Reunion Girls (3 page)

Babe kept up a bulletproof face, but inside she was wounded. "It was just an observation, Finn, not a judgment."

"You know, that chip on your shoulder has been weighing you down for at least eleven years. I'm surprised you don't walk with a limp." He turned to Lara. "I'm in the mood for a real drink. Can I get you anything?"

Lara shook her head. "I'm fine. Thanks." She stood her ground, as if waiting for Finn to leave. Once he did, she regarded Babe knowingly. "You always pick fights when you're nervous. What's going on?"

Babe revealed nothing.

"My guess is that you haven't talked to him yet," Lara said.

"Him,"
Babe repeated bitterly. "Isn't it just a little sick that whenever we talk about that son of a bitch, we never have to mention his name? It's just
him.
Like he's the only man in the whole world."

Lara shifted slightly, a move of cool indifference. "Well, he is the only man we have in common. There's really no point to name identification."

Babe laughed a little. "Do you realize that this is the longest conversation we've had since college? Usually it's just a quick hello and you asking me not to photograph Gwyneth with a cigarette in her mouth."

Lara looked at her, a gleam of superiority in her eyes. "I guess there hasn't been much to say. As a general rule, I tend to lose interest in girl talk when you sleep with my boyfriend."

"Lara, please!" Babe exclaimed with more bite than apology. "It's been a decade or more. It's time for a new grudge. Would you like to get even and screw my boyfriend? What's your address? I'll send Jake over."

"Thanks for the offer, but I think I'll pass," Lara said. There was a beat of silence, and then a shadow of discovery swept across her face. "You don't mean Jake
James"

Babe grinned. “Alert the media. Above-it-all Lara Ward reads the trashy 'It Parade' column just like the rest of us."

Lara shook her head disapprovingly. "Do you really like him, or are you just trying to make Dean Paul crazy?"

Now it was Babe's turn to look superior. "Unlike you, Lara, everything I do isn't predicated on my feelings for Dean Paul."

"What explains your attraction to Jake then? Personal taste? That's even worse."

"At least Jake's an adult. Dean Paul still can't decide what he wants to be when he grows up. And speaking of taste, don't you hold anything against him for walking down the aisle with that reality TV slut?"

"I don't know anything about her.
Survivor
is a waste of time. I've never watched it."

"She took off her top in the first episode. And that was Aspen at her most conservative."

"Dean Paul is free to make his own choices," Lara said tightly.

Babe laughed again. "Jesus, Lara, you've
still
got it bad. You're not even at the anger stage yet. You'll never get over a guy if you can't think of him as an asshole."

Lara shot back a fiery glare. "I'd rather carry a torch than crawl into bed with a creep like Jake James. Take a look at yourself, Babe. You've got it worse than I do." And then she left to join Finn at the bar.

Babe stopped a passing waiter to grab a glass of champagne. Her inner revolution started up again. All the negative self-talk that cranked in her mind whenever she was surrounded by people with better jobs, bigger money, and higher social standing. Deep down, she possessed little faith that she had equal value in the greater cosmic scheme. And being in this setting—without her equipment—only fueled the insecurity. Her Nikon with the Zeiss lens was her weapon against the world. Drinking deep on the Cristal, Babe remembered how it had evolved to this . . .
 

It was easy to be smart enough for the Ivy Leagues. But being rich enough—that was another story. Her parents weren't surgeons or senators or movie stars. They were divorced, at each other's throats, and stuck in middle management. Two miserable neurotics making enough income to take her out of the running for financial aid but not enough to put her through school. So much for the lovely graduation gift. All she got was the baggage of a dysfunctional childhood.

By the time Babe left college, she was buried eighty thousand dollars deep in student loans. But Brown University had been her first choice. She'd wanted a free educational environment, and the school's New Curriculum concept appealed to her. There were no tedious core courses to sludge through. You created your own interdisciplinary concentration. Babe majored in art history, punching up her studies with photography classes at the Rhode Island School of Design.

The same freedoms that attracted Babe to Brown pulled her perceived foes there like magnets, too. Snots from old money, brats from new money, dubiously talented children of celebrities, six degrees of European royalty—they all flocked to the school, longing for unchained fun after years of lockup in rigid boarding schools.

From day one, Babe had struggled to find her place. She could never hang with the money crowd. Their gluttony sickened her. While she watched every penny and fretted about her mounting debt, they were booking houses in Newport or Block Island to host weekend-long parties.

She fared no better with the rest of the students. Too uptight to lope around with the Doc Martens stoner types. Not brainy enough for the cerebral semioticians who debated ancient philosophers on the College Green. As for seeking out the theater crowd or preppy/jock scene, Babe would have rather thrown herself in front of a moving bus.

In the beginning, it was high school all over again. Starring Babe Mancini in the edgy role of the cynical loner. But this time it didn't stay that way. Her budding photography skills were constantly pushing her into the mix, mainly because she harbored no interest in taking pictures of landscapes, still-lifes, or architecture. To her developing eye, people were the most fascinating subjects. So in no time, she was a fixture on the busy Brown party scene.

Babe did Underground, the campus bar. Every Thursday was Funk Night. She never missed it. Ditto for the caravans to Viva, the nightclub in Providence that was a favorite of the Euro students. And then there were the wild theme events like the annual Naked Party and Campus Dance.

Her visual documentation style caused a stir. The images got people talking. She crafted mixed-media collages of her lens targets for art classes, earning raves from professors and approval from her peers. Babe didn't do smile-and-say-cheese good-time candids. Her images were disoriented, drunk in appearance, always operating on the edge—-just like her subjects. A daring cleavage shot. Porn star-worthy scarlet lips on a beer bottle. A guy's manicured hand riding up a girl's naked thigh. Her flair for beheaded bodies and unorthodox angles quickly became campus legend. Soon it was a mark of social status to be a violently cropped partygoer in a Babe Mancini original.

But she didn't limit herself to the avant-garde. To enhance her portfolio, Babe decided to produce a series of more traditional fashion shots. That's how she met Lara. The tall, dazzling blonde with the elegant shoulders was polished, slick, and exuded amazing style. Though aloof at first, she had eventually warmed to Babe and agreed to be photographed on the steps of the John Carter Brown Library. By the end of the shoot, they had become instant friends, a rare feat for Babe, who had always struggled to form bonds with other girls.

With one girlfriend in Lara, Babe actually got a second in the form of Gabrielle, a stunning black girl, one of Lara's fellow dwellers in "the cave" and an on-air talent for WBRU, the school's 50,000-watt commercial radio station operated by students. For a too brief stretch of time, they had been an impressive triumvirate. It was, in fact, one of the happier times in Babe's life. From grade school on, she had steered herself away from female cliques, hating the social policing, the pressure to dress, think, and sound alike. But for Babe, Lara, and Gabrielle, none of that came into play . . . until
him.

Like all the other women on campus, Babe found herself mesmerized by Dean Paul Lockhart. Maybe it was the crazy contradictions, the way he could be so utterly vain yet unconcerned about his own beauty. An eager exhibitionist, he was always quick to take off his shirt, proud of his rippling back and that long, tan torso quilted with muscle. Yet at the same time, he could be so careless about his hair and clothes, showing up to classes and social gatherings uncombed, un-ironed, even unclean, as yesterday's stains on his shirt and pants would reveal. But the real magic was simply the awesome power of his charisma, the way he could transform a room when he entered or left it.

That he was Lara's boyfriend did little to discourage Babe's crush. Her new friendship only brought her closer to Dean Paul more often. She was intuitive enough to realize the fierce loyalty expected from a close girls' club, but she lacked the experience to see it through. Babe had been a virgin to all of it—the sisterhood, the heady rush of a man with TNT for DNA. So it had been easy to fall in love, fall into bed, and fall out of favor.

She remembered the scene like it was yesterday. Brown was wilder than most colleges. The weekends started on Wednesday, not Thursday. Finn had rented an abandoned warehouse in downtown Providence, turning it into an instant disco with a DJ and a full bar. He had invited at least four hundred people. Lara had felt sick and Gabrielle had to cover for someone at the radio station, which left Babe and Dean Paul to party together. And party they did. Until almost four o'clock in the morning. Too trashed to drive back up the hill, they had crashed at the Biltmore Hotel... and then stayed in the room for two days.

By the time they checked out, news of the scandal had rocked the campus. Social lines were drawn, and surprise, surprise, Babe was odd woman out. The troika of Babe, Lara, and Gabrielle was no more; she was alone again. Even girls she didn't know hissed at her on the college green. She wondered why. Because she had betrayed a friend, or because she had landed the man they all wanted?

For all the destruction left in its wake, Babe's romance with Dean Paul didn't last long. It turned out to be a hot affair that burned as fast as a pink meteorite speeding across the dark night sky. She wanted more. He moved on. Typical Dean Paul math when it came to his relationships with women. And thanks to the wrecking ball that was his fling with Babe, all bets were off now. He took up with Gabrielle next. And after her, some other girl waiting for her chance.

Leaving Brown had been a relief. Babe couldn't wait to start over again, to get on with the rest of her life. She had moved to New York with dreams of making a living as an art photographer. It turned out to be frustrating as hell. Gallery after gallery snubbed her. She watched in disgust as other upstarts with less technical skill and a less interesting eye got ahead in the game. They were landing solo shows, selling images for top dollar, garnering attention from art critics. Meanwhile, she was going nowhere. A stint as an assistant for a legendary photographer proved short-lived. The genius had been a manic-depressive, drug-snorting lesbian. For six months, all Babe did was play victim to her pendulum mood swings and score coke from her dealer.

A stringer job on the
New York Times
improved Babe's life—but not by much. She tried hard news. Too many elbows jockeying to snap the perfect shot. Her heart just wasn't in it. A run at sports fouled out, too. Action photography? Not her strength. Getting on as a party photographer had been a fluke. One night a double-booked freelancer called Babe to help him out of a jam. Two hours later she was recording the scene at a Christmas party being hosted by Brae Group, a hot venture-capital firm. An editor from
212
had been there, drunk on spiked eggnog and offering everything from a full-time position to a three-way with her stock analyst boyfriend. By the end of the holiday bash, they had exchanged business cards. By the first of the year, Babe had a new job—
212
's official nightlife photographer.

There were worse gigs. Hell, she'd worked all of them. People from her graduating class were earning megabucks practicing law. They were being paged to surgery in major hospitals. And here Babe was, thankful to finally have a good salary with benefits. Her phone usually started ringing at noon with details about the night ahead. On a typical beat she would hit four events over the course of an evening.

Somewhere between the first flash and the millionth, resentment had kicked in. There was so much wealth. Every gig reminded Babe of what she didn't have, and, at the rate she was going, what she would never be able to afford. But then the culture began to shift. And the opportunities began to present themselves. So many celebrity magazines. So many paparazzi shots needed to keep them in business.

The world was operating on a whole new shutter speed. Reese Witherspoon glowing on the red carpet in Emanuel Ungaro was good. But Reese exiting a supermarket rest room with toilet paper stuck to the bottom of her Adidas was better.

Babe had been aware of the new order, but hardly paid attention—until a colleague earned ten thousand dollars for a one-off sale of Jennifer Lopez getting out of her Rolls Royce. That's when the trend captured Babe's full interest.

There were things that she wanted for herself. Nicer clothes. A great apartment with a rooftop garden. Exotic vacations. Maybe even a weekend place in the country. She knew that true dedication to the task and a few lucky breaks could get her all of that and more.

The trick was to avoid biting the hand that feeds you. If
212
ever found out that she was moonlighting as a paparazzo, then she would be over. So over. Banished from the A-list scene. Blacklisted from the masthead of credible magazines. She could just see herself after that, waiting at the airport with the other semi-psychotic pic hunters, drinking 200 ounces of Coke a day, boasting about her inside sources—doormen at the best hotels, Brad Pitt's body double, the jealous loser brother of a sitcom star. Such a scenario was imminently possible. That's why Babe executed her every move with paranoid caution.

Babe set up a dummy corporation to facilitate payment, negotiated prices by e-mail, and launched an on-line file-transfer program that was accessible to buyers by password only.