Catwalk (12 page)

“Jack and Jill,” answers Aphro. “You got elected house leader for a reason. You don’t have to front for anybody.”

“Yeah, but you gotta come over.”

“Let her come over Thursday. I mean, you did invite Ice Très,” Aphro points out.

“Now, that’s a plan.” Why not have the Teen Style Network shoot us while we’re having our first prestrategy meeting? “I mean, we gotta get the Catwalk flyer together to post on Friday.”

Now that the Catwalk house leaders have been chosen, I have to begin interviewing and snagging some more fierce members for our house.

“You’re definitely gonna help me with some cat-worthy choreography?” I ask Aphro, getting ten poses ahead of myself.

“I got you,” Aphro says as she reflects on the bold moves from the pose-off. “Did you see Elgamela? I didn’t know anybody could do that with their belly button.”

“Too bad she won’t be doing that for us,” I lament, reflecting on the sad fact that Chandelier has snagged our favorite model. “Well, we’d better scurry on down to SoHo.”

“I don’t ‘scurry.’ I take the subway like the rest of the animals in Manny Hanny,” Aphro quips as we descend into the gloomy underworld. Dramatically, Aphro sidesteps the puddles of dirty water scattered on the grimy, slippery floor of the train station. “Well, I guess you ain’t the only one who sprung a leak today.”

“This is true, but I pity the peeps who don’t have access to the iron horse like we do,” I say, like it’s a
consolation prize. “Gets you wherever you’re going—pronto.”

Aligning with my predictions: fifteen minutes later we arrive in the puddle-free, pricey shopping strip on West Broadway.

“SoHo is
sweet
,” proclaims Aphro like a fashion mantra. “Definitely the spot for Purr Unlimited.”

I gaze longingly at the endless stretch of stores ahead. The first three blocks on West Broadway are the most important retailwise, and for this privilege, boutique owners pay a premium rent. “Sixty dollars per square foot!” I exclaim.

“Sixty times at least five hundred square feet for even the smallest store. Do the math—that’s serious sweating each month,” adds Aphro. I know she secretly hopes to have a store, too, for her Aphro Puffs jewelry line. Something small and tasty like the Tarina Tarantino jewelry boutique on Greene Street—my fave, of course, since she’s a devotee of Russian Hello Kitty.

“All Big Apple landlords are
greedy
,” I announce like it’s a revelation, at least to me, which makes me feel the pressure about picking slots for Catwalk house members. “Since we can’t have Nole Canoli, we gotta think of another designer who can fulfill our vision,” I fret.

Aphro stares blankly at the gray blazer and slacks in
the window of the Banana Republic store. “Meanwhile,
they’ve
obviously got enough bananas to open yet
another
one.”

“What about Diamond Tyler?” I ask.

“I know you dig her animal sensibilities,” Aphro says, like she’s hesitating.

“Yeah, but she is a
good
designer.”

“We’ve just got to look at portfolios, that’s all there is to it,” Aphro says, shrugging. “I dig Nole’s stuff, but I can’t say I’ve really checked anybody else, that’s all I’m saying.”

I hate when Aphro does that. For somebody who riffs raw, she can flip the script and act so cagey. I know she digs Nole. Who doesn’t? Hello! I’m so busy fuming at her that we walk silently for the next three blocks. When we get to the fourth block on West Broadway going west, we stop in front of a store obstructed by a scaffold. I can’t see the building number we’re looking for. “This has got to be it,” insists Aphro.

“Nah, it
can’t
be,” I snap, staring at the pay-less-and-look-it outfits propped in the window. “Are you sure this is the right address?”

“There’s a sign, right there,” Aphro huffs, pointing at the small block-letter sign displayed in the corner of the window:
LOUNGEWEAR LULU
.

My attitude sinks to the level of my moccasins.
“Should we even bother going in?” I ask, turning meek at the sight of unchic.

“We made an appointment. What if they call the school and tell them we didn’t show up?” Aphro points out, attempting to push the door open to no avail. I press the buzzer instead, which chimes with a spooky echo.

“Almost all the boutiques in the Big Apple have buzzers because boosters are always mopping instead of shopping,” I remind her. Boosters then sell the stolen merchandise through an underground network, which costs the retail industry billions in lost revenue. “But I bet this is not a mopping stop on their itinerary.”

Once we’re buzzed inside the fun house with the distorted designer duds, I examine the rows of packed racks of clothes directly in front of me. Front and center of one rack is a white jumpsuit covered with hordes of invading sequins. “I think Chintzy would like this. It could go with her white go-go boots,” I observe glumly.

On the top of each rack are hand-blocked signs with the word
SALE!
in glaring red letters.
Subtle
. This is the kind of store, my retail instructor would say, that conducts sales all year round. Seemingly out of nowhere, a tiny, frail woman with ashy white skin and even ashier long hair appears from behind a mirrored door. She’s wearing a long black empire-waist dress.

“What can I do for you two ladies?” she asks in a squeaky voice, approaching us slowly like a zombie from
Dawn of the Dead
.

Escape!
I want to squeal, but instead I announce that we’re from Fashion International. The scary lady’s eyes widen, or so I think, until I look closer and realize that this is their perpetual state. Some of my mom’s best customers at the Forgotten Diva boutique are also afflicted with the same Popeye pupils—no doubt the handiwork of an overzealous plastic surgeon.

“I’m Lulu Fantom,” the lady says, breaking out into a fit of giggles and revealing teeth that look like they’ve trotted on the yellow brick road.

After we tell Lulu our names, she breaks into another round of giggles, which makes me wonder if she’s making fun of us? I hate when people trip about my name. So does Aphro. But when Lulu asks us about our majors at school and we tell her, she giggles again. That’s when I realize we’re probably witnessing her signature snorkle.

“I design my collection myself,” Lulu starts in as she proceeds to show us around the store, confirming our worst fear: she is, indeed, the designer behind the duds in this haunted house, established in 2004—the same year designer Faux Sho’ introduced his fake Mongolian lamb maxicoats that had women looking like Swamp Things.

“I can’t keep these in the stock,” Lulu continues, proudly showing off a pair of ivory gaucho pants with white sequins up the side. “I just love this fabric.”

“Is it muslin?” I ask in disbelief.

“Yes, I just love it; it gives the illusion of linen at half the cost,” she boasts.

In my opinion, muslin is the hillbilly of fabrics, but I decide it’s best to keep my thoughts to myself. Cuckoo Lulu continues to gush over a few more of her “signature pieces,” before she makes it crystal clear that the tour of her haunted house is over. Even though neither of us is interested in blemishing our supa-scanty résumés with a stint at Loungewear Lulu, I feel insulted when we’re ushered out of the store without so much as a half-meant
I’m looking at lots of applicants, but I’ll be in touch. Toodles!

Once outside, we adjust to the letdown. “I think she’s running a bootique, not a boutique!” I exclaim, getting depressed.

“She was definitely peekaboo scary!” Aphro adds.

“How about we try a few more real boutiques while we’re down here?” I suggest.

“No doubt,” Aphro responds cheerfully.

By the fifth real boutique and apologetic round of “Sorry, but we’re not hiring,” the two of us are ready to click our kitten heels and head home. “I hope Felinez didn’t get kicked to the curb like we did,” I say as we
walk quickly to the subway station on Spring Street. “We gotta at least look in the window,” I say, and Aphro knows exactly what window I’m referring to. We turn onto Greene Street so I can swoon at my favorite store. “Ooh, look at the new bag candy!” I say, staring hungrily at the lipless Pink Head of the rare Russian Hello Kitty cameo pendant dangling from a lucite beaded choker. “Oy, I can’t believe I don’t have one of these yet.”

Aphro shakes her head at me. “My jewelry is gonna be more fierce.”

Now it’s Aphro’s turn to swoon, so we stop for a
segundo
in front of the Jimmy Choo boutique. “Shimmy Choo,” I groan, using the Catwalk code name for the former Malaysian cobbler whose sought-after heels help everyone from Beyoncé to Lindsay Lohan sashay to stardom. “I sure could use a little shoe therapy right about now,” Aphro says, prompting me to whip out my cell phone and call Angora for feline support.

“Stop sole searching,
chérie
,” Angora hisses through the receiver. “We live in a cold, cruel world. That’s what my mother says anyway, and she’s always right.”

By six-thirty, I wish I could say the same thing about my mother, because it’s obvious I rushed home for no reason. Mr. Darius has stood me up.
Again
. I’m so
annoyed I could scream from the rooftop. And I would if the door up there wasn’t locked with prison-issue chains. My cell phone rings and I run to my bedroom to grab it out of the brown suede fringed messenger bag I was carrying today. Fabbie is plopped on top of my bag and she won’t budge. “Move the caboose!” I yell, then toss her like a salad, but I’ve already missed the call. I’m worried that maybe Mr. Darius called my mother or something. I don’t want her to think that I wasn’t here holding down the fort like a true Apache. But I see from the missed call prompt that it was Felinez, so I hit her back.

“What’s up, pussycat?”

Felinez alternates between barks and screams into the receiver before she blurts out to a salsa beat, “Ruff! Ruff! I got a job. I got a job!”

“You’d better work, supermodel!” I scream into the receiver, before I register an alternate reaction:
God, how come Felinez got a job and I didn’t?

Felinez is so busy babbling about her new position as an assistant to the assistant at the Ruff Loner showroom that she doesn’t notice that I’ve missed a salsa beat.

“And I get to recatalog the patterns from all the past seasons,” she babbles on, before she finally pauses for a breath and says, “
Mija
, how did it go in SoHo?”

“Well, let’s just say SoHo was so low I had to hurry home and lick my wounded paws,” I joke.

Suddenly, there is a loud rapping on the door. “Hold on!” I yell, scrambling to get by Fabbie, who now is sashaying ahead of me to the door like she’s a fluffy Goodfrill Ambassador.

When I open the door, Mr. Darius stands like a stone statue, not moving even a facial muscle.

“Um, hi Mr. Darius. Are you going to fix the toilet?” I ask, holding the cell phone to my chest.

“No. I come tomorrow. There is flood in the basement. We gotta fix,” he says unapologetically.

“You gotta be kidding!” I shout, losing it. “You gotta fix the toilet. My mother is coming home soon.”

“You try the thing,” he says, motioning with his hands like we’re playing a game of charades.

“The plunger?” I guess.

Mr. Darius ignores me. “Try fix it, maybe.”

“No, it doesn’t work!” I blubber. “When are you going to fix it?”

“I come tomorrow,” Mr. Darius says, clearly annoyed, being led by his protruding stomach as he walks away.

“Hello! What time?” I balk, stepping into the hallway in an attempt to stonewall him.

“I don’t know,” Mr. Darius says, shooing me away.

“I gotta know what time,” I insist.

Mr. Darius’s eyes catch a tiny twinkle as the corners of his mouth turn up involuntarily. “Okay. Okay?”

“Six o’clock,” I command, pointing to the face of my French Kitty watch.

Mr. Darius nods his head slightly, then waves his hand like he’s shooing me away again.

“Oy,” I groan, closing the front door. Then I resume my Catwalk leader mode, getting back on the phone and filling Felinez in on the Teen Style crew sighting after school.

“Omigod. I wish I was there!” Felinez says. She ran off to her appointment at Ruff Loner before Aphro and I left to go down to SoHo. “So, are you calling her back?”

“Calling who back?”

“The producer. Caterina. You said she wanted to see you in your natural kitty habitat?” Felinez reminds me.

“She did not say that!” I giggle. “Oh, right. Lemme—Omigod, I just thought of something so shady, I may go into total eclipse!”

“What happened?
Que paso?
” Felinez screams in anticipation.

“Operation: Kitty Litter,” I respond, deadpan.

“
Ay, dios mio
, what are you up to,
mija
?” Felinez says, with a giggle.

“Operation: Kitty Litter” is the code name we invented and have used for all our covert secret operations since grade school.

“Aphro is right: we get the Teen Style crew to come
over and shoot us having our first preinterview strategy meeting.
And
I tell Mr. Darius to come over at the same time to do the repairs,” I explain.