She pulled her running sneakers back on—today she’d need stamina, not style—and searched for a bag big enough to carry everything she’d need, settling on an old single-strap WWI RAF rucksack that had once belonged to her grandfather. You’re a survivor, she thought, staring at the bag. Me too. For the first time in years, Lou didn’t bother to apply any makeup; she didn’t want to think about it today. You’re going to look old, a nagging voice told her. At least put on some concealer. She turned and looked in the mirror, but as soon as she saw her own face—tanned, healthy, glowing—she thought, I look beautiful. It’s fine. She resisted the urge to smash the mirror on the ground.
Lou untied her headscarf and pulled the pins and foam rollers from her hair before brushing out the curls with a handmade wooden brush. Her hair floated around her face, the fine, honey-colored strands shining with health and vitality. She snapped a hair tie onto her wrist and dumped the contents of her handbag into the backpack on her way out the door, adding some bottles from her personal supply—a heavy, shiny cream and a lighter, sparkly body milk that contained actual gold dust.
Today was the first day of the rest of her life.
Hutton hadn’t intended to keep stalking Cat.
Not really.
But Mania made it really, really easy. He didn’t even need to leave his apartment.
The night before he hadn’t seen her text—whatcha doing later—until he’d already checked Mania and seen photos of her kissing an actor in some kind of Finnish restaurant that served only crackers. He’d been on the verge of responding to her when more photos showed up of her laughing an hour later with Grant Bonner, Bess’s preppy lawyer brother.
After that he didn’t see the point in responding—not now, and maybe not ever. It wasn’t that his feelings were hurt, he told himself; she was welcome to kiss anyone she liked. No, it was the quickness with which those kisses made their way online.
It would be humiliating enough for Hutton to admit almost anything about his life to his colleagues at the NYPD: that he’d gone to Hampshire, a college that didn’t have grades, or to an Ivy League graduate school, or that he now owned a five-bedroom penthouse apartment on Prospect Park when his boss could barely afford Staten Island. He’d done such a good job of keeping his background hidden. If he dated Cat, that anonymity would be gone, and not only would he lose the respect of his team, he’d never be promoted again, and he’d probably get suspended for dating a witness in an ongoing investigation.
She sure is a beautiful girl, though, he thought, scrolling through picture after picture of her, for an hour longer than he intended to, smiling in spite of himself when he spotted any photo where she looked annoyed, or frustrated, or suspicious, or bored. Those were the ones he couldn’t stop looking at.
But Hutton knew, deep down, that he didn’t want to lose any ground in the career he loved. He didn’t have any hobbies; he’d left a tsunami of broken friendships in his wake when his last girlfriend had caught him sleeping with Callie not once but a truly unforgivable four times; and Callie…he didn’t know how that was supposed to work out. They hadn’t spoken in months. Hutton’s career had become his entire world.
So when his new boss in the Major Case Division called ten minutes later and asked if Hutton was still awake, if he could make it to a crime scene down in Battery Park City, he said no problem, on my way—then closed Mania and deleted it from his phone, as well as all the texts they’d exchanged over the past week.
I’ll just have to get over it, he told himself.
Lou counted the shots in her head. They had thirteen—no, fourteen—incredible shots so far of Callie Court as their very own RAGE Gaia, each more special than the last. The earthy, logoless clothes that Lou styled her in before each take had a magical quality that was both past and present, simultaneously formidable Anasazi warrior and intrepid Mars colonist. Lou knew they’d captured not only the November cover shot, but an entire feature that would get ripped out around the country, posted equally in teenage scrapbooks and on production designers’ inspiration boards. She very nearly burst with pride. They had only one more shot to go.
The day had started at the American Museum of Natural History, where Callie had “woken up” inside one of the dioramas in the Native American wing, breaking the glass—they’d been allowed to install a temporary sheet of breakaway—using just her fists. As the glass rained to the ground, Callie’s face showed a terrible rage. At that moment Lou had known that this extraordinary model would carry the day, that it would make both of their careers, that she was about to be a privileged witness to magazine history. She let the girl take the lead, stepping in only occasionally to coat Callie’s gleaming skin with layers of the shiny lotions she’d brought from home.
As Callie strode through the museum, tracking the progress of human evolution, they’d captured her riding the elephants in Akeley Hall, sobbing beneath the blue whale, devastated that someone would take it so far away from the ocean, and lying on the floor of the Hayden Planetarium, her eyes as wide as a baby’s. Paula had stopped by briefly, and she seemed impressed.
Their next stop had been the Central Park Zoo, but en route Callie had spontaneously scaled the walls of the Belvedere Castle, looking every inch the conqueror—another spectacular shot. She’d rolled down a hill with a group of children in their prep school uniforms, bam, another one. She dived into the remote-controlled boat pond; touched noses with a tiger at the zoo; rode the carousel; stepped in for an at-bat on the baseball fields; and smashed a tea set at the Plaza Hotel, her face dripping with queenly disdain. She had changed unself-consciously in public between every shot, stripping down without a single glance to see who was watching.
Then she shoplifted from the MoMA store, slipping nonsense into her pockets with the deft hands of a practiced thief while Lou had casually paid for it all at the register, before hailing a taxicab and convincing the driver to let her ride on top as though the cab were her horse.
She’d peed in the Columbus Circle fountain, kissing the police officer who tried to reprimand her, and marched up Broadway to a Sprinter van filled with three hair and makeup artists waiting to apply her final look.
Lou now sat in the driver’s seat, examining Callie through the rearview mirror. Their work was almost complete: the model wore a leather bikini, handmade in Japan from Kobe beef hides, underneath a linen-blend cape that appeared to be equal parts beach blanket and queen’s robe. Her hair had been braided with huge extensions into waist-length braids, their girth ridiculously large. Her face and body were coated in dirt held fast by the heavy lotion.
“Are you ready?” Lou asked.
Callie smiled. “Absolutely,” she replied. Lou jumped onto the sidewalk, where she watched Callie leap from the van and run straight toward Lincoln Center.