Supermodel Confidential

At 6:45 a.m., in the hotel in West Hollywood, no Angie. At 7:10 a.m. she shows up with a red leash in her hand and puts out an APB: "Eddie ran away!" The Edster made a clean getaway when his old lady opened the door to their room. He was last seen rounding a corner in the third-floor hallway and heading toward the stairs, perhaps in search of some uncollected room-service trays. "Someone probably opened their door. Eddie ran in, and they closed it behind him," says his now frantic owner.

On the lam a few minutes, Eddie finally is spotted by Angie cruising south on the second floor and is returned to captivity.

"Bad dog! Bad Eddie! You're getting the leash from now on," soon becomes "You're still the cutest bunny in the world." Eddie the dog receives more adulation than his namesake, the lead guitarist of the rock band Van Halen, ever dreamed of, although Angie is a big fan of his. Her bedroom in Akron was wallpapered with Van Halen pictures. Last summer at a Van Halen concert in Pittsburgh, she paid a scalper $900 for three second-row seats. There was also the time at the Cleveland Coliseum when lead singer Sammy Hagar invited her onstage to dance to the band's rendition of Simply Irresistible. Backstage after the concert, Hagar asked Angie, then 16, if she wanted to go bowling with the band. "Yes, bowling," insists Angie. "He was serious. I said no. I said I had a plane to catch. Yeah, a plane to catch. At 10 o'clock at night. I was nervous, but it was the only excuse I could think of."

The shooting location for the day is Smashbox Studios in Culver City, Calif. It's 9 a.m., and Neil, the photographer and a PIB, is already impatient. He pokes his head into the hair-and-makeup room and inquires, "How are we doing, guys?"

"Well, the crudités are out, and I just put the turkey in the oven, dahling," Lucienne sniffs, brandishing the blusher like a basting brush. Never rush an artist.

Lucienne is downright domesticated, compared with some others on the shoot. Michael the fashion director is barking in Angie's car. "Woof!...That's me wishing I was Eddie," he says to Angie, who is cuddling her canine. Pam. the marketing director, is explaining the term favored nation to me. No, she's not talking about U.S. trade policy with China but about the modeling biz. "Favored nation just means that all the girls here make the same rate, $3,000 a day," she says. Neil is pulling down $6,000 a day, which makes him the most favored nation of all.

Crudités? A barking flirt? Favored nations? How are we doing?

In Angie's case, not well. "Some things just set me off," she explains, speaking softly so that the stylist who has just dressed her cannot hear her. "You know, when you wear an outfit you hate." Looking like a referee. Angie is wearing a black-and-white-striped jacket, a white-skirt and...heavens! North Beach Leather should be penalized at least 15 for this one ... black pumps. The couture cognoscenti take one look at the fashion faux pas and send Angie back to the dressing room to put on a black skirt to match the shoes. Much better.

"Smiles, Prozac smiles, everyone," Neil says from behind the lens, like Mr. Rourke in the opening scene of Fantasy Island.

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