CHAPTER 1

“Come on, Marty. You’ve got to have something. Throw me a bone here.”

With a sigh, my agent drags his fingers through the few greasy strands of hair he has left on top of his head. “It’s like I said when you called yesterday, Izzy, you’re just not right for any of the jobs that are available at the moment.”

This worthless piece of mierda has been putting me off for over a month now, giving me one sorry excuse after the other for why the modeling work I’ve been doing for the past six years has suddenly dried up and I’m tired of getting the runaround from him. Also, I’m in need of an immediate infusion of cash or I’ll have to start doing without the essentials of life, like Jimmy Choo wedges, oxygen facials at my favorite spa, and daily breakfasts at the specialty bakery up the street from my house (I have a standing order for a guava and cheese pastelito along with a high-octane café Cubano that’s a great eye-opener after a late night), which is why I decided to ambush Marty in his office at lunchtime when his secretary/guard dog is up the street at a Venezuelan restaurant stuffing her piehole full of arepas.

I glower at him. “Bathing suit season is already underway here in Miami, and I’m best known for my work in a bikini, so I should have my pick of jobs right now. Seaside photo shoots, swimwear shows, commercials for suntan lotion, sunglasses, and alcoholic beverages that you can drink while lounging by the pool—those are my stock and trade.”

“Yeah, they were . . .,” he trails off, avoiding eye contact and acting even more squirrelly than usual.

“Why are you using past tense? What the hell’s going on?” I slap my hands down on his desk and lean forward, which makes Marty recoil in fear.

Holding up his hands as a sign of surrender, he says, “Okay, okay . . . there’s really no easy way for me to say this, but I’m afraid, you’ve, uhhhhhhhh . . . aged out of your particular market in the modeling business.”

“Aged out? But I’m only twenty-nine!”

“And that’s considered to be over-the-hill in this line of work. All the casting calls for bikini babes have an age specification of eighteen to twenty-five. These clients only want models who are young and nubile. I’ve been lying about your age for the past few years and you’ve been able to get away with it, but you’ve finally reached your expiration date. There’s just no way you can keep competing with all these girls who look like they were plucked out of freshman orientation on a college campus when you’re pushing thirty and things,” he stares pointedly at my breasts, “are starting to head south.”

I gasp in outrage. “Excuse you! Just because my boobs are real and don’t sit so high on my chest that they look like a couple of balloons getting ready to pop doesn’t mean they’re migrating anywhere. And my ass is just as tight and perky as it was when I did my first swimsuit calendar.” To illustrate my point, I turn around and give my shapely rear end, which is encased in white stretch denim shorts, a hard smack.

“You do look great,” I watch as a bead of nervous perspiration trickles down Marty’s lined forehead, “. . . for your age, and maybe if you’d had some success in other areas of modeling you could transition into focusing on those now, but you’ve always been a bit of a one-trick pony—”

“Not true—I have range! Are you forgetting about my stint on Éxtasis y Engaño last year?” I got a small, but pivotal, role on a very popular telenovela without even having to audition because the show’s producer had seen me in a commercial for a waterproof cell phone (I played a mermaid who retrieved a phone some idiot dropped off the side of a boat) and he thought I’d be perfect for the part of the female lead’s scheming younger sister. “That job showed that I’m more than just a pretty face and a hot body.”

“You got fired,” he reminds me.

“Through no fault of my own!” I declare indignantly. “That bruja Catalina Mercado was just jealous because I outshined her every time we were on-screen together.”

“And you slept with her husband.”

“Again, not my fault. At the time of my hook-up with Lorenzo, I was unaware of his status as Catalina’s significant other.” I raise my hand to look at my manicure (because it’s a lot more interesting than the current topic of conversation) and notice that the starfish on the corner of my pinkie fingernail has chipped off, which ruins the whole effect of my beach-themed nail art. I’ll have to make an appointment at NailBar to get it fixed. Something else that will require money!

“You met him in her dressing room.”

“I thought he was there to deliver something!” I exclaim, stomping my foot for emphasis. “He was holding a box and wearing a baseball cap.”

“Because he plays shortstop for the Marlins.”

“I didn’t find that out until after—”

“Catalina caught you having sex with Lorenzo on top of the designer gown she was supposed to wear to the Lo Nuestro Awards that night.”

Okay, for the record, I’m not some slut who bones randos on the reg, but Lorenzo is crazy hot (buff Latinos have always been my jam) and sitting around the set for hours on end, waiting to shoot my one scene, almost bored me into a stupor on that particular day. Getting a little somethin’ somethin’ from Lorenzo seemed like a good way to pass the time and alleviate my boredom. Of course, if I’d known how much drama my horizontal salsa with him was going to cause, I would have refrained. I lost a job I really liked and I didn’t even get a decent orgasm out of it! (Yeah, Catalina has really bad timing. If she’d just walked in a minute later . . .)

“I think she was more upset about the dress than she was Lorenzo,” I say, with a smirk. “Catalina’s on husband number three now, isn’t she?”

Marty frowns. “I think so. Why?”

“It just occurred to me that if she’s happy with this new man of hers, she probably doesn’t care about what happened with Lorenzo and me anymore and she might be willing to let bygones be bygones and—”

“Have the ban she had placed on you at Telemundo lifted?” His bushy right eyebrow shoots up questioningly.

“Maybe.” A girl can dream, can’t she?

Marty snickers. “Fat chance. She’s never going to stop hating your guts.”

“What about Univision then? Couldn’t I get a role on one of their telenovelas? If my modeling career is dead in the water, I need to find another source of income quick.”

“Nope, sorry.” He shakes his almost bald head. “You’re persona non grata over at that network, too. You know what a big deal Catalina is in the telenovela world; no one’s going to want to cross her by hiring you.”

“This blows,” I grouse, collapsing onto one of the crappy, plastic chairs facing Marty’s desk. “If I can’t model and I can’t act, how am I going to support myself? It’s not like I have any actual skills. I’ve always made money just being me and looking like this.” I run a hand up and down the length of my tall, curvaceous form.

“There’s always Hooters,” my about-to-be-ex-agent suggests. “I’ve heard those girls make great tips.”

Serving hot wings to a bunch of drunk lechers while wearing fugly orange booty shorts? My future is looking grimmer by the minute.

Picking up his iPhone, Marty starts tapping on its screen. “Oh, wait.” He grimaces. “Looks like Hooters has a ‘preferred age group’ for their waitresses.”

“Let me guess—early to mid-twenties?”

“Bingo.”

“Great! I’m such an unsexy, old hag even Hooters doesn’t want me. Ugh, I’m going to be jobless, penniless, possibly even homeless since I haven’t paid my rent in two months. What will become of me?” Heaving a forlorn sigh, I bring my hand to my forehead and swoon back in my chair, trying to look as pathetic as possible.

If you’re wondering where this dramatic streak comes from, I can tell you I didn’t pick it up in any acting class. I learned everything I ever needed to know about being theatrical and manipulating people so that they’ll do exactly what I want them to from Miami’s reigning Queen of Histrionics, Luisa Alvarez, aka my mother. Dramatic pronouncements; temper tantrums that would put the brattiest two-year-old to shame; sobbing on cue; impassioned monologues on how neglected, mistreated, and/or persecuted she is—these are all part of Mamá’s repertoire and I’m pretty good at aping her when it’s required, like now.

I need to put a first-class guilt trip on Marty so that he’ll feel sorry for poor, pitiful me and send me out on a job, any job. Hell, I’m so desperate right now I’d even be up for doing a boat show (one of the worst modeling gigs in town—you stand next to some overpriced floating tub in stilettos and a dental-floss bikini all day and flirt with potential buyers so that they can imagine having girls as smokin’ as you populating the boat if they were to purchase it).

“Hold on now. I can’t have you ending up on the street. You know you’re like a daughter to me.”

Yeah, right, because constantly trying to cop a feel is such a fatherly thing to do. I roll my eyes internally, but make a sad puppy face for Marty’s benefit.

“If you’re willing to lower your standards a little bit . . .”

I sit up eagerly and scoot to the edge of my chair. “As long as the job is happening soon and it pays, I’m there.”

“Okay, then . . .” He begins to shuffle through the stacks of paper on his desk. “No, no, definitely not, Janeen already booked this, would you be willing to go blonde?” Marty glances up at me. “Nah, you couldn’t pull it off,” he determines.

I would protest, but I found out last Halloween when I dressed up as Harley Quinn in platinum blonde pigtails (a wig!) that lighter hair doesn’t really work on me. I have a brand, and it’s dark and exotic.

“Too old, too short, too ethnic-looking, not thin enough—”

Scowling, I say, “You’d better be talking about Sofia Vergara, not me.”

“Yeah, sure, that’s who I was referring to.” He dives into another pile of papers while I drum my nails impatiently on his desk.

“I’m not getting any younger, Marty,” I proclaim a couple of minutes later.

“I know. That’s the problem,” he snaps back.

“Do I have to do your job for you?” Clearly, the answer is yes since he’s making such a production out of this, so I get out of my chair and walk around his desk, where I grab a handful of papers he has yet to peruse.

“Hey! Those casting call sheets are for my eyes only.” He tries to snatch the papers away from me, but I step back, out of his reach.

Dropping my eyes to the page on top, I quickly scan the description of what the client is looking for. “Oooooo, hand modeling—I could totally do that!”

“No, you can’t,” Marty immediately dismisses the idea.

“Why not? I have really nice hands.” I lift my right one up in the air so that I can admire it.

“They’ve been baking in the sun for decades, which is a big no-no if you’re a hand model. Those ladies wear gloves to protect their hands from damage every time they leave the house, and they have a strict regimen of buffing, moisturizing, paraffin wax treatments, and cuticle care.”

“That sounds like a lot of work for . . .,” I consult the casting call sheet again to see what payment for the job will be, “. . . not nearly enough money.” I crumple up the paper and toss it down on the desk.

“Get used to working for less, princess,” Marty says as he unwads the ball of paper. “You’re not in your prime anymore, which means your monetary value has gone way down.”

“You’re just full of good news today, aren’t you?” I query waspishly. “What’s next? Are you going to tell me that JLo and A-Rod broke up or WAGS Miami got cancelled?”

Before he can confirm either of those unthinkable things, his land line rings and he pounces on it, probably to avoid having to continue our conversation.

“Bronstein Talent. Marty speaking. Yeah, hi, Tonya. How’s it—you’ve got what?”

When I give him a questioning look, he puts his hand over the receiver and says in an exaggerated whisper, ‘Mono.’

The kissing disease? Yeah, that sounds about right. From what I’ve heard, Tonya’s not very choosy about where she puts her mouth.

“So, you’ll get some of those super-antibiotics, and you’ll be fine by Saturday. No? Are you sure? I hate for you to miss out on this gig. Okay, let me know when you’re back on your feet. I’ll have Fabiana e-mail you my mother’s recipe for chicken soup with matzo balls. That’ll cure anything.”

He hangs up the phone and levels his bug-eyed gaze on me. “The man upstairs must be looking out for you. You wanted a job, and one just fell into your lap.”