9/2/2023 0 Comments Emerald city timeEight months before, after a year’s meticulous planning, she had bought her own ticket to New York from Cincinnati. She looked slaphappy, the way she looked sometimes after a second gin and tonic. ‘It’s crazy,’ Rory said, watching Stacey uneasily. ‘I mean, here I am,’ she said, ‘killing myself to stay thin, hot-oiling my hair, getting my nails done, and what does he tell me? I’m not ugly enough!’ She lay back on the bed and let the laughter shake her. He saw tears in her eyes and felt helpless. If a girl isn’t ugly, I won’t use her.” ’ Look at those girls, they’re monsters – gorgeous, mythical monsters. So you know what he finally says? I’m not ugly enough. ‘On my next go-see the guy kept looking at me and flipping back and forth through my book, and of course I’m thinking, Fantastic, he’s going to hire me. ‘And that was nothing,’ Stacey continued. ‘I’m too commercial.’ She shrugged, but Rory could see she was troubled. ‘What happened at Bazaar?’ Rory asked, perching on the edge of the bed. She weighed herself each morning, and when she was under 120, she allowed herself a real Coke that day. Rory longed to bring it up, to talk it over with her, but he was afraid to. ‘If I make it,’ she said, ‘they’ll be happy to call me whatever.’ She never acknowledged that she was failing, though it was obvious. Stacey – when girls with names like Zane and Anouschka and Brid regularly slipped him their phone numbers during shoots. He took the subway uptown to visit Stacey, a failing model whom he adored against all reason. This was the way he’d expected New York to look, and he was thrilled when the city complied. Twilight was his favorite hour – metal gates sliding down over storefronts, newspapers whirling from the sidewalk into the sky, an air of promise and abandonment. Rory swept the debris into bags, then he turned out the lights, locked up the studio, and headed down to the street. He didn’t want Vesuvi to get the wrong idea. He was blessed with a marvelous paunch, which Rory tried not to admire too openly. Vesuvi was one of those people who always had somewhere to go. He was always the last to leave his boss, Vesuvi, would hand him the camera as soon as the last shot was done and then swan out through the sea of film containers, plastic cups, and discarded sheets of backdrop paper. Rory stubbed out his cigarette and checked to make sure the lights were off in the darkroom. He took up smoking instead, although it burned his throat. But no matter how much Rory ate, he stayed exactly the same. Beefy was the way to go not fat, just a classic paunch above the belt. His other option was to gain or lose some weight, but the starved look had lost its appeal – any suggestion of illness was to be avoided. So there it hung, golden, straight as paper, reminiscent of beaches he’d never seen, being as he was from Chicago (in Chicago there was the lake, but that didn’t count). What could you do with sandy blond hair – cut it off? Short hair was on the wane, at least for men. As he watched the models move, he sometimes worried he was still too California. He was a photographer’s assistant, loading cameras all day, holding up light meters, waving Polaroids until they were dry enough to tear open. He’d intended to snort cocaine, but by the time he arrived, that was out. Nights in frantic clubs, mornings hunched over coffee in the East Village, warming his hands on the cup, black pants, black turtleneck, pointed black boots. He saw the apartment, small but high-ceilinged, a tall, sooty window with a fire escape twisting past a chemical-pink sky. He’d read about it in novels by hip young authors who lived there. Rory knew before he came to New York what sort of life he would have.
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