Four Blondes Page 9

  Everyone laughed.

  “Very good, Janey,” the instructor said, pulling at his mustache. “If you need any extra help, I’m available.”

  Oh God.

  Janey walked home. It was September, still warm and still light. She swung her books in a Gucci satchel Harold had bought her. He was trying to make it as enticing as possible, but in the end, she knew it wouldn’t make any difference. Her days would stretch before her. There would be a certain blandness to them, but after all, wasn’t that what most people’s lives were like? Most people got up every morning and went to a job. They dated ordinary people and went to the movies. They didn’t go to black-tie events. They didn’t model in fashion shows. They didn’t date best-selling authors or billionaires or movie moguls. They didn’t have their names in the gossip columns, good or bad, and they especially didn’t have summer houses in the Hamptons. And they survived.

  Hell, they were probably happy.

  She would never be happy that way. She knew she wouldn’t, just as she knew she would never finish the screenplay. She would never turn up in Comstock’s office and throw the finished manuscript down on his desk and say, “Read that, you asshole!” Write what you know, everybody said. And maybe it was stupid and maybe she was a loser, but that was what she knew. She could still remember the first time she’d come to New York, when she was sixteen, to become a model. Her mother had actually let her take the Amtrak train from Springfield to New York City with her brother, and had actually paid for them to stay overnight in a hotel. Which was such a weird thing for her mother to do, because she never did anything for Janey. Before or after. But that one time she had said yes, and Janey and her brother, Pete, had taken the train to Penn Station, passing the grungy little towns and cities along the way, the scenery becoming browner and more crowded and more industrial and more frightening (but Janey had loved it), until they passed through a long tunnel and arrived in New York City. It smelled of urine back then. It wasn’t safe. They stayed at the Howard Johnson’s on Eighth Avenue, and the horns and the clatter and the cars and the shouts kept them up all night, but Janey didn’t mind a bit.

  The next morning, she had taken her first taxi to the Ford Models Agency. It was on East Sixtieth Street then, in a narrow red town house. She walked up the steps. She pushed open the door. The room had industrial gray carpeting and posters of magazine covers on the wall.

  She waited.

  Then Eileen Ford herself came out. She was a small woman with curly gray hair, but Janey knew she was Eileen Ford by the commanding way she held herself. She was wearing brown shoes with a one-inch heel.

  She scanned the room. There were four other girls. She looked at Janey. “You,” she said. “Come with me.”

  Janey followed her to her office.

  “How tall are you?” Eileen Ford asked.

  “Five-ten,” she said.

  “Age?”

  “Sixteen,” Janey whispered.

  “I want you to come back on Monday at noon. Can you do that?”

  “Yes,” Janey said breathlessly.

  “Give me your phone number. I’ll need to get your parents’ permission.”

  “Am I going to be a model?”

  “Yes,” Eileen Ford nodded. “I think you are.”

  Janey walked out of the office. She was shaking. “I’m going to be a model,” she wanted to shout. She wanted to run and skip and jump. “A model! A model! A model!” And then, as she was leaving, a beautiful girl walked in, a girl whose face Janey recognized from the cover of magazines and glossy advertisements. Janey sucked in her breath, watching her. The girl was wearing an ornately beaded jacket with jeans. She had on suede Gucci loafers and was carrying a Louis Vuitton valise. Janey had never seen such a glamorous creature.

  “Hello, Bea,” the girl said to the receptionist. She had long blond hair that fell in perfect waves down her back. “I’ve come to pick up my check.”

  It was Friday.

  “Going away this weekend?” Bea, the receptionist asked, handing her an envelope.

  “The Hamptons. I’m catching the eleven-fifteen Jitney.”

  “Have a good one,” Bea said.

  “You too,” the girl said. She waved.

  The Hamptons!Janey said the words over and over again in her head. She’d never heard of them. But surely, they must be the most magical place in the world.

  When she got home from the class, her phone was ringing. It was probably Harold. He’d promised to call, to find out how “school” went. She picked it up.

  “Janey!” It was her booker at the modeling agency. “I’ve been trying to get you all evening. This just came in. Victoria’s Secret. They called. Asked specifically for you. They’ve got a new campaign. They want you to audition to be one of their girls.”

  “That’s nice,” Janey said.

  “Get this. They want women. They said women. No skinny little girls. So act your age. And Janey,” he said warningly. “Don’t blow it. Blow this, and I promise you, your career is over.”

  Janey laughed.

  “Janey Wilcox?” the woman asked, holding out her hand. “I’m Mariah. I’m the head of corporate for Victoria’s Secret.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Janey said. They shook hands. Mariah had long dark hair. She was pretty, about thirty-five. Her handshake was firm. There were hundreds of women like this in the industry. They weren’t quite attractive enough to be models themselves, but they wanted to do something “glamorous,” and they took themselves a little too seriously.

  “We all loved your book,” Mariah said. “We wanted to meet you.”

  “Thank you,” Janey said. She followed Mariah into a large, open studio. There were other people there. Desks. Layouts. A man with a video camera.

  “We’re looking for a few special girls,” Mariah said, the emphasis on “special.” “It’s not enough to be beautiful. We want girls who have personality. Who have lived a little. We want,” she said, taking a breath for emphasis, “girls who can be role models for our customers.”

  In other words, Janey thought, smart models. Now there’s a new one. She nodded.

  The other people came around.

  “Do you mind putting on some lingerie?” they whispered. They always treated you with kid gloves at these auditions, so they couldn’t be accused of sexual harassment.

  “Do you mind lying on that couch?”

  “Do you mind if we videotape you?”

  “I don’t mind,” Janey said. “I’ll go naked if you want.”

  Mariah laughed. “Luckily, this isn’t Playboy,” she said.

  Oh, but it practically is, Janey thought.

  She lay down on the couch. She arranged her magnificent body, resting her head on her hand.

  “Tell us a little bit about yourself, Janey.”

  “Well,” Janey began, in that soft voice that gave no offense, “I’m thirty-two. I’ve been a model for . . . sixteen years now, I guess, and an actress too, although I like to say I’ve been acting every day of my life. I’m pretty independent. I’ve never been married. I guess I like to take care of myself. But it’s hard, you know? I’m a model, but more than that, I’m a single woman, trying to make my way through life. I have my ups and downs like every other woman.” She smiled and turned onto her back.

  “I have days when I feel ugly. And days when I feel fat . . . like right now . . . and days when I think, ‘Am I ever going to find a guy I really like?’ I try pretty hard. Last summer I worked on a screenplay about my life.”

  “And what do you want out of life, Janey?”

  “I don’t know what I want, but I know I want something.”

  “And what about your goals?”

  Janey smiled and pushed her hair back. She turned onto her stomach, swinging one leg up. She put her head in both hands. Her expression was serious, but not too serious. She looked directly at the camera.

  “I guess you could say . . . I don’t know where I’m going.” She paused a second for effe
ct. “But I know I’m going somewhere.”

  “Brilliant,” they said.

  Eight months later.

  Janey pulled into the driveway of the house on Daniel’s Lane in Sagaponack in her new Porsche Boxster convertible. The car was pure flash: silver paint with a red leather interior, a special order. It was a bonus from the Victoria’s Secret people, not that they had to give her one, since she had a two-million-dollar contract for four years. It called for a maximum of fifty days of work a year, which meant, as her new agent pointed out, she’d have plenty of time to go on auditions and even do a television series or a movie. She’d already gone on three auditions for an action film with a big movie star, and they were “seriously interested.”

  Janey closed the car door carefully. It wouldn’t do to scratch the paint. Already her sister had asked if she could drive the car, and Janey had said no. “You’ve got plenty of money, Patty. Get your own car,” she said.

  “But I want to drive your car,” Patty whined. She looked so plaintive, they’d both cracked up.

  Janey walked toward the house, twirling the keys around her finger. It was an unusual house, with the kitchen and living room (with fireplace) on the second floor, with a large deck from which you could see the ocean. There were five big bedrooms downstairs, and outside, a charming antique shack that could be used as a separate guest cottage or an office.

  “Do you plan to have lots of company?” the real estate agent had asked.

  “No,” Janey said. “I’ll probably use it to do some writing. I’m working on a screenplay, you know.”

  “Really?” the real estate agent said. “I know you’re in that Victoria’s Secret ad. But I didn’t know you were a writer. Beautiful and smart. What a lucky girl.”

  “Thank you,” Janey said.

  “I just love that line you say in the ad . . . .How does it go again?”

  “I don’t know where I’m going, but I know I’m going somewhere,” Janey said.

  “That’s it,” the real estate agent said. “Don’t we all feel that way, though.”

  Janey opened the door to the house. Her house, she thought. Her house alone. It smelled a little musty, but all summer houses smelled musty the first day you opened them up. In an hour, it would pass. In the meantime, she’d take a swim.

  She went into the master bedroom and stripped off her clothes. The room was at least six hundred square feet, with a California king bed and a marble bathroom that contained a Jacuzzi and sauna. The house was terribly expensive, but what the hell? She could afford it.

  Not bad for a single woman.

  She opened the sliding glass door and walked out to the pool. It was unusually long. Sixty feet. She stood at the edge by the deep end. She paused. For a moment, she wished that Bill would show up. Walk up her flagstone path, up the steps and through the white picket gate to the pool. “Janey,” he’d say. He’d fold her naked body into his arms, kissing her hair, her face . . . “I love you,” he’d say. “I’m going to leave my wife and marry you.”

  It was never going to happen.

  Janey stuck her toe in the water. It was ninety degrees.

  Perfect.

  She dove in.

  HIGHLIGHTS (FOR ADULTS)

  I

  THE DIEKES

  This is a story about two people with jobs. Two people with very, very important jobs. Two very very important people with two very, very important jobs who are married to each other and have one child.

  Meet James and Winnie Dieke (pronounced “deek,” not “dyke”). The perfect couple. (Or, in their minds anyway, the perfect couple.) They live in a five-room apartment on the Upper West Side. They graduated from Ivy League colleges (he Harvard and she Smith). Winnie is thirty-seven. James is forty-two (in their minds, the perfect age difference for a man and a woman). They’ve been married nearly seven years. Their lives revolve around their work (and their child). They love to work. Their work keeps them busy and neurotic. Their work separates them from other people. Their work (in their minds anyway) actually makes them superior to other people.

  They are journalists. Serious journalists.

  Winnie writes a political/style column (“Is that an oxymoron?”James asked her when she first told him about the job) for a major news magazine. James is a well known and highly respected journalist—he writes five-to-ten-thousand-word pieces for publications like the Sunday Times Magazine, The New Republic, and The New Yorker.

  James and Winnie agree on just about everything. They have definite opinions. “There is something wrong with people who don’t have intelligent, informed opinions about things,” Winnie said to James when they met for the first time, at a party in an apartment on the Upper West Side. Everyone at the party was “in publishing” and under thirty-five. Most of the women (like Winnie) were working at women’s magazines (something Winnie never talks about now). James had just won an ASME award for a story on fly-fishing. Everyone knew who he was. He was tall and skinny, with floppy, curly blond hair and glasses (he’s still tall and skinny, but he’s lost most of his hair). There were girls all around him.

  Here are a few of the things they agree on: They hate anyone who isn’t like them. They hate anyone who is wealthy and successful and gets press (especially Donald Trump). They hate trendy people and things (although James did just buy a pair of Dolce & Gabbanna sunglasses). They hate TV; big-budget movies; all commercial, poorly written books on The New York Times best-seller list (and the people who read them); fast-food restaurants; guns; Republicans; neo-Nazi youth groups; the religious right wing anti-abortion groups; fashion models (fashion editors); fat on red meat; small, yappy dogs and the people who own them.

  They hate people who do drugs. They hate people who drink too much (unless it’s one of their friends, and then they complain bitterly about the person afterward). They hate the Hamptons (but rent a house there anyway, on Shelter Island, which, they remind themselves, isn’t really the Hamptons). They believe in the poor (they do not know anyone who is poor, except their Jamaican nanny, who is not exactly poor). They believe in black writers (they know two, and Winnie is working on becoming friends with a third, whom she met at a convention). They hate music and especially MTV (but Winnie sometimes watches “Where Are They Now?” on VH1, especially if the artist in question is now a drug addict or alcoholic). They think fashion is silly (but secretly identify with the people in Dewar’s ads). They think the stock market is a scam (but James invests ten thousand dollars a year anyway, and checks his stocks every morning on the Internet). They hate Internet entrepreneurs who are suddenly worth hundreds of millions of dollars (but Winnie secretly wishes James would go on the Internet and somehow make hundreds of millions of dollars. She wishes he were more successful. Much more successful). They hate what is happening to the world. They don’t believe in a free lunch.

  They do believe in women writers (as long as the women do not become too successful or get too much attention or write about things the Diekes don’t approve of—like sex—unless it’s lesbian sex). James, who is secretly afraid of homosexuals (he’s afraid he might be one, because he’s secretly fascinated with both his and Winnie’s assholes), says he is a feminist, but always puts down women who are not like Winnie (including her sister). Who are not serious. Who do not have children. Who are not married. Winnie gets physically ill at the sight of a woman she considers a slut. Or worse, a whore.

  The Diekes don’t know people who go to clubs or stay out late, or have sex (except Winnie’s sister). People who stay up late can’t, by their definition, be “serious.” It takes the Diekes all day (and often well into the evenings) to get their jobs done. By then, they are so exhausted, they can only go home and eat dinner (prepared by the Jamaican nanny) and go to sleep. (Winnie has to get up at six to be with her child and go running. The child is four. Winnie hopes that the child will soon be able to run with her.) At home, they are cozy and superior, and sometimes (when they’re not working) sit around in fuzzy flannel pajamas w
ith their child. Winnie and the child wear slippers in the shape of stuffed animals, and Winnie makes their slippered, stuffed-animal feet talk to one another. The child is a sweet and happy and beautiful child who never complains. (He crawls into bed with Winnie as often as he can. He says, “Mommy, I love you.”) He is learning to read. (Winnie and James know he is a genuis.) “But he’s a real boy,” Winnie always says to her friends, who, like her, are well adjusted and earning incomes over a hundred and fifty thousand a year, who also have one or two children. It always shocks Winnie when she says this. It makes her a little afraid, because she does not like to admit that men and women are different. (If men and women are different, where does that leave her?)

  Winnie believes (no, knows) that she is as smart as James (even though she’s not sure that he will ever admit it) and as good a journalist as he is and as good a writer. She often thinks that she is actually better than he (in every way, not just journalism), but he (being a man) has gotten more breaks. James’s style of writing and her style of writing (which she picked up from James, who picked it up from other writers of his ilk) was not hard to figure out how to do, once she understood the motivation. Ditto for their conversational style: pseudo-intellectual and desperately clever at the same time—“cl-intellectual.” (Tell me I’m smart—or I’ll wound you.)

  Winnie is deeply bitter and James is deeply bitter but they never talk about it.

  JAMES IS SCARED

  James is scared about his work. Every time he finishes a piece, he’s scared he won’t get another one. When he gets another assignment (he always does, but it doesn’t make any difference), he’s scared he won’t make the deadline. When he makes the deadline, he’s scared his editor (or editors—there are always faceless editors lurking around in dark little offices at magazines), won’t like the piece. When they like the piece, he’s scared that it won’t get published. When it does get published, he’s scared that no one will read it or talk about it and all his hard work will have been for nothing. If people do talk about it (and they don’t always, in which case he’s scared that he’s not a great journalist), he’s scared that he won’t be able to pull it off again.