Кэндес Бушнелл - Four Blondes

In other words, Janey thought, smart models. Now there's a new one. She nodded.

The other people came around.

"Do you mind putting on some lingerie?" they whispered. They always treated you with kid gloves at these auditions, so they couldn't be accused of sexual harassment.

"Do you mind lying on that couch?”

“Do you mind if we videotape you?”

"I don't mind," Janey said. "I'll go naked if you want.”

Mariah laughed. "Luckily, this isn't Playboy, " she said.

Oh, but it practically is, Janey thought.

She lay down on the couch. She arranged her magnificent body, resting her head on her hand.

"Tell us a little bit about yourself, Janey.”

“Well," Janey began, in that soft voice that gave no offense, "I'm thirty-two. I've been a model for ... sixteen years now, I guess, and an actress too, although I like to say I've been acting every day of my life. I'm pretty independent. I've never been married. I guess I like to take care of myself. But it's hard, you know? I'm a model, but more than that, I'm a single woman, trying to make my way through life. I have my ups and downs like every other woman." She smiled and turned onto her back.

"I have days when I feel ugly. And days when I feel fat... like right now ... and days when I think, 'Am I ever going to find a guy I really like?' I try pretty hard. Last summer I worked on a screenplay about my life.”

"And what do you want out of life, Janey?”

“I don't know what I want, but I know I want something.”

"And what about your goals?”

Janey smiled and pushed her hair back. She turned onto her stomach, swinging one leg up. She put her head in both hands. Her expression was serious, but not too serious. She looked directly at the camera. "I guess you could say ... I don't know where I'm going." She paused a second for effect. "But I know I'm going somewhere.”

"Brilliant," they said. Eight months later.

Janey pulled into the driveway of the house on Daniel's Lane in Sagaponack in her new Porsche Boxster convertible. The car was pure flash: silver paint with a red leather interior, a special order. It was a bonus from the Victoria's Secret people, not that they had to give her one, since she had a two million dollar contract for four years. It called for a maximum of fifty days of work a year, which meant, as her new agent pointed out, she'd have plenty of time to go on auditions and even do a television series or a movie. She'd already gone on three auditions for an action film with a big movie star, and they were "seriously interested.”

Janey closed the car door carefully. It wouldn't do to scratch the paint. Already her sister had asked if she could drive the car, and Janey had said no. "You've got plenty of money, Patty. Get your own car," she said.

"But I want to drive your car. " Patty whined. She looked so plaintive, they'd both cracked up. Janey walked toward the house, twirling the keys around her finger. It was an unusual house, with the kitchen and living room (with fireplace) on the second floor, with a large deck from which you could see the ocean. There were five big bedrooms downstairs, and outside, a charming antique shack that could be used as a separate guest cottage or an office.

"Do you plan to have lots of company?" the real estate agent had asked.

"No," Janey said. "I'll probably use it to do some writing. I'm working on a screenplay, you know.”

“Really?" the real estate agent said. "I know you're in that Victoria's Secret ad. But I didn't know you were a writer. Beautiful and smart. What a lucky girl.”

"Thank you," Janey said.

"I just love that line you say in the ad .... How does it go again?”

"I don't know where I'm going, but I know I'm going somewhere," Janey said.

"That’s it," the real estate agent said. "Don't we all feel that way, though.”

Janey opened the door to the house. Her house, she thought. Her house alone. It smelled a little musty, but all summer houses smelled musty the first day you opened them up. In an hour, it would pass. In the meantime, she'd take a swim.

She went into the master bedroom and stripped off her clothes. The room was at least six hundred square feet, with a California king bed and a marble bathroom that contained a Jacuzzi and sauna. The house was terribly expensive, but what the hell? She could afford it.

Not bad for a single woman.

She opened the sliding glass door and walked out to the pool. It was unusually long. Sixty feet. She stood at the edge by the deep end. She paused. For a moment, she wished that Bill would show up. Walk up her flagstone path, up the steps and through the white picket gate to the pool. "Janey," he'd say. He'd fold her naked body into his arms, kissing her hair, her face ... "I love you," he'd say. "I'm going to leave my wife and marry you.”

It was never going to happen.

Janey stuck her toe in the water. It was ninety degrees.

Perfect. She dove in.

This is a story about two people with jobs. Two people with very, very important jobs. Two very, very important people with two very, very important jobs who are married to each other and have one child. Meet James and Winnie Dieke (pronounced "deek," not "dyke")- The perfect couple. (Or, in their minds anyway, the perfect couple.) They live in a five-room apartment on the Upper West Side. They graduated from Ivy League colleges (he Harvard and she Smith). Winnie is thirty-seven. James is forty-two (in their minds, the perfect age difference for a man and a woman). They've been married nearly seven years. Their lives revolve around their work (and their child). They love to work. Their work keeps them busy and neurotic. Their work separates them from other people. Their work (in their minds anyway) actually makes them superior to other people.

They are journalists. Serious journalists.

Winnie writes a political/style column ("Is that an oxymoron?" James asked her when she first told him about the job) for a major news magazine. James is a well-known and highly respected journalist—he writes five-to-ten-thousand-word pieces for publications like the Sunday Times Magazine, The New Republic, and The New Yorker.

James and Winnie agree on just about everything. They have definite opinions. "There is something wrong with people who don't have intelligent, informed opinions about things/' Winnie said to James when they met for the first time, at a party in an apartment on the Upper West Side. Everyone at the party was "in publishing" and under thirty-five. Most of the women (like Winnie) were working at women's magazines (something Winnie never talks about now). James had just won an ASME award for a story on fly-fishing. Everyone knew who he was.

He was tall and skinny, with floppy, curly blond hair and glasses (he's still tall and skinny, but he's lost most of his hair). There were girls all around him. Here are a few of the things they agree on: They hate anyone who isn't like them. They hate anyone who is wealthy and successful and gets press (especially Donald Trump). They hate trendy people and things (although James did just buy a pair of Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses). They hate TV; big-budget movies; all commercial, poorly written books on The New York Times best-seller list (and the people who read them); fast-food restaurants; guns; Republicans; neoNazi youth groups; the religious right-wing antiabortion groups; fashion models (fashion editors); fat on red meat; small, yappy dogs and the people who own them.

They hate people who do drugs. They hate people who drink too much (unless it's one of their friends, and then they complain bitterly about the person afterward). They hate the Hamptons (but rent a house there anyway, on Shelter Island, which, they remind themselves, isn't really the Hamptons). They believe in the poor (they do not know anyone who is poor, except their Jamaican nanny, who is not exactly poor). They believe in black writers (they know two, and Winnie is working on becoming friends with a third, whom she met at a convention). They hate music and especially MTV (but Winnie sometimes watches "Where Are They Now?" on VH1, especially if the artist in question is now a drug addict or alcoholic). They think fashion is silly (but secretly identify with the people in Dewar's ads). They think the stock market is a scam (but James invests ten thousand dollars a year anyway, and checks his stocks every morning on the Internet). They hate Internet entrepreneurs who are suddenly worth hundreds of millions of dollars (but Winnie secretly wishes James would go on the Internet and somehow make hundreds of millions of dollars. She wishes he were more successful. Much more successful). They hate what is happening to the world. They don't believe in a free lunch.