Trading Up (21 page)

Well, she supposed she had paid for it, Janey thought idly, sitting back down at the desk and picking up a letter that had been lying halfway into the pile. But suddenly, her thoughts took a fresh turn when she saw the return address with “Parador Pictures” embossed above. With a rising sense of panic, she turned the letter over and saw that there was no stamp and that it was addressed to her at the Lowell Hotel, meaning that it had probably been hand-delivered that afternoon.

With a trembling hand, she slit the envelope open and unfolded the letter.

It was just like the others, except that this one was official, from Comstock’s lawyers, demanding that she pay back the $30,000 he’d given her for writing a screenplay that she had supposedly never delivered. Shock and rage came over her, and all she could think was, How dare he? He owed her that money after he had fucked her and fucked her over. So that was why he’d been so friendly all evening—

he’d actually thought that he could charm her into getting his way, and that she wouldn’t have the nerve to stand up to him . . .

“It’s getting awfully lonely in there,” Selden said, coming up behind her, and she jumped.

She turned around, struggling to compose her face. “Why, what’s wrong?” he asked. “You look like someone just bit you.”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” she said, emitting a small laugh. For a moment she hesitated. Should she tell Selden about the letter? But then she’d have to tell him about her history with Comstock Dibble, and she couldn’t do that, not
now
. . . “It’s only a letter from a charity,” she lied. “Asking if I would be the chairman of their committee . . .
if
I could donate ten thousand dollars.
Really,
” she went on, “can you imagine? It ought to be enough that they want to use your name, but then to ask for money on top of it . . . as if
I
had ten thousand dollars to give away anyway . . .”

“Is that all?” Selden asked, giving her an indulgent smile.

“Stupid, isn’t it?” she said, crumpling the letter and throwing it onto the fire.

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“is that all?” the cashier asked.

She was enormously fat. Tiny little eyes peered at Janey suspiciously, as if straining to see through the adipose that threatened to engulf them; an enormous hank of flab, the size of a paddle, hung from her upper arm.

“Yes, that’s it,” Janey said, sliding the magazine toward her.

Janey looked around surreptitiously. God, this store was dirty. And filled with sad-looking people. There were only two cashiers, who were taking their time, and at least twenty people were waiting to pay for their purchases, but the weird thing was that the people on line weren’t complaining. They didn’t even look impatient, as if they were too beaten down to protest and had become resigned to the fact that a good portion of their life would consist of waiting to pay for a candy bar and a large plastic bottle of soda.

“That’s a dollar thirty-nine,” the cashier said, glancing away.

“I’m sorry . . . what?” Janey asked.

“A dollar thirty-nine,” the cashier said, looking at her like she was an idiot.

Janey riffled nervously through her bag, searching for change. What on earth cost a dollar thirty-nine these days? she thought. It was such a small, inconvenient sum it really ought to be free. And then the cashier really looked at her, her face blossoming with recognition.

“Hey,” she said. “Don’t I know you?”

Janey froze. She had no idea how to respond to this question. Should she say

“no” in a haughty voice, grab her magazine, and run, or should she explain that she 18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:23 PM Page 115

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was Janey Wilcox, Victoria’s Secret model, and that the girl had probably seen her on TV?

“Oh,
I
know,” the cashier said. “You’re that
underwear
model.” Janey reached for her magazine. “Yes,” she said, nodding and forcing herself to smile.

“Hey, Washington,” the cashier said, calling to the girl on her right. “This here’s that Victoria’s Secret model.”

“Oh yeah?” The other cashier eyed Janey up and down. “How come they don’t got no fat girls as models? I’m sexy.”

“Skinny white bitch,” she heard one of the customers mutter under his breath.

She felt herself redden, but willed herself not to respond to the insult. Hurrying out of the store, she emerged from the Duane Reade drugstore onto Second Avenue shaken and breathless.

What the hell was happening in the world? she thought, looking around for her car. Who
were
these people? Were they so mixed up that they thought being skinny was bad? And she wasn’t even that skinny! Any one of these days she was probably going to have to have liposuction . . . She saw her car a few yards up the street and hurried toward it, opening the door and hurling herself into the comforting black leather interior.

The driver, an Indian man named Rashneesh, looked at her in the rearview mirror.

“Where now, miss?”

“The Four Seasons,” she gasped. “The restaurant. On East Fifty-second Street.

Not the hotel.”

Her heart still pounding in response to the random hostility of being called a skinny white bitch, she picked up the magazine and began fanning herself with it.

What the hell had she ever done to deserve such arbitrary aggression? But that was the way the world was these days, filled with angry, grasping people, all of whom felt they deserved something more, simply because they had been born—and why did they all seem to want to be lingerie models?

And now there was this! she thought, unfolding the magazine. “STAR” was printed in big white letters across the top; underneath was a photograph of Gwyneth Paltrow looking miserable. “Gwyneth’s Secret Oscar Heartache,” the caption read.

And at the very top, above Gwyneth, was a tiny photograph of Digger, sweaty and holding a guitar, with a banner that said: “Rock Star’s Secret Love Child.” She didn’t want to read it but she had to. Just two hours ago, while she’d been finishing up the Victoria’s Secret catalog shoot, Patty had called her, and in a low, quiet voice said, “It’s in
Star
magazine.” Then she’d hung up.

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“Does anybody have
Star
magazine?” Janey shouted.

“Why?” the photographer asked.

“My sister’s in it,” she said.

“How exciting!” the makeup artist said. He was from Costa Rica. “It is my life-long
dream
to be in
Star
magazine . . .”

“Isn’t that one of those magazines where they go through people’s trash?” the photographer’s assistant asked.

“I would
love
it if someone went through my trash. They would find so many interesting things . . .”

“Like what? Condoms?”

“Used condoms are
not
interesting,” Janey said firmly, as if the subject were closed.

Well, this was her life now, she thought, flipping quickly through the pages.

Her sister was in
Star
magazine.

The story took up one page near the beginning of the magazine. There was a big picture of Digger in the middle, with a smaller picture of a dark-haired girl in a black getup that resembled a dominatrix outfit, and then an even smaller picture of Patty on the street, bending over a tiny brown-and-black dog that was squatting on the sidewalk. Patty’s hair was disheveled and she was wearing blue Nike sweatpants, the kind that unsnapped on the sides, and she looked like she had just gotten out of bed, which, Janey figured, she probably had. But what was with that dog? And then she remembered that somewhere in the jumble of this whole mess, Patty had bought a puppy. She began reading:

Sultry singer Marielle Dubrosey spent a night of lovemaking with Digger . . . and now she’s having his baby!

The twenty-two-year-old up-and-coming stunner met Digger backstage at a gig in Minneapolis, and the two ended up spending the night together.

“As soon as Digger laid eyes on Marielle, you could see the sparks flying between them,” a friend of Marielle’s told
Star
. “He couldn’t keep his hands off her. He kept kissing her and touching her breasts.” Well, Janey thought. That certainly sounded like Digger. He couldn’t keep his hands off Patty either.

Digger then whisked Marielle off to his room, where they spent a night of gorgeous lovemaking . . . No one saw either of them until four the next afternoon.

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And now gorgeous Marielle is pregnant!

There’s only one problem, though. Digger is
already
married—to twenty-eight-year-old former VH1 producer Patty Wilcox!

Patty is the statuesque [Well, that’s hardly true, Janey thought] stunner who captured Digger’s heart two years ago when they met at a VH1

shoot. “Patty and Digger are truly in love,” a source says. “Patty won’t give him up without a fight.”

“I don’t care,” says Marielle, who plans to have the baby, due in May. “I don’t want to hurt his wife, but Digger is a wonderful person and a beautiful lover. He’s talented and kind. My night with him is one evening I’ll never forget!”

Janey threw the magazine onto the seat. What an outrageous piece of trash.

Why had Digger been so stupid? And to go after such an obvious tart—she’d probably planned the whole thing. She’d created a trap, and Digger had fallen right into it. Now he would have to pay. But it wasn’t Digger who was paying, it was Patty. He had ruined Patty’s life . . . she’d probably never recover from this.

But then she found her hand snaking back toward the magazine. The hand, seeming to act of its own accord, began turning the pages back to the story.

She picked it up and studied Patty’s photograph. As she did so, a terrible thought occurred to her. She was actually a tiny bit . . .
envious
.

How disgusting! How could she even think that way? But she
was
jealous, she thought.
She
wanted to be in
Star
magazine. Not the way Patty was, of course. But still, it would definitely help her career if she
was
in there somewhere, on the fashion pages, for instance. All of the women on those pages were actresses and more famous than she, but she was certainly more beautiful, and at least as interesting . . .

She leaned back against the seat, suddenly overwhelmed by the unfairness of life. Every day was a fight just to keep your place in the world. For the past two days, shooting the cover of the Victoria’s Secret catalog, she had struggled to be a model of patience, trying to be nice to everyone, and trying not to complain when the lights blew out or the hairstylist couldn’t get that stray strand of hair on the top of her head to stay down or the clothing stylist kept rearranging the pads in her bra—all the while, Janey thought, deliberately poking at her breasts. It was so
dull
being a model now—that was what no one understood—and what she really got paid for was sitting around and not losing her mind . . . And it was all for—
what?
A photograph that people would look at and hiss, “Skinny white bitch, skinny white bitch . . .” The car slowly drove past the entrance to the Four Seasons, which was blocked by several black town cars like her own. Looking up, she suddenly screamed, “Stop!” at the driver.

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“But Miss,” he said, turning around. “I cannot stop in the middle of the street.

The mayor made all these new rules. If I stop in the street, it’s a four-hundred-and-fifty-dollar ticket!”

“I don’t care,” Janey snapped. Jesus, every time you got into a car or a taxi these days, the driver complained about some potential new driving fine the mayor was trying to slap on them, as if it were
her
fault. “I don’t want to have to walk,” she said.

She opened the door and jumped out, but not before telling the driver to wait. “And make sure you’re at the front of the entrance when I come out,” she said, slamming the door.

She strolled through the revolving door of the restaurant, where she was met by an obsequious woman who begged to take her coat even though she wasn’t wearing one. And suddenly, she was reminded of how terrible it was to be rude to service people, and was glad that Mimi hadn’t been there to see it. But still, considering the circumstances of her day, it made her feel much better.

Patty was sitting by herself in the middle of an enormous brown leather banquette.

Her hair was wrapped up in a yellow bandanna, gangsta-style—Janey was surprised that they’d let her into the Four Seasons at all—and even from across the room, Janey could see that she’d lost weight. Over a week had passed since that Marielle person had approached Patty on the street, but for the first five days, she had told no one, not even Digger. Instead, she had locked herself in her apartment, refusing to answer the phone or the door.

After two days of begging by phone (Digger was away, on tour in Europe with his band), Digger had finally gotten the super to unlock the door and look for Patty; the super had supposedly found her in bed with gummy bears stuck in her hair, as this was all she’d had to eat in the house. (“Oh, Patty. Gummy bears?” Janey had said. And Patty had replied that they were Digger’s favorite food . . . ) Mimi had been kind enough to accompany Janey to Patty’s apartment three days ago, after Janey had gotten a call from her mother who’d gotten a call from Digger (Why couldn’t Digger have just called her himself? Janey thought, but it was probably because he knew she would have ripped his head off ), to tell her mother that Patty was “upset” about “something” and that someone should check on her. His hands were tied because he was in Amsterdam, but he had cancelled a couple of concerts to return to New York the next day.

“Did he sound stoned?” Janey asked her mother.

And her mother, who was French by birth and liked to pretend she was a grand lady, snapped, “What is this ‘stoned’? I do not know ‘stoned.’ ”