Miller continues to stare. I consider throwing something in the aisle so he’ll have to turn in that direction.
“You know an awful lot about airline safety for someone so young,” he says.
Yuck. What a cheesy way to ask someone’s age. “I can use Wikipedia, and I’m nineteen.” This is a mistake.
I don’t know why I give him that detail.
He smiles again. “Ah, I remember nineteen. Where’d your boyfriend take you for your birthday?”
I’ve never had a boyfriend, and I don’t want to tell the King of Fashion I spent the evening crying into a diet soda while Tommy was probably somewhere making out with my nemesis.
“What did you do on your nineteenth birthday?” I hedge.
He laughs, revealing a smile that would shame a toothpaste ad. “Ever been to Flathead County, Montana?”
I shake my head.
“Well, you can have dinner at the Sizzler. Or a kegger down at the lake. My pop settled on the latter.”
“Weren’t you already at Parsons by then?” I ask.
He pauses, regards me a bit differently. “We have met before. I knew it. Do a fella a favor and give me a hint where it was.” He turns a bit red. “We haven’t ever...”
At the front of the plane, the flight attendant is buckling herself into her seat. A few seconds later, the 757 races down the runway.
I glare at Gareth Miller. “You have that much trouble keeping track of the women you sleep with?” I let him squirm in his seat, facing the real possibility that he’ll have to spend four hours next to a stranger with whom he’d shared forgettable sex. He’s making a big show of watching the plane lift off the runway.
“We’ve never met,” I say. “But I get the ParDonna.com newsletter.”
He leans away from the window, breathing more comfortably. “Well, yeah, I had already moved to New York by then. But my dad always insists I come home for my birthday. It’s during the summer, so the timing isn’t too bad. The weather is nice.”
“It’s freezing in Montana in the winter.” I tuck my fingers into the ends of my sweater.
“You’ve been there? In the winter?”
I sigh. He’s still got that pensive expression on his face. Like he won’t quit until he figures out who I am. And it’s possible, given enough time, he might be able to guess. I decide to get out in front of it and tell him.
“Yeah. I went with my mother. She did a photoshoot there a few years ago. Leslie Vonn Tate. That’s probably why I seem familiar. People say we look alike.”
He’s impressed. His eyes widen. “Leslie Vonn Tate. Sure, I remember. The Atelier Fur thing. Bruce Richardson shot it in Whitefish, right?”
The Atelier Fur thing.
A totally avoidable clusterfuck. If only Grandma’s hairdresser had used one more roller.
FAT: Two years before NutriNation
Mom’s in the living room of Grandma’s tiny yellow house, striking a slumped pose on the 1980s brown plaid sofa. In her off-white Valentino shift dress, she’s more the picture of a model on an ironic Nylon magazine photoshoot than a mom hanging with her daughter. She’s got Lois Veering on speakerphone.
“The day of the supermodel is dead. Truly dead,” Lois Veering moans. She’s the editor of Par Donna. Nobody likes Veering. I’d bet fifty bucks that she won’t last, that it’s just a matter of time before her assistant edges her out.
She’s calling Mom. Because anybody who’s anybody hates fur. “And they’re strutting around naked in the trades. On my shoots demanding vegan pizzas and goji berry smoothies,” she says. “I need you, Leslie. I really need you.”
In spite of the best efforts of sexy celebrities and inked-up athletes, fur companies keep raking in cash—around $15 billion a year. Their sales are up worldwide. The Eastern European nouveaux riches and the wives of Chinese millionaires, they want their mink.
“The biggest threat to fur is global warming,” Veering sneers.
And the biggest threat to fashion magazines is sluggish ad sales. Atelier Fur has big bucks. They want a cover. A supermodel. They want photographer Bruce Richardson.
Mom’s there to pick me up from the tiny yellow house for a spa weekend in La Jolla. It’s my bad luck that Grandma gets home early from her hair appointment.
“We can just do it another time, Mom,” I say. “It’s no big deal.”
Grandma comes in. Takes one look at Mom, phone in hand.
“Cookie, go wait in your room,” Grandma says.
“It’s fine, Grandma. Everything is fine,” I say.
“Go,” she orders.
Of course, I can hear them through the paper-thin walls.
“You got one daughter, Leslie. One,” Grandma says. “It’s her sweet sixteen. And I didn’t plan nothin’ ’cause you said you were coming to get her.”
“I’ll clear my schedule in a week or two,” Mom says. “Cookie’s fine with it.”
“Yeah,” Grandma answers. “She’s just about jumpin’ for joy.”
“Well, I guess she’s carrying on the grand family tradition of being disappointed in her mother,” Mom snaps.
“Oh, I see,” Grandma replies. “I was a shitty mother to you. And you get special permission to be shitty to your girl? Well, you say what you want about me, Leslie. But I made dresses for all seven of Nina Udall’s bridesmaids so you could have a cake with sixteen candles and a fancy party dress to celebrate in.”
“I have to work. Lois Veering is asking me to do a job. Do you have any clue what happens to models who say no to Lois Veering?”
I imagine Grandma’s disgusted face. The beads of sweat forming at her gray-blue hairline. “Shoot, Leslie. You got plenty of money. Plenty of fancy things. If you’re paradin’ around half-naked in a magazine, it ain’t cause you have to, it’s cause you want to. And I ain’t never asked you for money. All I ask is you try to be decent to your child. If you say you’re gonna do something, you keep your damn word.”
If only the hairdresser had used one more roller, Mom might have been gone by the time Grandma got home. Instead, I spend the next half hour wondering what I can wear to Whitefish. The high temperature there is thirty-seven degrees. I’ve got one light sweater and a windbreaker.
“We’ll pick something up on the way,” Mom says.
And on the way means at the airport gift shop. I have to go to a men’s store. Nothing fits anywhere
