Box Girl by Lilibet Snellings Read Free Book Online Page B

“Well that’s not like a real holiday.”
    Model: “What do you mean?”
    Me: “The banks aren’t closed, the schools aren’t . . . you know what, forget it. Enjoy your day!”
    The models often stopped by the office to pick up checks or say hello. They’d roll in, looking effortlessly stunning without a stitch of makeup, sipping iced coffee and smelling of cigarettes. Sometimes, if they didn’t have any castings to attend, they’d hang out all day, twirling around in office chairs, regaling us with stories of parties at celebrities’ houses in the Hollywood Hills. Some would prattle on while we worked at our desks, trying to ignore them. One day, one of the models announced that she wanted to get a gap put in her teeth.
    â€œWait. Put in ?” I asked, swiveling toward her in my desk chair. She was picking something out of her hair.
    â€œDuh,” she explained. “Fucked-up teeth are so in right now.” (Granted, this was the same girl who once referred to parentheses as “those half-moon thingies.”)
    Another time, an older client—she had graduated to catalog modeling—fell out of her chair mid-sentence.
    â€œOh my god, Valerie, are you okay?” I reached for her wrist, its circumference the size of a silver dollar.
    â€œThe funny thing,” she said as I pulled her back onto thechair, “is this is the first time I’ve come into the office sober!” She laughed like a maniac.
    â€œBut Valerie, you always come into the office at, like, 11:00 am.”
    â€œI know!” she howled. More maniacal laughter.
    Successfully relaying audition information to the models was another challenge. This was back when phone calls were still the primary mode of communication and before most cell phones had email access. I’d have to dictate five-digit street addresses—“11317 Ventura Boulevard, Studio City, CA 91604”—over the phone, frequently to someone who was, at that moment, driving, smoking, and petting a small dog in a purse on her passenger seat. Time and time again, while making one of these calls, a model would answer and stop me mid–zip code.
    â€œWait, will you call back and leave this on my voicemail?” she’d ask.
    â€œWell, I would have left it on your voicemail in the first place if you hadn’t picked up,” is what I wanted to say. But what I’d really say was, “Sure! No problem!” and then hang up, re-dial, re-recite.
    This was also well before iPhones and cars with navigation. This was the era of the Thomas Guide , though none of these models owned one. Addresses were often so garbled by bad cell connections that they were totally lost in translation. One afternoon, a model called me in an absolute panic.
    â€œWhere the hell is this casting?” she demanded, in a whisper.
    I repeated the addresses.
    â€œThat’s where I am ,” she breathily snapped back, “and there is a sign on the door that says NO GUNS ALLOWED .”
    After some back-and-forth we realized that she thought I had said “Perry Avenue” instead of “Barry Avenue,” which landed her right in the middle of the hood. “Okay,” I instructed her, now also whispering. “Walk away from the house, get back in your car, and lock the door.”
    Almost daily, the agency received presents, and most of them were edible. I always thought it was sort of cruel to send your agents cornucopias full of crap you’d never eat yourself. A cookie and muffin combo would arrive from a fancy LA bakery, with a card attached that read: “Thank you for booking me on the Revlon job!” This, from a girl who wouldn’t be caught dead eating a muffin. In those first six months, I gained fifteen pounds. I know this because there was a scale in the agency’s kitchen. The kitchen . It was for weighing the models, but of course we weighed ourselves too, the boxes of