Chapter XXIII. Voyeur.
XXIII.
VOYEUR.
FRIDAY. AFTERNOON.
They were shooting at the villa again. In the billiards room, on the ground floor of the left wing.
The room, much like the rest of the house, was Spanish Colonial inspired.
White walls, arched windows, minimal décor.
A traditional billiards table ran two-thirds its length, with a leather sofa, card table, and smattering of club chairs rounding out the space.
Cecilia and Marc had covered the windows so that the photos would read as night.
Or more accurately, the wee hours of the morning.
The di Varenna team wanted the shots to feel like the after-after-party of a debauched evening.
Smudged eyeshadow and faded lip color. Mussed hair and loosened ties.
Which was why the models all looked wasted at two in the afternoon.
Although it did not explain the appearance of the crew.
That Cecilia chalked up to the late-night skinny-dipping and overindulgence of tequila.
They’d been reckless, and they were paying the price.
“What’s going on? Why everyone moving comme des paresseux?
” Didier asked, his eyes scanning the room from where he stood just off-center near the wall of windows, in a crisp black tee and white jeans.
He was never not impeccable. They were going over the shot list—Didier, Rafaella, and Jean-Luc—discussing the various setups and how best to give the clients what they wanted.
“Did he call us lazy?” Hugh asked Cecilia as she adjusted one of the light stands beside him in the back corner. He was bent over Elliot, working pomade into his loose curls.
“That, or sloths,” Cecilia translated.
Elliot snickered but did not look up from the book in his lap. “From now on, whenever I think of sloths, I’ll think of you lot.”
“Yeah, you do that,” Hugh said, stepping back to size up his work.
Elliot was in a black suit, black tie, crisp white shirt. His wavy hair falling into his gray eyes rendering him even more irresistible, Cecilia thought. Although she wasn’t certain what Hugh thought. Hugh was straight. A rarity among male hairstylists in the business.
“Santiago said, ‘Make it messy,’ but your hair won’t cooperate.”
“It wants to be perfect?”
“Basically. Model problems. I would kill to have hair that naturally fell like this and didn’t stick straight out all over my head.” Hugh removed his backward baseball cap for a second and ran his hand over his crew cut.
To Cecilia, it looked like her grandfather’s hair in old photos. Thick, dark, indignant.
“Grass is always greener, my friend. Grass is always greener.”
“Yeah, I don’t know about that. Bet Georgie loves your perfect hair.”
Elliot smiled, wry. “Georgie loves my perfect hair. Particularly when her thighs are clamped around my ears and she’s pulling on it.”
Cecilia stopped her work for a moment. She wasn’t sure if the guys realized she was still beside them. Or if to them it would even matter.
Hugh was laughing.
“Who’s Georgie?” she asked.
“My girlfriend. From Oxford.”
“Oh.”
Elliot never looked up from his book.
Just then Bas appeared at the arched doorway, his arms spread wide, as if he owned the place. His solitary dimple winking. Bas lived in a state of being perpetually debauched. “Ciao, ragazzi! Let’s get this party started, shall we!”
Cecilia was assisting Marc in the mounting of a softbox on a strobe adjacent to the billiards table when the rest of the talent filed in.
Her attention was drawn to the far side of the room.
Maren had pulled Didier aside. The two were heavily in conversation, she in her signature white jeans and navy blazer, not a blond hair out of place.
He was nodding, smiling while she spoke.
But something about her body language looked off to Cecilia.
Less rigid than she typically was. He said something and she laughed.
And then Cecilia saw it: Didier leaned in and lowered his head to Maren’s ear, tucked his forefinger in one of the loops of her jeans and tugged her toward him, gently.
She blushed, her back arching, her hand reaching for his.
She stayed that way for a moment, before pushing his hand away.
But to Cecilia, it seemed a moment too long.
She nudged Marc, discreet. Her eyebrow raised in Didier’s direction.
“Is something happening there?”
Marc looked over for half a second, and then back to the light. “Something’s always happening, Cee.”
Marc’s words resonated. Fashion types were not known for being the most conservative bunch.
But Cecilia wanted to believe that the people she worked with, the players she idolized, were generally good people.
Creative, indulgent, dramatic, petulant—but still generally good.
She had to believe that. It was part of what kept her going.
And so even when she was convinced she was seeing everything, she might well have been selectively editing.
She scanned the room now, wondering what she might have missed, caught up in her own thoughts about Lorry and their pending demise.
And the pressure she was feeling from her parents to move on to the next thing.
Just that morning they’d called to remind her to clear her schedule to register for the June LSAT, which would give her ample time to prepare if she started focusing now.
Cecilia did not want to focus on the LSAT.
She did not want to go to law school like her brother, her cousin, a solid percentage of her graduating class.
She wanted to settle down on a farm with Lorry and make art and babies and be happy. She wanted to do the unexpected.
Her eyes landed on Anouk then, seated on the sofa along the wall, waiting to be told where to go. Elliot was beside her, his face hidden behind his book. Cecilia strained to make out the title. Anna Karenina. Of course he was reading Tolstoy in the midst of this chaos.
Her eyes returned to Anouk, who wore a black-silk slip dress, her hair artfully undone.
She had wine-stained lips and no bra. Compared to Jaya’s beaded white number and Katrine’s structured silver sequins, she looked wanton, Cecilia thought.
They were playing up her sex appeal, her youth.
Whether or not Anouk was aware of it, they’d made her the wild one.
Cecilia had seen it happen before, a model singled out from the others and given the role of “lead” on a shoot.
The decision was typically made early in preproduction with the client determining whom they wanted to shine, and then executed by the stylist’s choices and the photographer’s direction.
But in this case, Cecilia was seeing the preference being made right before her eyes.
Someone or someones had fallen in love with Anouk and was showcasing her.
And in this situation, where her fellow models were not just established but icons in the industry, it was remarkable.
To Cecilia, it wasn’t just Anouk’s beauty that set her aside.
But her unflappable confidence. The way she held herself, the way she moved, the way she was not afraid to look you in the eye and tell you what she felt, regardless of your station, the way she was comfortable in her skin, clothed or not. It was enviable. Alluring.
Cecilia hoped to one day possess that kind of self-assurance.
She wondered how confident she would be if she hadn’t spent so much of her youth fielding negative commentary about her appearance.
Too chubby, too curvy, too dark. Too exotic to be Black.
Too Black to be exotic. She wondered who she would have been if she’d simply been told she was beautiful.
She wondered if she would have believed it.
She was not aware of how long she’d been staring, but at some point, Anouk looked up and peered directly at her.
As if she’d known she was being watched, intently.
She smiled, her wide top lip folding upward.
Cecilia felt herself flush. She waved and then awkwardly turned away, busying herself with her gloves.
“Yep,” Marc said, securing a sandbag at the base of the stand. “Something’s always happening.”
That afternoon’s shoot was about movement.
It was, Cecilia thought, almost photojournalistic in its execution.
Didier weaving in and out and around the models.
Cecilia and Marc following with strobes and reflectors, in tow.
There was Katrine, leaning over the billiards table, cue stick in hand.
Her supple breasts almost, but not quite, spilling out of her dress.
And Elliot, hair perfectly unperfect, shirtsleeves rolled, tie loosened, racking the balls.
Looking every bit the entitled Oxbridge type.
Jaya just off to the side, gazing narcissistically at her own reflection in a compact, reapplying a red lip.
Anouk edged up onto the rail of the table, glassy-eyed, disheveled hair.
And Bas, still in his suit jacket, pressed up between her legs.
His hands on either side of her thighs, his head buried in her neck, her back arched over the table.
This, Cecilia thought, would be nothing for Calvin Klein.
But for di Varenna, it was pushing the envelope.
Still, she surmised, it was art. And if Anouk and the other models had a problem with it, they did not let on.