The Ex Chronicles

Zenobia is running around her apartment trying to get dressed. She’s pulling things out of her closet and discarding them onto the floor. She holds up a pretty, strapless white dress with pink and white flowers.

Zenobia sticks her tongue out at him, then rummages through her hangers, pulling out a cream cashmere sweater dress that hits just below the knee. She grabs a large brown leather belt, then turns back to Malcolm. “What about this one, sweetie? It’s surely age appropriate, even a little cheeky and optimistic, yeah?” When he doesn’t answer she pleads, “Malcolm, please, I need your help.”

Zenobia pads over to the bed. Sliding under the sheets, she curls up behind him, slipping an arm across his chest. “You know I have the casting today. You promised to help me with my lines.”

Malcolm shrugs out of her embrace. “Damn it, Z. I’m sleeping. You go to castings twice a week—don’t you know how to do this by now?” Malcolm’s tone is even sharper than usual.

Stung but not surprised, Zenobia slides closer to him. “Baby, this is important. It’s for Apple. They pay extremely well and if it’s good I’ll get paid every time the segment airs. We could really use the money.”

“Money, money money. That’s all I hear from you.” Malcolm’s thick honey curls are standing up around his head; his creamy complexion is bright red. Even red-faced and furious, he is beautiful to her. Zenobia holds up her hands; she hates to upset him.

It’s too late: Once Malcolm spins out there’s no reeling him back in. He starts pacing around the bedroom. “And I don’t. You don’t care about my work. You don’t support me with my art.” He stalks over to the dresser, pulls out a pair of jeans and a shirt, then slips them on.

“Please don’t go,” Zenobia begs. “I’m sorry; that was thoughtless. I’m just stressed out—the bills are due and I’m not sure where the money is going to come from.”

“Is this the real reason you wake me up and upset me?” Malcolm turns to face Zenobia and crosses his arms across his chest.

Zenobia pleads, “You’re being unreasonable. You don’t help me with money. I have a mortgage.” She flings open her arms. “All this happiness has to be paid for,” she jokes.

Malcolm misses her sarcasm. “What happiness? If you don’t want me here I’ll leave.” Although this is far from the first time he’s threatened this, Zenobia’s heart skips a beat every time he says it. She hugs him. “I’m sorry, Malcolm,” she soothes. “That’s not what I’m saying. I just don’t understand why you get so angry at me.”

Malcolm shrugs off her embrace. “Because you don’t know how to talk to me or how to take care of me.” He goes to the closet and grabs his overnight bag, throwing clothes and shoes inside. After zipping the bag he looks at Zenobia. “You used to be fun—how you say?—easygoing, but now you’re . . .” He searches for the right word. “Gespannen.”

Zenobia puts her arms around him again. “That’s not fair, Malcolm. If I’m uptight it’s because nothing ever changes. Money is tight, I’m not modeling full-time anymore, and the agency is still struggling. I want you here but I need help, even if it’s just cleaning up or helping with chores around the house.”

Malcolm pushes her away and walks toward the door. “Dutch men don’t do women’s work. That’s what American men do. I told you not to leave your agency but you didn’t listen. Now I have to pay for it. Dutch women listen to their men. If you had, we’d be better off.” Then he turns and leaves the bedroom, Zenobia trailing after him. “Malcolm, please don’t go, I’m trying.”

“You’re not trying hard enough. That’s why I’m always leaving you. If this keeps up, one day I don’t come back.” Then he opens the door and leaves, slamming it behind him.

Zenobia stands in the hallway, looking miserably at the door. Nothing she does makes Malcolm happy. When she was modeling he complained about the hours and her long absences away on shoots. Now that she’s opened her own agency with David, he complains because money is tight.

Zenobia slumps against the wall, then slides miserably to the floor. She loves Malcolm; she tries to remember the love that joined them so many years ago in Amsterdam. But this Malcolm is not someone she recognizes. He’s become petulant and demanding, disappearing for days, sometimes weeks at a time whenever she asks him to do something he doesn’t want to.

At first his disappearance would completely wreck her; she’d be unable to work, and sometimes she couldn’t even get out of bed. But lately his departures have allowed her to focus more on herself and the agency. Although she doesn’t actually want him to leave, his absences no longer hurt as much—sometimes they even feel like a little bit of a holiday.

“Bloody hell . . .” Zenobia sees the time then jumps up and runs into the bedroom. She has an hour to get dressed and to the casting and she is in no frame of mind to be happy and bubbly. She shakes her head. Malcolm has managed once again to cost her. She wonders how long she can continue to afford it.

Two hours later Zenobia is walking across Columbus Circle. You’d think after more than ten years modeling she’d be used to rejection. As soon as she arrived at the casting her heart sank: The room was filled with wall-to-wall gorgeous “ethnic model types,” and not one of them seemed over twenty years old. The call had been for “ethnic models between twenty and thirty years old.” If these were the women they allowed for the callback then it should just have been for twenty- to twenty-one-year-olds.

When her name was called, Zenobia slunk into the studio feeling like someone’s mother. She did well, remembered her lines, was bubbly and cheerful, and even had chemistry with the ethnic-type guy she read with, though he, too, looked just slightly more than half her age. But she’s been in the business long enough to know when she’s gotten a gig or not, and she’s pretty sure she isn’t getting this one.

Heading into the 59th Street subway station, Zenobia tries to put it out of her head; she’ll find out soon enough. Right now she has a full day ahead trying to get her few girls cast. But it’s an uphill battle; NOW Management is the new kid on the modeling block, and Wilhelmina had threatened to get NOW’s girls blacklisted when David left and took one of their biggest girls with him.

David had been Zenobia’s booker for much of her time at Wilhelmina, and he’d taken really good care of her, treating her not like a black model but like a top model. She took a chance leaving—her bookings were great and she was making the agency money, but she felt stuck in a rut.

Zenobia felt pigeonholed as the black haute-couture girl. She knew she could do sporty and editorial work—she could even do the very lucrative Victoria’s Secret catalog work, but she was told she didn’t represent their demographic. She’d looked incredulously at the head of the agency. “Michaela, are you trying to tell me that black women don’t buy VS?”

As Zenobia had watched Michaela walk away, her platform sandals clicking across the concrete floors, she’d decided then and there to take David up on his offer to join him in his new agency. But she’d renegotiated the deal to join him not only as the face of NOW but also as his partner.

Zenobia goes into the station and sees an enigmatic figure in skinny jeans, combat boots, jeans jacket, and a hood pulled low heading for the uptown A platform. He’s tall and thin, and she’s struck by how gracefully he moves. She thinks he might be a good candidate for the agency. But they need women before they can focus on their men’s section. Putting him out of her mind, she heads to the downtown train and waits for the A. While she’s looking across the platform, she sees the same guy slouching against the column with his arms crossed over his chest.

Z hears the train rumbling into the station on her side. Great, she thinks, checking her watch; the express would get her downtown in no time. When she looks across the platform again he’s pulling the hood back and Zenobia is looking at the sharp cheekbones, honey skin, and full lips of a woman. Her fauxhawk adds to her androgynous look, but she is definitely female, maybe Hispanic. She’s not wearing a speck of makeup and she’s still the most beautiful woman on the platform. Zenobia has to find out who she is.

She’s torn. She probably can’t reach her before the uptown train pulls in anyway. She stands there for a few precious seconds, trying to decide what to do. Then, just as her train pulls into the station, Z fights her way through the crowd and runs to the stairs at the end of the platform. Her bag bangs into people trying to get on the train. “Excuse me, sorry, pardon, pardon, so sorry, very sorry.” She races across to the other stairs and almost slides down the last four steps. By the time she gets to the bottom, people are backing away from her like she’s peddling The Watchtower.

The uptown train pulls into the station. Redoubling her effort, Z runs down the platform, almost colliding with a group of teenagers.

“So sorry, excuse me,” she says. The girl looks warily at her as Z pulls her card out of her bag and hands it to her. She takes it just as the doors close.

That was weird, Portia thinks as the train pulls out of the station. She looks at the card she’s holding. “NOW Model Management”; below that, “Zenobia Bowles.” The tall, black girl definitely looked like a Zenobia Bowles. She didn’t look like one of the creepy guys who sometimes approach her to do “modeling” and often just want her to take her clothes off.

The card is a thick, chocolate stock with raised cream lettering. The office is in the Puck Building in SoHo. At least it isn’t one of those tacky free cards with all kinds of advertising on the back and an apartment address. Portia puts the card in her pocket, pulls her hood over her head, and forgets about it as the train rumbles uptown.

She exits at 163rd Street and heads one block uptown and then west to Fort Washington Avenue. Although it’s a school day, the streets of the mostly Dominican neighborhood are thick with kids and teens playing and talking loudly in Spanish, their parents sitting outside. Her head is down and her gait is quick as she makes her way through the throng and enters her apartment building. She gets into the elevator and exits on the sixth floor.

Before she reaches her door she hears the TV. Sighing, she turns her key in the lock and walks in. Her mother’s boyfriend, Rey, works at night, so during the day he is usually in the apartment watching TV. In the last six months Rey has been coming around and not leaving. He was living with his mother in the Bronx but Washington Heights is more convenient for his job as a late-night train conductor.

Portia hates being home during the day because she and Rey don’t get along. He also treats the living room like his bedroom: Beer cans and food cartons litter the room and although the large living room gets lots of bright light, Rey, who usually falls asleep watching TV in here when he gets home in the early-morning hours, prefers to keep the drapes closed.

The two-bedroom prewar apartment Portia has lived in most of her life is large enough to accommodate four people, but Rey taking over the living room during the day is an imposition when Portia is home or when Lulu, Portia’s nine-year-old sister, is getting ready for school. Their mother, Luz, works long hours and often overnight as a home-care attendant, so this isn’t as much of an issue for her.

Rey is lounging on the couch in his undershirt and boxers, drinking a beer as Telemundo plays loudly on the TV when Portia opens the door. He barely acknowledges her. Without a word she walks past him into the bedroom she shares with Lulu. After closing and locking the door, she plops down on her bed. Looking out of the window at the scenic view of the park across the street, with the sparkling blue Hudson River flowing behind it, makes her feel a little better.

She loves the neighborhood and used to love her home, but since Rey has been living with them she feels like a prisoner. Her mother is working longer and longer hours, and whenever she’s home she’s either sleeping or taking care of Lulu or Rey.

Coming out of her daydream Portia checks the clock; it’s almost two-thirty. She has to pick up Lulu from school at three. She unlocks the door and walks past Rey into the kitchen. The place is a mess—the garbage smells, the sink has dirty glasses and dishes, and the table is strewn with takeout cartons. Portia is getting angry as she looks around the kitchen. She cleaned up this morning before she took Lulu to school. Rey has managed to trash the apartment in the few hours he’s been awake. Portia’s fists are clenched as she walks into the living room. “You fucking slob!” she yells. “Why you never clean up?”

“All you bring in here is beer. When my mother isn’t here you only feed yourself. This is our house. We don’t want you here. Why don’t you go back to the Bronx.”

Moving in had been his idea. Luz had wanted to wait longer; she and Rey had been dating just over a year. Rey and Portia didn’t get along and she had two girls alone at home.

But Rey had pressed her, using her words against her. He’d convinced her that having a man around would help them feel more secure, especially when Luz worked overnight. He’d also promised that a second income would help with the bills. But six months had passed and the only contribution Rey had made was to increase everybody’s workload and to turn the once-open family home into a series of closed doors.

For Rey, Washington Heights, with its proximity to cheap restaurants along Broadway, was convenient for him for work and had a lot more going on than the sleepy neighborhood his mother lived in. Rey was also getting tired of being thirty and living with his mother.

“You got a smart mouth, Portia. Your mother spoils you.” He lets his eye travel slowly up her body. “Letting you hack off your hair and dress like a boy and mouthing off. If you were my kid I’d beat the crap outta you. You better find some respect. I’m not going anywhere. I might even be su padre one day.”

“I don’t need a father!” Portia yells. “I didn’t need that bastard and I certainly don’t need you,” she yells. “Clean up this fucking place before I get home with Lulu!”

Brushing past him, she says, “Yeah, you look like a bitch to me.” At the front door she turns around and points a finger at him. “Mi madre might put up with your bullshit but I see you for what you are, a lazy, freeloading bully.”

Then she walks out, slamming the door behind her. She can hear Rey cursing at her as she walks down the hallway to the elevator.