Mandarin Plaid

by S. J. Rozan

  “Thank you,” I said, giving her Mishika’s timid smile. “I’m surprised I was able to get an appointment so fast.”

  “I should say.” She didn’t look up. “Robert is always booked weeks in advance.”

  “But I was lucky enough to catch him just when he had an opening?”

  Now she did look up. “Certainly not. Robert never has an opening. But as it happens we have an arrangement with Everest Models.”

  “An arrangement?”

  Although I was clearly interfering with her study project on popular culture, she took a breath and explained the situation. “Mr. Everest sends all his models here. He’s an excellent client, so we try to accommodate him.”

  “He does? Do all the agencies do that? I’m new,” I explained shyly. “So I don’t really know how it works.”

  “Pay for their girls’ cuts, do you mean? No, not actually.” Her eyes narrowed, the better to focus on someone so new she didn’t know salon protocol.

  “I’m so glad Mr. Everest wants me,” I confided. “I’m so excited about being a model. And I never could have afforded this by myself.”

  “Yes, I suppose that’s true,” she said, going back to her magazine.

  “The other girls he sends,” I went on chattering, “what are they like?”

  She looked up briefly from the perfumed pages. “You’ll fit right in.” She turned to an article on Glorious Cashmere and began to read.

  “I will? Oh, I’m so glad! How will I? What kind of girls are they?”

  She paused before she answered this time, the way my third-grade teacher used to do, which was how I knew to stop asking questions or I’d be staying after school.

  “The Everest girls,” the receptionist told me, “are all rather quirky.”

  “Quirky? Quirky how?”

  She seemed to search briefly for the right words. “Mr. Everest seems to have a generous concept of a girl’s potential. But then, it is his agency, so perhaps he’s correct. Although,” she added, flipping magazine pages again, “I haven’t yet seen any of the Everest girls in a major spread.”

  I decided to ignore the unmistakable notion that I’d just been insulted. “You haven’t?” I made my voice sound disappointed. “The Everest Agency doesn’t have any famous models?”

  She smiled for the first time, a thin smile. “I’m quite sure you’ll be the first.”

  “Do you think so? You don’t think I’m quirky?”

  “Possibly that was a poor word choice.” The thin smile continued. “In your case, it’s only that, for a model, you’re rather short.”

  It was a great haircut.

  Robert, owner and resident genius at Tulipe, was an elfin man with pointed chin, sharp nose, and a widow’s peak in his own short dark hair. He wore a ruby stud in his left ear, like my brother Andrew’s, and three gold hoops in his right, which Andrew doesn’t have. He zipped around me, peering intently into my face from in front, then in the mirror, combing my wet hair forward, back, to one side, to the other side. Three other women in three other soft gray smocks occupied the remaining chairs in the small, square salon. They were each being well-fussed-over by their hairdressers, but I was the one in the seat of honor just inside the door, where a large bowl of crimson tulips on the counter was doubled by its mirrored image.

  “No scalp showing,” I told Robert, speaking to the mirror.

  He scrunched his lips together and furrowed his reflected brow. “Are you sure? We could shave it. The Sinead O’Connor thing. No, you’re right. That look’s old. Let’s do this.” He fastened most of my hair to the top of my head with bright red plastic clips and began to snip, comb, snip what wasn’t clipped. I felt a pang of fear as I saw locks of hair longer than I thought I had flying from his scissors, but after the fourth or fifth snip it was too late to worry about it, so I decided to relax.

  “This is wonderful,” Robert enthused, scissors and comb motionless while he spoke. “This thick Asian hair, and such a great head. God, this’ll be fabulous.” When his words stopped, his hands started up, combing and snipping.

  “Do you do many Asians?” I asked.

  “Lots and lots.” He stopped again and smiled in the mirror. Artists apparently can’t work and talk at the same time. “Don’t worry.”

  “I’m not worried,” I said. “I’m sure it will be wonderful. I’m really asking because a friend of mine got a great cut, and I’m wondering if she came here for it.”

  “If it’s great, she probably did. What’s her name?”

  “Dawn Jing.”

  “Dawn Jing, Dawn Jing, Dawn Jing,” Robert mulled, snipping and combing. He unfastened some clips, rearranged others. “I don’t know. But I have a terrible memory for names. Describe her.”

  That was something I couldn’t do, never having seen even a picture of Dawn. But I had an inspiration. I described Genna.

  “Hmmm,” Robert hummed, working on the back of my head. Pausing, he said, “Sounds familiar. But I don’t know. I’m not saying you all look alike,” he caught my reflection’s eye, “but truly, it’s like saying ‘tall, blue-eyed, and blond.’ It could mean so many people.” He went back to comb and scissors, frowning in concentration.

  “She has really beautiful hair,” I pressed on. “Fine and straight and very shiny. And perfect pale skin. And tiny ears.”

  “Tiny ears,” Robert mused, but got distracted by his work again.

  “You know who she sounds like?” The question came from the hairdresser at the station next to Robert’s, a round-cheeked woman twisting her client’s golden hair over thick ridged rods, for a perm. “That little one,” she said. “She came twice. You did her, Robert. And we all said how funny it was that someone who looked so delicate was like that?”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “Oh, I remember!” Robert declared. He waved his comb and scissors. “That one! Right! What a sensational head! But that wasn’t her name.”

  “It wasn’t?” I asked. “But maybe it was her anyway, using some kind of professional name or something. What was she like?”

  Robert stared into his own eyes in the mirror. “Ruby,” he said. “Jade, starlight … Pearl! Pearl Moon! Wasn’t that it, Mattie? Pearl Moon, wasn’t that her name?”

  Mattie, her tongue poking out in concentration, nodded without looking up from her rods.

  “Could that be your friend?” Robert asked me. “Does she ever use that name?” He started to work again, now on the crown of my head.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “You said it was funny, what she was like. What was she like?”

  “Tough,” he said, stopping again, this time to catch my eye. “No, not tough. That makes her sound like something you couldn’t chew. This one was something you’d break your teeth on if you even tried to bite. And you wouldn’t make a mark on her.” He shook his head and went back to work, taking the last clip from my hair. “Sharp and beautiful,” he said, pausing in the mirror one more time. “Not like a pearl, really. More like a diamond.”

  TWELVE

  It took six rings before Bill answered the phone.

  The fact that his service didn’t pick up meant he was there; the fact that it rang so long meant he was probably at the piano. He hates to stop when he’s practicing, and playing the piano is one of the few things that makes him feel really good.

  He doesn’t think I know that about him, but I do.

  After the sixth ring I felt so guilty about interrupting him that I started to hang up, but just before I let go of the receiver I heard his voice.

  “Smith.”

  I yanked the receiver back. “It’s me,” I said. “Have lunch with me.”

  “Anywhere, anytime. Are you still in disguise, with lipstick?”

  “Purply lipstick, and eyeliner, too. And something else, but it’s not a disguise.”

  “You’re being cryptic.”

  “It’s new. You’ll love it.”

  “I never know when you say that if it’s good or bad.” />
  “Me, either.”

  “I’ll take a cab. Where are we eating?”

  “In the Village,” I said. “Graziella’s. On Greenwich, across from the bookstore.” I added, “I’m buying.”

  “Great. Why?”

  “To even the score between us.”

  “Won’t work.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re always racking up new debt.”

  “Have I recently?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll tell you about it over lunch.”

  We hung up and headed for lunch, me taking the subway from the Upper East Side—although along with my snazzy new haircut I felt Ed Everest really should have ordered me a limousine—and Bill taking a cab, or so he claimed, up from downtown.

  The haircut was the shortest I’d ever had. It radiated out from my crown, coming forward to form a row of pointy bangs high on my forehead and little points in front of my ears. At the nape of my neck was another, softer row of little points. You couldn’t exactly see my naked scalp, but you couldn’t have found a hair on my head longer than three quarters of an inch.

  I looked at my reflection in all the shop windows on the way to the subway and was surprised every time.

  As I trotted down the subway steps I heard the sounds of drumming. On the platform, a muscular black percussionist tapped, beat, and pounded three upturned plastic tubs, a wooden box, the concrete in front, the steel shutter behind, and anything else he could reach. He looked sweaty and breathless, with popping eyes, as though the warp-speed movement of his arms and hands had gotten away from him. But the exhilarating satisfaction I felt as I followed the sounds told me this man was a master, in complete control. The illusion of spin-out desperation was thrown in just to thrill the audience. I stood completely enthralled until my train pulled in. Then I dropped a dollar in his box and scrambled aboard as the doors began to close. I caught sight of myself in the train’s window and ran my hand over my head, still surprised.

  I thought hard all the way downtown. I didn’t like what I was thinking, but it got more and more difficult to convince myself I was wrong.

  I was buttering a piece of fresh, hot bread when Bill came into Graziella’s.

  “Oh,” he said, pulling out a chair and sitting down without taking his eyes off me. “Wow.”

  “What do you think?”

  “Wow.”

  “You said that.”

  “It’s the only word I can think of.”

  “That means you like it?”

  “It’s inspired. In fact, it’s inspirational. It inspires me—”

  “Don’t tell me.”

  “What made you do it?”

  “Duty.”

  “To your public? To the goddess of beauty? Who is the Chinese goddess of beauty, anyway?”

  “We don’t divide them up that way. And in this case, it was my duty to our client.”

  “We don’t have a client.”

  “We did. Once a client, always a client.” I told Bill about my visit to Everest Models.

  “So, see,” I finished up, “I had to get the haircut so Ed Everest wouldn’t suspect we were on to him.”

  “Ah.” He nodded gravely, looking impressed with what I’d said. “Extremely clever. Except for one detail.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We’re not on to him.”

  “Ah ha.” I bit into my buttered bread. “That’s where you’re wrong.”

  The waiter, a short, swift man in a black vest and red bow tie, skidded to a stop beside our table at that moment and recited the specials for us. We ordered linguine with white clam sauce for Bill and spinach ravioli for me. Then Bill asked his question again.

  “Are we on to Ed Everest?”

  “I’m not pretty, you know,” I answered him.

  “No,” he agreed. “You’re gorgeous. Amazing. Sensational. Spectac—”

  “Oh, leave it alone,” I demanded. “My nose is too big. My eyelashes don’t exist. My skin is dark and my shoulders are wide. I’m a peasant girl from Guangdong. All my ancestors are peasants.”

  “So peasants are beautiful.”

  “Will you stop? Chinese people have standards of beauty like anybody else!”

  “And … ?”

  “And I don’t meet them.”

  “Okay,” Bill said, although I could see he didn’t think it was okay at all. “Where is this going?”

  “Ed Everest wants me to be a model.”

  “Ed Everest,” Bill said, “is a model’s agent. If you’re a model, he makes money.”

  “No, he doesn’t. He won’t make any money off a wannabe-model who looks like me.”

  “Well, admitting for the sake of argument that you’re right—and I can see I could be in trouble here either way—you obviously think he’s up to something. Any idea what?”

  “He told me I needed a set of photographs. A book, they call it. He said he’d send me to his photographer to get them done.”

  “Oh,” Bill said. “I begin to get it. How much was that going to cost you?”

  “No, that’s what I thought, too. But he said he was going to pay for it. As an investment in me. He said when I was rich I could pay him back.”

  “Is it just possible he knows more about your modeling potential than you do? No, I guess not,” he said, catching sight of my sour expression.

  “He said he didn’t know Dawn Jing,” I said. “But Andi Shechter said he did. And Robert, the genius who cut my hair, also cut the hair of a Chinese woman who sounded like my description of Genna to him. A woman sent by Ed Everest.”

  “You described Genna to him?”

  “Well, I’ve never seen Dawn.”

  “Quick thinking.”

  “But he said that wasn’t the name she was using.”

  “Not Dawn Jing?”

  “Right. She’s calling herself Pearl Moon.”

  Bill frowned slightly, without comment.

  “Think of it this way,” I said. “Suppose, instead of being a sensitive, empathetic, postfeminist New Man, you were a regular guy.”

  “Your thesis is flawed.”

  “Never mind. You take a woman to dinner, to the theater, for drinks afterward. You buy her flowers and perfume. What do you think?”

  “Me, Mr. New Man, or the Regular Guy?”

  “The Regular Guy.”

  “She owes me.”

  “Men,” I told him, “are only interested in one thing. That’s what you mean by ‘owe.’ ”

  “The first part of that statement is false. But the second is true.”

  “Ed Everest is going to do my book. He told me to get makeup and clothes if I needed them. He already paid for my haircut. I owe him. In Chinese tradition,” I said, “the moon represents the female principle. And the pearl stands for the fulfillment of desire. She owes him, too.”

  The waiter came speeding from the kitchen, bringing our pasta. The scents of garlic, clams, and oregano swirled around our table.

  “Ed Everest,” Bill said to me, when the waiter left, “can’t be going through all this just to get laid.”

  “No,” I agreed. “There are too many wannabes out there. He doesn’t have to spend like this. All he’d have to do is tell them he heads an agency. They’d fall at his feet.” I edged my fork into my ravioli, plump little pockets shiny with sauce. “The receptionist at UlTress told me none of the Everest girls is famous. She also said we’re all quirky.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I bet it means they’re all like me. Women who have no chance of ever being models. Dreams, but no chance.”

  “Genna Jing wanted you to model.”

  I stopped and considered that. “She was at least half kidding. And with her it was because I walk like a truck driver, not in spite of it.”

  “There may be other truck driver lovers out there.”

  “Not enough. Think about it. Who do you see in the magazines? Whose pictures go
by on the sides of buses? Those women weigh ninety-two pounds and they have cheekbones you could ski-jump off of. Plus they’re fifteen. And maybe there’s one Asian a season. Maybe. No.” I scooped up some more ravioli. “No legitimate agent would waste his time on me.”

  “Does that bother you?”

  The question caught me completely off guard. “What?”

  “Does it bother you?”

  I looked at him, but I wasn’t seeing him. I was seeing all the girls in my high school: the popular ones with their flat hips and flawless skin, and their secret, dead-on instincts about eyeliner, about haircuts and hem lengths; and the other ones, chubby or with thick glasses or who wore the clothes their mothers bought them. They were the ones who hesitated with their trays in the cafeteria, looking for someone who wouldn’t mind sitting with them; the ones who didn’t come to the Saturday night dances or, if their mothers made them, spent the whole night standing miserably alone against the wall.

  And I was seeing myself, somewhere between the two groups, fraudulently passing on the fringes of the one, desperately, guiltily grateful not to be in the other.

  “That’s not the point,” I said. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

  We were both silent. I don’t know what Bill was thinking; I was thinking about things I’d wanted, really wanted, in my life, and what desperate, dumb things I’d done sometimes to get them.

  “These women all owe Ed Everest,” I finally said. “But I’ll bet he’s not the one who collects.”

  Bill nodded. “A new angle on an old game.”

  “Doesn’t it look like it?” I asked. “Ed Everest takes women who’d give anything to be models, women nobody else will touch. He lays it on thick. ‘You can make it, baby, but only if you want it really, really badly, and do what Ed says.’ You should have heard him, Bill. He almost made me believe it.”