No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World's First Supermodel (29 page)

well, I had them in next to nothing. There was more pink Cristal than there were chateaux in the Loire Valley. The walls were buzzing. And the music was cranked up so loud that one of the lights exploded. But the end result was amazing. The calendar was a huge hit. I wish I still 214 J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N

had a copy. People were coming up to me for weeks

afterward, going on and on about how the pictures leapt off the page.

“It’s not enough for them to leap off the page,” I told one of my admirers. I was at another one of Ara’s legendary parties. “I want them to grab you by the throat and wrestle you to the ground.”

There really was no stopping me. I could walk, talk, snort coke,
and
take pictures.

Warren beckoned from across the room. He was with

Bitten Knudsen, a gorgeous blond model, very hot in the seventies. I went over. “Do I know you?” I said.

He laughed and waved me into the empty seat next to him. “So,” he said once he had me where he wanted me,

“how bad are you?”

“Excuse me?”

“All this press you girls are getting. They make you sound like monsters.”

It was true. In 1981,
New York
magazine did a piece on “The Spoiled Supermodels.” And the
New York Daily
News
ran a long series on “The Dark Side of Modeling.”

It was your basic fluff: We used drugs. We were demanding. We did unspeakable things in the back rooms of Studio 54.

“They didn’t get it right at all,” I said. “We’re
much
worse than that.”

Warren and Bitten ended up coming back to my place.

Bitten and I did a few lines and drank a little cognac, and Warren promptly fell asleep on the couch. After Bitten finally left, I went over and woke Warren up. He was incredibly handsome. He wasn’t one of those people who have to get up in the morning and fix their faces.

“What’s happening?” he said.

“You have to go.”

THE INFAMOUS ELITE CALENDAR SHOOT. BELOW, CLOCKWISE

FROM TOP LEFT: ANDIE MACDOWELL, PEGGY DILLARD, LISA PATE, DEBBIE DICKINSON, BEVERLY JOHNSON, RITA FALLONE, IMAN, SHEILA JOHNSON. CENTER: JOHN CASABLANCAS.

((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((

216 J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N

“Where’s Bitten?”

“She left.”

“Good,” he said. “I want to stay here.”

“You can’t,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Come on,” I said. And I walked him downstairs and

flagged a cab.

“Why won’t you let me stay with you?” he asked.

Clearly he wasn’t used to rejection.

“Because you’re much too good-looking,” I said, “and I’ll probably go and fall in love with you.”

The cab pulled up. “But I
want
you to fall in love with me,” he said.

I got the door for him and eased him into his seat. “Me and everybody else,” I said.

“Janice—”

I shut the door. “Take this man back to the Carlyle Hotel,” I told the driver. “And don’t stop anywhere. He’s dangerous.” The cab sped off and I went back to my apartment, feeling quite proud of myself. I’d been a good girl.

The next night, Warren invited me to dinner. He said Bitten was coming, too. I went over to the Carlyle and he asked me up and he was waiting for me at the door to his suite. He was on the phone, and he put a finger to his lips, urging me to be quiet. I looked around. His suite was even nicer than Jack Nicholson’s; it was bigger and had a piano.

I guess those two were always competing. Probably still are.

I tried not to listen to Warren’s conversation—he was talking to Diane Keaton, one of the women in his life—but I could tell he gave good phone. I could imagine Diane on the other end, feeling deeply loved. Then the second line rang and he had to ask her to hold and it was the
other
woman in his life, Mary Tyler Moore. He made
her
feel

N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 217

deeply loved, too. I half-listened as he juggled both of them for a few minutes. Then, finally, at long last, he was rid of them and turned to look at me. God, he was pretty.

“Janice, Janice,” he said. He rubbed his hands together like a man about to sit down to a good meal. “You look beautiful, Janice.”

“That was quite the performance,” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“The way you juggled those two calls. I swear, just standing here, I could feel the love coming off you in waves.”

“You’re funny,” he said.

“Where’s Bitten?” I asked.

“She’s meeting us at the restaurant. Can I offer you a drink?”

BITTEN KNUDSEN AT A CATALOG SHOOT.

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218 J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N

“No,” I said. “It’s hard enough to resist you sober.”

He liked that. He laughed and got his coat and we went downstairs and walked to the restaurant. Bitten really was waiting for us. She was very sweet. She ate quickly and left early. I wondered if Warren had asked her along just to make me feel safe.

“Why don’t you walk me back to my hotel,” he said

after dinner.

“No, thanks,” I said, hailing a cab.

He kissed me on the cheek—he wanted more, but I

turned my head—and I got in the cab and waved ta-ta as it pulled away. I loved the expression on his face: stunned disbelief. He’d perfected that look in
Bonnie and Clyde.

I called Debbie when I got home. “Guess what I didn’t do tonight?” I said.

“What?”

“Sleep with Warren Beatty.”

“Where’s he staying?” she asked. Don’t worry, she was just kidding. Debbie was funny, too.

Warren called and called and called. I kept putting him off. At the end of the week I had to fly to the Caribbean to do a shoot for
Elle.
(Oh, the drudgery.) But I spent the entire shoot thinking about him.

When I landed back in New York, I found myself standing in the baggage-claim area, waiting for my things,
still
thinking about that man. I walked over to a pay phone and called the Carlyle. He was in.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“At JFK,” I said. “I just landed. You sure nobody’s there? You’re not juggling calls again, are you?”

“Why don’t you come over?”

“Bitten’s not there? Can it really be—Warren is all alone?”

N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 219

“I won’t be if you come over,” he said, laughing. So I did.

He sat down and played the piano for me—what a

delight—then ordered room service. We ate by candlelight.

He asked me about me. Hung on my every word. Made me feel like the center of the universe.

Of course I slept with him. I’d been wanting to since the first time I’d laid eyes on him. He was great, if you must know. He knew where everything was and what to do with it. But of course he’d had lots of practice. I tried not to think about just how much.

I woke up a few hours later, at around three in the morning. Warren wasn’t in bed. I looked across the room and found him admiring himself in the mirror.

“What are you doing?” I asked in a sleepy voice.

“Nothing,” he said. But he couldn’t take his eyes off himself. He ran his hands through his hair, staring at his reflection in the mirror. I went back to sleep. In the morning, when I woke up, he was standing there again, playing with his hair, mussing it; trying to get it just right—going for that just-been-fucked look. I guess he thought he was pretty, too.

I saw Warren for the next eight months. I never let myself fall in love with him, but it was fun. He let me be a little girl. And he was a nice daddy. He made me feel loved and important. I knew he was making half a dozen other women feel the same way at the same time—sometimes on the same day, even—but it didn’t matter. I needed lots of nurturing, and I was getting it from Warren Beatty.

The only thing that bothered me was that he never let me photograph him. You’d think he’d love having his picture taken, vain as he was. And he did. But he had to control that, too. I’m sure if Irving Penn had asked him, he 220 J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N

would have jumped. But I was just Janice. He needed to be sure he looked perfect. He would have looked perfect in a fucking Polaroid, but that wasn’t enough for Warren. He wanted to look flawless.

I like Warren. I wonder how he feels about getting older.

I wonder if he gazes at himself as often as he used to then, or whether he’s had sheets draped over all the mirrors.

THE MUSIC MAN

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The month after things with Warren petered out (I use the phrase advisedly), I flew to Los Angeles to do a catalog job for Macy’s. It was fun; I was working with Rene Russo, whom I adore. She’s probably one of the shiest people I’ve ever met, and she said working in front of the camera was sheer torture. She didn’t know who to be when a photographer told her to be herself.

“I’m taking acting classes,” she told me. “It’s so much easier.”

“You must be kidding?” I said.

“No,” she said. “It’s
acting.
I find it so much easier to be another person.”

Made all the sense in the world.

The real reason I was so jazzed about being in L.A., however, had nothing to do with the Macy’s shoot. I was jazzed because Peppo della Schiavva had caught wind of my talents as a photographer. Peppo was the Italian publisher who ran most of the fashion magazines in Italy.

Bazaar. Men’s Bazaar. Cosmo.
He’d asked me to shoot a line of bikinis for him. And who was I to say no? It was my first paying gig on the other side of the camera, and, believe me, I was thrilled to death.

I asked Rene if she could do it, but she had a scheduling conflict. So I tracked down my old pal Bitten, Warren’s lit222 J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N

tle friend. Then I found a local hair and makeup girl and the three of us drove up to Malibu in a rented car. I was distracted the whole way out, trying to remember everything I’d ever learned about photography. I kept making these imaginary lists in my head—things to do and not to do—and the fucking lists were getting so long they were making me dizzy.

But when we got to the beach, I forgot all about the lists. I just stepped up to the plate and
felt
my way through the shoot. I found I had a good grasp of what would work and what wouldn’t, and the list simply floated out of my head.