There were huge crowds in front of the various sponsor tents, but Callie forced her way through as Lou and the camera crew followed breathlessly, waving their badges and elbowing strangers out of the way.
Callie stole the first cellphone within three minutes, rotating her cape around and using the corners as an ad hoc burglar’s sack. In the following ninety seconds she scored over a dozen, snatching them with ease from the plaza’s population of human mannequins, who were all so aware of being watched that they didn’t respond at all. But the crowd responded as crowds do, instinctively forming a circle around Callie’s zigzags to give her an arena.
Standing in the middle of the plaza, the model looked around with satisfaction at the hordes of strangers watching her. She wrapped up the cellphones in the cape and threw the bundle on the ground, pulling Lou’s solid-gold Dunhill lighter out of her bikini top before setting the edges of the cape on fire.
“People of Earth!” she yelled. “Free yourselves! Throw your phones on this fire!”
A few moments passed. No one did anything at all.
Lou stepped forward to give Callie her cellphone and tablet. “Here,” she said. “I don’t want these anymore.”
Callie hurled them toward the cape, where the first cellphone was starting to catch fire. It popped dramatically, the cover flying off in a rather impressive miniature explosion, and suddenly another woman stepped forward—an editor at IQ.
“I don’t need it anymore either,” the editor said. “I’m so goddamn sick of Fashion Week.”
“Me too,” said another woman in a black cocktail dress. She handed her tablet to Callie while the second phone exploded. The crowd flinched.
“Then take off all your shackles,” Callie ordered the woman. “Give me your dress.”
The woman in the black dress looked around. Tired, a little drunk, and extremely overheated, she was tempted to give in to this random performance—to finally take part in one of the spectacles that had surrounded her all week. It’s your time, the woman told herself before unzipping her dress and handing it to Callie.
The crowd cheered. Callie kissed her and threw the dress into the fire. The woman felt loved.
In moments it became an epidemic. Dozens of women unzipped their dresses, throwing them into the fire while the crowd around them raged, their cheers turning to chants in the space of seconds. Someone pulled the BP flower sculptures out of the fountain and threw them on the pile, turning it into a real bonfire. Callie’s face, lit by the flames, was simultaneously beautiful and terrible, a Homeric sibyl made real. Forty women, all of them boldfaced names, were standing in their slips and bras watching their clothing and cellphones burn. The very air of the plaza sizzled with the iron taste of menace while cameras flashed, and flashed and flashed.
And all of it was because of Lou, because of her vision.
Lou heard the shutters going off, and she visualized the fifteen shots that only RAGE’s photographers would have, including the last, of Callie running into the crowd before anyone noticed her.
Lou smiled. Her huge teeth gleamed, the orange flames reflecting in miniature on their bright surface.
She was so pleased.
Chapter Fifteen
Cat woke up after her night out with Grant and felt like herself again. The first thing she did was text June and Raphael to relieve them for the day; she wasn’t in the mood to be poked and prodded and costumed. Cat did her own hair and makeup for the first time in months—plain face, thick black eyeliner, hair brushed and left down—before donning a floor-length black dress, the neckline cut in a rectangle across her collarbones. She threw an oversized black blazer and brass necklace on top, and wore the biggest, chunkiest eyeglasses she owned, then attended a whirlwind of fashion shows, promising herself that she’d take advantage of the next two weeks. Maybe she’d even write something. Constance, Paula, Margot, and Janet would all be in London and Milan, so Cat, the most senior employee after Lou, had no real reason to continue being out and about. There was plenty of work to do in the office. She resolved to bring it up with Lou if she saw her today.
The first official afterparty for New York Fashion Week was uptown on the ivy-lined terrace of the Howard Hotel. After a day of shows, she went straight there to meet Bess and found her flirting with Jent Brooks. “I’ll tell you later,” Bess whispered. All anyone else had been able to talk about was Lou’s insane bonfire—the Gaia shoot—and the gorgeous, previously unknown plus-size model who’d started it all. Cat realized how close she was to losing her own place in the RAGE hierarchy.
It didn’t take Bess and Jent long to sneak out early, and Cat found herself suddenly alone. She checked her phone for the hundredth time; no text from Hutton, but she did have an invitation from Lou. Impromptu celebration at my place for RAGE staff, it said. Get your buns over here: 150 Central Park West penthouse.
There were easily three hundred people milling through the apartment by the time she arrived, including most of the RAGE staff, a group of models, and various hip-looking young people. Lou’s now-infamous plus-size model was at the center of it all, surrounded by admirers and hangers-on in a corner, wearing a textured, strapless burlap gown.
Cat spent most of the party on the terrace smoking cigarettes and trying to catch up with her coworkers. She managed to work her way into a lively conversation about the mayoral race with Janet Berg and Rose Cashin-Trask. During a brief lull after everyone agreed it might be nice to have Bloomberg back for a fourth round, Lou strategically appeared.
“More wine-o?” Lou boomed, her jaw unhinging and jutting forward as she grinned.
“I can’t. I’m so partied out,” Cat explained. “Besides, I think I need to start changing gears. I’d really like to get back to the office,” she said, putting Lou on the spot in front of the two colleagues who’d had to pick up much of her slack.
“Oh, it hasn’t been all bad,” Lou replied. “We’re paying you to party and wear beautiful clothes! Don’t be a Deborah Downer,” she chided in a fake American accent. “That used to be my whole life. You can’t fool me. It’s not very hard, partying all the time, being the center of attention.” She winked, elbowing Rose and Janet in an overly jocular way.
“Oh, it’s been lovely, really it has,” Cat agreed. “But I’m sure my colleagues want to get back to doing only their own jobs,” she persisted, using the people around her as graciously as possible.
Janet and Rose—both of them four glasses of wine–deep—nodded enthusiastically.
“You can say that again,” Janet had replied. “Honestly, if you don’t bring her back permanently, I’m going to ask for double the salary.” Her voice was steely.
Lou, still just five months into her very first paying job, looked shocked; she obviously didn’t know how seriously to take Janet’s comment.
“Me too,” said Rose, holding up her glass in a toast. “To more money or more Cat!”
“Cheers to that,” Cat said, clinking her water glass.