“I just thought of someone else I’d like to teach a lesson,” said Alexa.
“Wow, you’re just all about retribution,” I said. “Remind me never to get on your bad side,” I joked.
She slapped me lightly on the arm. “Oh, you never have to worry about that. And the person I have in mind here isn’t someone I want to hurt. Or someone we’ll have to monitor like Rick.”
“Who is that?” I asked.
“Her name is Mindy Christopher,” Alexa explained. “I worked with her. We actually started modeling together. She was nice at first, but then she became a real conniving bitch.” Her expression turned from a smile to a slight frown. “She got a little too attached to being a model. She wasn’t really ready to give up being a model. So she pushed herself as hard as she could, at the expense of everyone else around her.”
“I imagine that included you,” I said.
She nodded. “Yea, she got a few jobs that I was told I was going to get,” she continued. She shrugged her shoulders. “I was used to stuff like that happening but she lied to me about it. That’s what hurt. Most other girls would admit it because it was more fun to be a bitch about it. So a couple years later someone offers her a low level executive job at the agency I worked. All of a sudden she had a future after modeling. Suddenly she became nicer to everyone, but even more cutthroat at the same time. She was “the model’s voice,” she claimed in executive meetings, but she would throw other girls under the bus if she wanted to.”
“You didn’t quit because of her?” I asked.
“Oh, god, no,” she said. “I quit because I wanted to. In fact, she was the person at the agency I told it to. She claimed to understand. Then a few days go by and I get a bunch of letters and calls from other agencies telling me that they weren’t interested in me. I had no idea why because I didn’t go looking for work with them. Then another girl told me that Mindy sent a memo to other agencies that she would sue them if they used me, supposedly because I signed a deferred contract for exclusivity with them.”
That seemed strange to me. I asked, “Did you?”
“Not from what I was told,” she said. “My last day shooting some legal aide came to me with what she said was a standard one year no-compete clause which I had to agree to. I signed it because I knew it wasn’t going to be an issue. Either she lied to me or someone else lied to her, I don’t know which. So after I got those calls from the other agencies, Mindy calls me and asks if I miss shooting yet. I politely tell her that I don’t but if I did I would call her. Then she starts laughing and saying she knows that thanks to the contract I signed. She said that she knew how good I was and wanted to make sure I didn’t leave her, and that she had full power over me. That’s how I know she was the one behind all of it. She wanted to be able to control me, like I was hers to order around or something. I was furious, but I did sign the contract, so I couldn’t do anything. I didn’t want to anyway, because I just wanted to be done with it. It just pissed me off so much!”
“Obviously,” I deadpanned. “Remind me never to do that to you, ‘kay?”
“Oh, whatever,” she said as she stuck out her tongue at me. “But come on, you get why I’m angry, right?”
I nodded. “Yea, I get it. She’s trying to control you even when she can’t. She must think you’re going to crack or something.”
“Hmm,” she said. “I hope that’s what she does think right now. She won’t get to think that when we’re done with her.”