Mia Alvar - In the Country - Stories

A fat woman got onstage and started on that song from Titanic. Jorge was gazing very intently at the karaoke screen, with its beaches and mountain ranges and lovers walking hand in hand above the neon lyrics. A shadow of stubble had begun on his jaw. “You know, you’d get so much work in New York,” I said to him suddenly. For a second I imagined him sharing the apartment with me, taking up the room I had denied the Czech and Argentine and Senegalese girls. “Did you ever think about living there? In my agency the ethnic boys are huge.”

“Why would I?” Jorge looked amused. “All the hot American girls come here,” he said — and smiled, hotly.

—

Day three they shot us in a studio. “What happened here?” asked Carmen, frowning up at me. There was a bruised ridge, the size of a baby carrot, in the middle of my forehead, where I’d knocked into the jeepney. She called the photographer over.

I prayed I was less trouble for them to keep than to replace. It was not completely true that flexibility was my only skill, or that I could do nothing but model. During lean months in New York, I used to go out with some other young pretty people who knew how to dress and laugh. Cafés and bars had us sit near the windows, on their slowest nights, and act like we were having the time of our lives. Some of these places paid us; others let us eat and drink for free; others said they would pay us, then not only didn’t pay us but even charged us for the food and drinks. I had also worked as a shot girl, cinched into a dirndl or a corset or a sailor dress, depending on the liquor company. I circulated dance floors to peddle sticky-sweet drinks in test tubes or dosage cups. College boys became theatrical when drunk, said things like “You are so hot it hurts me,” and tipped extra for a body shot or a little pawing — though we were supposed to say no to that. One night a girl saw her boyfriend suck the salt off my neck before downing his tequila. It was true his mouth lingered on me too long. His tongue was oddly cold, and furry in texture, and I said, “Are you checking for a pulse, or what?” I had taken his money and turned away by the time his girlfriend announced herself. She lunged at me from behind, knocking a rainbow of test-tube flavors out of my arms and clawing my neck. The next morning my booker called about a go-see. Sabine helped me sponge foundation over the evidence: a hickey from the drunken kid and fingernail tracks from his jealous girlfriend. “Most action I’ve had all month,” I told Sabine. But that was a bad night. Other nights were better, and the gum of spit and sweat and alcohol washed off easily in the shower.

“She’ll be in the background anyway,” said the photographer, squinting up at me. “As long as we don’t take her profile…”

Carmen was annoyed. “If I needed a rhino,” she said, “I would’ve held a go-see at the zoo.” Her words buzzed at my forehead and at my stomach, which was flatter today, at least. The photographer directed me to the porch of a fake grass hut on stilts. The studio was lit to look like dawn. I wore a cotton eyelet bedsheet that I gathered at my chest, my hair deliberately tousled.

Jorge stood a few feet in front of the hut. “I’d do this,” he told me, picking up last night’s conversation as if no time had passed. He gazed at our backdrop.

“Make studio sets?” I said.

He looked insulted. “Live off the land.”

The “land” was a Technicolor vista of rice terraces and sky. The photographer shouted to me about Marilyn curves and a time in America when butter was golden. The directions sounded strange to me. Where I came from, everyone was over people like me; they were always looking for the Next Big Thing, and It Girls came in brown and onyx-black. “Peaches and cream,” said Carmen, and I loathed them all for loving something so commonplace — even if that commonplace thing was me.

—

After work, Jorge sped me into his car, which had that cooped-up airplane smell inside. He didn’t say where we were going. I recognized the place slowly. Balete Drive reminded me a little of the French Quarter in New Orleans: tall, sturdy-looking trees, large old houses set far back from the traffic, scrollwork on the gates and shutters on the windows. Some of them were walled in. Vines hung down from the trees and brushed over Jorge’s windshield as we drove. We stopped at one of the iron gates, which was unlocked. Jorge parked the car next to a motorcycle in the driveway.

I followed him inside to yet another huddle of brown limbs and laughter and chatter. Some men sat at a low table with cigarettes and beer bottles, playing bingo. “Hoy!” they shouted when they saw Jorge, and one man — dressed in Jorge’s usual work ensemble of jeans and no shirt — jumped to his feet and half-hugged Jorge, half-shook his hand. “Alice, this is my friend Will,” said Jorge. Will welcomed me and kissed my hand, then turned and ruffled Jorge’s hair. A young woman was curled up on the sofa, bottle-feeding a baby. Jorge murmured something to her, kissing her cheek and stroking the baby’s bald head. “Alice, this is Will’s sister Rose,” he said. Rose just smiled and looked at her baby, swaying with it. I couldn’t tell the baby’s sex until Jorge took it from her, bringing it up close to me. Two ruby studs glinted in the tiny earlobes. “I’d have a kid. And raise it well,” he whispered to me. “I’d do that in a heartbeat.” To the room, he announced: “Alice has heard stories about Balete Drive.”

Will laughed. “Don’t worry. This is my grandmother’s place — too shitty for anyone to haunt,” he said.

“No, it’s great.” I didn’t know what else to say. Two women materialized from a set of stairs near the back of the living room. They started clearing a round table where it seemed a feast had taken place, balled napkins and broken crab shells on the dishes. Everywhere I turned, expensive-looking objects mingled with crap, reminding me of a fashion editorial I once shot (“How to Mix Low & Luxe”), dressed in three-thousand-dollar coats and Payless shoes. Silk tapestries hung on the wall above dusty orange shag couches. A curio cabinet was empty except for a jade horse and branches of red coral. Jorge’s and Will’s friends were mismatched, too. Three of them looked young and put-together. I recognized at least one designer shirt. Two others seemed greasy, aging, toothless. We sat on the gritty, unclean floor. The coffee table, when I touched it, had the heft and coldness of real marble.

A friend of Will’s — one of the greasy, toothless guys — introduced himself as Piper. The reason for his nickname was a high melodic whistle, which he demonstrated. A gray mouse scurried out from under the curio cabinet to the middle of the floor. The mouse stood on its hind legs while rubbing its front paws together, as if to warm them. Then it returned to all fours and disappeared again under the cabinet. Everyone laughed, and I pretended to — even though I hated rodents, and the evil speed at which they darted out and disappeared.

It was a rodent that got me back to work, one day when I had started a new listen-delete-sleep cycle with my voice mail. “Why don’t you come into the office, Alice,” my booker was saying. “We need to talk about your career. Are you still in this, or are you out?” I was thinking maybe if I slept long enough, the decision would be made for me, when a mouse darted out from under my bed and disappeared between the white take-out cartons. I was up from the floor and standing on the windowsill faster than you could say “evil.” The next voice mail was about my credit card; I caught the main points, which were “past due,” and “collection agency.” I called my booker back. “In,” I said, when he picked up.