Alright, ready yourself... this chapter is pretty long but I promise it'll be worth it! (Well, I hope so at least!) Thank you so much for the reviews Wiccanprincess! They keep me going. As for all you other people, follow her example :)

Chapter 6:

It was still morning when I arrived home from brunch with my agent Charles Weston, Chas for short. We had been sitting under a great yellow and white umbrella at one of New York's nicer restaurants when he blurted out, nearly shaking with his excitement, "I've bagged you the gig of a lifetime!"

I looked up from the plate of blueberry crepes that I had been picking at with my fork. "Oh?"

"You're gonna love me for this, baby," He was talking in his knock-off British, like he always did when he used "baby". "I'm sure you've heard of a little fashion designer that goes by the name of… Usurp Randolph?"

My silver fork clattered to the cobblestone patio. Of course I had heard of Usurp Randolph! It was unthinkable for me not to know who he was. I mean, honestly, he was only the most sought after designer in France and Spain, if not all of Europe. His clothing line, "Les Poissons", had begun on runways in France and after that it had caught like an epidemic through Spain and the rest of Europe. Across the sea, the epidemic hadn't reached yet but it was rumored that Usurp Randolph was going to try and infect the people of America.

Chas leaned over and looked at my fork on the ground then to my wide eyes and slack jaw. He sat up straight and smiled. "Yup, well guess what, baby! Usurp, himself, said that he wanted you to be his poster-girl for his American line!"

"That's wonderful, Chas!" I screeched, causing those dining on the patio around us to turn sharply my way. I looked around, smiling, but their puckered lips and downcast eyes told me I would have no forgiveness from these heartless socialites. Chas slathered a piece of toast with butter until it was falling apart in his hands from the saturation.

"How much do you love me?" He stuffed the piece of toast in his mouth.

I laughed, my obnoxiously loud laugh was made even more so by the glares of my arrogant dinner guests. I loved to be especially obnoxious when people stared. "Now, Chas, promise me you won't have me doing anymore magazine shoots. Runway is fine but no more magazines."

"Why?" He slathered another piece of toast down with butter. "They're such good publicity for you."

"If I haven't gotten enough publicity by now then I'm never going to get enough." The thought of doing yet another Vogue, Cosmopolitan, or InStyle magazine with the title having anything to do with "new beauty" made me feel sick to my stomach. "I can't stand being seen as some guideline for beauty. It makes me physically sick to think that some girl out there is using me as their role model."

"You can never get enough publicity. You do realize that you and that other model, Marijuana or something of the sort, are the only two models vying for the title of New Beauty? But, okay, alright, you win. If you really want to give up that easily…" Chas looked at his Rolex wristwatch and groaned. "Looks like I've gotta run. I'll call you later to tell you when Usurp wants you for the clothes-fitting."

I remained seated, smiling up at Chas as he leaned down and kissed my cheek. "Congratulations Ada," He kissed my other cheek. "You're the new face of "Les Poissons"." And my face creased into a smile. I didn't put much significance behind Chas' warning of this new model. Perhaps it was confidence, perhaps cockiness.

Chas left and a waiter came up to hand me a fresh fork. I smiled up at him. The poor boy, not much older than me, was sent aflame as his cheeks blushed a scarlet red. He hurried off into the closed-in portion of the restaurant and I commence to pick at my blueberry crepes with the new fork.

New York is an awfully big city, I thought to myself from the safety of my apartment building. I was sitting in the lobby on an overly stuffed couch by a window overlooking the busy street. Big cities are always made bigger when you don't know anyone.

My brunch with Chas had gone well but I wasn't ready to face the emptiness of my apartment. Normally, I loved the simple pleasure of alone time but this wasn't one of those times. So, there I was, sitting in the fancy lobby of my apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, bordering Manhattan Bay. The guests walked through, wrapped up in their expensive furs and drenched in diamonds, and no doubt thought I was crazy. Only a crazy girl would sit by an open window in Manhattan with the busy traffic just outside the window, honking their horns and shouting their blasphemy into her ear. They glared. I would straighten my neck at their glares, meet their gaze, and smile my most dazzling smile from my couch before looking back down at the book in my lap as I waited patiently for Ms. Janson to arrive for the interview I had promised her.

If there was something I understood it was socialites, especially the older socialites. I had grown up around socialites, my own mother being the Queen Bee. No matter where you traveled, they were all alike. They hated to see young people with money; more-so young, happy people with money. It was like they believed you couldn't be happy unless you had money and you couldn't be happy with money until you were old. If you were young, happy and had money then automatically, you were labeled a wastrel and a fool. I suppose there's no pleasing some people.

"Hi," I heard a familiar voice. "We're looking for Ada Summer's room."

"Names?" The concierge spoke in a faintly European accent, perhaps German. I looked up and saw the back of Jeanne Janson and a young man standing in front of the concierge. The young man was much taller than Ms. Janson and had a camera strung over his shoulder.

"Ms. Janson!" I dog-eared the page in my book and stood to join them. Ms. Janson shook my hand with both of her hands.

"Thank you so much, Ms. Summers." She said. "You don't know how important this interview is for me."

"This is Peter Parker. He works for The Daily Bugle with me as a photographer slash journalist." Jeannie had noticed I was looking over at the man behind her. "He's an honest boy and has made a promise to keep what we discuss here to himself. I trust him and know he would never break a promise. It's just, he was assigned to take pictures of you for the social section of The Daily Bugle and I thought it would be nice for you two to meet before you had him following you around everywhere." She paused then continued in a worried voice. "If you don't want him here for your interview then I understand. Perhaps I shouldn't have brought him."

This "boy" she spoke of didn't look like a boy to me. He was nearly six foot, light brown hair, blue eyes, and a build that wasn't football-bulky but he definitely had muscle. I looked into his blue eyes and knew I could trust him. Don't ask how I knew, I don't even know. For all I knew he could be getting ready to tape-record my every word during the interview in order to turn around to sell it to a magazine other than The Daily Bugle, but I didn't think so.

"It's fine." I looked at Peter's camera and shifted my weight from one foot to the other. "Camera?"

Peter looked down at the camera and chuckled. "I've gotten so used to putting this thing around my neck before I go to work that I didn't realize I wouldn't need it today." He opened the back of the camera, took the roll of film out and slipped it into his pocket. He closed the camera up and smiled at me. "No pictures today."

"Alright, well I guess we can go up to my apartment." They followed me as I walked to the elevator and the three of us got in. I held my hands behind my back and looked up at the numbers over the door light up. 1… 2… 3…

"So Ms. Summers," Ms. Janson spoke up, "How long are you going to be in New York?"

Her question caught me off-guard as, until that moment, the thought had yet to cross my mind. "I- I don't know. Dr. Rausenbluem only told me that we were coming to New York City to establish another of his laboratories. He never said when we were to leave." The doors opened and we walked out. We were on a spacious landing. The summer sun was shining through the windows, setting fire to the golden oak floors. The landing was completely bare, except for the Philip-paneled oak door opposite to the elevator. I walked to the door and they followed close behind. "We should leave when he establishes the laboratory." I unlocked my apartment and walked in, throwing my keys into a bowl on the white marble counter. "Or, at least I guess that's when we'll leave."

"Did something break?" Peter asked, standing before the broken shards of the mirror from this morning.

"Oh," I laughed it off. I grabbed a broom and dustpan between the counter and refrigerator in the kitchen. "I may be graceful on the catwalk but I'm a total butter finger in real life. Go ahead and make yourself at home while I clean this up." I started to sweep the shards into the dustpan. From the corner of my eye I could see Peter and Ms. Janson walk around the living room.

I was emptying the shards into the trash when I heard Ms. Janson call out merrily, "Oh my! What a view!" She had seen the view of Manhattan Bay from my balcony.

I came into the living room. "It's nice, isn't it? Without that view I would say this apartment is too bland for my tastes." I looked around the room, the completely black and white-washed room. If only life could be so simple; black and white, never smidgens of gray to muddy up the perfect lines.

Ms. Janson and Peter sat together on the larger couch, while I chose to sit adjacent to them on the loveseat. Ms. Janson retrieved a small voice-recorder from her purse.

"I know how cowardly this is going to sound," I said. My voice was small like a child's, and try as I might I couldn't make myself sound the twenty years that I was. "But before we begin… can we all just promise to leave my name out of this?"

"Yes, of course. We wouldn't dream of putting you in any sort of trouble." Ms. Janson said, her sympathetic eyes shining. "Would we Peter?"

"No." He said, "Ms. Summers, understand that what you say here will go to the printers without a name behind it."

"Alright. Well, what do you want to know? He's a madman and must be stopped. I've tried to talk to him but he still does what he's been doing. Maybe when he sees his name all over The Daily Bugle he'll realize that his secret is out."

I spilled out everything I knew about my fiancée's dealings in his lab; well, at least as much as I was willing to release. I told them how he was indeed creating clones, how he had used the DNA of a mutated human for regeneration, and how he earned his fortune in selling these secrets to foreign countries. Creating clones was legal but only with an agreement from the government of the country he's creating them in. No one outside of his lab knew about these clones. Mutating humans or the altering of human DNA without specified permission had been outlawed. As for his fortune in selling those secrets to foreign countries, God only knew what use they would put to his findings. This outpouring lasted three hours and by the time I had finished, Peter and Ms. Janson were stunned.

"I-I-I have t-to make a copy of this." Ms. Janson stuttered, her fingers fumbling with the tape recorder in her hand. Her forehead glistened as though covered in diamond-drops. A bead of sweat slipped in-between her brows when she looked at me again. "Do you have anywhere to be, Ms. Summers?"

"No, it's alright. Go right on ahead." I stood from the couch. "You're welcome here as long as you like. I'm going to make lunch for us. I'm famished."

Ms. Janson nodded and began again to fumble with the little recorder. Peter followed me into the kitchen.

In the kitchen, he leaned his back against the granite countertop. I stuck my head into the refrigerator then once I had filled my arms with salsa, sour cream, a jar of jalapenos, and velveeta I closed the fridge door. I turned too quickly and with all of the stuff I was carrying, I accidentally dropped the jar of salsa.

"Shoot!" I cried, knowing that in a split second I would have salsa all over the kitchen floor. Peter, too quick for my eyes to register, grabbed the jar before it hit the ground. He lifted his hand up, the jar safely in it, a wide smile on his lips. His blue eyes were twinkling when he looked at me, his perfect, white smile glittering.

"You're fast." I said slowly as I felt myself swimming in his eyes. He began to feel uncomfortable under my gaze, I noticed as he tried to clear his throat. "Oh, umm, sorry…" I said and turned on my heel. The momentum from my turning caused the jalapenos to crash to the marble floor, sending the withered, lime-green peppers scattered between pieces of the broken jar. "Shoot, again!"

He laughed as he dropped to his knees and started to help me pick the jalapenos up. "You weren't kidding when you said you were a butter finger."

I felt my cheeks growing warm. "Yeah, I wish I had been. It's pretty bad. My mother used to tell me that girls are born with a natural grace." I paused. "Nature must have skipped me when she was passing out grace tokens."

We were hunched over the broken jar in silence for a short time until he spoke again. "What you're doing for Jeannie, it's really kind of you."

My shoulders shrugged to their own accord. "It's not a big deal. I'm tired of seeing Jacque, erm Dr. Rausenbluem, walking all over people like he's king or something. It isn't right."

"Still. You just saved her from an earful and maybe even a pink slip. Mr. Jameson would have been livid if Jeannie hadn't gotten an interview with Dr. Rausenbluem. Now that she has the interview with you, every other magazine and newspaper reporter will still be stumbling over themselves to try and get him to talk while we've already published yours." He paused. "Jeannie works hard and doesn't get nearly a third of the credit she deserves. I've never met a woman so honest in her reporting." He looked at me with those blue eyes and dear God, I felt myself falling. "It would be easy for her to lie, month after month, and have her articles placed in the better part of the magazine. God knows she's thrown into a business full to the brim with liars, but she never does and month after month her articles show up at the very end of the magazine where people hardly ever read. Because of you her article will be on the cover of The Daily Bugle and people will finally realize what a great journalist she is."

"You give me too much credit." The jalapenos had been picked up and I started to pick up the pieces of glass.

"You're going to cut yourself," Peter grabbed the broom and dustpan. "Let me sweep it up."

"It's fine." I said and for the second time that day, I stuck my foot in my mouth. I grabbed a piece of glass and the sharp edge of it got me just right. "Ouch." I rose to my feet. From a small cut on the tip of my finger blood beaded out in a steady stream.

"Careful, let me see." He took my finger and looked at the cut. "Think you got any glass in there?"

The cut vanished before his eyes. His eyebrows knitted together and as I noticed what had happened, I pulled my finger away and cradled it against my chest.

"It's fine." My words came out sharp as the glass shards. Their razor-edges were obviously felt by him as he put his hands into the air and laughed.

"Whoa, okay, I was just checking."

I bit my lip. "I'm sorry." My words wouldn't work. Try as I might, I couldn't think of an excuse for the rapid healing of my finger or for my snappy response. I just stood there; hand cradled to my chest, cheeks flushed, glass shards around my feet. If I had no excuse then I figured there was no use giving him time to dwell on what had just happened. "So much for salsa and chips." I opened the freezer door and peered inside to the cavernous world of ice. Nothing there.

I turned to the pantry closet. Second shelf from the top I found a box of macaroni and cheese. I pulled the box out and looked over my shoulder at Peter. "How does Mac-and-Cheese sound?"

"Sounds good." He walked over to the fridge and took out the butter and soymilk.

"Good because Mac-and-Cheese and salsa are about the only things left in my bag of tricks." I closed the pantry door. He was holding up the soymilk, his face screwed up in disgust. "Soymilk won't do anything to the taste." I snatched the soymilk from his hand and feigned offense.

"Okay, okay, okay." He leaned against the counter to watch as I bustled around the kitchen, preparing the Mac-and-Cheese.

"Sorry it isn't anything fancier," I handed Peter and Ms. Janson their heaping bowls of Mac-and-Cheese then sat on the couch with my own. "Unfortunately, I'm not much of a cook."

Peter shoveled a massive spoonful into his mouth. "No, don't be sorry. This is great." He swallowed the mass of yellow noodles and smiled. "Yum, yum."

"Yes, it's fine Ms. Summers." Ms. Janson looked up from her notes. "I wish I could stay but I really need to get back to the office to record my notes. Thank you very much." She stood from her place, gathering the notes and voice recorder into her black bag.

I stood and helped her gather the sheets of white paper that covered my coffee table. "It was my pleasure, really."

Peter stood also, having finished his bowl of macaroni. I walked the two to the door. They thanked me for my time and left. Before they had left Ms. Janson planned one more interview the next day to "wrap up any loose ends."

I walked back to the coffee table where I had set my bowl. I picked up my spoon and swallowed down the macaroni. The acrid taste of overcooked food made me spit the mess back into the bowl.

"Ugh!" I tossed the bowl into the sink. From the kitchen I looked into the living room and through the balcony's sliding glass door. The sun was still bright in the sky. I had yet to wander around this busy city and suddenly had the sharp yearning to do just that.

Review/rant as always. Please and thank you!