Chapter 10

Monday, February 10, 2014

Riley

Sunday night, I book three wake-up calls with three different companies on lovely Lucia’s lucky landline to make sure that I am up early enough to buy a new phone and then get to the agency on time for my meeting with Marcella. My career might be salvageable if I can be on my very best behavior today. Step one, get out of bed. Done. Then get ready, get out. Once out, find a cell phone store. After that, I spend half an hour convincing a young hipster in a goatee and a suit that I have an account with them. Why can’t he find my name in the system? And another half hour selecting a phone. For some reason, it takes goatee-suit-dude another half hour to switch the phone on for me. Why does everything take so long?

This time, I know I am late when I rush into JCW Modeling Agency. Bernie/Bernadette/San Bernardino sits at a desk outside Marcella’s office, her straight blond hair wrapped in a tight bun. She’s young but tough, and her fake glasses really do make her look smart. She gives me a certain look of pity, and my heart sinks. This is not good.

“I told you to be on time,” she says, her shoulders falling. “Just couldn’t do it, huh?”

“I have a new cell phone,” I say, holding it up for her, this tiny little devil that I have no idea how to operate. “Can I give you my new number?”

“They couldn’t switch it over to your old number?” she says.

I smile meekly. “I was ready for a change.”

“Isn’t that your third number in, like, two months?” She sighs but grabs a pen. “Go ahead.”

I tell her the number. “Is Marcella ready?”

Bernie looks down at the office phone. “She’s finishing up a call.” Bernie turns around to catch Marcella’s eye through the window that runs vertically beside the door. Marcella holds up one finger. I wait for a minute or two and try to seem busy by fidgeting around with my phone. Finally, the phone light goes off, and Marcella herself comes out to get me.

“Riley,” she says, and her voice is strained. “How are you feeling?”

I give her a smile and hold up my phone again. “New phone,” I say. “Yay.”

“Come on in,” she says. And then, quickly, to Bernie: “Hold my calls.”

I wince when she says that. It keeps getting worse.

I go into Marcella’s big bright office; one wall is adorned with a series of framed black-and-white pictures of her kids, two boys and a girl, Ryan, Mason, and Yvette. They are so beautiful with their open, curious faces and their hair, shimmering like gold; they should be in a movie. And then there’s the window and that downtown view. Every time I come into this room I feel like I am flying over Manhattan. Suddenly, I am drenched in the sensation I had the first time I stepped in this office, that New York is the most magical city in the whole world, brimming with possibility, and terrified that I, a girl from tired old Amesbury, will never be enough for it.

And now we know: Riley from Amesbury will never be enough.

Marcella tells me to take a seat. I sit in one of the chairs facing her desk, but she stands in front of me. She is tall and gorgeous, as always, in a skirt and a loose, flowing blouse, her light-brown hair cut in a neat bob. Marcella looks down to collect her thoughts.

“Marcella—” I start.

“Riley, please,” she says.

I went to her mother’s funeral and to Yvette’s fifth birthday party. She helped me when I first got to New York, and she helped me when Caleb was born. She visited me when I was in rehab. Marcella has been everything to me for seven years. This isn’t just work. This is family; the family I chose.

She’s not going to fire me. Nobody fires family.

“Riley,” she finally says. “What’s going on?”

“I’m sorry, Marcella,” I say. “It’s crazy; I lost my phone—”

“This isn’t about phones,” she says. “This is about business. When you don’t show up for a shoot or a show or a fitting, dozens of people have to rearrange everything around you. And it makes you look like you don’t care about anybody’s time but your own. Which makes me look like I don’t care.”

The look on her face is so solemn. I hate that. “I do care,” I squeak.

She holds up her finger. “And here’s the kicker. You’re older, Riley. You actually do know better. People aren’t going to put up with foolishness just because you know how to work a catwalk. You need to hustle. That means you get places on time—early, in fact. You’re not better than anybody; you’re just showing up to do a job, same as everybody. Nobody’s going to hire you for your looks or because of your name. They hire you because you know what you’re doing. But these days, I’m not so sure about that.”

I bite my lip. “I’m sorry, Marcella. I’ll do better.”

Marcella sighs, walks around to her desk, and sits down. “The behavior we’ve seen lately—blowing off shoots, arriving hours late, being rude—this isn’t like you. What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” I say. My heart floats up and into my throat. I want to cry. I look down at my lap because I don’t want her to see that my eyes are wet.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “Riley, I know you’re using again. I have to let you go.”

“Marcella, don’t,” I say, gripping the sides of my chair. “I need the work.”

“I know. You need the work; you need the money. It gets pretty expensive after a while, huh?”

“Don’t do this,” I say.

She comes around to the front of the desk and sits on the edge, across from me. “Take this opportunity. Quit. Clean yourself up, and pull yourself together. If not for your own good, then for Caleb.”

Marcella sighs, grips her elbows, and turns away. I know I disappointed her; I could have been one of those models who embraced motherhood and added it to her brand, and dressed her kids in designer overalls, and brought them to photoshoots and posted them all over the Insta-Twitter-Face-gram world. I don’t know why I’m not like one of them. I don’t know where my whole life went off the rails. And I have no idea how to fix any of it.

“Don’t talk about him,” I say.

“Fine, Riley, don’t do it for him, and don’t do it for me,” she says. “Do it for yourself. Because you won’t make it to the other side. If you don’t do something now, the drugs will kill you. They always win, trust me.”

I stare at her and blink. “You think I’m an addict. I can’t believe it. You guys sent me to rehab two years ago, and now you think I’m using again?”

“You’re really going to deny it?” she says, her short bob bouncing. “Empty out your purse. Right here, on the desk.” She taps her desk to show me where to pour everything out. “Better yet, here’s a cup.” She reaches into a drawer and slams a little clear plastic cup down in front of me. “Go to the ladies’ room and give me a sample. Prove me wrong. I’d like nothing more.”

I only look at the cup. I don’t want to turn away from a challenge, but I had a pill parfait for breakfast. Happy little pills, and a snort of cocaine to cheer me up because I sort of knew what was coming. I don’t touch it, but I meet her glaring eyes. Her face, her pretty face, which I have seen drunk and flirty at agency parties, pale and exhausted after twelve hours on a plane, fraught with worry for her mom, and exasperated by the drunken hijinks of young models, looks at me now with a derision I never would have thought she’d have for me.

She picks up the cup and puts it back in her desk drawer. “Damn it, Riley,” she mutters under her breath.

I know how I look to her. Me, my own face painted in broad strokes to hide a geography lesson of lines and circles. My body, skinny and bony, not lean and muscular like it should be, like it once was. And my pretty Fendi bag, the one she gave me for my birthday, showing threads on the handles and scuffs on the bottom. I have nowhere to hide. For a few years, I fooled the world into thinking I was beautiful, but now they realize, as Marcella finally has, that I am a fake.

I want to go home and hide under blankets. A friendly, happy little pill, and this will all fade into some past so distant that it might have never happened at all.

“All right, then,” I say. I stand up and whip my bag over my shoulder and walk to the door.

“You’re breaking my heart,” she says. “You’re a smart girl; you have a lot of talent. You could have a great future, but you need to get clean.”

I smile. “I bet you say that to all the pretty girls.”

“I’m sorry, Riley. You have no idea how sorry I am.”

My hand is on the doorknob, but I’m not quite ready to leave this room, where I used to be so welcome and safe. “I thought,” I say, not exactly sure if I am speaking out loud, “that you were going to help me.”

“I wanted to,” she says. “But if I keep helping you, you will die right in front of me. And I’m terrified, Riley. It might already be happening.”

Out on the sidewalk, I cry while I walk for two city blocks. And then it hits me—wait, I’m free. The future is wide open. I could do anything. Anything at all. I could go for a bicycle ride. I could take a cooking class. I could read the whole newspaper on Sunday morning and eat a bagel. An entire bagel. With regular cream cheese!

I will start, though, by going home and taking a pill and a nap, as long a nap as I want. Maybe, in fact, I will never wake up.