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who’d never run away from her. Wasn’t it enough that Daphne had the big job, the upturned nipples, huge discretionary funds, and enough self-confidence to go after a man like William Dearborn? The same man Emma’d thought about, much to her quivering satisfaction, in the ten minutes between going to bed and going to sleep last night.
    Maybe Daphne hated women, thought Emma.
    “Speaking of advertising,” said Emma. “Victor, were you aware that Daphne is responsible for the SlimBurn diet pill ads?”
    Victor froze. “The ones with Marcie Skimmer?” he asked.
    Marcie Skimmer was an old acquaintance of Victor’s, a model he’d worked with long ago, before Marcie got big—
    figuratively and literally. As the gossip pages reported it, the model fell into a depression a year ago, gained a ton of weight. Then she did the SlimBurn ads, after which point she had a nervous breakdown and attempted suicide by consuming ten pounds of Death-by-Chocolate cake. Marcie believed one could eat her way into a diabetic coma.
    Miraculously, she survived and went to some kind of rehab sanitarium upstate. Emma found the whole story sad but logical. When one’s worth is based on appearance, depression and self-destruction was a given.
    Daphne cheerily asked Victor, “Oh, do you know Marcie?” He nodded. She said, “We have a mutual friend.”
    “You call her a friend? ” he asked. “You had Marcie pose in a bikini, on all fours, among a herd of Holsteins in a muddy field!”
    “With the caption, ’Time to get off the farm’?” said Daphne proudly. “We moved half a million units of SlimBurn pills the week that ad appeared. But that was nothing compared to sales after the follow-up ads.”
    The follow-up shots were Marcie flying above Broadway like a float in a parade with the caption, “Time to come back down to Earth?” The third in the series: Marcia in a blue bikini, photo-shopped among a pod of whales in the ocean with the caption, “Time to get on dry land?”
    Victor said, “You humiliated her.”
    “She was paid millions,” said Daphne. “And that’s a lot of Death-by-Chocolate cake.”
    Emma gasped. Daphne’s insensitivity was galling. This was a woman capable of love? Her heart was as hard and
    black as onyx. William deserved better. Or not. He could be just as horrible as Daphne. For all Emma knew, they deserved each other.
    Daphne, meanwhile, peeled off her jacket, unhooked her bra, kicked off her boots and pulled off her pants. Standing tall and proud in a black vinyl thong, she asked, “Are you ready?”
    Victor feasted his eyes. He couldn’t help himself. He squeaked, “Ready.”
    “Everything that happens here is confidential,” she said to him.
    “Emma and I have been working together for ten years,” he said. “She can vouch for me.”
    “I vouch,” said Emma, her own jaw in the dropped position at the sight of Daphne’s lean body.
    The client said, “Emma, you can go now.”
    What? She was being kicked out? “You want me to leave?” she asked. “But what about my emotional services?
    Clients in the past have always relied on me heavily during the shoots. To help them pick outfits and backdrops. Being photographed in lingerie makes most women feel vulnerable. They wanted the handholding. The soft shoulder.
    Encouragement.”
    “Do I look vulnerable to you?” asked Daphne, her arms akimbo.
    She looked like she could chew metal, thought Emma. “I’m sure you’ll be wonderful,” she relented. Daphne was a client, after all. And Emma was in the client pleasing business. “I’ll take off then.”
    “Thanks for stopping by.”
    So she had the day off. Emma should be glad for the free time to rest her hangover. She should be relieved not to have to button a corset or say “you don’t look fat” ten thousand times. She should be happy. But she felt excluded.
    Unwanted. Again.
    “This is good. It’s perfect. I’ll have extra time to study up on William Dearborn,” said Emma with