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high-wasted pants, a tailored white shirt, and a pair of leopard-skin ankle boots with five-inch heels. Around her neck there were easily fifteen colorful beaded necklaces of various lengths. But the beautiful clothes and fanciful jewelry were not what you noticed first. It was her hair, which was dark, fuzzy, and abundant. For reasons that Regina figured were unfathomable to anyone outside the fashion world, someone had teased it out around her face in a wooly mushroom cloud that added anotherfour or five inches to her already overwhelming height, creating an effect as startling as a brightly colored parrot coming to rest on the branches of a magnolia tree.
    Serena looked at the agitated model without any discernable change of expression. “Scylla is always serious. You know that.”
    “Then she has lost her mind!”
    “It’s fine,” Serena said calmly. “When you see the photos, you’ll love it.”
    The model fluttered her hands unhappily around her hair without touching it and pouted her brightly painted red lips. “I will not love it. We look ridiculous.”
    “You look fabulous,” Serena said. “Now stop fussing long enough to meet Regina Hamilton. Regina, this is Sasha, the baby of our group. We indulge her more than we should.”
    “Tell her,” Sasha said, turning toward Regina and striking a
Vogue
-worthy pose. “Does this look like shit or not?”
    It looked like nothing Regina had ever seen on a woman’s head before, but Sasha didn’t look like any woman she’d ever seen either, so the standards that normally applied were obviously useless.
    “You look amazing,” Regina said, and that was true.
    Sasha snorted like that much was obvious. “We always look
amazing
. I’m talking about looking ridiculous.”
    A voice from the diaphanous tent joined the conversation. “Stop bitching and I’ll let you do the makeup.”
    Sasha’s pout disappeared and Regina had the feeling her expression was as close to a smile as the woman was going to get.
    “For real?”
    “Absolutely.”
    Serena paid no attention to the new voice at all. She looked bored.
    “For the whole shoot?”
    The curtains parted again to reveal another model. They looked enough alike in every way to be the twin daughters of some very odd-looking parents. She was wearing a gray pencil skirt and a hot-pinksilk blouse with the same stacked necklaces and the same towering poof of hair. Regina wondered in what alternate universe this could be a college professor’s classroom attire.
    “For the rest of my fucking life, if you will just calm down and get back in here so we can get ready and go to work.”
    Sasha looked at Serena. “You’re my witness. You heard that, right?”
    “I heard it.”
    Seemingly satisfied with that less-than-enthusiastic response, Sasha sashayed back over to the billowing tent and brushed past the other model, who had now fixed her gaze on Regina.
    “Scylla, meet Regina Hamilton. Regina, meet our creative director and resident genius. We couldn’t do it without her.”
    “Nice to meet you,” Regina said, trying not to stare. Standing among these women, she felt like a Georgia pine tree in the Sequoia National Forest trying to hold its own with the redwoods.
    “Are you the agent?”
    “Sort of,” Regina said, smiling.
    Scylla frowned. “What the hell does that mean? Are you the one we ought to talk to about doing the new portfolio or not?”
    Before Regina could respond, Sasha raised her voice from behind the curtains, where she seemed to be standing over a woman perched on a high stool.
    “Susan won’t let me put the green eyeliner on her!”
    “It looks stupid!” another voice cried from the inner sanctum.
    Scylla sighed and glanced at Serena, then back to Regina like they had important unfinished business but she had no more time. “Does anybody around here know what the fuck they’re doing?” she said, and ducked back behind the billowing fabric without another word.

Chapter Six

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