A tall, thin, dark-haired, utterly gorgeous man in a pinstriped suit, his curly hair coming over his collar, was standing there with his assistant, a plump woman of forty. He stopped speaking, and his eyes flickered over Lita, taking in every inch of her, finally resting on her breasts.
‘I’m sorry. I couldn’t stop her. My lord,’ the girl said, flirting with him heavily even though she was out of breath. ‘I don’t know how she got past the lobby …’
‘Entirely my fault,’ the young man said smoothly, in an aristocratic English accent that turned Lita’s bones to water. ‘I forgot to notify Mrs
Smith about this appointment. So nice to see you, Miss …’ ‘Morales,’ Lita said.
‘That’s it. Miss Morales. Won’t you come in?’
3
He closed the door behind her.
‘Have a seat.’
Rupert Lancaster gestured to her to sit down. His brows were slightly
raised, and he was smiling slightly. Lita was used to beatnik art directors and account executives in flares and orange-and-purple print shirts. This classic look, the English tailoring and the sober tie, almost made her nervous. He looked damn good in it. He also looked serious.
He was the first man she’d felt attracted to since Hector, and suddenly
the last small pangs she’d felt for Hector disappeared. She knew they
would never be back either. Rupert Lancaster was in a difference class.
Lira sat down. ‘You’re Lord Rupert Lancaster?’
‘I’m Rupert, or Lord Lancaster. In your case, Rupert. I make it a
point of not being stuffy with brave young women.’
Lita blushed richly. She had been expecting him to say ‘beautiful young women’. The compliment was so much better this way. She had been brave. ‘Well, thank you anyway.’ ‘
He settled back in his chair and looked her right in the eyes. Normally their gaze went straight to her breasts and hovered there throughout a meeting. Lira found she was breathing a little heavier. Man, she loved that accent. She loved those dark eyes, the aquiline nose and the dark hair just creeping over his collar.
‘Now. I assume you have something you want to say?’
‘Yes. You manage the Costa lica account. You’re looking for a new
girl for the TV campaign.’
‘And you want to be considered.’
‘No. I don’t want to be considered. I want the job,’ Lita said boldly.
He chuckled.
‘My clients are a big brand. They think it’s better to be associated
with a well-known model.’
Lita brushed the objection aside. ‘Rachel, Consuela and Tina are the
girls on your list?’
He nodded. ‘You have good information. How did you find that
out?’
24
‘It’s not important,’ Lita assured him. ‘But 1Lachel has never even had a Vogue cover, and the other two girls only picked up their covers after they got their first TV slots. It’s TV that makes a girl well known. If you
use me, I will be well known the first time you show the commercial.’ ‘Hmm. I’m not sure they’d go for it, Miss Morales.’ ‘Lita, please. May I take my coat off?.’
As she stood, he came around the desk and peeled it from her shoulders. She heard his faint intake of breath as his head came close to her one bared, bronze shoulder under the clinging white knit, as he took in the glorious curve of her back and her high, tight butt. She smiled softly. She was going to get him.
Rupert hung her coat up on a mahogany rack in the corner of his office. Lira turned to face him, so her silk skirt could flare up a little and show offher calves and the rhinestone pink Gucci straps could flash. She was the height of fashion and they both knew it. Delicately she folded herself back into her chair. Her top clung to her curves and her hair was trailing over her one bare shoulder.
‘Maybe you could also tell them that all three girls they are thinking of are in their late twenties. I’m almost ten years younger than some of them. If Costa goes with me, they’ll get young and fresh. And it’s all about that today.’
‘I know. You might have a point there, Lira.’
She loved hearing her name pronounced with that aristocratic accent. She leaned forward to close the deal.
‘Look - Rupert - I’ll make a deal with you. You don’t have to give me the campaign right away.’
‘Very good of you,’ he said cryly.
‘But give me a screen test. Thirty seconds. You take that to your clients, and you’ll have discovered a fresh face. Plus, I’ll work cheaper than 1Lachel or Consuela.’
‘You certainly will, if you want the job.’ He grinned. ‘Well, you sold me on the test. However, please understand I’m not promising you anything. Your enthusiasm and … presence may not translate to the screen. I think they will still prefer Consuela. But I am prepared to offer you a test for the part.’
‘Great. Where do we go?’
‘You go home.’
He walked over to the coat-stand, took her Burberry offit and shook it out for her. Lita reluctantly put it on.
‘I’m a busy man, surprising though that may seem to you. 1Kight now I’m ten minutes late for my next appointment. Leave your details with Mrs Smith, and when I’m ready to set it up, I’ll call you.’
25
‘But wouldn’t it be better to do it—?’
‘No, it wouldn’t.’ P,.upert opened his door. ‘Mrs Smith, would you see Miss Morales out?’
Lita caught a cab for once. She needed the privacy to collect herself. She felt elated, but a little humiliated. And strange. What was it about him that made her feel like this? Her heart was thudding. He had been so rude, almost dismissive, when he turfed her out of his office. But it made her all the more attracted to him. Why?
It dawned on her slowly. He had refused to take her shit.
They were going to do the screen test, but they were going do it on his terms and his schedule. She felt a squirmy sensation in her chest. Then there was his eyes … those dark eyes with the black lashes, and the black hair that was almost as glossy as her own. You could stick him in a pair of flares and he could be Mick Jagger. But the dark, insistently businesslike suit just made him ten times as attractive to her.
She felt like she was floating all the way back to Models Six. When she got there, Bill wasted no time bursting her bubble. ‘How could you do that to me? You can be such a bitch, Lira, you know?’
‘I did what had to be done, Bill.’
‘You did what could have cost lq, enee her Este Lauder shot. I do
have other girls, you know, toots. I could just walk away.’
‘I won’t do it again.’
‘Damn straight you won’t. What happens to me if I have to go to my boss and say I just lost them a campaign beorth a hundred Gs, not to mention all the future business Benson Bailey wouldn’t do with us, all because I can’t control one of my clients?’
He didn’t say ‘one of my smaller clients’, but it hung in the air between them.
‘And,’ Bill continued, not drawing a breath, ‘what do you think happens to agents that lose accounts? They get the can, and it’s not like other agencies are banging down their doors to get them to sign up. You have no idea how fiche this business is, Lita. light now you’re hot. But when you’re cold nobody wants to know your name. All those great friends you thought you had really don’t give a shit about you. So I don’t need you going around screwing things up on some crazy mission!’
Lita swallowed. She felt bad. Bill was her friend, and she had put his career in jeopardy. She said in a small voice, ‘It didn’t go so bad. He told his people that I had an appointment, and we talked, and—’
‘Was that before or after he asked you to give him a blow.job?’ Bill passed a hand over his hair. ‘I’m sorry, baby. You didn’t deserve that. I
26
know you’re not that way.’ He grinned. ‘If you were, we’d have at least had the cover of Elle by now.’
‘He offered me a screen test,’ Lita said proudly.
Bill rolled his eyes. ‘Of course he did. To get you out of his office without causing a scene.’
Lita felt her face crumple. ‘You think so? You think he lied to me?’ ‘Why not? You lied to them, didn’t you?’ Bill shrugged. ‘I guess he might arrange a test for you, but it won’t do you any good. He’ll pick lkachel or Consuela, that’s the word around town. He most likely
warned you that they were still the favourites.’
Her heart dropped to her boots. ‘He did.’
‘See, he gave you what you wanted so there wouldn’t be a scene, but put his firm in no danger of getting pressganged by us. He’s a limey, very polite and proper. Hates scenes. You know that’s how lkupert Lancaster is.’
Suddenly, despite her aching disappointment, Lita was very interested. ‘I don’t know anything about him. Why would I?’
Bill remembered who he was talking to. Lita was the only one of his girls that didn’t pack her little vial of coke with the tiny silver spoon attached and hit the Manhattan clubs as soon as she exited the bars. She packed up her things and rode the subway out to Queens. Crazy, but he had stopped trying to figure her out long ago.
‘He’s, like, a big figure on the club scene here. Goes to gigs, hangs out backstage, always in the VIP bars at the best places. He knows the Wall Street crowd and the hipsters. Film premieres, that kind of thing. I saw him at the party for The Fre, nck Connection last week. He’s super polite to everybody. The middle-aged mamas adore him, of course, because he’s got that fancy title, and it’s kind of hip to hang out with a lord, too. That’s why the rockers love him, because they’re really snobs like everyone else at heart. It wouldn’t surprise me that he acted like that to you. He’s one of those chivalrous types. On the surface. A real
smooth ladies’ man. I see him with a different chick every other week.’ ‘He has a girlfriend, then?’
Lira knew it was ridiculous that her heart was thudding with adrenaline as she waited to hear the answer to this. She was eighteen. Too old to have crushes, right?
‘Girlfriends. Nobody special.’ Bill shot her a sly look. ‘Ah, princess, don’t even think about it. For your own good. He’s strictly a four-F guy.’
‘Four F?’
‘“Find ‘em, feel ‘em, fuck ‘em, forget ‘em”,’ Bill told her. ‘You don’t
27
have the right stuff to wind up an English lady, sugar. So just skip this one, huh? You could have anybody you wanted.’
Yeah, Lita thought, but I want Rupert Lancaster.
She knew exactly what Bill meant. She was Hispanic. It wasn’t so much that she didn’t have the right look to be an English lady. They both knew that ifLita put her mind to it she could find some stiff tweed skirts and pussy-necked white blouses and dress exactly like Princess Margaret. It was more that she didn’t have the right skin to be an English lady.
Lira stole a glance at herself in the large mirrored door to Bill’s office. She looked hip and gorgeous, but she also looked exotic. She loved her own looks, she had never lied to herself about that. But for the first time in her fife, she examined her exquisite caf{-au-lait complexion and wished it were just a little lighter. But, hey, maybe Fisher had it all wrong. He was gay. He’d underestimate just how far a man would go for a woman he loved and lusted after. Mick Jagger had married Bianca, hadn’t he? And Lennon was all loved-up with Yoko. It was true that the upper-class Brits didn’t seem to cross boundaries that much, but there was a first time for everything. Some of their old kings had married Spanish and Portuguese queens. So why not a lord? They were marrying commoners all the time. If she went to England, she’d just be seen as an American model; nobody would know she was from the Bronx …
‘Lira. Quit it. I know what you’re doing. Don’t.’ Bill stood. ‘If he calls, you can go to the screen test, but doff’t become another notch on
the bedpost. You’ll thank me for it one day.’
‘Sure, Bill. Whatever you say.’
‘I fixed up some appointments for you to go see apartments,’ he
added, trying to distract her.
‘Apartments?’
‘You said you wanted to move into the city.’ Bill tossed her a Village Voice with various addresses ringed in pen. ‘Forget the Costa 1Kica campaign and the limey. This is gonna take you all day. And one more piece of advice? Wear flats.’
He was right about the shoes, Lita reflected. She’d ignored his advice the way she usually did, but after the Gucci straps had rubbed off a layer of skin she’d given in and taken a cab to Macy’s. Now she was in blessedly comfortable, hideously un-hip white sneakers. The sun had sunk over the towering glass-and-concrete forest of the city. She had seen eight places, and she had five more to go before she called it quits. They were dumps. Pretty much all of them. One was about as large as
z8
her room back in Soundview; another had a concrete ceiling so low that anyone over five-eight would have to stoop; then there was the walk up that involved seven flights of stairs, the basement apartment with the leaky pipes running across the ceiling, and the former hostel that she ran right out of because she could actually see the bugs scuttling across the floor.
But she was hooked. With each shitty apartment, Lira got a little more excited. No way was she going to live in one of these dumps, but they were all here. In Manhattan. Where men like lkupert Lancaster did the club scene. Where girls schmoozed with the power players and got the big jobs and the big cheques. The fact that landlords thought they could get away with asking outrageous rents for these places excited her; they were on the market only because people were desperate to live here, to be part of the cool set. If you could make it here, you could make it anywhere, went the song, but what it didn’t say was that unless you made it here you went nowhere.
Manhattan was the brass ring. If it weren’t, Bill wouldn’t have sent her to these dives with a straight face.
Lira made up her mind. She wasn’t going home without a signed lease. She was moving to Manhattan, and she was moving there today.
The next place she looked at was another dump. The one after that was only a dump-ette. Lira pinned the owner down and signed with him.