Poseur #2: The Good, the Fab and the Ugly (5 page)

“What do you mean
what
?” Melissa sputtered in disbelief. “Do you
not
recall that ridiculous launch party we hosted?”

“Of course, but . . .”

“Remember the contest we held to name our new label, only to have some raggedy-ass riffraff rifle through our raffle?”

Petra furrowed her pretty brow. “Okay, was that even English?”

“We need to
revisit the scene of the crime,
” Melissa pressed on. “All we need to do is find
one
tag and then . . .
Emilio,
I swear to . . . In the
back
! In the back,
now
!”

“Melissa” — Petra covered her aching eyes with one hand — “we left those tags in the gutter, remember?”

“So?” her comrade in fashion bristled.

“So . . . do you really think they’re going to be just, like,
sitting
there? Exactly where we left them?”

“No,” Melissa chortled at the sheer absurdity of that statement. “I mean, they’re probably blowing down the street or something.”

Petra’s perfect jaw dropped. “They’ve been blowing around for
over a week.
They’re probably halfway to
Borneo
by now.”

“Okay,” Melissa announced. “I am outside your house.”

“What?”

“I know, right? Janie and Charlotte are
so
out of the way, but you’re right on my way to school.
Oooo . . . !
”

Petra grimaced as her ear filled with what had to be a thudding hip-hop base, but through the cell sounded like a tortured black fly. “This song is so old-school!” Melissa sang.

She grimaced again, holding the phone from her ear, and crawled across the futon, pushing aside her hand-painted Balinese wood-beaded curtain. She peered outside, scanning the quiet Beverly Hills residential street, where, through luscious green hedges and imposing wrought-iron gates, she could
just make out
an all-too-familiar platinum Lexus convertible, parked illegally at the curb. The female driver, unidentifiable at this distance, bopped about in the breezy front seat, one long, bronzed arm extended. Light refracted from her wrist as her hand flapped around: first up and down, then side to side. Petra frowned.

Was she . . . spanking the wheel?

“
. . .
an’ if I hit da switch, I can make the
aaaaass
drop!” her tinny voice crooned in perfect time to Mystery Driver’s enthusiastic wheel-spanks. Petra shook her tangled honey-blond head.

It had to be her.

“Okay,” Petra intruded into her friend’s buoyant rap rhapsody. She released the curtain so that the swinging strands of beads clattered. “I actually don’t think I feel up to . . .”

Melissa yelled over the music.
“What?”

Petra cleared her throat and raised her voice. “Um . . .
I’m kind of not at my house right now?
”

“Halfway
home
and my pager still
blow-
in’
up.
” Melissa cackled with delight. “Oh no. Step back, y’all!
The man has a pager.
”

“Melissa . . .” Petra pressed two fingers to her throbbing temple. “Did you hear what I said?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I heard you,” she admitted, melting the volume on Ice Cube and cracking her gum. Petra breathed a low sigh of relief, cast one wistful glance at her organic Kapok pillow, and crawled toward it on her hands and knees. Closing her throbbing eyes, she collapsed like a parched desert wanderer.

“Petra,” she heard Melissa whisper in her ear.

“Mmrph . . .”

“If you do not get your ass outta your house in two minutes, I will lean on this horn and blast you out of it.”
Petra’s wide-set tea-green eyes popped open. “And then I’ll make it my life’s mission to hijack your sorry ass to
Borneo,
where you will spend the rest of your
life
looking for those vandalized tags because they are
not
in Borneo.
They are on Rodeo Drive, where we left them.
I feel it in my gut, and my gut
does not lie
— unlike certain Kumbaya-my-Lord blond chicks I may or may not mention!”

As Petra fumbled for an explanation, an abrupt Lexus car horn exploded across the stately Beverly Hills quiet. “Okay-okay-okay-okay!” she cried into the phone. The horn fell silent among the panicked twitter of a thousand treetop sparrows, not to mention the melancholy yowl of Job, her neighbor’s basset hound, and a maddening
yip-yip-yip-yip-yip-yip-yip
she could only assume belonged to the notorious E. Poochie.

“I’ll be down in a sec,” she surrendered, miserably.

“
Down
in a
sec
, ‘cause she
know
I don’t
play
,” Melissa rapped in sweet reply, returning Ice Cube to his original booming volume. Just before she hung up, Petra heard his thick baritone finish the verse:

“I got to say it was a good day.”

Not that she was an expert on the subtle nuances of Ice Cube. Still, Petra had a strong feeling his idea of a good day had nothing to do with Melissa Moon’s. She couldn’t imagine, for example, a four-minute-and-twenty-second rap song devoted to the pleasures of digging through trash bins behind Jamba Juice, even if that Jamba Juice
was
in Beverly Hills.

“Any luck?” Melissa called from the street corner where she’d spent the last twelve minutes investigating the gutter. So far she’d found a gum wrapper. Grasping the top of the trash bin, Petra heaved herself up and over the edge, landing with gymnastic grace onto the littered asphalt.

“Nada,” she answered, brushing her hands and pointedly ignoring the scandalized look of a Botoxed dinosaur in Taryn Rose flats walking her snow white Bichon Frise.

“Hey, baby!” A balding Mercedes driver buzzed down his tinted window and howled. “You like it dirty?”

“You
better
get your cheap-ass, pre-owned, C-Class Mercedes out of my face!” Melissa whirled, dark eyes flashing. Balding Driver grimaced (how did she know it was pre-owned?), and stepped on the gas. “Okay,” she breathed, returning her attention to Petra. “There’s just one more gutter we haven’t checked.”

“Melissa
. . .
” Petra reached into her crocheted hemp hobo, extracting the sole thing she held responsible for getting her into this mess to begin with: her purple Nokia. “School starts in fifteen minutes. If we don’t leave now, we’re going to be late.”

“Since when do you care about being late?”

“Since when do you
not
care?” Petra pointed out, joining her at the curb. Melissa was wearing what she imagined Naomi Campbell might wear during a routine bout of community service: a belted, black silk romper, her “practical” blue and orange silk Dolce & Gabanna wedge pumps, and a poppy orange Prada turban (fashion’s answer to the hard hat). Despite herself, Petra smiled. Leave it to Melissa to turn the gutter into a runway.

“Come on,” Melissa begged, misinterpreting her bemused look. “Just five more minutes?”

“Fine,” she agreed with a dramatic groan. “But after five minutes we . . .” She gasped, clapping her hand to her mouth.

“What?” Melissa sprung to attention, scampering to her side. She excitedly clapped her hands. “Did you find something?”

But Petra looked stricken, not overjoyed. Swallowing a twinge of disappointment, Melissa followed the line of her companion’s tea-green gaze to a glittering pink granite medical office building, where just outside the revolving gilded doors, a man in his mid-forties and a very young brunette (practically
their
age!) were engaged in a totally disgusting, all-tongues-out kiss.

“Ew-uh.” Melissa cringed. “It is
way
too early for this shizzle. I’m going to tell them to get a room,” she laughed, taking a small step forward.

“Don’t!” Petra grabbed her hand, urgently yanking her backward. She squeezed Melissa’s long fingers, numb to the bite of her oversized topaz cocktail ring.

“Ow.”
Melissa rebelled against her friend’s death-grip. “What’s
with
you?”

The middle-aged man pushed through the office doors, disappearing behind a double-flash of glass, and the beaming brunette strutted down the sidewalk, hipbones first. She pulled her phone out of her red purse, dropped it back again, and — with a swish of her mirror-smooth hair — rounded the corner.

“Do you know her or something?” Melissa frowned.

“No,” Petra offered, facing her friend with a feeble smile. She shrugged. “I just . . . I liked her purse.”

“Really.” Melissa dubiously scowled, still rubbing her hand. “Come on. We’re going to be late.”

Petra followed her to the platinum Lexus convertible, but not without a surreptitious backward glance. She knew that office building. She knew, for instance, the revolving doors sounded two hollow clicks at the end of each revolution. She knew an immense bouquet of lilies waited at the end of the hall. She knew the bright
bing
of the elevator doors, the little red velvet-upholstered bench inside, the silent vertical ride to the fourth floor, and the black lacquered office door with the gold adhesive letters, so immaculately placed.

Which was all to say, she
didn’t
know that girl. But she
did
know the man. At least, she’d thought she known him. Until now.

Dr. Robert Greene. The most sought-after plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills. Her father.

The Girl: Miss Paletsky

The Getup: Charcoal trouser pants, white Ann Taylor Loft polyester-silk blouse with “fashion flounce” necktie, plastic blue bead necklace, skeleton earrings, Via Spiga leather pumps in “neutral.” Everything from Loehmann’s!

“Yes, I understand you require decision,” Miss Paletsky, Winston Prep’s special studies adviser, explained in her patient, Russian-accented English. “But do you ch’ave to ch’ave
right now
?”

She winced, holding the light beige plastic office phone from her ear as Yuri, the stocky, perspiring owner of the Copy & Print store on Fairfax, erupted on the other end. Of
course
he needed her to answer this minute! This was proposal of marriage, not proposal of . . . of
toilet paper.
So
why
does she treat him like toilet paper? Maybe she does not know her temporary worker’s Visa is about to run out? She knows! So what does she want — a miracle? Either she marries him now, or
poka!
She is shipped back to Russia like a dog!

Miss Paletsky sighed, gazing around her small, festively decorated office. In another mood, she might have asked Yuri if
all
marriage proposals included allusions to toilet paper and dogs. But she wasn’t in another mood — the mood to joke, to make light of what was no longer a laughing matter. It
was
true what he’d said. If she wanted to stay in America, marriage was her only option, and, as of that Tuesday morning, Yuri Grigorovich was her only offer.

Never mind she could barely look at him — let alone touch him.

“Normal behavior for a wife!” he’d reminded her that morning, calling down from their apartment building’s asphalt-papered roof. He sunbathed daily in a stained white wife-beater and black garter socks, a damp washcloth on his steaming, bald head, and a pink bottle of Water Babies spluttering in his fist. “Life is not Cinderella!”

Uch . . .
She’d had to spend all of her bus ride to work repressing the memory.

A soft knocking pulled her attention to her dark green office door, where her latest decoration — a black-hatted cardboard witch — vibrated a bit on her yellow papier mâché broomstick. She returned the plastic receiver to her ear, smashing a clip-on dangling skeleton earring against her neck.

“Yuri,” she attempted to interrupt his crazed rant, “someone is at door.” Cupping the mouthpiece with her hand, she boldly raised her voice. “
Yuri.
I talk to you later, yes?”

Before he could respond, she hung up.

Sweeping the crumb-ridden remnants of her morning Lemonburst muffin into the wire-mesh trashcan under her desk, she flicked an automatic glance to the dark gray computer screen, examined her warped reflection, and sighed. “Come in!”

What she wouldn’t have given to go back in time, examine her face in a real mirror, check her teeth for poppy seeds . . . maybe apply a little Strawberry Lip Smackers. Because, contrary to her expectations, the door had opened not to reveal Glen Morrison — who would need to discuss upcoming HalloWinston Carnival logistics — but the most devastatingly attractive man she had ever seen. A slick blue-and-pearl-white Adidas tracksuit clung enticingly to his compact frame, and a glittering collection of gold chains drew attention to his gleamingly muscular chest. At her somewhat dazed nod, he glided into her office, walking in this way that was powerful, yet wounded — like a jungle cat with a slight limp.

“I’m Christopher Duane Moon,” he oozed in a voice like warm molasses, extending his strong brown hand. He flashed a blinding mega-watts smile. “Melissa Moon’s dad?”

She clasped his palm, and shook (all the way to the base of her spine).
This
was Melissa’s father? But he looked so young! Even if he was, say . . . thirty-three, a good five years older than she was, he was
still
young for a parent, especially a
Winston
parent. When Melissa was born he must have been, what . . . seventeen?