Catwalk (46 page)

Fifi gives me that look like I flubbed it. “I don’t think that was a good demonstration of acting like a therapist,
esta bien
?” Fifi says, frumping her face.

“Fifi, please, she’s going bananas about Polo’s plight. Friday she was sending an SOS about Maxie and Snickers the sea biscuit, who are stranded on an island.”

“Snickers is a spaniel,” Felinez says, correcting me.

“I could kick myself. I knew I should have called her yesterday,” I hiss, glomming on to one of my curls for comfort. “When the call goes straight to voice mail, your life goes straight to
hell.
”

Felinez and Elgamela remain quiet for the rest of the cab ride, which makes me feel embarrassed for my outburst, so I stroke their fashion egos. “I think we did a lot of work today, no?”

Felinez and Elgamela both nod enthusiastically.

“Awright, now it’s time to stroke Angora’s fur,” I say, snapping on a smile.

We get out in front of Angora’s building on Eighty-ninth Street between Riverside Drive and West End Avenue. “Wow, it’s so pretty and peaceful here, it doesn’t even feel like New York,” exclaims Elgamela, gazing down the quiet, tree-lined street toward the massive cluster of trees in Riverside Park.

We sail through the colorful stained-glass doors of the building lobby and smile at the doorman in the bright burgundy uniform and matching hat, both brimming with gold braided trim and tassel detail. He smiles at us, making us feel important. Then he chirpily asks, “Can I help you?”

“We’re here to see Miss Angora Le Bon,” I say, grandly. The doorman picks up his lobby phone to ring Angora. “There’s no answer,” he informs us, “but I know she’s home, because I haven’t seen her go out. Mr. Le Bon went out a little while ago with, um …,” he says, pausing like he’s struggling to remember someone’s name.

“Je’Taime?” I ask, guessing.

“Yes, sorry. I couldn’t pronounce her name correctly,” he says, looking embarrassed. “Well, anyway, they went out earlier, but I haven’t seen Angora. Listen, why don’t you just go up?”

“Great, thanks,” I say, trying to match his cheerfulness.

Once we’re in the elevator, Elgamela asks, sounding intrigued, “Who is Je’Taime?”

“She is Mr. Le Bon’s psychic, visiting from Baton Rouge, but if you ask me, something is awry,” I blurt out.

“Really?” Elgamela asks.

“Angora says they went out to get some shrubs—no, I think she said roots at a voodoo store,” I say, scratching my head, “but if you ask me, she should pick up a few refresher pamphlets while she’s there, because I don’t think her psychic powers are working.”

Fifi looks at me disapprovingly.

“Fifi, what’s the point in doling out tiddies? Now is the time to spill the refried beans,” I advise.

Elgamela looks puzzled, so I fill her in on the whole problem with Mr. Le Bon’s royalties—or lack thereof—from Bandito Studios for the tons of Funny Bunny toys and merchandising and amusement park stuff that the company has made based on Mr. Le Bon’s creation. “But yet they haven’t broken him off a piece of the back end. In other words, he has not received any profit participation.”

“You mean they don’t give him any money for all the toys and merchandise and stuff they do?” Elgamela asks, rhetorically, I hope, since she’s simply repeating what I just told her. “That doesn’t sound fair.”

“Mr. Blunt would hop on this one,” I say, referring
to our fashion business teacher, who taught us that fashion designers receive royalties—an exact percentage of every single item that has their name on it. Without the royalties, F.I. graduates like Calvin Klein and Ruff Loner and Yves Saint Bernard would not have been able to build billion-dollar burgeoning empires that make budding fashionistas like us eager to hop on the fashion gravy train.

“Hollywood sounds like the Wild West,” Felinez says, sounding sympathetic to artists’ plight, because as a designer, she hopes to scoop up as much profit as she can with her bag designs one day.

“Yeah, it’s wild, all right—and it’s definitely west. Can you imagine if they tried to do that to Dolce and Gabbana or Betsey Johnson? Puhleez, they’d walk right into the department stores and lift the clothes off the mannequins!”

“Peekaboo, don’t sue!” cracks Felinez.

“Guess who?” I yelp when we get to Angora’s front door and see it ajar. When I don’t get a response, I gently push it, but something is stopping it from opening all the way. I stick my head into the crack so I can yell through it, thinking maybe Angora is nearby and left the door ajar because she’s at the trash takeaway or something. But out of the corner of my eye, I can see a paper on the floor, and when I push the door even
farther, I see that Angora is lying next to it, her body flopped near the door. “Omigod!” I scream, squeezing my way through the door with more force. I bend down frantically to see what’s wrong, and from her gray complexion, I gather quickly that she has probably had an asthma attack. Sure enough, Angora raises her hand and whispers faintly, “Get my inhaler.”

Elgamela and Felinez have also rushed in and are hovering over her. Felinez picks up the piece of paper, which has adhered itself to her shoe.

“Is she okay?” asks Elgamela.

“Does she look okay?” I yell. “Help me look for her inhaler!”

We both scramble in search of Angora’s nebulizer inhaler. I find it inside her fringe purse plopped on the kitchen counter. With her sweaty palms, Angora grabs the inhaler and places it in her mouth.

“Omigod,” moans Felinez, staring at the paper in her hand. “This is an
eviction notice.
”

“I’m calling 911,” I say, ignoring Felinez.

“No, don’t,” spurts Angora, wheezing. “Just give me a few more minutes.”

“Should we wait?” Elgamela asks, hesitantly, probably because she doesn’t want me yelling at her again.

“If the inhaler doesn’t work, then we’ll call,” I say, more calmly.

We wait for a few minutes, which seem like an eternity. “I’m not going to any hospital for an asthma attack unless I’m unconscious,” Angora says, softly.

Now that she has seemed to regain her breath, I become interested in the probable source of her current attack. “Lemme see that,” I say to Felinez, who hands me the paper. Like Felinez said, the form is indeed an official eviction notice for “failure to pay rent due and in arrears pursuant to RSA 540:2 in the County of New York.”

“I can’t believe this,” I utter, involuntarily, reading the amount due—$11,500, or, in other words, three months’ rent. Reading the notice intently, I realize that Mr. Le Bon was obviously counting on Funny Bunny money that he thought he was going to get. I shiver thinking about the stress my mother goes through with her monthly bills. Who knew that Mr. Le Bon was going through the same thing?

“I found it in his bedroom after they went out. I knew something was wrong—I’ve been feeling it for months,” Angora says, quietly. “I was going downstairs to the building management office to see if Mr. Gahneff was there and maybe I could talk to him about the eviction notice, but then my legs got like rubber and I just couldn’t breathe and I got really lethargic. I guess I freaked out.” Now Angora starts sobbing. “I can’t believe Daddy kept this from me.”

“Don’t do that. It’ll aggravate your asthma,” warns Felinez, trying to fight back her own tears. Angora rubs her eyes and tries to stifle her sobs.

“How am I going to keep this from my mother?” Angora asks, raising her arm for us to help her up off the floor.

“Oh, Angora. I’m so sorry,” I say. Felinez and I bend down to help her sit upright against the door. I hug her gently, also near tears.

I know how much Angora dreads dealing with her mother. She moved in with her father to get away from her—and to attend F.I., of course.

“Why don’t you want to tell her?” Elgamela asks, innocently.

“Because I want her to keep her hysteria on Hysteria Lane—and not here,” admits Angora. “If Daddy loses this apartment, she’ll make me come home and I’ll have no choice, that’s why.”

Elgamela shoots me a guilty look, batting her long dark lashes to the beat of Morse code, like she’s trying to relay a message.

My eye starts twitching involuntarily and I shriek inside. The thought of losing both of them is more than I can fathom.

The intercom buzzes and Felinez jumps to answer it. “It’s Aphro,” she informs us.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, Aphro enters and
she comes bearing a peace offering: she shoves a big tin into Felinez’s hand. “My foster mother let me take some chicken wings and corn bread for y’all.”

“Oh, we ate,” Felinez says, much to my surprise.

“Thank you,
chérie
. I’m hungry,” Angora says, smiling weakly.

“What happened to you?” Aphro asks, finally sensing that something is wrong. “You look pale as a ghost.”

We give Aphro the broad strokes of the latest drama and kaflamma and she shakes her head in despair.

Aphro listens intently, then provides a primo example of excising payment from unwilling parties. She says that Mrs. Maydell had been plying her domestic services for the now-bankrupt rapper, Trigger Happy, who hadn’t paid her in two months. “She asked him for her money while she was cutting up some apples to fry for his breakfast, and he said, ‘I’ll hit you up with that soon.’ She kept slicing with that knife and very calmly told him, ‘You’d better go cut me a check now before I cut you.’ He went with a quickness to put some paper in her hand. So somebody needs to go up to the Bandito Studios and set it off, okay!”

“I heard that,” I second.

“It does sound far more effective than my alternative,” Angora says, wearily.

“What’s that?” asks Aphro, all ears.

“Calling my mother,” admits Angora, softly. “But I have to eat first.”

We sit down at the table to eat—and I decide to join in so that Angora won’t sit there picking, because I’m sure she hasn’t eaten all day. She’s been busy fretting about funds instead.

“This place is wild,” Aphro says, looking around at the surroundings—Mr. Le Bon’s compulsive, cluttered collection of everything from bunny bookends to velveteen rabbit coasters.

“It is,” seconds Angora; then she breaks down into tears again. Probably the thought of all these floppy-eared friends hopping into storage is more than she can bear.

She reaches out for me to hug her. “Can you stay until Daddy and Je’Taime get back? I don’t want to be here by myself.” Then she beams at Aphro and says, softly, “I’m so glad you’re here, too.”

I look at Elgamela eerily. She was right.

Angora gently rubs her chin, releasing a few dainty corn bread crumbs onto her napkin. “I want to lie down now.”

We go into Angora’s powder blue sanctuary and she plops down on her bed, instructing us to sit nearby.

Elgamela is elated to finally meet Rouge, Angora’s prized Ragdoll cat, who has been hiding behind the
blue chiffon curtain panel on the windowsill like a belly dancer manipulating a veil.

“I’ve wanted to meet you for so long,” coos Elgamela, stroking Rouge’s sublimely silky white fur.

“We did good work today,” I say, pulling out the copies of revised sketches from the fitting to show Angora the shapes of silhouettes to come.

“Tres mignon, chérie,”
she coos approvingly at the baby-doll dresses, which she loves the best. About thirty minutes later, the color in Angora’s face returns. “Can someone sashay into my father’s bedroom and make sure it’s not, um, in disarray? I made a mess snooping around—and when I, um, freaked out, I didn’t fix everything back.”

By now, we’ve all grown accustomed to Angora’s substituting the phrase “freaked out” for “had an asthma attack.”

“Right on it,” volunteers Aphro. “He won’t notice an Easter egg out of place by the time we’re finished.” Felinez goes with her.

I pick up a delicate brush off the vanity table to fix Angora’s matted hair. “I must look a mess,” she says, sounding embarrassed.

“At least your locks surrender to a few strokes,” I tease as her straight blond hair behaves without a fuss and lies on her shoulders.

“I’m ready for my close-up,
chérie
,” she says softly. “Do you think I’m doing the right thing?”

I know exactly what Angora is asking me. “Call her. Chicken Little would agree the ceiling has definitely fallen down,” I assure her.

I hand her the powder blue Princess phone, her blue emery board, and her inhaler. She rests them on the bed next to her, side by side, before she gets the courage to pick up the receiver and dial the dreaded number of Ms. Ava Le Bon.

While Angora is on the phone, Aphro rushes back into the bedroom with a stack in her hand. “You can’t believe all these bills we found in his bedroom—stamped ‘past due’!”

I shoot Aphro a look like
Can’t you keep it Lite FM, purr favor?
Then I jump off the bed so I can go whisper to Aphro, up close and personal: “Talking to her mother is one thing, so let’s not stress all of Angora’s nine lives today, okay?”

“Pash,
puhleez
, the cat is already out of the bag. They about to get evicted!” hisses Aphro.

I want to hiss back,
It sure is, so don’t let me drop a dime on your cyber crime!
Instead, I push her back into Mr. Le Bon’s bedroom with the upsetting stack of unpaid bills. “Just put them back under whatever pillow you found them under. Let the tooth fairy handle that!”

I hop back onto the bed to hold Angora’s hand while she absorbs her mother’s wrath. As expected, the conversation quickly reaches a crispy crescendo. “But what about the Catwalk competition? I can’t just leave school!” protests Angora, shaking uncontrollably. She moves the phone away from her ear for a second and I can hear her mother’s hysterical voice, loud and clear: “I don’t care about any ole competition, and after I get finished with that foolish father of yours, that will be the least of your problems!”

Angora smiles and starts filing her nails. It’s a ritual she has perfected from years of fighting with her mother. After a few seconds, she puts the phone receiver back on her ear. Angora begins blinking rapidly, then curtly informs her mother, “I’m hanging up now.”

Suffice it to say Angora doesn’t have to fill us in on the obvious: that Ms. Ava is madder than a witch who overslept on Halloween. “And now Daddy is going to be so mad with me,” she says, resigned to the ruckus coming her way.