“Really?” She didn’t look Black. Was she Black?
“My mother. My father’s side is from France. But my mother, and all the women in her family, have these.” Her fingers circled Cecilia’s wrist again. “Very Caribbean.”
Cecilia lost herself for a moment. Delighted that perhaps she was not the only Black person on this shoot, which was almost always the case. The idea that she might have had an ally, even if Anouk didn’t look it. But yes, there was something there, in the tint of her complexion, in the fullness of her lips, in the curl of her hair. She was “mix-up/mix-up.” She was an island girl.
“Hé, on va prendre des photos ou quoi?” Didier called down from his perch on the stepladder.
Cecilia apologized and quickly finished clearing the beer bottles from the table, handing them off to a production assistant as one of the waiters stepped in with a platter of freshly grilled lobster.
“Ah, bon. Okay,” Didier continued, in full-on director mode. “I need it to feel like you three are best friends. For a long time. Like you are family, almost. But also that you would have sex with him. And him. And maybe you already have. And maybe they have done it, too.D’accord?”
Didier’s commentary barely registered with Cecilia. She had grown used to his penchant for weaving sex into the narrative. It was simply how he worked. How many photographers worked. He was merely setting the tone of the shoot.
She had overheard the multiple conversations between him, Beatriz, the head stylist, and Jean-Luc and Rafaella, the creative and art directors. They were going for aspirational, international, aristocratic but diverse. Best friends from a Swiss boarding school duringles grandes vacancesat one of their families’ homes, a few years postgrad. They were very specific in their execution, in their targeted demographic, and in their desire to stand apart from the competition. Calvin was too titillating. Tommy too hip-hop. Ralph too faux Waspy. J.Crew too collegiate. Benetton too on the nose. But di Varenna’s new campaign, “The Sweet Life”—a nod to Fellini—was elegant, effortless, elite.
Didier, however, could not help but inject a strong element of sexuality into all of his photos, and that evidently was a huge part of his appeal.
He repeated himself then, in French, and Cecilia watched as Anouk parted her lips, kicked off both sandals, and extended her long legs into Elliot’s lap. No further prompting necessary.
Maybe she wasn’t a teenager after all.
Bas—who was the most established at the table, with twoGQcovers and a fragrance campaign under his belt—reclined in his chair, spread his arms, one dangling over Anouk’s shoulder, and nodded across to Elliot. “Who knew you had such good taste in men, Thorpe?”
Elliot laughed, gray eyes twinkling. Bas had an enviable ease and a disarming smile. They’d been well cast, Cecilia thought. They were, indeed, the Beautiful People.
The photos Didier took that afternoon were stunning, iconic, even. Cecilia thought of it as sex and candy. The carnival-color palette of the restaurant, the laid-back vibe of the beachfront, Anouk’s lissome limbs extending from a flouncy miniskirt and a navy bikini top, the boys in blue-and-white linen, tearing into the lobster with wet fingers, smiling, laughing… Skin and hair and youth and perfect teeth. This pretend life they’d created, thisfiction—whatever it was—Cecilia wanted to inhale it. To breathe it in and make it hers. To exist within this bubble.
Later, when the talent and most of the team had trekked back to base camp and their respective hotels, Cecilia and Marc were left behind to break down the equipment and straighten their corner of the restaurant.
“What did that model say to you?” Marc asked. He’d removed his safari hat and was resting at the edge of the table, swilling from a bottle of Pacífico, and staring out at the Gulf. The salmon-colored sky.
“Which model?”
“The girl. Anouk?”
Cecilia nodded, nonchalant. She was once again on the floor logging the film, transcribing the processing notes for each roll. Didier had shot a total of eighteen.
“Nothing. She just wanted to know if I was from the Caribbean.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
“Hmm,” he said, before swilling another mouthful. And then, “That’s not what it looked like from my end.”
“What did it look like from your end?”
Marc turned to look at her then, dead serious. “She was definitely flirting with you.”
Cecilia attempted to laugh. “Don’t be silly. She’s amodel, and like fifteen.”
“She’s nineteen.”
“How do you know that?”
“I asked Maren.”
Maren was the producer. The person responsible for putting all the myriad pieces together. Including the call sheet. They’d worked with her on several assignments. She was, like many in the fashion world, independently wealthy, and from Bedford, a much tonier hamlet in Westchester than Cecilia’s Hartsdale. Maren wore tailored navy blazers and white jeans, and Hermès scarves wrapped around her long blond ponytail. She was only in her thirties but outwardly far more self-possessed, and Cecilia envied her polish and composure.
