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  “Please, Vanessa,” he said, speaking more loudly against the increased volume of the music. “Who is she?”

  Vanessa put down her gold-trimmed Montblanc pen, and slowly shook her head in not so feigned exasperation.

  “Why do I bring you to these things, A.C.?” she said. “You never behave yourself.”

  “It’s just that I’m the only heterosexual male here. And anyway, I was only joking.”

  “No you weren’t, sweetheart. As you say, you’re a heterosexual. I think you are succumbing to a very serious case of lust.”

  “I’ve only just seen her.”

  “Some diseases strike quickly.”

  He waited impatiently for her return, but fashion shows follow a carefully structured script. Appearing at the top of the runway now was a long-haired brunette in an oversize white fox. As she approached them, it occurred to A.C. that her bearing was nearly as regal as the new blonde’s, but her expression was much too smug. It was as though she was contemptuous of those in the audience, as though she doubted they could afford the coat, and was daring them to try to buy it.

  “This one looks like she took up modeling just to annoy daddy,” A.C. said. “A Bryn Mawr girl, yes? Perhaps Wellesley—and not on a scholarship?”

  “Certainly not on an academic one,” Vanessa said, nodding at the brunette’s rear as she twirled and passed. “That’s Belinda St. Johns, nom de naissance inconnu. She’s one of the better models in the city, but I’d bet my summer place in Bridgehampton that she never graduated from high school. From what I know of her, I’d also bet her IQ isn’t much over eighty. Appearances are deceiving, sweetheart, or didn’t you learn that when you were working down in Washington?”

  “Who’s the new blonde? Please. Tell me and I’ll buy you a Lamborghini—anyway, lunch.”

  “Here?”

  “At Vagabondo, a quiet, Italian lunch. Please.”

  The old restaurant, which had one of the last bocce ball courts left in Manhattan, was on the Upper East Side near the Ford Agency and had become a fashionable hangout for models.

  “All right,” said Vanessa, after making another notation on her pad. “Vagabondo. Her name’s Camilla Santee. And she’s top dollar. Fashion royalty. At any rate, she used to be.”

  “What is she doing working an Arbre show?”

  “I suppose she needs the money. Santee’s been out of the country. She was one of the top girls here when you were in Washington, but four or five years ago she started working exclusively in Europe, and then more or less retired to the south of France. There was some talk she’d gotten married but I never saw anything in W or Women’s Wear Daily. I don’t know what brought her back, but early this spring she turned up on the New York runways again, and she’s been working her little haute couture tail off ever since. When she was on top, she was making better than eight hundred thousand a year. At this rate, she could be up there again, though I don’t know. She must be thirty now. Trente-et-plus.”

  Someone jarred heavily against the back of A.C.’s chair in the process of taking the seat behind him, a clumsiness not followed by any apology. A.C., smelling a strong odor of bourbon though it was not yet noon, was about to turn and glare at the intruder, but the room lights dimmed and the music changed once more, quickening from pulsating rock to something stranger and wilder, a rapid, electric, melodic pounding.

  “That’s ‘The Great Balloon Race,’” Vanessa said, in sudden recollection. “I can’t quite recall the name of the group. I think they’re called Sky or something. But Bob Mackie used that same music in his fur show last year. This business is nothing if not original, n’est-ce pas?”

  Heads were turning back toward the high end of the room where an extraordinarily tall and long-legged black model, with enormous eyes and skin as light as a May tan, stood at the entrance summit in a floor-length white ermine coat held back to display an ensemble of tight black sweater and short, short skirt, black stockings, and high heels of the Times Square mode.

  A.C. knew her. He had interviewed her a few months before. Like many models, she was struggling to become an actress, and had won a small role in a low-budget New York film. She played a murder victim but her brief appearance was in a nude scene considered one of the steamiest ever to get away with an R rating.

  “Ah, yes,” Vanessa said. “The up and coming Molly Wickham. The ‘African body’; a Nutra-Creme face. They say she could be another Iman, but I don’t think she has the class.”

  “She gave me a good interview. I think she’s very nice.”

  “I bet you do.”

  The black girl wrapped the coat about her dramatically, then, head high, started forward down her dangerous course. She wore her hair straightened, long and full, or perhaps, A.C. thought, it was a wig.

  “If she makes it without stumbling in those shoes she deserves a ten-thousand-dollar bonus,” Vanessa said. “I don’t know what possesses Philippe sometimes. He’ll do anything for effect. I wonder if we’ll see his girls on stilts next year.”

  The person behind them coughed as the black model approached, intensifying the unpleasant aroma of whiskey. The girl paused a little overlong before them, but otherwise paid them no attention. She was extraordinary to behold, but A.C. had fallen for the blonde—un homme tombé amoureux. Camilla Santee. It seemed a professional enough name for a model, but odd—the first part out of a Southern gothic novel, the last name almost something from a western movie.

  There were only eight mannequins working in this Arbre show, and Camilla Santee reappeared within a few minutes, the music gentling to David Sanborn again to welcome her back, this time in a sable jacket.

  A.C. sighed, too loudly.

  “You’re wasting your time, A.C. I mean it. Santee has a reputation for aloofness. Très hautaine. Even a little mysterious. I’ve probably told you all I really know about her, and I’ve been writing about fashion for nine years.”

  A.C. was no longer listening. He was fixed to his chair as though with arrows. As before, he was staring at Camilla Santee like a man possessed, but this time, without missing a step, she was staring back at him—her look deliberate, steady, serious, and flamingly provocative. The effect on him was electrifying. Perspiration began to moisten his palms, neck, and brow. This was in its way a signal honor, perhaps even some peculiar form of invitation. But it was also a serious transgression. Except perhaps to smile in response to an audience’s applause over a particularly winning ensemble, runway models never looked at anyone except those on the platform with them. They kept their eyes averted from their audience, lifting them to gaze off into space during their pauses and turns. On the rare occasions when they did make eye contact with someone they knew, it would be with a quick, almost imperceptible wink. To communicate directly with someone off the runway was as great a sin as a stage actress interrupting an important scene to wave at someone in the seats.

  Yet here was this blond vision A.C. had never encountered before performing her routine with her eyes full upon him. He felt quite sexually excited, but at the same time puzzled by this odd and inexplicable occurrence. But for the merest glimpse of him during that pause on her second trip down the runway, she could not possibly have ever seen him before. And even though nearly all the others in the room were older women, and peculiar men in effeminate clothing, he was still just a vague face in the crowd.

  A.C. now felt troubled. Something was wrong here. His elation, he realized, was probably going to be very short-lived.

  As she approached them now, her stare vanished. Her eyelids lowered. Her pale face reddened. She made her turn in front of them with something close to violence and stalked away with the angry stride of a flamenco dancer. Behind A.C., the man who smelled of whiskey began coughing again, causing the air around them to reek. A.C. turned angrily in his seat, confronting a large, middle-aged fellow with dark curly hair and black-rimmed glasses. There was something vaguely familiar about him, but A.C.’s eyes were still full of the glare from the runway l
ights and it was hard to see.

  Rising, pausing to cough once more, the man then began awkwardly making his way back down the aisle, stepping on the foot of a fashion reporter from one of the women’s magazines. She swore.

  A.C. sat facing forward again. “I’m confused,” he said.

  “Well, I’m impressed,” Vanessa said. “I’ve never seen a model do that before. You’re certainly not chopped liver, A.C., but that was ridiculous.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Philippe’s probably going to kill her. Everyone was looking over at us instead of at that jacket, and that jacket probably goes for sixty thousand dollars.”

  “Perhaps it was just our imagination,” A.C. said, slouching down in his chair.

  “Well, we’ll find out next time around, won’t we, sweetheart?”

  Next time came around, but there was no appearance by Camilla Santee. The girls pranced along in the proper order, but the succession began over again without her.

  “Arbre’s probably beating her,” Vanessa said.

  “With his handkerchief.”

  “Be quiet, A.C. This is my work. You may not get along with Philippe, but I have to.”

  Eventually Santee did return, toward the end of the show, modeling a long silver fox coat with the collar high up against her cheeks. She looked somber. Her eyes met A.C.’s only once, during her first turn, but she ignored him thereafter. He felt awkward, and then depressed. It was the last they saw of her during the show. The other girls joined Arbre for the finale when he came forth to accept the tumultuous applause with a sheepish bow. Santee’s absence from this concluding ritual was as remarkable as her prolonged look at A.C. had been.

  “I’m afraid I’ve gotten her into trouble,” he said, as the floodlights went out and the chandeliers were rekindled to their full brilliance. They rose to join the stream of two-hundred dollar coiffures and ten thousand dollar designer outfits heading toward the stairs and the Plaza lobby.

  “Come off it, A.C.,” said Vanessa, gathering up her notebook, program, and black Prada bag. “You were just another guy along the runway, even if you do dress like Commander Whitehead, or is it Jay Gatsby? I think Santee’s getting a little strange, that’s all. That may be why she retired in the first place.”

  A.C. fell glumly silent and let Vanessa lead them toward the exit. The aroma of expensive perfume in the crowd was so strong it was almost as unpleasant as the whiskey breath of the stranger in the seat behind him had been. He longed for the clean, clear air of the out of doors and the bright sunlight that had been sparkling over the entire city when he’d stepped out of his apartment building earlier that morning.

  Unfortunately, Vanessa had other ideas. “I want to stop and get a few quotes from Arbre,” she said.

  “I’ll meet you in the main lobby, or maybe outside.”

  “No,” she said, taking his hand firmly. “I think you’d better come with me. Otherwise you might see her on her way out and go up and say something embarrassing. I’m afraid you might try to apologize or something. Mon Dieu!”

  “I don’t want to talk to Arbre.”

  “You don’t have to. You can just stand there and take in the scenery. I’m sure you’ll like it.”

  Vanessa led him through an opening in a wall of folding screens set up across the foyer outside the Terrace Room. The barrier had created a large, temporary chamber, into which were filing a number of highly stylish women, and men in strange, wide-shouldered suits that looked to be much more appropriate for the next century.

  It was the changing room. A.C. had been in them before, but had never felt completely comfortable. It was customary for men and women in the audience to come back after a show to congratulate the designer and his or her girls, but to A.C., it was just the same as barging into a woman’s dressing room or bath.

  Arbre—a short, balding fellow with curly side-hair, double-breasted suit, and crimson silk handkerchief flowing out of his breast pocket—gave him a dark look, but turned happily to Vanessa. A.C. stood awkwardly by, trying to be inconspicuous and feeling anything but. Some four or five of the girls were standing or sitting about in their underwear—not the “woman of substance” proper lingerie that Kitty and doubtless all her friends wore, but the briefest, flimsiest, laciest, and certainly most expensive sort of “innerwear” that A.C. could imagine. They stood or sat and chatted as unconcernedly as National Football League players in their locker room after a game.

  One of them was Camilla Santee, curled up with knees and calves tight together on a folding chair in the corner as she talked with a youngish man in a punk hairdo, polka-dotted wide-shouldered sport coat, zebra-striped pants, and gold slippers. He was consoling her and she appreciated it, giving him in return a small but winsome smile.

  A.C. tried to catch her attention, but though she turned once in his direction, the eyes that had stared at him so fixedly from the runway eluded him completely. Carried away in his excitement, he had presumed flirtation, but now, for her, he had ceased to exist. He felt increasingly embarrassed and exposed standing there, and, despite himself, furious. This was not simply an awkward moment; as Santee continued to ignore him, it became a humiliating one. He was immensely grateful and relieved when Vanessa finally came to rescue him—and angry that she had taken so long.

  “I should never have gone in there,” he said, as they emerged into the normal world beyond the folding screens.

  “No one minded.”

  “They were in their underwear. Some of them, anyway. Camilla Santee, too.”

  “That will happen when one takes off one’s clothes—as I believe you may have noticed on occasion in the past. If this embarrasses you, A.C., you ought to come with me to the shows in Italy. A lot of the models there don’t even bother with undies.”

  “She didn’t look at me—not even a glance. I couldn’t have been more than twenty feet away.”

  “But you certainly looked at her, didn’t you, A.C.?”

  They reached the corridor that led around the Palm Court to the lobby. The restaurant was crowded with expensively dressed patrons.

  “When do you suppose Camilla Santee might next be in a show?” A.C. said quietly.

  Vanessa glared at him. She was one of his very best friends and he had never before seen her look at him in this disapproving way.

  “I’m sure you’re just having an odd morning, darling, and that this bout of puppy love will pass by this afternoon. But if you’re bent on anything more serious, let me give you the best advice I have to give any man about the fashion business. Never, dearest, get seriously mixed up with a fashion model. Some of them are great ladies. Most are just hardworking kids. But there are some sleazeballs like Belinda St. Johns, and a few are even worse than Belinda.”

  “I still think she looks like a Wellesley girl.”

  “Your wife actually happens to be a Smith girl. What became of all your talk about patching things up?”

  “I called her last night, but nothing’s changed.”

  “And, vraiment, panting after the mannequin du jour is going to help?”

  He said nothing. They passed through the lobby and then waited their turn to go through the revolving door on the north side of the hotel that led to that stretch of Fifty-ninth Street known as Central Park South.

  “Kitty’s the genuine article,” Vanessa said, leaning close to him. “With these ladies, what you see is seldom what you get. Why haven’t you learned that? Mannequins are even worse than actresses that way. I used the wrong word when I said Camilla Santee had a reputation for aloofness. A lot of people have found her downright scary. Fashion models can be a lot of trouble, A.C. If you want to fool around a little while you’re waiting for Kitty to make up her mind, go home with one of those married belles dames d’un age certain you’re always flirting with at parties. You’ll have a good time. They’ll be grateful. They won’t complicate your life for exactly the same reason they would expect you not to complicate theirs.”
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  “I’m not looking to fool around, Vanessa.”

  “And I am Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis.”

  Stepping out into the midday glare, both put on their sunglasses. There was a row of horse-drawn carriages farther along the curb and two stretch limousines standing with motors running in the street before them, one of them with a rear door partly open. But there were no cabs.

  “There’s an auction this afternoon at Sotheby’s,” Vanessa said. “The late Marianne Mills’s jewelery. I think I’ll go after lunch.”

  “Junk jewelry,” A.C. said.

  “Costume, sweetheart, and with a hell of a history. Do you want to come? See who’s there? Tell the collectors from the ghouls?”

  “Sure.”

  A.C. heard a soft flurry of sound behind him and turned to see several of the models from the Arbre show descend the red carpeting of the steps in a group and head toward Fifth Avenue. They had changed into street clothes, all in knee-length or full-length pants and bright-colored blouses, and two or three were carrying oversize picture cases. The girls seemed much smaller and more delicate than they had on the runway, walking with light little steps like a small herd of impalas or gazelles. A.C. heard one of them utter a coarse profanity, and then the others laughed.

  Camilla Santee was not among them.

  “I met a real ghoul the other night,” A.C. said. “A woman next to me at a dinner party. She makes her living going through the possessions of dead celebrities and Park Avenue rich ladies for trustees of estates. She decides what’s worth auctioning off and what should be tossed or dumped on relatives.”

  “She could do well performing that service for the living. I can think of quite a few rich bitches who would pay well for judgment like that.”