‘G’night,’ she sing-songs instead, wobbling off to bed.
My phone is still vibrating inside my jeans. This is what people mean when they say their phone is blowing up. My eye takes in several notifications, settling on one message from Violet.
‘LAYLA ISN’T THE PERSON THEY MADE THEMSELVES OUT TO BE,’ Violet writes. ‘We are being taken for idiots by a full-grown fucking MAN.’
24
‘All of that stuff “Layla” has said about loving Ted Levy? Written by Gerald Bronstein.’ Violet’s really off on one now.
‘Who the hell is Gerald Bronstein?’ I reply. My mind is working overtime trying to absorb the last half-hour.
‘A guy in Amsterdam who is a SICKO and a PERVERT and a LIAR.’
Layla’s profile has disappeared from Facebook altogether. We must all have been blocked.
‘How did you even find this out?’ I type to Violet.
‘I have my ways,’ she writes back. ‘I asked Layla to Skype me, and she just wouldn’t. So I knew something was up. There’s this new thing, Google Reverse Image Search. I wanted to find out more about her as a person so I looked her up online and the pictures are of a girl called Ellie, from Scranton, who died in 2008.’
‘Are you looking us all up?’ I type, then think better and delete before sending.
Later, I google the absolute bejaysus out of Alice Andre, trying to find any scrap of information on her that I can. There are the two articles that mention her and Ted, as well as those detailing her relationships with Frank Bustard and Marc Benjamin, both of which seem to be not muchmore than momentary passing flings. One headline from that report catches my eye and I feel inordinately pleased: ‘Gag Hag’.
It’s much easier to find breathless hagiography on her, mind.
Stylish Canada, 2008
‘Alice is a Wonderland’
Alice Andre walks into the Four Seasons Hotel, and all heads turn her way involuntarily. Either the 26-year-old doesn’t notice the rubberneckers, or she is used to them by now. After years of modelling in Milan, South Africa and Tokyo, where her gazelle-like proportions were especially well received, it’s safe to assume she is more than used to the attentions of strangers.
Gracefully tucking her tiny feet in under her lithe body and pulling her blonde beach waves into a loose bun, Andre orders a burger with the works and green salad, hands falling hungrily on to her plate when the meal finally arrives.
The model is energized, fresh from shooting her first major campaign for MAC cosmetics. In her early twenties, Andre was lured away from a blossoming career in architecture to a life back in front of the lens. ‘I’ve always loved the brand, and when they said they would put me front and centre of the international campaign, I couldn’t say no,’ Andre says between mouthfuls of spinach. ‘The baby mall rat in me remembers seeing all those old ad campaigns– who wouldn’t want to get a piece of that action?’
Growing up a shy outcast in Ottawa, Andre’s six-foot frame drew attention in her Catholic high school for all the wrong reasons. ‘I was a classic nerd,’ she explains. ‘Not classically beautiful, not cool or funny enough to run with the crowd that I wanted to. Instead, I drew and wrote. I would sneak into any available classroom and watch old movie clips on the VCR on my own.’
At 16, Andre was discovered by a model scout while queuing at a Weezer gig, and within months was living with four other would-be supermodels in an overcrowded apartment in Japan. She is brilliantly indiscreet about model lore, unlike many of her contemporaries, lifting the lid on Japanese salarymen and being ‘too chunky’ for couture campaigns, at 6 foot and 110 pounds. ‘I found Polaroids from that time recently, and my heart nearly stopped, as I was painfully thin,’ she admits. Andre recalls it as a difficult, toxic and lonely time, and the experience sent her running into the arms of York University in Toronto, where she studied architecture. Andre also spent a year studying in Dublin, where her nascent dreams of becoming a writer began to take root. By day, she worked in Café en Seine, close to the capital’s Grafton Street thoroughfare, but by night she had discovered a cohort of writers who lured her from her original vocation into the beating heart of a vibrant creative community.
I am still trying to wrap my head around the idea of this gazelle-like creature with her too-far-apart eyes walking down Dawson Street. I am having an even harder time trying to think of someone like her at writing workshops in Dublin. Heads would have blown clean off shoulders.How did anyone get anythingdonearound her? Did the blood in everyone’s head just travel directly to their groins and no one said anything about it?
Still bruised from meeting Alice Andre and a bit woozy from the Layla revelation, I take myself over to Match.com. And really, what is the harm in creating a profile to do a bit of looking around? I find my best selfie, taken back in the flat in Stoke Newington, after a bottomless brunch morning with Brigitte. It’s ten years ago, but still, I am aglow with prosecco and gossip.
‘New to town!’ I type. ‘Irish (not Irish-American, I grew up in Ireland) writer, 30s.’ I pause. Now is the perfect opportunity to build a whole new me from the ground up. ‘I love going to comedy gigs and festivals, and I enjoy cinema, theatre and writing… the usual stuff,’ I half lie.
I volunteer too, and DJ, so between that and the comedy script I am currently writing, I don’t have a lot of free time these days. But I do enjoy meeting new people; if they’re like-minded, passionate about things, and in the driving seat of their own life. And if they’re funny too, so much the better.
Job done on creating the profile, I decide to have a look around Match.com. I missed all this the first time around, so to be here in the swamp is quite the culture shock.
It will never cease to amaze me how many men put up a ‘will this one do?’ picture on their dating profile. How do they not understand that the ghostly light from a computer, or a photo taken right under their chin(s), is about as unflattering as you can get? Do they care? Are they looking for sex, or someone to join a cult with?
I automatically ignore the ‘Hi, I’ll write something here later’ guys and keep looking.
There are, I notice, lots of men who definitely Know Their Way to the Airport. These are the guys who are the barely discernible speck photographed against some far-flung landmark like the Taj Mahal or the Sydney Opera House. For some reason, men with possibly drugged Bengal tigers wrapped around their shoulders is also big noise around here.
I also can’t fail to miss the guys who are SERIOUS about meeting someone– there they are, holding babies and playing away with toddlers (the ‘About me’ lines read something like ‘This is my nephew’, or even more intriguingly, ‘This is my neighbour’).
As I am admiring the sheer volume of men who have posted photos from the gym, a message pops up from VelvetElvis100. The name of the production company that did one of Ted’s films, I notice. What kind of message this is from the universe, I cannot yet tell.
