I get a reprieve from being grounded because we have to do campaign posters, so Ro and Clive and Candy and I hang out at Clive’s, and at dinnertime we’re starving so we speed-dial for hot and sour soup, egg rolls, moo shu pork, shrimp and Chinese vegetables, ten-ingredient fried rice, sweet-and-sour chicken, and shrimp lo mein.
After everyone pigs out and we read the fortunes in the cookies—All your hard work will soon pay off (mine), Don’t let the past and useless details choke your existence (Candy), The one you love is closer than you think (Clive), and Be direct, usually one can accomplish more that way (Ro). I force them into the bathroom to wash their hands ten times to get rid of the grease before touching the oak tag for my posters.
When everyone’s clean, we sit on the floor in Clive’s room.
“Okay,” I say, clapping my hands. “Here it is, the long awaited campaign slogan: Gia. Fresh thinking. Fresh answers. Vote outside the box.”
Silence.
“Earth to Clive?”
“I like it,” he says finally, “but you know the people you’re running against, Gia. Can you handle how they’re going to twist it and throw it back at you?”
“I can deal.”
“Just one thing, Gia,” Ro says. “When they start snickering and sticking it to you about the word fresh and calling you a slut, how do you plan to answer that?”
“That this is the year of the slut.”
“What?” Clive says, his eyes widening.
“I’m kidding. I don’t know. Any ideas?”
“Say that they have filthy minds for thinking that,” Candy says, “and for perverting the truth. Act totally indignant.”
We all look at Candy with new respect.
“You go, girl. That’s exactly what I’ll say.”
Then we get to work coloring, never mind the blisters on our fingers from all the work, three hours later we do actually finish all of them and they come out fabulous. Then Clive’s driver takes Candy home to Park Avenue and drops Ro off at home in Little Italy. I stay behind to hang with Clive.
“You never told me about that night with Michael Cross,” he says. “Excuse me, Officer Hottie.”
“He’s in total denial about his feelings for me. Plus he probably thinks I’m jailbait—even though I’m not—and the daughter of a don and he’s my arresting officer and blah blah blah.
“Did he actually say all that?”
“He didn’t have to.”
“What did he actually say?”
“He didn’t say anything. He’s not a talker.”
“So how do you know he’s into you and can’t handle it?”
“By the way he looks at me.”
“That’s all?”
“Clive,” I say. “Chemistry. Does. Not. Lie.”
He’s quiet after that and we sit there looking at each other.
“Maybe I should just marry you,” I say. “And we could live happily ever after.”
“I would love that,” Clive says.
“And you’d give me a giant diamond ring and everything?”
“Absolutely everything.”
I smile back at Clive, not sure exactly what he means. He said he’s not gay, but he’s not like anyone straight that I know either. Not that it matters.
I climb into his bed and pat the place next to me and then Clive and I snuggle together while the rain comes down hard so that the view of Central Park outside looks all drippy and speckled like it was painted by Seurat, the French artist we learned about in art history who freaked everyone out at first with his weird way of painting called pointillism. He put like three million paint dots or something on his canvas, and if you stand away from it, you see that, whoa, it totally all works, because what happens is those separate color dots you see next to each other close-up magically morph into different patches of colors from a distance.
And that made me start to think about whether in real life you need to step back from things to see the real picture and the true colors, aka perspective, and that if you’re too close and fixated on the individual dots, you can get it all wrong and maybe what you think you’re seeing isn’t reality or the true picture at all. It’s something else entirely.
“What are you thinking, Gia?
“Of George Seurat.”
“Because of our painting?”
“What painting?”
“You know, the one in the living room.”
“You have a Seurat? A real Seurat?”
“Mmm, over the couch.”
“Clive, do not tell anyone.”
“Why?”
“Because they’d steal it and kidnap you for ransom.”
“Like they could ever track down my parents to pay.”
I look at Clive and he looks back at me and we start to snicker and then laugh and a minute later we’re keeled over laughing so hard we’re practically choking and holding our stomachs because they hurt so much.
I mean what’s sadder, the fact that my dad’s people would probably get behind stealing the art, or the fact that his dad is MIA and wouldn’t be around to pay?
Without warning all this emotion that must have been barricaded behind the laughter rears up like a tsunami and I don’t know why, but everything gets less funny and backslides and grows darker and tragic and suddenly we’re sobbing and, God, how did that happen? And we’re feeling sorry for everything that’s wrong in our lives and not the way we want it to be, although we know we don’t have the power to change any of that. So we sob harder and I can’t breathe and Clive is gasping for air too with tears running down his cheeks. And how pathetic are we, lost and alone even though we’re not now because we have each other. And I don’t even remember how all this started now, but I wish I could figure out what it means because my insides are collapsing.
It’s been one week, sixteen hours, and thirty-seven minutes or so since I’ve seen Michael. I check my phone every time I inhale to see if he might have broken down and called. Or left a message. Or a text. But no. He is playing hard to get or not playing at all and just being a dick because he’s so into the good cop thing, trying to do right and be ethical and all, despite the fact that I’m sure he’s up nights thinking about me and suffering too because even his tough impassive cop face is not good enough to hide what’s behind his eyes.
If there’s one thing I am sure of, it’s that I have an unfailingly sharp radar when it comes to picking up vibes on how men feel about me. And even though, yes, I might be completely deranged, I am convinced that I just have to work on Michael Cross. And that is what I’m going to do if I can get near him.
What I need is a way to track his whereabouts, which makes me think of the electronic ankle bracelets that they clamp on felons’ legs and that my dad walked around with one time so they always knew where he was so he couldn’t flee to a safe house in Reggio Calabria or wherever to hide. But how ridiculous is that? So I have to come up with a real plan.
But then my phone rings. And of course it isn’t Michael. It’s Vogue magazine. W-H-A-T?
I’m not sure what I’m hearing at first. But then I realize that the assistant to the fashion editor named Clotilde Marie Saint-Just is asking me to pose for them for an upcoming issue called “Under Age and Over the Top,” which would basically be about famous young girls in the news, even though I’m not exactly famous and not exactly in the news either—not unless you count the TV cameras they stick in our faces whenever our family goes out somewhere together because they love to stalk my dad. But, whatever, because if they do the story, I will be famous in a different and better kind of way, so the idea blows me away.
I mean me? In Vogue magazine? GET OUT. I call Ro.
“How do you know it’s not some perv who wants you to take off your pants, Gia?”
“To start, the caller ID said Condé Nast, okay, and I don’t think you can set that up on your own. So, no, it wasn’t bogus. And then they gave me the name of the photographer who’s shooting it and his name is John Plesaurus and he is big and does a lot of their covers and you can find his name in any issue. And anyway I called his studio to check and they said yes, yes, yes, the shooting is scheduled for four weeks from now and it’s legit and yada, yada, yada.”
“One other thing, Gia. Your dad will never go for it.”
I don’t answer.
“Gia?”
“I’m thinking.”
My dad is nothing if not vain, and I am his daughter with his DNA and his looks. We both have honey-blond hair, tawny skin, and green eyes. Me in the magazine would be a compliment to him. So bottom line, I have my game plan.
“I can do it.”
“Do what?” Ro asks.
“Convince him.”
“How?”
“I’ll call you back.”
Whenever my mom makes pasta con sarde, no matter what, my dad comes home early. His grandparents grew up in a small town near Palermo and they fed him pasta con sarde before he had breast milk, I think, and they passed that love to him in their genes, so the fresh sardines with the sweet currants and the parsley and the thick bucatini pasta just about transport him back to his childhood.
Tonight is pasta con sarde night, which may work in my favor. I help my mom with the salad and put in extra arugula, because my dad loves arugula, and then I dress it with oil and balsamic vinegar. I bought a chocolate truffle cake at Ro’s dad’s bakery and after we finish dinner I cut him a big piece and bring him his espresso and then I’m silent and patient and all attentive, transformed into perfect daughter mode, waiting for just the right moment as he sits for a little while enjoying the pasta con sarde afterglow or whatever until I can’t stand it anymore.
“So guess who called me today?”
He shrugs. “Tell me.”
“Vogue.”
He narrows his eyes, not getting it.
“Vogue. Vogue magazine. They want to do a photo shoot of the best-looking daughters of celebrities.”
I leave out the underage part and put a second wedge of truffle cake on his plate. My dad stirs his espresso with the small silver spoon and very slowly runs the sliver of lemon peel around the edge of the gold-rimmed cup. He shifts slightly in his chair, crossing one leg over the other, before cocking his head to the side.
“In what, in bikinis?” he asks, because he’s afraid of saying thongs or panties and sounding pervy.
“No, Daddy, in designer clothes!” Not that I have a clue what they’re thinking, but it’s Vogue and what are they going to use, low-end polyester shit from Walmart?
“I don’t think so,” he says, blotting his lips with the linen napkin.
I look at him. “Do you know why they want me?”
“Eh,” he purses his lips. “I know.”
“Because I look like you, Daddy. They said I got my incredible looks from my dad.” I give that a minute to sink in. My father lifts his chin.
“They said that?”
“Word for word.”
He stares out the window and then turns back to me. “I’ll think about it.”
I look over at my mom who I can tell is already on board so I just need her to move him from thinking maybe to saying yes. I remember a line from a movie where the wife says that her husband may be the head of the family, but that she is the neck and “the neck turns the head.”
“Mom?” I say, just short of pleading.
“Frankie would go with you,” she says.
“Absolutely.”
“And be there the whole time.”
“Well, except the dressing room part,” I say.
“Don’t be fresh,” she says.
I hold out my hands.
My dad turns to me. “Maybe,” he says. “If it’s Vogue magazine and you’re on the cover.”
The cover? Who said anything about…?
“You’re the best,” I say, jumping up and hugging him. Now all I have to do is make sure it’s the cover.