Poseur #4: All That Glitters Is Not Gucci (5 page)
“You guys are too cute. I love how you take care of each other,” the salesgirl murmured, inputting Janie’s info into the computer.
Then she glanced up and smiled, amber eyes aglow. “Name?” she chirped.
“Jane, um, Farrish,” Janie stammered, glancing at the gaping Amelia. “It’ll be
fine
,” she half assured her, half assured herself. “Relax, okay?”
But before Amelia could respond, a whirling storm of spray tan, sun-in, and in-your-face sass migrated from a Balenciaga bikini
display, gathered force behind a rack of See by Chloé short-shorts, and exploded on the scene. “Zanie?” Charlotte Beverwil’s
next-door neighbor and aspiring Oscar
presenter gasped aloud. “You disgusting, fat whore, is dat
ju
?”
Janie beamed, internalizing her somewhat rattled nerves as Don John propelled Mort, his wheelchair-bound and possibly unconscious
charge (not to mention his impromptu shopping cart) toward the register. In exchange for assisting the retired and ailing
Hollywood producer, Don John got to live in his pool house for free. Of course, “assistant” seemed a scandalously loose term
for the flip-flopping fop’s primary activity: languishing poolside whilst telling Charlotte how “fierce” she looked. But whatever.
With an array of candy-colored Bermuda shorts heaped on his lap and a dreamy-soft smile on his wrinkled, pink face, Mort seemed
more than content.
“Is Charlotte here?” Janie asked, glancing back to the fitting room after he and Amelia were introduced.
“Well, she is in body but not in spirit,” he clucked, already absorbed in a nearby mirror and sucking in his cheeks. “Oh,
Looocccie!” he sang toward the fitting rooms. “Would you please stop this interminable conversation with that silly, silly
boy? We got company.”
The door to the mystery dressing room finally opened then, and Charlotte emerged in a painfully chic camel-colored Chloé suit.
The expertly tailored jacket and playfully scalloped shorts exuded the perfect balance between classic beauty and flirty sex
appeal. It was seriously so envy-inducing
Janie almost clutched Amelia’s arm for support.
“I’ll call you back,” the petite brunette bombshell murmured into her iPhone, immediately laying eyes on Janie. She dropped
her cell into her glossy black Chanel shopper and released an airy laugh. “Janie!”
“Hey!” Janie tossed her hair and attempted to act natural. She hated to admit it, but she was one person with Amelia, and
another with Charlotte. Was she really supposed to be both at the same time? “
Quel
is up?” she chirped, before catching Amelia’s horrified eye. “Ha!” she laughed thinly.
“What’d you think?” The salesgirl, who’d completed Janie’s app in record time, swept away from the register and beamed.
“
Hids
,” Charlotte sniffed, and stuffed a lacy wad of discarded lingerie into her outstretched hands. “Cut for a drag queen.”
“I’m so sorry,” she gasped, as Don John peered over her shoulder, examining the rejects with new interest.
“Hello,” the pretty ice queen smiled at Amelia, magnanimously extending her hand as Don John disappeared with the salesgirl.
“Charlotte Beverwil.”
“Charlotte’s the head seamstress for Poseur,” Janie babbled inanely as they limply shook hands. “Amelia goes to LACHSA. She’s
in a band. Creatures of Habit, actually, you know them! They’re playing Friday and you should
totally
come, I mean, obvi.”
“Oh,
obvi
.” Amelia eyed her friend in thinly masked disbelief.
“
Trés
cool,” Charlotte oozed. “Well, great to see you two, but I have got to return this call.” Fishing her iPhone from her shopper,
she confided, “Don’t want to be rude.”
The two girls followed her tiny, ticktocking hips with their eyes as she confidently headed for the all-glass double door
exit. And then, just as she’d turned to Amelia with an apologetic little sigh, the French wench’s melodious voice rang brightly
in her ear.
“Evan?”
The blood drained from Janie’s face. Wait, so, she’d been talking to
Evan
? That
entire
time? About kissing? Wait a minute….
Paranoia donkey-kicked her heart.
Did that mean
she
was Dogfish?
“Wait for me, you mangy minx!” Don John cried, sweeping Mort free of garments and wheeling him toward the exit. The salesgirl
flashed Janie’s freshly used platinum Pellicard and sang.
“Enjoy your top!”
The Getup: Mourning garb: coffee-stained gray sweats, Bugs Bunny slippers, black silk Korean flag bathrobe, no shirt, gold
chains, gold rings, ink for days
Melissa returned to her über-modern glinting glass Bel Air estate to find her father exactly where she’d left him at eight
in the morning: holed up in his second-floor studio, tinkering away at yet another sad and pensive, soon-to-be-voice-modulated
(his voice was terrible) song about Vivien.
This one, from what she could gather from the obsessively repeated chorus, was titled “Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like
a Vee.” Melissa sighed with concern. Not to say she wasn’t
super
down with Daddy dumping that bitchass Botoxed barracuda like he did (she was
down
to the can-I-kiss-it
ground
). And not to say she didn’t fully support his soaring rise to worldwide chart domination (she was the wind beneath his
bling
). But, still. Him moping around in those raggedy-ass gray sweats day after
day
? Subsisting on nothing but Mountain Dew, melba toast, and misery?
Nuh-uh. Not cool.
And so, in what
some
might deem a rare burst of selflessness and domesticity, Melissa pitched her Juicy Couture
Cheetah Day Dreamer to the immaculate white Berber carpet and padded with purpose to their ultramodern kitchen. After the
requisite blowout with Mr. Thang, their nasty, totalitarian cook, she whipped her daddy up some
personalized
macaroni and cheese. It was the best mac on the planet, which was a good thing, seeing as it was the only thing she knew
how to make herself.
“Daddy!” she sang, softly clunking upstairs in her Dolce & Gabbana denim platform wedges and the hideous hippie smock Petra
designed for her to wear to Poseur’s launch party (she’d taken to using it as a makeshift apron). She leaned against the airtight,
opaque black glass door of Seedy’s studio, balancing the mac on her hip. “Daddy! Open up. I brought you a
present
.”
“Is it a gun?” he inquired, a note of hope in his voice. He sounded like gravel and rusty chains.
“Um, no…” Melissa smiled at the door, straining with cheer. “But I’ll give you a hint, okay? It starts with
m
.”
“Machete?”
“Daddy,” his daughter huffed, shifting the mac on her hip. “Just open the door, okay? Tray’s getting heavy!”
She heard something like a shuffle, and stepped back. Seedy cracked open the door and peeked out. Melissa pressed her lips
together in disapproval. Here he was—the Kimchi Killa, the Lord of the Blings, the illest hip-hop artist
in
history
—and what? He looked like butt. Gone was the fun-loving sparkle in his eyes. Gone the cleanly shaved head, fragrant and gleaming
with coconut oil. His eyes were now bloodshot, sunken, and dull. And as for his head,
Lord
.
Looked like he was wearing George Clooney’s
face
for a
cap
.
“Delivery!” Melissa chimed, as if she could combat the foul rankness of the airless studio through sheer force of pep. She
floated her simmering tray (along with the mac, she’d added an origami napkin swan, a novelty silver spoon, and a bottle of
VitaminWater (Rescue flavor)) into the dark, keyboard-stuffed room. “Ta-da!”
“No!” Her father waved aside a Gruyère-scented puff of steam. “Melissa, I told you I cannot
eat
.”
“I know what you told me,” Melissa assured him, landing the tray on top of a high-end Yamaha amp and brushing her hands. “You
can’t eat. You can’t sleep. You can’t move….” She regarded her father with steely-eyed reserve, and then—quick like a Band-Aid—threw
open the velvet blackout curtains.
“Aaagh!” Seedy flinched, and attempted to combat a sunbeam with a hapkido hand strike. “The
light
.”
“That’s right.” Melissa bobbed her eyebrows. “That light is full of the vitamin D you need for such D-related activities as
bein’ top
dawg
, not to mention bein’ my
daddy.
So
stop with the woe-is-me whining, and
bake
it till you
make
it, a’ight?
Damn
.”
Plopping down on the plush white leather couch, she folded her arms, bolting her father with her very sternest, do-not-mess-with-me
stare. Seedy sulked his way around the room, listless as a neglected goldfish, and then surrendered, flopping into his ergonomic
seat. He stared at his synthesizer, pushing some air between his lips. “D,” he murmured, poking the corresponding key. Squeezing
his dark eyes shut, he poked it again, singing with pained passion:
Duck
all those kisses, they didn’t mean
jack
.
Duck
you, you
ho
. I don’t want you
ba-a-ack
.”
“Okay, Daddy?” Melissa blurted in interruption, unable to take it anymore. “Not to be a killjoy, but that’s an Eamon song.”
Seedy slowly nodded, still gazing at his keyboard, and then his face crumpled.
Ho no,
thought Melissa.
Was he going to cry?
She’d have to kick it up a notch.
“Christopher Duane
Moon
!” she screeched in perfect imitation of his late mother’s terrifying Korean accent. “Stop feeling so bad or I
make
you feel so very, very bad you cry like
gye jip ae
!”
Seedy sucked in his breath, stunned, and Melissa pursed her lips, triumphant. “Look, Daddy,” she continued in a
gentler tone. “Whenever something bad happens, all you got to do is think,
This makes room for something good
.” She leaned forward, reaching for his knee. “You remember who said that?”
The mournful rap mogul gazed at his daughter, timid. “Eckhart Tolle?”
“No, Daddy. You did.”
He whispered. “I did?”
“Yeah, Daddy. And you know what else you said?
That no matter how bad things get
, there’re always people much worse off. I mean, just look at Miss P, for example.”
“Lena?” Seedy perked up at the sound of her name. Although he’d met Melissa’s mysterious teacher for a teacher-parent conference,
they’d ended up bonding a bit over music. Not that they shared similar tastes in any respect—he was hard-core into hip-hop,
while she was committed to classical—but still. Then, when Vivien wanted a classical pianist for their engagement party, he
invited Lena to audition. Imagine his surprise when she waltzed into their living room and performed a perfectly delicate,
classical rendition of his early nineties megahit “Bi Bim Bitches.” Man, it damn near blew his
mind
. After that, he found himself listening more and more to classical tracks. Yeah, like,
voluntarily
. He had to admit some of those puffy-haired white dudes were all right.
Of course, it helped that Lena made him a mix.
Wondered what she thought of his?
“That’s right,” Melissa eagerly continued, encouraged by her father’s sudden alertness. “Miss Paletsky broke up with
her
fiancé, too, remember? But unlike you, gettin’ your Phantom on in a Bel Air mansion, she’s got no place.” Ruefully, she shook
her head. “Unless you count Room 201B.”
Seedy nodded in sympathy. “You mean that new hotel on Melrose with the live white tiger in the lobby?”
“No,” she groaned in despair. “It’s one of the rooms at Winston. Like, she’s sleeping at
school
?”
“Come on,” Seedy cracked a smile, refusing to buy his daughter’s dramatics. “Where’d you come up with that idea?”
“Um… because I found all her funky toiletries in my desk drawer while conducting the Poseur meeting today?” She gaped, daring
him to refute her. “For real, Daddy. Woman is
homeless
, as in without a
home
.”
Seedy frowned at the floor, slowly shaking his unkempt head. “I was homeless for a while,” he admitted. “Back in eighty-four.
Man, those were tough times. Real tough.”
He looked around his roomful of twinklingly expensive equipment and sighed, his black eyes growing glassy. “Lissa!” He smacked
the arm of his seat so suddenly his daughter jumped. “We have got to help her.”
“Who?” Melissa paused. “Miss P?”
“Yes, Miss P!” Seedy leaped to his feet. “I refuse to let
that good and, and
beautiful
soul sleep in a drafty old classroom. It’s not right!”
“She can come live in our second guesthouse!” blurted Melissa. The Moons’ second guesthouse was not only completely gorgeous,
but also perfectly
untouched
—unless you count the time MTV shot that episode of
Cribs.
She clapped her hands, giddy. Not only would they be helping her out, but, you know, it might be kind of fun having her around.
At times, Miss Paletsky reminded Melissa of her own mom, you know, before she got cracked-out and crazy.
“Perfect!” Seedy agreed. But then his face fell. “Except.”
“No!” Melissa gasped, crumpling her face like a milk carton. “No
except
!”
“Baby, calm down.” Seedy laughed, the old warmth returning to his voice. “I think Lena living here is a great idea. But, you
know… we’ve got to think of a good
reason
.”
“So, um…” Melissa picked a dried splatter of mac from her smock. “Having to brush her teeth in the chem lab: not a good enough
reason for you?”
“Lena has too much dignity to accept charity,” he explained. “If we’re gonna do this, we have to make it look like it’s not
some kind of handout.”
“Oh,” Melissa nodded, finally comprehending. She and Seedy slumped into their respective seats, frowning with
thought. The studio hummed. She was at a loss.
Until, for the first time in days, her father cracked a blinding megawatt smile. She looked up, hopeful.
“Pass the mac ’n’ cheese,” he commanded. “I’ve got an idea.”
