry. It was Freddy’s idea to quit his job and start the agency. At first it was an adventure, just the two of them and Gina, her booker, from Ford. Freddy did the bookkeeping. Suzan was the only model for a while, and she worked night and day to keep the agency going. She took any job she could, no matter how small or demeaning, no matter how tired she got. She would accept a booking of an hour, was always on time, always a pro. Gradually, other girls joined the agency, and finally Suzan quit modeling altogether.