Supermodel Confidential

So far this experience has only seemed like scenes from a bad TV show, then a bad TV show actually arrives on the set. A crew from the tabloid program Hard Copy shows up to do a piece on Michael, the one who owns North Beach Leather, who has a reputation for "discovering" the next megasupermodels.

"Michael predicted Cindy and Christy would be huge, and he's saying the same thing about you three ladies," says Anthony, a Hard Copy associate producer, during an interview with Angie. He asks her if she sees herself following a similar path as Cindy. "I don't see myself going the route like Cindy did, being a newscaster for MTV," Angie answers. "I want to be an actress." Fade out....

Two years ago Angie was on the Concorde when she noticed Lauren Bacall sitting several rows in front of her. She had never asked anyone for an autograph but decided to make an exception.

"What's a pretty young girl like you want with an old lady's autograph?" the whiskey voice asked. "Sit down."

Fifty years earlier Bacall had been discovered after she appeared on the cover of Harper's Bazaar. Within a month she had a Hollywood movie contract, and soon after, she starred with Bogie in her first film, To Have and Have Not.

"I feel like an actress more than I feel like a model," says Angie, who has been taking acting lessons for the past year. "I know that goes along with the stereotype. Models thinking they can jump into acting. But with me, it's something inside."

In her first movie Bacall delivered one of the most memorable lines ever uttered on the silver screen: "You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow." Angie's first movie was last summer's forgettable Last Action Hero, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. But, hey, Arnie is no Bogie. Still, Angie's two lines as the Video Counter Girl may someday be an answer to a trivia question, so tuck these words away: "Foreign films are in the back," and, "Down the aisle to the left."

"Down the aisle to the left," the flight attendant says. It is 10 p.m., and we are on the red-eye back to New York. The plane will arrive at 6 a.m., and Angie has a booking for 9 a.m. "I think it's for Saks," she says wearily. "Maybe Bloomingdales."

We decline the meal because we had dined two hours earlier at a Taco Bell drive-through. Angie eats like any normal 24-year-old. A testament to her superhuman supermodelness is the fact that she does not have to work out, nor does she belong to a gym or employ a personal trainer. And she eats junk food, lots of it. Before we boarded the plane, Angie had apparently knocked over an airport candy shop and gotten away with a bagful of fancy chocolates, gumballs, Nerds, lollipops and paper dots.

It is Day 4 when the plane lands at Kennedy. The sky is midnight blue, a perfect backdrop for a fairy-tale moon that's so unreal I half expect to see a cow or a spoon nearby. In drowsy silence Angie and I stare out of the taxi's windows at the lunar brilliance. "Everyone is still asleep," she says as we cross the Triborough Bridge to Manhattan. Her stop is first.