Poseur #2: The Good, the Fab and the Ugly (23 page)

He smelled like an unwashed fruit crisper.

“Nicoletta.” Her grandmother rapped her pronged, aluminum cane against the floor. “Come here, please.” She rose to her feet, and the old man’s hum rose with her, swinging into a high, fevered pitch.

“Take a close look at this one,” Nonna advised, indicating a painting with her crumblingly powdered chin. “What do you think of it?”

She’d asked that question at least thirty times that afternoon, and the answer was always the same:

“It’s okay, I guess.”

“You guess!” Her grandmother rasped with laughter. “If you
looked
at the painting, Nicoletta, you wouldn’t have to
guess
all the time.”

Indulging her, Nikki hooked a flaxen strand of hair behind her ear and really looked. The painting depicted a plate of cherries and a plate of peaches. It was called
Still Life with Cherries and Peaches.

“Notice the redness of the cherries,” Nonna crooned. “The way the bowl tilts forward, inviting you to take a bite.
Ach!
Wouldn’t it be so delicious, to eat a cherry like that?”

“You know what we should do?” Nikki brightened. “Go to Whole Foods and get some
real
cherries.” At the mere
thought
of Whole Foods, her heart rate elevated, because in addition to cherries, the grocery chain
happened
to offer free Wi-Fi. And true, she didn’t have her laptop with her, but maybe — while Nonna enjoyed herself in the cheese aisle — she could beg one of the many aspiring screenwriters stationed at the tables for just five or so minutes? “I wouldn’t ask except it’s an emergency,” she’d explain sweetly, and quickly log onto MySpace. Just to
check.

“Nicoletta.” Her grandmother clutched her arm, fracturing her glowing fantasy. “You cannot find such cherries at the market.” She indicated the painting with her withered old hand. “These are cherries you must eat with your
mind.
”

“Complete and utter caca,” a clipped female voice interrupted from the right entrance, inducing the man in the brown hat’s second fit of humming.

“What did you say?” Nikki’s grandmother addressed their mystery intruder, wobbling forward on her cane.

“I said
caca,
” she cawed like an angry crow. “As in, ‘Oh! My mind just ate a pretty red cherry, and it tasted of
caca.
’”

“This painting is a Cézanne,” Nikki the First informed the woman with a squint fierce enough to unstick her fake eyelashes. “An artist of
great
importance. A genius! Who are you to say he is what you say?”

“Who am
I
?” A spastic blue vein throbbed at the woman’s temple. Black hair fell down her back in one snaking coil, and the sticker name tag on her leather mini–clad hip read
BLANCA.
“Has it occurred to you that I, too, am an artist? A
living
artist whose work remains unappreciated — unseen! — because fusty old ladies like
you
prefer the company of a dead man’s
cherries
?”

“My grandmother is
not fusty
!” Nikki cried, shocking herself right down to her antique gold Nanette Lepore Hot & Bothered flats. She wasn’t sure what fusty
meant,
exactly, but she could tell by the woman’s
tone.
It wasn’t nice. More like the kind of word she might scrawl across Nonna’s locker in scarlet lip liner, assuming Nonna had a locker, which she didn’t.

But
still
.

“I apologize,” Blanca sighed, instantly contrite. “It’s merely that I . . . I have an exhibit here. It’s only a two-day thing, and well . . . nobody so far has come.” She threw her elegant head back with a dry little laugh, gazing at the bleak expanse of ceiling. “Nobody!”

Nikki glanced at her grandmother. Her grandmother glanced back, pursing her bright orange mouth.

“Well . . .”

“Oh, thank you!” Blanca blurted, beckoning them both into an adjacent gallery. Nonna sighed her surrender, following the artist at a labored pace, but stopped at the archway, blocking her precious Nikki with a brusque, perpendicular sweep of her rubber-tipped steel cane.

“We do not want to see anything dead and floating in a jar,” she warned. “Or anything inappropriate for my granddaughter.”

“Oh, nothing to be concerned about,” Blanca assured her.

Nonna lowered her cane and together, they stepped into the adjacent gallery. Instead of paintings on the wall, the entire
room
had been transformed, with garbage encrusting every spare square-inch of space. In one glance Nikki saw dented soda cans, rusted hubcaps, water-stained takeout fliers, crushed cardboard cups, and crumpled receipts.

“Wow,” she murmured, looking all around.

“And what do you call this?” Nonna asked, sounding considerably less impressed than her teenage companion. She pushed her horn-rimmed glasses up the bridge of her nose, and sniffed. “Does it have a title?”

Blanca paused for effect. “
Rodeo Drive.
”

“Really?” Nikki piped up. Like all red-blooded Winstonian girls, she
lived
for Rodeo. “Why?”

“Because,” Blanca began slowly, testing her words like overripe cheese. “Even the most famous street in the world has its own special trash. Its own brand of litter. I call it —
the detritus of the privileged classes.
You find it tossed into waste bins. Strewn along the gutter. And why? Because it is worthless?” In her most impressively crow-like move to date, Blanca actually flapped, springing lightly from the floor. “Well,
not
to me. For three months, I roamed the streets and
picked up their garbage.
And now? I have created a thing more worthy, more
valuable,
than the contents of every luxury window display
combined —
”

“Yes, art is priceless,” Nikki’s grandmother interrupted, putting an end to the woman’s very inappropriate rant. She gestured to an explosion of ketchup-stained burger wrappers on the wall. “But this? This is trash on a wall.”

“Perhaps you should look closer,” Blanca haughtily advised.

“Ah yes, forgive me.” The old woman patted Nikki’s elbow and amended her statement with a wry smile. “I meant to say it is
caca.
”

Obedient as ever, Nikki followed in her grandmother’s wake, but not without a subversive backward glance for Blanca’s benefit, a sweet, apologetic smile. Blanca returned the favor with a gracious, if imperious, nod. Satisfied, Nikki faced the small archway and quickened her step, but just as she swept beneath the glowing red
EXIT
sign, something caught her attention. She halted in her tracks, stunned to the base of her spine. Rooting the ball of her foot to the ground, she turned — her eyes as round as Cézanne dishes.

“Nikki?” her grandmother called. But her brittle voice sounded a million miles away. There — framed by a broken loop of dog leash and overlapping a empty matchbook — was a simple white clothes tag, a single word scrawled across its face. As Nikki drew near, the word blazed out, searing her mind like a branding-iron, until, at last, it was the only thing she could see.

POSEUR.

The Girl: Isabel Greene

The Getup: “You’re too young for getups!”

Petra breezed from her bedroom and trotted brightly downstairs, a tangled, chlorine-scented ponytail bouncing at her suntanned back. The Monday morning sun streamed through their enormous east-facing French windows, painting glowing runways along the polished hardwood floors. She sailed into the kitchen, tugging the end of her ponytail to her nose, and breathed in deep, surrendering to memories of last night. “Heya!” she sang, still smiling through her golden hair.

“Hiii, Miss Petra,” Lola greeted her, a piece of yellow thread pulled taut between her teeth. “Hol’ still,” she instructed Sofia, whose tiny, bewildered face peeked out from a giant yellow felt orb.

“What are you supposed to be, Soph?” Petra smiled down at her four-year-old adopted sister, and quickly shielded her eyes. “Ooo . . . ouch! Are you the
sun
?”

“Nooooo . . . ,” her little sister moaned in despair, and Lola grunted, straightening from her crouched position on the floor. She sent Petra a reproving look.

“No, the sun.” She yanked an iron-on
M
from her apron pocket, pinching the lowercase letter at either corner. “She is M&M candy.”

“Oh-oh-oh.” Petra covered her face in a show of embarrassment. “Omigod, of
course.
What a good idea, Soph! M&M’s are your favorite, right?”

But Sofia continued to look at Lola, her dark eyes glassy with disappointment. “B-but I do-don’t want to-to be the
sun,
” she whimpered.

“Hey.” Petra grinned. She knew she had to act fast before all havoc broke loose. “Do you know who’s coming over?”

To both Petra’s and Lola’s relief, Sofia loudly exhaled, and her breathing returned to normal. “Who?”

“My friend Charlotte,” Petra announced. “Remember you met her? When we went to Melissa’s house that time? Remember Melissa? You played with her cute little dog?”

Sofia responded to her older sister’s cheerful interrogation with numb incomprehension, her small mouth slightly gaped.

“Anyway —” Petra smiled, sympathizing with Sofia’s con-fusion — “she’s coming over with a real-life ball gown for me to wear to school. Isn’t that fancy? We’re supposed to dress up as Oscar winners!”

“You are?!” Isabel’s brassier, six-year-old voice interrupted. Petra glanced at the gaping archway entrance, got one eyeful of her sister, and promptly screamed.

“Why are you doing that?” Isabel frowned fiercely at her older sister as she clapped a hand to her mouth, staggered a small step backward, and leaned up against the kitchen wall. “Sto-op!” Isabel stamped her glittery purple platform-clad foot. “It’s not supposed to be a
scary
costume.”

“Yeah,” Sofia echoed in agreement. A frowning Lola stuck the hem of her costume with a pin and got to her feet, raising her eyebrows at Petra.

“I no make it,” she assured her, turning to Isabel with an appraising look. The six-year-old wore a purple mini-dress in body-molding vinyl. Neon-yellow piping coursed along the sides, curving in at the waist, flaring at the hips, and creating the disturbing illusion of a sexy silhouette. A synthetic wig hung to the back of her knees, drowning her small face and shoulders in a stiff cascade of gleaming brown hair.

“Izzie,”
Petra gasped. “
What
are you wearing?”

“My
Halloween
costume,” she explained, with a defiant stamp of her purple platform. “I’m Yasmin!”

“What’s a Yasmin?” Petra shook her head in amazement.

“Not
uh
Yasmin.” Isabel rolled her eyes.
“Yasmin.”
To Petra’s dismay, she stuck a pair of candy-red wax lips into her mouth, and posed — hands on her hips, head at a perfect 30-degree tilt.

“See?” Sofia explained, handing Petra a plastic doll dressed exactly like her sister. “Yasmin is a Bratz.”

“Isabel . . .” Petra gazed into the whorish doll in her hand in horror. “I’m sorry.” She frowned. “But you can’t go to school dressed like that.”

“What?!”
The red wax lips spilled from her open mouth and fell to the floor on a broken string of drool. “But it’s Halloween and it’s the only time I don’t have to wear a uniform!”

“I’m not saying you can’t dress up at
all,
” Petra clarified. “
I
know. Why don’t you go as a
pink
M&M? Isn’t pink your favorite color?”

“No.”
Isabel gritted her teeth, puffing at the notion. “M&M’s are
dumb
!”

At that, Sofia promptly dissolved into a fit of weeping, and half a second later Isabel joined in, gripping the kitchen island for balance. She howled and heaved, makeup-polluted tears streaming down her flushed cheeks.

“What the hell is going on in here?” Heather Greene, who hadn’t emerged from her bedroom this early in weeks, shuffled into the kitchen, wearing her oversized black Armani sunglasses and a wrinkled ice blue Fernando Sanchez bathrobe. At the sound of their mother’s voice, the little girls collapsed into complete hysteria. “Why is everybody crying?”

Petra covered her eyes in exasperation as Lola plucked the blubbering Sofia from the floor, planted her on her hip, and exited the kitchen. “Mom,” she sighed, lowering her hand to her side. “Have you
looked
at Isabel?”

Heather yanked the refrigerator door toward her rail-thin body, an effort rewarded by a celebratory jingle of glass: bottled salad dressings, jars of mustard, marmalade, and mayonnaise. She gazed past the chilled shelves, appearing to fix her shielded eyes at a great distance — as if beyond the cartons of soy milk and soggy boxes of Zen Palate takeout there lay another, brighter world. She closed her eyes and inhaled.

“Mom,”
her older daughter gaped.

“Alright!” She shut the refrigerator and leaned up against it, a frosted bottle of Evian clutched to her plunging silk neckline. She pushed her sunglasses to the crown of her head, roosting them in a tangle of light ash blond hair. “Okay.” She cleared her throat, wincing into the morning light. “What is it? What am I looking at?”