Chapter 16

"Oh God I wish I had a joint," murmured Sarah to herself, sitting in the corner of the backstage where a group of models, including her, rehearsed for the evening's presentation of Delon Fils negligees. "I hate these arrogant, narcissistic airheads." It was to be her grand debut as a featured model for the line and as a top level runway model in Europe. After spending a busy four days being photographed and evenings loving Paris, the wonderful week was ending bitterly. She loved the sexy clothes. She hated everything else.

Then she spotted a model gazing at her. Porcelain skin. Light yellow, nearly white blonde hair. Delicate, beautiful features, looking like Twiggy back in the sixties. Tall and slim like all the models, with a perfect model's butt. Dressed just like Sarah in a generic robe and nothing else. The blonde looked up from her books, a thick text and a yellow note pad, lowered her cute cat's eye glasses and gazed at Sarah. She waved Sarah to her.

"Sit," she said. "I know that look." She had a distinguished London accent.

"Really? Here?"

"I look in the mirror all the time," she replied, gesturing to the mirror in front of them. "It's a repellant. I learned to give it up in order to get along with my colleagues. I'm Victoria Cole."

"I know. Sarah Jones."

"I know that too," Victoria smiled. "You can call me Vic."

"How come you know me?" asked Sarah.

"You're a lovely young woman. I find your look quite striking, thus I filed you away." Vic leaned to her side and extracted a portfolio from her large bag. Opening it revealed several photographs of women and men, all beautiful, and a thick notebook. She found a photograph of Sarah wearing a sheer peignoir looking just fucked.

"Why?' asked Sarah.

"Roland Barthes wrote an extraordinary essay about beauty. He's a..."

"I'm familiar with French Postmodern philosophy."

Vic looked delighted.

Sarah glanced at the text Vic had been reading. Sartre. "Being and Nothingness" in French.

"You understand that?" she asked Vic.

"It's difficult. Barthes is such a lovely read, a real pleasure. Sartre may be difficult, at least this particular massive tome, but at least he tries to make sense unlike Foucault who seems to try not to. It's great for vocabulary as well."

"Is existentialism relevant to the postmodern?"

Vic chuckled. "Aren't you something? I study philosophy. I needed to read the canon from Plato up until the present. It's the only way to add to the continuum. I'm preparing a dissertation."

"As in PhD.?"

"Yes. I'm turning Barthes' little essay into a rather fat tome. It's a sacrilege I know, but I believe the relevance of beauty, its polarity if you will, needs to be thoroughly explored. I see it as a priori, and all things human judged on a scale receding from perfection. I believe people are judged when first met as desirable or even acceptable as mates or people of interest almost exclusively if not fairly by their shallow, surface beauty."

"How about other aspects of beauty like bearing and grace and the sound of a voice or something even less tangible like inner beauty"

"Voice interests me. Sometimes when I listen to the radio and hear a seductive voice, a beautiful voice, I match it with a similar face. And of course I'm always wrong. But could that affect the ... uhm ... effect? Hmm." She jotted a note.

Sarah chuckled. About to ask if she could sketch the beauty studying, the late, last minute rack of clothes--the delay causing the pause in the rehearsal--finally arrived. "Merde," she muttered.

Vic smiled at her and winked. "Come on. We can have fun together." She sounded buoyant.

Sarah returned the smile. She had wanted Sophie with her during rehearsal but serious Delon business prevented it. Sophie promised to join her during the actual performance. "Maybe I won't need her after all," she thought.

The arrogance of the other models towards Sarah ended, replaced by puzzlement and a tiny droplet of respect. Vic, the oldest and most experienced model in the show and a legend in the making, always kept her space. Not aloof, in fact most everyone found her sweet and kind, she simply preferred to be alone. To befriend the lovely if odd little nobody was unprecedented.

An hour between the rehearsal and the show allowed the two to become better acquainted. Eating the light salad, Vietnamese, sweet and tangy and delicious, they chatted. "Could I sketch you studying?" Sarah finally asked.

"You draw? Can I see?"

"I have raw sketches ... but maybe I shouldn't show you. I work alongside Elliot so there's proprietary stuff, you know. Trade secrets."

Vic chuckled. "You figured me out. I'm a spy for the Gap."

"I knew it. Why else would you want to talk to me?"

"Why else indeed," purred Vic, the sound and the expression on her face brought a tingle and moisture to Sarah's pussy.

"Oh my," thought Sarah. "Would you like to see my etchings, young lady," she flirted back, hauling out her black portfolio, unzipping it and paging through it.