“Teddy, it's wonderful! I like it even better than our apartment in San Francisco.”

He smiled at her apologetically. “I wouldn't exactly compare the view.” He peered out at the other narrow buildings crowded onto Sixty-third Street, and could well imagine it all with snow and slush and soot in a few months. He turned around to face her then, with a gentle look in his eyes. “Serena, I'm glad you're here.” He knew that for her it had been an act of enormous trust. What if she didn't find work here? What if he had been wrong? There was no certain knowing.

“I'm-glad too. Frightened out of my wits,” she said, smiling, “but happy.” The very tempo of the town had filled her with excitement on the way in from the airport.

He spent the rest of the evening explaining to her how to get around the city, what was where, where not to go, and what were the safest areas. And the more she listened, the more she liked it. She had to go to the agency for her first interview the next day, and she was so excited, she could barely stand it.

When Serena appeared at the Kerr Agency the next morning, she was startled at what she found there, gone were the easygoing, relaxed people she had run into modeling in San Francisco. Here everything was business, it was quick-fire, high pressure, rushed, and hurried, and there was no fooling around. No casual air surrounded this business, it was an office filled with well-dressed, well-made-up women sitting at desks, speaking on phones with stacks of composites piled up before them, file cards referring to jobs pinned up on boards in front of them, and telephones ringing every time one turned around. Serena was ushered to one of the desks in a businesslike way, and she found herself being looked over by an attractive dark-haired woman. The woman at the desk was wearing a crisp beige wool suit, a matching silk shirt, her hair was impeccably combed in a shoulder-length pageboy, and hanging over the silk blouse was a thick rope of pearls.

“I saw your photographs a few weeks ago,” she told Serena. “You're going to need new ones, probably a whole book, and a composite.” Serena nodded dumbly, feeling terribly stupid and almost too inarticulate to speak. “Have you got anyone who can do that?” With wide eyes she shook her head. She had worn a pale blue sweater, a gray skirt, a simple navy-blue cashmere blazer she had bought at the store in San Francisco, and her long graceful legs seemed endless as she crossed them and the woman noticed the black Dior pumps. Her hair was carefully knotted, and in each ear she had worn a simple pearl. She looked more like she was going to tea with a friend in San Francisco than going to a modeling interview in New York. But she was so nervous about what to wear that she had decided to dress simply. Whatever she had on they probably wouldn't like anyway, so what the hell. She had gone to the interview almost rigid with fear, and now she sat staring at this woman, wondering what she was thinking of her. Probably they would never use her, Teddy had been crazy. Whatever made her think that she could model in New York? But the woman in the beige suit was nodding, and wrote down a name on a card that she handed across the desk. “Make an appointment with this photographer, put the photographs of your past jobs in order, get your hair cut, have your nails done a deep red, and come back to see me in a week.” Serena sat there staring at her, wondering if there was really any point, and as though the woman could see what she was thinking, she smiled at her. “It'll be all right, you know. Everyone's nervous at first. It's not the same here as it was in San Francisco. You're from out there?” She suddenly looked kindly and interested, and Serena tried desperately not to seem so ill at ease.

“I've been living there for seven years.”

“That is a long time.” And then she cocked her head, as though hearing an accent. “Where were you from before that?”

“Oh,” Serena sighed, feeling uncomfortable, “that's a long story. My husband and I moved there from Paris. We were in Rome before that. I'm Italian.” The woman's eyebrows raised.

“Was he Italian too?”

“No, American.” She almost said facetiously that she was a war bride, but there was no reason to be nasty to this woman. She seemed genuinely interested in Serena.

“Is that why you speak such good English?”

Serena shook her head slowly. In two minutes this woman had got more out of her than anyone had in years. In the years she was married to Brad, she was so wrapped up in him and Vanessa and Teddy that she had made no close friends on the base, and afterward, when she was modeling, there was no room in her life for anyone but her child. And now suddenly this woman had extracted much of her life story. There was nothing left to tell her except the nightmare of losing her parents to Mussolini and how her husband had died. But she still had the woman's question to answer. “I was here during the war. My family sent me over.”

The woman seemed to be calculating something as she looked down at Serena's file card again. “What was your name again?”

“Serena Fullerton.”

The other woman smiled. “It sounds too English. Couldn't we make it more exotic? What was it before you got married?”

Serena looked at her hesitantly. “Serena di San Tibaldo.” She said it with the full lilt of the Italian.

“That's lovely.…” She grew pensive. “But it's so long…” She looked up at Serena hopefully. “Did you have a title?” It was an odd question to ask, but she was in the business of selling people, beautiful faces with exotic names. Tallulah. Zina. Zorra. Phaedra. This was not a business for Nancy or Mary or Jane. She looked at Serena expectantly, as Serena seemed to hold back.

“I … no … I …” And then she suddenly thought what the hell, what difference did it make? Who cared anymore? There was no one to be shocked or raise an eyebrow or object. Her whole family was dead, and if a title mattered so much, why not give them hers? If it meant that much more money for her and Vanessa, so what? “Yes.” The woman's eyes narrowed, wondering if Serena was telling the truth. “Principessa.”

“Princess?” The woman in beige looked genuinely shocked.

“Yes. You can check it out. I'll give you my birthdate and all that if you want.”

“My, my.” She looked very pleased. “That ought to look very pretty on your composite … Princess Serena …” She squinted, again looking at the paper on which she wrote it, and then Serena again. “Sit up straight for a minute.” Serena did. Then she pointed to the far comer, past some other desks. “Walk over there and come back.” Gracefully, her head held high, Serena did so, and as she returned, her green eyes flashed. “Nice, very nice. I've just thought of something. I'll be right back.” She disappeared into an inner office, and it was a full five minutes before she came back. When she came back, she brought someone with her.

“This is Dorothea Kerr,” she announced simply. “The head of the agency.” It was unnecessary to explain that. Serena stood up quickly and extended her hand.

“How do you do?” But the tall spare woman with gray hair pulled sharply back and sharp spectacular cheekbones wedged in at an extraordinary angle beneath huge gray eyes said nothing to Serena. She merely looked her over, like a horse she was buying, or a very expensive car.

“Is your hair natural?”

“Yes.”

She then turned to the woman in beige. “I'd like to see her without all those clothes on, and then I think we ought to send her to Andy. Don't mess around with any of the others.” The woman in beige nodded and made a rapid note. “I want to have something on her in the next two days. Can you do that?”

“Of course.” It would mean everyone working overtime, including Serena, but if Dorothea Kerr wanted “something on her” in two days, they would move heaven and earth to see that it was done. “I'll call him right away.”

“Fine.” Dorothea nodded at Serena then and walked away quickly. The door to her office closed almost instantly, and Serena's head began to spin. A minute later, as she listened to the conversation, she realized that Andy was Andrew Morgan, the most important fashion photographer on the East Coast. An appointment was made for later that morning, and before that she had to go to the hairdresser for a trim.

“Do you know how to find it?” The anonymous woman in beige looked sympathetic and then patted Serena's hand. “You know, she really liked you. She wouldn't have wanted shots on you in two days if she didn't have something big in mind for you.” But Serena still found it all very baffling and a little hard to believe. “Are you excited?”

Serena looked at her and felt her hand tremble as she took the note with the hairdresser's address. “I think so. So much has happened in the last five minutes that I'm not sure what I feel.”

“Well, enjoy it. Not everyone gets their first shots done by Andy Morgan.” Andy Morgan? Andy? For an insane moment Serena wanted to laugh. It was almost impossible not to be overwhelmed by what was starting to happen. It couldn't be. It wasn't real. It was crazy. But she glanced at the clock and knew that she had to get moving. “Do I have to wear anything special for the photographs?” “No, Dorothea said she'd have everything sent over. She particularly liked the idea of your being a princess. I think she's going to have him play that up in the shots.” For an instant Serena felt acutely nervous, perhaps she shouldn't have told them. But it was too late to stop them now. The woman in beige explained once again all the places where she was expected, wished her luck, and then went back to the stack of composites and file cards on her desk.

She arrived at Andrew Morgan's studio at exactly eleven thirty, as she had been told. And she didn't leave it again until almost nine o'clock that night. He shot black and white and color, he did head shots, candid, high fashion, evening dresses, tennis clothes, bathing suits, ermine, chinchilla, sable, Balanciagas, Diors, Givenchys, and jewels. He did her hair up and down and her makeup subtle and heavy and wild and crazy. She had had more clothes and furs and jewels and different outfits on in nine hours with Andrew Morgan than she had worn in all of the years she had worked in San Francisco. He was a tiny elf of a man, with a wonderful smile that lit up his black eyes, horn-rimmed glasses, and a shag of silvery gray hair that fell constantly in his eyes, he wore a black turtleneck sweater and black slacks and soft kid jazz dance shoes, and he seemed to leap through the air as he took the pictures. He reminded her constantly of a dancer, and she was so totally enamored of him, that she did all that he told her to do. More than that, he seemed to cast a kind of spell as he worked. She worked tirelessly with him for hours, and it wasn't until she walked in her front door that she realized how exhausted she was. Vanessa was already asleep. She had wanted to wait up to see her mommy, but Teddy had explained that they were taking beautiful pictures of her mother, and he had told her how beautiful her mother was, and how this was something very important for her. By the time Vanessa fell asleep, he had won her over again, and he read her two stories and sang her three lullabies, and halfway through the third one she fell asleep.