The End of the Runway: Chapter 8

STACY HAD KEPT silent while she was being checked out, but she could tell that Unla had something to say. She decided to take a gamble and get the first word in. "Unla, I am SO sorry," she began. That was a good start. "I have no idea what happened. I must have eaten some bad shrimp. You know these French...such peculiar culinary habits." Hopefully Unla's unrelenting Germanness would come through in a pinch. Stacy could see it wasn't having quite the intended effect and decided to flesh out a few details as they headed for the elevator.

By the time she had finished rambling, Stacy had added a back story on the shrimp dish having floated in melted ice for at least an hour and an outbreak of food poisoning she had heard was going around at the hotel.



Outside, Unla ushered her into a cab and sat stone faced until she finished. "Ve know about ze gin," she said finally.

"Gin? What gin?" Stacy replied coolly. Was the jig up? How much could they really know, she thought. "I have just suffered acute food poisoning, and believe you me, I will be contacting Solomon Goldshmidt, America's finest personal injury attorney for this wanton lack of sanitary food preparation—" Solomon Goldshmidt ran a local Hoboken shoe repair store, but what did Unla know?

"Briann and the other girls saw you zneaking gin," said Unla. "Ve know you've been drinking."

Stacy wondered who Briann was. The curly haired model who had given her the gin? Conveniently someone had forgotten to mention it was from her flask. "I—I was poisoned!" Stacy wailed in a panic. "It was a setup! I saw them do it! They told me it was just water. They were jealous—I was closing the show!" Was anyone buying this? Stacy was too scared to tell the truth about the ipecac syrup, afraid Unla would think the same thing as Irene and the doctor if she spoke up. What if it got back to her parents that everyone thought she had an eating disorder?

"Actually," she said quickly, changing tactics, "I think my recently acquired allergy to synthetic fabrics may have played a significant role. I'm not used to those clothes. I told them about it—rayon has a devastating effect on my fair complexion. I'm sure it's in my file..."



None of it was registering, as the taxi pulled up to Stacy's hotel, the Magente Orly. Now she was being instructed to go to her room and pack up her things and meet Unla in the lobby in 30 minutes—she was being put on the next flight home.

As sorry as Stacy was to be leaving Paris with things in such a muddle, she knew how good it would feel to get home, change into her jammies and pig out on Oreos and ice cream while she hid her face from everyone. But she still felt terrible about what she had done to Red Linton, especially when he was probably still grieving for Anya. And why would Briann put ipecac syrup in her own flask? And most important of all, would she still be getting paid for working the show?

Before she left her room, Stacy determined to settle at least one account and scrawled out a desperate apology to Red Linton on hotel stationary. She could probably count on Unla to deliver it, she thought as she slipped it into her purse and headed for the elevator bank. If not, at least she could say she tried.



Stacy emerged with her bags onto a crowded lobby thronged with mingling fashion types. They weren't here a half hour ago, Stacy thought to herself as she squinted her eyes and kept on the lookout for Unla. How could she find anyone in here, she wondered as she slunk and wormed her way through groups of old women thinner than herself wearing cocktail dresses that draped from sinewy shoulders like dry cleaning bags on clothes hangers.



Stacy saw signs indicating a fashion week after party would start in one of ballrooms at 9 p.m, just a few minutes away. Doing the math, she realized it had been less than six hours since she had humiliated herself at the Cadiz show. She bowed her head. What if someone recognized her? Stacy suddenly had awful visions of jeering fashionistas pelting her with pickled truffles and dousing her with Prosecco.

Stacy was now on a desperate hunt for Unla so she could leave in a hurry. This crowd is ridiculous, she thought to herself, sweeping her eyes across the packed room. Maybe Unla was by the front desk? Stacy turned her head to the right as she unconsciously gravitated toward the crush of people huddled in the center of the room.

Suddenly, Stacy caught a blur out of the corner of her eye and swerved her head just in time to see her smack right into a tall stranger, her bags crashing to the floor beside her. “OW!” she yelped. “You should really watch where you’re going, you could have...”

Stacy hadn't even finished her thought before she looked up and stopped mid-sentence. Standing in front of her and dressed in a dark suit and black bowler hat, with unrelenting chiseled features and bright blue eyes, was one of the most gorgeous men Stacy had ever seen. He was obviously around her age, well toned, and definitely modelesque. “Oh, I uh, nevermind” Stacy stammered almost in a whisper, losing her nerve—and what was left of her breath.



“Pardon, mademoiselle, I did not look where I was going,” he said politely, beaming a smile that betrayed two rows of perfect white teeth. “It was all my fault. Please, allow me,” and scooped up her bags off the floor and held them out for her. His French accent was impressively slight and intoned with almost British inflections—which Stacy found extremely sexy. She had noticed the same thing with Irene—what was it with these French and their flawless English? At Cadiz, Stacy couldn’t go one sentence without tripping all over her high school French—and she was in the “advanced” class. What a joke!

“Oh, thank you,” she said bashfully, sliding her arm into her shoulder bag and taking her suitcase by hand. Stacy really hoped he wasn't at the show that afternoon.

“Can I get you a taxi or anything?” he said, folding his hands in front of him. "I really do feel awful"

That makes two of us, Stacy thought to herself. “Oh no, that’s not—no, I’m actually waiting for someone. Well, she’s waiting for me,” she told him instead, catching herself before she started to ramble. “But thank you.” With that, she shot him a weak smile and trudged on, still on the hunt for Unla so she could get her plane and get out of here. Shame, though, she thought, glancing back at the man in the hat, who had turned to rejoin his group. She wished there was just a bit more time to take in the, uh, "sights."

Since Unla obviously was not near the front desk, Stacy swung her head toward the left, at the bar at the far side of the room. Grazing over the tops of partygoers' heads, one face in particular caught her eye, and when Stacy went back for a closer look her heart stopped cold, frozen in terror.

There in a fresh black blazer and cream sweater she glimpsed the unmistakable chestnut hair and thin-framed aviators. Red Linton was standing not 30 feet away. And he was staring right back.

The End of the Runway: Chapter 7

THE REST OF Irene's visit was pleasant enough, but Stacy couldn't stop thinking about what was on her chart. Ipecac? What was that? Stacy chewed it over in her mind, bubbling with apprehension. Did the curly haired model put it in there on purpose? At least the news had put her in better spirits and some aspirin from a paper cup had put her in less pain.

Stacy was genuinely excited when the doctor arrived, a stout older man who squinted at her chart even through his thick glasses. "We're just keeping you a few hours longer to observation," he told her. French speakers always had problems with English prepositions, Stacy noticed.



"What was wrong with me?" she asked.

"We ran some tests while you were asleep and it seems you swallowed a foreign agent that reacted badly with alcohol," the doctor said. "It's lucky it wasn't much and that you drank so much so quickly, actually. If you hadn't, you might not have pushed it all up in your vomit. It could have been much more serious."

"So I probably just ingested something I shouldn't have on accident?" Stacy asked.

"That's one explanation," the doctor said. Stacy couldn't face up to the other likely answer right now, so she scrubbed it from her thoughts.

"I—I think it was an accident," Stacy said. "I wasn't trying to die or throw up or anything." Stacy cringed at the thought of this tidbit hitting the papers, the day after Anya's death. "I'm certain it was an accident."

"It probably wouldn't have killed you," the doctor said giving her a sideways glance. He shrugged, and finished his visit by checking her vitals. "You seem fine now, but I'd be careful about what you ingest from now on. Ipecac can be very dangerous. Why don't you get a little rest and you can get a good night's sleep at home." He probably thought she really was a bulimic model. In any event, it didn't sound like figuring out whether or not Stacy had an eating disorder was high on his list of priorities.



Two hours later Stacy sat in a wheelchair wedged between the floor's nurse call station and the elevators, frowning. She was being released into Unla's care. After she was checked out she was to head back to her room to change. In a bag behind her were the only clothes she had—the same black dress she had worn when she arrived at Cadiz.

The End of the Runway: Chapter 6

STACY AWOKE FEELING dizzy and swollen under a glazed white ceiling strung down the middle with glaring white orbs of florescent light. She closed her eyes to combat the strain but rings of light still trailed in the darkness. The back of her head throbbed acutely in a spot she couldn't quite pinpoint.

Stacy was pretty sure she had to have been dreaming. It must have been a nightmare. She jerked her body up. She was fine, really, she thought—as fine as you can be with a swimming head and a pounding headache, which, to be fair, was only technically painful every other second.



She blinked a few times to clear her eyes and drew the white curtains next to her bed. Her throat was dry and she felt out of it, like she had been drugged. Obviously, she was in some type of infirmary, which means she probably did throw up and pass out on Red Linton. A wave of paranoia crawled up her body and flushed her face, and a faint whimper escaped from her cordoned-off cubby.

The first person she saw was Unla standing legs apart wearing her patented Teutonic scowl . Without thinking she threw back the curtain and flopped down on the bed. She pulled the sheets high to her chin making a pocket of air between the hands at her face and her rigid body.





As Stacy waited for Unla to approach, her eyes clenched shut, she slid in and out of consciousness and into a series of terrifying fever dreams that intensified as her anticipation mounted. As she faded out, she watched herself pitted against a series of dark shapes Stacy knew by instinct—Unla, Red Linton, Anya Tom, and, in one rapturous whirl of reverie, her science teacher back in Hoboken, Mr. Frist who was taking turns scolding her with Wolf from the show and her 4th grade girl scout troop leader Ms. Patland, who had made her cry once when she accused Stacy of killing the troop's gerbil Fuzzley after Stacy went to the shore for a weekend and forgot to feed him. "You obviously haven't learned yet how to care for anyone but yourself." Her words enveloped Stacy and bit into her like a molar—dull and crushing, tearing at the back of her eyes where it hurt the most.





Suddenly she flicked her eyes open and was relieved to find a nurse standing over her, smiling. That was the first smile she had seen since Irene had shot her a glance of pathetic sympathy before the show. Before Stacy ruined everything.

The nurse began speaking to her in French. Stacy closed her eyes and listened to the words whirring through her ears like a pack of motorcycles on the freeway. Her head hurt a bit less now. Stacy caught something about a visitor and "une amie."





Unla? Stacy's eyes bulged and she considered shaking her head and protesting, or pretending to be asleep. But then she figured that would only delay the inevitable and at least this way she would have an excuse for seeming flustered and disoriented. Stacy never did well on the spot no matter how she felt.

Under the covers, Stacy crossed her arms on her chest and lay perfectly still, eyes closed. "Like a dead queen," she thought. Better to receive bad news in a regal, dignified position—well, as dignified a position as she could muster for having just vomited and tripped over the stage while walking in a straight line.

Stacy was flooded with relief when she heard "Salut!" from a small voice on her right hand side. It was Irene! Stacy sent a silent prayer of thanks to the heavens.

"I don't know if you remember me. But I brought you some magazines," Irene said, sidling up to Stacy's bed.





"Irene! What are you doing here ?" Stacy exclaimed through a parched throat. She knew this probably wasn't the best way to convey her thanks. "I—I'm so happy to see you! Where am I?"

"Oh, the agency sent me to check in on you. You're in hospital. They took you here after you collapsed," Irene said simply.

"...On Red Linton," said Stacy, staring down the elephant in the room.

"Yes, on Red Linton," parroted Irene. It was the first time Stacy had heard it said out loud. It stung a little to discover this was all really happening.

"But, Unla?" Stacy asked reflexively.

"Oh she went to the hotel," Irene said. "She'll be back later."

"I don't know what happened," Stacy said staring at her hands folded in her lap.

"I wasn't feeling good. I should have told someone. Is everyone very mad?"

Irene withered Stacy with a nonchalant arch of her eyebrow. Right. Of course they were.

Maybe Irene was too, Stacy thought. She had only met her, briefly that one time. Who knew what her intentions were and why she was here. Stacy wanted to ask, but Irene sidetracked her a with question of her own.

"Well, what's wrong with you?" Irene asked.





"I don't know. I haven't seen anyone," Stacy said obliquely. She really hadn't, but of course she didn't exactly need a team of G.I. specialists to tell her she just drank too much and threw up. Not that Irene needed to know that.

"Can I look at your chart?" Irene asked.

"My chart? Uh, I don't think hospitals have charts anymore," Stacy said, picturing quaint '80s sitcoms where private medical information was always an arm's length away.

But when she glanced over at Irene she was already flipping through a wooden clipboard tethered to the foot of the bed. Amazing. Was this for real?

"Oh, interessant," Irene said. "Are you by any chance bulimic?"

"Oh my god, no!" Stacy exclaimed. She had always been naturally thin but she really did love to eat. And while there had been a few days of SlimFast shakes and laxatives before her agency Connekt Us took the measurements for her very first comp card, she hardly considered that an eating disorder.

"Oh, I see," Irene said, finishing up with the chart. "It says here 'ipecac ingestion' suspected.' That's a, how do you say, vomitif, non? It would force you to throw up."

"Oh?" Stacy replied. She was still a little out of it.

Irene finished connecting the dots. "It means you probably ingested something you didn't mean to."

The End of the Runway: Chapter Five

THE DREAD MOMENT arrived not fifteen minutes later. Stacy's head was swimming, but she felt relaxed. Queasy, but relaxed. It was better than the alternative. Anya's moment had came and went but Stacy was too busy figuring out how to balance on her new heels to notice much. When the second to last model emerged onto the runway, Stacy began counting in her head and watching for her signal.

And before she even knew what was happening, she was being pushed by a minder on stage, high-heeled boots and all. Although she had never done this before, Stacy knew enough to fix her focus on the horizon line in front of her and its dark shapes. It was all a haze, really. Bright strobes of flashing light flanked Stacy—the sum of hundreds of magazine and newspaper cameras—blurring everything on each side. Since she couldn't see anything, Stacy just kept meticulous count in her head, careful to pace herself evenly, "fifteen... sixteen... seventeen.. left foot, right foot, left foot." Walking too fast—or worse, too slow—could throw the whole show careening off its carefully choreographed timing. It seemed to be working.





Suddenly, the fixed point straight ahead began to come into focus. Amorphous shapes began to define themselves, like when they eye doctor switches lenses during a vision test. First they became dark blurry ovals, then shoulders and heads began to emerge. People, a whole row of them, came into view. Then, a man in the center with a crimson blazer, dark glasses, chestnut hair.

Red Linton—it had to be. Stacy almost lost her balance from the shock. She teetered forward, knees jabbing in opposite directions. She recovered, quickly, but her brow was now thick with perspiration. She was expecting him there, of course, but not directly in her line of vision. Not when she had nothing else to focus on.

"Concentrate," Stacy thought. "Twenty-two... twenty-three... twenty four..." Red was staring right at her. The lights were awfully hot. This outfit was ridiculous, the whole tent was swirling.

The end of the runway approached, Stacy was short of breath and nauseous. Where was she supposed to turn? She remembered 1/4 of a meter. Was that the same thing as half a foot? That seemed almost reasonable. She locked her gaze on Red as she tottered toward him, aware for the first time that she had drank too much.

By this point, Stacy had long since lost count. Her hands were shaking, drenched in a cold sweat. Now, she realized, she was in a full-blown panic—drunk, and standing two feet from the end of the runway. One foot, half a foot.

Then, Stacy froze and clutched her stomach. It wasn't the panic, she realized, it was the nausea. The hot lights, the eyes, everything was fixed intently on her. This was no jaunty fashion pose. Suddenly, she let out a dry heave. Even though loud thumping music played overhead, she could hear the collective sound of five hundred jaws dropping.





Still frozen, Stacy retched again, but this time it was the real deal. She lurched forward and tripped over the toe of one of her towering high heels. With no room at the end of the runway, Stacy couldn't regain her balance with her other foot.

The last thing Stacy recalled before losing consciousness was tripping over the stage and tumbling right into Red Linton's lap, preceded by a cascade of her own vomit.

The End of the Runway: Chapter Four

ONCE BACKSTAGE AGAIN, Stacy began to dress. Like all Cadiz pieces, hers was a showstopper. Thick bell sleeves and obnoxious bright patterns. The boots were six inches high and simply hideous. They also hurt. Stacy didn't even want to think about walking an entire runway in them.

Anya Tom could have done it.

But Stacy was no Anya Tom, despite this bizarre day, but perhaps she could be. Stacy's head began to spin, along with the room, from what could only be the gin.

At least she wasn't nervous anymore. At least, no more nervous than usual.

The lights flickered and one by one the models began to line up, as stylists and designers added accessories and touched things up. Suddenly, the nerves returned. She started to shake. Stacy was closing the show.

Without thinking, Stacy slid out of line—easy since she was last—and tiptoed up to the curly haired model with the flask.

"Do you have any more, please?" and tipped a sort of hang ten sign to her lips. Butterflies were exploding in her stomach.

The curly haired model was clearly not in the mood. "Get back in line before they see you!" she hissed. Stacy pleaded with her hands. The model sighed, "It's over with my stuff," she said, and pointed to a clothes rack on the far side of the room. "The red coat."

Stacy tried to sneak over, hoping to get lost in the backstage mêlée, but a sharp-eyed stylist from Cadiz  spotted her and began shouting at her in French pointing to the perfect row of girls behind them.

"Pardon, un moment s'il vous plaît." Stacy was desperately recalling her high school French.  "J'oublie ma..." What would she be retrieving? "...ma medication. Je suis malade." 

"Vite! Vite!" he shouted. The rest was incomprehensible.

Stacy groped around the red coat until she felt the flask. Draping her head between some clothes, she held her breath and downed the remainder of the gin in one go. She dropped it back into a pocket and wobbled back in line. These shoes were impossible.

The End of the Runway: Chapter Three

PREDICTABLY, HAIR AND makeup took forever, and allowed Stacy to collect her thoughts. She may not be able to get out of closing the show after all, she thought. Now all eyes would be set on her—every camera lens, every fashion maven. "So this is who they think they can replace Anya Tom with!" they would all scoff. She could picture Red Linton—if he wasn't being questioned by the police—shaking his head disapprovingly next to all the industry heavyweights. But then again, if she aced it, this could be the start of a major fashion career. The prospect of making Anya Tom money made her positively giddy.

Stacy didn't end up liking they way they dolled her up, especially the dark makeup. Not that it mattered, though. The hairdresser didn't speak English, thank goodness, so there was no more awkward talk of Anya Tom, or anything at all. Until Unla and three flacks from Cadiz came over and pelted Stacy with a hundred do's and don'ts at a mile a minute. Stacy couldn't keep up with most of them. "Don't turn about face until you're almost 1/4 of a meter from the end of the runway," was one of the few items she caught. Stacy didn't even know what a meter was, and was simply too petrified to ask.





After hair and makeup, Stacy excused herself and went to the bathroom. A group of models were huddled around a mirror checking themselves for blemishes and critiquing their makeup. A copy of Style was lying open-face on the sink, showing Red Linton's latest editor's column. It was as if he were stalking Stacy's every move today. Would he like what he saw on the runway? Her nerves were acting up again.

One model, a curly haired brunette, was drinking from a flask.





"Hey, can I please bum some of that?" Stacy asked. She rarely drank, but something had to put her nerves at ease. "I'm closing the show and I wasn't expecting it."

The model dutifully handed over the flask and Stacy took a swig and gave it back. Gin. Not as rough going down as she expected.

"You're closing the show?" one of the other models asked, sounding surprised.

"Yeah, isn't that funny?" Stacy said. Maybe this had finally made her one of the girls.

"Here," the curly haired model said, handing the flask back to Stacy. "If you're going to take Anya's spot you're going to need a lot more of this."

The End of the Runway: Chapter Two

ONCE INSIDE THE tent (actually a wood pavilion snapped together in a day), Stacy made a beeline for hair and makeup. The good thing about working was that you never had to do it yourself, so getting ready was a breeze. From behind she felt her shoulders pinched and squeezed. She knew it had to be Unla, one of her new agency's reps and her minder in Paris.

"Vhere do you sink your going?" she bellowed. Unla never just said anything, she always bellowed, and through an impenetrable fog of a German accent.





"I was, I. I was going to hair-," Stacy stammered. Where else would she be going?

"Vell you should have been at ze meeting. Didn't you know about ze meeting?"

This was the first Stacy had heard anything about a meeting, but then again her cell phone didn't work in Europe and she had never figured out how to check her messages on her hotel phone, with its perpetual blinking light.

"Can you show me where the meeting is?" Stacy said. She was trying her best to be polite.

To her relief, Unla said nothing and led her through a thin crowd, who were huddled up in groups, buzzing, likely, of Anya Tom.

The meeting, when Stacy finally arrived, consisted of about thirteen models and about thirty people, some teary-eyed, that Stacy didn't recognize. She might have if she ever read the Paris magazines like the other models did. Fashion, she told herself, was just a paycheck and a chance to see the world. Still, there was something terrifying about the way Red Linton could make or break a model's career with a few well-chosen words or a photo in Style. Admittedly, he was pretty scary. I mean, look what happened with him and Anya. Stacy glanced at a few of the other attendees wiping away tears behind sheets of Kleenex. Yeah, scary was definitely the word.





During the meeting, Stacy hid behind a few of the taller girls and said nothing. The gist of the meeting was that the show would still be going on as planned, but with a respectable moment of silence for Anya at the beginning.

Just then, she was spotted. "There she is," one of the men in the center of the pack exclaimed as Stacy approached. Stacy winced, bracing herself for another telling off.

"Hi, honey," he told her. He sounded sweet. The lanyard around his neck said his name was Wolf, but was that his first name or his last? "Hurry up and get ready! We need you!" This was not as sweet. "We need someone to close the show. Now! Anya clearly won't be doing it as planned."





Stacy froze in fear. Close the show? Absolutely not! She was looking to escape attention, not bask in it. She couldn't speak, but shook her head from side to side and shrugged.

"Well you have to do it," Wolf said, simply, as if Stacy's input wasn't an issue. "All the other models have been assigned."

Stacy winced as he pronounced that last word. Was he kidding? Didn't these fashion types communicate? Didn't anyone else know about her "lackadaisical pacing?" Her knock knees?

"You want me to close the show?" She was buying time. How was she going to get out of this one? She couldn't close a major fashion show. She had never walked a major fashion show.

"Yes, yes! Of course!" Wolf was getting impatient. "Get to hair and makeup and we'll fill you in. You don't have much time."

Stacy stared back blankly. "I, I'm flattered because of, because Anya can't -- but I can't close I, I." She was stammering again. "I mean, I haven't walked. I can walk, but, uh, lackadaisical pacing! That's it." This wasn't very persuasive, she realized.

Wolf ignored her and motioned for an assistant to lead her back to hair and makeup--as if she didn't know where it was, and wasn't halfway there five minutes ago!

"My name is Irene," the girl said. She was French, but had only a trace of an accent. "You are closing the show now. You must be so excited!"





Stacy didn't know what to say on the way to hair and makeup, so she ended up talking about the one thing she vowed not to. "What happened to Anya? I mean I know she died, but what happened?"

"Isn't that sad?" Irene said. "No one knows, but one minute she's here, and now she's dead. But the show must go on."