“Now wouldn’t that be a bitch?” I asked myself. Of all people to call and talk to, I thought about a young, careerist white girl.

I shook my head and tried to talk myself out of it, but I was curious. I hadn’t dealt with white women much, even when I had opportunities to. They were around me. Fine white women. Topflight models. But I always had a black woman around to help me avoid the temptation. Even with salt and pepper girlfriends, I would naturally gravitate toward the pepper. But not that night.

It was a toss-up between calling Rachel or Victoria, and it wasn’t even a competition. I was thinking Victoria all the way. Then I came up with a better idea, a more sane perspective.

I decided to call Danyel instead. Wasn’t that what a dedicated man would do? You were supposed to do that. You do it when you’re first courting a woman. You call her day and night from anywhere in the country. But who was I kidding? I hadn’t courted a girl like that since my college years at Purdue. And I only stayed there for a year and a half. Once I joined the modeling world, the phone calls to my college sweetheart slowly evaporated.

I called Danni up and got her answering service. I left her a message to call me back, and wondered how long it would take her. It was nearing seven o’clock in Chicago, which meant eight in Atlanta. Danni had plenty of time to call me back before the night was over, but I felt anxious. I started wondering where she was.

“Shit! I don’t want to feel like that,” I mumbled. I liked feeling unattached, it kept your mind at ease.

My un-attachment was what Kim had correctly assessed about my character. But so what? I was still a free man, and I liked it that way. And if I wanted to call a white girl and shoot the breeze about life and relationships, then it was my prerogative to do so.

I took out the card Victoria had given me at the airport and flipped it over to her 773 cell phone number on the back. Before I actually dialed her numbers, I thought about Judi again.

To sex or not to sex, that was the question. But I was only calling the girl, and I was certain she would want to talk more about modeling and her career in the public eye than any personal conversation I wanted to have. So I went ahead and called her.

“Hello,” she answered on the second ring.

I hesitated before I opened up with, “Surprise, surprise. This is, ah, Terrance Mitchell, from the airport.”

She responded with, “Hey you, hold on one minute, okay. Let me clear my other line.”

She did it all in rapid fire, just like a businesswoman would. It was nothing personal.

Immediately, I told myself that the call was a mistake, and that I would keep things short.