Catwalk (41 page)
Authors: Deborah Gregory
My mom yells out from the living room, so I fling open the door to my pink palace to see what she wants. Like I thought, her plans are about to spring into action despite the original setback—Ramon’s fatigue. “We’re going. Don’t be back later than eleven.” Although Ramon has ditched the scruffy work gear and changed into a striped burgundy shirt and black pants, he still looks like he just crawled out of a bomb shelter—frightened but happy to be alive.
“I know. I’ll be home,” I concede, although eleven is not the bewitching hour I had in mind. I’ll probably get Ice Très to walk me home, anyway. Then maybe we can make out in the stairwell—right under the goofy red graffiti: Treva 4EVER.
“Call me on my cell at ten o’clock sharp, and then
when you’re back home,” Mom warns me, squelching my shot at a stairwell interlude.
“Will do. You look nice,” I say, smiling.
I hear my bedroom phone ringing and I run back to get it. “Hello,” I answer, in a breathy voice. This time it’s a distressed Angora.
“What time is he picking you up?” Angora asks, sounding concerned.
“He said seven o’clock but he hasn’t gotten here yet,” I say. “Should I call him?”
“Absolutely not, according to
The Rules
,” advises Angora.
“Oh, right,” I say, chuckling. Angora, the sound bite queen, swears by a dating manual that advises, “Never call a boy unless it’s to return his call. And never e-mail him first, either. No smiley faces. No recipes. No YouTube videos!
Nada. Niente
. Nietzsche. (The last part I added for good measure.) Exasperated, I sigh to Angora, “How is he gonna call if I’m talking to you?”
“Call-waiting?” quips Angora.
“No, I mean … I gotta go get ready!” I blurt out before I realize that Angora probably called for reasons of her own. “Wazzup?” I ask, concerned.
“My father’s freaking out,” she admits. “He got his profit participation statement today from Bandito Studios and there’s no money.”
“What, what?” I ask, confused.
“The profit participation statement lists all the money the studio brings in from Funny Bunny everything, and how much they pay the creator—in this case, my father—after all their expenses. So the statement says they’re in the
red
—they’ve lost money, to the tune of five million dollars!” Angora explains patiently, but she’s having trouble breathing, like she does when she gets stressed.
“What a sham-o-rama. That sounds like a three-card monte,” I say in disbelief. When Angora’s dad first moved to New York, he went to Times Square, where these shamsters used to always be set up with cardboard boxes, ready to empty tourists’ pockets with their confidence card game. In it, the mark—in this case, Mr. Le Bon—was tricked into betting his ducats that he could find the money card—for example, the queen of spades—among three facedown playing cards. Of course, the shamster had
always
perfected his sleight of hand, which guaranteed that the mark would always pick a losing card.
“Je’Taime told him that he was going to get a lot of money—and apparently, Daddy has been counting on that. So we’re not going to Colombia for Christmas,” laments Angora.
Now I feel bad for her, but still I can’t help giving her advice: “I think maybe your father should be taking
advice from a lawyer and not from his psychic. Don’t you think?” I say, gently.
“I know. He’s been on the phone with one all day. Now he’s running around the apartment so hyper I’m worried about him,” Angora confesses.
“Well, maybe I can come over on Sunday,” I say, my head whirling with my weekend schedule. I have to do my homework, go over to Nole’s, and see Felinez.
“I don’t know what to do,” Angora says, trying to catch her breath. “I don’t want to call Ms. Ava. And Je’ Taime spent all day making her famous gumbo, but Daddy won’t eat a drop. And his eyes look crazy because they’re so bloodshot.”
“Well, make him some of your mint julep tea. Try to get him to calm down,” I suggest.
“I know. I will. Well, have a good time tonight,” Angora says, sweetly.
“Um, listen,” I interject, quickly, “have you heard anything?”
“About what?”
“About anything. About Aphro. About Liza Flake. About the bubonic plague. About the computer virus. Anything,” I say, exasperated.
“Settle down,
chérie
,” Angora says, calmed by my cuckoo episode. “We have to be very careful how we deal with this situation.”
“Now you sound like the AOL warning. ‘If you don’t know who sent you this e-mail, open with caution.’ What a crock!” I hiss.
“I’m sorry, Pash. I’m not AOL, but I feel like saying the same thing. What else are we supposed to do except be careful?” advises Angora.
“You’re right. Okay, signing off,” I say, giggling. “And don’t forget that I love you.”
When I get off the phone, I look at my Glam Kitty clock on the wall and notice that it’s seven-thirty already. I’m starving and my stomach is now fueled by jitters. And now where is Ice Très? Spacing out, I stare at the Eartha Kitt poster over my bed. I continue floating, orbiting on the image of Chris “Panda” Midgett trolling with his PC pals at the Jacob Javits Center. Well, at least he’s probably having fun. I switch on my computer, which is now working, thanks to the shortie with a techno plan. I search through my files for my Catwalk competition document so I can examine the call-of-show lineup for our fashion show. Scrolling down through my files, I start to feel creepy about the corrupted file that contained the virus. When I asked at school, nobody else reported their computer going into deep freeze. Shrugging off my feelings, I numbly start reordering the lineup of my fashion show. Definitely the canvas hoodie with the graffiti cargo pants should go before the chiffon drawstring gown—and not the
other way around. After fifteen more minutes, I decide to ditch Angora’s advice. I pick up the phone and dial Ice Très’s cell. It goes straight to voice mail. I listen carefully and leave a squeaky message. I don’t want to sound like I’ve hit the panic button, even though I have. We were supposed to take a bus down to Lenox Avenue together so we could get to Native around eight o’clock! Obviously that’s not gonna happen and he hasn’t even called to cancel. Suddenly struck by lethargy, I force myself to get up and finish getting ready. There is no way Ice Très would stand me up. Nobody would primp up their plumage just to pluck out my kitty whiskers by standing me up.
Would they?
I shake off such feline-foolish thoughts and sashay for myself in front of my full-length mirror after I’m dressed. Staring at my long reflection, I smile. There is nothing like head-to-toe pink for earning personal purr points.
“Meowch!” I squeal out loud, staring at Fabbie, who is still propped on my bed without a care in the world. I’m so glad nobody keeps her waiting. I know it would make her fluffy fur wilt.
By eight o’clock, the phone still hasn’t rung, so I pick it up just to check that it’s still working. Now I’m bona fried. I call Ice Très’s cell phone again—and this time my message is extra-crispy. “I don’t know if you’ve been washed up by the Pineapple Express, but if you
have, I hope you’ve drowned!” I whisper fiercely into the phone before hanging up. Instead of feeling better, I feel guilty. Ice Très told me that the reason his family had moved from Hamilton, Washington, to the Big Apple was that their house had been flooded several times by tropical waters originating in Hawaii. Suddenly I’m flooded by horrible thoughts: What if Ice Très is trying to get back at me for getting him expelled? Maybe he sent me the virus! Nobody told him to write that corny graffiti in the school stairwell, but I bet he blames me for the Cupid misfire. Phase two of his get-even plan: he stands me up! All along I assumed it was someone in my house—but what if it’s the handsome hoodwinker hovering on the horizon with twinkling eyes and dangerous dimples?
FASHION INTERNATIONAL 35th ANNUAL CATWALK COMPETITION BLOG
New school rule: You don’t have to be ultranice, but don’t get tooooo catty, or your posting will be zapped by the Fashion Avengers!
TAKE IT TO THE BRIM …
Some of my friends in my neighborhood out on Long Island give me static about being in the mix at F.I. As a matter of fact, I don’t even say the name of my school when talking to my skateboarding brethren, because I don’t want to deal with their raised eyebrows and silly smirks. Since the news circulated around the bushes that I’m competing in something called the Catwalk competition, names like “Sissy-rella” and “primping pimp” have been flying around my hat, attempting to make a landing too frequently for my fly tastes.
I also know that right across the street from F.I., the dogs at D.T. (don’t see any reason to spell out that school name, either) are barking big-time about the male students at F.I. Personally, I think they should stop with the haterade conventions and focus on student amalgamation that would force D.T. school officials to lighten up on their constricting dress code. I would have a problem with attending a school that prohibits me from wearing headgear. I know D.T. isn’t the only one with this kind of crimp in its pimp. My cousin Demeter
goes to a school in the UK where you either lose the baseball cap or be moved out of the classroom and taught in isolation. Taking all these creative restrictions into consideration, I feel lucky to be a part of my school. I recognize that I’m a serious sneakerhead, which means I must bring the headgear—
always
. As a matter of fact, I hope that after hearing about my blog entry, the F.I. faculty will take a cue from Bell Academy in Bayside, Queens (which my younger sister, Olivia, attends—and yes, I come from a big, tight family), by instituting “Crazy Hat Fridays.” At that progressive school, students are encouraged to wear their most creative headgear on a designated day. F.I. was, well, designed for that type of display in creative thinking out of the hatbox.
Wearing lids isn’t about exuding attitude—it’s about claiming your angle with “hattitude.” These days, I’ve been hinged to my mink zebra-striped-brim hat, because my dad made it for me. My dad, Mr. Cronus Artemides, is an old-school tailor in every sense. The man can make a suit that would put the House of Armani out of business. I’m not bragging—this is a serious fact. My father was trained by his grandfather back in Greece. I don’t think you can get that kind of training anywhere else, from what I can see. No disrespect to the fashion design situation here at F.I., either. My father could have been a world-class
designer, but he had to raise a family and has been successfully running his own tailor shop for two decades in Manhattan. Unfortunately, with the escalating greed of New York landlords, my father may be forced to take his tailoring skills elsewhere. I really think that’s foul. Let me ask you: how can you expect a small retailer to pay $10,0000–$30,000 a month on rent for a retail operation and still be able to pay all their other expenses that we’ve learned about in Retail 101 AND expect them to turn a profit? You don’t have to be a student at Fashion International (okay, there, I said it) to see that is straight-up pimping. Now, I don’t want to go off on any retail riff here and now, but rather get back to basics: I plan on wearing my mink zebra-striped hat proudly to the Catwalk competition, where I will be taking the competition to the brim. And hats off to the winning house, cuz there’s nothing sissy-relish, or whatever, about winning a trip abroad and $100,000 in prize money—which could buy some serious Italian headgear.
Posted by Sneakerhead 14:56:45
Felinez freaks out when I tell her that I have to jettison the fashion pit stop to her house later because Angora requires my assisterance instead.
“I can’t believe it.
Yo no lo creo!
You promised!” she hurls at me on the phone as I try to juggle my double mochaccino frappé coolatte in one hand and her vixen vibrations in the other. The heated exchange causes beads of sweat to percolate on my upper lip despite the whipping winds that are propelling me faster than my magenta suede bootees into the narrow doorway of the tenement building on East Sixty-seventh Street where Nole lives.
“Come on, Blue Boca—I’ll see the bags on Monday,” I plead as I take the elevator to the fourth floor to Nole’s apartment.
“No, I’m on the design team, so you should have invited me, too!” announces Felinez.
“I know that, Fifi.
Duh!
I didn’t think you wanted to labor through the first fittings,” I protest, catching my breath when I reach the fourth-floor landing.
“Well, now I do, since you’re too busy to see me! I
finished five billboard
borsas
already! What if you don’t like them, huh?” she pleads in return.
“You’re a genius, Fifi—you never make anything I don’t like. That’s why we’re going to be in business together, so stop it,
purr favor
?” I moan.
“Well, I’m coming anyway. Michelette is driving me cuckoo mambo. I gotta get out of this
casa Telemundo
!” cries Fifi, sounding more like a desperate housewife than a designated designer.
“Awright then, hop on your broomstick to the East Side, cuz there is plenty of parking space over here,” I sigh, eyeing the rows of fancy cars parked on the street.
“What’s that supposed to mean—I’m a
bruja
now?” asks Felinez, defensively. “I only light the candles for
buena suerte
—good luck—not because I’m a witch!”
“I know that, Fifi,” I say, trying to calm her down. After I snap my phone shut, I realize that I didn’t even get to chew the catnip about Ice Très’s espionage because I had to fluff Fifi’s whiskers instead. Dragging my feet down the gray carpeted hallway, I reflect on my new reality: being in house leader mode 24-7.
“It just goes on and on till the break of dawn!”
I sing, or rather squeak, in my cackling jackal voice.
I tap rapidly on Nole’s front door with my knuckles before my blurry vision rests on the tarnished brass knocker directly in front of my nose. Suddenly, I feel a stabbing pain in my chest—the familiar ache I get
when my heart is hurting. I can’t believe Ice Très left me in the booty dust Friday night!
