Read Online The Home for Wayward Supermodels by Pamela Redmond Satran - Free Book Online

didn’t completely like him, but having him take my picture reminded me of going to the special dentist in Milwaukee who’d made me a new front tooth after I fell off my bike. I didn’t exactly like the dentist either, but I trusted that he was good at his job and that he would be able to take care of me. That’s the way I felt with Alex.
    Things I Thought About While Alex Was Taking My Picture
How I was making enough money on this one day to take a trip to Europe, which I thought I would never be able to afford to do in my entire life.
Desi, and how great it would be, for both of us, if she were here.
How the silver sequined dress felt like chain mail on my body.
The princess in one of my favorite movies when I was a kid, The Princess Bride . (Fantasy inspired by the dress. Fantasy also inspired by the chain mail fantasy.)
Ice skating on Big Secret Lake with Tom. (This was when the air conditioner was turned up especially high and I started twirling to get warm.)
The pizza I’d eaten for dinner last night.
The other appointments Raquel had lined up for me this week.
Lipstick: how much I hated it.
Chocolate: how much I loved it.
Tatiana, who’d slept in her bed when I was out yesterday, refilled the apartment with cigarette smoke, and disappeared again before I got home.
    By the end of the shoot, when everybody started packing up, relieved and happy because it had gone well and because it was over, I finally let go, really let go. I scrubbed all the makeup off and ran my hair under the faucet to rinse out all the spray. Then I realized I was finally and truly hungry, not just candy hungry, but buffalo burger ravenous. Forget sushi, salad, and vegetables; I piled my plate with roast beef with mayonnaise slathered on it, and helped myself to one of the beers in the refrigerator.
    Alex sat down at the kitchen counter beside me as I wolfed down my food.
    “Did you have fun?” he asked.
    I shrugged. “A little.” Then I let out the last of the breath I’d been holding in all day and finally smiled at him, for the very first time. “Thanks for helping me.”
    “My pleasure,” he said. “I really like working with you. And I—well, I remember what it was like being new in New York.”
    “You do?”
    “Of course. With this accent, you can tell I haven’t been here forever, can’t you? Listen, do you want to take some of this food home? It’s going to take ages for you to get your check from this shoot, and I know Raquel’s kind of stingy with the allowance she gives you girls.”
    “Wow,” I said, “that would be great.”
    “And there’s some other stuff we could grab too. Stockings, eye shadows, samples the editors always leave behind.”
    It was like Christmas at the Rotary Club. Somewhere in the middle of packing up the fifth container of food, Alex looked at me and said, “Are you sure you and Tatiana can eat all this?”
    “Oh, it’s not all for us,” I said. As Alex and I packed the food I’d been hatching a plan. “I’m going to take everything down to my friend Desi’s building on the Lower East Side and hand it out to the people who live there.”
    Alex looked at me, surprised. “Well,” he said, packing faster, “that sounds like a very nice idea.”
    When everything was together, he helped me carry it downstairs, where he hailed me a taxi.
    “So,” he said, when I was about to step into the cab. “Would you like to have dinner with me sometime?”
    I was about to say no because I was so used to disliking him. Then I was about to say no because of Tom.
    As if reading my thoughts, he interrupted the silence to say, “Come on, I mean as friends. I feel a little bit responsible for you being here on your own. I’ll take you someplace magnifique. ”
    Who could resist magnifique, or a new friend, especially one who’d proven he had such friendly intentions?
    “All right,” I said.
    “Saturday night?”
    I nodded my agreement, but I was thinking about the plans I’d already made