Until You

"Hmm?"

"Can you see the stage?"

"A little bit of it. Why?"

"Who's that man?"

"What man?"

"The one near the stage, dammit! Aren't you listening to me?"

Nita shifted her gaze. "I don't see nobody."

"What do you mean, you don't see anybody? You can't miss him."

"Mademoiselle," Frangoise said petulantly, "if you move..."

"Nita, try again. See? The guy in the tweed jacket?"

"The guy in the what?" Nita bit back a giggle. "What are you flyin' on, girlfriend? Ain't nobody here gonna be wearin' a tweed jacket."

"This man is," Miranda said impatiently, "and do me a favor and ease off the down home talk, okay? There's nobody around to appreciate it."

"Says who?" Nita slipped into perfect upper-class American diction. "Besides, I have to keep in practice. In these parts, 'down home' is lots more exotic than Ivy League. Haven't you ever heard of Josephine Baker?"

"Haven't you ever heard of Condoleezza Rice? Why's he watching me?"

"Condoleezza?"

"Nita, I'm warning you—"

"Come on, Miranda. There's a guy watching you. So what?"

"He hasn't just been watching. He's been staring."

"Everybody stares at you. You'd be collecting unemployment if they didn't. What's with you? I'm the one gets the jitters right about now, not you."

Miranda took a deep breath. Nita was right. She never got edgy before she went out on the catwalk, not since the first time. As for people watching... so what? Nita was right about that, too. She was paid to let people watch her.

Why was she getting antsy because this one guy was looking?

Maybe it was the way he was watching her. As if he was some kind of scientist and she was a bug he'd never seen before. This wasn't the long, hungry look that went with the territory of her profession. This was... different.

Françoise dusted a powder puff over Nita's face and then stepped back, hands on her hips, in a perfect, if unconscious, parody of her boss.

"Et voila," she said, "you are done."

"And so are you," Nita said, slipping off the stool and turning to a mirror behind her, "if I don't look fantastic." She peered at her reflection. "Good God almighty, I look like somethin' that would make the Ku Klux Klan fire up another cross!"

Miranda laughed. "Wait until you put on your wig," she said, "and then... Shit!"

"Oh, come on. It's not that bad."

"He's heading this way."

"Claude?"

"That man."