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KAMELEON MAN
a novel by
KIM BARRY BRUNHUBER
Copyright © 2003 by Kim Barry Brunhuber
First Edition
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency), Toronto, Ontario.
This book is published by Beach Holme Publishing, Suite 1010, 409 Granville Street, Vancouver, British Columbia V6C 1T2, www.beachholme.bc.ca. This is a Porcepic Book.
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts and of the British Columbia Arts Council. The publisher also acknowledges the financial assistance received from the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for its publishing activities.
Editor: Michael Carroll
Design and Production: Jen Hamilton
Cover art: Copyright © Dennis Novak/Getty Images. Used with permission.
Printed and bound in Canada by Printcrafters
National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Brunhuber, Kim Barry
Kameleon Man/Kim Barry Brunhuber.
“A Porcepic Book.”
ISBN 0-88878-443-0
I. Title.
PS8553.R866K35 2003 C813’.6 C2003-905868-9
To my little family: Twiddy, Mouse, Wolf and, most of all, Mum
ONE
The inside of the tent is a whirlwind of stockings, nubile limbs, breasts of all kinds. No time to look. A minute and a half to change. Otto, on his way out, turns for one last glance, but the mirror’s full of Sandor and his conical top hat. “Am I tucked?”
“Let me...” one of the models behind him says. He pretends to tuck it, pulls Otto’s shirt out even farther. Not that Otto has a chance of winning, but it’s the last routine, and why take any chances?
Everyone else is still trying to fit into their bridal gowns or tuxedos, too big or too small because there aren’t any rehearsals for shows like this. Tairhun, our dresser, a young balding Pakistani with big hoop earrings in both ears, flits among us, adjusting collars and brushing off lint, telling each of us to call him Tyrone. I fumble with my suspenders, can’t figure them out, search for my shoes instead.
Before the show all the clothes were neatly arranged on racks, our names and the order of each outfit printed in marker on cardboard tags. Now, after three changes, tags litter the floor, shoes are in the wrong boxes, outfits are mixed up and inside out. Two square feet of space each in which to manoeuvre, and one chair for every three models where we toss our used outfits. Tairhun told us to hang everything up after each change so the clothes wouldn’t be wrinkled for tomorrow’s show, but now even he realizes he was dreaming. Discarded clothes hit the ground like spent cartridges.
“Zip me?” Cindy asks. She’s crouching next to me, holding one pump in her mouth while she tries to jam the other size six onto her perfect size eight. I zip her, trying not to stare.
“The jig is up,” she says in a stage whisper. I nod knowingly, though I think she means “the fix is in.” We both suspected it since we first saw the lineup and which outfits were assigned to whom.
“I hear Manson likes pink,” I whisper back, but she has heard enough about Chelsea Manson to know I’m making it up.
“I look like a fucking flamingo,” she hisses, pointing with a mouthful of shoe at her dress. A horrible pink chiffon. “And check that out,” she adds, waving the shoe at Zoë.
In a full-length sable Cartier dress, Zoë, one of the newer girls from Bramalea, looks as good as she ever will with that nose.
“Don’t sweat it,” I say. “You’re still the bee’s knees, baby.” I’m trying to be helpful, though I don’t know what the bee’s knees are, or if that’s even good.
“Thanks, but I don’t care anymore,” she says, but I know she does. “This is all bullshit, anyway.”
Zipped and shod, Cindy swishes out of the tent, her strides already timed to the music outside. A brave soldier at the Gallipoli of fashion. Which is, of course, a shame, because she’s one of the few among us who actually has a chance to win. Most of the other models here are just attractive—one better than good-looking, but one less than pretty.
In this town, to say that you’re dating a model is more often than not an admission of failure. Models here would never turn your head at a supermarket or inspire you to push up on the dance floor. Most of the models in Nepean are the girls in your class who sit in aisle seats and never lend their notes, or farmers’ daughters, extra-large thanks to country air and potato fritters, grown too big to eat, like prize-winning cornstalks, reluctantly rounded up in trucks and sold to one of the two modelling agencies in the city—Bramalea Talent or DBMI. And Cindy and I both work for the wrong one. Cindy, rumour has it, was iced out of Bramalea for going down on the director’s husband after a show. Then again, rumour has it that I go both ways.
“Stacey, shouldn’t you be on already?” Tairhun says, still fussing with Sandor’s hat.
I peep through a slit in the tent. Otto, on the ramp, seems nervous, keeps glancing back toward the tent. Expecting the cavalry. But my dress shirt’s still on its hanger.
“Damn.”
I struggle to undo buttons, zip up zippers, snap off hooks. Nothing’s worse than being out there too long. It’s a small runway, about twelve feet long, shaped like a lowercase t. Not enough room to do anything except walk slowly up and down, slowly because if you walk any faster you’ll either look like a caged baboon or else drop off the t into the front row. And the mall’s lunchtime crowd, so quick to clap at every pirouette, every new accessory, can turn ugly in seconds. You don’t leave a guy out to dry on the runway—it’s part of the unwritten code, like lending your socks to the model from the other agency. It’s just not done, and I know this, but haste turns fingers into spoons, none of them prehensile. I miss a button and now I have to start over. My mother used to have a saying, written in neat black calligraphy on a cue card taped to the dash of the family Fairmont: “If you’re late, don’t rush.... You’re late already.” Good advice. The faster I change, the slower I end up moving. Like in those dreams where you battle to escape from sharks, but you’re swimming in chocolate pudding.
I need help with my pants, but Tairhun’s too busy plucking lint off Sandor with a handful of rolled-up tape. In his spare time Tairhun teaches the makeup course at Bramalea. Sandor’s with Bramalea. Bramalea’s affiliated with Chelsea Manson. And Manson runs the Feyenoord Faces contest.
Cindy opens the tent flap. “You know, the chair’s still out there.”
“What chair?” Tairhun asks from behind Sandor’s hat. We all drop what we’re doing and peer through the flap.
Zoë forgot to take off the huge red collapsible beach chair put up during the spring scene, and there it is, on the left end of the t. Otto’s at the top of the ramp, cruising nonchalantly around it, pretending it’s part of the set.
“Stacey! Take it with you when you come off,” Tairhun says,