Waking Beauty (7 page)

I tried not to think about singing or Nathan as I headed for the last stop on my cleaning journey: IZ Talent Management. A misnomer if you asked me. It wasn’t talent that was being managed, but genetic fortuity. I unlocked the vast double doors and rolled on in. Usually I only had to contend with myriad photos of perfect-looking people, lining every wall, and myriad photos of slightly less-than-perfect people smiling up from the garbage cans where they had been unceremoniously stuffed. That was Monday to Thursday. On Friday nights, it was far more annoying. On Friday nights, the co-owner, Peter Igel, would hang around and hold late-night confabs in his lavish corner office. Peter Igel looked to be in his late forties or early fifties. He had lank blond hair and a ruddy, borderline rosacea, complexion. He was fit, trim, and expensively dressed—so well dressed that, initially, I assumed he was gay. I soon discovered otherwise. It was either my second or third Friday on the job when I rolled my cart past his glassed-in office and saw him clawing the clothes off of a Naomi Campbell look-alike. The Friday after that, I caught him in a lip lock with a bony brunette. A week later, I actually witnessed him being fellated by a Teutonic-looking blonde squatting muscularly on high heels. Either Igel was an exhibitionist or he considered me a nonentity. The blinds on his office were never drawn, and he rarely closed his door to shut in the sound.

At first I figured he was diddling his clients, making his way through the IZ Talent Management roster. But over time I discovered that Friday nights were when Peter Igel met with the models who didn’t have a hope in hell of fitting the IZ
Talent Management bill. The ones who didn’t have what it takes to make it in the big-time. In other words, the ones who would never be cash cows for Peter Igel, and were destined for Sears-Roebuck catalog pages. Powerless. Going nowhere. Ripe for a different kind of exploitation.

He was fiddling with one of them that night. I heard signs of it as soon as I entered the reception area—the faint jazz music emanating from the corner office, the far-off shriek-giggle of some beautiful, hungry creature laughing too hard at one of Peter Igel’s jokes.

If she had known what I knew about Igel’s dirty game, she would not be guffawing, that’s for sure. Igel’s method was to point out the girl’s flaw and tell her why she absolutely shouldn’t be on the high-class ID roster—perhaps she was a smidgen under five foot nine, or a little knock-kneed, maybe the torso was disproportionately long for the legs. He’d tell her that she should probably go downstairs to the Malcolm Anders Agency, a small shop on the first floor that dealt with C-level models. But then, just when the pretty eyes—perhaps a little too close set—were filling with tears, Igel would offer a whiff of hope, suggest that the girl in question just might be something special, the unusually stunning exception to the rule. “After all,” I heard him say on at least five occasions, “Kate Moss is under five-eight.” Yup. Peter Igel would dangle that carrot. Then he’d turn on the music, open the wine, and dangle something else in their hopeful, tear-streaked faces.

I once witnessed a lovely snaggle-toothed teen ask him if braces and cosmetic whitening were the way to make it into IZ Talent. He suggested that she have all her teeth knocked out and replaced with dentures. I have no doubt that she did it.

“The fact is, lips are still hot,” I overheard him tell a gorgeous blonde with lips that didn’t appear to have been punched repeatedly by George Foreman. I’m sure she ran out the next day to have them pumped full of ass fat. The following
Friday, he told a gorgeous East Asian woman with a big poufy mouth: “Unfortunately, ethnic is out at the moment. Still, there’s something about you. A certain quality…”

Essentially, he’d criticize and mislead them, screw them and dispose of them. When they came back, new and improved after alterations and enhancements, he wouldn’t see them, speak to them, or even return their e-mails. I know all this because one Friday night, a postoperative redhead slipped past me through the door as I was letting myself in to clean. She charged down the hallway, into Peter Igel’s office, and let him have it, right there in front of another redheaded wanna-be.

“Calm yourself,” he kept saying as she screamed out the dollar values of her various surgical procedures. “Calm yourself.”

“Fuck you!
You fucking pig!
You think you’re gonna get away with this? Huh?! Well, you’re not. You’re not going to get away with this, you piece of shit!”

“Calm yourself,” he said.

Of course he was going to get away with it. Peter Igel was too savvy to make any promises. Everything was voluntary. Everything was consensual.

“FUCK YOU!”

I heard something crash and shatter. I heard the other girl scream.

Another man in the same situation might have called the cops or tried to wrestle the rampaging redhead out of the office, but Peter Igel was too clever for that. He just sat there, telling her to calm herself, waiting for her to flame out and leave on her own accord. Eventually she stormed past me, her lovely face contorted with rage and covered in ugly pink blotches. Peter Igel followed a couple seconds later, presumably to make sure she had left the premises and to lock the doors behind her. He came upon me in the hallway, still tensed and listening. We locked eyes for a single sinister moment. It was as if he was waiting for, or challenging, me to
say something. But I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t the say-something type.

“There’s some broken glass in my office,” he said softly with a nasty little smile. It was the first time he gave me that smile, but not the last. I caught it practically every Friday after that. Because Igel knew that I knew what he was up to.

On the night in question, I found Peter Igel seated behind his large desk when I rolled my cart up to his office. The jazz music was still playing, but the laughing girl was nowhere to be seen. I figured she had gone to the bathroom and it was safe to enter. But as I moved toward my target, avoiding eye contact, Igel suddenly lifted his small trash can and placed it on his desk. This was something new. What wasn’t new was the stinking mess inside. Igel was the only one in the entire building who thought nothing of dumping unwrapped food into his unlined plastic receptacle (which meant I’d have to take it to the kitchen to wash it out). That night it was chili. I emptied it, took it to the kitchen to rinse, then returned and set it back down in the same spot on the desk. Peter Igel smiled. And something about the smile, and the way he had barely moved his torso when retrieving the trash can, made me suspect that the Evangelista wanna-be was down below, sucking on his noodle. Uch.

As I was leaving IZ Talent Management, the DeSouza twins were on their way in with brooms and dusters to finish the job. A barely perceptible nod from Abril as we passed each other in the reception area. Nothing from Alvaro. I proceeded downstairs to empty my cart and wait for a ride home plus my weekly cash payment of two hundred dollars.

It was a nice night, so I went outside to wait. My work was done and I was ready to go home and veg in front of the tube. I leaned against the van and stared across the street at Ochre, where the night was just beginning for a bevy of spruced-up teens and twenty-somethings lining up to get into the trendy club. An electro-pop dance beat spilled onto the street. Two
grim-looking musclemen were guarding the massive brown leather entrance doors. Nobody seemed to be going in or out.

Ochre was one of my father’s clubs. That is, he designed it and owned a fifty percent share. There had been an article about it in the Style section of the newspaper before the thing even opened. My roommate at the time, Elda, had read it and was eager to check it out. Elda was quite the club girl. She used to go dancing every Friday and Saturday night, sometimes Thursdays as well. When I told her that the man in the article was my father, she almost passed a brick.

“Oh, my God!” she said, jumping out of her chair and bouncing up and down on the spot. “That means we can get into the invitation-only opening night party!”

“No, it doesn’t. I don’t have an invite and, trust me, I’m not likely to receive one.”

“Well, can’t you just call him and ask for one?”

“I don’t even have his number. He doesn’t even live here.”

“What do you mean, you don’t have his number? He’s your flippin’ father.”

I explained that I hadn’t seen or even spoken to my adopted dad since I was five years old.

“Oh,” said Miss Sensitive, mulling this over. “Well, can’t you, like, get his number from your mom?”

“Are you kidding? She gets enraged if I even mention his existence.”

“Well, couldn’t you just call his office? I mean, if I found out the number, you could call, right?”

Right. I had tried it on three separate occasions over the years. Ages thirteen, fifteen, and sixteen. What I wanted, I suppose, was to get his side of the story and possibly reconnect in some way. I would let him know that I wasn’t bitter about him leaving, and that I agreed that my mother was eminently leavable. I would tell him that I understood his anger over losing custody and remind him that I was old enough now to choose whom to be with. I would tell him that I wasn’t
upset about him not staying in contact while I was growing up, but that I would welcome the opportunity for us to get to know each other now, as adults. I called on three separate occasions over the years. Each time I got a secretary or assistant taking a message, followed by a three-week period of wondering if he ever received it.

“I could call,” I said, “but why would I? I don’t want to go.”

“Oh, my God,” said Elda. “How could you not want to go?!”

Easy. In the first place, I had no desire to attend a dance party. Second, if I was going to finally gain access to my father, I didn’t want it to be in a nightclub teeming with trendies.

Nevertheless, after several days of unrelenting pestering, I finally agreed to try to wrangle an invitation for Elda, mostly to get her off my back but also because she was one of the few people in the world who treated me decently. Also, I hate to admit, it gave me an excuse to once again place a call to my father’s office. It would have been too humiliating to phone again, out of the blue. This time I had a bona fide pretext to get in touch with him.

“He’s out of town,” said the secretary, “but he’ll be calling in for messages. Is there someone else who can assist you?”

“Um…no, it’s personal.”

“Oh, I see,” said the female on the other end, and I got the distinct impression that she was more interested than the situation warranted. “Can I take your name and number and have him get back to you?”

I gave her the info. He never called me back. I told Elda to forget about it, but she wouldn’t let it go.

“You should call him again,” she said. “He probably didn’t get the message.”

I had wondered about that. Something about the secretary’s tone. “You’re the one who’s not getting the message,” I said, knowing it was useless to call again.

Elda huffed off to her room, and I figured that was that. But on the night of the opening, she was all restless and agitated, more determined than ever to attend the party.

“Let’s just go down there,” she said. “I’m sure we’ll be able to wheedle our way in.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure.”

“Oh, come on, Al,” said Elda with a pleady expression. “We’ll take a cab. I’ll pay. And if we can’t get in, I’ll take you out for Amato’s pizza.”

“It’s just another stupid club,” I said. “Why do you want to get in so badly?”

“Because it’s
exclusive
. Because only the
coolest
people are going to be let in tonight. Because I might finally meet someone….”

This was before fat but pretty Elda met her first real boyfriend and left me in a rental lurch.

“Please, Allison? C’mon. Don’t you wanna see your dad? I’m sure he wants to see you. He’ll probably let us into the VIP room! Come on. Pretty please with a cherry on top?”

“Fine,” I said. “Whatever.” I had a flash of my father taking us on a private tour of the club, pointing out the unique design elements that he had dreamed up.

Elda ran off to her room to get ready. Several minutes later, she dashed back into the kitchen, wearing a miniskirt and a giant silver lamé bra. She was applying a deodorant stick to her massive underarms, rubbing fast and ferocious. “Don’t you want to get changed?” she said.

“Nah.” I feigned indifference, but in truth I was already wearing my least lousy outfit. Black jeans, black blouse, black Reeboks.

“We’ll tell the doorman you’re Simon’s daughter,” she said confidently. “He’s not going to fuck with the daughter of the owner, right?”

Wrong. The beefy doormen were unimpressed.

“Step out of the way, please,” said the big black one, herding
us out of the path of the invitation-wielding beautiful people who were streaming in. A giant spotlight machine was set up on the sidewalk. I watched the beams of light crisscross in the sky.

“Do you value your job?” said Elda, refusing to give up.

“You’re not on the list,” said the bouncer. “There’s nothing I can do about it.”

“Yes, there is,” said Elda. “There’s something you’d better do about it or her father is going to be very pissed off.”

A mild smile from the bouncer, who seemed to be enjoying the confrontation.

“Fine,” said Elda. “If you don’t want to take five minutes to go tell Simon she’s here, that’s your prerogative. But tomorrow, when he wants to know why she didn’t show up, she’s going to tell him that you were personally responsible for his darling daughter not getting in, and you know what’s going to happen then? He’s going to fire your ass.”

A shadow of uncertainty flitted across the amused eyes of the bouncer. He covered with a weary smirk and a big theatrical sigh. Then he stepped up to the entrance and murmured something to another doorman—a Lou Ferrigno look-alike.

“What did you say your name was?” said Bouncer Guy.

Elda elbowed me in the side.

“Allison Penny,” I said.

The Incredible Hulk slipped into the club. Bouncer Guy took his place at the door.

“We’re in,” said Elda. “I can feel it.” She fished in her tiny handbag for lip gloss and applied a thick, slick coating.