Robert, who had momentarily left my side to go check something with his assistant, turned around when he heard me sob.

“Gosh, they’re not that bad, are they?” he asked, a look of genuine anxiety crossing his face.

“Oh no!” I said. “It’s not that. They’re very good. That’s why I’m crying.”

He looked at me, puzzled, and shook his head. I felt his hand rest on my lower back, and he turned to kiss me on the cheek, ignoring the tears that seemed to have collected by my earlobe. I felt his eyelashes flutter against my face, and it caused a tingle to run up and down my body. I drew in a sharp intake of breath, shocked at the newness of the sensation, and quickly moved away.

Chapter Fourteen

It took me a while to realize where the sound was coming from. For a few minutes I had been hearing an intermittent knocking from somewhere in the apartment. I listened some more, then heard my name being called. Softly at first and then a little louder.

“Tanaya! I’m here! Downstairs!” the voice said. I ran toward the window, peered into the street a couple of floors below, and saw Robert standing there, grinning up at me. Under one arm was a large flat, black case.

“I’ve been tossing pebbles at your window. Your buzzer thing down here doesn’t appear to be working,” he yelled up. “Just wanted to show you the final pictures from our shoot. I think you’ll be pleased. Can I come up for a minute?”

I pressed the button to let him in and quickly dashed to the bathroom to rinse out my mouth; I had been eating tuna for lunch, straight out of the can, and our tiny living room and I both reeked of it. I grabbed a bottle of perfume from Teresa’s closet and spritzed it into the air, waving away the bold, overflowery scent and causing the room to smell of jasmine and fish.

Robert was knocking on my door by the time I was done.

“Hello,” he said. “Hope I’ve not come at a bad time. I was in the neighborhood, so thought I’d drop in, take a chance you were at home.”

“Please, come in. May I bring you something to drink?”

“Coffee would be great if you have some. Sorry to just barge in like this, but I was so excited about these shots that I couldn’t wait to show them to you. It’s not something I usually do. But for you,” he said, looking right at me, “I made an exception.”

I excused myself for a minute to go into the kitchen and brew up a fresh pot of coffee, suddenly horrendously self-conscious-at the way I smelled, the way the apartment looked, at being alone with a man whom, I was now sure, was here for more than he let on. There was no reason I would know how to handle it.

Nervously I reentered the living room and sat on a chair across from Robert. He patted to the space on the couch next to him.

“It’s OK. I can see from here,” I said. He got up, walked around the table with his black case, and crouched next to me.

“No need to be nervous,” he said quietly, putting his hand on my back again. “I’m not going to bite you, darling.” He opened his case and pulled out some large colorful photos: a carefree smile hovering on my lips, my hair tossed over one shoulder, my arms folded in front of me. I looked like I had been doing this for years.

“We had to do some retouching, just to even things out,” he said, turning to look at me. “I mean, it’s not like you’re anything less than completely stunning.” His eyes lingered on my mouth now. I stood up, telling him I needed to check on the coffee. He stood up too. Then he wrapped one strong arm around my waist and pulled me toward him.

“So tell me,” he said in a grunting whisper. “That silver patch of yours up there, does it match the one down there?” His eyes lowered, and his hand started to move down my body. I grabbed it, holding it tight in my grasp. Then his mouth landed on mine, his tongue forcing my lips open. He smelled of cigarettes; his skin was coarse and rough. I felt a wave of nausea come over me, fear gripping my belly. I instantly had a flash of my mother and father on the night I was conceived, a miserable man pressing down on top of a desperate woman. I thought of those articles in Teen Cosmo, about how to attract the boy of your dreams and which lip glosses were most kissable, and I wondered why girls chased after something that was so obviously repulsive. As another surge of sickness overcame me, I pushed Robert away, ran back into the kitchen, and threw up in the sink.

“Please leave,” I said, my voice starting to tremble.

“You’ve got nerve,” he said. He bent over and picked up his portfolio. “I thought you’d be a bit friendlier, given everything I could do for you.”

I came out of the kitchen and looked at him.

“Well, my girl, I’m like this with the people at French Vogue,” he said, crossing two of his fingers in front of my face. “I could have landed you something pretty major there, something any other upstart model like you would do anything for. But you’ve just blown it, haven’t you?”

He slammed the door behind him, and I started to cry.

“No matter how it might appear, that kind of behavior is not normal.” Mathias looked over at me sympathetically as I took a break during my shift the next day. He had calmed down significantly since I first told him what had happened with Robert; his first reaction had been a desire to race over to what he described as “that British punk’s studio,” and, from the sounds of it, hit him.

“You know, people think that fashion is all about sex,” he said, deep in thought. “I suppose in many ways it is. But then they think that all models are cheap, willing to give themselves over to anyone because, after all, they are willing to take off their clothes for a living. It’s not fair, but it’s the way this business is perceived. Perhaps the cad has never met a virgin model before.”

I thought of Nana, who would grumble and groan each time he spotted a copy of Stardust-the glossy magazine charting the lives and loves of Bollywood’s finest-in our house.

“Decent girls don’t dress like this,” he would spit out, pointing to the cover photo of a comely Aishwarya Rai in a belly-baring choli, her bountiful cleavage peeking through its sequin-encrusted surface.

I looked down at the snug jeans and T-shirt that Karla had insisted I wear that day and wondered what Nana would think if he saw me now.

The Viva ad campaign launched some weeks later. Dimitri showed me a couple of magazines and newspapers in which large ads were placed, a shiny, smiling me in full-color glory. My roommates, who had wasted no time in telling their other friends and colleagues that they lived with me, wanted to take me out to dinner to celebrate, to pop open a bottle of champagne and insist I take a sip-just one-to help me feel the thrill of this. For one evening they pleaded with me to forget that I was Muslim, and to succumb to the forbidden lure of alcohol. Instead, I kept my hand around a glass of club soda, sipping away quietly while they ordered another bottle of the bubbly liquor.