“Which reminds me. I found you an assistant. Finally.”
“That took long enough.”
“You keep me pretty busy.”
She had too. And Pablo hadn’t minded until she snapped her fingers at him to pick her panties up off the floor. Finding someone for her to flog was no easy task, though. He called his alma mater Parsons, the Fashion Institute of Technology, and all of the other art colleges in New York City to see if there were any soon-to-be-graduates desperate for work—someone smart enough to foresee problems and solve them, but not so smart she (or he) didn’t want to be verbally abused. The assistant didn’t need to understand Keisha—that was Pablo’s still-to-be determined job description.
Pulling up outside of the network, the driver hopped out to hold an umbrella over her head as he opened the door to the Escalade and they jumped out to rush into the lobby. Inside, shaking the wet from their shoes, Keisha looked at him. “Are you ready for this?”
It was such a rhetorical question Pablo didn’t even bother to answer. As they came off the elevator, Pablo could hear the receptionist speaking into the intercom. “Miss Keisha Kash is here.”
“Send them in,” a boisterous voice crackled over the speaker.
They were ushered into a conference room made of glass walls, where a small group of people sat around a large metal table that could’ve easily sat twenty, comfortably. Their new colleagues. Pablo paused and let Keisha walk past him with a dramatic swish.
Tall, dark and handsome did not begin to describe the man standing up to greet his new star. “Keisha Kash. We’re so honored to have you as the host and EP of Model Muse. I’m Broyce Miller, Network Exec in charge of the show. We spoke on the phone.”
Keisha smiled broadly at him. “Finally, we meet.”
Broyce looked delighted. “So, let me introduce everybody to you.” He pulled out a chair for the Supermodel to sit in. Pablo grabbed a seat on the fringe. “This is Joe Vong, formerly EP of our hit docu-reality show, OFFICERZ.”
Pablo wondered what EP stood for. As if reading his mind, Broyce added, “Executive producer. He’s our showrunner, overseeing all production.”
“OFFICERZ?” Keisha paused and looked over at Vong. “That just got canceled, didn’t it?”
Vong had the paunch of a man who spent too many hours sitting in his office, and the face of a man who yelled a lot. The petite and oddly boyish-looking Korean didn’t look happy. “It got moved to a bad time slot. That killed the show.”
“I’m sure it did, Mr. Joe,” she said as she slipped into her creepy child’s voice.
Pablo knew from the moment she said Mr. Joe something was wrong, but what or why, he had no idea.
“Rachel Simpleton, your supervising producer,” Broyce continued.
Rachel had the earnest and gaunt look of a vegan, and Pablo wondered if she’d purposely dressed down for the meeting. He also wondered if he stooped down and looked under the table if she would be wearing Birkenstocks on her feet.
“And we’re extremely lucky to have Luciana Velásquez casting for us. She just left IMG as head of their women’s division.”
Pablo was impressed at how Broyce Miller kept deferring to Keisha throughout the introductions.
Keisha looked over at Luciana, a tight fake smile curling the side of her lips. “Shanna, is it? I thought I knew everyone over at IMG.” She shrugged. “Hmm, nice to meet you.”
“Luciana.” The casting director smiled back and started to flip through her papers. “I actually booked you on the Swarovski Christmas campaign. But that was years ago. You were a new face then.”
Pablo cringed at the ageist comment. Was the woman an idiot?
Like a mythical harpy about to eat its kill, Keisha didn’t blink.
Broyce jumped into the potential fray. “I just want to say that the network feels Model Muse is going to be a huge hit with someone of your caliber at the helm.”
“And it will be.” Keisha gestured in Pablo’s direction. “I want you all to meet Pablo Michaels, my creative director and right-hand man.”
Overcome by a wave of bashful shyness, Pablo simply waved. Keisha moved like a cresting wave toward the front of the room and leaned on the table. “Pablo worked for Fern Mallis and made his mark art directing and co-producing the Michael Kors show last winter. I’m sure you all heard about it. It got enormous press because of his innovative stylings. Everyone who works with Pablo, loves Pablo. He’s gonna werk his fashion connections with stylists and photographers for us, so we have real cred, as well as ratings. And he’s ours—exclusively. The only real fashion insider we have, other than me, of course.”
Pablo could hear the rippling of hair standing on the back of the casting director’s neck. “Well, as a seasoned booker at the biggest modeling agency in the world for eight years,” Luciana fired back without missing a beat—Snarl! Hiss. Catfight—“I think I have a little experience in fashion.”
With the grace of a maître d’, Broyce Miller diffused the friction in the room by quickly announcing, “Now that everybody knows each other, Luciana, why don’t you bring in this season’s models?”
“Happy to.” She jumped up and opened the conference room door to a parade of stunning young female specimens. They snaked across the room in a crooked line, then turned to face the team, posing awkwardly with one leg bent and toe pointed. It felt suspiciously like a Miss America pageant, without the tits and ass. “First, we have Angela.” Luciana gestured for a stick of a girl to step forward.
Keisha stood up. The girls sighed in collective awe at their muse. “Thank you. You can all leave now.”
The models looked at Luciana and then at each other.
“We’re good.” Keisha flicked her perfectly manicured fingernails at them.
They wiggled back out of the room.
“I’m sorry. Did you want them to wait in the hall?” Luciana closed the door firmly behind the last contestant.
Keisha walked around the conference room table. Her I’m gonna eat your liver smile slowly spread over her face. Pablo wondered if Luciana would have any flesh left after the altercation that was about to ensue. The casting director looked completely unaware that she was about to become Keisha’s lunch.
“I’m sorry, Lucia.” Keisha leaned on the table and looked at the rest of the team. “You have it all wrong. My show is all about the Cinderella story. I need to build girls from the ground up. I need a little more broken bird. You feel me?”
“Yeah, I feel you. And it’s Luciana! Lou…See…Anna.”
Keisha ignored her. “I need girls that are odd-looking, fragile. Girls who have never walked a runway or posed in front of a real camera before. Girls who come from poor backgrounds and are struggling to be seen by modeling agents on social media. Real girls.” She looked at Pablo as if making sure she’d explained the idea he’d given her. “Girls like me.”