by Compai
“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 n
oticed.”
“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).
In addition to her pink Nokia cell phone, Nikki also owned a mint-condition princess phone from nineteen fifty-five, a relic of her grandmother’s first marriage. The candy blue phone hunkered on her white side table, the size and shape of a curled-up cat. Because it never rang, Nikki assumed its purpose was decorative — much like the broken grandfather clock in her father’s study. Imagine her confusion at 8:42 that Sunday morning, when the phone rattled her awake with a terrifying brrrrriiiiiinnnngggg! She sat up with a start, blinking behind a tangled veil of flaxen hair. The phone rang again, and whipping aside her butterfly-patterned Tommy Hilfiger duvet, she swung her longish bare feet to the plush white carpet, and half-walked, half-stumbled her bleary-eyed approach. As she neared the phone, the ring seemed to increase in volume and urgency. Slowly, slowly, she lowered her hand, her fingers gripping the vibrating receiver until — kuh-click — she picked it up, and the thing went dead in her hand. She raised the heavy plastic receiver to her ear and took a deep, fortifying breath. Maybe it was irrational, but . . .
“Tom?”
“Nicoletta!” a disappointingly familiar voice rasped on the other line, and Nikki exhaled, her cornflower-blue eyes smarting with disappointment. “What are you doing up there? You are on the Fruit Machine?”
Nikki sighed. Her grandmother referred to anything developed after medieval times as “machines,” including but not limited to televisions, microwaves, Dust Devils, toaster ovens, cars, and those kids’ shoes that blinked red lights when they walked. Nikki once tried to demystify her Apple laptop to her grandmother, but the only detail retained was the machine’s all-important relationship to fruit. Within just a short amount of time, “Apple Laptop” became “Apple Machine” became “Fruit Machine” and, finally, just plain “Fruit.”
“The Fruit is no good,” her grandmother cried into the phone. “It is bad! You have not come out of your room in . . . how long, Nikki? Days. Weeks. You need sunlight, cara. Fresh air. You need people!”
“Nonna.” Nikki forced a smile, attempting an optimistic tone. “Please, don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”
“Ha! Fine, she says. You are not fine, cara, you are sique! The Fruit eats up your thoughts and then holds you like a hostage!”
“Just leave me alone!” Nikki wailed helplessly into the phone. And then she did the unthinkable — she hung up on her grandmother. Eight seconds later, the phone rattled to life, and Nikki flung herself to the bedroom floor, grinding her hot cheek into the plush white carpet, and breathed in the pleasant, vaguely mineral scent of residual vacuum breath, covering her gold-studded ears with her hands. When, at long last, the phone stopped ringing, she turned her face upward. Her white laptop snoozed on her painted oak desk. On the lower panel, a little Tic Tac of light brightened and darkened, breathing in, breathing out. Sliding into her simple ladder-back desk chair, she punched the space bar, and the laptop buzzed awake. She felt herself relax, beginning to type.
Are you there, Tom . . . ?
She took a moment and smiled, weakened by the opiating effect of those four little words. Except they weren’t words anymore — they were an addiction. She resumed typing, fingers atremble, and succumbed fully to the heavy-yet-light sensation of giving in.
It’s me . . .
“Nicoletta!”
Her white bedroom door sprung open and thwacked against the adjacent wall, upsetting her very favorite framed Anne Geddes photograph. The baby-in-a-lettuce-cup slammed to the floor with guillotine-blade finality, the glass pane cracking in three places.
“Get away from The Fruit Machine,” her grandmother rumbled, pointing a waxen finger. Nikki closed the laptop with an obedient click. Nikki the First hadn’t ventured from her bedroom, let alone upstairs, in as long as she could remember. She was almost always in bed, to the point that Nikki hardly perceived them as distinct, separate entities. Like a mermaid, or a minotaur, her grandmother was a glamorous creature of myth: half human, half mattress.
“Get dressed,” she ordered, raising a shakily drawn crayoned eyebrow. Gone was the virgin white, lace-trimmed nightgown, and in its place a matching skirt and jacket in beige silk jacquard. Biscotti brown pumps molded to her small, knobby feet, and nude stockings wrinkled about her matchstick-thin ankles. Bright orange coral lipstick and slapdash streaks of blue eyeliner made her wrinkled face pop, and a shining helmet of hair clamped to her head like a vise.
“Nonna.” Nikki struggled to button her pink-and-green Ralph Lauren cardigan. “Are you . . . is that . . . are you wearing a wig?”
“What,” she chuckled, patting the blond orb with her hand. “You think I grow this overnight?” She coughed, thumping her upper chest with her fist. “Of course, we call it a wig only between us. Once we are outside, it is my real hair. Capiche?”
“Outside?” Nikki’s hands dropped to her sides, appalled. “What do you mean?”
“I am taking you out,” her grandmother declared, popping open her navy quilted Chanel purse. She extracted a ball of used tissue, held it to her nose, and sniffed. “You need to see the world! Appreciate nature, air, art . . . humanity!”
“But . . .” Nikki’s eyes darted to her laptop.
What if Tom sent her a message, and she wasn’t here to receive it? What if she didn’t write him back right away? Maybe he’d think she
wasn’t serious about their friendship. Maybe he’d . . .
“Do not even look at The Fruit,” her grandmother interrupted her thoughts, clutching her arm. She tugged her toward the open door. “You are coming with me!”
The Girl: Janie Farrish
The Getup: Unisex black-and-white wide-stripe cardigan and black leggings by United States of Apparel, and Red flip-flops by Havaianas.
“Janie,” Mrs. Farrish murmured, training her eyes to the pile of junk mail in her lap. “That’s the third time you’ve brushed pencil sharpenings on the floor.”
“Sorry,” Janie muttered in her seat at the opposite end of the dining room table, still squinting at her design.
“Unbelievable,” her mother clucked, shaking her messily ponytailed head in dismay. “These people with their ‘one-time-only’ credit card offers. I swear . . .” She pushed another envelope into the shredder, listening with satisfaction to the resulting chainsaw buzz. “They’re like drug dealers.”
Janie stared at her drawing and blew, pursing her Carmex-slathered lips. At the noise, her mother looked up, blinking behind her turquoise cat-eye reading glasses.
“You do realize you’re cleaning that up.”
“Obvie,” Janie sang, just as her cell phone flashed awake, buzzing across the table like a dying bee.
“Obvie?” her mother repeated, as her daughter lunged. She grimaced. “Is the word ‘obviously’ really too much of an effort?”
“Hey, Charlotte,” Janie answered, scooting back in her chair and padding into the kitchen. The digital microwave clock read 8:48 a.m. “I was going to call you, but I thought you’d still be asleep.”
“No, how’s the design?” Charlotte’s delicate voice chimed on the other end, whipping in and out of a breeze. The tangerine tree outside Janie’s kitchen window rustled its leaves. “Are you done?”
“Just finished.” Janie nodded, pacing back to the table. She pinched the corner of her sketch, lifting it to the light. “I just need to pack up, and I’m on my way.”
“No, no . . . I’m in the Valley!” Charlotte informed her, still chiming in the wind.
