Now, looking at the clothes, Madison was horrified. Frills and little gold buttons, plaids and flowery prints, were spread out in front of her. If she’d worn any of these clothes to the modeling agency, no wonder the receptionist had smirked at her. But then, Madison seemed to remember that the other hopefuls had been wearing clothes just like hers.
Leaving the clothes on the bed, Madison walked uptown to Saks.
Three hours later she returned, exhausted, and flopped down on the bed on top of her clothes-from-home, dropping her heavy shopping bags to the floor.
In the bags she had nothing but black and white. She’d bought nothing that wasn’t perfect in 1981 as well as the year 2000. Classic. Plain. Simple.
And unbelievably expensive. She’d bought a pair of black wool trousers that cost twelve hundred dollars new, but she’d purchased them on sale for a “mere” six hundred. A white cotton blouse, from Italy, had cost her, on sale, two hundred and fifty. She’d bought a Hermes belt, with a matching bag and shoes.
On the way back from the stores, she’d stopped in a shop and had her eyelashes dyed. When she did show up at the modeling agency, she planned to go with a face devoid of makeup. She planned to show off her skin, not hide it under foundation makeup. She would have just the deep black lashes, unclumped by mascara, and her hair would be streaked and in a perfect cut.
The next morning, Madison was at Cordova’s studio at five-thirty A.M. She’d eaten nothing since noon the day before, and she hoped she lasted the day without food. She had to drop about fifteen pounds as soon as possible.
To Madison’s surprise—and delight—the photographer seemed to have decided to make a serious try at the shoot, because there were two young men waiting for her. They were young and inexperienced, but eager. And when Madison heard their names, she had to keep from swooning. She knew that one of the young men was going to go to Hollywood and on a future Oscar night his name would be mentioned in answer to the question, “Who did your makeup?” Now he was staring at Madison, a pair of tweezers in his hand, and frowning. “Honey, with those eyebrows I should have brought a lawn mower.”
The other man was a hairdresser, and Madison knew that someday he’d have not only his own salon but also his own line of extremely expensive hair products. “And what am I to do with this?” the hairdresser said as he picked up a handful of Madison’s hair.
Madison smiled down at the two of them and said, “I hope you boys brought a ladder with you.”
She made them laugh and, as a result, she made them her friends. She was able to direct the hairdresser to cut her hair in the style of Jennifer Aniston on Friends, a cut that would sweep the country years later, but in 1981 was absolutely new. “Sorry, Jennifer,” Madison mumbled as she looked in the portable mirror that was in front of her.
At precisely nine A.M., the door to the studio opened and in walked two huge, sweaty men wearing sleeveless T-shirts and carrying a snake that was as big around as Madison was.
What the hell have I done? she thought; then Cordova whispered in her ear, “Turning coward?”
Madison swallowed.
The two sweaty men were looking at Madison as they put the snake on the floor. She was made up, her hair was soft and framing her face, and she was wearing only a thin kimono.
“I want fifty copies of the picture,” one of the men said, leering at Madison.
Turning away, Madison grimaced. It was one thing to disrobe in front of the photographer and the other men—they certainly weren’t interested in her—but these men . . .
“I hope he puts the pictures on the Internet,” she mumbled.
“The what?” the hairdresser asked.
“Never mind,” Madison said; then she took a deep breath and untied her robe, but held it closed.
But then she smiled. What the hell? she thought. When you’re twenty, you want to keep covered, but when you’re forty, you’re glad when someone asks. Naked, she turned around and looked at the snake. “Let’s do it,” she said.
When Madison walked into the office of the top modeling agency in New York, her first thought was that she felt old. The office was full of girls young enough to be her daughter.
But there was a mirror by the door and a brief glance showed that her body was as young as these girls’. But she was happy to see that age was the only thing that they had in common.
The girls were dressed as she had been the first time she’d walked through those doors. They had on their “Sunday best,” which meant little suits and lots of jewelry. And their makeup was in the style that was taught in “charm schools” all over the U.S.: too much and too obvious.
Standing amid the other girls, Madison, with her plain white blouse and her plain black trousers, with her glowing skin without any makeup, looked like a perfect pearl beside a bed of aquarium gravel.
Sitting behind the desk was the same squat, ugly, bad-tempered receptionist she remembered so well. “Yeah?” she said as she looked up at Madison.
The first time around that sullen glare and the hostility of the woman had enraged Madison. But this time, she smiled sweetly at her. “I’d like to present my portfolio and possibly see Mrs. Vanderpool,” Madison said.
The receptionist tried to cover it, but she was impressed by the look of Madison. Obviously, the woman recognized the quality—and cost—of the clothes she had on. “You got an appointment?”
“Actually, I do,” Madison said. She’d been caught in this trap the last time. “It’s for eleven, and I believe it’s that now.”