Jenna
I haven’t heard from Rafe in six weeks. I haven’t eaten, drank, or slept, and my body’s looking haggard, although of course industry rumors are that I’ve lost weight because people won’t hire me.
At one fitting, they didn’t even try to disguise their comments. The atelier employees spoke Italian, thinking I couldn’t understand, but actually I’d studied the language during college and understood every word.
“She looks fabulous, doesn’t she?” said one gay guy, giving me a charming smile. “Emaciated, just the way we like it.”
“She does, but look at the poor thing,” clucked an older woman while draping a length of fabric across my chest. “Bags under her eyes, her skin is dull, and this hair! That blonde hair she was always known for, it’s now like straw, we’ve got to tell her agency she’s got some serious psychological problems.”
“She’s not our responsibility,” scoffed the gay guy, turning me around this way and that, as if studying a piece of meat. “The agency should be keeping tabs on her, and what do we care? As long as our clothes look good and fly off the rack, why should we give a shit if she dies?”
I almost cried then, this was how people talked about me when they thought I couldn’t understand. Again, as my old self, I would have raged back at them in fluent Italian, telling them to fuck off, I was going to tell my boss, his name was Rafe Connor and wasn’t he their boss too?
But the new me was different. Knowing my place, I bit my tongue even as a flush rose up my chest, my cheeks flaming.
“Would you mind if I went to the bathroom for a moment?” I murmured. “I’ve been standing here for an hour and really need to use the loo.”
“Of course not, honey,” said the older woman through a couple of pins in her mouth. “Let me just get this off you.”
Of course the gay guy was shooting daggers at me with his eyes, but I was beyond that. I needed a moment of privacy to re-group, to steel my shoulders against this new assault.
Because I felt like I’d been at war for the last six weeks. Not that Rafe ever fought back, it was the wall of silence that was killing me. I’d left countless messages on his cell, on his work phone, with his secretary, and all for nothing. All I got was a polite murmur of acknowledgment from his personal assistant, and one day a package came in the mail.
It was astounding. I’d been feeling down in the dumps when my doorman called upstairs to inform me that something had arrived. “Yes, just send it up please,” I’d said weakly.
“No,” said Herberto. “This requires your signature, they won’t take mine.”
“Alright,” I said with a sigh. I rolled off the couch, looking my worst. I’d had no jobs today and had spent hours alone in a dark apartment, feeling miserable, re-running the sensual times I’d had with Rafe over and over in my head. My bedhead was disgusting and I probably smelled, I was wearing last night’s sweats with a very visible tomato stain on the knee.
But I didn’t care. Since Rafe ghosted me, I was a mess psychologically. I couldn’t focus on anything and had become the type of model that designers look for – a clotheshanger with no personality, a sullen expression, caved in cheeks and a penchant for moodiness. It was nothing like the public persona I’d built for myself, sparkling, bouncy, healthy, a real California girl.
So I schlepped downstairs in my slippers. Who cares if my neighbors saw? There were other celebrities in this building too, they could stalk Taylor Swift or Blake Lively instead.
And when I got downstairs, the delivery man gawked a bit. I use the moniker Angela Adams, so I’m sure he wasn’t expecting to see top model Jenna Walsh appear, even in a disheveled state.
But Herberto hurried it along.
“Pen, Ms. Walsh,” he said. And I signed, taking the package into my arms. It was small and flat, covered in brown paper with no indication of the sender.
But once I got back to my apartment, I scrutinized the package suspiciously. As a public figure, I need to be protective of my identity, but it’s actually pretty easy to figure out where famous people live in New York. There are celebrities walking around all the time and it doesn’t take much effort to trail someone back to their home. In fact, some of the male actors I knew were pretty careless, never wearing wigs or disguises, going about their business like they were regular people.
But dammit, if this was a bomb, I was kind of okay with it at this point, life was so painful. The gray pallor that had taken over was stifling, like I was being drowned in a deep sea of murky water, unable to breathe, unable to lift my head even and open my eyes.
With resigned fingers, I opened the seal to the brown paper, listlessly pulling out the box within. With uncurious eyes, I noted that it was from Harry Winston. Again, in my past life I would have jumped with joy because Harry Winston only meant one thing, and that was money, money, money.
As I opened the beautiful plush purple velvet box, I saw how bony my fingers were, how my nails were ridged from malnutrition and dehydration, only partially obscured by my fancy manicure. God, I needed to take care of myself better.
The box snapped open, and there it was. A beautiful diamond tennis bracelet, probably thirty carats total of perfect, emerald-cut stones. I lifted it to the light, and the bracelet flashed with fire and life, each diamond a perfect gem in and of itself, priceless in value.
I reached listlessly for the card. There was no note, just a card with the word “Rafe” written in a cursive hand. Of course that wasn’t his handwriting, it was probably his secretary or worse, some nameless peon who worked at the jewelry store. Feeling sick, I hunched over, my shoulders heaving up and down as I took quick gasps of air.
I should have felt happy. I should have felt elated, lucky even, for receiving a six-figure piece of jewelry, even if the relationship was now over. But instead I felt miserable, the sadness overwhelming. I hated the jewelry on sight, letting it slip through my fingers to clatter to the floor, uncaring where it landed.
Rafe couldn’t even bother to talk to me, to end our relationship in person. I was the recipient of a pay-off, intended to silence me, some poor consolation prize. And I still had no idea what had ticked him off. One day we’d been fucking three times a day, enjoying each other’s bodies and company, and the next he was gone with the wind, a mystery of the ages. Was I so unlovable? Did I deserve this somehow?
Like a bad memory, my mom’s voice rang in my head.
“Jenna, look inside yourself,” she’d urged. “The world won’t do what you want just because you’re pretty so don’t take it for granted. Be nice, be kind to people, you never know what will happen.”
I’d scoffed then, throwing my hair over my shoulders, disdaining her advice. The world had been at my fingertips thus far, I only had to smile at men and they did my every bidding. Who wasn’t to say that it wouldn’t last forever? Okay, maybe not forever, but a good twenty years more at least.
“Whatever Ma,” I’d dashed off carelessly. “I know what I’m doing.”
But the shake of her head and the sad look in her eyes were reproachful.
“Look at me Jenna,” she said. “I was once a pretty girl, even prettier than you, and where am I now? A single mom with four daughters, struggling to make ends meet. I don’t want you to be like me.”
I’d sighed exasperatedly. My mom’s mistake had been that she’d hooked up with my dad, who’d turned out to be a deadbeat loser. I knew better than that. Find a rich man, get married with no pre-nup, and boom! My problems were solved for life.
“I’ll be fine, Ma,” I said shortly. “Go worry about someone else, like Tina. She needs to lose weight before she becomes a sack of potatoes, no one’s ever going to want her,” I’d sneered.
My mom had sighed and turned away, but looking back, there was an uncanny element of truth to her words. Now it was Tina married to a rich man and I was getting dumped with a diamond bracelet as the consolation prize.
I cried in the bathroom, grateful that atelier’s restroom had plush, fabric-covered walls, the better to muffle my sobs. Not knowing who to turn to, I dialed Deborah on my cell phone.
“Deb, I can’t,” I cried into the phone. “The wardrobe folks have been so nasty to me, they say I look terrible and ugly. They say it right to my face, they think I can’t understand.”
“Oh ignore them,” soothed Deborah. “Pepe is known for having a sharp tongue, you know how gay guys are, they’re jealous of women as if they were women themselves.”
“I can’t,” I cried. “I can’t go back out there,” I said pitifully, sniffling into the phone.
But Deborah, who’d been kind to me in the past, did a one-eighty.
“You can and you will,” she said nastily. “Because you know what? The shit’s about to hit the fan.”
“You can’t scare me with Rafe Connor,” I said woodenly. “I know I signed a contract with Levant Corp. but contracts get broken all the time, I’ll pay whatever penalties are required.” At least my legal training was coming in handy.
“No, you dumb bitch,” said Deborah, her voice like nails over the phone. “It’s that video you did … the video plus the nudie pix.”
“What do you mean?” I asked slowly. “I’ve done nude photo shoots, I mean, you were there during one, but I’ve never done any video. What are you talking about?” I asked confusedly.
“The porn!” screamed Deborah. “The porn you did is about to hit the wire!” Her voice lowered. “I heard it’s already got ten thousand streams on some seedy website, people watching you get pummeled every which way in some dirty gang-bang.” She continued. “Did you like it Jenna? Did you like being a slut in front of the camera? I suggest you finish this job because your career is about to be over.”
The woman slammed the phone with a clack and I stood frozen in the tiny bathroom. What video? a voice screamed in my head. Was I being blackmailed? I had no idea what was going on and my only thought was to call Rafe for help.