Jaine Austen 4 - Shoes to Die For (2 page)

At which point, our waitress slithered back to our table with our lunches. We spent the rest of our meal trying to find actual food among our lettuce, and talking about what a rat Lance’s ex-boyfriend was. Every once in a while, Lance sneaked a peek at the guys in the room, while I sneaked a peek at the dessert menu. Nothing too exciting there. Just some nonfat sorbet, amaretto biscotti, and a flourless carrot cake. Lance and I shared the carrot cake, a tiny square of orange sludge with a sprig of mint on top.

We paid our bill and headed out into the hazy sunshine.

“Let’s go for a walk,” Lance said, “and burn off some calories.”

“What calories? There weren’t enough calories on that menu to feed an anorexic gnat.”

“Come on,” he said, grabbing my arm. “We could both use the exercise.”

So we strolled up the street, past one terminally trendy boutique after another.

“Look!” Lance said, stopping suddenly in front of a unisex clothing store. “Passions. My favorite clothing store. A friend of mine works here. Let’s stop in and say hi.”

But that whole surprise act wasn’t fooling me.

“We didn’t just happen to walk by this place, did we?” I said. “You had this all planned as part of your fashion makeover.”

“Okay,” Lance admitted, “so I had it planned. But I still want to say hi to my friend. Are you coming with me or not?’

Like a fool, I said yes.

And that’s how all the trouble started.

Chapter 2

P
assions was an uber-hip joint with gleaming hardwood floors, pulsating rock music, and fashions cut so small, for a minute I thought I was in a children’s clothing store.

Lance’s friend turned out to be a pixie in her twenties with Day-Glo orange hair that looked like it was styled with an eggbeater. Together with her big blue eyes and itsy-bitsy figure, she just about broke the needle on the cute-o-meter.

“Becky and I used to work together at Neiman’s,” Lance said, after he’d introduced us.

Somehow I couldn’t picture this elf, with her flaming hair and earrings the size of hula hoops, in the refined sales aisles of Neiman Marcus.

“My hair wasn’t orange back then,” she said, as if reading my mind. “I worked in ladies lingerie. Frankly it was a bit of a snore. It’s so much more fun here. I even get to do the windows.”

I glanced over at the window display, featuring a mannequin in thigh-high boots and thong underwear. Just what I always wanted. The sexy storm trooper look.

I picked up a tank top the size of a handkerchief.

“Just out of curiosity,” I asked, “do you have anything in a size large?”

“That
is
a size large.”

I rolled my eyes in disbelief.

“Jaine’s a writer,” Lance said. “She’s not really into the fashion scene.”

“A writer?” Becky asked, clearly impressed.

I nodded modestly.

And it’s true. I write resumes, personals ads, and industrial brochures. Perhaps you’ve read my block-buster brochure for Toiletmasters Plumbers (
In a Rush to Flush? Call Toiletmasters
.)

“I adore writers!” Becky gushed. She blinked those big blue eyes of hers, and I couldn’t help wondering if she’d actually ever read a book.

“Tyler’s a writer, too.” She pointed to a salesman helping a customer in the men’s section. “He’s writing a novel.”

Lance eyed him with interest. And for good reason. Tyler was one eminently eyeable guy. Tall and slim, with an innocent face and a killer body, he managed to look both sweet and sexy at the same time.

“Forget it, Lance,” Becky said, following his hungry look. “He’s straight.”

“Are you sure about that? I don’t mind a challenge.”

“I’m sure, Lance. In fact, he used to date Frenchie.”

“Frenchie?”

“The blonde at the counter. Her real name is Giselle but everybody calls her Frenchie.”

We followed her gaze to a brittle blonde sitting at a stool in front of the register, talking into her cell phone. Her white-blond hair, pulled into a tight bun, contrasted sharply with her blood-red lipstick and fingernails. She wore a low-cut black dress and ridiculously high stiletto heels, which she tapped impatiently as she talked. Nestled in her cleavage was a gold Maltese cross. Yet somehow I didn’t figure her for much of a churchgoer.

“Where the hell is my pizza?” she shrieked. “I’ve been waiting over an hour!”

Her name may have been French, but her accent was strictly Brooklyn.

“A cutie like Tyler dated her?” Lance’s eyes were wide with disbelief. “Quelle bitch.”

“You know who she’s talking to on the phone?” Becky said.

“An unlucky pizza parlor?”

“Her husband. She bosses him around like a trained seal.”

“Don’t forget to pick up my dry cleaning,” Frenchie barked, before slamming down the phone.

“Wait a minute,” Lance said. “She dated Tyler, and she’s married?”

Becky rolled her eyes. “You wouldn’t believe how much she cheats on her husband. I’m surprised she hasn’t hit on the UPS man yet.”

Lance shook his head, baffled. “What was a cutie like Tyler doing with a bitch like her?”

“Oh, Frenchie can be charming when she wants to be. But eventually Tyler realized how awful she was and dumped her.”

“I wish you wouldn’t say nasty things about Frenchie.”

I turned around to see a mousy woman in a tweed suit and sensible low-heeled pumps. Her brown hair formed a frizzy halo around her head. She looked as out of place in this joint as I did.

“Frenchie is a very nice person when you get to know her,” the mouse said reprovingly, then scurried away toward the back of the store.

“That’s Maxine, the bookkeeper,” Becky said. “Poor thing. She’s got a mad crush on Frenchie. Frenchie barely gives her the time of day, but Maxine still worships her.”

“Hello, Frenchie,” Maxine said, waving shyly as she passed Frenchie.

Frenchie gave her a faint smile and went back to examining her cuticles. Then the phone rang, and she answered it.

“Passions,” she said, dropping her voice an octave, like a phone sex operator. “How may I help you?” Suddenly, she was back to her Brooklyn roots. “Oh, for crying out loud, Owen! You’re still stuck in traffic? Just get here already; I’m starving.”

She slammed down the phone, her face clouded in anger. But in the very next instant the storm clouds disappeared and her face was wreathed in smiles.

“Mrs. Tucker!” she said, jumping off her stool and heading to the front door to greet a customer, clomping along in those ridiculous high heels of hers.

“Jimmy Choo knockoffs,” Lance said, following my gaze.

“Who’s Jimmy Choo?” I asked.

“Send this girl to fashion camp,” Lance said, rolling his eyes. “He’s only one of the world’s hottest shoe designers.”

Okay, so sue me if I happen to shop at Payless.

By now Frenchie was at the door, air-kissing her customer.

“How nice to see you, Mrs. Tucker,” she cooed.

“Mrs. Tucker’s one of our best customers,” Becky whispered. “Frenchie never lets her out of her sight.”

Mrs. Tucker was a woman in her fifties who dressed like a kid in her twenties. There was something creepy about the way she’d crammed her menopausal body into low-rider jeans and a midriff-baring tee. I’m no fashion expert, but I think its safe to say you should stop baring your midriff once it’s got liver spots.

“Love your outfit,” Frenchie gushed.

“You should, sweetie,” the older woman said. “You sold it to me.”

Frenchie laughed gaily. “So what can I show you today? We’ve got some fabulous new capri’s that’ll look just smashing on you.”

Like a blond hurricane, she swept through the racks, pulling out one item of clothing after the next. Mrs. Tucker’s eyes shone with anticipation. After Frenchie got her set up in a dressing room, she hurried over to where we were standing.

“What a silly old bat,” she said. “If I had a tummy as pouchy as hers, I’d shoot myself.

“Where the hell is the label thingie?” she asked, rummaging in a drawer behind the counter.

“It’s right here,” Becky said, handing her a device that looked like a stapler.

“Just watch,” Frenchie said, ripping out the size 8 label from a pair of sequinned capri’s. “She’s going to ask for these in a size 6. You’ll see.”

And as if on cue, Mrs. Tucker popped her head out the dressing room door.

“Frenchie, honey. These are a size 8. You know I wear a size 6.”

“Right, Mrs. Tucker,” Frenchie said. “I’ll go find you a pair.”

As soon as Mrs. Tucker disappeared back into the dressing room, Frenchie looked through the drawer and found a size 6 label. In an instant, thanks to the “label thingie,” Frenchie had it sewn onto the capri’s.

“Here we go, Mrs. Tucker,” she trilled, heading for the dressing room. “A size 6.”

“Did I just see what I think I saw?” I asked, amazed.

“Yes,” Becky said. “We switch size labels all the time.”

“What a brilliant idea. I wish Bloomingdale’s would start doing that. If they did, I might even try on a bathing suit.”

“As long as we’re here,” Lance said, “why don’t you try on a few outfits?”

“I already told you. I’m not interested in buying any clothes.”

“Oh, come on. Just one outfit.”

“No way, Lance. I’m not trying anything on. Nada. Zilch. Nothing.”

Ten minutes later I was squeezed into a dressing room with an outrageous assortment of outfits I’d never in a million years dream of wearing. There were skintight pants, see-through blouses, and one of those handkerchief-sized tank tops I’d seen earlier.

“How am I supposed to get into this?” I asked, waving it out the dressing room door.

“It’s spandex,” Lance said. “It stretches.”

Somehow I managed to squeeze myself into it. And for the first time in my life I knew what it felt like to be a sausage.

“Try it on with the harem pants,” Becky called out.

Oh, God. Those harem pants. Just the memory of them makes me shudder. I’ll spare you the gruesome details. Let’s just say I looked like Barbara Eden on prednisone.

I stepped out of the dressing room and everyone gasped. Not in admiration, I can assure you.

From over at the counter, where Mrs. Tucker was paying for her “size 6” pants, Frenchie didn’t even bother to stifle a laugh.

I struggled through a few more outfits, each one more disastrous than the last.

Eventually even Lance gave up.

“I think Jaine’s more the tailored type,” Becky said diplomatically.

I scrambled back into my elastic-waist pants and T-shirt and came back out of the dressing room, ready to strangle Lance for putting me through such a humiliating ordeal.

Perhaps sensing how irritated I was, and trying to make amends, Becky said: “Hey, Jaine. I was just wondering. Have you ever written any advertising copy?”

I nodded. Of course, not everyone would consider Toiletmasters a major account, but it
was
advertising.

“It just so happens that the owner of the store is looking for someone to write a new ad campaign. Would you be interested in the job?”

Suddenly I was in a much better mood. Paychecks have a way of doing that to me.

“Should I try to set up an interview for you?” Becky asked.

And, in another move I’d live to regret, I said yes.

Chapter 3

I
drove home on Cloud Nine.

Well, technically I drove home on Olympic Boulevard, which was clogged with bumper-to-bumper traffic. But I didn’t care. I had an actual job prospect. Something I desperately needed. You see, I’d just lost one of my biggest clients, Tip Top Dry Cleaners. They’d decided to go with a full-service advertising agency, instead of a woman in sweat pants cranking out ads at her dining room table. Well, phooey on them. I sincerely doubt any ad agency could match my slogan. (
At Tip Top Cleaners, We Clean for You, We Press for You, We Even Dye for You
.)

But the fact remained, I had a pesky little thing called rent to pay, and so any job offer was a welcome one. So what if I didn’t know the first thing about funky fashions? So what if, aside from belly buttons, I had no idea what was “in” or “out”? I bet plenty of great ad campaigns were created by people who didn’t know much about the product they were selling. For all I knew, the guy who invented
Got Milk?
was lactose intolerant.

The first thing I saw when I let myself into my apartment was my cat, Prozac, hard at work at my computer. Okay, so she wasn’t writing. She was licking her privates. But she was working hard at it.

“Hi, poopsie,” I crooned. “How’s my little love bug?”

My little love bug yawned and went back to her G spot.

One of these days, I’m going to get myself a sweet slobbering dog who’ll cover me with wet kisses the minute I walk in the front door. But until then, Prozac is my only significant other. We share a one-bedroom apartment in a 1940s duplex in the slums of Beverly Hills, far from the megamansions north of Sunset. Not that I’m complaining. I happen to love our apartment. It’s on a pretty tree-lined block, right up the street from a Starbucks. We’ve got hardwood floors, original tile in the bathroom, and a great view of our neighbor’s azalea bush. The only thing I don’t like about it is the aforementioned rent, which has the annoying habit of coming due at the beginning of each month.

Still starving after the three shards of lettuce I’d had for lunch, I fixed myself a healthy snack of peanut butter and Pop Tarts. Then I scooped Prozac off my keyboard and spent the rest of the afternoon working on a resume for one of my clients, a recent LSU graduate. (The LSU in this case standing for Lazy, Slow, and Unskilled.) It wasn’t easy thinking up accolades for a kid who seemed destined to spend the rest of his life asking, “Would you like fries with that?”

Eventually, Prozac woke up from her umpteenth nap of the day and began howling for her dinner. I fixed her a bowl of Fancy Fish Guts and grabbed a light dinner of Cheerios and bananas for myself. Of course, I use the term “light” advisedly. At Café Ennui, it probably would have fed a family of four.