The Magnolia Palace(6)
It hadn’t been the look that Veronica had been going for when she cut a photo out of Rave magazine and showed it to her mother. “What, you’re going to pay someone two quid to do that?” her mother, Trish, had said. “Let me.”
Veronica had felt guilty at the thought of spending that much money on herself, so she’d sat in the kitchen chair, let Trish put a tea towel around her neck to catch the bits, and closed her eyes, hoping for the best.
The model in the photo had thick bangs along her forehead with the rest long. But Trish cut the bangs too deeply at the sides, and then flubbed the trim at the back, so that by the time she was finished, Veronica looked like she had a mop on her head, the same cut she’d had back when she and Polly were five and their mother used an upside-down cereal bowl as a guide.
For all of her ranting and raving at Trish for destroying her hair, in the end, the cut had attracted a modeling agent in London, and later landed Veronica the Vogue job. While she looked quite mod in photos, the hairstyle tended to overwhelm her other features in person.
“She looks like she’s a mushroom,” one of the girls had said last night at the party.
Veronica had been around the corner, examining the contents of the bookshelves that lined a hallway. Heller, Capote, Pynchon. All men. Not even a little Flannery O’Connor, to break things up. She’d overheard the comment and known that it was meant for her.
“I like it.” The voice was high and squeaky, and Veronica recognized it as belonging to the girl called Tangerine, who she’d briefly befriended on a shoot in London last year. Tangerine was shorter than the typical model, around five feet six, and skinny with huge eyes. “I wish I had the courage to chop all this off. Would be much easier to manage.”
The other girl gasped. “Don’t you dare touch it. Promise me!”
After a couple of giggly promises, they’d moved on, and Veronica had emerged, collected her coat, and left. Outside, snow flurries danced in the lamplight, like slivers of confetti.
If she was the first to leave, then hopefully she wouldn’t be the last to arrive at the photo shoot location this morning. The others had more reason to be late, considering the amount of alcohol consumed.
She grabbed her two large suitcases—one filled with her modeling gear and the other with her street clothes—and checked out of the hotel. A porter helped her into a taxi, and she gave the driver the address that she’d scribbled down in her daily planner. The shoot encompassed two locations, shot over three days. They were to begin in New York at somewhere called the Frick Collection, a fancy museum that used to be a Gilded Age house, followed by a shoot at a mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, with a train ride connecting the two. Veronica wished she’d had more time in New York, or at least spent last night at a Broadway show or walking the streets instead of trapped inside Barnaby’s smoke-filled flat. She’d thought it was important to get to know the crew, do a little bonding, but next time she’d skip it. If there was a next time.
Her agent, Sabrina, had told her that the New York City location was grand, but the one that the cab pulled up to wasn’t particularly fancy, at least not by English standards. The building was low and white, protected by a wrought iron fence, and if she hadn’t known better, she might have thought it was a bank, not a house. The snow had picked up overnight, leaving the sidewalks a slushy mess and collecting in small drifts in the corners of the six steps that led to double doors with the initials HCF etched in the archway. Above that, in the pediment, a naked woman carved in stone gazed down dreamily on all who entered.
She tried the doorknob, but it didn’t budge. Was she supposed to enter through some other way?
After a moment, though, a young man in jeans and a yellow tee shirt opened the door. “Sorry, the Frick Collection is closed on Mondays,” he said.
“I’m Veronica Weber, here for the photo shoot.”
“Oh.” He gave her a look, and she knew exactly what he was thinking. That she didn’t belong. That she didn’t resemble a model. Especially sans makeup and with her hair a floppy mess. “Huh. Okay then. I’m Steve, one of the PAs. We’re just getting set up. The other girls are all upstairs, I can show you where you can get ready.”
The reception area was dominated by a massive floral arrangement on a table in the very center of the hall, where delicate magnolia blossoms erupted from thick, dark stems. They walked on, past an organ tucked inside an arched setback at the base of a grand stairway. She wondered out loud if the instrument still worked and got a shrug in response.
On the second floor, Steve made a sharp right and a sharp left to a smaller set of stairs, which was probably only used by the servants back in the day. On the third floor, the chatter of the other models floated down a long hallway. He stopped and pointed to the women’s bathroom, situated about midway. “In there.”
She lugged her suitcases up a small set of stairs that led to the bathroom door and pushed it open. Inside, the tile floor was almost completely covered with all the accoutrements of the modern model, from shoes to rollers to makeup. The girls leaned over the porcelain sinks, staring into the mirrors, barely glancing in her direction.
“Hullo there,” she said. “Room for one more?”
“Hi, Veronica,” squealed Tangerine. “We missed you last night. Where did you go?”
“Tried to get some shut-eye. Jet lag, you know.”