The makeup artist finished setting up and began working on my face while Jonathan cooked dinner. He offered me a glass of red wine, which, in my nervousness and desire to seem older and wiser than I was, I accepted and drank quickly. I took deep sips as the makeup artist painted thick, black, wet liner on the tops of my eyelids. I opened my iPhone’s selfie camera in my lap to check her work. She was making me look pretty, transforming me to fit Jonathan’s aesthetic vision. When he laid out old-fashioned lingerie on a kitchen chair, I began to grasp what type of girl he wanted me to be. My agent hadn’t mentioned that the shoot would be lingerie, but I wasn’t concerned; I’d done countless lingerie shoots before. I could imagine her writing to me the next day, “Jonathan loved you. Can’t wait to see pics! Xx,” as she had on other occasions.
Jonathan’s kids were picked up by someone who did not come inside the house, while the makeup artist finished preparing my face. When he was done cooking, Jonathan, the makeup artist, and I all sat around the kitchen table eating pasta, as if we were a small family. He talked about his “crazy” ex-wife and his affair with a “crazy” actress, now twenty-one （a year older than me, I noted）。 He told me about his marriage’s undoing; that the actress, whom Jonathan had cast for a short film he’d been making at the time, came to live with them. He showed me naked pictures, Polaroids, he’d taken during their affair. She seemed so vulnerable in Jonathan’s photos, even though I could tell she was trying to look strong and grown-up from the way she held her face square to the camera, chin up, her hair falling perfectly over one eye.
“No one has shot her better,” he said over his shoulder, as I continued to riffle through the Polaroids.
Something switched inside me then. As I looked at the images, I grew competitive. This guy shoots all these women, but I’m going to show him that I’m the sexiest and smartest of them all. That I am special. I chewed on my lower lip as I handed the neat stack of Polaroids back to Jonathan.
I wondered where he normally kept these Polaroids. Were they all meticulously labeled in a giant filing cabinet somewhere in his attic, the names of young women written in ink on their assigned drawers? The image of a morgue came to mind.
It was dark, and my hair was still in rollers as I finished my third glass of wine, my mouth stained purple. I was used to unusual setups on shoots, but I’d never been in a situation like this before. I made sure not to eat too much, while Jonathan silently refilled my glass and I kept drinking. In the industry, I’d been taught that it was important to earn a reputation as hardworking and easygoing. “You never know who they’ll be shooting with next!” my agent would remind me. We finished our meal relatively quickly, and I helped bring dishes to the sink as Jonathan washed them. “Thank you, that was so good,” I said politely. I turned and leaned against the counter, opening my phone. Jonathan sneered. “You girls and your Instagram. You’re obsessed! I don’t get it,” he said, shaking his head and drying a plate with a dish towel.
The makeup artist painted on a bright-red lipstick, and I changed into a high-waisted pink lingerie set. We headed to the upstairs bedroom to begin shooting. I sat up on an antique brass bed frame, my knees pressing into the faded floral-print sheets. As Jonathan shot the first Polaroid, I explained that modeling was just about making money for me. “When the economy crashed and I started to get more opportunities to work, it just made sense that I’d pursue this while I could,” I said. I was used to defining myself with this explanation, to men especially. “I’m not dumb; I know modeling has its expiration date. I just want to save a lot of money and then go back to school or start making art or whatever.”
Jonathan frowned as he inspected the Polaroid. “You girls always end up spending too much money on shoes and bags,” he said. “It’s not a way to save real money.”
“I don’t buy bags,” I said weakly, but I began to doubt myself. I was dumbfounded by his easy dismissal of my life’s plan, and began to panic. What if he was right? What if at the end of this I really would have nothing?
He paused then and turned, silently walking back downstairs to the kitchen. I followed behind, shoeless and in my lingerie set. He spread the Polaroids out on the table and scratched his head, inspecting them. I peered at the pictures from over his shoulder. “These are just kind of … boring and stiff,” he said with a sigh. “Maybe take off the red lipstick, fuck up your hair.” He waved his hand at the makeup artist and went to the counter to open another bottle of wine, pouring fresh glasses for himself and me. The makeup artist rubbed her nails roughly into my scalp, loosening my curls. I could feel the acidic burn of alcohol in my chest as we proceeded back upstairs.