Chapter XIII. Out of Many, One. #2
Didier was fanning a developing Polaroid, and without saying a word, he handed it to her and let her inspect it.
Cecilia was struck by the image. He had shifted the focus so that Jaya and Bas were now muted in the foreground.
The lines of Jaya’s bare shoulder, the deconstructed chignon, the vertebrae at the back of her neck, the planes of Bas’s chiseled face.
All exquisite. But there, between the two of them, at the center of the composition, was Anouk.
Her figure cool, composed. Yet there was an intensity in her eyes, a beguiling smile on her lips, just over the top of her book.
The other models were likely not aware, but with the slightest of adjustments Didier had made Anouk the star.
“Tu vois?” he asked, pushing his round glasses up onto the bridge of his nose, his eyes twinkling. As if he was sharing a secret.
“I see.” Cecilia nodded, and then without further instruction, revisited the light stand she’d just set, and tweaked the angle, so that it was fixed on its proper subject.
She turned her attention back to the scene before her again and realized that from this new perspective it no longer felt forced and improbable. It felt like art.
Maybe Didier was a genius after all.
By the fifth and final setup of the day, they’d hit a groove.
They were shooting on the terrace again, this time at the bar beneath the pergola.
The sun dipping in the winter sky, bathing everything in an apricot hue.
Soon it would be pink, perfect. “Magic hour,” photographers called it.
Someone had loaded the remix of Everything But the Girl’s “Missing” into the CD player.
Jean-Luc had wanted a shot in which they were gathered around the bar, but because their target demo skewed as young as eighteen, they were trying to avoid obvious references to alcohol.
And so, instead of mixing margaritas, Bas and Elliot were somewhat comically tasked with cutting up a couple of watermelons.
“This morning I thought perhaps we were playing at rented cabana boys, but now I’m thinking we might just be the hired help,” Elliot ribbed, while they were going through touch-ups.
For the moment, it was just the models, Santiago, Paola (one of Beatriz’s two assistants), Marc, and Cecilia on the set.
The others had scattered to the far sides of the terrace, out of earshot.
“At least they gave you a big knife. Mine is, like, for cheese or butter or something.
“Excuse me. Excuse me.” Bas motioned toward Cecilia, who was erecting a bounce board just below the rail of the bar to adjust for the lower light.
“Bonjour. Hi. I’m Bas,” he said, outstretching a large hand.
His left cheek was dimpled. At six three, he had at least eleven inches on her.
A Michelangelo-worthy jawline, that disarming smile.
“Hi, Bas, I’m Cecilia.”
“Hello, Cecilia. I see you working very hard here, and I’m wondering if perhaps in that little tool kit of yours you have a proper knife.” With that, he held up first the large watermelon, and then a small paring knife, his expression grim.
Cecilia laughed. “I have an X-Acto knife. But I’m pretty sure that’s not what you’re looking for.”
“No. Probably not.”
“Hold on.” Cecilia scanned the terrace for one of Maren’s two production assistants but could not find either.
Instead, she spotted one of the di Varenna team, a small gentleman whose name she did not know and whose title she was not aware of—but the fact that he was standing idle, hands in his pockets, swaying to and fro in his Gucci loafers, watching Paola adjust the cups on the bodice of Katrine’s dress, made her believe he could be put to better use.
“Scusi, signore. Lui ha bisogno di uno…” She stopped, realizing the limits of one year of introductory Italian. “Una cosa per il melone.” Cecilia mimed chopping.
“Ahhh, un coltello?”
“Si, un coltello, più grande, per favore.”
“Okay. I find.” And with that he headed off.
“Did you just send the VP of marketing for the House of Varenna to fetch you a knife?” Marc asked, handing Cecilia a clamp to secure the bounce board.
“I don’t know. Did I?”
“Indeed, she did,” Bas said.
“Well done, you.” Elliot smiled.
“Yes, thank you,” Katrine said, and then lowered her voice. “He was beginning to creep me out a little.”
“Well, he’s really going to creep you out when he returns with a massive knife,” Jaya piped up from her post on a stool at the far end of the bar where Santiago was doing his best to control her cowlick.
He’d given all the girls low-slung ponytails, slightly off-centered parts. Clean, natural, but unmistakably chic.
“You have to just ignore that stuff,” Jaya continued. “The lecherous ones. For the most part they’re harmless. They’re just looking. And if we didn’t like being looked at, we wouldn’t be in this business. N’est-ce pas?”
Santiago nodded in agreement. “I always say, ‘Look, but don’t touch.’ Me, I touch the hair, but not the body.”
“Yes, well, never you, Santiago. You, we trust. You’re like family.” Jaya smiled up at him.
“I don’t know.…” Katrine made her way over to the center stool, assuming her position. “I think there’s looking in admiration,” she said, “and then there is looking that feels like more than that. Like a violation.”
Throughout this entire exchange, Anouk had remained quiet, perched on her barstool, one long leg tucked beneath her.
Like a flamingo, Cecilia thought. Her eyes were darting back and forth between her fellow colleagues.
In addition to being the newcomer and the youngest, Anouk’s English was the most rudimentary of the bunch, and Cecilia wondered how much of the conversation she was able to follow.
“There are a lot of lascivious men in this industry, who are just men being men,” Jaya continued. “And then there are the really bad ones. Don’t confuse the two. Because if you worry about every dirty old man you encounter, you’ll never get ahead.”
It was silent for a moment, and then Bas, who was not easily offended, forced a laugh. “Well, good to know the base level of men just being men is ‘lascivious.’”
“Right, exactly. Wonder why we even try.” Elliot smirked, catching Cecilia’s eye. She smiled in return. Elliot was posh-boy pretty. Foppish dark-brown hair, intelligent eyes. An innate confidence and charm. Cecilia imagined he didn’t have to try very hard.
“Oh, you guys know what I mean,” Jaya said.
“Do we?”
“Whatever.” She rolled her eyes, and then turned her attention to the villa. “What’s taking so bloody long?”
Marc and Cecilia had just completed mounting the last of the reflectors when Anouk finally spoke. Her voice deep, heavily accented, unfamiliar.
“I think the line is different for everyone. What feels safe to one person may not feel safe to someone else. If he makes her uncomfortable, he makes her uncomfortable.”
They all turned to regard her. This young unknown newcomer. Was she challenging the Queen Bee? Trying to assert herself?
Jaya responded first, naturally. “Where are you from, Ana?s?”
“Anouk,” Bas corrected.
“Sorry. Anouk.”
“Paris.”
“You grew up there? Whereabouts?”
“Le dix-septième.”
Cecilia watched them ruminate. One was hard-pressed to find a working model who did not know his or her way around Paris.
The seventeenth arrondissement, depending on the neighborhood, could be solidly middle to upper-middle class or bohemian edgy.
Anouk wasn’t giving away much. And the way she tossed her ponytail over her shoulder and angled her jaw up to the sky with such outward confidence told Cecilia everything.
She was not a wide-eyed innocent fresh off the farm.
She was not just a pretty face. She may have held her cards close to her chest, but she was playing the game.
“Alors, les filles, les garcons. On est prêt?” Didier appeared presently, his Nikon in one hand, a large butcher knife in the other. “Yes? Good. Someone asked for a knife? Boys, move from behind the bar, hein. You look like the GOs at Club Med. Quick, before we lose the light.”
Cecilia had been on enough sets to know when a shoot was going well, and when there was something above and beyond.
Whether it was the chemistry between model and photographer or model and model, or the light and composition being just right.
She was aware that sometimes a photographer’s lens caught magic.
And that evening, on the terrace, it happened.
Anouk eating watermelon out of Katrine’s hands.
Katrine laughing, the juice dripping down her forearms. Bas holding back Anouk’s ponytail, while smiling surreptitiously at Jaya, who had sidled up behind Elliot, her arms around his bare torso, possessive.
And Elliot, watermelon in hand, staring directly down the lens, tongue sticking out like an impish schoolboy.
It was both intoxicating and playful. Suggestive—but not overtly so.
They were still talking about it at the group dinner later that night—on the terrace of one of the restaurants at the Querencia Bay Resort, the swanky establishment where the higher-ups were staying—how they’d managed to straddle the line between provocative and safe.
And how they’d done so with the utmost taste.
“It’s more like the suggestion of something. Not too brazen or in your face. Didier, you are perfect at this,” Rafaella said, from her place beside him at the head of the table. Her dark curly hair framing her large features—big eyes, full mouth, a Roman nose. Cecilia found her striking.
“Yes,” Maren added from her seat, toward the opposite end. “That he is. Sexy, but not tawdry. And bravo to our exquisite talent!” With this, she raised her margarita high in the air, her eyes searching out specific members of the group.