Chapter 15 Marcie Comes to Italy
Musical Theme; Call Me The Breeze by J.J. Cale
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Marcie arrived with a truck and a crew of five guys, all of them lusting for her, as she preferred. She occupied the East Suite with a delicacy and dignity that has not been seen since Heinz Guderian. She deployed her dresses in the closet, occupied the floor there with her shoes, and took the man’s side of the closet without a shot fired, moving in her negligees and pajamas. She invaded the North Suite with a wave of her hand, and invested it with racks of businesschick outfits and jeans, sweaters, casual dresses, coats, and a number of large boxes. Chrissie came in.
“Chrissie, darling. Does Will want to shoot this evening?”
“I’ll go look for him and find out, Marcie.”
. She went around, and eventually downstairs and out around the house. She heard a man and a woman speaking Italian. She knew a little of it herself. The woman was talking about a job, and the man was speaking very rapidly and mellifluously. He sounded like a professor of Italian literature. Suddenly she realized it was Will.
“Halt. Who goes there?”
“Chrissie, Will.”
“Chrissie, this is May. She was a maid here once, she’s cleared. She wants to work here. She’s Sicilian. She understands she needs your kiss on the cheek before she can have the job.”
“Kiss on the cheek?”
“It’s not a real kiss.”
“Why does she need me to approve her?”
“Because that’s the proper thing. The lady of the house has to approve of the maid. She will work for you. She does not report to the Don.”
Will’s phone rang, and he picked up. He listened for a moment. “This is her father. Is she hired? She will be good.”
“She is hired.”
Will spoke rapidly into the phone. He hung up.
“Let’s go upstairs. I want to put her in South 2. We show it to her, and when her dad gets here, he will take her home to get her stuff, and then we will give her a couple of days to move in. We will not discuss her business with anyone. If he brings his wife, you show her exaggerated respect.”
They went upstairs, and showed May the room. She ran around and fussed with things. She was getting a room in the palace. Her parents came and looked around, and were very pleased. They took her home to get her things.
“Marcie wanted to know if you wanted to shoot tonight.”
“I do, but not until May’s parents leave. Well, no, we can do business wear first.”
Will went up and knocked on Marcie’s door. Marcie let him in. “Marcie, we have just hired a Sicilian maid. Her mother and father are going to bring her back in a little while, and we can shoot some pix, but it has to be very correct. You ready to be a businesschick?”
“Sure. Get the camera ready, let’s blow away some virtual film.”
They went to the office, where Marcie looked for things she couldn’t find in the desk, and her attaché case, which held a writing pad, a little zip up collection of pens and pencils, and a day planner, which should not taken as any indication that our darling could plan a day. Then again she made ten times as much as Will, who could plan an epoch, and schedule it on a spreadsheet, and a hundred times as much as Poquita, who could plan a millennium down to the microsecond, and remember the entire plan.
Marcie looked for nonexistent bits of lint, pulled out files with nothing of consequence in them, looked over her shoulder at the camera, which really was watching, and tapped at keyboards running programs she didn’t know anything about. Will’s best joke in this line was having her running a super sophisticated debugger called ‘Soft Ice.’ To even try to explain what Soft Ice does would no doubt bore the reader to the throwing the book against the wall level, but you can take my word for it, it’s amazing.
The chances of our darling Marcie learning to operate Soft Ice are pretty remote. She is more likely to run herself over with the seven three, and please, dear reader, relax. There is less chance that our heroine will manage to start the seven three than that a jack rabbit will learn to do an integration by trigonometric substitution.
Marcie moved to the sophisticated evening dress thing. She chased Will down the stairs and he chased her back up. When that got old, she strutted around the living room in some really nice outfits.
The doorbell rang. Will admitted May and her parents. They came in quietly.
“Sir, you are here just in time to be photographed with Marcie Della.”
They did a kind of family thing with Marcie looking at May’s hand, and that seemed to be all they wanted, so they took May’s things up to South 2, and had a brandy. Will said he would get them a little phone so they could call May any time, and he would be glad to pay for it, it wouldn’t cost much. Then he got them a phone with unlimited long distance, and explained that the company had supplied the wrong phone, but they didn’t have the right one, and, well, they would let them keep this one because they couldn’t find the paperwork, and, well, it was not worth bothering with. The bill would go to Will, and it would not be very much, and there had been all this confusion, but anyway, they could make as many calls as they liked and it would not cost a thing, now wasn’t that neat? Mama could talk to Auntie for hours every night, and it would all be free.
Will would pay $89.78 a month for the service. Not for nothing had he taken General Barnes’ course in advanced bullshitting.
Marcie did a hundred outfits in the lingerie catalog. May had to make the bed dozens of times. The yellow satin was fine for a while, then they needed the green. Marcie played with her stockings, toyed with bikini strings, lounged around in pajamas, and showed off the most fashionable new things. After about 3 hours, she started to look tired, and Will cut it off. The model has to look frisky, fresh, and ready for fun. Marcie had put in a hard few hours, and she was bushed. Will tucked her in, and went to the office. If this was a thriller, he would have a state of the art computer, and you could tell that at a glance. Since it is not, a state of the art computer at one time or another has included hard drives laying on the desk next to the machine, wires dangling. The state of the art main board might be in the case of an older machine. In the DOS days, the latest main board could be in an old box. You could have an amber monitor and the most powerful processor ever made. The most powerful computer system Will had ever worked with had 257 Taiwanese clones connected with a huge tangle of cables, and stacked like bricks. Explaining that system would definitely try the reader’s patience, so we move on. Will had a desktop with lots of ports and a nice monitor.
Will took the camera to the desktop. He uploaded the pix to a folder called yyyy-mm-dd because it would sort in the directory. He put them on the hard drive, then on a flash drive, and cleaned them off the camera. He put the flash drive in a bag to go to the bank to a safe deposit box. He started an upload of the files which would go to the agency, the customer, Will’s US system, and commercial backup systems in Canada, Brazil, Mozambique, and Lithuania.
He went to bed, and held Chrissie.
In the morning, they collected a little dome tent and a few lawn chairs, and went to the beach. Will shot Marcie in every conceivable outfit for about 5 hours. As they packed, a guy told Will he thought that was a cool idea to bring the tent. Will sold it to him for $10 and threw in a pic of him with Marcie Della. Then Marcie put her cover up on.
“Help us pack up, buddy. You get signed posters of anything that comes out that good. We have all rights to the pix. Your girlfriend can pack up that tent, and you can pretend you are Marcie Della’s boyfriend to the top of the hill. You agree knowing that I am recording this. your name is?”
“Sure. I’m Don Blake.”
A kid looked at him. “Is she really Marcie Della?”
“She is. Carry those lawn chairs up to our car, and you can have a picture with her. We will have all rights to the pix. You understand I am recording this.”
“I don’t care about that.”
They went up the hill, Don holding Marcie’s hand. They stopped a few times and kissed. When they got to the top of the hill the girlfriend, Billi, with the tent more or less stowed right, took over. Will got one nice shot of them looking out on the Med. He got Don’s contacts and email in the palmtop. He took a pic of the kid and Marcie, she smoothing his hair. Will could tell she wanted to, but he was like 14, and even Marcie knew better, although ten years later, the population of 24 year old men who would regret a little fun with Marcie Della would have been zero.
They went back to the house.
Will uploaded the pix to the desktop, and emailed the ones he’d taken of his amateur models. They already had a poster printer at the house, so Marcie did a 24x36 for the kid, and signed it, “I wish we could. Love and kisses, Marcie Della.”
She ran the ones of Don Blake after cropping them. She signed them, and they went into the mail, too.
Will had an email from Aurora. “Your pix are incredible. We are all very pleased. Please do the negligees, and then get ready to tour Europe. You know the drill.”
They went to the beach the next day. They got Don to bring the dome tent, and shot Marcie in the rest of the swimsuits on the list. A girl walked by while Marcie was changing. Will turned to Don. “She could be a model.”
The girl came over. “I heard you. Are you serious?”
“Sure. I’ll shoot you a half dozen pics free, you can put on Facebook.”
“Is that how you get started?”
“No. You have a portfolio showing you in swimsuits, underwear, dresses, as much variety as you can. You don’t do nudity. You need an agent, which is hard to get. If you do not have one, you try to get jobs for Sunday supplements and stuff. The guys shooting that stuff might connect you with like, $50 jobs. You try to work your way up, and you must work fast, because, well, how old are you?”
“15.”
“You will be a supermodel at 25 or you’ll be done. You need to be an actress by 30, or something else. Otherwise, you are looking at a lost career. Lots of you make 100 thousand by 25 and snort it all up in coke, and end up dead by 30. You need to plan on going to college. Be a nurse or an engineer, something that is in high demand. Ask employers and see if it is.”
A red faced man came over. “Are you trying to seduce my daughter?”
“No, sir. Talking about modeling.”
Marcie came out. “Excuse me guys, we need to do some shots. We be back. Marcie played in the ocean for a bit, and they came back.
“Will, give her $50 and let me do the auntie and daughter thing.”
Will shrugged. “Would you like to do a little modeling job?”
The girl said “Yes.”
“Up to you, Sir. $50 for all rights. We’ll be done with her in an hour. No harm will come to her, and I would be glad to have you here to see that it does not, although I can probably handle that alone.”
“No nudity.”
“I never let them do that. I’m not against it on principle, but I think it trashes a model’s career, so I will not do it.”
Will handed the contract to him, and they both signed.
Marcie and the girl played in the waves and came back. They went in the tent, and somehow Marcie found another outfit for the girl. Out they came, and splashed around some more. The girl was an adorable little thing with pig tails, who had no idea how to pose, but could be caught looking cute pretty easily. They went through what they had, and Will saw Marcie looking a little tired and slightly over sunned, and called it off for the day. They invited their guests to the house for lunch.
Anita made them sandwiches.
“What are you called?”
“Bob. My daughter is Teresa.”
“I’d like a last name for the check.”
“Jackson.”
“Chrissie, would you cut a check for Teresa Jackson, $100?”
She went to do it.
“I thought you said $50.”
“Too late unless you object to our using the pix in the Aurora catalog, with little credits somewhere with Teresa’s name on them, just so maybe we can launch her.”
Anita passed out sandwiches. She looked at the little one Marcie had asked for.
“Is that all you’re going to eat, Marcie?”
“For now.”
Chrissie came in with some posters and one of Marcie’s black with gold flecks pens.
“Love and kisses, Marcie Della?”
“Are you really Marcie Della?”
“Sorry if you thought I was famous like somebody on a sitcom.”
She threw the posters aside and started into her sandwich. Then she dropped it on her plate, and went to her suite. Will took the pen and posters, and pursued her to her suite. “Marcie, I don’t know what you’re mad about, but please sign these posters for me.”
She did.
“I thought you liked Teresa.”
“I do.”
“So if I send her pics to Aurora, and they want her to work with you, you will be glad to?”
“Sure. Figure on it for Mother’s day.”
“You will be all right?”
“Just let me be. We’ll shoot tomorrow, OK?”
“Yes.”
He went back down and gave Teresa her posters.
“She likes you, and will be glad to work with you if Aurora asks. I don’t know what got into her, but she wants to be alone for now.”
Bob asked “Did we do something?”
“No telling what it’s about, Bob. It’s not good, but it isn’t the first time a model has acted nutty with me.”
“We are going back to Kentucky pretty soon.”
“If they want Teresa to work with Marcie, she should do it. Aurora will send her here first class. Or Marcie will send the Lear for her, or borrow Phillipa’s Gulfstream. I don’t want her dropping out of school, but she can study here, or call it home school, whatever. We will see to it that she has tutors, or gets in school here, or wherever we go, and I can teach her if nobody else does.”
“I’d like to see if you can solve an algebra problem.”
“I can.”
“Sight unseen?”
“Sure.”
“Here it is.”
“Read it to me. I’ll see if I can do it in my head.”
Bob read it.
“This is a simultaneous equation in two variables. Y is 14. Want me to tell you how to do it?”
Bob looked in the back of the book at the answer. 14. “Tell me.”
“Got to get two expressions in the same variable. So divide the first one through by 2/3 Y, and multiply the second one by the square root of two, and you have x= this and that. Set the two expressions equal to each other, multiply through by 7, and subtract Y from both sides, and there it is. Y=14.”
There was a knock on the door. It was Quint and Poquita. Will introduced everyone. “I thought the seven three was going to bring you.”
“It did.”
“I, oh, it’s been plenty of time. Are you here with a truck?”
“It’s coming. Chrissie got us a travel agent, and the travel agent got everything happening. I just talked to her on the phone and she said she was in the little brick house, and that’s where she was putting us.”
Will went to the window. “Take the truck around there, go straight at the Med, and it will be on the left. Quint, when you have time, I’d like you to look at the fish ponds, see what we need to do. Poquita, would you do a trick for Bob and Teresa?”
Quint went outside. Tell an aquarist you have fish ponds, and he wants to see them.
Poquita saw a deck of cards on the table. “Here, Bob, shuffle these.”
He did.
She took them and dealt them to a pile, face up, on the table. She turned them over. “I will tell you which card you are going to find, starting at the top of that deck. The first is the two of diamonds. As you turn each card, I will tell you what the next one is.”
He turned the two of diamonds.
“Ten of hearts, jack of clubs, five of spades, nine of hearts, seven of diamonds, three of clubs, nine of clubs. Let’s make it hard. Cut the deck and show me the first card in the stack.”
It was the seven of spades. “Then the next is the four of clubs, then the ace of diamonds, king of clubs, queen of hearts.”
“How do you do it?”
“Memorize the cards.”
“She memorized a dictionary.”
“C’mon.”
“Ask her a word. A real strange one.”
“Diakensis.”
“The final stage of the meiotic prophase marked by the contraction of the bivalents. I have no idea what that means. Will probably does.”
“How long do you remember things for?”
“I have never tried to remember something and not been able, unless I also forgot that.”
“Tell Bob my policy on nudity.”
“Models over 18 can change where they like. Under 18, they must do it by themselves. Over 18, cleavage and the nipples pushing the fabric are all right, but no more than that. Under 18, neither. Models over 18 can pose nude if nothing shows in the pic. Models under 18 may not pose nude, regardless. They will not be permitted to do anything their parents told them not to do.”
“She is safe with you.”
“Yes.”
“Why so restrictive even on adult models?”
“Let me give you our career plan for Teresa, if we can pull it off. She does juniors, back to school and that stuff in the Sunday supplements. She gets dressed and made up to look younger, and she does Mother’s day with Marcie. Then she moves into swimwear and dresses and all that. You blink, and she is 18 doing lingerie. She gets a bit part in a movie, a couple of TV commercials. She’s 22, and she gets a supporting role for a hundred. She’s 25, and she gets a lead for five hundred. She’s 27, and she gets a starring role for a million. And someone has nude pix of her they can publish. She can make a movie a year for five years, and each one for twice what she got for the last. Then the nude pix show up. Cruddy, badly shot sleazy junk. Or at best, Marc shot her for Playboy. Beautifully shot erotica. Still, if you were her agent, would you wish she hadn’t done it? I shot Marcie Della’s first paying job when she was 16. She wanted to pose nude, and I told her she would not be doing it. Today, she owns a 737 and a Lear jet”
“I wouldn’t want Teresa to do it anyway.”
Marcie came down the stairs in a gown Aurora was probably offering for less than the cost of a semi tractor, and some Phillipa shoes, also reasonably priced.
Marcie put her arms around Teresa. “I’m sorry I was so rude. I’m under a lot of pressure, and I sometimes act pretty silly.”
“It’s OK, Marcie.”
Since she had it on anyway, Will shot her in it. Teresa got a chance to see them at work. She was amazed at how fast they worked. Marcie changed outfits in less time than it takes to waste a dollar at a casino, and then it was “This way. Catch the light from that window. Back a little. Move around some. Shake your hair.”
Marcie wanted to wear 4112 with the suede boots. Then they decided the grey stockings would be better. She came back out, and they shot that. 4113 was a lost cause, so they just shot it and put it back on the rack. 4114 was cool, and they did it with two different pairs of shoes and then again in the sky blue Marcie liked.
Bob and Teresa left.
They shot negligees for a couple hours. Marcie prowled the house like an alley cat. Like? Be nice. She laid on beds, strutted about, sat on couches with innocent looks, and looked over her shoulder with anything but innocent looks. She fussed with her shoes, brushed her hair, and tried on jewelry. She got in and out of outfits faster than a lady who did that professionally. She did every role from the extremely high priced call girl to the little innocent girl who had no idea how good she looked. May was quite busy with hanging things up and all. They hit the wall, and everyone but May went to sleep. Will outlasted the rest for a few minutes, starting an upload to Aurora. He included a little message about Teresa, the digital recording of her agreement to sell the pix, and some technical details.
* * *
In the morning, Aurora had sent the highest praise for Will and Marcie’s work, and a contract for Teresa. Will called Bob, and he came with Teresa and her lawyer. He looked at his client’s contract. She would be paid at about the gross national product of Somalia and her education would be on top of that. She could forget about high school, she would not be going back there. She signed. They got on Marcie’s big birdie, and they were in Rome. There, Teresa was lined out with a Jesuit priest, Father James, who would help her out a little with her schooling. Aurora sent a truck to the airport, and she certainly did not need to worry about having nothing to wear. Not that it has much practical application, but women will look at 25 perfectly nice outfits and say they don’t have a thing to wear, but if they look at a thousand, they don’t say that.
The girls toured Rome, Marcie walking point, Teresa right behind her, followed pretty closely by Will and Chrissie, and a couple of cops. There was also a guy named Bruno who carried a big satchel of catalogs, and said very little to anyone but Will.
Marcie went to her old routine of visiting every store. She bought something, gave away a catalog, got her picture taken with the owner, or whoever was there, and went on, leaving a business card so they could download their pix from her website. When she hit the old school, she summoned Kitty, who talked with them quietly in his wonderful Italian, and got their addresses to send the posters to. Marcie even learned to write ‘love and kisses’ in Italian, such a student she was. She saw all the cathedrals, and showed them off to Teresa, who knew just a little bit about them from Father James.
They got a ride now and again from a little bus that had a small bathroom, and the unique property that whenever Marcie and Teresa got in they always came out in different clothes. The cops had one buddy in the bus, a very quiet fellow who didn’t even talk to Will much.
They visited the Vatican, where Marcie opined that ‘God has great taste!’
They went to some big department stores, and Marcie sometimes had to stand on a ladder to sign her posters. She had special very large markers for this sort of work, and she explained to whomever, that the gold flecks were real gold, which they were.
She took her little guest everywhere, of course followed by the camera. She stopped occasionally at a bar, and left her little charge in the hands of the cops while she got photographed with well known bartenders and owners. They were marked down to receive posters. She drank so heavily that Will was usually asked to finish the shot she had ordered.
* * *
It was time for Mardi Gras, so Marcie had to go to New Orleans. She had her own modestly appointed float, built on a truck chassis. Well, modestly appointed is a relative term, and by Marcie’s standards, well, let’s forget it. Teresa wore a jester’s outfit. She took one side of the float. Marcie took the other in a knit body suit in mixed colors, and black boots with gold buckles. Marcie wrote a big M on the front of a catalog and handed it out, and reached for the next one. Teresa did the same on the other side, handing out a different version of the catalog that had Teresa on the front. The usual aluminum silver dollar sized coins were thrown from the upper deck by a group of court jesters played by, yeah, well, models and other nice looking ladies whose backgrounds were not carefully checked. They were not subject to Will’s rules about the exposure of certain parts, and limited only by the customs of Mardi gras, that rigid set of repressive rules. The coins offered a catalog if you could call or get on the web site.
When the parade was done, they toured the French Quarter. Marcie bought lots of things she did not need, and gave away lots of catalogs. Teresa tried her French with the Cajuns, who enjoyed it. Will sent a little smile to Marcie, who knew he could speak Parisian French so well that Parisians would think he was one of them. He could no more speak Cajun French than his cats could.
They ate oysters with Tabasco, crawfish, and a few blue crabs. Will sucked the fat on the crawfish, and people called him ‘coon’, which he obviously liked. The Marcie method was, you came in, said hi, bought something, handed out catalogs, took pictures, and left. Lots of bartenders and patrons got cards with the website on them so they could download pix of them with Marcie. If you were in a restaurant or bar, you would ask if they wanted an autographed Marcie Della poster to put here on the wall. Bar owners put their arms on Marcie, and the poster came in the mail real soon. Local framers, found by the staff, offered usually a 20% discount on framing the posters. Some of them delivered the posters to get the framing work. Marcie had mastered the location deal. She found the spot she wanted to put it in, and measured it, and offered a poster that size. Knowing our Marcie, you can be sure the spots she wanted were not inconspicuous, nor the images excessively modest.
Marcie’s visit was faster than Katrina’s, and ever so much more pleasant.
They went to Baton Rouge and Lafayette. Posters were much in demand, now being printed in the bus Marcie had just bought, and had painted in her usual modest pattern. Will could edit pix, print posters, and lay them out on a table for Marcie’s signature and cuddle Chrissie in a nice sleeping berth.
Poquita and Quint met the bus, and Poquita instantly made everything twice as efficient and practical. Poquita’s ability to communicate was not a problem, but she only knew how to pronounce words from the pronunciation guides. She could read and memorize the dictionary in a day, but she couldn’t talk. Will went to work on that when they got to Spain, by hiring a Spanish secretary. You can get around a lot of places with a pretty, well spoken secretary on point, dressed in the latest Aurora. You can get out if you need to, also, if you have a couple of Spanish feds with you.
They visited bookstores, where Poquita bought a grammar book at one, and a lot of books on CD at another, where they were very inexpensive. She would listen to a very well spoken reader do Don Quixote, and she would read the text at the same time, and have a fair Spanish accent. She would also be able to recite the entire book word for word in her poor Spanish, for whatever that was worth. Since she had read it in English in high school, she would be able to recite it in English as well.
They went to an espresso shop, which in Spain, is kind of like a Starbuck’s with much lower prices, better coffee, and people behind the counter who make a decent living, and like their jobs and their customers. Marcie and Teresa circulated, and were shot with everyone in the shop. They went out to the bus and changed, and came back in and did some more of it. Everyone was given the web site address so they could get pix of themselves with Marcie, who was beyond supermodel at this point, and Teresa, who was heading for the Stratosphere herself. Will made a joke about that, and Teresa said something about how much she would like to really go up there. Will conferred with one of his Spanish associates. It was pretty early in Tennessee, but he made the call anyway.
“Bob? Will. Sorry to call you at such an hour. May Teresa go for a ride in a high performance jet? She’s fine. I just think I need to ask. OK.”
“Juan, will you ask if we can send her on a two seat fighter up where you can see the stars?”