Chapter Thirty-Five
Josephine
My final night of working at NYFW had finally arrived and I walked in the back entrance of Lincoln Center with mixed emotions. The job had definitely had its rough moments, but I loved being behind the scenes of fashion shows and I was really going to miss the extra income.
With Lily moving to New York soon, I’d be able to make ends meet with just one job, but I still had to help her out until she found a job of her own. She’d been working in restaurants her whole life and had started a food blog a while back. She wasn’t so much a chef as she was a critic. She loved eating good food and prided herself on knowing which restaurants were the best ones in town. New York would be the perfect city for her if only she’d just hurry up and arrive.
I stepped into the dressing room for the final show of the season. Marc Jacobs. Everyone who was anyone would be sitting in the audience and I was backstage working as a glorified janitor. A janitor surrounded by couture wearing black pants, a t-shirt, and a black baseball hat with “NYFW STAFF” stretched across the front. God, why have you forsaken me?
Models, hair stylists, makeup artists, stylists, and designers were running around like worker bees in the center of a hive. Elbows, knees, arms, fists—at any given moment, various body parts were colliding with me as people rushed to finish their jobs. I went back to emptying the trashcan in the corner of the room just as I heard someone start to yell at the front of the room.
“Where the hell is Gillian Grace?” a man spat, spinning in a circle and flailing his arms wildly. “Do these models think contracts are a joke?!”
He was short and completely bald with circular framed glasses perched on his nose. He was dressed in all black, like me, except his clothing probably cost more than all of my organs combined would go for on the black market.
He clapped his hands and started yelling again.
“So help me god, if she doesn’t arrive in three seconds, I will murder her entire family.”
I reached for my broom and took a step back, lest he catch sight of me and direct his anger at me.
Wrong move.
He whipped around and narrowed his eyes on me. I froze as if I were trying to fend off a bear. Don’t let him smell your fear! He scanned over me once, all the way up and all the way down, and then he took a step closer.
“You,” he yelled, pointing in my direction.
Every single person in the area paused and turned toward me. I whipped around to see if there was someone behind me; there wasn’t, only a black concrete wall and craft food services. (Which I’d been sneaking food from for the last ten days. What? It’s not like the models ever touched it.)
“Don’t play dumb. I’m talking to you,” he said, stepping another foot closer.
I gripped my broom tighter and smiled tentatively.
“Uh, yes?”
“Who are you?”
His question felt philosophical, like I was supposed to respond with a treatise on existentialism. Instead, I just replied with my name.
“Josephine.”
He waved his hand with impatience. Clearly my name wasn’t what he was looking for.
“What are your measurements?”
I glanced from him to all the other people watching me and waiting for my reply. I was supposed to say my size in front of a room full of models? I should not have eaten that Chipotle burrito last night.
“Uhh—it depends on what I’m wearing. Usually I can pull off a smaller size in pants—”
His patience wore out somewhere between the “u” and the first “h” in “uhh”.
“You’re literally boring me to death. Enough. I need you to model. Take off that heinous uniform and see Nikki for sizing. Tell her you’re filling in for Gillian Grace.”
I laughed. Cracked up, in fact. Wow, this was a really bad reality show. He wanted me to model in a Marc Jacobs fashion show during the finale of New York Fashion Week? I didn’t even know where to begin with my protests, so instead I stood mute, with deer-in-the-headlight eyes.
He wasn’t pleased by my reaction. “I know. Believe me, I wish this were a joke. Now stop sweeping and go get changed. I don’t have time for this.”
With that, he turned and walked away. His departure acted like an on/off switch for the insanity in the room. The second he walked away, the room returned to chaos and I determined that my life had taken a sharp turn into Crazyville.
I was still clutching my broom when a short Latina woman with purple cropped hair and dark lined eyes stepped up in front of me and pursed her lips.
“I’m Nikki,” she said, giving me a onceover, much like the other guy had just done.
“Josephine,” I said, pressing my hand to my chest.
“Are you like a custodian or something? What’s with the hat?”
I reached up to feel the brim. I knew the bright white NYFW letters illuminated my lower-middle class status.
“Yeah. Uh, I work here and I don’t think I fully understand what’s going on.”
She popped her hip out with a touch of attitude. “Martín is down a model, so he’s enlisted your help. We’ll get you fitted and push you through hair and makeup as quickly as possible.”
“No. No. I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“So you’re turning down $3,000 and the chance to model in New York Fashion Week? What, do you love your current gig that much?”
Hold the phone.
No one said anything about three grand! I’d do a whole hell of a lot for three grand and most of it was illegal in Texas and New York. Walking in a fashion show for money hadn’t even seemed like an option.
“You’ll receive a check before you leave tonight. They hand them out before the after party. I’m sure someone will fill you in on everything, but there’s no time for me to explain it all right now.”
Nothing she was saying made sense to me and worst of all, I had no time to argue. In a straight up movie montage scene, ten things happened around me at once: someone pulled the broom from my hand, another person ripped the shirt off my head, a measuring tape appeared around my boobs, and two women crouched down in front of my legs. HEYO.
“Nice tits,” one assistant said as she finished measuring my chest.
“Uhh, thanks,” I replied as she ran in the opposite direction, having acquired the measurement she needed.
“Is this your natural color?” a hairstylist asked as she ripped the hat and ponytail from my head.
“Yes,” I said, squinting from the pain. Well, it was my natural color before you ripped all of it out
She ran her fingers through the tangles, yanking as she went.
“It’s beautiful. Yes, we’ll leave the color. No time to change it. I’ll freshen up the cut and style it while they do your makeup. Let’s go.”
She wrapped her hand around my bicep and began to pull me after her.
“Hold on!” the woman between my legs protested. “I’m getting her inseam.”
Her hand was two millimeters from my vagina and I’d never seen her in my life.
“What exactly will I be wearing?” I asked the gaggle of people swarming me.
No one appeared to hear me.
In ten seconds flat, I’d gone from Josephine to Cinderella. Except, while Cinderella had evil stepsisters and one fairy godmother, I had Martin and fifteen bitchy birds flitting around me.
There was no time to reflect or consider the sharp turn of events my life had taken. While one woman did my makeup, another woman attacked my haggard nails. I had a woman sizing my feet as another sewed me into a dark blue couture dress.
“I don’t actually know how to walk down the runway,” I admitted after being sewn into the dress. I’ll be honest, a part of me purposely waited to tell them until after they’d sewn me in so that they’d feel pity and let me keep it.
“Honey, how old are you?” the makeup artist asked.
“Twenty-four.”
“So you’ve been walkin’ for at least twenty-three years. Keep your head up, take confident steps, and look where you’re going. Don’t look down, you’ll only trip yourself.”
“But my gown is really short.”
She met my eye in the mirror and shook her head. “They just tailored that dress to your body specifically. It’s the exact length it should be for you to walk just fine. Now stop complaining.”
Alrighty then. That was that. I stayed quiet, trying to conceal my nerves as they finished up working on my face. When I opened my eyes after they’d finished with my eye makeup, Nikki stood behind me in the mirror. I met her eyes and she smiled, seemingly impressed with how I looked.
“It’s time to line up, let’s go.”
I tried to talk some reason into her one more time.
“Are you sure there’s not an actual model they could get for this? I am honestly the least qualified person in this place.”
She laughed. “Yeah, well, when you’re gorgeous, people forgive you. They sure as shit ain’t puttin’ my ratchet-ass cankles out there.”
She yanked me to the side and I almost tripped in my three-inch heels.
“This is your spot.”
I looked to where she was pointing and my heart leapt in my chest. I was positioned among half a dozen super models I stalked on Instagram at least once a day. Charlie Whitlock stood in front of Gigi Hadid. Cara and Giselle were taking a quick selfie. Me? I looked back toward Nikki to find that I was now utterly alone; I wanted to throw up everywhere.
“Places, everyone! The show is about to begin!” Martín yelled from the front of the line. “Walk slow. DO NOT SMILE. Own that runway and then line up quickly for the finale. There is no time for delays.”
He glanced down at his clipboard and I took a final breath as deep bass started bumping through the speaker system. I loved the song.
“Oh!” Martín yelled, drawing our attention once again. “Most of all, remember that you’re all fucking supermodels.”
I felt the vomit rising in my throat.
There’s no way this could end well.