No Lifeguard on Duty Read online

  “What the fuck is that!?” Christopher shouted over the din.

  Well, what can I say? I thought it was working.

  With no bus fare to my name, I walked all the way back to Lexington and 63rd. Edna was out and Wendy was working at the club, and for a moment I thought about showering and hustling on down to meet her for a drink and some companionship. But I didn’t do it. I was bone tired; plus I was beginning to feel that I was wearing out my welcome at the Gralnicks. They hadn’t said anything, of course. But these days when I’d come home after another fruitless trek through the city they seemed to look at me funny, like they felt sorry for me or something. I didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for me. I could do that on my own, thank you very much.

  There was an open bottle of wine in the fridge. I poured myself a glass and sat down on the couch and picked up the phone and dialed home. The rat bastard answered.

  “It’s me,” I said. “Is Debbie there?”

  “Is that any way to say hello to your daddy?” His voice was full of venom. How’d he dredge it up so fast?

  “Dad, please. I’m tired. Would you put Debbie on?”

  “What’s wrong? Doesn’t my Nile Princess have a minute for her loving father?”

  Nile Princess. It had been a decade since he’d called me that. When I was a little girl, it was a term of endearment—a reference to my exotic looks and dark coloring. Now it was a nasty dig, another joke about this ridiculous attempt at modeling. He was laughing at me. He was asking, Who the hell are you to think you can compete with all those gorgeous, blue-eyed blonds?

  “I have nothing to say to you,” I told him. I was determined not to let him get to me. “Nothing nice, anyway.”

  “How’s the big modeling career coming?”

  “Great,” I said. “Richard Avedon thinks I’m the Next Big Thing.”

  “I told you you’d never amount to anything,” he said, then put the phone down and hollered for Debbie. I cupped my hand over the receiver and took a few deep, bracing breaths—the rat bastard knew how to hurt me—and Debbie got on the line a moment later. We chatted about school and gymnastics, and she told me all about a cute guy in her class. I listened for clues. I knew Debbie so well that I was confident I’d catch even the smallest hint of trouble in her voice. But she seemed to be doing fine. Then she had to go—there was something on TV—and she told me she loved me and hung up.

  I finished my wine and sat there in the growing darkness for the longest time, listening to the muted roar of the city. When I’d left for New York six months earlier, my biggest concern was leaving Debbie in Florida with the rat bastard. But I didn’t have a choice. Well, I did, I guess; life is all about choices. So I had to rationalize it. And this is what I came up with: Ray had never molested Debbie. She’d always been his favorite. Why would he start now, when she was a teenager?

  It was dark already. I forgot about Debbie and my thoughts turned once again to me. Ah, the miracle of self-absorption. All these weeks and months in New York, and what did they amount to? Sure, I’d been lucky that afternoon. A mediocre photographer had wasted a few rolls on me. By accident. But how good would they be? He wasn’t exactly Irving Penn. And what would happen when I went by his studio to pick up the prints?

  I’m a loser. I’m not going to make it.

  I had another glass of wine, popped a ’lude, and crawled into bed.

  MY PARENTS, RAY AND JENNIE DICKINSON.

  When I went back for the pictures two days later, Christopher wasn’t happy. Eventually he’d realized his mistake, of course, but he also knew it wouldn’t make much sense to keep the pictures from me. After all, if I ever happened to get lucky, it would help his career, too.

  “You owe me,” he reminded me as I was leaving. Art showed up as I reached the door. “You owe me, too,” he said. What did they expect? Blow jobs?

  So off I went with my new, improved portfolio—the all-important tool of the modeling trade—and tried the agencies yet again. First stop: Eileen Ford. I’d been there half a dozen times already, but I figured if I made a pest of myself someone would cave and give me a break. There was also a slim chance that someone might recognize me and mistake me for a ravishing creature they’d seen in a magazine. That is, a real model.

  Eileen and her husband had launched the agency in 1946, out of their home, and had gone on to create the most recognized name in the business. Eileen was known as a strict disciplinarian, a control freak. Jerry was quieter but very sharp. It was Jerry who negotiated the first big-money contract in fashion, way back in 1974, for my hero, Lauren Hutton. I was hoping he’d scale new heights with me.

  A dowdy assistant took me back to a tiny office and started paging through the new photographs. They were pretty good, actually, and she seemed impressed. She took me over to see Monique Pillard, one of the bookers. Monique was very friendly. She was a little overweight and had a very thick French accent. She told me she liked what she saw, and it was clear she meant it. She also had the power to do something about it. I thought I would burst with hope. Just then, the far door opened and Eileen Ford walked into the room. In the flesh.

  “Who’s this?” she said, looking me up and down with obvious displeasure.

  “Janice Dickinson,” I volunteered. I offered her my hand, but she didn’t take it.

  “I’m sorry, dear. You’re much too ethnic. You’ll never work.” She let herself out through another door, but she wasn’t done with me yet. Before the door closed, I heard her say to no one in particular: “My God, did you see those lips?”

  I swear to God, I almost died. I was just a kid, for Christ’s sake. Did she get a kick out of humiliating me? What kind of sick people was I dealing with?

  I took a few deep breaths. Once again, pain curdled into anger. Too ethnic? Wasn’t Beverly fucking Johnson on the cover of American Vogue? Who the hell did Eileen Ford think she was? Sure, there were some narrow-minded assholes out there who thought a black cover girl meant the Great Exotic Apocalypse. But not Eileen Ford. Surely she had enough sense to see that the business was changing. This endless bullshit about the all-American look—it had to end sooner or later. And didn’t they get it? Blond? Blue-eyed? That’s not American, you idiots. It’s Scandinavian.

  I had to fight the urge to run after her and push her out the window. Then it hit me. What if she’s right? I suddenly imagined myself back at the Orange Bowl, waiting tables—at age fifty. It happens. To lots of people. Was I going to be one of them?

  I ducked into the bathroom and looked at my face. Yes, my lips were big. And my hair was a little on the frizzy side. And those brows could use some serious tweezing. And I didn’t have much in the way of cheekbones. And—and and and and and…I bit my lips together to make them look smaller. I could hold that pose. I looked good all of a sudden. Well, okay, not really; now I looked like a thin-lipped Polish mutt. I left the bathroom and found Monique waiting for me in the corridor.

  “I am so sorry,” she said in her thick accent. “But I have a feeling our paths will cross again.”

  “What should I do?” I asked her. I was falling apart. I was not going to cry. Not not not.

  She looked around to make sure we were alone, then whispered: “Wilhelmina.”

  I went out into the street. I was upset and angry. Being upset never did shit for anyone. Being angry, on the other hand—that could work wonders. If you used it right.

  I walked to Wilhelmina’s, at 37th and Madison. I was going to make it. Nothing was going to stand in my way. I was getting angrier by the second. Fuck you, Eileen Ford. You’ll be sorry. It wasn’t my first time at Wilhelmina’s, either. The receptionist smiled that familiar smile: You again. She let someone know I was there. Didn’t exactly jump to it, either.

  I sat down to wait and tried to look pleasant and charming. But I was burning up inside. Did you see those lips? Twenty minutes later, a young Hispanic gay guy came out to greet me. Dealing with walk-ins wasn’t exactly a task the top brass fought over. He smiled h
is most professional smile and took me back to his cubicle. The poor bastard didn’t even rate an office. We squeezed into it. There was barely enough room for two chairs. Our knees touched. He looked at my book, which didn’t take long. He shut it, handed it back to me.

  Do not fucking thank me and send me on my way! I am not a loser.

  “These pictures aren’t great,” he said. There was a “but” in there somewhere. I knew it was coming, but it took an eternity. “But I’m intrigued. I kind of like you. I like your energy. I like the fact that you’re, well, not ordinary. There’s a certain je ne sais quoi about you.”

  Of course there is, you wonderful little homosexual you! I smiled demurely. “Thank you,” I said. I could hardly breathe.

  “I’ll talk to Willie.”

  Willie! He was going to talk to Willie herself!

  “Good,” I said. I was so poised. So unruffled. So la-di-da not-really-interested-thanks. “Let me know.”

  I smiled and waved ta-ta and sashayed my way back to the lobby, hoping I wouldn’t faint.

  I met Wilhelmina the following week. She had a neck that wouldn’t quit, and her long hair was piled on top of her head in a huge, messy tower. There was something wonderfully classy about her. I wanted to like her. I wanted her to like me. I told her my hard-luck story. She listened attentively, chain-smoking all the while. When I was done talking, she lit another cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke and studied me for a long time. “I think you’re interesting,” she said finally. She had a pronounced Dutch accent. “You have an unusual look.” Interesting? An unusual look? For a moment there, I went into a panic. I thought she was going to smile politely and send me on my way. But she didn’t. She said she would sign me—start me on the “testing board”—and see how it went. I didn’t know what the “testing board” was, but she was good enough to explain: Photographers often needed junior models to help them test their lights, say, or pose for a new type of film, or work with a revolutionary fish-eye lens, that kind of thing. “It’s not much,” she said with a pleasant smile. “But it’s a start.”

  Not much? You must be fucking kidding me. I was walking on air. If I’d been wearing a cap, I would have tossed it, Mary Tyler Moore–style. But I didn’t. I contained myself. Barely. “Sounds really interesting,” I said, sounding—to my insecure self, anyway—like a complete moron.

  Wilhelmina reached for her buzzer, and a moment later an elderly secretary came in and introduced herself and took me on a brief tour of the premises. “The bookers are your lifeblood,” she said in a dull, sad monotone. I wondered if she, too, had dreamed of being a model many years ago. We walked into a large room. The phones were ringing off the hook. Three bookers were sitting in front of what looked like a giant lazy Susan that spun like a roulette wheel.

  “No, she’s not available.”

  “She’s in Milan. She’ll be back Friday.”

  “She won’t model in sunlight. She doesn’t like what it does to her skin.”

  “You can’t afford her. Sorry.”

  “No, no lions this week. She’s having her period.”

  I could see slots for each model, but they sped by so quickly that I couldn’t make out any of the names. I tried, though. I wanted to see some famous names. The secretary reached over and plucked a clipboard from one of the slots. It had the name of the model across the top: Deirdre Nobody, with all her vital statistics in a neat row below that. Further along, I could see that her day was broken down into hours, starting at seven in the morning and going through till eleven at night. At any given moment, at a glance, you could see where Deirdre was or what she was doing next. “Deirdre is a tester,” the secretary explained in her dull monotone. “Testers don’t get paid. If she does well, though, she’ll move up a notch, to the Big Board, and start in editorial. Those are the photographs that run with the fashion articles. If Cosmo decides that pink is suddenly the hot color, for example, they’ll run a piece on, say, ‘New York Pink,’ accompanied by shots of a beautiful model dressed in pink from head to toe. Editorial doesn’t pay particularly well, maybe a hundred a day, but if you’re noticed and you’re lucky it might lead to advertising. Of course, you won’t be starting with Revlon.”

  A hundred a day? Not much? Are you kidding me? Give me fifty dollars and I’ll work for a month!

  “Then it gets exciting,” the secretary droned on, her voice betraying no excitement whatsoever. “Giant billboards, your face all over the subway station, runway shows, television, maybe movies even. Who knows?”

  Who knows indeed!

  I walked back to the apartment, floating. I was in love with Wilhelmina. She represented hope. And that bitch Eileen Ford—well, who gave a shit? I’d show her soon enough. I am it, baby. Different? You bet your skinny ass I’m different; I’m better. So, hey—I’m beyond crazy. I’m manic, okay? I go from the pits of despair to the peaks of elation. In the space of a day, of an hour, of a look. Doesn’t everyone?

  Edna was out, trolling for rich older men with a weakness for middle-aged Jewish women. Wendy was in the shower, getting ready for work. When she got out, I told her I’d just been signed by Wilhelmina. She jumped up and down, screaming and giggling. She was genuinely happy for me. I didn’t tell her I was just a tester or that “signed” was a pretty broad definition for what had actually happened. It wasn’t as if Willie had put a contract in front of me and told me that she absolutely positively had to have me. But hey, I was happening, right?

  I went down to the club with Wendy and sat at the bar. Two businessmen were sitting nearby, checking me out. They were talking about some big deal that had gone down in their Wall Street office that afternoon, trying to sound important and rich for my benefit, and when they were done talking business one of them said something about getting tickets for B. B. King. My ears perked up. It turned out B. B. King was at Carnegie Hall at that very moment. I finished my drink and got my too-ethnic ass over to Carnegie Hall.

  I waited by the back door. When one of the grunts came out for some fresh New York air and a cigarette, I slipped inside. I was stopped by a security guard who wasn’t going to be easy to charm. He must have been seventy years old, and—from the way he cocked his head and squinted—half-blind.

  “Excuse me, miss. You’re not allowed in here.”

  “You don’t understand,” I told him. “Ron asked me to meet him.”

  “Ron?”

  “Ron Levy,” I explained. “The piano player. The white guy.”

  There was some hemming and hawing, but just then the musicians took a break and he sent someone to get word to Ron Levy. A few minutes later, I was told that Ron was waiting for me in the dressing room.

  I went in. Ron came over and hugged me. “Janice! Jesus, it’s nice to see you, girl!” I wondered if he was bullshitting me. “I guess you’re back for that drink I offered you in Florida!” He wasn’t bullshitting me! He remembered me!

  I stayed for the last set and then Ron and his intense green eyes and I went over to the Plaza for drinks. He was gorgeous—my Jewish Jim Morrison. We closed the place down and he took me back to his hotel, where there was some coke. I’d never done coke. I was just a kid. I couldn’t have afforded it. But I didn’t want to look naïve, so I just leaned over and—toot—took one line in each nostril. I looked up and smiled ear to ear. I felt powerful. I felt invincible.

  Ron made love to me, and I had an orgasm you could hear all the way to Poughkeepsie.

  My God—is life good or what? Signed and stoned and properly laid, all in one day! Yowza!

  When you’re in love, you want the whole world to know it. And I did my part. I told the waitress at the coffee shop. The nearsighted girl at the checkout stand. My bank teller. Cabdrivers. Strangers on the subway. Any fool who made eye contact with me had to hear it: “Hey, look at me! I am in love, goddamn it!” I felt like Mary Tyler Moore again, only happier and much better looking, and without that stupid fucking beret.

  When I ran out of people to tell, I phoned
Alexis. Her marriage had fallen apart. Mr. Hubby had developed a nasty drug habit and fried his brain. I mean, to hear Alexis tell it, the man was a fucking vegetable. So she left and moved to Santa Cruz and was trying to start over with some flower-children commune types. Sheesh!

  So, yeah, I kept it short and simple. Met a guy. He’s okay. I couldn’t go on and on about how happy I was, could I? It would only make her feel worse. But the thing is, I was happy. I couldn’t get enough of my Jewish Jim Morrison. I hated it when he had to go to work. He’d leave and I’d try not to pout and I’d go back to the Gralnick apartment and pull myself together and call the agency, pushing for work of my own.

  Alexis was very sweet about it. “That’s so great,” she said. “I can’t wait to meet him.” I could hear tears in her voice. I asked her if there was anything I could do for her. She said she was fine, thanked me for calling, and hung up.

  Eventually, Wilhelmina began sending me out. It was pretty much what I’d been told it was going to be—a lot of test shots. It didn’t pay, of course, but it was work, and it felt real. “Some day you’ll make it to the Big Board,” one of the girls told me. She said it like nothing could be further from the truth. Still, I knew I would; I knew my big break would come when one of the photographers cleared the fog off his lens and started paying attention to me.

  Patrice Casanova was one of the first to really notice me. He wasn’t narrow-minded about beauty, and came right out and told me he thought I had “international” appeal. He was also a perfect gentlemen, which I hadn’t expected; I had heard countless horror stories about the French Mafia, the group of Parisian photographers who were very hot at the time. They thought of themselves as “street” guys. They were into their 35-millimeter cameras and liked shooting outdoors with minimum fuss, kamikaze-style. They liked movement, action, acting. They didn’t like mannequins. They prided themselves on being the exact opposite of the Irving Penns and Helmut Newtons and Richard Avedons of the world. And they all had major attitude about it.