The Models

by Natascha Holenstein

The model sits in a crappy diner in front of a plate of syrup-soaked waffles that she regrets ordering. It was a moment of weakness that her manager, Brian, would chide her for, but it’s been a long day of caked-on rogue and flashing cameras. She slouches in the booth rubbing her mascara smeared eyes and kicking her stiletto with the broken heel off her foot. The waitress approaches, and to avoid thinking of an excuse for the cold plate of food, she searches around the room for a diverting topic of conversation.
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What’s that painting on the other side of the room? she asks the waitress, because it looks so out of place with its pallid, half-dead heroine drifting in a creek of flowers.
I think it's called Ophelia, she says. I know, looks too fancy to be in this place. The manager just put it up because he thought she looked pretty.

The model thinks that she looks pretty too as she jabs at the waffles with her fork and pushes them away. In about fifteen minutes she will drop a twenty on the table and move on with her evening, waking up bright and early to be dolled up and stolen away in a photograph. She will never come to know how long ago that beautiful girl who modeled for the painting lied in a bone-cold bathtub for hours on end and subsequently succumbed to a short life of long illness just to favor the whims of men. 

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NATASCHA HOLENSTEIN is a writer and dancer from the California Bay Area. She is currently the nonfiction editor for the literary journal Rawhead. Her fiction is forthcoming in Slash Magazine, After the Art, and London Fog Literary.  ​

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