Imperfections (18 page)

She was reading. “You really don't remember me do you?” She marked her page and closed her book. “Razor and his Blades of Doom? Camp? Mary Koshushner and your cousin? Doing it by the lake?”

It clicked. I was stunned.

I wanted to know her so badly that night, as I wanted to then on that plane. None of the other women I had sex with in airplane washrooms, or any washroom for that matter, evoked such a need for connection.
 

Was it coincidence?

Was it love?

Did I love her, the way she used me, the way she looked?

“And what are you reading?” She asked, breaking my reverie.

I dumbly held up the book Leonard had given me when he drove me to the airport.

“No shit,” she said. “Perchance you are heading to Moscow to model in the PG show?”

It clicked. Paige Green.

“Well, aren't we just Little Mister Beef Cattle?” She snickered.

I looked at her, my shock mounting and my need deepening. We had shared so much without even knowing.

She misread my look to be one of questioning and explained, “It's this kids modelling show that I was in a long time ago. It was a county fair thing…”

“No. I know,” I managed to choke out. “I was Little Mister Beef Cattle 1984.”

It was Paige's turn to be speechless.

It is easy to predict the future when all the bits come together. It is all about perspective. If I had the time and maturity to think of it, I could have been able to predict the future from some point in the past. If I could only have recognized the hints as they were happening.
 

It would be easy to say, “That's life,” or “Small world,” or “Hindsight is always twenty-twenty,” or something as equally dismissive. That there are so many clichés dealing with this very fact means I am not the first one to notice. There was something going on. There was no coincidence, anywhere. Ever.

The critics loved Paige's Moscow Fashion Week show. Then again, critics always liked to ‘discover' the next up-and-comer, any unknown with a modicum of talent. I think Paige outdid both Viktor and Rolf in press coverage. She definitely outdid Carolina Herrera. There was even a full-colour, glossy picture printed in
F Magazine
of her at the end of her show. She was on the runway, smiling and waving, surrounded by beautiful models.
 

If you look in the background, you could see me in the back row, on the left.

CHAPTER 10

Baker Grade IV

The need to support and constrain breasts is the underpinning of a billion-dollar industry. We were in Las Vegas, arguably the centre of all things breast-related, to celebrate and promote them. From honorable to degrading, with its elegant and rhinestone-clad dancing girls and glamorous, low-cut evening gowns, to its burlesque history and neon titty peep shows, in Vegas breasts are the great equalizer. In the same night, they are both revered and objectified by visitors and inhabitants alike. In Vegas breasts are a tourist attraction, a civic monument.

As a man, it may be a wonder why I was involved in a shoot for Gowan Dewar, the overlord of couture brassieres. Bridges and skyscrapers didn't have the structural integrity or attention to detail that Dewar's bras did. They were second only to their contents as works of beauty. I was the only man in the shoot because the ladies needed something to drape over and cling to while flashbulbs strobed the hot desert night. I was an accessory.

The idea for the shoot was a post-apocalyptic, wrecking-yard lingerie party. It had me naked to the waist, smeared with dirt and oil, wearing leather cut-off short shorts and surrounded by six of the Agency's most beautiful models sporting nothing but amazing underwear. It was the middle of the night. The wrecking yard was ringed by the yellow blaze from the natural gas flares of a refinery on the city's outskirts.
 

Photographers shouted directions, their cameras clicking like a plague of desert locusts and their voices rising against the dusty diesel breeze that blew across the scrub and open flats. A lonely coyote slunk about at the edge of the light, its eyes two glowing pinpoints floating in the dark.

“Show me ennui,” shouted a photographer. “Great. Now, show me subtle resignation.”

We stood on a pile of crushed automobiles, a tangle of metal and tires. The rusting, twisted metal mountain we crawled over was a snarl of shadow and light from the spotlights and strobing camera flashes. We worked every inch of that mountain of wrecks. Dripping engine fluids, slippery break fluid, stinking gasoline and sticky fluorescent puddles of antifreeze all became sexy props. It was hell on earth and I was Max Rockatansky of Main Force Patrol. I was a desolate shell of a man in my leather short shorts, doing all I could to survive in an oil-starved future gone mad. I was sure lingerie would be at the top of everyone's thoughts when the world ended, when the Lord Humongous roamed the wasteland with his band of crazed anarchists in search of precious gasoline.

“I want crippling domination,” shouted a photographer. “Great. Now, I want munificent tyranny.”

I tried to look tough but it was difficult because all the women were taller than me and I was busy trying not to cut any of my exposed bits while crawling over rusty cars. Forget the broken cubes of windshield glass and the nauseating smell of oil and gasoline, I didn't want to shear off a nipple or anything.

“Give me contumacious servility,” shouted a photographer. “Great. Now, give me libidinous masochism.”

Give me a dictionary, I thought.

One of the models, a slender brunette beauty named Donna Wanna, swore when she snagged her shoulder on a jagged muffler. A bead of blood, black in the night, formed from the cut.

“Fuck this,” Donna yelled through a snarl.

“Beautiful, that's perfect. Such emotion.” A voice marvelled from below.

“I'm out of here. You bastards can suck it.”

Donna scrambled down the pyramid of crushed cars as daintily as any lady wearing stilettos, cheekies and a bandeau could. The tirade continued. She waved her hands violently every chance she got, punching the air and giving lewd gestures. She became a force of nature, a fast and intense downpour flash-flooding dusty arroyos, eroding ancient cliffs and moving sediment for miles.

“You fuckers ain't paying me enough for this shit. I have better things to do than crawl around here contusing myself.”

Donna did that, used pseudo-words. She told me she had heard in an audiobook that people instamatically respect people with a hunormous vocabulary.

Her voice rose from yelling to high-pitched screaming as she carried on.

“Look at this. I'm fucking bleeding everywhere and you pricks keep fucking blinding me with your fucking flashbulbs. Stop it now and help me get the fuck out of this shithole. I'm bleedin' all over the fucking place.” Then there was a long, amorphous noise that could best be described as sheer animal fury.

“Don't get any on the strap.” Gowan Dewar rushed to meet her when she reached the ground. “Christ, that's a seventy-five thousand dollar creation you're bleeding all over. Take it off before you ruin it.”

Give me my paycheque and get me the hell off this crushed AMC Pacer, I thought as I pulled slimy leather from between my sweaty butt cheeks. Give me strength to endure these chafing leather shorts.

“Give me a martini. Vodka, olives, straight up,” I told the bartender at the breast cancer fundraiser after-shoot soirée.

We had taken a limo from the junkyard to the MGM Grand. On the way, Donna peeled off her lingerie and slid into a stunning Valentino dress.

We whirled from the limo, through a crowd of staggering tourists and into the lobby of the Grand. The creamy marble floor reflected the thousand lights overhead, making the whole room feel like a departure gate of some futuristic spaceport and the spinning night seem even more surreal. A golden lion statue sat in the centre of the room, caged by bars of light. People alternately bustled confusedly around and stood gaping at shiny lights, shiny things and their shiny reflections. Our caveman minds were still in there and capable of mystification.

Donna grabbed my hand and dragged me through the crowd. She pulled me to a sign on a gold easel listing events and locations. My eyes wandered as she bent at the waist to get a better look in the pale amber glow of the room. She used a finger to poke at different events. There was a gathering of realtors, a poker tournament and some firefighter's conference: Gary Jan Fairway presiding over a session titled “Nozzles, Hoses and Reels.”

“Richard,” came a call from my left.

It was Leonard, walking toward me with his arm outstretched. We clasped hands, bumped chests and thumped shoulders. Rachel followed a few steps behind. We hugged and kissed cheeks.

“Donna, this is Leonard and Rachel. They're both journalists with the
Times
,” I said.

Donna looked at me, awaiting an explanation of why this was important. She held out a limp hand, palm down, to Leonard who dutifully brought it to his lips.

“It's a pleasure to meet you,” Leonard said.

“Yes,” Donna agreed.

She glanced at Rachel, as if she were a stain, and then looked expectantly at me again.

“Yes, well,” I said. “Rachel writes for the style section and Leonard is an obituarist.”

“Style and obituaries, how… eclectical,” Donna said.

Leonard raised an eyebrow to Rachel who bit her lip but failed to stifle a snort.

“Richard,” Donna tapped my chest with a playful finger. “We're in the Garden Arena. Let's go.”

“I'll be there in a minute. I want to catch up with Leonard and Rachel first.”

Donna looked at me like I made a bad smell, “Well, enjoy your conflagration.” She stormed off.

Leonard watched her go. “She is quite a vocabularian.”

“Yes, she is,” I agreed.

“Do you think she meant confabulation?” Rachel asked.

“Likely,” I said and shifted my attention back to my companions. “I didn't know the two of you were going to be here.”

“Ever check your emails or voice messages?” Leonard asked.

I didn't.

“Well, Rachel is covering a bra guy…”

“Gowan Dewar,” Rachel added.

“…and it was seen fit that I attend the Second International Obituary Writers' Conference.”

“Get out, at the Grand?” I asked and then thought for a second. “Get out, Obituary Writers' Conference?”

“Yes, there is such a thing and no, not at the Grand. We're at Thomas and Mack. UNLV is hosting. I figured I would visit Rachel and see how the other half lives,” Leonard said. “The paper sent me here because I wrote that Howard Goldfarb, a great pioneer of professional poker, had died. I wrote,” Leonard held out a hand to frame invisible text, “this legend worked to make poker every part the legitimate sport curling is.”

“So?” I asked.

“Goldfarb didn't die,” Rachel said.

“Not so much. In fact, he's supposed to be here tonight.” Leonard grimaced. “I had to do a retraction and it apparently caused Goldfarb quite a bit of grief, explaining that he wasn't dead to all of his friends and family and the folks at the World Series of Poker. So, the paper thought I needed a bit of education and here I am.”

“We should go,” Rachel said looking at her watch. “The show starts in twenty minutes. You coming?” She asked me.

“I'll meet you two later for beer?” Leonard called as we disbanded.

Rachel and I parted ways once we got to the Grand Garden Arena. I looked around and saw shadows mingling in the twinkling pinpoints of light on the concourse overhead. Some leaned on the railing, looking down at the sunken arena basin which had been converted into a catwalk for the show. The seats were already starting to fill.

I was trying to figure out what exactly was wrong about Gowan Dewar holding the launch of his new bra line under the pretense of a breast cancer fundraiser when Donna swooped out of the crowd, grabbed me by the arm and hauled me toward the bar through the glittering masses in the twinkling cavern that was the Garden Arena. Her strapless Valentino was made a little less glamorous by the thick bandage taped to her shoulder. The dress did serve to remind me that she made four times my pay on every shoot.

If I was going to survive the runway show and Donna's drunken fuming over the junkyard shoot, I was going to need liquor. At the best of times, Donna was socially maladroit. That didn't matter though; to most in the Garden Arena, her assets were solely of the visual variety.

“Can you believe that junkyard shit? It's ironical, us modelling his trash in a junkyard. And now I barely have time to get a drink before I have to get up onstage in Dewar's next piece-of-shit contraption.” Donna pulled a tube of Rectolone hemorrhoid cream from her clutch and smeared some under her eyes. Steroids constrict vessels, lessening puffiness.