“I think we need to cut some of that hair off, Cherry. You would look much better with a cute, short do.”
“Uh, I don’t think so, Gerard. Mrs. Vreeland didn’t say anything about me cutting my hair, and I just got it grown out from a bad haircut my cousin gave me when she was going to beauty school. I don’t think Clairol would like it if I had short hair, and I do a lot of work for them. Let’s not cut it.” He was acting a little weird and for a minute I was afraid he was going to attack me with the scissors anyhow. I’d worked too hard to get my hair to grow out to let some hairdresser I’d just met cut it all off on a whim.
While I was talking, he pulled out a handkerchief and poured some liquid from a metal bottle onto it. Then he stuck a corner of the handkerchief into his mouth and started sucking on it. It smelled sharp and astringent. The room all of a sudden seemed too close. I was getting woozy-headed.
“What is that you’re doing, Gerard?”
“Ether. Want some? If you only take a little you get the best high. Too much and you pass out, but what a great sleep!” He laughed, a high-pitched sound that was slightly demented.
“You want to cut my hair while you’re high on ether? I don’t think so.” I got up and opened the window and took some deep breaths.
“Okay. Want to see my new tattoo?”
He pulled up his shirt, and across his belly was a rainbow that plunged down under his waistband and ended…well, I could imagine what the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow was.
“That’s lovely, Gerard.” He started to unzip his pants. “But I don’t need to see the end of the rainbow. Listen, I really need to go to the bathroom. Why don’t you take a little break, go back to your room and have your ether, and then I’ll call you and we’ll get back to work? Okay?” He shrugged and went out of the room, sucking on the rag.
“Ron! Get in here!” I screamed into the phone, and Ron came running in.
“You have to get rid of that guy. He’s going to get all of us thrown in jail. Call Rita. I’m not working with him. I’ll just do my own makeup—I’m better at it than he is anyhow. I don’t want to see him again, please.”
“What did he do? Calm down, Cherry.” When I told him, he was in a worse state than I was, and I was calming down. He called Rita and the upshot was that Gerard was back on the plane that afternoon. I don’t know what he did with the drugs. They’re probably clogging up the pipes at the Albion or making some poor fish stoned.
Anyhow, the moon-bathing shot went well, and Rita even loosened up and wore a beige dress. I was so tired after the night shoot, though, that I didn’t want to go out, so we just had a little dinner in the hotel dining room. Rita ate with us, then excused herself.
“Stay and have another glass of wine?”
“Sure, Ron. How are the pictures? Getting some good ones?”
“Oh, yeah. Lots of good ones. This is going to be big for both of us. When we get back to New York, I have some great ideas for tests. You know Guy Bourdin?” I shook my head. “He’s incredible, one of the best. He’s been doing these dark, sinister fashion shots. Real moody stuff. I want to take them even farther. Get this: There you are at a roadside hamburger joint in the middle of the night, wearing an Oscar de la Renta evening gown, jewels, makeup, nails, hair done up. The guy behind the counter, a greasy-spoon kind of guy in a dirty white apron, is making a burger for you, and in the bushes to the right, a guy in a black mask is lurking, holding a gun.”
“And then what?”
“What do you mean? That’s it. It’s a fashion shot.”
“A fashion shot? Ha. Fashion shot. Get it? You made a joke.”
“Of course it’s a fashion shot. Look. It’s a story—there you are, in an expensive evening dress, out in the middle of nowhere at night, eating a greasy burger, looking fabulous and bored, all by yourself, and there is a guy waiting to…what? We don’t know. Is he going to rob you of your jewels? Kidnap you? Wait until you go and then rob the burger guy? What are you doing out there in the first place? See? It sets up this air of mystery. You write your own ending. You gotta love it.”
“I do kind of love it.” Actually, I did. I always liked a good mystery. And I figured it was weird enough to be right up Mrs. Vreeland’s alley.
“Or how about this one…you’re holding a raging dog on a leash, a Doberman or pit bull or one of those. He’s baring his teeth, lunging at the camera, and you hold the leash with all your strength with fingers and arms covered in rows of diamond bracelets and rings. You have on an exquisite evening dress by Bill Blass, which is in danger of being shredded by the dog at any minute. Your hair is wild, your teeth are bared, too, with the effort of controlling the dog. Like it?”
“Not so much. Maybe not lunging dogs, Ron, although the concept is great. Maybe you could get Rhonda for that one. It sounds more like her kind of thing.”
“Okay. Maybe I will. But what do you think? Think Mrs. Vreeland will go for it?”
“I think Mrs. Vreeland will love those. As soon as we get back, let’s do some tests and I bet she gives us sixteen pages.”
She gave us twelve for the sun and moon shots! I couldn’t believe it. Mama would die.
44
* * *
THE FIRST DAY
Hitting New York traffic after days of boring freeway and hamburger joints was a shock. As she came in on the New Jersey Turnpike, the skyline appeared, like a hazy mirage in the clouds, then she went down into the darkness of the Lincoln Tunnel and was shot out into Manhattan traffic. There was so much to try to see all at once, so many cars coming at her from all directions so fast, that Cassie had to pull over at a gas station on Eleventh Avenue, catch her breath, and study the map. It looked like it would be pretty easy to find Twelfth Street. The streets were mostly laid out like a checkerboard, and numbered. She pulled back out onto Eleventh Avenue, took it slow, and tried not to flinch when a car whizzed around her, like the driver was in a demolition derby. She turned on Fourteenth and headed down Seventh Avenue and started looking for a parking place, which turned out to be not so easy. Maybe it was a sign. All the way, the closer she got to New York, the more she realized she dreaded seeing Lale and Cherry. She had made a mistake in coming, but it was too late. She couldn’t turn around and go back now. She’d come too far. If nothing else, she just wanted Lale to look her in the eyes and tell her he didn’t love her, never had, and she should go home and leave him alone. At least she would have heard it straight from his mouth. Why couldn’t men ever be honest with a woman? Instead of breaking up with them, clean and tidy, they just stopped calling. One of her guy friends had done that to his girlfriend, and when she told him it was a chicken thing to do, he said he knew it, but he didn’t want to hurt her feelings and she’d get the idea if he never called again. It would be easier. Right. Easier on him. At least Lale wrote her a note and left her the car and sent the money, so he wasn’t all bad. She couldn’t have loved him as much as she did if he was all bad. She wouldn’t have been in that much pain if he was all bad.
She drove around the block of West Twelfth Street for the umpteenth time and, miracle of miracles, a car pulled out, and she grabbed the space. It was not at all like she expected New York to be. Somehow she didn’t think there would be any trees here, just cement and tall buildings. The houses looked old and like the ones she’d seen in movies that took place back in the 1800s. The street was tree-lined and cleaner than she thought. Snuffy had told her how dirty the city was. Snuffy was her fount of information about New York, since he came so often, but he didn’t get to every single place in the city. Just the liquor warehouses.
She stretched, got out her coat and purse, and walked down the street toward the address on the envelope of Cherry’s last letter. She stood in front of the house, a red-brick four-story building that looked much like the others on the street, started to go toward the door, then changed her mind and walked on past it to the corner of Sixth Avenue. Now that she was here, it wasn’t so easy to just knock on Cherry�
�s door and confront her. Maybe she’d have something to eat first. That would settle her nervous stomach. She went into a coffee shop called Joe Jr.’s and sat at a booth by the door.
“What’ll it be, miss?”
“Hamburger, please. Tomato, pickles. No onions. Salad on the side.”
“What to drink?”
“Do you have Tab?”
“Sure.
He wrote it all down, yelled out the order to the cook behind the counter, and laid down a fork, spoon, and knife wrapped in a paper napkin. He filled a glass with Tab, set it down in front of her, wiped up a little spill.
“Thanks. Do y’all have any lemon?”
“We do.” He put a couple of lemon wedges on a small plate and set them down. She squeezed them into the glass. He watched her.
“You’re not from around here, are you?”
“Why, how can you tell?”
He laughed. “You don’t sound like you’re from around here. Where you from?”
“Arkansas.”
“No kidding. I know somebody from there.”
“Really? Who?”
“A pretty model. Big girl. White-blond hair.”
“Is her name Cherry?”
“That’s the one. You a friend of hers?”
“Yeah. I’m Cassie. An old friend. I’m here to visit her.”
“You are? I thought she was off on a job. She told me this morning she was going to Miami to shoot some pictures for …Vogue magazine, I think. She left right after she had breakfast. Her usual. Scrambled eggs and cheese Danish.”
“Yep, that’s her usual, all right. Do you know when she’s coming back? I kind of wanted to surprise her.”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you call up the magazine? They could tell you.”
“I might do that. Well. If she’s not home, maybe you could tell me of a good cheap hotel to spend a few days…what was your name?”
“Oh, I’m Tony. Sure. Try the Chelsea. It’s on Twenty-third between Seventh and Eighth. Just up the street.”
“Thanks, Tony. You’re a big help.”
“Arkansas grows some pretty women, that’s for sure. Maybe I’ll take a trip down there one of these days.”
“You do that. We’re just hanging off the trees.”
Cassie ate her burger, then went to the phone booth and looked up Vogue in the book. The address was 420 Lexington Avenue. Maybe she should go there instead of calling. She doubted anybody would tell her anything on the phone.
But first she needed to get settled, clean up, collect herself. Think a little more. She made her way north and found the Chelsea on Twenty-third Street. It was a tall but not-too-tall building with wrought-iron balconies and strange, different-size dormers and windows on the top, and looked like something she could afford. There was a parking space right in front, a good sign, so she went in and rented a room. The lobby was shabby but homey, a huge old iron staircase rising up the middle, but the room she got was nothing special. It was painted a drab green color, with an old four-poster bed, a small dresser, a table, and a little TV with rabbit ears. It had seen a lot of traffic, that’s for sure, and the bathroom was out in the hallway—she’d have to share it—but the price was right. She unpacked her few clothes and washed up, then got her courage together and went out to face New York.
The streets were numbered, and with her map she didn’t have much trouble finding 420 Lexington. She’d find out when Cherry was coming back, and maybe they could tell her how to find Lale, too. He’d been in the magazine plenty of times. They could at least tell her which agency he was with. It would be best to take things slow, not just land on him the first day she got here. She had to keep her head together about this, not just go off and make a stupid mistake.
The big glass doors with Vogue printed in gold script on them were a little intimidating. The carpets were clean and soft, and the air had a perfume that smelled like class. Cassie wished she had worn something besides sneakers, jeans, and a turtleneck. She had on her best coat, a quilted white car coat with a fake-fur lining, but after being dragged around in the car, it needed a cleaning. She hadn’t thought about putting on makeup, since she usually didn’t wear any, but the girl at the desk was made up and dressed to the nines. She had never felt more like a hick. The girl glanced up at her, then looked again, eyebrows raised to her hairline, like she was viewing a wet river rat.
“May I help you?”
“I hope so. I have a friend who is a model for y’all, and she’s off right now on a job, in Miami, I think. I just needed to know when she’s going to be back in town. Her name is Cherry Marshall.”
“I’m afraid we can’t help you. There are a lot of models who work for us, and we aren’t allowed to give out any information about them.”
“I know you have to protect them—my goodness, I can see there must be all kinds of crazy people who would love to meet some of them—but I’m an old friend of hers from Arkansas, and she would be really happy to see me. I know where she lives—I just need to know when she’ll be back in town. That’s all. Really.”
“Sorry.” The girl pretended to go through a drawer in search of something. Cassie tried again. She had come too far to just walk away now.
“Look. I’m not a crazy person who’s after her. If you can’t help me, maybe you can get somebody else who can. It’s a simple thing I’m asking.”
“Nobody here can help you. Now please leave.” It was horrible. Cassie was on the verge of tears. To come all this way, get so close, and have a nasty little girl treat her like she was trash was more than she could take. She was trembling with anger.
“You are the rudest, snootiest person I have ever met in my life!” She was trying not to cry and whirled around to go, almost running over a small woman who was coming in the door. The girl at the desk snapped to attention, and Diana Vreeland took a step back.
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Vreeland,” the girl said. “Do you want me to call security?”
Mrs. Vreeland stared up into Cassie’s face, which was blotchy with tears and anger. Her eyes lit up.
“My God! That nose!”
“My nose? My nose! What is the matter with you people? I can’t believe a total stranger would say something about my nose! So what if it’s big? What’s it to you, lady? If you’ve ever looked in the mirror, you have a pretty good-size honker yourself! And what’s wrong with a big nose anyhow? It works. It breathes. It smells. Are people going to be attacking me from here on out unless I get my nose chopped off? I can’t believe this!” Now she was crying for real, on the verge of hysteria. She ran toward the door, but the voice stopped her.
“Stop! Come back! Dear girl, I wasn’t criticizing your nose! Come back. Please.”
Something in the voice made her stop, and she turned around. The receptionist was poised on one foot, phone in hand, ready to call the guard. Mrs. Vreeland gave her a signal and she put the phone down.
“Please. Come into my office. I want to talk to you.”
Cassie wiped her eyes and followed the little woman into her office. She gaped at the red walls and leopard rug. What kind of place was this? What was the woman going to do to her?
“Sit down. Please.” The voice was kind. Cassie sat on the edge of the wicker chair. “First of all, you are absolutely right. I do have an enormous honker. Much bigger than yours. I know exactly how you feel. I have always had to overcome it, and yes, there were people who thought I should have it reduced. But do you know why I never did? Because the nose is the instrument of sensuality that controls the entire face. It is the interesting larger nose that expresses the senses and the character and projects the person more than the smaller nose. Anybody can be beautiful with a small nose. But it takes a woman of great charm and wit to be interesting with a big nose. I have that. I cultivated those qualities with a lot of hard work. You, my dear, I believe, could do it, too.
“Think of the parts of the nose, the septum, the columella, the iliac bone. The nose is a complex structure.
The flare of the nostrils, the height and shape, give a resonance to the face that anyone with a smaller nose just doesn’t have. I have a friend who is a beautiful countess, and she will only be photographed in profile because she loves her nose so much. It is her trademark. It is as high in the middle as a church steeple, and she is ravishing. She has been married five times and has so much money she could never spend it all if she devoted herself to shopping twenty-four hours a day. So you must not believe I was belittling your nose. Not at all. In fact, I’ve been searching for just such a nose as yours. I would like to photograph your nose for our magazine.”
“I…I’m not a model. I’m…Cassie Culver. I just came by to find a friend of mine, Cherry Marshall.”
“Ah, Cherry. Wonderful girl. Pity her nose is so small. She has her own unique qualities, though, no? But of course you’re not a model. It makes no difference. You have the perfect nose for our story.”
Cheap Diamonds Page 34