MANDARIN PLAID (Lydia Chin/Bill Smith series) (12 page)

T
EN

E
verest Models. Well, Ed Everest had told me, as he was touching my hair, that he handled exotics. I guess being brought up in Oak Park didn’t disqualify Dawn Jing.

On the phone with Everest Models, I used the same French name and French accent that had been proving so successful today. I explained about Botanica Nature and asked if they could put me in touch with Dawn Jing.

Then my streak was over.

“I’m sorry, we have no client by that name,” a thin-voiced receptionist said with an air of bored finality.

“Oh, but I was told—”

“I can’t help what you were told. We don’t have a client by that name.”

“Oh,” I said. “Quel dommage. May I speak to Mr. Everest, in this case?”

She put me through to Ed Everest, who answered the phone heartily. Laying the French accent on thick, just in case he remembered Mishika Yamamoto, I told him what I’d asked the receptionist and what she’d told me.

“No, that’s true,” he agreed, sounding regretful. “I don’t know the name. Dawn Jing? No, not a client of ours. Sorry.”

“Perhaps,” I said, “it is possible she is using another name?”

“She could be. But she’s still not with us. I’m really low on Asians right now, and the two girls I do have, I know pretty well. One’s Burmese and the other’s just off the boat from Japan. And they’re both booked heavily for the next month or so,” he added. “So there’s really nothing I can do to help you. Why don’t you try Asian Faces? They specialize in Oriental girls. You could probably find what you’re looking for there.”

“Oh, there are agencies which specialize?”

“Sure. Asian Faces, or Chinoiserie. Give them a call.”

“Merci, monsieur.”

“No problem. Happy to help.”

I hung up the phone and sat tapping the receiver thoughtfully. Then I packed up the T-shirts for Goodwill, closed my now neat-and-beautiful bureau drawers—I gave them a week like that, at the outside—and surveyed my closet critically.

I couldn’t do a cropped top and tight black pants, but blue jeans, a crisp white shirt, and black boots had some currency on the street right now.

Besides, Mishika Yamamoto wasn’t supposed to know what she was doing.

I fluffed up my hair and moussed it, then examined myself in the bathroom mirror. If you measured to the absolute tip of the highest-standing hair, I could pass for five-foot-three. I clipped on big red round earrings, and even, since I was home where the supplies were, painted my lips with a purply, eggplant lipstick and smoothed
out the color on my face with a bronze base that, oh by the way, covered up the bruise on my cheek.

I put a black leather belt with a silver buckle through the loops on my jeans and a carved cinnabar necklace around my neck and stepped back to admire the effect in the full-length mirror on my closet door. Then I called Bill.

“You should see me,” I said.

“Why?”

“I’m in disguise.”

“Dressed as Santa Claus?”

“Hardly.” I told him about my search for Dawn Jing and the dead end I’d run into.

“Maybe Andi was lying,” he said.

“Why would she lie? If she didn’t want me to find Dawn for some reason, she could just say she didn’t know her. Telling me she’s with an agency she’s not with is a lie that can’t go very far.”

“True. Maybe she was just wrong. Or maybe Dawn Jing used to be with Everest and she’s moved on.”

“She sounded awfully sure,” I said. “But even if she was wrong, there’s something strange about Ed Everest.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, for one thing, if Dawn used to be with him he’d know her. He said he’d never heard of her. And also, he told me his Asian models were all booked. For the next month. He didn’t ask me my schedule, or what kind of a deal it was. Maybe it would be worth canceling someone’s booking for. In fact, he didn’t even try to find out whether I really needed an Asian model, or if he could sell me someone else. Is that how it works in this industry?”

“I don’t know the industry,” Bill said. “But you’re right, it sounds peculiar.”

“And there’s something else about him.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. But Andi and Francie brought his name up when they heard about Wayne Lewis’s death.”

“You told me. So what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to go up there. After all, Ed invited Mishika. I’m going to go see what I can see.”

“Well,” Bill said, “it’s what I would do, in your position. But keep in touch. I don’t want to have to worry.”

“If you start worrying, like the rest of them—”

“I won’t worry like the rest of them. I’ll worry in my own special way. It will be unique, idiosyncratic, and probably quite embarrassing. I think you owe it to me to save me from myself.”

“There’s no one,” I told him, fiddling with my cinnabar necklace, “that I’d rather save anyone from.”

I called the cold-fish receptionist at Everest Models again, using a breathier, unaccented voice and told her Mr. Everest had asked Mishika Yamamoto to come see him. We set it up for forty minutes from now and I was on my way.

Everest Models was up in Genna’s and Andrew’s neighborhood, Chelsea, on Twenty-second Street in a converted loft building. A bold white-on-black graphic of a double mountain peak was the first thing that grabbed your eye when you got off at the fourth-floor elevator lobby. I knocked timidly, then opened the door and went in.

The receptionist had a knife-sharp nose and a suspicious look in her eyes. The look didn’t change when I told her who I was.

“Sit down,” she ordered, and spoke over the phone on her desk, presumably to Ed Everest. She ignored me totally after that, but since she hadn’t told me to go get lost, I figured I should wait.

The chairs in the small waiting area were black leather, the walls stark white. A dozen photographs of young women were all the decoration there was. Some of the women were Asian, some black, some with the sultry eyes and thick dark hair of the Middle East. All were gazing seductively into the camera. One, wearing a fog of flowing chiffon, embraced a brightly decorated column on a Shinto shrine. Another, wearing shockingly little, lay sprawled on a Turkish carpet.

All of them were showing more smooth-skinned thigh, arching back, and bare shoulder than Mishika Yamamoto was comfortable with.

The glass-and-brass coffee table was weighted down with books of more glossy photos. I was flipping through the second of them when a door swung open across the room.

“Mishika! Sweetheart!” A beaming Ed Everest blew like a wind into the room. “Great to see you. Come on in. Irene, hold my calls.” He took my arm and swept me past Irene the receptionist and through the door he’d come from. As the door closed behind us, I saw something I read as disgust in Irene’s eyes, but I didn’t know who it was for.

“So, Mishika.” Ed Everest rounded his desk, plopped down behind it, and waved me to a leather-and-chrome chair. He wore pleated dark navy pants and a shirt the color of cocktail olives. His navy tie had blobby red accents like the pimientos they stuff those olives with. He smiled at me broadly, exposing a solid set of gleaming, capped teeth. “Take off your jacket, hang it over there. Sit, sit. Glad you came up, sweetheart. Shows you’re serious, take advantage of opportunity. I like that. It’s key in this business. Now, what’ve you done?”

I slipped my jacket, one of Ted’s old tweeds with the sleeves rolled up, onto a hook, and sat demurely on the chair opposite Ed Everest. “Well, back home—”

“Where’s home?”

“San Francisco.”

“Good. A city girl. Knows the score. Born here, Mishika? U.S.A., I mean?”

“Yes, I—”

“Great.” He cut me off again. “Now, you don’t have a book, right?”

“That’s true, but—”

“No problem, sweetheart, no problem. Just means whatever you did back home isn’t worth much. Clients want to see it, Mishika.” He grinned wolfishly. “We’ll set you up. Send you to my guy, he’s a genius. We’ll get you head shots, full-length—we’ll make a book. No problem.”

“How much will that cost?” I asked, trying to look as though I was trying not to look worried.

“Runs close to a grand,” Ed said. “You have it?”

“Oh, I don’t think—”

“Don’t worry, sweetheart. Most of the girls don’t. I’ll front it.” His grin broadened. “Well, come on, don’t look so surprised. I’m investing in you. Mishika, my little gold mine. That’s how it works. I
do for you, you do for me. How can I make my fortune on your fabulous career if you don’t get started? Stand up, honey, turn around.” He circled his hand, stirring the air.

I stood and slowly turned.

“Good, good,” he said. “Terrific. I’m getting ideas already. Listen, can we talk about your hair for a minute?”

My hand went to my head. “My hair?”

“It’s all wrong. You’re a smart girl, you see the other girls. You have a great head, Mishika, I told you that. I want to
see
it. Clients’ll love it.
Love
it! You know Tulipe? Sixty-fifth, near Madison? Tell them it’s for Ed. I’ll have Irene call.”

I blushed. “Tulipe? I can’t—”

“Afford it? Get with the program, Mishika. It’s on Ed. You can owe me. And makeup. Go down to Mac, get what you need. If you don’t know what you need, get them to show you.” He stood and came around the desk. Taking both my hands, he smiled. His blue eyes, fixed on mine, seemed to be filled with excitement, a promise of adventure ahead, wonderful things waiting to happen to me. The smile remained, but his voice, when he spoke, was serious. “Mishika. Bottom line. You walk around looking like that, nobody’ll ever look twice. You do what Ed tells you, you’ll make it. I take you around, introduce you to the people who can help. All you have to do is be nice and be
gorgeous
. Simple as that. Get it?”

Looking into his eyes, I nodded to show that I’d gotten it.

“Good,” he said. “Good.” His smile blossomed into a joyful grin, as though the adventure had already begun. “I knew it, Mishika. I knew you had it.”

Then he dropped my hands and checked the Rolex on his wrist. “I’m sorry, doll. I have things to do, people to take care of. You know? Look, you get started. Hair, makeup, get yourself some clothes if you need them. Leave Irene your info, where to get in touch. You have a beeper or a cellphone?”

“No …”

“Phone’s better. Get one.
Communicado
, baby. It’s key. See if you can get to Tulipe this morning. Irene can get you in. We’ll talk in a day or two, get the book done after the hair and makeup thing. Okay, sweetheart?” He beamed at me.

“Thank you,” I began.

“Oh, no. No problem. I’m doing this as much for me as you, doll. You’re going to make me rich, Mishika, I can see it. I can just tell.” He put his hand on the small of my back, grabbed my jacket off the hook, and ushered me out the door. “Good-bye, hon.” He dropped his hand lower, cupping my rear, and copped a quick feel. I slid uncomfortably away. He smiled down at me. “Later,” he said.

Ed Everest closed the door behind me. I smiled at Irene the receptionist, but the look she gave me over her typewriter had changed from disgust to contempt.

E
LEVEN

I
came out of the subway half an hour later on the Upper East Side. The wind had picked up, and it tossed my hair around as I marched down the sidewalk in the bright sunlight. I brushed my blowing bangs off my face, wondering if I’d miss having hair that could touch the top of my collar. But I’d been wearing my hair this same way for a while now. And I was due for a cut anyway. Even my mother had noticed.

Not that my mother was going to love this. My mother considered any haircut that left you without something long enough to braid to be a man’s cut and therefore hopelessly unattractive. Tulipe, on the other hand, was the envelope-pusher in this season’s super-short women’s styles.

The great thing about hair, though, is that it always grows back.

I’d discussed this cut with my conscience all the way up on the train. This was a $150 haircut, something I never in a million years would have spent this kind of money on even if I had it. The prosecution argued that, since I had no intention of ever modeling for Ed Everest, it was some sort of larceny to take advantage of his largesse. The defense, however, maintained that it could be a useful step in my
search for Dawn Jing, even if its only use was to keep Ed from suspecting my motives in coming to him.

The defense further pointed out that Ed had, uninvited, squeezed my behind. Most men who do that to you get away with it; the worst you can do to them is glare. It would be justice, the defense’s summation held, to make one really pay.

The defense rested. Deliberations were brief and the verdict was unanimous.

Tulipe was in a limestone-fronted townhouse a few buildings in from the corner on a residential street. It had an elegant gray-and-cream sign outside and an elegant gray-and-cream waiting room inside. Crimson tulips bloomed happily in the tiny front garden; they had those inside, too. I wondered what they did in the other three seasons.

The waiting room was empty when I opened the heavy wood door. I gave my name to the receptionist, a bony woman with arched eyebrows and a sort of fade cut, shaved on the sides and about half an inch long on top. I’d have to make sure they didn’t give me one of those; it would be beyond my mother’s ability to cope.

“Mishika?” She sounded dubious, and consulted a large appointment ledger. “Oh, yes, right. Irene called about you.” Her accent was British, her long nails deep dark red. Her tone implied that, against her expectations, I’d passed the first test—being in her book—but I shouldn’t let it go to my head. “Robert will take you as soon as he’s ready.” She nodded languidly toward a gray leather sofa and went back to the fashion magazine she’d been thumbing through. I could smell the heavy sweetness of the perfumed advertising strips from where I stood.

“Thank you,” I said, giving her Mishika’s timid smile. “I’m surprised I was able to get an appointment so fast.”

“I should say.” She didn’t look up. “Robert is always booked weeks in advance.”

“But I was lucky enough to catch him just when he had an opening?”

Now she did look up. “Certainly not. Robert never has an opening. But as it happens we have an arrangement with Everest Models.”

“An arrangement?”

Although I was clearly interfering with her study project on popular culture, she took a breath and explained the situation. “Mr. Everest sends all his models here. He’s an excellent client, so we try to accommodate him.”

“He does? Do all the agencies do that? I’m new,” I explained shyly. “So I don’t really know how it works.”

“Pay for their girls’ cuts, do you mean? No, not actually.” Her eyes narrowed, the better to focus on someone so new she didn’t know salon protocol.

“I’m so glad Mr. Everest wants me,” I confided. “I’m so excited about being a model. And I never could have afforded this by myself.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s true,” she said, going back to her magazine.

“The other girls he sends,” I went on chattering, “what are they like?”

She looked up briefly from the perfumed pages. “You’ll fit right in.” She turned to an article on Glorious Cashmere and began to read.

“I will? Oh, I’m so glad! How will I? What kind of girls are they?”

She paused before she answered this time, the way my third-grade teacher used to do, which was how I knew to stop asking questions or I’d be staying after school.

“The Everest girls,” the receptionist told me, “are all rather quirky.”

“Quirky? Quirky how?”

She seemed to search briefly for the right words. “Mr. Everest seems to have a generous concept of a girl’s potential. But then, it is his agency, so perhaps he’s correct. Although,” she added, flipping magazine pages again, “I haven’t yet seen any of the Everest girls in a major spread.”

I decided to ignore the unmistakable notion that I’d just been insulted. “You haven’t?” I made my voice sound disappointed. “The Everest Agency doesn’t have any famous models?”

She smiled for the first time, a thin smile. “I’m quite sure you’ll be the first.”

“Do you think so? You don’t think I’m quirky?”

“Possibly that was a poor word choice.” The thin smile continued. “In your case, it’s only that, for a model, you’re rather short.”

It was a great haircut.

Robert, owner and resident genius at Tulipe, was an elfin man with pointed chin, sharp nose, and a widow’s peak in his own short dark hair. He wore a ruby stud in his left ear, like my brother Andrew’s, and three gold hoops in his right, which Andrew doesn’t have. He zipped around me, peering intently into my face from in front, then in the mirror, combing my wet hair forward, back, to one side, to the other side. Three other women in three other soft gray smocks occupied the remaining chairs in the small, square salon. They were each being well-fussed-over by their hairdressers, but I was the one in the seat of honor just inside the door, where a large bowl of crimson tulips on the counter was doubled by its mirrored image.

“No scalp showing,” I told Robert, speaking to the mirror.

He scrunched his lips together and furrowed his reflected brow. “Are you sure? We could shave it. The Sinead O’Connor thing. No, you’re right. That look’s old. Let’s do this.” He fastened most of my hair to the top of my head with bright red plastic clips and began to snip, comb, snip what wasn’t clipped. I felt a pang of fear as I saw locks of hair longer than I thought I had flying from his scissors, but after the fourth or fifth snip it was too late to worry about it, so I decided to relax.

“This is wonderful,” Robert enthused, scissors and comb motionless while he spoke. “This thick Asian hair, and such a great head. God, this’ll be fabulous.” When his words stopped, his hands started up, combing and snipping.

“Do you do many Asians?” I asked.

“Lots and lots.” He stopped again and smiled in the mirror. Artists apparently can’t work and talk at the same time. “Don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried,” I said. “I’m sure it will be wonderful. I’m really asking because a friend of mine got a great cut, and I’m wondering if she came here for it.”

“If it’s great, she probably did. What’s her name?”

“Dawn Jing.”

“Dawn Jing, Dawn Jing, Dawn Jing,” Robert mulled, snipping and combing. He unfastened some clips, rearranged others. “I don’t know. But I have a terrible memory for names. Describe her.”

That was something I couldn’t do, never having seen even a picture of Dawn. But I had an inspiration. I described Genna.

“Hmmm,” Robert hummed, working on the back of my head. Pausing, he said, “Sounds familiar. But I don’t know. I’m not saying you all look alike,” he caught my reflection’s eye, “but truly, it’s like saying ‘tall, blue-eyed, and blond.’ It could mean so many people.” He went back to comb and scissors, frowning in concentration.

“She has really beautiful hair,” I pressed on. “Fine and straight and very shiny. And perfect pale skin. And tiny ears.”

“Tiny ears,” Robert mused, but got distracted by his work again.

“You know who she sounds like?” The question came from the hairdresser at the station next to Robert’s, a round-cheeked woman twisting her client’s golden hair over thick ridged rods, for a perm. “That little one,” she said. “She came twice. You did her, Robert. And we all said how funny it was that someone who looked so delicate was like that?”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Oh, I remember!” Robert declared. He waved his comb and scissors. “That one! Right! What a sensational head! But that wasn’t her name.”

“It wasn’t?” I asked. “But maybe it was her anyway, using some kind of professional name or something. What was she like?”

Robert stared into his own eyes in the mirror. “Ruby,” he said. “Jade, starlight … Pearl! Pearl Moon! Wasn’t that it, Mattie? Pearl Moon, wasn’t that her name?”

Mattie, her tongue poking out in concentration, nodded without looking up from her rods.

“Could that be your friend?” Robert asked me. “Does she ever use that name?” He started to work again, now on the crown of my head.

“I don’t know,” I said. “You said it was funny, what she was like. What was she like?”

“Tough,” he said, stopping again, this time to catch my eye.
“No, not tough. That makes her sound like something you couldn’t chew. This one was something you’d break your teeth on if you even tried to bite. And you wouldn’t make a mark on her.” He shook his head and went back to work, taking the last clip from my hair. “Sharp and beautiful,” he said, pausing in the mirror one more time. “Not like a pearl, really. More like a diamond.”