Susan Phillips - Glitter Baby

“Modeling agency! Why?”

“Gretchen loved the photos, and she wants Bunny to get some proper test shots of you.”

“I don’t believe it. She’s putting you on.”

“I told her the truth. That Alexi would never permit you to model.” She pulled the cigarette lighter from the dashboard. “But after what’s happened…” She filled her lungs with smoke. “We have to be able to support ourselves. And we need to get as far away from him as we can, which means New York. This is going to be our ticket out, baby. I just know it.”

“I can’t be a model! I don’t look anything like one.” She planted her loafers against the dash and drew her knees to her chest, hoping the pressure would ease the knots in her stomach. “I-I don’t understand why we have to go right now. I need to finish school.” She clasped her knees tighter. “And…Alexi doesn’t…He doesn’t seem to hate me so much anymore.”

Belinda’s knuckles turned white as she gripped the steering wheel, and Fleur knew she’d said the wrong thing. “I only mean-”

“He’s a snake. You’ve been begging me for years to leave him. Now I’ve finally done it, and I don’t want to hear another word. If those test shots are good, you’ll make more than enough to support us.”

Fleur had always intended to support them, but not like this. She wanted to use her math and language skills in business, or maybe be a translator at NATO. Belinda’s plan was a fantasy. Fashion models were beautiful women, not clumsy, too-tall sixteen-year-olds.

She rested her chin on her knees. Why did they have to leave now? Why did they have to leave just when her father had started to like her?

Bunny Duverge lectured Fleur on makeup, on how to walk, on who was who in New York fashion, as if Fleur cared about any of it. She clucked over Fleur’s ragged fingernails, her lack of interest in clothes, and her habit of bumping into furniture.

“I can’t help it,” Fleur said at the end of her first miserable week at the Duverge Fontainebleau estate. “I’m a lot more graceful on a horse.”

Bunny rolled her eyes and complained to Belinda about Fleur’s American accent. “A French accent is so much more appealing.”

But despite all that, Bunny swore to Belinda that Fleur had it. When Fleur asked what it was, Bunny waved her hands and said it was elusive. “One simply knows.”

For all her faults, Bunny knew how to keep a secret, and she was as determined as Belinda to prevent Alexi from finding them. Instead of choosing a Parisian coiffeur, Bunny flew in a famous London hairdresser who began snipping at Fleur’s hair, a quarter of an inch here, a half inch there. When he was done, Fleur thought her hair looked pretty much the same, but Bunny had tears in her eyes and called him “maestro.”

One good thing happened. Belinda stopped drinking. Fleur was glad, even though it made her mother a lot jumpier. “If Alexi finds out about Casimir, he’ll put a stop to it. You don’t know him like I do, baby. We have to be established in New York before he finds us. If this goes wrong, he’ll come up with a way to separate us forever.”

Knowing Belinda was resting all her hopes on this made Fleur sick at her stomach. She tried to pay attention to everything Bunny told her. She practiced her walk. Though the halls. Up and down the stairs. Across the lawn. Sometimes Bunny made her walk with her hips leading. Other times with what Bunny called a “New York street stride.” Fleur worked on makeup and posture. She struck poses and practiced different facial expressions.

Finally Bunny called in her favorite fashion photographer.

Gretchen Casimir’s pampered pedicured toes curled in her pumps as she pulled the latest photos Bunny had sent from the envelope. She owed Bunny for this one. God, did she ever. The girl was breathtaking. Hers was the kind of face that appeared once every ten years, like Suzy Parker’s, or Jean Shrimpton’s, or Twiggy’s. She reminded Gretchen of both Shrimpton and the great Verushka. This girl’s face would shape the look of a decade.

She stared into the camera, her bold, almost masculine features surrounded by that great mane of streaky blond hair. Every woman in the world would want to look like this. In Gretchen’s favorite shot, Fleur stood barefoot, her hair in a single braid like a mountain girl, her big hands hanging slack at her sides. She wore a water-soaked cotton shift. The hem hung heavy and uneven around her knees. Her nipples were erect, and the wet material defined the endless line of hip and leg more clearly than if she’d been nude. Vogue would be in raptures.

Gretchen Casimir had built Casimir Models from a one-room office into an organization nearly as prestigious as the powerful Ford agency. But “nearly” wasn’t good enough. It was time to make Eileen Ford eat her dust.

Fleur Savagar would make that happen.

Fleur gazed out the window as the taxi jockeyed for position in the Manhattan traffic. It was a cold, crisp early December afternoon. Everything was dirty and beautiful and wonderful. If she wasn’t so terrified, New York City would have felt just right to her.

Belinda stubbed out her third cigarette since they’d gotten in the cab. “I can’t believe it, baby. I can’t believe we got away. Alexi’s going to be furious. His daughter, a model. But since we won’t need his money, he can’t do one thing to stop us. Ouch! Be careful, baby.”

“Sorry.” Fleur pulled her elbow in. Knowing that Belinda was pinning their futures on Fleur having a modeling career made her sick at her stomach.

Gretchen was supposed to have rented a modest apartment for them, but the cab pulled up in front of a luxury high-rise with the address cut into the glass above the door. The doorman wheeled their suitcases into an elevator whose last occupant had been wearing Joy.

Fleur’s stomach jumped as the elevator shot upward. She couldn’t do this. She’d seen the test shots, and they were ugly. Her feet sank into thick celery-green carpeting as they got out. She followed Belinda and the doorman down a short hallway to a paneled door. He unlocked it and set their suitcases inside. Belinda entered the apartment first. As Fleur followed her, she noticed a weird smell. Familiar, but she couldn’t identify it. Sort of like-

She looked past Belinda and saw them. They were everywhere. Vase after vase of full-blown white roses. She sucked in her breath. Belinda made a soft, muffled cry. Alexi Savagar stepped out of the shadows.

“Welcome to New York, my darlings.”

“What are you doing here?” Belinda’s voice was little more than a whisper.

“Quelle question. My wife and daughter strike out for the New World. Should I not at least be here to greet them?” He gave Fleur a disarming smile, inviting her to share the joke.

Fleur started to smile in response, but caught herself as she saw how pale her mother had become. She moved closer to Belinda’s side. “I won’t go back. And you can’t make me.”

She sounded like a baby, and he seemed amused. “Whatever makes you think I would want you to? My attorneys have examined the contract Gretchen Casimir has offered you, and it seems quite fair.”

All the secrecy Belinda had imposed was for nothing. Fleur breathed in the scent of roses. “You know about Casimir?”

“I do not mean to sound immodest, but little escapes my notice when it comes to the welfare of my only daughter.”

Belinda seemed to come out of a trance. “Don’t believe him, Fleur! This is a trick.”

Alexi sighed. “Please, Belinda, do not inflict your paranoia on our daughter.” He made an elegant gesture. “Let me show you the apartment. If you don’t like it, I will find you something else.”

“You found this apartment for us?” Fleur said.

“A father’s gift to his daughter.” His smile made her feel soft inside. “It is past time for me to begin to make amends. This is a small token of my best wishes for her future career.”

A small, inarticulate sound escaped Belinda’s lips. She reached out to pull Fleur to her side, but she was a moment too late. Fleur had already gone off with Alexi.

Alexi took a suite at the Carlyle for the month of December. During the day, Fleur spent countless hours being primped and polished by Gretchen Casimir’s team. She met with movement coaches and dance teachers, ran every day in Central Park, and studied with the tutors Alexi hired so she could complete her education.

In the evening, he showed up at the apartment with theater or ballet tickets, sometimes with an invitation to a restaurant where the food was simply too wonderful to miss. He took her on a trip to Connecticut to track down the rumor that a 1939 Bugatti was hidden away on a Fairfield estate. Belinda sat in the backseat and chain-smoked. She never let Fleur go anywhere alone with him. If Fleur laughed at one of his jokes or sampled some tidbit he fed her from his fork, Belinda stared at her with an expression of such deep betrayal that Fleur felt sick. She hadn’t forgotten what he’d done to her, but he sounded so sorry about it.

“It was childish jealousy,” he told her when Belinda slipped off to the restroom during one of their meals together. “The pathetic insecurity of a middle-aged husband deeply in love with a bride twenty years his junior. I was afraid you would take my place in her affections, so after you were born, I simply made you disappear. The power of money, chérie. Do not ever underestimate it.”

She had to blink back tears. “But I was just a baby.”

“Unconscionable. I knew it at the time. Also ironic, non? What I did drove your mother away far more than one small child could ever have done. By the time Michel arrived, it made no difference.”