The driver came around and opened the door closest to the curb. Shari Bernstein was closest to the door. She got out first, and when she did the photographs rushed up to her, screaming at her to turn to look at them, and snapping pictures all the while. Shari ducked her head and raced for the door to the restaurant.
Linda Kowalski was next. By now, all the girls were looking out of the car windows, watching the performances as they came by. Grace looked very thoughtful, and that was important, because Alida thought Grace was her only real competition.
Mary-Louise went out next, and Alida almost laughed out loud to see that performance. First she ran. Then she seemed to lose her way, then she skidded and fell. When she got up, she had dirt all along the side of her little black dress. She rushed toward the restaurant door and lost a shoe. She turned around, found the shoe, picked it up, and rushed some more.
Alida was next. She got her umbrella from the floor where she had left it when she first got into the car. She stepped out of the limousine in that swiveling way her mother had taught her would not expose any part of her that she did not want people to see. The photographers rushed her as they had rushed all the others. She opened the umbrella directly into their faces and walked—not ran—to the restaurant’s front door. She was inside and out of the range of the cameras in no time at all.
Mary-Louise was standing near the reception desk, crying softly into a napkin somebody had gotten her from someplace. Alida ignored her. Other girls were coming in: Janice Ledbedder, looking out of breath; then Ivy, Grace, and Suzanne; and then Andra and Marcia Lee. It took a while for all thirteen girls to enter the restaurant.
Alida moved closer to Grace. “They’re all so pathetic,” she said. “They don’t look this pathetic on television, do you know what I mean?”
“They’re edited for television,” Grace said.
Alida shrugged. The restaurant door opened again and the judging panel came in, or some of them did—there was Sheila Dunham, and Mark Borodine and Johnny Rell, but not the other two. Alida had never had much use for gay men, but the entertainment business was full of them, and she supposed she’d have to tolerate them.
Sheila was walking up and down in front of them. Alida wondered if she took drugs. She was always so extreme, so angry and hyperactive. She did seem to have managed to make it into the restaurant without a hair out of place or an inch of stocking wet.
Alida watched as Sheila stopped in front of Mary-Louise Verdt and looked her up and down. It really was very hard not to laugh in these situations. It really was. Mary-Louise looked terrified. She also looked like she’d been wrestling in mud.
Alida could feel all the girls holding their breaths. They were waiting for Sheila to do something outrageous and violent, as she had already twice that day.
Instead, Sheila just said, “Go home.”
Mary-Louise’s tears welled up yet again. “Excuse me?” she said.
“Go home,” Sheila said. “Get back in the car. You’re out of this challenge. No decent restaurant would allow you in looking the way you do.”
“I slipped,” Mary-Louise said, and now the tears were coming down hard and fast. “I—they just all ran at me and so I was running to get away, and I slipped.”
“I don’t care what you did,” Sheila said, “you can’t come into the restaurant like that. Go back and sit in the car. You’re out of this challenge.”
“But I can’t be,” Mary-Louise wailed.
“Get out or I’ll have you taken out,” Sheila said, and then she turned her back on the crying Mary-Louise, and looked down the line at the other girls.
Alida didn’t know why she expected the next target of Sheila Dunham’s gaze to be herself, but she did. She was not surprised that Sheila stopped in front of her. She was not afraid, either. She knew she looked good. Unlike most of the rest of these girls, she had clothes that really suited the occasion. She was wearing Betsey Johnson and Gucci, not knockoffs from Kmart and JC Penney. Her hair was good, too, sleek and styled and combed, jet black and falling to her shoulders. She didn’t have too much makeup on. She wasn’t wearing too much jewelry.
Sheila Dunham said, “Do you think that was smart, what you did out there?”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” Alida said.
“Holding the umbrella in front of your face. Do you think that was smart?”
“I think it successfully prevented the photographers from photographing me,” Alida said.
“And you think that’s what you want to do?”
“I think that’s what most celebrities do,” Alida said. “They try to avoid the paparazzi if they can.”