Description: While Eve Jones models her outfits in the door mirror of her hotel room, hoping to strike the Miss Teenager pageant judges' fancy, Julie returns to the room after her run-in with Glenn Sabine and Pike Setter.
Eve Goes to New York. PART 15.
Turn left, right, check out the back, purse your lips, flash a smile, a gasping surprise, a toss of the hair over your shoulder. For Eve Jones, the door mirror in the bedroom of the Hotel Star was a portal into another world. For two hours, she stood in front of it, trying on outfit after outfit and imagining how she would look on stage when the audience lights dimmed, the crowd hushed, and the stage lights came up on the Miss Teenager contestants. Miss Devon, of course, (i.e. Eve Jones) would be smack dab in the center of center-stage, she imagined. When it came to which girl the audience would be ooing and awing, Eve wished on all the stars in the universe that it would be her, but the question of which dress to wear to bowl them over was an ever-present perplexity.
She practiced her posing exercises that she had learned from Tee Top back at Hector of Hollywood’s modeling agency. In her magic mirror, she imagined stunning the judges with every dress she tried on from her luggage, but it wasn’t enough. Something was missing. She tapped her cheek. Yes, the bikini.
Now, this! This was sure to strike the judges’ fancy. As she checked herself out in the mirror wearing the bright red bikini, she groaned. Feeling a little bloated in the hips, she blamed the malt milkshake that she had ordered on her last visit to the lower Manhattan diner with Julie. Oh, what did it matter now, she thought? A little extra bulge wasn’t going to hurt her chances. It might even improve them by filling out the bikini bottoms with some extra curve to impress the judges. She grinned to herself. Mm-hm, she nodded.
Just then, the door opened and in the mirror, Eve noticed her sister entering the room with a heavy sigh. Julie flung the hotel key down onto the desk in a miff. As she shed her coat by the closet, she watched Eve posing.
“Hi, Julie,” Eve greeted with a pleasant tone. “Like this little number?”
Eve turned her hips left and right in the mirror to catch the right angle of her pose. “Where were you?” she asked Julie nonchalantly over her shoulder.
As she wrenched off her gloves, Julie turned to Eve, “Shopping.”
Eve loved how the halter strap on this bikini revealed more shoulder. “Looks like you didn’t find anything that struck your fancy,” Eve said.
“No,” Julie seethed. “I didn’t find anything that struck my fancy!”
