Model Guy by Simon Brooke Read Free Book Online

called Penny who was based in an attic in a street just off the Kings Road
in Chelsea. She was on her own apart from a very pretty looking Oriental bloke in
a black polo neck and a rather jolly hockey sticks girl in a faded denim jacket.
Cig in mouth, she flicked through Paul's cards at 90 miles an hour as the others
had done and said they were really great but they weren't quite right for her at
the moment. Then she looked at mine.
      But this time she did
it at 30 miles per hour and then showed them to the Oriental bloke. He looked through
as well, looked up at me, raised his eyebrows at her and nodded and then handed
them back. Then she called over to the girl to get a portfolio. She began to slide
them into it, taking a moment to choose the best order for them.
      "Okay, lovey, you'll
have to get some more done and we'll need to talk about a card," she said as
she pushed my stupid, naff, amateur pictures down into the plastic wallet of each
page of the black, shiny book with JET in big red letters over the front. Still
with the cig in her mouth, its ash wilting precariously now, she showed me a contract
and told me to sign at the bottom which I did in a slight daze with the pen the
girl gave me as I opened my mouth to ask for one. Paul looked on as we both realised
that weirdly enough, at the end of this long hot, exhausting day, our faces glazed
with perspiration and pollution, I had done it. I had entered the world of modelling
- even though I wasn't really sure I wanted to.
      Afterwards Paul was dismissive.
      "Never mind, mate,
thanks for coming along with me," he said over a very welcome cold beer in
the Chelsea Potter in the King's Road.
      "No problem,"
I, said, just wishing we could swap places. He obviously wanted it so much and I
just wasn't really that bothered.

 
    Penny's agency grew, moved to bigger offices, took on more people
and my career has sort of taken off with it over the past eight years. My current
booker, Karyn, joined three years ago and we speak almost every day. We sometimes
go out for a drink and I was the first person she rang after she split up with her
boyfriend. She came over for dinner, which should have been fun but she and Lauren
didn't seem to get on with each other, so I don't mention one to the other now.
      Am I good looking? Well,
I must have something, although I'm never quite sure what it is. When I first started
working, one girl said to me thoughtfully: 'You've got the kind of face I'd like
to see if I was lost in a foreign railway station and I didn't speak the language."
      I think that's a compliment.

 
    Having waved modelling goodbye - perhaps, only temporarily, of
course - my first day in my new job, on the first floor of a building in Soho, drags
a bit because there is so little for me to do. The office itself has maroon walls
and all the desks are heavy constructions in dark wood which contrast beautifully
with our white and clear Perspex state-of-the-art Apple Macs, I notice. That, somehow,
can't be a coincidence. There is a sort of fresco painted on the ceiling. Piers
has already explained that the room is intended to look cool but understated and
cost effective to make it clear to our investors and trading partners that all their
money is going into the product. Whatever that is.
      He shows me 'my desk'.
      'My desk'.
      What my parents always
wanted. Okay, I'm not wearing a suit but I've still got a desk with a phone on it.
Their reaction when I told them that I was going to start modelling was every bit
as joyous as if I'd said I was going to join a monastery or become a Bangkok ladyboy.
I kept trying to explain that I was just going to do it for a while until I worked
out what I wanted in the way of a career. Their sad, anxious looks every time the
subject was raised drove me bonkers with irritation.
      "What shall we tell
our friends when they ask what you're doing now?" said my mum as if this was
the final, clinching argument against this whole