Free Plus by Veronica Chambers Page B

museum: stone walls, sculptures, paintings, Persian rugs. You take this winding staircase, like the one in Daddy Warbucks’s house in Annie , up to your room. My suite looked out on the lake and had a private swimming pool. (Giovanna insisted it wasn’t a swimming pool, it was just a big Jacuzzi.)
    It was heaven. Over dinner, Giovanna told me the whole story. The villa was built in 1568, which is way too long ago for me to even imagine. Then it was owned by a ballerina, then one of Napoleon’s generals, then an Italian princessa and a Russian empress. It became a hotel in 1873. She also told me that George Clooney owns a house nearby and that he’s always hanging out at the bar with his friends, people like Matt Damon and Brad Pitt.
    I begged, like a dog, to go to the bar after dinner. But we had a five a.m. wake-up call the next day. Giovanna said, “You are the model. You must rest.”
    “What if I want to make a call?” I asked. “Can I call long distance on the phone in my room?”
    Giovanna laughed. “You are staying at the Villa D’Este, the most exquisite hotel in all of northern Italy. Of course you can call long distance.”
    I was so excited that I filled the gigantic bubble bath with water. I got in, and then because there was a phone right next to the Jacuzzi, I called Chela.
    “Hey, Chela, guess where I’m calling you from?” I said.
    “Italy, girl, I know,” she said. “Tell me all about it.”
    “Where exactly in Italy am I?” I pressed.
    “I have no idea.”
    “I’m in my very own mega-Jacuzzi! Can you believe it???” I screeched.
    “Get out!” she said.
    “No, you get out!” I said.
    We went back and forth that way for about five minutes because that’s what we always do.
    “This Jacuzzi is gigantic, Chela,” I said. “You could fit like six people in here easy.”
    “Why didn’t you ask them if you could bring a friend?” she whined.
    “I did,” I said. “I TOTALLY did. But Leslie said it was unprofessional.”
    “Well, that sucks,” she said.
    “Tell me about it,” I said.
    I was so amped about the photo shoot the next day that I talked to Chela until the water in the Jacuzzi was ice cold and my skin was all dried up like the papayas in my mother’s favorite trail mix.
    When I finally hung up and got into my pajamas, I couldn’t believe the time. It was two o’clock in the morning! I had to be up at five. I called down to the front desk for a wake-up call and then went right to sleep. No biggie, I thought. I’m a college student. I get by on three hours of sleep all the time.

    I don’t know what happened. Maybe the guy at the front desk “non parlo inglese” the way he said he did. Or maybe the phone rang with my wake-up call and I totally slept through it. It’s been known to happen. But I overslept, and when I did pick up the phone, it was Leslie Chesterfield’s very angry voice on the other end.
    “Bee, where the hell are you?” she said. She wasn’t screaming, but she had the kind of voice that could bring the pain without raising a single decibel.
    “Hi, I mean, good morning,” I mumbled. I was so, so sleepy. I guess asking if I could hit the snooze button was out of the question.
    “Do you know what time it is?” Leslie sniped.
    “Five a.m.?” I said hopefully.
    “It is six a.m. The photographer, the stylist, the makeup and hair people are all waiting for you in the lobby and have been waiting for over an hour. You do know this is unacceptable.”
    “But I thought my call was at five a.m.,” I said. “How could I be an hour late already?”
    She took a deep breath and then sighed. It was the indignant sigh of a very smart person having to explain something very simple to someone who was extraordinarily stupid. I knew it well because it was the same indignant sigh that my mother made every time I asked her why we couldn’t buy our clothes from the mall like everyone else.
    “Beatrice,” Leslie said, reverting to my full name. “A five