Crystal Read Online Free PDF Page A

shoulders and hugged her. “Sister Gibbs, you are something else!” Crystal said.
    “I know it.” Sister Gibbs put her dark hands over Crystal’s. “Now you get on home before your mama accuse me of stealing you!”
    Crystal kissed her gently, got in a second hug, and left.

3
     
    Crystal had finished a breakfast of tea and fresh fruit by the time the limousine arrived. The driver, a thin, owlish man, was relieved when Crystal’s mother said that he had the correct apartment.
    “It’s early, you know,” he said, twisting his cap nervously in his hand. “You don’t want to wake people up at this time of the morning and ask if they’re expecting a limousine.”
    “Especially in this neighborhood.” Daniel Brown was sitting in his robe at the table, a cup of black coffee cradled in his hands. “You want coffee?”
    “No, sir.” The driver glanced at the clock over the refrigerator. “We’d better start off; you can never tell how traffic is going to be.”
    “At this time of the morning?” Crystal’s father asked.
    The driver shrugged.
    Crystal kissed her father good-bye. He grunted and shook his head. His lips tightened ever so much, and Crystal thought of the argument she had overheard when she came out of the shower. He didn’t want her modeling without hermother’s being there, he had said.
    “Daniel, you can’t take away the girl’s chances,” her mother had answered. “She has a chance to do something with her life. Are you going to take that, too?”
    “What do you mean, too ?” had come the angry reply.
    “Nothing.” The muted reply was scarcely audible through the bathroom door. So many of her parents’ arguments finished with her mother ending the discussion by saying ‘Nothing’ to something her father had said.
    “You be careful,” her father said as she went out the door.
    Crystal turned and smiled. “I will,” she said.
    The driver seemed to come alive once they had left the Black section of Brooklyn.
    “Your mother’s a looker, too,” he said. “She ever a model?”
    “No,” Crystal said.
    “How long you been modeling?” he asked.
    “Not that long,” Crystal said.
    “You know who I had in the car about two weeks ago?” the driver asked, and then continued before Crystal could reply: “Michael Jackson’s look-alike. The guy looked just like him.”
    “That’s nice,” Crystal said.
    “I had that colored boxer in here once, too. What’s his name—real dark guy—you know who I’m talking about.”
    “No,” Crystal said.
    “Yeah, anyway, I had him in here. He was okay.”
    The city in the early morning was eerie. The dark shadows of the buildings loomed ominously over the narrow streets. Crystal sat in the middle of the backseat as the carwhisked into downtown Brooklyn and over the Manhattan Bridge. In Manhattan, there was already activity as trucks unloaded in Chinatown and the East Village.
    She felt alone. It was more than the empty streets or being shut away in the speeding limousine. It was as if she were no longer herself but some other person being carried through the morning stillness to be something she was not. There was a picture somewhere, waiting for her presence. There were angles that she would fill, a glossy smile that she would place in just the right light, at just the right moment.
    The early shooting was for an Italian magazine. Crystal didn’t like working with foreign photographers that much, because sometimes she didn’t understand their directions. When the limousine arrived at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street, she felt nervous. The crew was already there. A young man came and opened the door for her quickly. She was glad to see Susan Hirsch, Loretta’s secretary, on the sidewalk, close behind.
    “Good morning, Crystal.” The young man who had opened the door made a sweeping gesture with his hand. “I’m Frankie, and I’ll be doing your makeup.”
    In a moment, Crystal was sitting in a small tent set up on the