Poseur #2: The Good, the Fab and the Ugly (20 page)

“That’s nice,” Vivien replied with a tight smile. “But you realize today isn’t about your students.”

“Vee . . . ,” Seedy intruded.

“It’s about me,” she pushed on, ignoring him. “So . . .” She glanced at her white gold Rolex, raising her penciled-in eyebrows. “Should we get this show on the boulevard?”

“Of course.” Miss Paletsky nodded politely, sweet as always. But Melissa noticed it — a brief but glittering heat behind her eyes — proof that she wasn’t the only one in the room who found Vivien to be a truly horrible human being.
At last!
Melissa smiled as her trustworthy teacher plunked down on the white leather stool, arranging her sheet music into a crisp overlapping row.
She wasn’t alone!

Miss Paletsky lifted her small hands, her fingertips caressing the polished ivory board, took a breath, and began to play. She exhaled, and her hands exhaled with her, sinking into the keys, dancing in place like elegant, long-legged spiders. From the depths of the grand piano, notes spiraled into the air, arranging themselves into startling patterns, floating high above their heads — a complicated canopy of sound that shifted, and shifted again. Miss Paletsky stopped playing and the canopy shattered, the notes drifting down, and landing at their feet. It was quiet.

“Oh.” Vivien pressed her hand to her heart, looking at Seedy for the first time since their tiff. “That was . . .”

“Beautiful,” he agreed, dropping his arm across her shoulders.

“Yeah,” Melissa begrudgingly admitted. As much as she enjoyed the piece, it was hard take pleasure in what had just resulted in Vivien and her father making up. She gazed at the ceiling, wincing at the swampy sound of their kisses.

Having peeled his lower lip from Vivien’s temple, Seedy returned his attention to Miss Paletsky, shaking his head. “You know what’s crazy?” He laughed. “I never listen to classical music, and I
swear
I heard that before.”

Melissa hugged Emilio to her chest. “I thought that,
too.
”

“Here we go.” Vivien rolled her eyes, resting her head on Seedy’s waiting shoulder. “Now she’s an expert.”

“I never said I was an expert,” Melissa seethed. “It’s just . . .”

“I’m just glad you liked it, baby,” Vivien purred to Seedy, changing the subject. She poked his cheek with her ring finger. “Didn’t I
tell
you?”

“Yeah, you did . . .” Seedy grinned, planting another kiss on her temple. “You were right.”

“I’m always right.” She fake-pouted.

“Lena.” He slapped his hands to his knees and got to his feet. “Please tell us you’ll play at our engagement party.”

“Of course.” She smiled, gathering her sheet music into a pile. “It would be my pleasure.”

Later, as Seedy and Melissa walked her to the door, he remembered to ask: “That piece you played . . .” He scratched the back of his neck. “Who wrote it, again?”

“Well . . .” She gazed at the polished marble floor. “Remember the day you came into my office, you told me you wanted one type of music, but your fiancée wanted something else? Well, I thought, why choose? Why not
combine
the two types of music into something completely new?”

“Okay,
combine
rap and classical piano?” Seedy began to laugh at the notion, but the laughter died on his lips. “Wait . . .”

“Omigod,” Melissa gasped. She turned to Miss Paletsky in awe. “It was ‘Bi Bim Bitches,’ right?”

“It can’t be.” Seedy gripped his forehead, humming the refrain under his breath. “Wait a minute.” He exploded into a wonderful triumphant laugh. “It
is,
isn’t it?”

Miss Paletsky nodded, sheepish but proud.

“How did you even
hear
that song?” He grinned, his eyes shining. “Isn’t it, like, locked up on the B side of some EP they only sell in Japan?”

“Well,” she confessed, embarrassed, “yes.”

“I cannot believe this,” Melissa laughed. “Miss Paletsky: secret hip-hop junkie.”

“I wouldn’t say
that.
” She blushed, fanning her hands on either side of her face. “In fact, this kind of music . . . Okay, I
hated
it. But your father changed my mind. Just a
little.
”

Seedy laughed, and bumped her fist. “I hope this serves as a lesson to you.” He turned to Melissa with a stern look.

“Um . . . Miss Paletsky’s awesome?”

“And,”
her father prompted. “Amazing things come out of compromise.”

“Oh right.” Melissa nodded as he ushered Miss Paletsky toward the door. She smiled, repeating his words in his head. With a sudden wave of urgency, she ran upstairs, down the hall, and into her bedroom. She belly-flopped across her mattress, snatched her rhinestone Sidekick from her pink satin pillow, and punched 6.

“Hey,” she answered when Janie picked up. “I have an idea.”

“Thank you all for putting aside your personal agendas to attend this emergency meeting,” Melissa intoned as Petra, Charlotte, and Janie gathered round the beige plastic table. They’d decided to meet at the Whole Foods on the corner of Santa Monica and Fairfax, conveniently located equidistant from all four girls’ houses, as well as providing free Internet access.

“Well, this better be important,” Charlotte sighed, smoothing a paper napkin on the beige plastic bench. She sat down, tucked her long, pink tights–clad legs under her seat, and rolled her perfectly coiffed head on her long neck. “I’m missing a ballet class for this.”

“And
I’m
missing my nap,” Petra yawned, tugging the straggled ends of her honey-gold, chlorine-scented braids. According to a tacit understanding, she and Paul had gotten together every night, meeting up in his grandparents’ kidney-shaped pool, treading the temperate, dark-as-night water, and keeping their gasping voices low. Until they got sick of talking. Then they floated on their backs, blinking at the moon, water lapping into their ears — and bumping into each other, always by accident. She hadn’t gone to bed before two in the morning for over a week (not to say she had regrets).

“I’m not missing anything,” Janie announced with a cheerful shrug.

“Thank you, Janie,” Melissa said, reaching into her silver nylon Batkier tote, “for having the right attitude.” Extracting her reliable Tiffany gavel, she loudly rapped the hard plastic table, causing a nearby female shopper in purple baggy-butt sweatpants to gasp in alarm. “So.” Melissa flipped open her glitter white notebook, scratching a note to herself in the margin. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since our last meeting, and I think maybe we were all a little too rash. Thankfully, part of my duty as executive officer of public relations is to take the
rash
. . . and turn it into the
rational.
”

“
Stellar
wordplay, Meliss,” Charlotte mused, dropping a green straw into her glass Orangina bottle. “It’s like having lunch with Shakespeare.”

“Obviously,” Melissa ignored her, “we all have very different ideas of what the Trick-or-Treater should look like. But
what if,
” she postulated, cocking a savagely gelled eyebrow, “instead of choosing
one
design, we took the best parts of each and
combined
them, designing something completely new? Like a hybrid super bag.”

“You
have
to be kidding me.” Janie dropped her whole-wheat cinnamon roll and gaped. “You’re suggesting a compromise?”

“What’s wrong with that?” Petra frowned in confusion.

“Nothing, except . . .”
Except I’d been trying to suggest a compromise all week, and no one would listen!
“Except nothing,” she sighed, grinned at the irony, and stuffed her cinnamon roll into her face.

“Okay.” Melissa gently yanked a Xerox copy of Janie’s sketch from her folder, sliding it across the table for her perusal. “Janie: if you could only save
one
element from your Trick-or-Treater design . . . which one would it be?”

Janie stared down at her drawing and frowned, finding herself torn between two design elements: the color of the purse, a glaring bright yellow, which she’d chosen in homage to Paul “Electric Banana” Miller, and the cotton cord lace-up detail, inspired by Evan Beverwil’s board shorts . . . that one night at the Viceroy. She’d go with the color, she resolved. She’d loved that yellow for as long as she could remember.

“The cotton cord lace-up,” she blurted, flushing at her answer. The words had leaped to her lips, surprising her.

Melissa poised her pen. “You sure?”

Janie swallowed, shaking her head. “Yes,” she assented, surprising herself again.

“Cotton cord lace-up it is,” Melissa announced, and with a kick of her poor, baffled heart, Janie watched her write it down. “Petra?” Melissa solemnly slid a second sketch across the table. “You’re next.”

“Definitely the color,” she replied, returning the sketch without looking. She recalled the name of Paul’s dyed hair color with a dreamy, secret smile. “Atomic Turquoise.”

“Oh yeah . . .” Janie furrowed her brow. “Isn’t that a Manic Panic color?”

“Done!” Melissa trilled, scrambling to write it down before Petra changed her mind and decided to keep those damn rocks. “Okay, Charlotte . . .” She presented her sketch with a flourish. “That leaves you.”

“And you,” Charlotte pointed out, fluttering her sooty eyelashes into a downward gaze. She wrinkled her porcelain brow. “I’m attached to the stained silk,” she confessed, the smallest note of apology for Petra’s benefit. “Sorry.”

“Stained silk is
two
elements,” Melissa sighed, her earlier triumph with Petra all but ruined by Charlotte’s stubborn attachment to insanity. “It’s the stain or the silk, French Fry. And you
know
my vote.”

“Okay, see my dress?” Petra got to her gold flip-flops and circled the perimeter of table, planting herself at Charlotte’s side. “It totally looks like silk, right?”

“Well, yes,” she admitted, reluctantly admiring Petra’s floor-length, empire-waisted ruby-red gown.

“Seriously.” Petra stepped forward. “Touch it.”

“My fingers better not smell like patchouli after this,” Charlotte warned with a playful squinch of her ski-slope nose. The moment she rubbed the fabric between her ginger fingertips, her expression melted from skepticism to surprise. “That really isn’t silk?”

“No,” Petra answered with a proud smile. “It’s a bamboo, cotton, soy blend.”

“C’est magnifique.”
Charlotte bobbed her eyebrows at Melissa, impressed. Melissa buried her face in her hands, grief-stricken. “I’ll keep the stains,” Charlotte informed her. “But only if we make the purse from that fabric,” she insisted, indicating Petra’s skirt.

“You might remember my bag’s made of
stain-proof
canvas?” Melissa uncovered her face, and huffed. “What if I want to keep
that
for my design element?”

“Ah,
what if,
” Charlotte sang. “But you won’t.”

“Fine.” Melissa gritted her teeth, committing their final decisions to paper. “But if you keep the stains, then I’m keeping my interlocking double-P clasp.”

Charlotte shrugged, rolling a flimsy green rubber band along her clear plastic sushi container. “
C’est la vie,
I guess.”

“And when you’re designing this bag,” Melissa addressed Janie in an all-business tone, “keep one thing in mind, and one thing only.
Instant brand recognition.
This means I want that
POSEUR
label
on
the bag. Not embroidered in teeny tiny your-name-on-a-grain-of-rice sized letters
inside
the bag.” She narrowed her almond-shaped eyes at Charlotte. “This is our premier couture handbag, and it has to be noticed.”

“Hurrah.” Charlotte chewed, drumming the air with her chopsticks. “Death to subtlety!”

“Subtlety,” Melissa repeated, shaking her head in a show of contempt. “That word riles me, ladies. And it should rile you, too — with that pansy-ass silent letter.
POSEUR
isn’t about
silence.
Our letters will be loud, proud, and
in your face
!”

“Okay, I already have something in mind,” Janie confessed, gray eyes agleam. She rubbed her hands together. “Ah!” She squealed. “It’s gonna be
so good.
”

“Can you have it done by tomorrow morning?” Melissa inquired.

“First thing,” she beamed, still excited. “I’m halfway done already.”

“I hope so, because if we’re going to call it the Trick-or-Treater, we
have
to launch it
on
Halloween.” Melissa leaned forward, locking Charlotte into intense eye contact. “Seamstress Charlotte. Be completely honest. Can you really do this in one day?”

“Omigod,” Charlotte frowned, raising her small hand. “For toats.”

“Because I came up with this totally phenom teaser.” Melissa continued to look stern. “But once it’s out, it’s
out,
and we’re do-or-die committed.”

“We’re
committed,
” Petra assured her.

“
Straight
-jacket committed,” Janie emphasized.

“
Couture
straight-jacket committed,” Charlotte amended. “Of course.”

“Okay!” Melissa laughed at last, gaveling the table with all her might. A tiny man in a woolly scarf and nipple-revealing tank top looked up from the salad bar, his chiseled face sour with scorn, and good ol’ Baggy Butt — squeezing and sniffing oranges this entire time — looked up from her latest victim, shaking her head in slow disgust.

“Uh-oh,” Petra tittered under her breath. “I think we’ve upset the natives.”

“Really,” Melissa intoned, with a defiant bob of her eyebrows. She pinched Charlotte’s green rubber band from the table, looped it around her thumb, and shot. Baggy Butt continued to sniff her fruit, oblivious to the assault — as well as the green rubber band clinging to her baggy butt–pants butt.

“As I was saying,” the straight-faced Melissa continued, as Charlotte, Janie, and Petra collapsed to the table, stifling their giggles in their arms. “This emergency
POSEUR
meeting is officially dismissed.”

The Girl (sometime last century): Nikki the First, aka “Nonna”

The Getup: Full, knee-length skirt and wide-collared swing jacket in matching beige silk jacquard by Escada biscotti brown midheel pumps by Ferragamo. Navy quilted handbag by Chanel, semi-sheer control-top nude stockings by Wolford, and top-secret brassiere by La Perla (La Mela’s oldest and greatest lingerie rival).