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Fleur began earning bigger sums of money that needed to be invested, but Belinda didn’t understand finance, so Fleur started asking Alexi questions during their phone calls. His answers were so helpful that she and Belinda grew to rely on him and eventually dumped the entire matter into his capable hands.
Fleur’s first cover appeared. Belinda bought two dozen copies and propped them all over the apartment. The magazine sold more issues than any in its history, and Fleur’s career exploded. She was grateful that her success had come so easily, but it also made her uncomfortable. Every time she looked in a mirror, she wondered what all the fuss was about.
People magazine asked for an interview. “My baby doesn’t just shine,” Belinda told the reporter. “She glitters.” That was all People needed.
GLITTER BABY FLEUR SAVAGAR
SIX FEET OF SOLID GOLD
When Fleur saw the cover, she told Belinda she was never ever going out in public again.
“Too late.” Belinda laughed. “Gretchen’s press agent is making sure the nickname sticks.”
Fleur had been in New York for a year when the first movie offer rolled in. The script was trash, and Gretchen advised Belinda to turn it down. Belinda did, but she was depressed for days afterward. “I’ve been dreaming about us going to Hollywood, but Gretchen’s right. Your first movie has to be special.”
Hollywood? It was all happening too quickly. Fleur took a deep breath and tried to hold on.
The New York Times did a feature story. “The Glitter Baby Is Big, Beautiful, and Rich.”
“I mean it this time.” Fleur moaned. “I’m never, never going out again.”
Belinda laughed and poured herself a Tab.
Belinda gradually got rid of the antiques in their apartment and decorated it in a starkly contemporary style, as different from the house on the Rue de la Bienfaisance as she could make it. Buff suede covered the living room walls. A chrome and glass Mies van der Rohe table sat in front of the pit sofa, which had black and brown graphic pillows. Fleur didn’t tell Belinda she liked the antiques better. She especially hated the long living room wall decorated with window-sized enlargements of her own face. Looking at them made her feel creepy. It was as if someone else had taken up residence in her body, and the makeup and clothes formed a thick shell hiding the real person beneath. Except she didn’t know who that person was.
Alexi promised he’d come to New York in February. He’d canceled two other trips to the city, but this time he swore nothing would keep him away. As the day approached, she struggled to hide her excitement from Belinda, but just hours before his plane was supposed to land, the phone rang in the apartment.
“Chérie,” Alexi said, as foreboding curled in her stomach. “I’ve had an emergency. It’s impossible for me to leave Paris now.”
“But you promised! It’s been more than a year.”
“Once again I have failed you. If only…” She knew what he was going to say. “If only your mother would let you come to Paris. But we both know she will forbid it, and I won’t go against her wishes. Hélas, she uses you to hurt me.”
Fleur wouldn’t betray Belinda by agreeing. As she tried to swallow her disappointment, she heard high heels tapping down the hallway. A moment later, Belinda’s bedroom door clicked shut.
Belinda settled on the edge of her bed and closed her eyes. He was canceling on Fleur again, just as he’d done twice before. Fleur would be heartbroken and resentful, not at Alexi but at her. His strategy was brilliant. Make it Belinda’s fault that father and daughter couldn’t be together.
Fleur had held out against Alexi’s charms longer than Belinda had expected, and even now, she maintained at least a trace of reserve with him. Alexi didn’t like that, which was why he called her several times a week, why he sent lavish gifts calculated to make her feel his presence, and why he’d stayed away for the past year. Any moment now, Fleur would knock on her bedroom door and beg for permission to fly to Paris to see him. Belinda would refuse. Fleur would be resentful and withdraw into herself. Although she wouldn’t say it out loud, she saw her mother as neurotic and jealous. But Belinda had to keep Fleur in New York where she could protect her. If only she could explain why it was so necessary without offering up the truth.
Your father—who, by the way, isn’t your father—is seducing you.
Fleur would never believe it.
“Further to the right, sweetheart.”
Fleur tipped her head and smiled into the camera. Her neck hurt, and she had cramps, but Cinderella hadn’t whined at the ball just because her glass slippers pinched.
“That’s beautiful, honey. Perfect. A little more teeth. Amazing.”
She sat on a stool in front of a small table with a mirrored top, which was elevated like an easel to reflect the light. The open neck of her champagne silk blouse revealed a magnificent string of square-cut emeralds. Summer had arrived, and it was a blistering hot New York afternoon. Out of camera range, she wore cutoffs and pink rubber shower thongs.
“Fix her eyebrows,” the photographer said.
The makeup man handed her a tiny comb, then dabbed at her nose with a small, clean sponge. She leaned over her reflection and combed her thick brows back into place. She used to regard things like eyebrow combs as weird, but she no longer thought about it.
Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Chris Malino, the photographer’s assistant. With his shaggy, sandy hair and open, friendly face, he wasn’t nearly as good-looking as the male models she worked with, but she liked him a lot better. He was taking filmmaking classes at NYU, and the last time they’d worked together, he’d talked to her about Russian films. She wished he’d ask her out, but none of the guys she liked ever got up the nerve. Her only dates were with older men, celebrities in their twenties that Belinda and Gretchen wanted her to be seen with at some important event. She was eighteen years old, and she’d never had a real date.
Nancy, the stylist on the shoot, adjusted one of the clothespins on the back of Fleur’s blouse so it better fit her smaller breasts. Then she checked the piece of Scotch Tape she’d stuck to Fleur’s neck to raise the height of the emerald necklace. Fleur had come to think of the beautiful clothes on magazine pages as false-fronted buildings on a movie set.
