forward and back, dissatisfied with both positions. “What do you expect me to do with this hair?” He pushed it away from her face and gathered it up in back.
“What’s wrong with my hair?” Whitney said.
“Besides the color, the cut and the style, nothing at all.”
Homes-Leighton was peering through the lens of his camera. “That’s a phat look for her.”
“Fat?” Whitney said.
“Cool,” Leo said. “He means cool. That’s a good look for you, with your hair up. Really shows off your features. Just pin it up,” he said to Fraunces.
“I am a make-up artist,” Fraunces said. “I am not Anne Sullivan.” He let Whitney’s hair fall.
Whitney said, “Who’s Anne Sullivan?”
Fraunces turned back to Whitney. “A few more hours, I’d dye that hair. Blue-black, honey. Those eyes would shine like diamonds.”
“I don’t want black hair,” Whitney said.
“What’re we shooting here,” Leo said, “the cover of
Homes-Leighton said, “Word.”
“But I don’t want black hair,” Whitney whined.
Leo shut her up with a stare.
Fraunces went into his kit and came up with a mouthful of bobby pins. Covering her hair with a silk scarf, he knotted it at her forehead. It gave Whitney a Twenties kind of glamour. Perfect.
Homes-Leighton posed Whitney in front of a screen, chattering instructions. He snapped pictures, providing his own soundtracky babble, like he was starring in a TV commercial.
“Look left, that’s it, chin up. Gorgeous. Okay, chin down, eyes right. Beautiful, baby. That’s the way.”
Whitney got loose and started to have a good time, and while Homes-Leighton changed rolls, Fraunces attacked with a brush or a cloth, or his naked finger, a swipe, a stroke, a dip or a dab.
Homes-Leighton dove in. “Okay, give me a sexy look.”
Whitney took a stab at a fuck-me stare.
“Sassy-sexy, pouty.”
Whitney plumped her lips.
Leo thought, if he says, Make love to the camera, I’m gonna hit him with a chair. He lost track of how many rolls Homes-Leighton had shot, but they’d been at it for over an hour.
“This is fun,” Whitney giggled.
Homes-Leighton said, “You’re a natural.” A line of sweat stained the band of his backwards Kangol cap.
“I think we’ve got what we need,” Leo said.
Fraunces said, “I should hope so.” He was looking at a wristwatch with a transparent casing and a transparent strap.
Leo pulled a full vial of coke out of his pocket. “Lunch time,” he said. “Who wants to do a bump?”
“Two hundred,” Homes-Leighton was saying, “what’s up with that?”
“What’s up with that is, your memory sucks, buddy. I told you two and that’s what you’re getting.” Leo stuck two new hundreds into Homes-Leighton’s hand.
“What about Fraunces? I gotta hit him off.” He made a fist around the bills. “That’s gotta come out of here?”
“Stuart, Stuart,” Leo said, spreading his fingers into a stop sign. Arguing over money with a guy whose family could buy the town. “Let me ask you a question. You have a good time today?”
“That’s not the point,” Homes-Leighton sniffed, rubbing his nose.
“Then let me ask you another question, blue-blood. When was the last time anybody hired you to do a photo job at any rate?”
Homes-Leighton tilted his double-chinned face into profile.
“What you get out of this, besides the two hundred, which, by the way, is the going rate for tests, and also by the way, you could wipe your ass with and I know that, is some quality prints for your book. How do you know Whitney isn’t going to be the next Christy Turlington?”
“A little short for that.”
“Okay then, Kate Moss.” Leo knew this was a stretch, but fuck it. “What I’m saying is, here I am, doing you a solid, and you gotta force me to make you feel bad.”
Homes-Leighton caved. “Alright. But you gotta throw for the lab fee.”
“Not a problem,” Leo said. “Just like we talked about.”
Leo looked out at Fraunces, who was in the front seat of the Olds with his arms folded. Leo’d broken out all the blow he was going to do with them, and he needed them to get lost so he could get high the way he wanted to get high.
“So listen,” Leo said, “if you got everything you need, there’s a few things I wanna take care of around here...”
Homes-Leighton got the message. He put Leo through the mechanics of a handshake that started with a hug and ended with Homes-Leighton snapping his fingers.
Leo was almost rid of him when Homes-Leighton turned around and said, “Oh, shit. Did you hear? Remember that grotty white trash guy?”
Leo said, “Which one?”
“You remember,” Homes-Leighton said. “He was short and he had an ante-bellum name. He was tight with your Cuban homeboy. Beauregard, Beaumond. That’s it, Beaumond. Remember him?”
Leo felt like he had a golf ball blocking his windpipe, saying, “Yeah?”, but it came out a squeak. He cleared his throat. “What about him?”
“I heard they pulled his body out of the Glades. Somebody popped a cap in his ass and dumped him out there.”
“How’d they know it was him?” Leo’s limbs went cold.
“Dunno,” said Homes-Leighton, suddenly sounding very English, “dental records? Why’re you wearing that look? If you ask me, it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.” He said a few more things Leo wouldn’t remember, Leo just staring as he backed the Olds out of the driveway.
The bus hissed into Port Authority and circled up a number of ramps before coming to a stop with a jerk. Harry wanted to check out the overhauled Times Square that had been making all the network newscasts, but today wasn’t the day for it, so he walked east a block to Seventh and jumped into a cab.
One of the last of the Single Room Occupancies, the Downtowner was home to assorted lowlifes and deadbeats, drifters and hustlers in pocket for a week or two. The building was still warehousing its share of welfare barnacles until the government installed them in plusher digs, but one lifer, subsisting on a shrunken trust fund, was the grandson of a shipping tycoon, and on any given week, the register featured a handful of nine-to-fivers, hanging on till they found apartments they could afford. For extra flavor, the Downtowner was a favorite landing strip of Midwestern rockers grinding out Econoline tours.
The glow from the sidewalk warned him, but now, standing in the lobby, Harry was blinded by a bank of lights aimed at three girls on a sofa, primped to pose. They were young, but they were not tender, huffing lowtar cigarettes and bitching about the cold, their clodhopper platforms and knobby knees sticking out from under their mini-skirts.
The front desk was formerly boxed off behind scratched plexiglass that had a cash slot and a two-way speaker. But the partition was gone, and so was the old desk. In its place stood a sleek modern model, fake mahogany buffed to a high gloss. The dingy wallpaper behind it had been stripped off and painted over. Harry’s shoes sunk into new carpeting. It looked like the Downtowner had swallowed a stiff shot of its own cutrate publicity.
Harry was relieved to see Davey Boy, not too much of a boy any more, but still front and center. He was looking horribly pleased with himself. He had his hair done in a South Beach bob, that all-one-length hairdo Leo
