Heather exited the hall, drifting out into the chilly evening. It seemed like rain was on the way, the smell of moisture heavy on the breeze. The front of the event hall, all roman columns and soaring windows, was lit up in dramatic shades of blue and purple. Yellow fairy lights twinkled in the meticulously landscaped trees and shrubs of the hall's front terrace. A circular stone path led down to the street where cars gathered to collect departing guests. There weren't many leaving this early, but there were a few. Heather scanned their faces, looking for Altair. A sleek black Maserati pulled up to the entry, and Heather stared as the driver’s door opened and the Sheikh emerged.
"I prefer to drive myself," he said as she hurried toward him. "I hope that's all right?"
"It's fine!" Heather said at once. "I just didn't expect..."
He opened the door for her to climb into the beautiful sports car, and Heather smiled gratefully as she slid into the passenger seat. There were many things about Altair she hadn't expected. She supposed she'd been somewhat naive to assume a sheikh would always wear the robe and keffiyeh she'd seen in movies. Altair's tailor-made, silver-gray suit looked just as exotic as any outfit would have. He could have made a T-shirt and jeans look incredible. The jacket was open over a white silk shirt through which she could see his lean, fit body. She wondered if he was a swimmer or a weightlifter, or if such beauty was just natural for royalty.
"Thank you again for accepting my invitation," Altair said as he slid into the driver's seat again and pulled away from the event hall. "I hope I didn't disrupt any plans you had this evening?"
"No. Not at all," Heather said quickly as she buckled in. "I had to call my mother to pick up my daughter, but it was no problem."
"Oh, you have children?" Altair looked surprised. "Pardon my rudeness, but I would not have guessed."
Heather laughed a little, pleased. She'd worked hard to keep her figure after her pregnancy. Nothing would ever go quite back to where it had been before, but she was proud of what she'd managed.
"Just one," she told him. "Her name is Chloe. She's eight."
"I love children," Altair said fondly. "I spoil the daylights out of my brother's boys, which is saying something for the children of a sheikh."
"None of your own?" Heather asked, politely curious about this mysterious nobleman.
"Not yet." Altair shrugged, looking a little disappointed. "They were always part of my life plan, but, well, things don't always go according to plan."
She could tell she'd stumbled into some unhappy memories, and she hurried to change the subject.
"So, this event, what should I do?" she asked.
"It's a smaller event than the earlier one, much more exclusive," he said, looking glad to leave the previous conversation behind. "But otherwise, it's a show like any other. I'm sure you have plenty of experience. The director will not be pleased with me bringing you in so late, but when I saw you walk earlier tonight, I could not resist. You wear my shoes beautifully."
"Really?" Heather asked, a little flustered by his assumption of her experience. Had he not realized she was an amateur? Well, she couldn't tell him now, not on the way to an event! "I didn't think I did anything special."
"The way you carry yourself is unusual," Altair said. "You walk with purpose. You aren't just strutting around the stage—it feels like you're going somewhere. For a moment it felt like you would step off the catwalk and keep going. I love that unique energy. I think it suits my designs perfectly."
Heather felt a blush rising to her cheeks. Had she really been that good? She hadn't felt like she’d been doing anything unusual. Maybe the “unique energy” he'd sensed was just that she didn't know what she was doing.
They soon arrived at the smaller venue, a series of grand, illuminated white tents in a park. The previous event had hosted hundreds of guests. This one was maybe a hundred, primarily high-end designers, critics, and their entourages. It was clear immediately that, though smaller, this was a much more serious event than the one she'd just come from. Though she wasn't familiar with the big names in fashion, she could see the way the other guests circled and stared.
She was braced for disaster to strike and this to all go horribly wrong, but Altair escorted her to the backstage area and signed her in without incident. Then they went to find the director, a short, square-jawed woman who looked quietly outraged.
“I’m going to have to reshuffle the entire lineup!” the woman said in a low whisper. “The clothes aren’t fitted to her! She’s got to be three sizes bigger than the other girls.”
“The clothes aren’t the focus of this show anyway,” Altair replied. “She looks fantastic. The advocacy groups are always saying these shows should have more average-sized women.”
“Where did you even find her? I’ve never seen her before, and I’ve directed every model with a lick of experience in this city.”
“Apparently not,” Altair said with a shrug. “I just picked her up from the joint show with Christian downtown.”
“That’s impossible,” the director scoffed. “I saw the lookbook for that event.”
Heather cleared her throat.
“I was a last-minute replacement,” she said, hoping to mollify the other woman for Altair’s sake.
“She’s a sub?” The director groaned. “She probably has all of a few months’ experience. I can’t condone this, sir.”
“I’ve seen her walk. I know she’ll be fine,” Altair replied with calm confidence. “And I know you’ll trust my judgment on this.”
He fixed the director with an imposing look, and she glanced at Heather again, making a face.
“Are you really sure?” she asked.
“I’m positive,” Altair said without hesitation. He reached back to take Heather’s hand, leading her forward. “She’s exactly the woman I design for: refined, elegant, driven. Just wait till you see her walk.”
Heather’s face flushed with delight and embarrassment at the praise. The director still didn’t look like she bought it, but she threw her hands in the air, surrendering.
“Come on. Let’s get you into makeup,” she said, guiding Heather away from Altair. “Maybe enough concealer will make me feel like this isn’t a terrible idea.”
Heather waved to Altair as she was hurried off, and he waved back, smiling genially, and then vanished back into the crowd of guests.
The clothes this time were simpler, meant to direct focus to the shoes. The previous show had been a joint effort between Altair and an evening-wear designer, but this event was all his. The shoes all had a kind of fairy-tale whimsy to their design, and the clothing reflected that. The outfits were like modern interpretations of storybook characters. Dressing in these beautiful clothes and having a storm of people fussing over her hair and makeup and nails already made Heather feel a bit like a princess. Wearing a dress that evoked a contemporary Cinderella complete with elaborate glass heels only made that feeling more powerful.
As terrifying as the idea of going out onto that stage still was, she couldn't pretend this hadn't been an incredible night. The Sheikh lingered on the edge of her thoughts even though he'd left to go tend his guests. It was ridiculous to imagine he might be interested in her beyond tonight's show. He was almost certainly taken. But she couldn't help imagining. He was beautiful and mysterious and rich. What harm was there in allowing herself to fantasize a little?
“Oh, is this the last-minute addition?” one of the stylists, a trim young man with blue hair, asked, carting over several plastic toolboxes full of hair-care supplies. A plump, dark-haired woman was already working on Heather’s makeup.
“Sure is,” she said. “What’s your name, honey?”
“Heather,” Heather answered, a little intimidated.
“I’m not sure the hair the other girls got is going to work for her,” the makeup artist said to the hair stylist as he set up.
“Why not?” he asked, frowning and coming closer to peer at Heather’s face.
“She’s a bit older than the other girls,” the woman remarked casually, though it made Heather wince self-consciously. “You pull her hair straight up like that, it’s going to make her look stretched out and severe. She’s supposed to be Cinderella, not the Wicked Stepmother.”
“You might have a point,” the man muttered, looking Heather over. “What are you doing for the makeup?”
“Shellac it,” the woman said, tilting Heather’s chin up to examine her. “There are good bones under there. We just have to smooth it all out and keep the details simple. Pink and peachy.”
“No, no. The fresh and youthful thing will just play silly on a mature face like this,” the man scolded. Heather wished she could melt into the floor. “We should enhance what’s there, not hide it. Don’t you think?”
“So we go soft,” the woman said. “Rose lip, soft liner on the eyes, no wings, loose hair?”
“I have a crystal headband I was dying to use anyway,” the man said with a grin.
They got to work, talking excitedly with each other all the while, mostly ignoring Heather even as others came in and out buffing Heather’s feet and doing her nails. The stylists, caught up in their own artistic visions, kept working as though they weren’t there.
“There we are,” the woman said as she stepped back, setting down her blender. “Cinderella the queen. It’s perfect.”
“I had my doubts,” the hair stylist replied, looking pleased, “but the Sheikh always knows what he’s doing.”
“You look stunning, honey,” the makeup artist said. She stepped out of the way to let Heather see herself in the mirror. She almost didn’t recognize herself. The loose updo curling against her cheeks brought a softness to her sometimes angular face that made her look regal and feminine, and a crystal diadem glittered among the sculpted curls. Her eyes had never looked so large and bright. She really did feel like a queen.
“Last call!” the director yelled. “Line up!”
“Just in time!” the woman said. She helped Heather to her feet and into the glittering shoes. Then she pushed her forward. Heather stumbled after the other models, hoping she wouldn't screw up too badly.
The blinding lights of the stage dazzled her, and she felt her heart racing, worrying what the people watching were thinking, how they were reacting. She felt her ankle wobble and forced herself to take a deep breath and straighten up. She could do as she had last time. These lights were the bright white lights of her kitchen. She visualized her stove and her counters as she walked, focusing on some imaginary culinary disaster that needed immediate fixing.
At the end of the runway, the illusion broke. The lights cleared and her eyes found Altair’s like it was instinct. He was near the front, as he had been the last time, and he smiled up at her like he’d been waiting there just for her. When she walked the circuit again, three more times before the show ended, he was always there waiting for her, smiling when he saw her. Heather felt her heart grow lighter every time, even through the countless changes and the blisters starting on her feet from the absurd shoes. It was hard and painful, and she was in heaven.
She finished the show in a haze of euphoria and collapsed on a couch in a seating area backstage with the other models.
"These shoes are pure evil," one of the girls said, removing a towering heel with architectural silver arabesques that seemed designed to maim whoever wore them. "Gorgeous, fantastical evil."
"At least they care about getting the sizes right," one of the other women replied, fishing antiseptic and Band-Aids out of her bag and tending to her battered feet. "I was in a big commercial walk once where they had nothing but size fours. Half the girls were nines at least. Imagine walking in that monster if it was five sizes too small."
The first girl rolled her eyes. "They couldn't pay me enough."
"They aren't paying me enough now," another girl said, laughing.
"Don't let the director hear that," the woman with the antiseptic warned. "They hear girls talking about how much they got paid, those girls don't get hired again. It's how they keep rates so low."
"There's always more pretty girls who want to be supermodels," another girl added with a touch of bitterness.
Heather listened, both too tired to contribute and having nothing much to add, fascinated by this glimpse of the secret life of fashion models. They griped about the unlivable pay, even for high-end shows, that kept them running between multiple engagements a day—if they were lucky enough to be cast for that many— about the day jobs they had to take if they weren't that lucky, and about the clothes, some of which had to be taped or sewn onto them because the designs were so impractical or unfinished.
"I was in a high-concept show once," a girl recalled, "where they put me in this cage bustier that must have been made of scrap metal. It cut in under my arms so much I was literally bleeding. I was afraid it was going to scar!"
"You did great tonight, though, newbie." The girl with the antiseptic had finished doctoring herself and passed her supplies onto someone else. She was leaned back against the couch now, halfway out of her costume and smoking a cigarette. Her dark hair had deflated from its fancy starched updo, and she'd torn out some of the pins. It fell around her in casual, messy glamor. "This was, what, your third, fourth show?"
Heather paled as the girl called her out. She didn't sound cruel, but neither was there any doubt in her voice about Heather's experience.
"Second," she confessed in an embarrassed murmur. "Was it that obvious?"
"To one of us?" the woman laughed. "Definitely."
The other models murmured in unsurprised agreement.
"But I doubt anyone else noticed. You didn't fall and your walk is competent. A lot of first-timers exaggerate it too much or stomp around like they have bricks on their feet instead of thousand-dollar shoes. You have a good foundation. With a little study, you could be really good. Watch the Brazilian girls. Clara! Show her your walk!"
One of the models stubbed out her cigarette and stood before doing a quick circuit of the area. Her walk had a casual, effortless sexiness to it. There was something in the bounce or the movement of her thighs that Heather couldn't quite discern.
"All the directors want Brazilian walks right now," the first woman said. "Us white girls just have to imitate it the best we can."
"What I want to know is who she slept with to get an exclusive like this on her second booking," another model said with a tired laugh. "I was still doing design school student work by the end of my first year of this."
"Want me to make it worse?" Heather laughed a little nervously. "My first show was earlier tonight."
There was a chorus of groans from the other models.
"Oh, come on!" someone complained, followed by laughter.
"Guess you caught someone's eye," the first woman said. "But whoever they are, they aren't wrong. You've got the chops for this."
"I don't know." Heather shook her head. "I think this might be more of a one-night thing. It isn't really me."
"So what's you?" the woman asked. "What do you do?"
"I'm a chef," Heather said. "I have a catering business. That's what I've always been happiest doing."
"Did doing this tonight make you unhappy?" the other woman asked, leaning toward her.
"No."
"It will," someone chimed in, laughing.
"Listen," the woman said, ignoring the comment, "no one gets to be a model forever. You look real good, don't get me wrong, but you're older than most of the girls here, aren't you?"
Heather looked away, embarrassed.
"If this makes you even a little bit happy, keep doing it," the woman said. "You'll get a couple of years out of it and food will still be there when the glitter and glamor are gone. If you can, why not have both worlds?"
Heather thought about it, unsure. If she put her business on the backburner that long, would she be able to recover? And she had a kid to provide for.
"My name’s Crystal," the model said, offering her a hand. "If you end up doing this again, we'll probably bump into each other."
Heather shook Crystal's hand with a smile.
"I'm Heather," she said. "I hope we do."
"My car's here for the after-party," one of the other models said, standing up. "Who's in?"
"Man, I just want to go to bed," another girl said.
"Yeah, you enjoy your nap, Portia," the first replied. "I'm gonna be chatting up the directors of every show happening in the city this year. Come on, get up. We have work to do."
Portia, groaning, got up and followed her friend, as did most of the other girls, including Crystal. Heather suddenly realized she wasn't sure what happened next. How did she get home? Was she supposed to go to the after-party? Should she be looking for Altair, or, now that the show was over, was their brief association at its end?
A touch on her shoulder brought her out of her worried thoughts, and she looked up, surprised, into Altair's green eyes.
"You were wonderful out there," he said, offering her a hand up from the couch. "I couldn't take my eyes off you."
"Thank you." Heather blushed, feeling oddly intimidated in his presence as she stood up. "I'm just glad I didn't fall or ruin anything."
"I never thought you would," Altair said kindly. "You were even more stunning than I expected you to be."
"Are you going to the after-party?" Heather asked.
"I never do the after-parties," Altair said. "But, if my Cinderella is not about to turn into a pumpkin, may I treat you to a late dinner? As thanks for the inconvenience."
Heather laughed, realizing she was still clutching the glass heels in one hand. She considered his offer for a moment, unsure. It was late. She'd received a text from her mother during the show that Chloe was safely home and in bed, so she didn't need to rush back for any reason. And the truth was, this night had been perfectly magical. She didn't want it to end just yet.
"All right," she said. "Dinner sounds great actually."