Part 6 (1/2)
Developers discovered that there was a rub, naturally, because if it was easy, it would have been done already. The property had three lienholders, all of whom wanted to sell or develop immediately, and an heir, Katherine Lancaster, who didn't. Katherine wanted to bring gla.s.smaking back to Brooklyn. She was the only reason the building had not been converted into condos, though the activists who believed New York didn't need one more luxury condo liked to think they had something to do with scuttling deal after deal. The developers, for their part, were patient. They just waited for Katherine to die. In the meantime, she collected nice checks by renting out the s.p.a.ce for fas.h.i.+on shoots and movies.
Laura followed South Second to the water. The Lancaster Gla.s.s building stood in the middle of an empty waterfront like a big erection at the edge of the earth. Yellow signs with arrows that said, cryptically, LAMPPOST, directed her to the waterside entrance. The elevator operator had a clipboard. She knew him, so he let her in and clicked the doors behind her. Olly was a good guy with a crackerjack memory for faces. He loved operating elevators more than anything in the world, and even put on his uniform for his two-hour moonlighting gig in Williamsburg.
”Hey, Olly,” she said. ”Who's here?”
”Craft services is on eleven. Safety people. They're the ones with the ropes and nets, right?”
”I guess.”
”Your photographer and his a.s.sistants got here. He's a little...” Olly rotated his index finger around his ear.
She nodded. ”Yeah.”
”The model came early, and he smelled her breath. Like a puppy, he did it. Then he whispered in this other girl's ear, and she said, 'Chase thanks you for not puking before the shoot and wants you to know it won't be allowed.' I tell you, I wanted to puke a little on his shoes just to see what he'd do.”
”Scream like a tropical bird is what,” she said. ”The smell makes him crazy.”
He slid open the doors and winked at her. ”Eleven. Coffee to the left.”
Coffee was exactly what she had on her mind. She mixed herself a cup, then went directly to the roof, where the shoot was to take place. At some point, she may even have drunk a little, but the next hour was lost in preparation and details with interns, makeup with Monty, clothing with Maria and Carlos from the sample room, accessories that arrived in trashed wheeled suitcases, and Ruby, who showed up a minute before Rowena came from behind the curtain.
”You all right?” Laura asked.
”They taped off my apartment. I can't even get in.”
”Did they tell you anything about why they were there?”
”No.” She shook her head as if trying to loosen the gears. ”How is Chase doing?”
The photographer, with his signature long mop of curly black hair and pageboy cap, was doing what he always did before a shoot, holding his camera at his chest, standing directly in the way, and staring into s.p.a.ce. He spoke to no one, having briefed his all-female team beforehand by whispering instructions in their ears. They set up a net over the edge of the building, and then another, larger one a few stories down, and a dangling shelf for Chase and his silent camera.
”He's not happy about Rowena,” Laura said. ”Thomasina worked with him a hundred times. She could read his mind. Rowena, he's going to have to speak to. And she was obviously out last night.”
He stood there until the sun was in the right place in the sky, and his team, like a well-trained squad of a.s.sa.s.sins, stopped talking and puttering when he held out his hand. The person in charge of the music started the thumpity-thumps, and Rowena stepped out from behind the curtain in a silk tulle dress that looked like twenty yards of fabric wrapped around her and sewn shut.
”She can't walk,” Ruby said.
”That's the point.”
”You did that because you didn't like Thomasina. Now how do you feel?”
”I feel like she looks exactly like Thomasina, but with a different face and an accent I can understand most of the time.” Laura took the purple capsule out of her pocket. ”You ever seen one of these before?”
Ruby barely glanced at it before she said, ”It's probably a vitamin.”
”Vitamins don't come in lilac.”
”How would you know?”
”It looks like someone emptied grape Pixy Stix into a clear capsule. And what's with you getting defensive about a pill that you don't even know where I got it?”
”I just feel bad for Rowena, and it's your fault she can't walk.”
Laura suspected there was more to it, but Ruby was sour and puckered, so she let it drop.
The shoot was simple. The model stood over the ledge in the dress she couldn't walk in and tipped over so the view to the city spanned below her. The imagery was going to be gorgeous, hashed out between the four of them: Laura, Ruby, Thomasina, and Chase, who nodded, grunted, or hissed. There would be a net, safety gear, and a dress so tight the tension of the scene would be palpable enough to make the pages sweat. The key to that had been Thomasina's agreement to look as though she were falling twenty-five stories, which Laura didn't realize until Rowena came out of dressing in an ankle-length skirt that she expected to be able to walk in, but couldn't.
Chase motioned with his hands, and Rowena moved all six feet of her fabric-bound legs as far as she could, while looking completely inaccessible to either gender for s.e.x, friends.h.i.+p, or a two-dollar cup of coffee. She turned sideways, and Laura noticed the bones in her arms and thought she might actually be thinner than the last show, as if some internal organs and musculature had been removed so her skin could adhere better to her bones. But what stood out the most was that, for all her lack of preparation, Rowena was dis.h.i.+ng it out. If Chase was doing his job, the shoot was going to send girls all over the country tumbling over rooftops.
Laura turned just in time to see Roquelle Rik walking over to her.
”This was slick,” Roquelle said, sipping creamy coffee from a vintage chintz cup. Laura was pretty sure the coffee and the cup had come from Marlene X, the breakfast joint on Third that was filled with models, wannabe models, agents, producers both real and fake, fas.h.i.+on hangers-on, and the occasional hot designer seeking an undiscovered look.
Laura fondled a nondescript paper cup holding her now-cold coffee. She'd been to Marlene X once and had been caught without cash, which was all they took. She had been mortified and never returned.
Roquelle seemed to sense Laura's thoughts, like a cat, and played on them, like a b.i.t.c.h, when she said, ”My girl dies, and you two don't miss a beat.”
Mortification notwithstanding, Laura's mouth functioned fine as she snapped, ”Please, if I'd died on Sat.u.r.day afternoon, Thomasina wouldn't have missed a Sunday brunch over it.”
Roquelle clicked her cup into the saucer, and they watched things progress at the building ledge. ”n.o.body would, but she wouldn't have been so public about it.”
Laura turned to Roquelle to see her expression because the tone was too flat for her to make out the sentiment.
The modeling agent smiled. ”She was a cla.s.s act. And lots of people knew it. Oh, and don't start with the whole Ruby-runway thing. It was a moment of pique. I hear you've had your own.”
Laura turned back to the shoot, her shoot. Rowena swung her arm up, then down, and made a big circle with her other arm. Laura was sure the woman was headed over the edge. Even with the net, it was scary, and her instinctual mind refused to believe Rowena would be caught. But the model righted herself, swung left, and growled at the camera, which clicked. Even Chase made a shocked sound. Rowena seemed to be getting tired, and he held up a hand. His team dropped everything and scuttled around, picking things up, and one brought Chase a container full of something brown and gritty. Someone handed Rowena a small bowl of almonds.
”Nicely done,” Roquelle said. ”You make them beautiful, then throw them off buildings. You're playing on public disdain. Everyone else is doing aspiration.”
”That wasn't my intention.”
”Of course not.” Roquelle went over to Rowena. She spoke in a soft voice and stroked the model's hair.
Laura felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to see Monty, Jeremy's special style guy, and now hers by dint of the fact that she apparently had no career outside of her old boss. They air-kissed, but she somehow did the wrong side first, and they wound up pressing cheeks together.
”You were brilliant yesterday,” he whispered.
”Maybe you can help me with today?”
”How is Ruby holding up?”
”Great.”
”Can I do something with your face?” Monty asked, continuing a line of badgering that had been going on for at least two years. ”Please?” His cartoonish pleading wasn't new, but Laura was feeling dish-raggy from the picture in the paper, so she sat in his chair.
The first thing he did was put drops in her eyes. ”Your eyes are red as a lobster. Didn't you sleep?”
Laura didn't feel like answering any questions about her insomnia. ”How's Rowena behaving?”
”She's forever in the bathroom. Like a diva already.”