Salaam, Paris by DASWANI KAVITA

Author:DASWANI, KAVITA
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Plume

“Nine pounds, three ounces. Bravo!” Stavros said, peering down at the weighing scale in my bathroom. “You’ve done it!”

It was six a.m., and our call time was in a couple of hours. The show was one of the first of the day and, as Stavros pointed out, because it was only the second day of Fashion Week, the style crowd hadn’t yet developed the cynicism they were noted for, and thus it would be much easier to love a new and fresh face before the toll of the week had been taken.

I shrugged my newly slenderized body into a pair of jeans and a light sweater, and Stavros pulled out a pair of high heels for me to wear, telling me that I had to look like a model, even before the show. He was beginning to behave like the ayah I had when I was growing up, my pudgy Gopibhai, who fussed over me like I was a wounded bird.

Initially nobody backstage looked my way. We were at the Bryant Park tents, or “fashion central” as Stavros called it. Men with bright blond hair, buff arms, and high-pitched voices were fussing with curling irons. Women wore aprons around their T-shirt-and-cargo-pants-clad bodies, brandishing everything from fluffy makeup brushes to spritz bottles. Music coming from a sound system behind me was louder than it needed to have been, a string of rhymes and four-letter words rat-tat-tatting in my ears. The other models were immersed in their own world, reading glossy magazines or listening to their iPods or texting messages to some lover who might be awaiting them on the other side of the runway. Stavros was asked to leave and, telling me that I was in good hands, disappeared into the cavernous darkness of the long room I would soon be walking into.

All the commotion, combined with the smell of cigarette smoke that hung heavily in the room and the fact that I hadn’t eaten in two days, made me feel lightheaded. I didn’t belong here, and I would never be able to feign the coolness of these people.

“Hey, you’re number ten,” said a black man in a tight white T-shirt, streaks of orange running through his hair, as he glanced at a clipboard. “Let’s get you situated.”

He installed me in a chair and signaled to someone from the hair and makeup team to start working on me. One of the models in an adjacent chair finally took her eyes off her BlackBerry long enough to notice me.

“Hey, you’re new aren’t you?” she asked. “Haven’t seen you around before.”

“Yes, hello, my name is Tanaya.”

“Pippi,” she said. “Pleasure. Lovely name you have. Where’s it from? I’m from London myself . . . Bolton, actually, but none of these other birds know where that is, so I just tell ’em London. Here. Fag?” she asked, offering me her packet of Winston Lights. I shook my head.

“So tell me, did that poofter Pasha by any chance tell you to drop some pounds? He does that to all the new girls.

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