ForArtsSake
For the Amelia we all know, and the Daniel we all hope to meet
Y
ou can't help with whom you fall in love; the heart's not that easy.
Beautiful, 22 year old Amelia Fontaine tries to balance college, modeling, work at a dead-end job, and her dreams in Hollywood, but can't seem to meet every demand, especially when the weight of her lovelife is thrown onto the scale. Will a seemingly too-good-to-be-true job advertisement —pinned to a coffee shop bulletin board—help her begin to make demands of her
own
?
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For Art’s Sake
Copyright © 2013
Kai Lu
ISBN: 978-1-77111-499-8
Cover art by Scott Carpenter
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
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For Art’s Sake
By
Kai Lu
For the Amelia we all know, and the Daniel we all hope to meet
Amelia pressed urgently on her brake pedal as the clumsy furniture delivery truck swerving in front of her skidded to a grinding, ponderous halt. The truck driver apparently decided halfway through the intersection of La Cienega and Wilshire Boulevard that he couldn’t beat the red light after all, and had stopped with the hulking vehicle awkwardly, uncomfortably blocking half the crosswalk. Pedestrians crossing Wilshire in both directions gave the driver—a sad, not unpleasant looking older man in a blue work hat—disapproving looks as they made their way around him.
“Slow,” sighed Amelia in answer to the How’s My Driving? sticker on the truck’s rear bumper. “Slow, and clumsy.”
She was supposed to be working the breakfast shift at Café Claire, one of the trendier upscale restaurants in Beverly Hills, but she had begged off coming in today from her boss—a pompous, thirty-five-ish little man named Cyril—telling him that she had gotten a big modeling job and would lose it if she couldn’t have the morning off. Cyril had told her she could indeed have the whole day off if she wanted, but she would have to give up her Friday night shift—the best night to get good tips—to Janice, a girl who had worked at the restaurant a few weeks longer than her, and who was one of Cyril’s favorites. Amelia seriously wondered if Janice and Cyril had slept together. Janice certainly flirted with him a lot. Cyril could be such a jerk.
Cyril-the-jerk probably didn’t really believe she had a big modeling job, but Amelia didn’t care. She probably wouldn’t believe it herself if she were in his shoes, though Amelia would never want to be an officious, five-foot tall, balding man from Whittier who tried to fake a French accent and a savoir faire with women.
She had told him she was a student and also a part-time model when she first interviewed for the waitress job seven months ago, and he had feigned credulity then
—
mostly, Amelia now realized, because he wanted sooner or later to get her into bed. Once it became unmistakably clear that it would happen neither sooner, later, nor ever, Cyril promptly found any and every excuse to nip and tuck at her hours so that she had the least of all nine girls who worked at the restaurant. Cyril was, to his credit, smart enough to do all this in such a way that it appeared perfectly natural and not the least bit punitive. Amelia told herself she would file for harassment or quit, but, like many things she promised herself, she didn’t follow through and she always showed up her next scheduled day.
“I’m a masochist,” she once told herself in the bathroom mirror as she brushed her teeth, bracing herself to endure eight hours of Cyril’s high-pitched, nasal flirtations. “A masochist, or at the very least, a coward.”
At least today, sitting in her car driving straight down Wilshire Boulevard from Korea Town to Beverly Hills, the four-times-a-week self-torture routine was broken, if only for one day. Maybe more, if it all worked out as she hoped and the whole thing wasn’t as crazy as it sounded over the telephone.
Traffic, while interminable, still allowed time for reflection. In the absence of anything on the radio beyond inane commercials for cars she couldn’t afford and songs she couldn’t stand, her thoughts drifted to last night, and how one phone call had set in motion a chain of events that might yet allow her to tell her boss to go fuck himself.
It was just a plain, black and white letter-sized ad tacked onto the coffee shop bulletin board—Amelia stopped there almost every day after work or school to buy a nonfat cafe latte and to engage in a harmless flirtation with the owner—next to a plethora of flyers for concerts, fitness clubs, and missing pets. Sometimes the sugar and creamer table was so crowded with such flyers that one couldn’t find the sugar and creamer anymore, but with her steaming latte in her hand, Amelia was glad this time that she didn’t see the sugar first. The ad wouldn’t have stood out except for the fact that it was tacked to the wall and the word Models was written in bold, black print across the top. Below it, tiny in comparison, were the words wanted for artist, $200 per day. Lower still were little tear-off tabs listing the advertiser’s telephone number. That was all. No name, email address, or specifics. Amelia saw that no one had torn off any tabs yet, and, somewhat shamefacedly, she slyly pulled the ad off the corkboard, folded it in half and slipped it into her purse.
Normally such a cryptic, nondescript ad wouldn’t even capture her notice, but it was so ambiguous—and Amelia was at that moment so unambiguously strapped for funds—that despite all the red flags her years of experience put up, she found herself dialing the number a few minutes after six in the evening, walking the few hundred yards home from the coffee house. In choosing to do so she experienced one of the shorter, more fascinating conversations of her young life.
“Hello?” a mild, male voice answered after four rings.
“Hi, yes, I’m calling about your ad.”
“My ad?”
“Yes, the one from the coffee shop in KoTo—models wanted for artist.”
“Oh yes, I only just put out the one flyer today. I was downtown for business and stopped at The Coffee Cove on my way back.” The voice paused for a moment, as if considering, then added, “Come to my studio at one twenty five Robertson Boulevard, Beverly Hills, between Olympic and Pico. Is nine o’clock tomorrow morning okay for you?”
Amelia was taken aback slightly, and looked at her cell phone as if it had unexpectedly nibbled her earlobe.
“I… um… oh…”
“Too early?” the voice continued without emotion, in a flowing, slightly melodic tone that had a curiously hypnotizing effect on her.
“No—no…” Amelia stammered, a bit flustered. “I mean, nine is good, I just thought…”
“Yes?”
“Don’t you want to know any information about me? I mean, my name, height, weight, hair color, age, and all that?”
“Would you not like more information about me?” the voice countered, the tone unerringly calm and reassuring, almost like audible silk.
“Well… Yes,” Amelia confessed.
“Good. We can talk about it tomorrow morning at nine, then, face to face. If I can use you, I will. If you can use me, you should. If we can’t use each other, we turn around, and no harm done, correct?”
“I—I guess—I mean, I suppose so. But, the… I was wondering, will there be other models there?”
“I don’t even think you’ll be there, let alone anyone else,” replied the temperate voice in a lighthearted tone, though the speaker didn’t sound as if he was actually smiling.
“Huh? Uh, I mean, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. To sound so rude, I mean. I just don’t understand.”
“People answer my ads all the time,” the voice explained suavely, polite but not quite familiar, “but when I tell them about my studio and my art over the phone they usually hang up quickly. The two hundred dollars a day—they think it’s a trick, or some kind of bizarre sex thing, or pornography, or some other crazy scam. Their loss. So, I’ve stopped being specific in my ads or over the telephone, and ask people to come to my studio to see for themselves what it’s all about. The few people who have actually worked with me have never complained about their experience. Most of them have come back to work with me again and again.”
What is it all about? Amelia burned to ask aloud.
“Do you prefer male models, or female models?” she asked rather pointlessly instead, nibbling her lip nervously. “Your ad has so little to say.”
“I take both, but that’s irrelevant. Are you a model?” the voice replied, with a precise patience and smoothness that intertwined incongruously with Amelia’s clumsy stammering. “And, are you a professional?”
“I… Yes, I am. Both.”
“And so am I,” the voice rejoindered mildly. “A professional, I mean—who works only with other professionals. You see? I trust your honesty and good faith, so now you must trust me if we are to be successful. I’ll see you tomorrow at nine, if you’ll actually come. One twenty five Robertson.”
“I will,” Amelia began, intrigued and a little scared, but the man on the other end had already hung up. She put her nearly wallet-sized cell phone in her purse, breathed a lungful of cold, night air, and wondered if she was crazy to actually want to go. Her latte had gone cold, she realized.
If you’ll actually go…
She laughed quietly at herself, gave a dollar to a homeless man sitting on the sidewalk, and, after a moment, gave him her latte, too.
“I’ll find a way to make it taste better,” the smiling derelict had reassured her when she informed him it was cold. Taking a glance back a few strides later she saw him removing a small bottle from his grease-stained military parka.
At least you’re honest, she thought, walking into the foyer of her apartment building.
One twenty five Robertson Boulevard, she repeated to herself silently as the 1930s-vintage steel elevator doors closed around her and brought her to her third floor apartment. She decided to study and go to bed early, in order to make her appointment on time.
But she couldn’t study, and she couldn’t sleep, either.
All that night, lying naked on her fold-down bed in the dark, she found thousands of reasons why she shouldn’t go swimming intermittently through her thoughts, even though she had already called Cyril only minutes after speaking with the mysterious stranger to ask for the next morning off. Perhaps this artist was some sort of pervert, or predator… Maybe he was a kidnapper, or psycho, a million times worse than tiny little Cyril and his bad toupees.
Cyril…that pompous little bastard. He claimed to be a native New Yorker
—
what was with the French accent, then? It wasn’t part of an overall theme for his restaurant, for he even went so far as to use the accent when he wasn’t around customers. Had he worn a beret, grown an eyebrow pencil mustache and carried baguettes, he could have carried the caricature to perfection. How he happened to manage such a popular restaurant in such a nice area was beyond Amelia’s powers of deduction. Amelia sighed, hints of guilty curiosity lacing her next thoughts—maybe he at least fucks like a Frenchman.