Emerald City Part 4

"Two years ago," Anouschka said in her heavy accent. "It's okay, but when you take the morning airplanes, you see the j.a.panese men are coughing their lungs into the trash cans. They smoke like crazy," she concluded, wagging her cigarette between two fingers. Rory listened miserably; poor Stacey was barely surviving in New York and here was Anouschka, who not only had been to j.a.pan but had the luxury of complaining about it. He rattled the ice in his gla.s.s and impatiently cleared his throat.

Anouschka glanced at him and turned serious. "Still," she said, "the culture of j.a.pan is quite important."

"The culture?" Inge said.

"You know, the museums and this sort of thing."

Vesuvi, who had seemed on the verge of sleep, roused himself and turned to Anouschka. "You, inside a museum?" he said. "That I don't see."

The girl looked startled.

"You must have gone there on location," he said.

"Not location! I went for fun. How do you know what I do?"

Vesuvi shrugged and sat back in his chair, his lazy eyes filled with amus.e.m.e.nt. Anouschka blushed to the neck; the pink tinge seemed at odds with her extravagant face. Helplessly she turned to Stacey. "You have been to j.a.pan?" she asked.

"I wish."

"But Milano, yes?"

"No," Stacey said, and Rory noticed with surprise that her drink was almost gone. Normally one c.o.c.ktail would last Stacey an entire night, her sips were so tiny.

"Paris?"

Stacey shook her head, and Rory noticed a change in Anouschka's face as she sensed her advantage. The others were quiet. Vesuvi sat forward, looking from Anouschka to Stacey with great interest, as if they were posing for him.

"You never worked in Paris? I think everyone has worked in Paris."

"I've never been to Paris," Stacey said.

"London? Munich?" Anouschka turned to the other girls, confirming her surprise. Though she didn't glance at Rory, he sensed that all this was meant for him, and felt a strange, guilty collusion with her. He saw Stacey's hand shake as she lifted her gla.s.s, and was overcome with sudden and absolute hatred for Anouschka-he had never hated anyone this way. He stared at her, the gush of hair, the bruised-looking mouth; she was ugly, as the man had said today. Ugly and beautiful. Confused, Rory looked away.

"So," Anouschka said, "what places you have been?"

Stacey didn't answer at first. She looked double-jointed in her chair, heaped like a marionette.

"I've been to New York," she said.

There was a beat of silence. "New York," Anouschka said.

Vesuvi started to laugh. He had a loud, explosive laugh that startled Rory at first. He had never heard it before. "New York!" Vesuvi cried. "That's priceless."

Stacey smiled. She seemed as surprised as everyone else.

Vesuvi rocked forward in his chair, so that his heavy boots pounded the floor. "I love it," he said. "New York. What a perfect comeback." Anouschka just stared at him.

It began to seem very funny, all of a sudden.

A chuckle pa.s.sed through the group like a current. Rory found himself laughing without knowing why; it was enough for him that Vesuvi had a reason. His boss gazed at Stacey in the soft-eyed way he looked at models when a shoot was going well. "It's a h.e.l.l of a place, New York," he said. "No?"

"The best," Stacey said.

"But she has gone only here!" Anouschka protested. "How does she know?"

"Oh, she knows," Rory said. He felt reckless, dizzy with the urge to make Anouschka angry. "You don't get it, do you?" he said.

"What can I get when there is nothing?" she retorted. But she looked uncertain.

Vesuvi dabbed with a napkin at his heavy-lidded eyes. "Next time you go to New York," he told Stacey, "take me with you."

This was too much for Anouschka. "f.u.c.k you!" she cried, jumping to her feet. "I am in New York. You are in New York. Here is New York!"

But laughter had seized the table, and Anouschka's protests only made it worse. She stood helplessly while everyone laughed, Rory hooting all the louder to keep her in her place.

"That's it," she said. "Goodbye."

"Go back to j.a.pan," Rory cried. He had trouble catching his breath.

Anouschka fixed her eyes on him. Her makeup made them look burned at the rims, and the irises were a bright, clear green. He thought she might do something crazy-he'd heard she once punctured an ex-boyfriend's upper lip by hurling a fork at him. He stopped laughing and gripped the table's edge, poised for sudden movement. To his astonishment, the charred-looking eyes filled with tears. "I hate you, Rory," she said.

She yanked her bag from under the table and hoisted it onto her shoulder. Her long hair stuck to her wet cheeks as she struggled to free her jacket from the chair. Rory thought of his high school lunchroom: girls stalking out mad, clattering trays, their long, skinny legs skittering on high-heeled shoes. He felt a pang of nostalgia. She was just a kid, Anouschka-so much younger than he was.

"Hey," Vesuvi said, standing and putting his arms around Anouschka. "Hey, we're just having a joke."

"Go to h.e.l.l with your joke." She turned her face away so that no one could see her crying.

Vesuvi stroked her back. "Hey now," he said.

Chastened, the group sat in guilty silence. Stacey and Rory traded a look and stood up. No one protested as they slid their jackets on, but when Rory opened his wallet to pay for their drinks, Vesuvi winced and waved it away. Anouschka still clung to him, her face buried in his neck.

Vesuvi spoke to Stacey in a lowered voice. "I've got something coming up you'd be perfect for," he said. "Who are you with again?"

Stacey told him the name of her agency, barely able to contain her joy. Rory listened unhappily; Vesuvi said this all the time to girls, and forgot the next minute. It was just a pleasant salutation.

They left the restaurant and headed toward the East Village. Rory longed to reach for Stacey's hand, but she seemed far away from him now, lost in her thoughts. Outside a market, a boy was perched on a stool cutting the heads off beans. A barber swept thick tufts of dark hair into one corner of his shop. From an overhead window came music, and Rory craned his neck to catch a glimpse of someone's arm, a lighted cigarette. The familiarity of it all was sweet and painful to him. He searched the dark shopfronts for something, some final thing at the core of everything else, but he found just his own reflection and Stacey's. Their eyes met in the gla.s.s, then flicked away. And it struck him that this was New York: a place that glittered from a distance even when you reached it.

They climbed the four flights of steps to Rory's apartment. A slit of light shone under the door, which meant Charles was back. They found him standing at the kitchen table, wiping a slab of red meat with a paper towel. He had a blowtorch plugged into the wall, and a dismantled smoke alarm lay at his feet.

"You poor thing," Stacey said, kissing him on the cheek. "You never stop working."

Charles's mouth was like a cat's, small and upturned at the corners. It made him seem happy even when he wasn't. "Meat is my weak point," he said. "I've got a job tomorrow doing steak."

He was prematurely balding, and Rory admired the look of hards.h.i.+p and triumph this gave him. Lately he'd searched his own hairline for signs of recession, but the blond surfer's mane seemed even more prolific. Most cruel of all, it was Charles who'd been born and raised in Santa Cruz.

"Here goes," Charles said, firing up the blowtorch. They watched as he moved the flame slowly over the meat, back and forth as if he were mowing a lawn. Its surface turned a pale gray. When the entire side was done, he flipped the steak over and lightly cooked its other side.

"Ugh," said Stacey. "It's still completely raw."

"Wait," Charles said.

He held a long metal spit to the flame until it glowed red. Then he pressed the spit to the meat. There was a hiss, a smell of cooking, and when he lifted the spit, a long black stripe branded the steak. He heated the spit several more times and pressed it to the meat at parallel intervals. Soon it was indistinguishable from a medium-rare steak straight off the grill. Rory felt an irrational surge of appet.i.te, a longing to eat the meat in spite of knowing it was raw and cold.

Stacey opened the refrigerator. Rory always kept a supply of c.o.kes for her in there; Diet, of course, but also some regulars in case she had earned one that day and not yet rewarded herself. To his surprise, she pulled out a can of regular now.

"What the h.e.l.l," she said. "I mean, really, what difference does it make?"

Rory stared at her. She had never said anything like this before. "What about Vesuvi?" he asked, regretting it even as he spoke.

"Vesuvi won't hire me. You know it perfectly well."

She was smiling at him, and Rory felt as if she had peered into the lying depths of his soul. "Vesuvi doesn't know s.h.i.+t," he said, but it sounded lame even to himself.

Stacey slid open the window and climbed out onto the fire escape. The sky was a strange, sulfurous yellow-beautiful, yet seemingly disconnected from nature. The shabby tree behind Rory's building was empty of leaves, and made a pattern of cracked gla.s.s against the sky. Stacey drank her c.o.ke in tiny, careful sips. Rory stood helplessly inside the window, watching her. He needed to say something to her, he knew that, but he wasn't sure how.

He shook a cigarette from his pack and placed it in his mouth. Charles was working on a second steak. "By the way," Charles said, pointing with his chin at a spot near Rory's head, "I baked us a cake-a real one."

Rory turned in surprise and lifted a plate from above the refrigerator. It was a tall, elegant cake with giant dollops of whipped cream along its edges. "Charles," Rory said, confused, "haven't you been doing this all week?"

"Yeah," Charles said, "but always for strangers. And never to eat."

He bent over the steak, his blowtorch hissing on the damp meat. He looked embarra.s.sed, as if his preference for real cake were a weakness he rarely confided. Charles's honesty shamed Rory-he said what he felt, not caring how it sounded.

Rory climbed out the window and sat beside Stacey. The bars of the fire escape felt cold through his jeans. Stacey held her c.o.ke in one hand and took Rory's hand in the other. They looked at the yellow sky and held hands tightly, as if something were about to happen.

Rory's heart beat quickly. "So maybe it doesn't work," he said. "The modeling. Maybe that just won't happen."

He searched her face for some sign of surprise, but there was none. She watched him calmly, and for the first time Rory felt that Stacey was older than he, that her mind contained things he knew nothing of. She stood up and handed her c.o.ke to Rory. Then she grasped the railing of the fire escape and lifted her body into a handstand. Rory held his breath, watching in alarmed amazement as the slender wand of her body swayed against the yellow sky. She had no trouble balancing, and hovered there for what seemed a long time before finally bending at the waist, lowering her feet, and standing straight again.

"If it doesn't work," she said, "then I'll see the world some other way."

She took Rory's face in her hands and kissed him on the mouth-hard, with the fierce, tender urgency of someone about to board a train. Then she turned and looked at the sky. Rory stared at her, oddly frightened to think that she would do it, she would find some way. He pictured Stacey in a distant place, looking back on him, on this world of theirs as if it were a bright, glittering dream she had once believed in.

"Take me with you," he said.

THE STYLIST.

When they finally reach the dunes, Jann, the photographer, opens a silver umbrella. This is the last shot of the day. The light is rich and slanted. Around them the sand lies in sparkling heaps, like piles of gla.s.s silt.

A girl toes the sand. She wears a short cotton skirt, a loose T-s.h.i.+rt. A few feet away from her the stylist pokes through a suitcase filled with designer bathing suits. The stylist's name is Bernadette. She's been doing this for years.

"Here," she says, handing the girl a bikini. It is made of s.h.i.+ny red material. The girl glances at Jann, who is busy loading his camera. She slips her underpants from beneath the skirt and pulls on the bathing-suit bottom. She is not close to twenty yet.

"Is this the cover shot?" asks the girl, whose name is Alice. Each time she's in a shot she asks this question.

"Where were you two months ago?" the stylist says.

"What do you mean?" Alice's face is diamond-shaped. Her eyes are filled with gold.

"I mean where were you two months ago?" Bernadette asks again."

"I was home. They hadn't found me yet." "Home is where?"

"Rockford, Illinois."

"Cover shot or not," Bernadette tells the girl, "it seems to me you aren't doing too badly."

This takes Alice by surprise. Her mouth opens as if to answer, but instead she turns away and lifts the T-s.h.i.+rt over her head. There is something despairing in the movement of her shoulders. She covers each of her small b.r.e.a.s.t.s with half of the red bathing-suit top. Bernadette ties the straps. Alice stares for a moment at the waves, which are pale blue and disorderly.

"Where are we again?" she asks.

"Lamu," says Bernadette.

Hair and Makeup arrive, panting from the walk. Nick, the makeup man, begins to work on the girl's eyes. She hugs herself.

"Where were we yesterday?" she asks.

"Mombasa," says Bernadette.

The photographer is ready. The silver umbrellas are raised to gather the light. He holds a light meter to the girl's chest. Hair and Makeup share a cigarette. There are two other models on this trip, and they watch from a distance. The sea mumbles against the dunes. The girl looks especially bare, surrounded by people who are dressed. She is still so new the camera frightens her. Jann has removed it from his tripod and is holding it near her face. "This face," he says, pausing to glance at the rest of them. "Will you look at this face?"

They look. It is delicate as a birdcage. Jann squints behind his camera. The rhythm of the shutter mingles with the breaking waves. Catching it, the girl begins to move.

"There," cries Jann, "that's it!"

They look again. Bernadette looks and sees it, too, feels the others see it. In the way the light falls, there is something; in the girl's restless hands, her sad mouth. A stillness falls. She is more than a skinny young girl on a beach; she is any young girl, sad and longhaired, watching a frail line of horizon. The camera clicks. Then the moment pa.s.ses.

Alice leans down and scratches at her knee. Bernadette looks at Jann and sees him smiling.

"Bingo," he says.

In town the wind blows, filling the air with dust and tissue candy wrappers. There are lots of widows in Lamu, old squat women who clutch their dark veils against the wind. In the market square they hunch beside baskets of dried fruit, seeds, purple grain. The air smells burned.

The group is staying in an old two-story hotel near the waterfront-the sort of place that conjures up piano players and rough men toasting their motherlands. It reminds Bernadette of the hotel in New Orleans where she spent her honeymoon. Like that hotel, this place has ceiling fans. Last night she lay in bed and watched hers spin.

After dinner, Alice tells of how she was discovered. It happened at the shopping mall, she says. All the girls walked through. You had to bring snapshots. She had one of herself riding on her brother's shoulders. The two other models look bored with the story.

Bernadette lights a cigarette. She turns to Jann, who is flipping through a magazine. "What does this remind you of?" she says.

He looks up, his blond eyebrows raised. He is gentle and brawny, like a Viking from a children's book.