The Rusty Nail, December 2012
the stylist install curlers in her long, ratty hair, while I introduced myself and thanked her for coming. “Is she really a model?” asked the makeup artist. We stood in the street as she smoked a cigarette and I fed my parking meter. “She looks about ten years old.” “I don’t know what her deal is. The photographer recommended her.” “Yeah, that photographer kept trying to tell me how to do the makeup and getting in the way. I was like, Fine. You do it.” “I’m sorry.” I resisted the urge to talk smack. That could wait until I was out of a volatile, professional situation, safe with Lori. “She’s rather domineering.” “Who does she think she is? Stanley Kubrick?” It took all my willpower to bite my tongue. “Want to see the dresses?” “Ooh. Yes!” She tossed her cigarette into the gutter and I showed off the gowns. They were beautiful, I had to admit. Corinne had chosen well.
“I love this dress,” she murmured, running her hands down her narrow hips. She was too short for it. It puddled on the floor. “How much does it cost?” “It should say on the tag.” She unzipped the dress and stepped out of it with a total lack of modesty. Her figure was not boyish as much as childish. Her breasts were small, with tiny, rosy nipples. She had shaved her pubic hair. At the time, this was uncommon, and I wondered at first if she had not physically matured, or if she perhaps had some hormonal imbalance. But looking closer, I saw faint stubble there, so I knew she had done this to herself. I realized I was staring and busied myself with a shoe. But she had noticed, and gave me a queer, recognizing look. “It doesn’t have a tag.” She dropped the dress at my feet. “Ask the boutique owner to hold it for me.” “Sure.” I smiled at her. “It’s a beautiful dress, isn’t it?” At that moment, I resolved to buy the dress if it fell within my limited means. But I suspected that neither of us could afford it. It was a Harold Clarke. Even secondhand, the dress would cost thousands.
But heartfelt words rarely saturate the barren ground they are meant to nurture. They just roll right off.
The shoot went smoothly. It did not rain. We got our rooftop shot, but Corinne framed it against old New Orleans, the small red tile roofs and the St. Louis Cathedral’s pricking spires, rather than the gleaming high-rise hotels of the Central Business District and Canal Street. I pointed out that this wasn’t very similar to the Vogue editorial she had so admired. “Well, we don’t exactly have a New York-caliber skyline,” she said, clicking photos of the model, who moved fluidly and professionally. I had seen enough novices to recognize the mark of a true model. So many girls seize up and go into rigid, pseudo-fashion posturing. But a good model is at home in her own skin. She opens herself and lets the camera see inside. That’s what this ugly, short girl was doing with Corinne. Again, I wondered how Corinne had found her. Corinne had more or less assumed the reins of art director, so all I needed to do was sit back and watch. I busied myself by ordering and fetching food, writing down the prices of the dresses, covering the bottoms of the high heels with duct tape so they wouldn’t get scuffed. Corinne and the model seemed at ease with each other. They swept out of the elevator before I did, assuming that they were foremost and I would follow. I began to resent my loss of authority, and then I began to question myself for taking it that hard. Was I really so egotistical? Did I so relish being in control and calling the shots? Apparently, I did. “What’s your job here?” the model asked as I knelt on the floor, scraping stubborn tape off the bottom of a shoe. “Are you from the store?” “No, I’m the editor,” I told her curtly. She didn’t say anything to that, only admired herself in the mirror of the hotel room we were using as a changing room. She was wearing the Harold Clarke.
That night, Lori called me, sobbing. “It’s pornography.” “What’s pornography?” “In Scott’s drawer. I looked, and it’s pornography. It’s vile. It’s horrible.” I wondered what had gotten into Lori. When had she become so conservative? Perhaps her Pentecostal upbringing was rearing its head. “Lori, you can do so much better than Scott.” I said it from my heart, and I meant it. But heartfelt words rarely saturate the barren ground they are meant to nurture. They just roll right off. Lori went on devising ways to win Scott back, though the concept of back was a dubious one, since he had never in their eight months of having sex called her his girlfriend. I listened to her schemes, but mostly I thought about the dress. If I had a dress like that in my closet, I would be a different woman. A woman with new potential. A woman who expected black tie invitations and assembled her wardrobe accordingly. Such a woman would be likelier to step into a glittering, expansive future than one who was ill-prepared, was she not? The dress was still in my car. I told Lori I would call her right back. When I tried on the dress, I realized, with a sinking feeling, that sometimes more expensive things were genuinely better. My sturdy, middle-class upbringing had worked hard to blind me to this truth, but now it stared at my from my own mirror. The dress elongated my legs, brought out the slender definition of my arms. It gave me the illusion of possessing a figure I never really had. Too short and too plain to be a model. Too this, too that, while at the same time never enough. Until now. 17