No Lifeguard on Duty Page 5

  I was still a fixture at Publix, still gleaning what I could from the magazines. Though of course now I’d added Rolling Stone to my reading. After all, models and rock stars—that was a hard combo to beat. So I’d sit there on the cold floor, whiling away the hours, dreaming, lost in those fantasy pages. The management didn’t seem to mind; they knew me by name. Even the blue-haired Jewish ladies came over with their shopping carts and stopped to chat. “Hello, Janice,” they’d say in their New York twangs. “How are you, dear? What’s new? What’s cookin’? Who’s hot this month?”

  Then I’d go home and preen in front of the mirror. “Yes, Mr. Avedon,” I’d say. “I’m almost ready, Mr. Avedon.” I’d sigh a lot, and suffer gracefully through my shoot—I was wonderful, almost painfully beautiful, a delight to work with—and as the day grew long I would have to beg off. “You’ll have to hurry, Mr. Avedon,” I’d say. “Hendrix is waiting for me at the Plaza.”

  Then I’d snap out of it and realize that it really was late and that the only thing waiting for me was my homework. And I’d buckle down and do it. Because I had to graduate. Nothing could stop me. I couldn’t afford a single F.

  That’s when Wendy Gralnick came into the picture. She was this real smart Jewish girl with a pear-shaped butt and beautiful hazel eyes and the longest lashes I’d ever seen in my life. “So how ya doin’?” she said to me one day in front of the school lockers. “Me?” I said, pointing at myself. I couldn’t understand why this brainiac would even bother with me. “Yeah,” she said. “You.” Suddenly we were studying together. And liking each other more and more. And of course I loved her for loving me and thinking I was smart, too.

  I began spending less time with Pam Adams and less time with Eric and men in general—all that sweating and grunting, what was the point?—and more time at Wendy’s house. It was a goddamn mansion, near the water. She was from a really rich family. Or half a family, anyway. Her father had been a hugely successful dentist who died and left them a small fortune. But Edna, her mother, was going through the money awfully fast—she had no self-control—and for years now her accountant had been begging her to slow down. Unfortunately, she couldn’t help herself. And now they were in trouble. They were going to sell the house, Wendy told me. It was already on the market. And they were going to take the money and move to New York, where—thanks to rich kids with bad teeth—they had a huge co-op on the Upper East Side. I was so jealous I could’ve died.

  I went home that night in a funk. Debbie and I got dinner ready and washed up afterward and watched TV till bedtime. Debbie knew something was bothering me. She kept asking me why I was so sad. I told her I wasn’t sad, I was just tired. But just looking at her, at her perfect little body curled up on the couch next to me, made me even sadder. She was not yet a teenager, and already turning into a real beauty. I wondered how much longer my father would be able to resist.

  The next day, after school, I was back at Wendy’s house, studying for finals, when the phone rang. It was the realtor, calling for Edna. They had an offer on the house, a good offer. We could hear Edna in the other room, discussing it with the realtor. After a few minutes she hung up and came into the dining room. We had our school books spread out in front of us on the mahogany dining table.

  “I guess we just sold this dump,” Edna announced. “We’re leaving this backwater as soon as school’s out. We’re going to New York.”

  I got tears in my eyes. I couldn’t help it.

  “What’s wrong, Janice?” Edna asked.

  “Nothing,” I said. But she insisted on knowing and I broke down. The tears came in earnest now. Buckets of tears, rivers of tears. “You and Wendy are so lucky,” I said. “I love New York. I wish I could move to New York, too.” Hell, I would have stowed away on the Apollo moon rocket to escape the rat bastard.

  “So come with us!” Edna said. Everything she said ended in an exclamation point.

  “You mean it?” I said. I thought I was dreaming. I was prone to out-of-body experiences, after all.

  “Why not? The place has five bedrooms. We used to be rich!”

  And that’s how I got to New York.

  FREEDOM

  We drove to New York in Edna Gralnick’s big silver Cadillac. It was a Saturday, in mid-August. She pulled up outside at noon, right on time. Though of course I’d been waiting by the open front door since eight A.M., hoping she’d be early.

  “Mom,” I said, “they’re here.”

  My mother floated out of the kitchen; she looked out the open door and waved at Edna and Wendy, then turned to face me. Debbie was at gymnastics class; my father had gone fishing. I hadn’t said good-bye to either of them, not properly, anyway. I don’t think Debbie wanted to believe that I was really leaving. And my father—he didn’t give a shit.

  “Oh, honey,” my mother said, and tears welled in her eyes.

  “Please don’t cry, Mom. Everything’s going to be fine.”

  “Promise me you’ll be a good girl,” she said, hugging me. “Promise me you’ll go to church every Sunday.”

  “I promise,” I said, and I grabbed my suitcase and ran down the driveway toward the waiting Cadillac.

  Edna was a terrible driver, but she wouldn’t give up the wheel. She didn’t trust either Wendy or me. We entertained ourselves with silly road games, stopped at all the worst fast-food places, and spent two nights in motels. Edna taught me how to play poker. I only had fourteen dollars to my name, so I played aggressively. I won four bucks the first night, three the next. And I needed every last penny of it, believe you me.

  MULTITASKING IN NEW YORK CITY—BOOKING JOBS, CLEANING GUMS, SNAPPING PICS.

  And then there we were, in New York City. Lexington and 63rd. A regular goddamn palace! Five bedrooms. Marble bathrooms. How could I not make it, living in a place like this?

  I kept thanking Edna and Wendy for being so good to me. I couldn’t believe I was really in New York. What’s more, it felt like home. I’d wake up in the morning thinking, Here I am, where I belong.

  So, okay, it took a little getting used to. There were the garbage trucks that roared through the alley every other day at the crack of dawn; the crush of humanity on the streets; the honking horns and the squealing brakes and the lumbering buses that seemed determined to mow me down at every turn…

  I walked everywhere. Me and my pathetic “portfolio”—four cheesy photographs of little Janice in the most amateurish poses imaginable. I walked like a speeding bullet, hyperaware, hyperanxious, hypertense. I loved the city but I was afraid of it, too. I would jump like a frightened thoroughbred when men hissed at me on the street, jump when construction workers whistled, jump if a man so much as smiled at me on the bus.

  I carried my keys in my hand, with the sharpest one wedged between my fingers like a weapon. I’d read in one of the magazines that the streets were full of predators, and that one should always go for the eyes. And that’s what I was going to do. Any man who fucked with me would regret it for the rest of his life.

  Eventually, the fear began giving way to desperation. I had knocked on the doors of every agency in town, but nobody gave a shit. I was invisible. You had to be blond and blue-eyed and all-American to get any attention at all. And me? I was a Polish mutt.

  “You’re not what we’re looking for,” I was told.

  “What are you looking for?” I once asked.

  “Well, we’ll know it when we see it—but you’re definitely not it.”

  This does something to you. Duh. Beyond making me feel like crying, or beheading the fucking messenger, it fueled my insecurities—and they didn’t need fueling. I was still that lost, cripplingly self-conscious kid from South Florida. People had no idea how hard I worked at appearing normal. I swear to God, I would wake up mornings and have to talk myself out of bed. You’re great, Janice. You’re wonderful. You’re smart. No, really. It’s true. And sometimes I even believed it. Sometimes I went overboard. Sometimes I’d swagger into the noisy streets of Manhattan, convi
nced I was the hottest thing in town. But not often. Not often enough. Mostly I felt like a goddamn pinball, caroming between emotional extremes—up, down, sideways, down the fucking drain—with absolutely no control at all. So, yeah—I was crazy. But I knew one thing for certain: I had a great body.

  So one day I took that great body to a place on 7th Avenue that was advertising for a fitting model. The ad had been placed by a middle-aged Russian couple who were building up a little sportswear line. They had me out of my clothes within five minutes, and I spent the next two hours modeling those tacky little “casuals” you find in cheap stores in all the worst malls in the country. The husband loved pinning me, and he spent plenty of time in and around my crotch. Tucking, marking, straightening, sniffing. But hey, I was making seventy-five bucks an hour, a fortune in those days. They could only afford me for a few hours a week—and they worked me like a demon when they had me—but it was well worth it.

  The rest of the time I concentrated on becoming a model.

  People tell you to do your homework if you want to be a model. You’re supposed to look at the magazines and how you might fit in and get to know your strengths and play to them. I’d already looked at the magazines; I had them goddamn memorized. I thought I was nothing but strengths; I thought I could do anything. There wasn’t anyone who looked even remotely like me. I mean, there was Ginger on Gilligan’s Island, if you were looking for nonblonds on TV. And I’d seen Bianca Jagger in Rolling Stone. She was pretty damn exotic. But even so, I was different. That’s what made me special. I was an original. Then I got this horrible, sinking feeling that maybe the business didn’t want an original, wasn’t interested in what I had to sell. I was a breed apart, and maybe this breed was destined to remain apart.

  It was driving me crazy. I had to fight that kind of defeatist thinking. I kept telling myself I was going to make it. Surely someone would see what I’d been working so hard at believing: that I was a fucking star, greatness personified. So I took a closer look at the magazines. At the fine print. At the names and addresses. And I bypassed the agencies and went directly to the photo studios.

  “I’m sorry, dear. You’ll have to go through proper channels. You’ll have to get an agent first.” No one was even vaguely impressed.

  I was crushed. I tried to remind myself that it was just a business. That I shouldn’t take it personally. That they weren’t rejecting me, the real Janice. But I didn’t even know who the real Janice was. And it was personal. Still is. Rejection hurts like hell. I began to think this was a pretty odd career choice for someone as deeply damaged as myself.

  Of course, there were plenty of people who pretended to be interested the minute I walked through their doors. Too interested. Some of them would ask for money up front, which was a dead giveaway. Even I knew that was seriously fucked up.

  The so-called model conventions were another big scam. Everyone had a convention coming up next week, out at a Holiday Inn in Long Island, say. There would be agents from all the name houses there, you were told, and plenty of famous photographers from all corners of the world. And you could be there, mingling with all those powerful people—for a mere two hundred and fifty dollars. I was tempted, but I’d heard that only the lowest of the low ever showed up at these things, and that anyone with a real foothold in the business wouldn’t be caught dead within a mile.

  I was getting pretty depressed. I was also hungry all the time. I ate the worst kind of junk. A lot of candy. Candy gave me energy. And yogurt for the protein.

  Wendy, meanwhile, took a job waiting tables at a Greek restaurant. It was owned by an old friend of the family. We were both nineteen, but all she wanted to do was meet a guy and get married and never work again. And there were plenty of handsome single guys to meet at the restaurant.

  Edna approved. “I don’t understand girls nowadays,” she said. “All this fuss about careers. It’s so much easier to find a rich man to take care of you.” Clearly, Wendy had had this idea drummed into her head since puberty. She was looking for a knight in shining armor. She wanted to be saved. Was that so wrong? I didn’t know anymore. I just knew I was getting tired of pounding the rock-hard pavements of Manhattan. I was beginning to lose confidence in myself—and I didn’t have that much to begin with. But was I ready to give up on the fantasy?

  “Mom?” It was late one Sunday afternoon. I was beyond depressed. I’d called collect.

  “Oh, hi, honey. How are you?” She sounded far away. She must have been trying some potent new drugs.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. And then the dam broke. I told her how frightened I was. How alone I felt. I told her about the miles and miles I’d logged on the crowded city streets, about feeling friendless and unimportant and completely anonymous. And I told her it was hard being broke all the time.

  “Well, Janice,” she said in her Hare Krishna voice. “I have to get dinner ready for your father. Be a good girl and go to church.”

  That’s a mother’s love for you.

  But hey, terror is a great motivator. I was going to keep trying till I made it. I had to make it. And since I had nothing to lose, I decided to aim high.

  Irving Penn’s studio was on lower Fifth Avenue, in the same building as legendary photographers like Bob Richardson and Bill King. One day I put on my sensible shoes, my less sensible crepe de chine top, and my red miniskirt, then hopped on the downtown bus. I walked right up to Penn’s studio, knocked on the door, and asked to see the man himself. Alas, I was told—a shade less than politely—to make myself scarce.

  I went outside and watched the world go by for a few minutes. I wondered when I’d start becoming a joke. I didn’t think I could take much more of this. A person needs a reason to get out of bed in the morning, and marching from one end of Manhattan to another just to have doors slammed in your face is not a very good reason.

  There was a big white limo parked at the curb. The driver smiled at me. He looked cool and comfortable. I was sweating and my feet hurt. My top was so wet by this point you could see the lace on my push-up bra. Maybe that’s why the driver was smiling.

  I was about to ask him if he minded giving me a ride—it was only sixty blocks to my temporary home—when he leapt out of his seat and got the door. I turned around just as Lauren Hutton emerged from the building. I couldn’t believe it. She’d been upstairs with Penn, I figured, or one of the others, looking beautiful for the camera and making oodles of money. She smiled at me—that electric gap-toothed smile—and climbed into the limo. The driver jumped behind the wheel and pulled away.

  I watched them till they were out of sight, kicking myself for missing an opportunity. I should have said something to Lauren Hutton. Then again, I probably would have stuck my foot in my mouth. I’m glad you didn’t get that gap fixed, Lauren. Smart move.

  I was so hot I thought I was melting. Some day, I told myself, I’d have an air-conditioned limo of my own. So I’m shallow. Fuck you. I was tired and my feet hurt and I was this close to admitting defeat.

  I didn’t quit, though. My dogs were barking, but I kept walking. Uptown, to Richard Avedon’s place, back down to see Penn again, with stops at all the photographers in between: Art Kane. Patrick Demarchelier. Stan Schaefer. John Stember. Bill Cunningham. Oliviero Toscani. Pierre Houles. Bob Richardson. Jean-Paul Goude. Scavullo. Jean Pagliuso (one of the few female photographers in the business).

  But they were all out of reach. Their doors were closed—to me, anyway. I finally cried. I sat on a bench in Central Park and the tears just poured out of me. They were the size of walnuts. I could have drowned in those tears.

  I wondered if I was approaching it wrong. Maybe what I needed was to lower my sights. I’d heard about a half-decent photographer who had a studio downtown, His name was Christopher Robinson, and he was listed in the white pages. I made my way over without so much as a phone call. It was a sixth-floor walk-up. I was winded by the time I got upstairs. I made a mental note to think about cutting back on cigarettes. The doo
r was open. It was one of those heavy steel doors. I knocked and let myself in. It was a dump. No, it was worse than a dump. It was one of those places that intelligent people don’t poke around in because it looks like a Hollywood set for a grisly murder. Me? I went in. I’m a genius, but I’m not always real bright about basic, mundane things. And I was a kid, for God’s sake. A desperate kid.

  Christopher Robinson was sitting on a couch, watching TV. He looked over at me and told me I was late. His assistant, Art, came out from the bowels of the apartment, scowling, then he told me I was late. And he was nasty about it.

  My first impulse was to tell them both they were assholes, but I knew a lucky break when I saw one. So I apologized for being late and promised it wouldn’t happen again. See? I told you I was a genius.

  The assistant went off to set up the lights and Christopher cranked up the volume on the stereo. It was fucking deafening. I went behind a curtain and changed into the little outfit I’d bought for the modeling contest—that wraparound number with the blotchy flowers, one of the few decent things I owned—and came out and stood there in front of the lights and tried to smile. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. I didn’t even know how to fake it.

  “Well?” Christopher said. He had to shout to make himself heard above the Rolling Stones. I was frozen. “Would you fucking do something!” he shouted.

  I posed. I fucking jumped. I looked like a frightened idiot. He snapped away and I kept posing and jumping, trying hard not to look as terrified and lost as I felt. Then all of a sudden a succession of crazy images began flooding my brain, images from my days on the cold linoleum floor at Publix, images from the magazines that had been such a significant part of my life. Models, modeling. Looking beautiful and regal and confident. Lauren Hutton, floating. Not looking terrified. And I tried to jump the way she’d jumped, and smile the way she’d smiled, and float the way she’d floated. And it goddamn worked!