Authors: David James

A Not So Model Home (4 page)

BOOK: A Not So Model Home

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Drake had effectively let the air out of the men in the room. A pair of Dries Van Noten pants and Gucci-clad feet weren't going to score a lot of points right now. Drake was everything the other men were not: masculine, honest, and smart. He didn't have the Euro-sleek look of the other men; but make no mistake, he was strikingly handsome in a wholesome, all-American way. His predatory looks, dark hair, eyebrows that sat overshadowing deep-set eyes and slanted downward in a straight line toward the nose, and prominent, chiseled jaw gave him both a smoldering and somewhat dangerousâshall I say, almost sinister in a sexy wayâlook. He could have walked right out of an early Ralph Lauren Polo ad.

All eyes went to the next man at the table, Mr. Frenchy.

“I ham Gilles Moreau, I ham six feet tall . . . and eleven inches,” he said with a not-so-subtle wink.

Since we were seated, it was difficult to ascertain how tall anyone was, but it was clear what Gilles was hinting at. Plain and simple, Gilles was cute Eurotrash with a big dick, and apparently a desire to get his hands on a lot of money. He had longish black hair as thick as the bristles of a shoe brush, swept back and up from his face, as if he lived life in a wind tunnel filled with hair spray. His two lips were permanently pursed into a perfect heart shape at the middle, revealing two beaver-like incisors that forced his lips to part in a tempting look of come hither. He had no brutish jaw like Drake. It simply eased back to disappear into his swan-like neck as if it wanted to slip away gracefully, unnoticed. Even though he was male, he had this light, gossamer overlay of femininity.

Gilles continued, “And I am so qualified to be the boyfriend of Ian, I sink zere is no reason for the others to stay! I win!” Gilles laughed . . . all by himself. What might have been a knee-slapper in Paris landed like the carcass of a deer on the table. You could smell the contempt in the room.

Jeremy spoke up, “Anything else, Gilles?”

“No, ze contest is over. I am ze best.”

A very satisfied smile rose in the corners of Jeremy's face. Gilles was just the match to throw into the ammunition pile. Arrogant. Narcissistic. Sociopathic. “Very well, then, Gilles. Next?”

“I am Aleksei Kikorov. Big surprise: I am a fashion model. I'm currently taking a break from a busy career here in Ian's house,” he reported dryly without a hint of an accent of any kindâdespite the exotic name.

Gilles was not done talking. “You forgot to zay zat you are a kree-stal meth head in rehab here.”

“I have nothing to hide. I have been clean for six months now.”

“Seeex months! They always go back to ze drugs,” Gilles added.

“Gilles, could you just shut that sewer that you call a mouth for one goddamned minute?” Keith MacGregor (name card again) said as he was texting from his BlackBerry phone, not bothering to look up. “Unlike others, I will wait my turn to talk,” he added, raising his eyebrows in unison and nodding his head slightly in the direction of Mr. Eurotrash. “Continue, Aleksei.”

Aleksei continued, “Gilles, I've spent sixty days in rehab,” he retorted snottily while taking a rather large gulp of wine. “I'm clean.”

What wine was doing at a breakfast table was a mystery to me, but I did notice that Aleksei was the only one with it in front of him. To be fair to Aleksei, the others merely had Bloody Marys. Alcohol was apparently the one acceptable carb.

“So you drink ze wine now?”

Raised eyebrows from a few guys and some dagger eyes from Keith.

“I was at Beginnings in Malibu for substance abuse. I'm sure you've all heard of it. All the big stars have gone there. Charlie Sheen, I think. Anna Nicole Smith went there. I'm clean now. Wine doesn't count.”

“Even zo, you like your wine. I saut zat you go there to stop drinking too?”

“That was for hard liquor. Wine is different. This is California. You get arrested for not drinking wine. Plus, it's good for your arteries. Keeps them open or something to do with trans fatty acids. How should I know, I'm not a chemist.”

“I vould zink you know a lot about ze chemicals, Aleksei,” Gilles said, getting in one last dig.

Aleksei raised his nose in the air. “I will not dignify that comment. That's about it. Ian has been very good to me.”

Gilles replied, “I'll bet he has.”

“Always trying to have the last word, aren't you, Gilles?”

Aleksei was young. I was guessing about twenty, if that. Like any man who attracted Ian's eye, he was abnormally handsome. Again, we had the huge-hair syndrome, but his was swept upward in a single, light brown wave that made him look like a Russian James Dean. And again, the lipsâperfectly pursed. It finally occurred to me how many of them had collagen injections in their lips. Everything was all too perfect, too structured. But if you looked a little closer, you could see that Aleksei was already showing huge amounts of wear and tear from the crystal meth. His cheeks were almost imperceptibly sunken, the face a tiny bit shriveled, and he had a jumpiness that showed up in tapping fingers, restless feet, and gazing around nonstop. He couldn't stop fidgeting in his chair, and his hands were fluttering like a pair of Monarch butterflies on their way back from Mexico for the winter.

Gilles was about to lob out another verbal cluster bomb when Keith raised his hand to silence himâagain, without looking up from his over-texted BlackBerry. Oddly enough, when I thought even a volcanic eruption couldn't stop Gilles from talking, Keith's hand had calmed the waters temporarily.

Jeremy motioned for Keith to talk next.

“I'm Keith MacGregor. I'm an event planner, nightclub promoter, and bulk texting expert in Los Angeles.”

This pronouncement was met with blank stares all around the table.

“I help build, design, and promote cutting-edge nightclubs in Los Angeles. Like Area, the Skybar, Element.”

“You had nothing to do with any of soze clubs,” Gilles chimed in again, giving the shit pot another good stir.

“I said I build and design nightclubs like them. I didn't say those clubs exactly. I am very much involved in the design of Water, Tube, and Sonic,” Keith replied with a bit of cocky bravura.

“I figure as much,” Gilles added. “No wonder nobody goes to soze clubs.”

Keith looked up at Gilles like a dog about to attack. Head lowered, eyes glowing like red coals looking up at you from beneath hostile brows. Then he smiled, poured himself some more cranberry juice, took a long drink, and was quiet. Keith's appearance? Not like the rest. Instead of the polished, sleek look of most of the others, Keith looked, well, disheveled. Between the wild, longish hair, the beard stubble, and the dark circles around the eyes, he looked like a vampire who partied way too much. Jeremy was rightâKeith looked like personal hygiene and grooming took a back seat to everything else in his life.

Aleksei reached for his wineglass again, which I noticed had been magically refilled. His grasp slipped and the glass tipped over on the table, spilling the contents.

Ian broke in, “Drake, would you be a dear and mop up Aleksei's spill?”

Drake got up with just a hint of frustration on his face, picked up the glass, mopped up the spill, and headed for the kitchen.

“Drake, where are you going, boy?” Ian sneered with a barrelful of attitude.

“What? The glass is chipped. I'm throwing it away, Ian!”

“Let me see that glass,” Ian demanded.

He studied the glass, turning it this way and that. He then put on his reading glasses that hung on a jeweled chain around his neck.

“I don't see anything, Drake.”

Drake let out a sigh that could've woken the dead.

“Right there, Ian!” he said, pointing to an area on the rim.

“My God, Drake! You'd have to have the Hubble telescope to see that chip. Okay, throw it away, Drake. You win!”

Drake left the room and went into the kitchen, where we were treated to the sound of the glass being thrown at great velocity against a wall, shattering into a million pieces. This followed by what sounded like someone kicking in the side of an aluminum pizza pan.

“The way that man spends my money!” Ian complained.

“David,” Jeremy said, moving things along, “would you like to introduce yourself? Tell us a little about you.”

Gilles was about to let loose another volley when Aleksei clapped a hand over Gilles's mouth. It worked!

“I'm David Laurant.” Like the others, he was abnormally handsome in a young, waif kind of way. But David had a different kind of look. His hair was dyed a bright white and was spiked up, and between the hair and the oversized Tom Ford tortoiseshell horn-rim glasses that made up most of his face, he had a constant look of being surprised. His eyes were bright and mischievous. I could tell right from the start he was going to be bubbly, energetic, and a whole lot of entertainment and drama. But not a lot of substance. And I was not disappointed.

“I've modeled since I was sixteen for Armani, Gucci, Tom Ford, and I was the lead model at Alberto Garelli's 2006 Hobo Show.”

“
That
show set the standard. Fabulous!” Aleksei said with a didactic seriousness.

“I know, wasn't it?” David agreed. “The show director said I actually looked like I had tuberculosis. That's how I got to be the opening
and
closing model. They don't have shows like that anymore!”

“Having the models crawl out of cardboard boxes at the beginning and the end of the show... totally brilliant!” Aleksei relished.

“The press was really unkind to Alberto because of that show,” David defended. “Everyone is so PC nowadays. You can't even make fun of the homeless anymore. I personally have nothing against them, but if they didn't smell like sour milk . . . Hey, I have an idea. Perfume for the homeless! Genius! I thought of it first,” David added, then pulled out his iPhone and began texting his million-dollar idea to what I presumed was his good friend, Karl Lagerfeld.

“Is there anything else that you'd like to tell us about yourself, David?” Jeremy plied.

“No, I'm a very in-demand model. What else can there be worth telling?”

Then we came to the square peg in the round hole: Marcus Blade. Marcus was the complete opposite of everyone at the table. Unlike the skinny, androgynous physiques that made the other men into perfect, human clothes hangers, Marcus was built like a brick shithouse, his body so puffed up by steroids that he looked like an overstuffed knockwurst engorged with blood. He was short, too: a sapling in this forest of redwoods. I managed to get a good look at him when we were milling about earlier and he couldn't have been much taller than five feet six inches. He didn't even attempt to squeeze himself into the fine European clothing the other guys were sporting. Oh no, little Marcus had obviously spent much of his life in the gym and he wanted us to be sure of that fact, with a T-shirt stretched so tight you could actually see his abdominal muscles through it: a rare eight-pack. I counted. The other models probably had visible abdominal muscles, too, but there's a difference between those created from strenuous crunches and those induced by frequent bulimic vomiting.

“I'm Marcus Blade. Most of you know me. I'm Ian's personal trainer.”

There was a violent fit of coughing around the table. One look at Ian's blubbery body and it was clear that either Marcus was a miserable failure as a trainer or he was Ian's stud. I guessed the latter. The participants around the table looked at Marcus, expecting more, but nothing came. There were some whisperings about his height, followed by some tittering. I guess that was it for Marcus. He was obviously paid to screw Ian and didn't care to pretend that he was anything else. At least he was honest.

Jeremy then turned to me. “Amanda here,” he explained, “is Ian's good friend.”

This comment got even blanker stares from the contestants than Keith's comment about being a bulk texter. There were a few disbelieving snorts, and no wonder. Those close enough to Ian would know that Jeremy's proclamation was patently false, and those who were just bedmates for Ian probably didn't give a shit. I was a woman and, therefore, no threat. Of course, I could have explained that I was a Realtor there to eventually list Ian's house for sale, but I was forbidden by contract to let on to this fact. The smarter boys would no doubt go online and in 2.5 nanoseconds, figure out that I was a real-estate agent, and know instantly what I was there for. These boys probably couldn't discuss Cartesian metaphysical and epistemological principles, but you could bet that they could figure out when there was a threat to their financial well-being.

“Yes, I've been best friends with Sean for years,” I said, making my first big faux pas.

“You mean Ian
,
” Aleksei corrected me like a tired schoolteacher giving the answer to a simple question to a dumb student.

BOOK: A Not So Model Home

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