Chapter 3

We had to spend an hour at the airport. Waiting. I was always waiting it seemed like and sometimes this life could be amazingly boring. More than sometimes, actually.

"I wish it was over," I sighed, looking around the Lufthansa VIP lounge, but there wasn't much to see.

"What was that? Cindy? Are you paying attention, we'll have just two days in Paris before we have to be in Florence for the Dino Marcus show. Cindy? Are you listening..."

Mr. Goethe was talking to me, looking very chic in his silk suit and ponytail. For being old like he was, the man was sexy as hell, but I think most of that was just because he was so totally unavailable. So far as I'd been able to tell, he had no interest in sex. None. Not with me, not with anyone else. Not even little boys, which was the most popular rumor about him. It was weird. He was a hell of an agent though and he knew everything about everything in the fashion business. I'd been lucky to get him and I knew it, but the fact was that I didn't believe in luck. Not anymore and only because I'd had way too much of it.

Someone was pulling some strings for me. Or pulling mine maybe.

"Would you like more champagne, Cindy?"

Sofia was already filling my glass and that was her job. Not to tend bar, but to make sure that whatever I wanted was there. She'd found me, I hadn't been looking for her. I didn't even know I was supposed to have a personal assistant until she'd started working for me. A week after that and I couldn't imagine not having her. Nearly a year later, Sofia wasn't just my right hand; she was my best friend as well. I'd have gone crazy without her.

"Thanks." I picked up the glass and she gave me a little smile and went back to her organizer, filling in the blanks with Mr. Goethe.

I took her picture, just because Sofia was so pretty. Not beautiful, nothing like that, but pretty in a secret way. The way my first girlfriend, Evelyn, had been pretty and maybe that was why I liked the woman so much. Otherwise, they weren't very much alike. Sofia had blonde hair to her shoulders and bright green eyes, a fresh open face like the girl next door, and she was a complete workaholic. The girl never stopped and I had to get mad before she'd take a day off.

My little Minolta was brand new, a gift from someone and I didn't know who, but I liked it. I took Mr. Goethe's picture, asking him to say cheese, and he ignored me completely. I aimed it at the bartender, a handsome young man who was making a wonderful show of being unimpressed in the hopes of impressing me. I shot the waitress, who had been equally wonderful at letting Sofia know she was available if I should want something a little more intimate than the bottle of Cristal she'd delivered.

I wasn't the only one with a camera either. The opaque glass doors opened as another VIP arrived to await his flight and there followed a chorus of shouts.

"Cindy!"... "Over Here!"... "Hey Cindy!"... "Fire! Fire!"

The paparazzi had found us. The hungry, homeless shadows without soul. The appetite without teeth. They were the useless and reflected precisely what I'd become. I wondered sometimes at how boring the world must truly be if what I was doing could possibly be of interest to anyone.

There were others in the lounge, a dozen perhaps, sitting alone or in twos and threes. A banker and his mistress, I thought; a lawyer or two, a political, a diplomat and his assistant. I made up roles for them based on their dress and manners. I'm sure I was wrong in most cases, but it was something to do while we waited.

And that man, the unshaven one, he was a predator and I turned from his dark eyes instinctively. The woman too, thin like an aesthetic, who was sitting apart from him at the bar. But they were together, Wolfgang and Eva, staring at me as I raised my camera.