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Casey was pondering how best to describe the lack of horsepower on the Broncos' offense when he was rudely interrupted by Natalie throwing a magazine at his head.
"What the …?" He glared at Natalie, who was glaring back at him from the doorway to his office.
"I'm here to tell you that I'm not talking to you," she announced.
"And you had to nearly decapitate me with… Celebrity Spy to tell me that?"
"Why didn't you tell me?" Natalie demanded, moving into the office.
"Tell you what?"
"That you had an entrée into the admittedly shallow, yet highly coveted world of fashion?"
Casey blinked at her. "I do?"
Sighing, Natalie leaned over the desk, grabbed the magazine out of his hands and leafed though it. When she found the right page she thrust it at him again and stood back with her arms crossed while he tried to work out what he was supposed to be looking at.
"Top left hand corner on the right page," Natalie informed him impatiently.
The page was headed 'Who's New to Watch!' in flashy yellow letters and featured photos of glamorous looking people who were barely out of their teens. Casey presumed they were famous for something, but he didn't recognise any of their names and didn’t really understand why any of them was considered 'hot property'.
In the top left-hand corner was a photo of a lithe young woman with cascading Pre-Raphaelite curls posing on a catwalk. She was dressed in a flimsy silk blouse that was unbuttoned just enough to show a hint of breast, tiny shorts and towering heels. There appeared to be some sort of stuffed animal posing as a hat on her head. The caption read:
One to look out for in the world of high fashion, 16 year-old Charlotte Eberhardt is currently blowing up a storm on New York catwalks, and plans to do equal damage to Paris when she visits there in the spring.
Casey's jaw dropped as he read the blurb again, because how many people did he know who were called Charlotte Eberhardt and who were currently dating his son?
"Why didn't you tell me that Charlie was dating a model?" Natalie demanded.
"I didn't know Charlie was dating a model. She's sixteen years old and in the tenth grade! Where I come from tenth graders do not model haute couture in their spare time; they work at the Stop 'n' Shop on Saturday mornings and count themselves lucky if they get an out of date candy bar as a bonus."
"It's the big city, Casey. Kids grow up awful fast around here."
"You're not kidding." Casey glanced up at Natalie who was looking at him smugly. "Okay, you are kidding. This girl is the clumsiest thing on two feet! How the hell can she wear heels like that without falling flat on her face?"
"There's walking and then there's walking in heels. It's a whole different thing, Casey."
Casey looked at the picture again and sighed forlornly. She really was quite stunning. "My son's dating a model."
"It's better than dating a garbage collector," Natalie said brightly.
"You're not helping."
"What's not helping?" Dan asked as he breezed into the office.
"Charlie's girlfriend is the next Heidi Klum and Casey's freaking out," Natalie said before Casey could open his mouth.
"What girlfriend? You mean Charlotte?" Casey nodded and Dan began to laugh. "Oh man, that girl can barely stay upright. How the hell can someone who can't walk through a door without bumping into …"
Dan stopped laughing when Natalie grabbed the magazine off the desk and shoved it at him. Casey had never actually seen someone's eyes pop out of their head, but he was pretty sure Dan came close when he saw that picture of Charlotte.
"Holey moley!"
"Hey, do you think she can get me tickets to fashion week?" Natalie cut in. Casey gave her a very pointed look in reply and she seemed to shrink back from him a little. "I'm just asking!"
"This is so cool," Dan said.
"How can it be cool?" Casey demanded.
"It's all about future cachet, my friend," Dan replied. "Just think of it; when Charlie's in college and Charlotte is on the cover of Vogue, he can point to it and say, 'That's my ex-girlfriend'."
"How do you know they're going to break up?" Natalie asked. "They could still be dating when they get to college."
"That's very true. And if it is the case then Charlie's cool points will ratchet up several notches if he's dating the model on the cover of Vogue."
"Wouldn't it be romantic if they both went to live in Paris so Charlotte could work on her career and Charlie spent the day drinking coffee in fabulous cafés while writing his first novel," Natalie gushed.
Casey blanched. "Charlie's moving to Paris?"
Dan reached out and gave his shoulder a soothing squeeze. "It's okay, Casey, he's not going to move until after the SATs."
Casey was vaguely reassured, but the Broncos never did make into that night's show.
~*~*~
"I still don't get it," Casey said the next day, as he and Dan watched Charlie and Charlotte go round and round the Chelsea Piers ice rink. "She can barely walk a few hundred yards without tripping over, and yet somehow she's together enough to strut around in ridiculous shoes while wearing next to nothing."
"And she's dating your son," Dan stated.
"That's not the point."
"Then what is the point?"
"The point is …" Casey huffed a frustrated sigh. "The point is, whatever happened to childhood? Why is it that when I was sixteen the closest I came to dating a model was the Farrah Fawcett poster I had hidden at the back of my closet?"
"Don't forget your unhealthy obsession with Brooke Shields, who, I might add, was fifteen when she started modelling for Calvin Klein."
"Shut up."
Dan snorted, but stayed silent as Casey gazed out at the ice rink. It was easy to spot Charlie and Charlotte on the far side. Charlotte was wearing her ubiquitous purple coat and her raucous laugh echoed through the building as Charlie helped her up off the ice. Unstyled, her auburn hair fell in a tangle of haphazard curls down her back, and with her long legs and irregular features she reminded him of a baby giraffe who had yet to get the hang of standing upright.
A giraffe that was paid thousands of dollars by a notoriously fickle industry to prance around in what passed for women's fashion and who was currently dating his son, he thought bitterly.
"Stop it," Dan said, breaking his reverie.
"Stop what?"
"They can hear you thinking in Newark. Stop it."
Casey opened his mouth to protest, then closed it again when he realised that no matter what he said, Dan could see right through him. Slumping in his seat, he watched Charlie and Charlotte slowly make their way across the ice to where he and Danny were sitting.
"You want some hot chocolate?" Dan asked suddenly. Before Casey could answer he was on his feet and moving down the stairs. "Stay here, I'm going to get some hot chocolate."
Casey watched Dan wander down to where Charlie and Charlotte were taking off their skates. He smiled when something Dan said made them both laugh, then winced slightly as Charlotte's braying chuckle assaulted his ears. How someone so awkward could make it in the world of fashion, he had no idea. Then again, twenty years ago no one would have believed that a woman could be producing a show like Sports Night, and yet there was Dana, currently one of the most powerful women in televised sports.
A moment later Dan and Charlotte disappeared toward the concession stand, and Charlie was plonking himself down beside his father.
"Danny and Char are getting us something to drink," Charlie said. He grinned goofily. "Isn't she great?"
"I don't think I've ever met anyone quite like her," Casey admitted truthfully. "Hey, Charlie?"
"Yeah?"
"You never mentioned that Charlotte has a pretty interesting after-school job."
Charlie looked at Casey, frowning a little, then smiled and said, "Oh you mean the modelling stuff? Yeah, pretty cool, huh?"
"You could describe it like that, yeah."
"I mean she only does it in her spare time," Charlie continued, "and her mom won't let her work if we've got a test or something coming up."
"Glad to hear it."
"She's going to Paris during spring break to do a layout for some magazine…"
"Vogue?" Casey cut in.
"Pardon?"
"Is she working for Vogue?"
"I dunno," Charlie said, looking at him sideways. "But she's getting, like, a squillion dollars for three days' work, and a free trip to Paris!"
Casey wasn't sure he wanted to know how 'a squillion dollars' translated into real money, but one thing he had to ask was, "What does she do with her money?"
"Boring stuff," Charlie snorted. "Investments and college funds. Her parents think she'll blow it on parties and shopping if they let her near it, so they've got it all tied up until she's twenty-one. Char doesn't even like shopping!"
"She wants to go to college?" Casey asked.
"Harvard," Charlie said blandly, "or Princeton; she's not sure yet, although she definitely wants to do law. Or medicine. She's not really sure about that either."
"It's good to keep your options open," Casey said weakly.
They fell silent and sat and looked at the skaters for a while. Casey watched as one girl dressed in black leggings and a snowflake-patterned ski sweater executed a passable axel and dropped into a slightly shaky sit spin. He managed not to laugh when she ended up on her ass, and smiled as the guy she was with helped her to her feet and they fell in with the rest of the crowd, holding hands as they circled the ice.
"It's okay, dad," Charlie said softly.
Casey turned toward his son. "It is?" What was okay?
"Char's not the type of person to let all that fashion world BS get to her. She knows how fake it is, and her mom and dad take pretty good care of her."
"She couldn't get a part-time job behind the perfume counter at Macy's?" Casey asked, only half joking.
"Remember what happened at dinner the other night?” Charlie asked. “Who in their right mind would let Charlotte anywhere near a job that involved glass."
He had a point. Casey was still finding shards of his salad bowl on his kitchen floor.
"Here they come," Charlie said suddenly. He stood up and waved at Dan and Charlotte, who were bearing cups of hot chocolate in a cardboard tray and what looked like a bag of donuts. Dan, Casey noted, was carrying the drinks.
Casey looked up at Charlie who was smiling broadly, his whole attention given over to the gangly girl with the straggly red hair and dressed in an atrocious purple coat. He suddenly felt old and ever so slightly bitter, because who was he to disparage anyone who made his son smile like that?
"Hey," Charlotte said, smiling back at Charlie and holding up the bag as they approached. "I bought us some donuts!" And then she promptly dropped them.
"Yeah, I could see that coming," Dan said softly as he came to stand next to Casey.
Casey watched as Charlie and Charlotte scrambled to rescue the donuts off the ground, both of them laughing and smiling as they went. And before too long Casey was also smiling, because he could just remember what it was like to be sixteen and in love for the first time with a girl who, despite her flaws and improbable part-time job, was perfect in every way.
"What's up?" Dan asked, giving his fingers a quick squeeze.
"What is up?" Casey asked back, and reached for a cup of chocolate.
FIN