A sympathetic grimace. “Why not?”
“My parents won’t let me.”
“Yes, that’s right.” He laced his fingers, pulled them apart. “And I’ll bet that’s not all they’re unfair about. You probably even have a strict curfew, right?”
She shrugged again.
“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.” He looked thoughtful. “How old are you, Tania?”
“Seventeen,” she said. “Like my uncle told you.”
He shifted his weight from foot to foot. “So beautiful, so bright, but so… stifled. Held back. Distrusted,” he said, shaking his head. “Believe me, I’ve heard it before, more times than you could believe.” His gaze touched gently on hers. “Seventeen is old enough to start making your own decisions, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” she said. Then: “That’s why I’m here.”
“I know.” His eyes were full of sympathy and understanding. “I’ll help you, Tania,” he said. “I swear it.”
He sat down on the edge of the bed, unzipped the smaller of the two bags he’d brought, and pulled out a laptop computer. He unfolded it, rested it on his knees, and pushed a button. The computer hummed, and a moment later the screen turned from black to gray to blue.
“Let me show you what we’ll be doing together.” He gave her a slantwise look, then patted the bedspread beside him. “You won’t be able to see from way up there,” he said. “Sit.”
When she hesitated, his face turned solemn, as if he was on the verge of taking offense. “Sweetie, I feel like we already know each other so well,” he said. “I understand you. I know what you’re trying to escape from. But you have to trust me. So keep me company. Sit.”
She sat.
It was called TeenHeaven. The letters were spelled out in a flowing script with a pink heart where the “a” should have been. The Place Where All Your Non-Nude Dreams Come True,” a second line read.
“Whose dreams?” she asked.
He turned his head to look at her. She could feel the heat of his leg just a few inches from hers, and all at once she was aware of her body. Her heart pounding beneath her breasts, the band of her panties digging into her hip, a tickle of sweat snaking down the back of her neck.
“Yours,” he said softly. “Your dreams, Tania.”
“And theirs too.” She glanced at him. “The members.”
“Yes,” he said. “And why not? Why shouldn’t we please them? They’re men and women who appreciate the energy and spirit and beauty of youth, and are willing to open their wallets to prove it.”
His smile was warm on her face.
“But deep down they’re nothing to me-just ghosts, phantoms out there in cyberspace. Numbers on a credit- card slip. You…” he sighed. “You’re real. You’re sitting right here with me. And your dreams are the only ones that matter.”
A row of portraits, eight in all, each contained within an oval of a different pastel color. Cameos, they looked like, or popsicles, or candy eggs with girls trapped inside.
Pretty girls, fifteen years old, sixteen, seventeen. A name below each portrait, with the i’s dotted with smiley faces: Jessica and Kristi and Nata, Suz and Miki and Beatriz. Smiling at the camera or giving it a pouty look.
“This is where I’ll be?” Tania asked. “Here?”
“At first,” Gary said. “Just at first.”
He reached up and brushed the side of her face with his fingers, the lightest of touches. “I’m amazed by you,” he said. “You must be the most beautiful girl in Baltimore. I know that the camera will love you as much as I do.”
She blushed.
He turned back to the computer. His fingers moved across the touchpad, the moisture from her cheek leaving momentary trails on the gray surface.
“Here’s how it’ll go,” Gary said. “We’ll do the first few shoots today, here. I’ll introduce you on TeenHeaven as my newest discovery-” She heard him take a breath. “Boy, will the members be happy to meet you And then, in a couple of weeks, we’ll get together again and do a full-scale session, maybe ten, twelve different outfits. Get a thousand great shots, easy, and use the best of them for the grand opening of your own site.”
He paused, thinking, then smiled at her. “What say we call it ‘Blooming Tania’?”
Glorious Gloria was tall and slender, with dark, wiry hair and olive skin. She often wore short-shorts, halter tops that were a size or two too small for her, long dangly earrings, brightly colored headbands. She always looked only half-awake, smiling sleepily over her bony shoulder at the camera or lying on a tan sofa in a living room with splintery floors and peeling wallpaper, her toes pointed to accentuate the length of her legs.
Starlight Stacy lived on a farm someplace warm. Even in winter she was always outdoors, feeding the chickens in her shorty pajamas, posing in muddy boots and a bathing suit amid rows of vegetables, scraping the flesh of an orange off the peel with her even white teeth, swinging on a tire in a miniskirt.
Dream Jeannie had freckles everywhere: her face, her arms, between her breasts. All her photographs were taken indoors. She almost always wore bathing suits, and had moved from tankinis in her earlier galleries to thongs in her most recent, suits so insubstantial as to leave her practically naked.
Tania felt her face grow hot again.
“I know,” Gary said. “Not until you’re ready. But you’ll be amazed at how fast you become comfortable with the… more revealing outfits. Everyone does.”
Joyful Jane, though, didn’t look comfortable. In fact, her modeling name seemed like a joke, or an indictment. She never smiled, never once, as she posed. Her large, dark eyes and prominent cheekbones gave her a vulnerable look.
“My shy one,” murmured Gary. “Popular because she’s shy.”
“She looks like me,” Tania said.
Gary glanced up from the screen at her face. “Not a surprise, really.”
Tania looked at him.
“Sweetie, you come from the same tribe.”
“Everywhere,” he told her. “They’re from everywhere. Gloria is from Sandy, Utah. Melanie-I didn’t show you her-lives in Froid, Montana. Stacy hails from Balm, Florida-”
“Are those real places?”
Gary laughed. “Yes, and there’s a million more just like them. All filled with girls desperate to get out.”
Tania thought about that. “So all your other models are from small towns?”
“Uh-huh. Big-city girls cause too many problems.” Then he shook his head. “Well, Jane lives in Milwaukee, but she’s the exception to the rule.” He smiled. “Just like you are. The same exact kind of exception.”
He gave a fond laugh at the confusion on her face. “Where did your family come from, Tania? Russia?”
“The Ukraine.”
“Same thing.” His hand touched her knee for emphasis, withdrew. “Look, sweetie, I know about Jews. Immigrant Jews. They don’t move here looking for big-city lights. Wherever they settle, even if it’s New York or L.A., they build their own small town.”
Again that quick touch. “Take you. Your address says you live in Baltimore, but I know that you’re really from the village of Park Heights. It might as well be a thousand miles from anywhere. You shop at your own stores, eat in your own restaurants, keep with your own kind. It’s true, isn’t it?”
She nodded.
“Especially for the girls,” he said. “I mean, you don’t even get to have a computer. Too busy learning to cook while the men read the Bible, right? You wouldn’t even know about me if your uncle hadn’t broken away from the tribe and told you.”
He smiled at her silence. “Let me ask you something,” he said. “Those jeans, that sweatshirt-is that how you get to dress at home?”
“No,” she said.
“Of course not. You have to, like, cover up everything, right?” He frowned, on her side. “And do they ever tell you you’re beautiful?”
She shook her head.
Radiating warmth, he leaned toward her, reached out and rubbed the back of her neck. “Well, you are,” he
