I was getting ready to go up and introduce myself and ask if we could have a word together in private — because maybe if Mr Stark met me and saw what I was like, he might reconsider the whole making my parents pay back the two million dollars if I didn’t honour Nikki’s contract with Stark… and also might tell me why he’d given Nikki a computer that was loaded with keystroke-monitoring software.
But just as I was about to take a step in Mr Stark’s direction, someone grabbed me and wrapped me in a fierce hug.
‘There you are!’ cried a woman’s voice — gravelly, and big, to match the hug. ‘Oh, my God, I can’t believe how long it’s been! I wanted to come see you in the hospital, but they had those damned family visitation-only restrictions! But I’m her agent! I’m family, I told them. No deal. Well, let me look at you.’
I was held at arm’s length while a dark-haired middle-aged woman, whippet-thin, in a cream-coloured skirt suit examined me from head to foot.
‘Gorgeous, as always,’ she concluded when she was done checking me out. ‘Couldn’t be more gorgeous. Oh, but you don’t have the foggiest idea who I am, do you? You really did get a bump on the head!’
‘Um,’ I said, glancing past the woman at Robert Stark, who was complaining to someone about the cufflinks on his tuxedo shirt, which appeared to keep coming undone. ‘You’re Rebecca, my agent?’
‘That’s right, that’s right!’ She flung her arms around me again.
‘Rebecca Lowell! Thank God you’re all right. If anything had happened to you… well, I don’t know what I’d have done!’
‘Run straight back to that trailer park in the Ozarks to see if she could find someone else to pluck from obscurity,’ said a man in leather trousers with a pencil moustache drily.
‘Oh, hush,’ Rebecca said to the leather trousers man. To me, she said, ‘I know this is probably all very overwhelming. But you’ve always been a natural and I know you’ll snap back in no time. And speaking of being a natural… how excited are you about SI? Oh, Nikki, when I heard, my heart… well, I just thought I’d cry!’
‘Step away from the talent, Rebecca,’ Pencil Moustache said. ‘Now that she’s here we can finally get to work.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, Raoul,’ Rebecca said, still hanging on to me. ‘It’s just that when I think how close she came to death—’
I wondered how she’d react if I told her her client Nikki really had died. Just not legally in the state of New York.
‘Yes, well, I’ll take good care of her for now, Bec.’ The man she’d called Raoul took me by the arm and said, ‘We’ve met before, Nikki, but you don’t remember, I see. Which is a crushing blow from which I doubt I’ll soon recover. Never mind. Hop up on to this desk here so Pete can check the lighting —’
Obediently, I hopped up on to the enormous mahogany desk — after first checking to make sure my diaphanous dress was covering everything it was supposed to be covering. Which it wasn’t doing the world’s best job of. My nipples were kind of showing…
‘Yes, yes,’ Raoul said, totally noticing what I thought I was doing so subtly. ‘Never mind that now, we’ve all seen it before. Now roll over and stick your heels in the air — elbows up, chin in your hands — Norman, hair.’ Norman darted forward to arrange my hair as I let Raoul twist me into a completely uncomfortable — even painful — position on the desk. ‘Yes, that’s better. All right, gentlemen, places.’
I couldn’t see what was going on behind me, because I was trying to hold my painful pose. But I suppose Mr Stark and his son went back to their places, since Raoul said, ‘Good, good. Let’s take some Polaroids.’
Well, I thought to myself as the photographer, Gwen, started snapping away. This isn’t so bad. Why had Lulu laughed so much when I asked how hard modelling can be? It’s not exactly difficult… although my neck kind of hurts. And I think there’s some mascara in my eye. And –
‘Nikki, Nikki,’ Raoul said. ‘Can you try not to look like you’re in pain? I know you are, darling, but don’t think about it. Think about lovely things, will you? Lovely thoughts, lovely face —’
I realized with horror that I’d been grimacing. I immediately plastered a huge smile on to my face.
‘Not quite that lovely, Nikki,’ Raoul intoned. ‘This isn’t a Sears portrait studio. Relax your mouth. Think dewy… Denise, can you make her lips more dewy? There. There. Now, a few more —’
And then Raoul and everyone gathered around to look at the Polaroids as they developed. So I started to sit up. Now, I thought, would be the perfect time to speak to Mr Stark –
‘Nikki, darling,’ Rebecca called sweetly from somewhere beyond the circle of white light thrown by the kliegs, so I couldn’t see her, ‘where do you think you’re going?’
‘Um,’ I said. ‘To change back into my real clothes?’
‘The shoot’s not over,’ I heard Brandon say with a smirk. ‘It hasn’t even begun.’
‘But —’ I looked at the dozens of Polaroids now being dropped indifferently to the floor.
‘Test shots,’ Brandon said. ‘God. What, did you get a little too much wind between your ears riding around on the back of that scrub’s scooter?’
I bristled. ‘For your information, Gabriel Luna is a very hard-working singer-songwriter, and not a scrub… unlike some people I could mention.’
Brandon stuck out his chin. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘For your information, I’ve got several production deals in the works right now… not to mention I’m recording my own album.’
Yeah, I wanted to snarl. With your dad’s money. But I didn’t dare, with his father standing right there. Checking his emails on his — non-Stark-brand — Blackberry, but still. He could have been listening.
Knowing what I knew about Nikki’s computer, I didn’t doubt he was.
‘No bickering, children,’ Rebecca called from the darkness beyond the desk. ‘And Raoul will tell you when you can relax, Nikki.’
And that’s when I began to realize why Lulu had laughed at me when I’d said modelling was easy.
There is nothing easy about it.
Unless you think it’s easy trying to look dewy and think lovely thoughts while twisting your body into the most uncomfortable position possible at the same time you’re trying not to mess up your make-up or expose a nipple while wearing five-inch heel shoes and trying not to notice how incredibly hot your jerk of an ex-boyfriend is.
Because allow me to assure you, it’s not.
Especially when you’re doing it for the first time, and in somebody else’s body.
Eighteen
It was nearly two hours later before Raoul got enough shots he thought he could use. I had to do a bunch more different poses. Some of them involved me biting into a big red apple. That was fake. And tasted like dirt.
Another pose I had to do involved hanging off Brandon Stark’s shoulders like I was one of those baby rhesus monkeys, clinging to their mothers. I said I thought that pose was kind of misogynistic, because it implied that women are helpless and need a big strong man to support them.
I mostly just said that because draping myself over Brandon that way reminded me of how fun kissing him had been, and made me want to kiss him again, which, considering how mad he was at me about Gabriel — and the fact that I’m crushing on someone else entirely — didn’t seem like it would be the best idea.
Raoul didn’t take my advice anyway though. And Rebecca took me aside and asked if I had a fever.