It was her second day in New York City and already Reini Campagna was being sent on what she was told would be one of the biggest casting calls of her modeling career. As she stood in front of the enormous building she thought back to how all of this began. Less than a month ago she was just a normal teenager working at a dry cleaners in boring Melrose New Mexico. Now here she was all alone in front of the biggest building she’d ever seen in the biggest city she had ever seen. She inhaled deeply and pulled open the large glass doors of A-List Casting. Walking up to the large receptionist desk she timidly asked “Can you please point me in the direction of casting room…number…umm…” shuffling through the papers she held in her hands along with her portfolio she desperately looked for the sheet of paper that the agency had given her with all the information for her casting calls for the day. Letting out an exasperated sigh the young woman behind the desk gave her a terribly annoyed look and promptly went back to her previous task. Finally finding the single sheet of paper Reini quickly scanned over all the times and addresses until she came across the correct one. “Umm its room 365” she finally got out. Looking Reini up and down the young woman let out a slight chuckle and pointed to her left. Reini stood there slightly perplexed. She wasn’t a complete hick but surely in a building this large there had to be more direction than just simply left.
“Umm that’s it its that way?” she said pointing left still looking every bit confused.
“Calvin Klein audition right?” she asked not looking back up from her work
“Right”
“Its that way.” taking another look at Reini she continued “trust me you cant miss it.”
**********
Sitting in the crowded hallway with the rest of the campaign hopefuls Reini laughed to herself. “The bitch at the desk was right” she thought, there was no way in hell she could have missed this cattle call. Sizing up her completion Reini began to feel a little self conscious. She knew that she was a cute girl and she was pretty thin but as she sat in the hallway with the other models she couldn’t help but feel like she was in the middle of a Kate Moss convention. Checking out the guys she knew that they would have it far easier if only for the fact that the women out numbered them about 3 to 1. Taking a deep breathe she decided that the best thing she could do was just to go through her portfolio to make sure that all her pictures were in their proper order
An hour and five-million portfolio checks later Reini decided that she needed to fixate on something new, seeing as how the line had only seemed to move about a foot in that time. Pulling one of her comp cards from the back pocket of the portfolio she began to look over her stats:
Name: Reini Allisandra Campagna
Height: 5’8”
Weight: 110 lbs
Hair: Dark Brown
Eyes: Hazel
D.O.B: 4-26-84
Measurements: 28-24-26
As she continued to obsess over the cards she heard a soft slightly southern voice in her left ear.
“First casting?” the soft male voice asked.
“How could you tell?” she replied turning to see the face of the first person other than her agent and ‘the bitch’ who had spoken her since she got to this city.
“Your fidgeting,” he stated matter of factly and nodded toward her legs. “and you damn near burned a hole through that comp card with you eyes.”
Reini glanced down at her legs and wondered how long she had been rocking them back and forth. She looked back up at the young man and let out an uneasy laugh. “Nerves I guess” she said averting his glance. He had the most piercing green eyes she had ever seen. As a matter of fact he had the most piercing everything. She couldn’t tell how tall he was from his seated position, but she could tell that he had an excellent build. With his shaved head, strong jaw line and irresistibly pouty lips he was easily the most beautiful human being she had ever seen.
In the midst of her thoughts Reini hadn’t notice that he had extended his hand out in front of her. “Channing” he said hand still out stretched
Snapping out of her daze Reini extended her hand as well “Reini. Nice to meet you”
After their brief introduction Channing picked up the comp card that Reini had been looking at. Eyeballing it oddly he asked “How in the hell do you pronounce your last name? Camp-Ag-Geena?” Normally the butchering of her last name would have annoyed Reini but this time it was quite funny. She didn’t know if she wasn’t offended because he was hot or nice, but probably both.
“Its pronounced Camp-Anna its Italian.” she corrected giggling
Over the next half hour while they continued to wait they spoke candidly with each other like old friends that just had a lot of catching up to do. Although there was a four year age gap between the two of them they found out that they had a lot in common, including the same birth date. Reini told him about the craziness of living with a Brazilian mother and Italian father in Melrose, and how the mix of her mothers Portuguese, her fathers Italian and both of her parents poor English as well as the Spanglish in New Mexico made for an interesting childhood to say the least. Channing told her about his childhood in the south and his experience in military school. By the time Reini was called in for her audition she felt like she had known him for years.
Minutes later Reini walked out of the casting room not sure exactly what had happened.
“How’d it go” Channing asked on his way into the male casting room
“I’m not really sure.” Reini replied with a half smile “I think okay”
“Well hey I gotta get goin in here but uh where are you staying…you know maybe I could show you around the city.” he asked looking slightly shy
“The agency’s putting me up in a penthouse at the Waldorf-Astoria until I get a couple jobs so just swing by there I’m in suite 304”
“Wow the Waldorf when I got here my agency had me in some piece of shit loft with like four other guys. They must see a gold mine in you.” he chuckled lightly. Just as he finished his statement the casting door opened and he was signaled in.
“Well Ms. Campagna it was nice to meet you I gotta get going but what about tomorrow afternoon for that tour?”
“Sounds good to me. Besides I need to hear more about how you ended up in military school.” she said with a devious grin.
Walking backward he confirmed their plans for the next afternoon and disappeared inside the casting room. Standing on the other side of the door Reini began to think that maybe New York wouldn’t be so bad after all.
**********
When she got back to her suite late that evening she noticed that she had messages waiting on her phone. The first was from her agent.
“Hey Rei I’m sure your not back in yet but I got good news for you. You got the CK job so give me a call first thing tomorrow and I’ll let ya know all about the booking. I knew you had the look” Reini couldn’t hide the smile that spread across her face and had she not been so tired she probably would have ran around her suite screaming. After saving the message she was shocked to see that she had a second message waiting since she had already talked to her parents she couldn’t imagine who it was
“Hey Reini its Channing I called the front desk and they put me through to your room. Anyway I just wanted to let you know that my agent called me about an hour ago and told me that myself and ‘some young unknown model named Reini Camp-Ag-Geena’ got the CK job. That’s all I wanted. See you tomorrow” she smiled at his deliberate mispronunciation of her last name. Oh yeah she could definitely do this New York thing.
