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  As I walked out the door, she said, “It’s a crying shame when students have to work instead of concentrate on their education, isn’t it? But what are you going to do? It’s a money-driven society, eh?”

  Little did she know, I wasn’t doing this for the money. Not really. I was doing it for Brian. Wait till he saw me, modeling in some high-fashion magazine. I knew I had this goofy cat with a mouthful of canary look on my face, but I couldn’t help it. I was going to get Brian back. I was going to Italy on a modeling job, and I didn’t even have to humiliate myself on Top Model to do it. Things were definitely looking up.

  9

  Bee Takes Flight

  Did I mention that the closest I’d ever been to Europe was the It’s a Small World After All ride at Disney World? I could hardly tell what geeked me out more: the fact that I was about to go on my first modeling job or the fact that I was headed to Italy. If the Chesterfield Agency hadn’t sent a car to pick me up and take me to the airport, I would’ve never made my flight. I would’ve gotten on the subway and instead of taking the train to JFK, I would’ve ended up at Yankee Stadium. I swear. I’m not wrapped too tight these days.

  Then they flew me business class. Well, on Alitalia they called it “executive class.” Ha! I’m not an executive. I’m a seventeen-year-old freshman who got really, really lucky in Dean and DeLuca.

  Aunt Zo warned me to pass on the free champagne they give out on international flights and not just because I’m underage. “It flows like water up there, and you don’t want to arrive at your first job drunk,” she said. But I made myself completely happy with OJ, the gnocchi that came on a real plate with real silverware, and the cannoli they served for dessert.

  When we landed, I was met at the gate by a woman named Giovanna from the advertising agency in Milan. She looked more like a model than I did. Tall, thin, movie star hair, and movie star sunglasses. She kissed me on both cheeks and said, “Benvenuto, bella.” Giovanna had a porter get my bags, then she led me through customs. Since I was there for work, we didn’t wait in a single line. Giovanna just spoke Italian rapidly and we stormed through.

  A navy blue Mercedes was waiting for us, along with a driver who was so handsome that for the first time in months, I completely forgot about Brian. He drove us to the Villa d’Este. And what can I say? It’s not a hotel, it’s an experience.

  First of all, it’s not really a hotel: it’s a castle, sitting on this beautiful lake. When you walk in, it’s like a museum: stone walls, sculptures, paintings, Persian rugs. You take this winding staircase, like the one in Daddy Warbucks’s house in Annie, up to your room. My suite looked out on the lake and had a private swimming pool. (Giovanna insisted it wasn’t a swimming pool, it was just a big Jacuzzi.)

  It was heaven. Over dinner, Giovanna told me the whole story. The villa was built in 1568, which is way too long ago for me to even imagine. Then it was owned by a ballerina, then one of Napoleon’s generals, then an Italian princessa and a Russian empress. It became a hotel in 1873. She also told me that George Clooney owns a house nearby and that he’s always hanging out at the bar with his friends, people like Matt Damon and Brad Pitt.

  I begged, like a dog, to go to the bar after dinner. But we had a five a.m. wake-up call the next day. Giovanna said, “You are the model. You must rest.”

  “What if I want to make a call?” I asked. “Can I call long distance on the phone in my room?”

  Giovanna laughed. “You are staying at the Villa D’Este, the most exquisite hotel in all of northern Italy. Of course you can call long distance.”

  I was so excited that I filled the gigantic bubble bath with water. I got in, and then because there was a phone right next to the Jacuzzi, I called Chela.

  “Hey, Chela, guess where I’m calling you from?” I said.

  “Italy, girl, I know,” she said. “Tell me all about it.”

  “Where exactly in Italy am I?” I pressed.

  “I have no idea.”

  “I’m in my very own mega-Jacuzzi! Can you believe it???” I screeched.

  “Get out!” she said.

  “No, you get out!” I said.

  We went back and forth that way for about five minutes because that’s what we always do.

  “This Jacuzzi is gigantic, Chela,” I said. “You could fit like six people in here easy.”

  “Why didn’t you ask them if you could bring a friend?” she whined.

  “I did,” I said. “I TOTALLY did. But Leslie said it was unprofessional.”

  “Well, that sucks,” she said.

  “Tell me about it,” I said.

  I was so amped about the photo shoot the next day that I talked to Chela until the water in the Jacuzzi was ice cold and my skin was all dried up like the papayas in my mother’s favorite trail mix.

  When I finally hung up and got into my pajamas, I couldn’t believe the time. It was two o’clock in the morning! I had to be up at five. I called down to the front desk for a wake-up call and then went right to sleep. No biggie, I thought. I’m a college student. I get by on three hours of sleep all the time.

  I don’t know what happened. Maybe the guy at the front desk “non parlo inglese” the way he said he did. Or maybe the phone rang with my wake-up call and I totally slept through it. It’s been known to happen. But I overslept, and when I did pick up the phone, it was Leslie Chesterfield’s very angry voice on the other end.

  “Bee, where the hell are you?” she said. She wasn’t screaming, but she had the kind of voice that could bring the pain without raising a single decibel.

  “Hi, I mean, good morning,” I mumbled. I was so, so sleepy. I guess asking if I could hit the snooze button was out of the question.

  “Do you know what time it is?” Leslie sniped.

  “Five a.m.?” I said hopefully.

  “It is six a.m. The photographer, the stylist, the makeup and hair people are all waiting for you in the lobby and have been waiting for over an hour. You do know this is unacceptable.”

  “But I thought my call was at five a.m.,” I said. “How could I be an hour late already?”

  She took a deep breath and then sighed. It was the indignant sigh of a very smart person having to explain something very simple to someone who was extraordinarily stupid. I knew it well because it was the same indignant sigh that my mother made every time I asked her why we couldn’t buy our clothes from the mall like everyone else.

  “Beatrice,” Leslie said, reverting to my full name. “A five a.m. call means that you are ready to work at five a.m. This means you are in the lobby of the hotel, dressed, and ready for transportation to take you to the site of the shoot. In order to make a five a.m. call, you must then be awake by four a.m., earlier if you are the sort of person who drags in the morning.”

  Up at four a.m.? I know they were paying me the big bucks, but was she kidding me?

  “Have I made myself perfectly clear?” Leslie asked.

  “Um, okay,” I said.

  Then for about five seconds, her tone softened. “I understand that this is your first shoot. And it’s entirely possible that some of the blame for your irresponsibility lies on my shoulders for not explaining the protocol to you. But this is not a business that deals in second chances, Bee. You’ve got to figure out where you need to be and when you need to be there and then help the photographer create images that will satisfy the client. It’s work, not play. You’re a smart girl. I expect you to pick up quickly.”

  And then without saying goodbye, she hung up the phone.

  I was so rattled that I wasn’t sure I had time to shower. I flew out of bed, stepped into my jeans, and raced to the lobby, combing my hair with my fingers.

  Dexter Haven, the photographer, was British like Leslie. He was one of those guys who tries to pretend he doesn’t know how cute he is, but he can’t quite hide it, kind of like Justin Timberlake.

  Dexter had three assistants; they told me their names but then never really spoke to me again. They were too busy
hopping to it every time Dexter needed a lens or a filter or a soda. There was a stylist, who also had three assistants. And there was a makeup artist, Syreeta, who, as it happened, was from Philly, so we had a million things to talk about. The hairstylist, Andy, was funny—very dramatic, very much the artiste, and very bald. He assured me, though, “The fact that I’m not worrying about my hair means that I can concentrate on yours.”

  We all piled into a really fancy minivan and drove about an hour to a beautiful little country town. That first day, I rode a bicycle down a hill for six hours. I kid you not. I rode it down the hill, laughing and smiling and trying to hold my hands above my head. Then one of Dexter’s assistants would walk the bike back up the hill. It was a cool bike, a classic red Raleigh. I wore these beautiful sundresses—some were strapless, some had more of a halter top—and Syreeta dusted gold powder on my eyes, my cheeks, and in the middle of my cleavage. “Those puppies are the real stars of the show,” she said, referring to my breasts. Hilarious.

  It was fun riding the bike, but Dexter kept saying, “More in the face, Bee. More in the face.” I was laughing and smiling the whole time I was on the bike, but I guess laughing in real life isn’t the same as laughing so they can capture it on film. Every time Dexter took a break to show me the digital shots on his laptop, nine out of ten of them looked like I was about to be examined by a dentist, not like I’d been smiling or laughing at all.

  Dexter was really nice about it. At the end of the day, he said, “It’s okay, it’s your first shoot. And we’ve got a couple of really gorgeous shots. Just try to remember, you’re a model: you’ve got to learn how to control your face.”

  I went back to the hotel and tried to make happy faces that didn’t show off a bird’s-eye view of my tonsils, but it was actually harder than it looked. After about an hour, my face really, really hurt and I still wasn’t sure that I was doing it right.

  Leslie Chesterfield called at seven p.m., right before I was about to hop into bed.

  “Bee,” she said. Her crisp British accent made it sound like she was going to keep me after school for detention. “I understand there’s some problem with the face shots.”

  I was lying in the gigantic hotel bed, and I just wanted to crawl underneath the covers and never come out. I only had one face. I’d been smiling the same way my whole life. What was I supposed to do?

  “Bee?” Leslie said. “This is modeling, not curing cancer. Just try to smile in a fashion that does not suggest that you are trying to catch flies.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Very well,” Leslie said. “Good night, and remember that there are a hundred girls who would kill to take your place. Apply yourself, Bee, and set multiple alarms.”

  I knew what it meant to work hard at physics or calculus, but I had NO idea what it meant to “apply myself” as a model. I had always liked having my picture taken. My dad is a typical science geek, and cameras are some of his favorite gadgets. Maybe if they would hire my dad to take the pictures, I could do a better job. Somehow, I sensed that wasn’t going to happen.

  At the airport, I’d bought a copy of Elle with Savannah Hughes on the cover. I opened up the magazine and studied her eight-page fashion spread. I noticed that she never actually smiled in any of the photographs. Instead, she did this cocky little smirk and the left side of her mouth was raised ever so slightly as if she had a secret that was hers and hers alone.

  I jumped out of the bed and went to the mirror in the massive marble bathroom. I practiced doing the Savannah smirk, and I’m not trying to brag or anything, but it looked pretty damn good.

  Okay, I thought as I crawled back into the bed. Didn’t both Leslie and the girl at the Laura Mercier counter say I kind of reminded them of Savannah? Tomorrow, I was going to work the Savannah smirk like no one but Savannah herself had ever worked it before.

  Chela wouldn’t approve. Her motto in life was “Do you.” But I’d tried all day to “do me,” and the word had come from on high: when I was myself, I pretty much sucked.

  The next morning, I rode in a speedboat with a gorgeous Italian male model who did not speak a word of English. He said a bunch of things I didn’t understand, then Giovanna translated, “His name is Lucho. He wants you to know that he is gay, but he thinks you are very beautiful. Touch him anywhere.”

  What? She laughed and then demonstrated. She put an arm around his shoulders, kissed him on the cheek. “You are a couple in love,” she said. “Lucho wants you to feel comfortable touching him.”

  All righty, then.

  Dexter and the team rode in a boat in front of us, and Lucho and I were in our own boat. Peter, one of Dexter’s assistants, lay down on the deck of the boat. He had a walkie-talkie and gave us all of Dexter’s orders since we couldn’t hear him over the crashing waves.

  “Dexter wants Bee to hug Lucho,” Peter said. “Dexter wants Bee to lean against the mast and close her eyes.”

  Then it was, “Dexter wants Bee to close her eyes and look thoughtful happy, not thoughtful sad.”

  It was funny to get these wacko instructions; it was kind of a mix between playing Simon says and being a life-size Ken and Barbie.

  The good news was that Dexter was much happier with my smile. “Big improvement in the face,” he said when we stopped for a lunch break. “It’s a very sly, knowing smile. I really like it.”

  It was a long day, from six a.m. until sunset. I must’ve changed clothes thirty times. And after every meal, Syreeta had me wash my face so she could do my makeup completely from scratch. “We don’t want you to get drag rot, girlfriend.” I went back to the villa exhausted. But I would not, could not, with good conscience call it work.

  On the last day of shooting, Giovanna told me to sleep during the day. It was a night shoot, and we would work until three or four o’clock in the morning. The car picked me up at four p.m. We drove to another, smaller villa on the lake. Giovanna said it belonged to Giorgio Armani, who sometimes rented it out. I was surprised when I got there to find it was packed with people. Maybe fifty people were there in addition to our usual dirty dozen.

  “Extras,” Giovanna said dismissively. “We are shooting a dinner party.”

  “That’s a lot of people to have over to dinner,” I said.

  “This is how we do it in Italy,” Giovanna said.

  The clothes for this shoot were fancier, honest-to-goodness ball gowns with long, poofy skirts. Andy said, “We’re going the whole principessa route,” and he put extensions in my hair so that I’d have curls going down my back.

  I had a new “boyfriend” for this shoot, Marco. Although I received the same set of instructions: Marco was gay. He thought I was very beautiful. Touch him anywhere.

  I kept thinking about Brian during the shoot. How I wished we were still together. How cool it would’ve been to take this amazing trip with him. How I wished instead of caressing Marco’s extremely well-sculpted biceps my arms were wrapped around Brian.

  It was the last setup of the evening when I heard what sounded like gunshots. Dexter explained that we were all to go to the shutters, open them, and walk through the balcony doors onto the lawn. So we did. And when I looked up, I saw fireworks.

  “Just like that, Bee,” Dexter said, circling me as his assistants flashed strobes and bright lights in my face. “Look surprised. Look up at the sky as if you can’t believe what you are seeing. That’s very good. Excellent.”

  He showed me the images on his laptop, and there were a couple that were so good, I could hardly believe they were of me.

  “These are the pictures I’ve been trying to get for three whole days. Look at those eyes,” Dexter said. “That is the face of a supe. You can’t manufacture that kind of magic. You look like a modern-day Alice in Wonderland.”

  It wasn’t hard to smile at the camera, like a girl who’d wandered into a fairy tale. I was at a villa, on the lake, in Italy, wearing a one-of-a-kind hand-painted ball gown. I was surrounded by beautiful people, I was being
fed the most amazing food, and the sky was exploding with color. The awe Dexter saw in my face was absolutely and categorically real.

  10

  Bee in Hives

  After I got back from Italy, I went in for a meeting with Leslie Chesterfield. I don’t know why, but I half expected her to get up and kiss me on both cheeks, like all the modeling people I’d met in Italy. But she wasn’t in a kissy-kissy mood.

  In front of her, there was a big stack of photographs; all of them were of me. I was kinda stoked. I mean, she must’ve called me in to congratulate me for rocking the house on the Italy shoot, right? Didn’t the photographer say that the last shots were perfect?

  But when I went to her office, she said, “You’ve got to do better than this, Bee. There are a few shots here that are nothing short of amazing. But there are a lot of shots that look like they were taken for your yearbook. You’ve got to learn how to connect with the camera. A really great model knows how to bring something fresh to every frame.”

  Leslie’s office was all white: white desk, white bookcases, white plush chairs, with funky pieces of sea coral on the bookshelves that matched the reddish orange telephone and rug. It had a cool kind of aquarium feel the last time I’d been in, to sign my contract, but now, I couldn’t help but see the ocean theme as a sign that I was sunk.

  To the left of Leslie’s desk was a flat-screen TV that was connected to her laptop. Every time she clicked her mouse pad, a picture of me came up.

  It was a little embarrassing. One after another, a dozen shots of me on the bike came up on the screen. Every single picture looked like a medical photograph of someone being prepped for a tonsillectomy. The last shot was really pretty. I had a nice smile, and I didn’t look gigantic in the clothes. I just looked like a curvy girl out for a bike ride on a perfect spring day.