Picture Imperfect Read online

  By the time that’s done, I’ve got a steaming cup of coffee ready and waiting. I sit in front of my laptop in the small dining space that’s also my kitchen and pull up my website and social media accounts.

  It’s the only apartment I could afford on my own, and there are only three rooms, really. The kitchen-slash-dining-room, the bedroom-slash-living-room and a tremendously tiny bathroom. There’s also a closet that’s about the same size as the bathroom, but at least they’re actual separate rooms.

  I’m scanning around, still half awake, when I notice my Twitter followers have increased.

  I turn my head just in time to spit my coffee all over the kitchen floor.

  “Ten thousand?” I yell into the empty apartment. “Ten thousand?”

  What happened? I click around and find a tweet of an article with my name in it.

  It’s been shared almost twenty thousand times.

  “Holy shit.”

  A few more clicks and I find a Buzzed article written by Liz Masterson.

  Liz was doing the reality show piece; why would she write anything about me?

  There’s a picture, an old one from a shoot when I was still modeling. Next to it is one of Scarlett at Miguel’s. The headline reads “Former Model Stops a Rape.”

  I scan through it. Liz wrote a piece about what happened last night. She calls me the Wonder Woman of Broad Street. Snorting a laugh, I click to my blog. Thousands more followers there, too.

  What the fuck?

  My email box has exploded with job offers. Most of them are still of the celeb “please shoot my wedding/child/family photos” variety, but they’re jobs. More than I could ever accept and enough to cover my rent for a while for sure.

  Maybe this month I’ll spring for the fancy ramen noodles in the big pack.

  I power on my phone, and there are a ton of missed calls and messages there, too. I groan. I need an assistant. Half those calls are probably media outlets that I do not want to call back.

  Been there, done that.

  In between all the job offers is another rejection from a high-profile political rag, which puts a damper on my excitement. I’ve been pitching my idea for a year now and can’t even get a bite.

  There’s a light tap at my door and I get up and open it without looking through the peephole.

  “Hey, Martha.” I dash back to my computer, absorbed by the magic happening on my laptop.

  “Good morning, dearie.” Martha steps into my kitchen, shutting the door behind her and heading straight for my coffee pot.

  Martha is my neighbor. She’s about ninety years old and comes over every morning to drink my coffee. She also steals weird things like Q-tips, garbage bags, and tampons. Even though I’m pretty sure she hasn’t PMS’d in at least forty years. I’m not sure why she takes my things, but I just let her. She bakes me cookies sometimes, so it’s a fair trade.

  “Are you busy today?”

  I glance over at the question. She’s wearing her trademark pink floral nightgown and her hair is in curlers. It’s always in curlers. “Um, sort of. I have a bunch of new followers on social media.”

  She blinks. “Oh. Can I use your bathroom?”

  “Sure, Martha.”

  She disappears into my bathroom for so long I nearly forget she’s there. Then she’s out the door without so much as a goodbye, the pockets of her gown bulging.

  I laugh. No matter how “famous” I might be, some things will never change.

  An hour later I’m still clicking around online, amazed at all the sudden publicity, when my phone rings, and this time I recognize the number.

  “Victoria?” I answer. I haven’t talked to her since the Times Square photo. She’s the reason I got the job in the first place, but after everything that happened since. . .

  “Are you free today? We have a shoot in Harlem. ‘New York’s Sexiest.’ It’s for Stylz.”

  In true Victoria fashion, she acts as if nothing’s happened and it was only yesterday she was talking me up and promising me the world.

  I don’t really want to do it. Stylz magazine is the same magazine that printed the article describing my shame to the world. But I’m over it. I’m not letting my past drag me down. Again. Even though it’s more celebrity nonsense, I would be a fool to say no.

  Everyone knows Victoria. Turning her down now would be professional suicide.

  “What time?”

  Chapter Two

  Life, for people, begins to crumble on the edges; they don’t realize it.

  –Dorothea Lange

  MARC

  MY FATHER HAS THE UNCANNY ability to take a decent day and turn it into a shit sandwich.

  “Do you have those TPS reports?”

  “Hello, Dad. Good morning to you, too.”

  It’s almost afternoon. I left work last night at eleven, and I was back in the door seven hours later. He probably wandered in a few minutes ago and expects the world to fall at his feet.

  Story of my life.

  I’m too exhausted to deal with him.

  I can’t see my father through the phone, but I can picture him at his desk. I’m sure he’s dressed in an Armani suit that costs more than the GDP of a small country, and he likely still reeks of booze from the night before. While I was here, working late into the evening, he was out schmoozing some clients that flew in from China. I’d bet my left foot he hasn’t even looked at his desk yet to see if I gave him his damn reports.

  “What?” he barks in response to my greeting.

  “I put them on your desk before I left last night.”

  Muttered curses fill my ear and the shuffle of paper crinkles in the background. His desk is always a hurricane of reports and paperwork that he can barely read anymore, let alone keep track of.

  I don’t know why he bothers coming in at all. He doesn’t do anything but bluster and curse and freak out the administrative staff. He’s never been good at anything that doesn’t require charming people out of their money with fancy dinners and pretty women.

  I wait, tense and still, wondering what he’ll want next.

  There’s a click when he hangs up on me without another word, and I release a sigh into the silence. I put the phone back on its base and look out the bank of windows into the city.

  I’m on the top floor of one of the biggest corporations in New York City. It’s a dream job, really. For anyone else. My grandfather was an immigrant from Scotland and he started the company all by himself when he was in his early twenties. It was a simple enough idea, a one-stop shop for all of the restaurants in the city to purchase kitchen supplies. Now we supply products for thousands of eating establishments across the country, including home stores and giant superstore chains. The company is worth millions.

  It was a forgone conclusion that I would work here and eventually take over, especially when my brother Brent began excelling in sports and I had my little accident.

  But the truth is, I kind of hate it.

  The phone rings. It’s not Dad this time but his assistant.

  “Marc here.”

  “Marc, it’s Alex.”

  Poor, poor Alex. My dad sucks, but I’m his child and although technically I’m just an employee with no ownership interest in the company, he wouldn’t get rid of me or do anything to hurt me, really. Nothing more than he already does. Alex is the fifth assistant he’s had in the last six months. “What’s going on?”

  “Well, it’s about Mr. Crawford.”

  “It usually is. What is he doing now?”

  “He told me only to interrupt him if Dane Jones calls, and well, Dane Jones is on the phone for him.”

  “Okaaay.”

  Alex sighs. “Then he shut his door and put his phone on busy. I can hear the music.”

  Typical Dad behavior. If Alex interrupts him when his music is on, he’ll be fired. But if Dad finds out Dane Jones called and Alex didn’t interrupt him after he explicitly told him to, he’ll be fired.

  Dad’s a seventy-year-old
toddler.

  “Ah. I gotcha. Be right there.”

  We hang up and I take a few deep breaths to prepare myself before I leave the relative safety of my office.

  The same thing happens every time I move anywhere inside the building.

  “Marc, will you sign this?” Grace stops me, an accountant who’s been with the company since I was a child and does the work of ten people while managing to be the office grandmother.

  “Can I get you to look at these numbers?” Eric from marketing is next. He’s going through a divorce and has been obviously stressed lately. I tell him to leave the reports on my desk.

  “Do you think Trina in marketing would go on a date with me?” This from an IT woman I hired last year. Charlie. She hands me a coffee and walks with me.

  “Asking out coworkers is a bad idea. And I think she’s straight.” I take a sip and then frown. Way too much sugar.

  She groans. “Why are all the good women taken?”

  “When you find out, let me know.” I lift the coffee cup in her direction. “Next time, just make it black.”

  “But you need something sweet in your life.” She pats me on the shoulder before disappearing down a hallway.

  By the time I make it to Dad’s office, Alex is doing a nervous dance outside the door.

  I drop my coffee in his trash. “Don’t worry, I’ve got it.” I walk past him and open the door without knocking. “Dad, Dane Jones is on the phone.” I have to nearly yell the words over the music blaring in the background. Frank Sinatra. He listens to it every time he starts dating someone new. So every other week.

  He motions for me to shut off his music and I click the button, thrusting his office into silence.

  “Dane Jones is on the phone,” I repeat.

  With a quick, frustrated breath, he picks up his phone and pushes some buttons. “This thing doesn’t work,” he grumbles. “Where is that damn secretary of mine? Andrew!”

  “His name is Alex.”

  He points the phone in my direction. “Never heard of a man being a secretary. It’s not natural. I don’t know why you won’t let me pick my own staff.”

  Because the last two people he hired were blonde and buxom. And while I’m sure they were excellent at their jobs, he immediately started dropping things to make them bend over, kept asking one of them if there was a mirror in her pocket, and gave the other one a dress code with nothing on it. It was literally a list that said wear nothing. I don’t have time to deal with sexual harassment lawsuits on top of everything else.

  But I’ve learned the best answer to Dad’s questions is silence or a subject change.

  I walk to his desk and push the button next to the call Alex put on hold. “There.”

  “Dane,” Dad barks into the phone. “Let me call you right back.” Then he hangs up on him.

  I take a deep breath and count to ten. I will not kill my father today, I will not kill my father today.

  “Did you finish that paperwork I asked for yesterday?”

  The same paperwork you asked me about ten minutes ago? I pick up the bound papers off the corner of his desk and hand it to him. “Yes. It’s right here.”

  He flips through the pages, squinting at the words.

  He needs to put on his glasses. He has them, he just refuses to wear them. He avoids anything that would make him look less than a “real man,” even when he’s only in the company of his son.

  Narcissism, thy name is Father.

  He finally puts the papers down on his desk. “Why were you here late working? You’re young. You should be out partying with your brother. If anyone can pull in the tail, it’s him. He could help you out, even with that ugly mug of yours.” He laughs at his own joke.

  Like I don’t realize how I look. After the accident, he pestered me for months about getting plastic surgery for that “horrible disfigurement.”

  It’s just some scars.

  I’ve told him I have a girlfriend about six times. Not that he remembers. I’ve made a deal with myself that I won’t tell him the same thing more than ten times because I’m pretty sure the eleventh time, an angel somewhere gets his wings ripped off.

  “Brent’s not going out these days. The season started three months ago.” Besides that, ever since Bella broke up with Brent, he hasn’t had much interest in partying. Not that Dad would know that. Brent and I don’t share personal stuff with him. We know better.

  “You’re right.” A sentence that would be surprising if he stopped there. “Brent is getting it done every time he has an away game, I’m sure. He’s probably banged a chick in every state. You should learn from your brother.” There’s more chortling and nudging.

  If I had been out partying, I wouldn’t have gotten the work done that he wanted and he would have faulted me for that. There’s no winning here, only pacifying the beast as best I can.

  This place would fall down without me.

  Pressure builds behind my eyes. I can’t take this much longer. Can a thirty-year-old have a stroke? I take a deep breath and picture myself somewhere else. On a tropical beach. Touring an ancient castle in Europe. Exploring the Great Wall of China.

  Anywhere but here.

  “Will Brent have time to do those commercials we talked about?” Dad asks.

  Brent has become the official spokesperson for the company. Dad’s been wanting to open a home and kitchen chain store, starting upstate and eventually branching to the rest of the country. He’s been using Brent’s star power to get the funding to make it happen.

  “He’s already done a couple of the ads. We won’t need him again until the season is over.”

  “We really need to get a jump on this if the expansion is going to work.”

  Which is why I was here until late last night, working out the logistics for exclusivity deals with a few key distributors. Which is what the paperwork I just handed him covers. “I’m on it, Dad. I’ll let you call Dane back.”

  I use the excuse to leave his office. A few seconds after I shut his door, the music comes back on.

  He’ll forget to return Dane’s call, and no doubt it will somehow be my fault.

  I make it back to my office with only a few interruptions but as soon as I shut the door, my cell rings.

  It’s Brent.

  “Hey,” I answer the phone.

  “Hey, best brother in the world.”

  “I’m your only brother in this world.”

  “Semantics.”

  “What do you want?”

  “What makes you think I want something? Can’t I just call my big brother to tell him how awesome he is?” There’s soft, measured tapping in the background and I can picture him pacing the living room and tossing his football up and down. It’s what he always does. The ball is the same one he got for Christmas when he was ten. He plays with it when he’s on the phone or thinking or doing pretty much anything where his hands are free.

  “Is that it?” I glance at my watch. “Because I’ve got to go. Dad’s going to be calling me about something ridiculous within the next sixty seconds and while I love hearing about how awesome I am, I’m not sure I have time right now.”

  “You sound stressed. You need a break and I have just the thing.”

  “Aha, the truth comes out. What do you want? And why can’t we ever start with this?” There’s a new stack of paperwork on my desk that wasn’t there ten minutes ago. I pick up the top sheet and frown at it. What now?

  “I don’t want anything from you. I want to help you.”

  Can he help me with this marketing report that magically appeared out of nowhere? Probably not. “Help me how?”

  “Well, you see I have this photo shoot—”

  “Okay, let me stop you there with a hard pass. Anything that starts with photo and ends with shoot does not sound like something I am into.”

  “Hear me out. It’s for the sexiest people in New York. There will be a ton of hot babes.”

  “I don’t need babes, I have Marissa.”
We haven’t been dating long, a couple of months, but she’s the first girl I’ve met that doesn’t give me a hard time for having to work every day and also hasn’t made a pass at my brother.

  He’s quiet for a few seconds. “Right, well she might be there, too. I think Stylz is doing an article about someone.”

  He’s been acting off every time I bring up Marissa. “Do you not like—”

  The office phone rings, cutting me off. I glance over at the name on the screen. Albert Crawford. And there’s the call from Dad I knew was coming. The headache behind my eyes makes a comeback, flickering to life like a big-screen villain who just won’t die.

  “What time is this shoot?”

  Chapter Three

  I was invited to photograph Hollywood. They asked me what I would like to photograph. I said, Ugly men.

  –Imogen Cunningham

  GWEN

  VICTORIA’S PHOTO SHOOT is on 123rd in East Harlem at some repurposed warehouse rented out for these kinds of things. There are multiple rooms and lots of space, so they lease it out to a variety of ’zines and papers. I have to take a cab with all my equipment and it takes thirty minutes due to the traffic on Martin Luther King Blvd and even though I tell the driver to take 128th, he doesn’t listen.

  He drops me at the door and it takes me a couple minutes to pull out my heavy case, during which time I get honked at twice and flipped off three times.

  Gotta love big-city living.

  The space is on the seventh floor, and of course the elevator is broken.

  “Why did I wear heels today?” I ask the faded pink walls after I’ve trudged up the first three flights. The walls don’t respond to my bitchy tone. I clutch my camera closer and keep hiking, tempted to pull the heels off, but when I pass a dead rat on one of the steps, that idea is quashed.

  When I finally reach the floor in question, my feet are sobbing in pain and my bag is digging into my shoulder like I’m carrying the sun instead of my tripod, battery packs, and lenses. I stop at the door, leaning down a little to catch my breath before I enter the shooting area, which I know will be a chaotic mess of makeup artists, reporters, assistants, PR people, models, and celebrities.