I sit looking at the screen of my phone for a long time, feeling both the urge to say more and the very real need to sign off, get on with my day. In the end I do nothing and just keep looking until Loncey sends another message.
They say my name a lot in messages. I don’t know if that’s weird or if I’m weird for thinking it might be weird.
For fuck’s sake, I need a coffee.
They add another laughing emoji.
I’m smiling as I type that last message. Smiling and scrolling back to the top of our conversation to read it all over again.
*****
Despite it raining all day, my day hasn’t been an utter shitshow. My meeting with my agent wasn’t a complete waste of time. Sure, she still presented deals with brands I have no interest in working with, but there were a few potentially good campaigns discussed. I bristled a little when she talked about a swimwear brand I would be a fool for refusing, but I then confidently reminded Aisling that I didn’t do bikini shoots. That had descended into us having a tense conversation about my reluctance to do any kind of work where I have to take my clothes off and I had to fight down this uneasy feeling of Aislingnot even trying to understand my standpoint even though it was mixed with an equally unsettling paranoia that she had a point and that I was the problem. Whether it’s her or me, I spent much of the walk after leaving her office hunched under my umbrella, criss-crossing cobbled streets and mentally promising myself I’d start researching other agents and maybe be more open to some of the cold calls I get.
The lunch was yet another hour of me wondering if I’m in the right industry as I listened to a handful of women roughly my age talk at great length about crises like how devastating it is when your favourite nail artist moves to Manchester, how shocking it is when a content creator who was outed as being a fuckboy this time last year cheats on you, and how there’s this one girl down in Cork copying a handful of our videos. My ears pricked up when one of the girls tells us all she’s taken the plunge and started a MyFans page where she sells photographs of her feet for $10 a pop.
“Ten dollars?” I’d declared with a snort. “That doesn’t sound like much.”
“It is when I sell around thirty or forty of them a day.”
I did the sums quickly. “Every day?” I asked, but really I was wondering if she was getting that much for feet pics, how much cash was Loncey earning for sending… other kinds of photos on their site.
I’m still wondering how much money Loncey earns and how I feel about it as I walk out of the studio the fashion brand hired for my test shots. It was a successful few hours taking photographs, meeting the owner and some employees, and learning more about the brand. While I don’t think they’ll be able to pay my usual rate, I’m prepared to negotiate so that it works for us both because I really like Dervla, the owner, and the company’s ethos.
It isn’t a long walk over the river to the bar Arabella and I picked for our drink, and it looks like the weather gods see fit to save my suede ankle boots and expensive Brazilian blowout as the rain has stopped. The sky is still heavy above me, but it’s a typical Irish sky and I don’t hate it. Deep down, I have a lot of love for this grey and moody country of mine.
Once I step inside the wood and brass-filled bar, a popular haunt among workers from the nearby IFSC, it doesn’t take me long to see Arabella sitting at a table near the wall opposite the long bar. The space is mostly empty considering it’s only just gone three o’clock on a weekday afternoon. I smile when I see her, and it only widens when I see she’s already got me a glass of white wine.
“Hamster!” she calls out as she looks up at me from her phone. I should blush or wince or react in a negative way to that godawful nickname she gave me back when we were kids taking ballet lessons together, but I don’t. I love that she calls me that. I’ll always be her hamster.
“Munchkin,” I say as I sit next to her and lean over to kiss her cheek. Yes, I have an equally embarrassing name for her.
“You look tired,” she says as she pulls back and studies me.
“Good to see you too,” I deadpan back.
“It’s not an insult. It’s a fact. Are you sleeping enough?”
“I’m sleeping,” I answer honestly. But regardless, I feel tired.
“Are you masturbating?” Arabella asks without hesitation.
“Jesus, Bella!” I say, self-conscious enough to look around us to see if we are in danger of being overheard.
“You know how much of an advocate I am for the benefits of self-love.” Arabella gives me a little pout and nods her head to emphasise her point, making the thick twists in her hair shake. “It’s literally the best thing for your skin.”
I put a hand to my face. “Are you saying my skin looks bad?”
