The venerable entrance to the Plaza Hotel in New York was being used as the backdrop for a glossy magazine fashion shoot. Camera grafted to his face, the photographer, an amalgam of undefined creatures, clicked and crawled and cooed, climbing about the stone and marble like something primordial yet to develop legs. A woman in gray wool and a wine-colored scarf blown by a huge fan, was the focus of his attention.
Holly Marie Bassett’s traffic-stopping, head-turning face had glamorized the covers of countless magazines. Her perfect legs had strutted the runways of Paris, Milan, Tokyo, and New York. She’d been wined and mined by royalty, shutterbug trash, and a yogi “guru.” Like most beautiful women, she required constant reassurance of the fact that she was.
Eric pulled the camera from his face and stood surprisingly erect. She smelled the cigarettes on his breath. “Baby, what’s going on? There’s something missing. You’re not giving it to me. We’re losing the light. C’mon Baby, you gotta turn it on.” He whirled to his assistant. “Give me all you can on that reflector. Let’s go!”
The hotel room was jammed with equipment, designer clothes on rolling racks, makeup and hair paraphernalia. The people that went with it all were packing up. Holly sat in the bathroom blotting tears. Eric leaned against the door talking to her in the mirror. “I think we got it. But, Jesus, Holly, it was like pulling teeth. What’s the matter with you?”
“I don’t know…Maybe I need a rest…”
“A rest? Who rests in this business? You rest when you’re dead. Go home. Drink a half bottle of Merlot and get some sleep. Your eyes look like two slices of pepperoni.” He kissed the top of her head, lit a cigarette, and left.
The rent on her puny one-bedroom apartment on the East Side was about the same as a mortgage payment on a Texas ranch. Not much of a place to call home, but it kept the rain off a gypsy’s head. The kitchen was a sink, a two-burner stove, and a half-pint fridge lined against a wall. It was almost never used. Mainly Cokes, bagels, and an occasional dose of brown rice fueled her.
She leaned against the wall as if she’d been clubbed, her face streaked with tears, her legs about to fold. As the last of her strength ebbed, she slid slowly down the wall and dropped her head on her knees.
Tony stood there in his slickness wishing he could be anywhere but where he was.
“What makes me think?” She said it to the floor, then wearily raised her head as if it were a great weight and behind a cascade of tears looked at him with tired eyes and said, “I don’t think…I know. I know because she told me. She told me the things you said about me while you were screwing her. ‘I’m frigid because I’m really in love with my dead brother.’ Am I making that up? It’s written all over your face.”
“Well, maybe if you’d let go of your brother, I wouldn’t be screwing somebody else.” Tony brushed a hand lightly over his hair as sleek as a blackbird’s breast and glanced at his watch.
“You’re such a low-life.” She sobbed, “And my brother’s got nothing to do with it. I knew it. I’ve known from the start what you are. I deserved you for being so stupid. My brain must have died with my brother.” She struggled to her feet and walked slowly toward him on unsteady legs as she reached deep inside of herself for just enough power to pummel his chest and beg him to leave. Tony covered his head as she raised her arms in an incomplete gesture. “Get out…please…get out. Get out!”
With his slamming of the door, she summoned the energy to get to the bedroom, gather his stay-over clothes in her arms and rush out to the empty hallway. The elevator light indicated its descent. She leaned over the handrail at the stairwell and tossed the clothes and sneakers. She watched them tumble twelve stories to the lobby floor. He appeared from the elevator next to the heap. When he looked up, she was gone.
She spread her forearms on the mantle and put her cheek on her stacked hands and wept. She raised her watered eyes to gaze at the tousled head and lopsided grin of her brother Brad in a silver frame. “I want you back…” she said, releasing a plaintive wail from a tortured heart. “Everything I ever hoped for…it’s all gone. Oh, God…”