I drive to Dom’s studio, wearing one of the sundresses Cici and I bought. We are meeting here for the drive down to Rosarito. I’ve borrowed Darla’s suitcase again, and it is packed with clothes that Cici bought for me and some I borrowed from Sybil. There are three other girls sitting in the reception area of the studio, each with luggage.
They look up, en masse, as I enter, and I recognize a girl named Tabitha from the Dillard’s shoot. I feel better, knowing somebody.
She gives me a hug from where she sits, with just the airbrush of a kiss. “I didn’t know you were doing this,” I say.
“He just called last week. Needed another blonde.” A spark of pride erupts through my chest, I’ve been scheduled for weeks, months.
“I’m so glad you’re here. It’s nice to know someone.” I sit down next to her, to wait.
The girl at the far end of the room has moved closer and is looking at me with a small crease between her brows. I look up, and up some more, because she is massively tall. It isn’t until my eyes pass her lush lips and reach her eyes that I recognize her.
“Blue,” I say.
“Yes.” She purses her broad lips, and I can almost see the gears working backward to find my name.
“Ali,” I say, helping her out, but realize Sage had introduced me as Jade. With those eyes, you have to be Jade, she’d said. I remember her voice, low and masculine. “Or Jade. I met you at Sage’s house, last spring.”
“That’s right. I knew I recognized you.” Her voice is resonate, a beautiful alto. “Bella, actually. Only Sage calls me Blue.”
“That’s good to know,” I laugh, remembering how it had felt so odd when I had first met her, with everybody and their strange names.
“Sage is actually Sarah, but don’t tell her I told you,” she mock-whispers. “Amber’s Amber, though.”
I wonder if that’s where Sage’s nicknames began, with Amber who so matched her name.
“You’re doing the Delphi shoot? Look at you!”
I nod, feeling both embarrassed and proud. It feels like an impossible thing has happened, transforming my life.
“Great.” She sits down next to me and introduces me to the other girl, sitting on the other side of Tabitha, a brunette named Karis. The girl gives me a small, pinched smile, but is entirely uninterested.
“This is Tabitha,” I offer. “We did the Dillard’s fall ad together.”
“Have you done Delphi before?” Tabitha asks, now that we all know each other.
“Oh yes,” Karis says. “It’s my third year.” She is so thin, her upper arms are as big around as my wrists. The bones of her face are sharp, pushing through her translucent skin. Her eyes are too large for her face, and I have a flash of thought of a Holocaust survivor at the end of World War II. Her large eyes scan my body, and I know she is having the reverse reaction, thinking how meaty I am, how fleshy.
“I did it two years ago, but I was in Paris last year,” Bella says.
“Paris?” I ask, awed by her glamorous life.
“Runway with Calvin Klein.”
“Wow. What was that like?” I am so new to all of this.
“Exhausting,” Bella says. “Good money, though.”
“You’re not right for runway,” Karis says, mistaking my curiosity for hope, and I wonder if it is my weight or my height that she finds unacceptable.
“Ladies, you are here!” Dom has come from the studio side of the wall and leans against the reception counter. “Bella, it’s good to have you back this year. I was glad to see you on the list.”
Bella crosses the lobby in two long strides, and they embrace like old friends. They talk for a few minutes, and I turn to talk to Tabitha so I’m not staring and Dom and Bella.
Rosarito is only about thirty-five miles south of San Diego, but we sit at the border for almost half an hour, waiting to be waved through. Bella sits in front with Dom, who navigates the Tijuana traffic like a Nascar driver. I’m in the far back, and I brace my arms on the seat in front in front of me. Karis and Tabitha watch out the side windows, unfazed.
Poverty is everywhere, and soon we are out of the city and heading down a two-lane road with slightly less traffic. Every car on the road is at least ten years old. They weave around each other with abandon, heedless of speed limits. Bella and Dom keep up a conversation in the front seat. Karis’s head drops onto her chest, and she sleeps. When my mother was so sick, with drugs and life, I could see the shape of her skull, the shape of all her bones pushing through her skin. Karis is the same. She doesn’t have the look of an addict, not at all—she is beautiful, her hair is shiny and her skin is unblemished—but she has the look of someone opposed to food. The faint blue veins are large in her neck, pulsing so close under the skin.
I turn to Tabitha and whisper, “She so skinny.”
Tabitha nods. “The skinnier you are the more work you get. She works all the time. Does Victoria’s Secret and a lot of catalog work. She’s kind of a ‘legend’ in catalogs.” She does air quotes and tilts her head, as if to say “according to her.” Tabitha rubs her fingers together. Money. “We were talking before you came. She’s nice.”
I hadn’t gotten “nice” from her. I’d gotten stuck up, I’d gotten judgmental, I’d gotten cold. Maybe she just didn’t like the looks of me.
“I hope they don’t put me next to her. I’ll look like a toad.” I say, thinking how thick my body is in comparison, how short and squatty I would look.
“Yeah. She’s amazing.”
We pile out of Dom’s SUV onto the black-topped parking lot, stretching and talking. “We have the penthouse,” Dom says as he comes back to where we wait in the lobby. Our shoes click on the orange tiled floor as we head to the elevators. The other guests watch us—the beautiful people.
Bella has dropped back to walk next to me. “Lobster for lunch?”
“I’ve never had lobster.”
“There is a little restaurant, Ortega’s, just down the beach. They catch fresh every day. Best lobster you’ll ever have.”
“Sounds great.”
The Penthouse is over three thousand feet of marble floors and dark, polished wood ceilings. It is luxurious, with beautiful, solid wood furnishing. The great glass doors of the living area open out to a large, thatch-covered balcony. We are like children on an Easter egg hunt, Tabitha and I, moving through the rooms, with our mouths gaping, “oohing” and “aahing” at the views. Bella and Karis are less impressed, having probably stayed in more elegant places.
“We’ve arrived,” I say to Tabitha, lifting my arms over my head, buffeted by the wind off the sea. I climb onto the ledge and reach my arms overhear to hold the beam of the overhanging roof. The wind wraps my skirt around me, fluttering. If I let go and jumped, I would fly.
Tabitha is nervous and tugs at my skirt, and I scramble down.
We each flop onto lounge chairs and let the warm breeze rush past. How has this become my life? I am giddy with the thrill of it. We choose from the three rooms; Tabitha and I agree to share, being the new girls. Carrying our sandals, we head down the beach, our long sundresses blowing out behind us.
The restaurant is open to the elements, facing the ocean, cooled by the massive, thick walls and a fan moving in lazy circles above us.
“What’s that?” I ask when Karis brings out a small notebook that had been concealed in her pocket.
She looks at me with tired eyes. “It’s my log. You should keep one.”
“What do you do with it?”
“It’s to track your food intake.”
“You’re so thin! You don’t need to track your food.”
She looks at me for a long second before saying, “That’s why I’m so thin.” A tight smile stretches her lips, and I look down at the page, where she has already started her daily log. Saltines with two marks beside it, coffee with one mark, and walnut with three marks. She now writes the word lobster.
“Is that everything you’ve eaten today?”
She nods.
“I ate more than that before six.”
“I’m sure.” He voice is languid, and she looks away from me and out to the water. “That’s why you’re so fat.”
I’ve dropped fifteen pounds since I did the first Dillard’s ad. I’ve lost a full cup size in my breasts and gone down two dress sizes. I’m not fat—but I’m not model thin, for sure. As conversation fills our table, I watch Karis taking very determined bites and chewing, chewing, chewing before making a single mark in her book. While the other girls dip their lobster in the butter sauce, Karis does not. I pace her, chewing, chewing, chewing, until the velvet meat of the lobster simply dissolves on my tongue. We leave more than half our lobster uneaten, and my stomach is angry when I push the plate away.
“Don’t you get hungry?” I whisper.
She glances at me, then at my plate, and when she looks at me again, the smile is easy, not pinched. She shakes her head. “It gets easier. Your body adjusts.” She bites her lip. “It’s not hard, once you get used to it.”
The photographers and crew from Delphi are already setting up on the beach when we finish our meal and stroll back from the restaurant. Dom leaves us to talk to the crew, and we head back toward the hotel. Bella and Karis are walking a few steps ahead of me and Tabitha, and when they turn toward the hotel, we continue on down the beach.
I tell her about my little conversation with Karis, thinking she will be appalled at the few things in her log. She isn’t.
“I saw her writing. I figured that’s what it was. Most of us do it.”
“You do?” I ask.
“I try. I only eat twice a day. I leave half of everything on the plate. That’s how I do it. Some girls carry a scale around.” We walk a few more paces, and she adds, “Sometimes, if I’m really hungry, I just eat it all then get rid of it.”
“Meaning?”
She pantomimes putting her hand in her mouth, one long digit extended, and I get the picture. I am appalled, and excited. It’s like a key. I don’t know if I could make myself throw up, but writing everything down, being accountable, I can do that.
“She said I was fat,” I say, not offended.
“For a model, I guess. Everybody is fat next to Karis Wooland.”
We walk, my stomach protesting at my meager lunch. “I’m so hungry.”
Tabitha nods, and we turn and head back toward the hotel. The first photo session is scheduled for sunset.