Free The Home for Wayward Supermodels by Pamela Redmond Satran Page A

doesn’t believe you.”
    He rolled his eyes and practically groaned in desperation. “Ask her what I have to do to persuade her.”
    “He wants to know…”
    “Tell him to go freak off!”
    Well, I wasn’t going to tell him that, so I just smiled and shrugged, and he smiled and shrugged back at me. He was so suave-looking, except he had a little snaggle tooth, which to my mind was the thing that made him really irresistible. He seemed like a great guy to me, and I couldn’t understand Tatiana’s problem with him, though he didn’t seem any more enlightened than I was.
    After a moment’s hesitation, he moved close to Tati and put his hands on her hips. When she didn’t swat them away, he moved closer to her and started dancing in rhythm to her. He was a really great dancer, almost as good as Tati herself. She began dancing away from me, her boyfriend holding tight to her tail, both moving farther and farther from me, like a train chugging west.
    Another man, with red hair sticking out all over his head and thick-rimmed black glasses, took advantage of the gap and danced up to me. The odd thing was that he was carrying a notebook and a Bic pen that was leaking onto his fingers.
    “Hello, beautiful,” he said. “You must be a new girl. What’s your name?”
    “Amanda,” I said.
    He wrote that down, without asking my last name.
    “And what agency are you with?”
    “How do you know I’m a model?” I asked.
    He laughed, ignoring my question and instead asking, “Whose clothes are you wearing tonight?”
    I stopped dancing and looked down at the dress Desi had made me. “Why,” I said, “my own.”
    “Charming!” he cried, scribbling another note on his pad as a flash went off so close to my eyes I was temporarily blinded.
    By the time I could see clearly again, the red-haired man had disappeared and so had Tati and her boyfriend. I pushed my way through the room as quickly as I could manage on the ridiculous heels, but they were nowhere to be found. It hadn’t even occurred to me to bring money along; I was with Tati, she would get me home. Someone tried to hand me a glass of champagne and another man asked me to dance, but I sat at the bar to get off my feet, hoping that Tatiana would once again appear, wishing with sudden longing that Tom were there. It almost made me laugh out loud to imagine Tom in a place like this, but I loved thinking of his strong arms lifting me clear into the air, carrying me outside and home—Wisconsin home or Manhattan home, it didn’t matter—safe with him.
    Finally I gave up waiting for Tom or any other White Knight to come along and save me, and fought my way outside, where at least I could get a cell signal to call Desi or start trying to stagger in my heels toward home. But when I reached the sidewalk in front of the club, I was surprised to find the chauffeur waiting for me.
    “Miss Tati asked that I drive you home,” he said.
    “Where did she go?”
    “She went with Mr. Billings to his town house.”
    “Oh,” I said. “All right. I’ll go home.”

    Since I hadn’t spent any time with Tati in the apartment, I hadn’t missed her being there before, but when I got back that night I did. For the first time since I’d been in New York, I felt lonely, really and truly lonely.
    Feeling like this, the first person I thought of was my mom. If I wanted to talk before bed, or if I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep, Mom had always been there.
    But I didn’t want Mom to be the one who was there for me now. I was an adult, I reminded myself, I’d made my break. I couldn’t go running to Mommy.
    Tom. In the summer, Tom was always in bed by nine so he could be up before dawn to take one client or another fishing. But more than once I’d called him or sneaked into his room in the middle of the night. He wouldn’t mind.
    At the first sound of his muffled sleepy voice, I nearly melted. It sounded as if he were right there in the bed