Before the Flock Read online

  Caitlin forces a smile. “We’re sending you on tests.”

  Sophie is worried. “That’s probably not a very good idea.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t even know what they’re on.”

  Caitlin looks at Sophie’s lips and wonders if they are just a little bit too full, but then she decides it will be her distinguishing feature. “Sophie, it’s not that kind of test.”

  Sophie is on her knees in front of a white backdrop wearing a neon orange T-shirt with the sleeves cut off at the shoulder. Her legs are in fishnet hose with a small pleated skirt and combat boots. Serge, the photographer, spins his finger above his head and looks through the camera’s viewfinder. As if on command, she writhes from girlish position to girlish position, tossing her hair with each turn. “This is fun,” she says.

  “Yes. Yes. Good,” Serge says. “Put your right hand flat on the ground, straighten your arm, push your right shoulder forward and look at me like you want to fuck my brains out.”

  Joy slides from Sophie’s face. Suddenly she feels the crowd of busy people around her. She closes her mouth and lifts her lip at the camera.

  “No. That’s a sneer.”

  Sophie flips her hair forward into her face. She opens her eyes and everything is dark. She wonders if she can stay here. Then the brush of the white swan’s feathers sweeps her forehead, pushing her hair, making her skin tingle, she opens her mouth and tilts her head back.

  “Yes,” Serge says. “Yes.”

  At the modeling agency, Caitlin hands Sophie an envelope and asks her if she has a passport.

  “Like, no. What is this?”

  “It’s a passport application. Mr. Cassavetes wants you to be his guest at his compound in Jamaica. He’s seen your tests. He’s going to make you a star. You’re very lucky. He doesn’t do this for just anybody. He wants to talk to you. He’s in there, in his office, go ahead, he’s alone.”

  Sophie walks in hurried steps uptown, away from Aspire Model Management. She runs up to a payphone only to find a frayed cord where the handset should be. At a second phone, there is no dial tone. “Hey, that one works” a man in a suit says, and smiles at her. It starts to rain. Sophie huddles next to the phone. The man stands behind her. He shuffles from side to side in his suit, fumbles to open his umbrella, and holds it out over Sophie.

  “Hey, actually, I’m fine. You don’t have to.” She shakes her head and clutches the phone at her neck and punches the keys—collect.

  Audrey answers and accepts.

  “Are you okay?” Audrey asks.

  “No.”

  Jean puts the phone to her ear and asks, “What is it, sweetheart?”

  “I want to come home.”

  “No, you don’t sweetheart. No, you don’t. You’re just having a bad day. What’s going on?”

  Sophie looks around her. The businessman smiles and starts to say something; she turns back to the phone. “I’m standing on this street and it’s called Prince Street. Isn’t that Daddy’s middle name?”

  “Sophie, are you crying? What do we say about crying?”

  “Shut. Up. I think he likes me.”

  “Who likes you?”

  “Mr. Cassavetes.”

  “That’s nothing to cry about. That’s good. He’s very important. He can help.”

  “Mom, not like that. Like in a weird way. I have to ‘holiday’ with him. None of the other girls are going. He’s like fifty or something. It’s kind of weird. If I don’t go, like will he…”

  “Sophie if you want to wreck everything that I’ve worked for, go ahead and come home. Don’t go on this trip. Don’t act polite. Don’t be the woman I brought you up to be, just think of yourself and come home and go back to school. We’ll manage somehow.”

  A black Lincoln Town Car pulls up in front of the models’ apartment. Sophie hugs the other girls after the intercom buzzes. Caitlin is waiting in the car with a passport.

  “You won’t need that.” Caitlin points to Sophie’s bag. “Mr. Cassavetes has arranged for you to have all new clothing on this trip. All the top designers: Norma Kamali, Willi Smith, Stephen Sprouse. He has chosen from their collections especially for you. Doesn’t that make you happy?”

  “I guess.” Sophie rolls her eyes.

  They drive to a private airport in New Jersey where a small jet waits.

  As she ducks down and steps in, Sophie says, “There’s like nobody else on the plane?”

  “No, Sophie, there are two pilots.”

  “Shut. Up. You know what I mean. Why don’t you come? There’s lots of seats.”

  Caitlin laughs. “Sophie, I don’t think that’s what Mr. Cassavetes had in mind.”

  “Please, please, we would have so much fun. You and me. C’mon.”

  “I think you’ll be just fine without me.”

  “No. Please. It would be really fun. It’s supposed to be warm, and we can put on baby oil and read magazines.”

  “No.”

  Sophie reaches out and holds Caitlin’s hand, her eyes welling up. Caitlin, looking up, notices something she has never noticed before; Sophie’s right eye has a black inverted oval-shaped speck beneath the pupil. “You’ll be fine.”

  Inside the plane, there are two black leather recliner chairs, one on either side of the aisle, and two thin leather banquettes behind them. Sophie sits in the seat on her left because it has a phone just beneath the large round window.

  From the front of the cabin, Caitlin looks in at Sophie sitting in Giuseppe’s seat and thinks to herself, They all have that look, something like a colt, legs long and awkward—fragile, fleeting, ecstatic expressions, a skittish something in their eyes—they are all the same—and we find them wherever they are. We find them. “Have fun,” Caitlin says, with inauthentic levity.

  The cabin door and stairs close, fold, and seal; and to Sophie it is like watching a spider that’s been splashed with water. The cabin becomes dark except for the bright white light showing through the cockpit windows. Two silhouetted captains’ hats turn toward Sophie. “Welcome aboard.” Sophie’s eyes adjust, and she can see the details of the tarmac, the other planes, the sky, the tree line. The jet turns on the runway. The engines fire, and Sophie is soon in the clouds.

  When the plane door opens again, the air is moist and hot. A black man with a sweaty brow, close-cropped hair, and dazzling white teeth sticks his head in the cabin. “Welcome!”

  In the limo Sophie rolls the window down so that the hot air can push her hair back. The car weaves through hand trucks and carts and colorful women then speeds through children and soccer balls and squat schools with murals. The air feels like feathers, she thinks to herself as she lets the warm rush of it float her hand outside the window.

  A turn and then there are fields with tall green stalks, where dark black men hang on the sides of tall, grunting trucks. They leap to the ground, swing machetes, and eight-foot stalks are felled instantly. In the rearview mirror, the driver studies Sophie. “It’s sugar. They’re making sugar. I bet you never knew this is where your candy comes from!”

  “I’ve never even been on this side of the road before!”

  “Yes, of course!”

  The roads are tight and circuitous. Plants reach out from every corner trying to touch the car on the curves, succeeding with whips and laughs.

  “Some people think we drive crazy on the island.”

  With every turn, the road seems smaller and rougher. Now there is surely no way to get back to the airport, or back to New York, or back to Poway, or back to the school cafeteria. She tries to remember her locker combination and can’t. There are books in there, and photos taped to the door, and other things that belonged to some silly little girl she doesn’t really know anymore. The thought exhilarates her. She is going to be famous, and someday somebody will open that locker and say this once belonged to Sophie Clark. She holds her hands out and shakes her hair and says to herself, Yes!

  They come onto a straightaway, and the ju
ngle of cane fields and palms and banana trees falls away as two meadows rise up before them with a slim road in the middle that stretches beneath mature English oaks. “This is the old plantation.” The driver smiles. And at the end of the road a large white colonial English manor sits in front of a circular driveway.

  The sound of ice cubes, the feel of silk, each day the servants carry the living-room furniture to the veranda when the sun hits the large oak in the lawn, when the breeze turns around and blows softly off the hill, dry air bringing the intoxicating fragrance of orange blossoms. First, the Oriental rug, a Kerman, woven with silk threads by active hands, blood-colored reds, Roman purples, it rolls out toward the ocean, the center uniform and intricate as a bed of clover. Then the furniture, then the pillows, carried by black hands. Below the oak, on the Kerman, Sophie spreads her fingers, arches her back, and the breeze flows through her. She dreams that the jungle holds enchantment. If she can just turn her head when the spirits don’t expect it. If she can surprise them, she can see them as they suck back behind the rocks and foliage, giggling. She can hear their high, thin laughter. And she smiles, knowing they are for her.

  “What are you drinking?” His voice is deep. He stands in the frame of the French doors at the end of the Saltillo tiles.

  “I’ll have a Coke,” Sophie says.

  He laughs. “American Beaujolais, yes?”

  Sophie shakes her head.

  “It’s a wine.” He turns and calls orders into the house. “How do you like it here?”

  “I like it.”

  “Yes.” Giuseppe extends a crystal highball across the ocean and the hills. “This all belonged to a man my father worked for once. When I first saw it, I was much like you, young, tremendous potential. I had dreams, but I had no way to obtain them. I knew it would be mine, but I didn’t know how.”

  “That’s totally awesome.”

  A young man with sun-streaked hair holds a tray with a small bottle of Coca-Cola and a crystal tumbler filled with ice cubes. Sophie notices his bright blue eyes and the shell necklace that moves against his tan skin.

  “Sophie, what are your dreams?”

  She takes the drink and nods a thank-you. “I don’t know.”

  “You can tell me.” He laughs. “You never know, maybe I can help you with them. That will be all, Cyan.” Giuseppe motions toward the house. Cyan and Sophie exchange one last glance. He is gone. A gust skips a broad leaf toward the ocean.

  “I guess I want to be in…”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t you have a son?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Well, he is…I believe…He is…” Giuseppe forces a laugh. “You must know that he is, he is a pimply little boy. You are a woman.”

  “Am I?” Sophie laughs and tosses her head back.

  The wind brings the sudden silence of white noise. The ocean churns white and blue and green.

  When Sophie returns to her room after dinner, a servant girl with shy eyes has poured her a bath. The smell of lilac rises in little wispy clouds. As she sinks into the water, she feels a prickly tingle up her calf, through her thigh, in her lap, through her stomach, around her chest, stopping at the nape of her neck.

  The girl picks up the pile of clothes on the tile floor. “Don’t go,” Sophie says. “Will you brush my hair?”

  “Yes, miss, yes.”

  Each stroke tugs. Sophie grips the side of the claw-foot tub so she doesn’t slide in.

  Sophie dries herself, puts on a robe, and sits on the bed beneath the slow turn of the ceiling fan. She switches out the lights, but cannot sleep. She opens the window. Moist hot air surrounds her. She sees a light in the distance at the edge of the jungle and hears the faraway sound of laughter and music.

  Days of sun, the white linen is blinding at lunch. The silver is cool to the touch. When Cyan bends over to pour Sophie’s water, she reaches up to touch his shell necklace. The water glass overflows. She giggles.

  “I am so sorry,” he says.

  “It’s just water.”

  But Cyan is already heading toward the house. His rope belt looks high on his white pants.

  “He is Creole. Looks French, but he’s probably British. Very beautiful, yes?” Giuseppe remarks.

  “He looks like the men who run from the bulls.”

  Giuseppe laughs. “Yes. You are right. I don’t think you will find him running from any bulls. I usually find him chasing my chambermaids. The girls call him mantell. That’s Jamaican for a male slut.”

  “Really?”

  “Sissy.” He waves his hand at one of the girls standing a few feet away with her hands behind her back. “Tell Sophie what you mean when you call Cyan a mantell.”

  “Dat mean ‘im tan pon it long den mantell him fren.” She smiles brightly, and Sophie and Giuseppe laugh.

  The day after the Spirit gig, the day after Dickey and Gary quit, Kurt and EJ drive over to the Dugans’ house. EJ has a real job. He trades bonds for Muckerman, makes thirty grand a year. He likes it, but it is someone else’s life. A good second mate, EJ needs to master and be mastered. He grew up with a sadistic older brother who showed him the ropes, dragged him down the beach in a ball of seaweed, telling everybody that EJ was a Chinese egg roll. Ten years later, with those narrow eyes, EJ is still working it out in his head: He needs percussion.

  Mrs. Dugan feeds them lasagna and says, “Bob’s still asleep.”

  They find the Jovi on the sleeper sofa in the cabana by the pool. Crashed naked on the duvet, he has the vibe of an 18th century European aristocrat that has been left at his tropical outpost too long and gone native, a regal savage. He pushes down on the bed and looks up at the two of them. His hair is dark. It contrasts with his green eyes. “What’s up?”

  “Hey, bro,” Kurt says, and pulls the shades.

  The Jovi blinks like a mole. “Right on. Welcome, welcome.” He stretches, yawns. “What time is it?”

  “One.”

  “Fuck.”

  The Jovi rises, goes to the kitchenette, dumps some cigarette butts out of a cup, rinses it, pours in some coffee from the carafe, and scratches his balls. “You want some?”

  EJ says, “Dude, c’mon, you’re making me sick. Put some fucking clothes on.”

  Kurt shakes his head and laughs.

  The Jovi gets back in bed, nurses the stale coffee and listens.

  “We need you. Dickey and Gary quit.”

  “Whoa. Dude. I’ve got a paying gig. Do you know how insane that is? They cater our practice sessions.”

  “That music—it’s not real,” Kurt says.

  “Paycheck’s real,” the Jovi says.

  Kurt lights a cigarette. “We’ve been playing together for fifteen years. Nobody our age has that.”

  The Jovi motions for the smoke. Kurt hands it over.

  “I know. But, dude, I can’t quit my gig. I gotta move out—I’m twenty-two. I’m finally making some money.”

  “Since when do you care about money?”

  “It’s not that. It’s a cool gig. These guys treat me alright. I want to play with you guys—like old times. I just don’t want to let you down. If I got a paying gig with Belinda or Smithy, I can’t be down here with you guys playing at the Pumphouse for nothing.”

  “Belinda Carlisle? From the Go-Go’s?” Kurt lifts his hands in the air. “Brian Smith, wasn’t he like a roadie for the Love Guns?”

  “C’mon, Kurt. He played guitar. Smithy is a great guy!” The Jovi says.

  “Face it. You’re a backup in a couple solo projects. We’re a band.” EJ says, and stares intensely over the Jovi’s shoulder. The Jovi turns around to see what he is looking at, but there’s nothing there. “Smithy and Belinda, both of them, their salad days were playing with their friends. Now they’re just trying to cash in on faded glory. I never want to be that—the kind of guy who does projects. You’re not a project guy either.”

  “I know. It’s not like that. Dude.”

&
nbsp; “Look, if you can’t be there all the time,” Kurt says, “if that’s all you can give us, that’s fine with me. I can cover on guitar if I have to.”

  “I know you can, but is that fair to you guys? I don’t want you flipping out over this, Kurt.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Really?”

  “I never start it—”

  “That’s what I’m talking—”

  “Are you in?”

  The Jovi sips some coffee, takes a last drag on Kurt’s cigarette, drops the butt in the mug, and holds out his hand. “I’m in.” Hands pop. “Yeah. I’m in.”

  Jamaican lazy afternoon, the sun seems to swirl with the wind, swirl and fill minds with everything warm and fluid and natural. It rubs her stomach until her navel is a tiny pool of sweat and oil. It pushes warmth through her, to the arch of her back that doesn’t touch the towel, the arch where a single drop of moisture hangs from the trestle, hangs, then falls. Each time she opens her eyes, a blinding snapshot, silhouettes in white, figures in black, white before blue, black before green; arms are branches; hands are pools; and the sun swirls with the wind.

  She rolls onto her front, tucks her face in the crook of her shoulder, watches her profile change in her shadow, and breathes in her own skin. It is something like home: She brought it with her. And the sun pushes down.

  “Ms. Clark, is there anything I can bring you?”

  The voice is different. Sophie rolls over, opens her eyes, and sits up. Cyan kneels before her, glowing in the afternoon sun.

  “So sorry to wake you. Were you asleep?”

  “No. Just dreaming.”

  He laughs. “You dream when you are awake?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “That is good. You know what they say?”

  “What?” She sweeps a blonde curl back.

  “Those who dream in the day see more than those who dream at night.”

  Sophie smiles. “You think?”

  “Yes. Tell me what you dream right now.”

  She looks at him, then at the rough blue surface of the ocean. “I dream that your eyes are frozen, and only I know how to make them melt.” She wraps her fingers around his necklace, pulls him in, breathes him in, and turns away, shy and embarrassed.