Cola. I need cola really badly. It’s another too-long-day-with-too-little-action at work. I am falling asleep at my desk. It’s too late for coffee and so I need cola.

I walk out of my office, press the down button on the elevator and catch a glimpse of myself in the oddly situated stretch of mirror as I wait the two to three minutes it takes for the illuminated down arrow to be followed by the sonic chime.

Bling!

On a bank of four elevators, the one that opens is third from my right. As I step toward it I make note of its occupants: three females. Two are young and striking, the third female is older, and with a little more hair she could easily fit in to one of Chewbacca’s family portraits.

As I step into the confined space which is also mirrored, I notice that the two fabulous things are conversing. One’s white, and the other’s black. Before I should know what’s going to happen next, I know what’s going to happen next.

I’ve seen the set-up before. I work in an office building that house two modeling agencies. One on the tenth floor and the other on the fifteenth.

I was there in the ground floor lobby to witness a model that was too self involved to notice that each elevator was outfitted with a closed-circuit camera. Cameras that broadcast moving images to a clearly visible rack of television sets by the elevators in the lobby. As a line of spectators waited and watched, in anticipation of the ride up to their floor, this pretty young thing decided to change her top en route to the fifteenth floor, after the other lowly passengers had gotten off at three and seven and nine. She wasn’t only brainless, she was bra-less as well. Or maybe she just didn’t give a damn?

There was also the time I rode with a model who kept checking himself, checking himself, checking himself ad infinitum in the quadruple mirrored elevator. He created a crazy fun house effect that looked like something I would have seen in an eighties new wave video. Then he realized that while he was so busy preening he had forgotten to press his floor and had ridden half way up the building and was now again mysteriously back in the lobby.

Yes, models turn into very funny characters when confined to a small mirrored space. But they can also be sad, and this scenario is setting itself up to be one of those sad ones.

As I had fully expected, the skimpily clad I’m-on-my-way-to-a-hip-hop-video-shoot young black girl with full hips, hands her portfolio to the grungy I-just-rolled-outta-bed-and-I’m-too-hip-to-comb-my-hair white girl that looks like she’s on a strict heroine diet. She is obviously disinterested. I suspect that the white girl is onboard at the agency and only came in to pick up her check.

In an elevator that can hold six people maximum, there isn’t much privacy. So the white chick reviews the portfolio, the Wookie looks, and I look too. We all look as the black girl broods over her pseudo-glamorous photos adding little anecdotes to each. “Oh, that one was supposed to be in Vibe magazine.” She quips. “That was from the video that BET didn’t take. Those shots were for a lingerie calendar that my boyfriend’s friend never got published.”

How could you not feel sorry for her? How could you not feel sad? The white chick says nothing, biding her time, hoping the elevator goes express to the lobby so that she can hear that familiar bling and be out of this cramped, clammy, excruciating situation.

Bling!

She hands the portfolio back to the black girl, and as she b-lines it for the exit turns her head slightly and speaks over her shoulder. “You never know how these things work”, she says, “they don’t want you today, but try again next week. They may want you then.”

I feel badly for the black girl. Not because this particular interview went bad. And it definitely wasn’t because it was the first time I’ve witnessed something like this. No, I feel bad because I know that today being Open-call day, she has probably been to and is on the way to several other interviews. Others that will probably have the same result.

I did say it was a sad scenario.

As I step toward the coffee shop to grab my cola, I notice her re-telling the story to a male friend who’s sitting in one of those cars outfitted with rims that keep spinning even though it’s standing still.

After today she’ll probably love him more for loving her, and hopefully he wont take too much advantage of it. She’ll probably have a lower, but more real self image. She’ll tell all her friends that this modeling shit just ain’t cut out for everyone. And I only hope she’ll stop letting guys gas her head in order to see her get down to her skivvies in front of the camera.

When I see someone who’s obviously being taken advantage of, someone who doesn’t understand that most model managers are not godheads, but ugly fucked-up people who enjoy destroying young girls self-esteem, when I see someone like this I feel sad.

It’s a fleeting sadness though, for as she steps into the car now blasting a song with lyrics that declare “Mammi you can take me home if you let the whole crew get on”, I silently laugh and think Fuck-it, right now I need cola.