Petty in Pink

by Compai

  “Thought maybe you’d change your mind,” he grinned, lifting his I’m a Rock Star in Jamaica t-shirt to wipe his face. (’Cause, yeah. Someone brought the six-pack to the barbecue.) His white-hot girlfriend grimaced, yanking his shirt down.

  “Change my mind?” Her black eyes snapped. “I have the most important meeting of my life in less than an hour.”

  Looking wounded, he smoothed his mauled t-shirt over his unappreciated abs. “So?”

  “Deena.” Melissa fluttered her dark eyes shut, spanking the air. “Will you explain this to him?”

  “Boy,” her horse-faced best friend began, fanning her tiny, pinched nose with her French-manicured hand. “You think she want to show up at Ted Pelligan with your man-stink all over her?”

  “Whoa, whoa, Dino, hold up.” Marco forked a hand into his springing brown curls, looking puzzled. “You mean to say you can smell outta that nose job?”

  “For the last time!” Deena squawked, flushing an angry shade of puce while her traitor friends hid their smiles. “I had a deviated septum. Without necessary surgical intervention, I could have died, Marco!”

  Just as a crowd began to gather, a nasal beeping filled the air, grinding the performance to a sudden halt. A dozen girls turned to face their intruder, their exfoliated foreheads in various stages of rumpled disapproval.

  “So sorry to interrupt your turf wars,” Charlotte Beverwil chimed, fluttering a wave from the depths of her lumbering vintage Jag. Janie Farrish sat half-slumped in the driver’s seat, her bobbed light-brown hair delicately mussed, and a pretty fair imitation of Charlotte’s ennui smacked across her face. “Just wanted to bid y’all adieu,” Charlotte called, focusing in on Melissa. “That’s French, by the way. For outie.”

  In a burst of panic, Melissa scampered to the side of the vehicle. No way was she letting Charlotte and her paraffin-pampered paws get to Ted Pelligan first. She could just see it: the two of them, chillin’ in the corner office, chuckling over some private joke. How dare they have a private joke? She hadn’t even introduced herself yet!

  “No!” She gripped the lip of the window, forcing Charlotte to a sudden brake.

  “What do you mean, no?” Her raven head jerked forward.

  “We have to wait for Petra,” Melissa warned, gripping the window tighter.

  “Um, no.” Charlotte frowned, cranking the volume on her longtime obsesh: Beirut. “Petra’s your car, remember?”

  “Well, we need to caravan,” she insisted, raising her voice above what sounded like dueling accordions. “What if one of us gets lost?”

  Charlotte arched an icy cool eyebrow. Melissa knew as well as she did—one just didn’t “get lost” on the way to Ted Pelligan. Winston girls were like newly hatched baby turtles, and Ted Pelligan? Was the sea. Were baby turtles afraid of getting lost? Did baby turtles quote-unquote caravan?

  No. The baby turtles just knew.

  Charlotte narrowed her glittering green eyes in suspicion. Melissa wanted to get to Ted Pelligan first. The question was pour-quoi? So she could convince him butt pearls were the wave of the future?

  Without another moment’s hesitation, she sank her heel to the gas.

  “No, you did not!” Melissa called after her screeching wheels, flapping her impossibly toned arms.

  “Oh yes, she did,” a throaty voice piped up behind her. Melissa whirled around. Well, she scowled. If it isn’t my belated bohemian friend.

  “Get in the car,” she barked, snapping her fingers in the direction of the gleaming Lexus.

  “Relax, El Snapitan,” Petra quipped, raising her blue-ink-stained hands in surrender. Melissa balled up her fists, pulsing like a nuclear flash.

  “Now!”

  Miss Dillydally darted toward the car.

  “I still don’t understand,” Charlotte sighed, flattening her ballerina back against her butter-tan leather seat. The winding canyon was behind them now, and the Jaguar coasted onto a wide and smoothly paved avenue bordered by majestic sun-filled pines. For the last five minutes, Janie had been staring out the window, dreaming up surfer tattoos: winding seaweed vines, and shark teeth, electric eels, and mermaids. At the sound of Charlotte’s voice they blew away like dust.

  “What?” she turned from the window, blinking. Please, God. Let her not have just read my mind. Seriously, weren’t telepathic powers supposed to be limited to, like, kooky great-aunts and glittering vampires? The former always had your best interests at heart. And the latter only threatened to suck your blood—not your very last drop of dignity.

  “Nothing.” The witch at the wheel eyed her up and down. “It’s just… I liked the other outfit better, that’s all.”

  “Yeah.” Janie gazed at her leopard-print cardigan cuffs, smoothing the faux fur over her wrists. “I just… this outfit just feels more me, or something.”

  With a delicate bob of her eyebrows, Charlotte adjusted her pearl gray Hermès driver’s glove. For the life of her she would never understand girls who thought comfort was, like, a legitimate style choice. When would they realize “me” marked the halfway point to mess?

  She resolved to change the subject.

  “So, what did my brother say to you?”

  “Oh,” Janie blushed. “Nothing, he—he wanted to know if I could design him a tattoo.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Charlotte rolled her eyes. “You’re not going to, are you?”

  Janie chewed her thumbnail.

  “Janie!” she spanked the wheel in disbelief. “Don’t waste your talent on such folderol. Your time is precious!”

  “It shouldn’t take that long.” She shrugged, smiling into her lap. That Charlotte thought she was talented! That she’d deigned to say so!

  “Uchh…” The driver regarded her pleased profile with suspicion. “Do you have a crush on my brother?”

  “What?” Janie wheezed out a laugh and blushed. “Um, no.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Charlotte fluttered her eyelashes, not bothering to hide her smile. “I didn’t mean to make you… uncomfortable.”

  “I’m not,” Janie gaped, tucking her bob behind her ear, “uncomfortable. It’s just… I mean… we’re just…”

  “Friends?” offered the pretty brunette, flipping the turn signal to an appallingly boner-like angle. Janie glanced away.

  “Yeah,” she exhaled.

  “Too bad I don’t believe in male-female friendships,” Charlotte rejoined, pleased by her trap’s success. She slid Janie a knowing look. “Call me old-fashioned, but someone’s always hiding an attraction.”

  Janie narrowed her eyes. Of all the things she’d love to call Charlotte right now, “old-fashioned” was so not one of them. And then something occurred to her.

  “What about you and Jake?”

  The turn signal clicked, sproinging downward, and Charlotte screwed up her face, shifting in her seat. “What about me and Jake?”

  “If there’s no such thing as—”

  “Jules and I are really serious,” she cut her off, cranking the polished wood wheel.

  “I know,” Janie began.

  “No,” Charlotte snapped before she could continue. “You don’t.”

  Janie faced the window and flinched, fighting off the sting. Charlotte was right, of course. Pretty much the closest Janie had come to a serious relationship was back in fourth grade, when Michael McFadden handed her a green M&M and said, “The green ones make you horny.” Since then, it had all been downhill. Still, she thought, watching the neon signs on Sunset Boulevard flash dimly in the daylight. That Charlotte just said so with such absolute authority. Like Janie’s utter lack of experience was just, like, splattered all over her face.

  It pissed her off.

  “I know more than you think,” she informed her condescending driver, still glaring out the window. “It’s not like I’ve never had a boyfriend.”

  Charlotte exhaled quickly through her nostrils and curved the corner of her mouth into a smile. “Really.”

  Janie moiste
ned her slightly chapped lips. She hadn’t wanted to embellish her lie, but Charlotte’s rage-inducing response all but forced her at gunpoint. “You know Creatures of Habit?”

  “Sounds familiar,” she replied slowly. Janie smiled. Her best friend Amelia had a pet peeve with people who said “sounds familiar.” It’s only, like, the deadest giveaway they have no idea what you’re talking about, she’d scoff, dripping with contempt.

  “Oh, they’re just this band,” Janie continued in her best I-can’t-believe-you-haven’t-heard-of-them tone. “Anyway”—leaning forward in her seat, she gripped the glove compartment and smiled—“he’s the bassist.”

  “Oh, really?” Charlotte waited out the light on Sunset and Hillcrest, pale fingers toying with the clustered cabbage ruffles at her throat. “What’s this bassist’s name?”

  Janie’s seat belt tightened against her chest. Something about saying his name out loud: it made her nervous. Her instinct was to backpedal, maybe make up a name—but what if Charlotte Googled Creatures of Habit? She fretted, examining Charlotte’s haughty profile.

  She kind of seemed like a closet compulsive Googler.

  “Paul,” Janie croaked, and pulled the seat belt toward her lap. “I mean, he’s not, like, my boyfriend boyfriend. He’s more like… you know.” She swallowed. “We’re kind of off and on.”

  Charlotte drummed her clear polished fingernails against the wheel. Was it just her, or was Janie making “off and on” sound way more appealing than “serious”? With all those breathy little pauses and glazed faraway looks. Uch! She totally was. But off-and-on relationships aren’t appealing, Charlotte reminded herself. Off-and-on relationships lead on to heartbreak! And passion, countered the beret-wearing devil on her shoulder. All of your favorite couples. Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Napoléon and Josephine. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Miss Piggy and Kermit?

  Admit it, he cackled. You miss that feeling.

  “Hey, sexy!” A shrill voice called from a neighboring lane, and Charlotte gave a start, glancing left. “Mm!” Petra leered over the passenger side of Melissa’s gleaming platinum Lexus convertible, purple shades glinting in the sun, hair flying all over the place. “You ladies are looking fine.”

  “Get a grip, creep,” Charlotte deadpanned, just as the light flicked green. She barely had time to react before Melissa slammed on the gas, peeling off with an impressive squeal. “Merde!” she cried, fumbling for the pedal while Janie clutched the sides of her buttery leather seat. Ahead of them—so far ahead!—Madame Pearlbutt lifted her tan arm in mocking salute, bright bangles flashing on her wrist. Charlotte swallowed a hard lump of pride, daring to ask a question she never, in a billion lifetimes, thought she’d ask.

  Why can’t I be more like Melissa?

  The only man on her mind was Ted Pelligan.

  The Gent: Ted Pelligan

  The Getup: Lime green seersucker suit and white shirt by Paul Smith, lavender sunshine medallion silk tie by Ermenegilda Zegna, traditional two-tone wing tips by Salvatore Ferragamo, silver silicone Men’s Elite Gardening Gloves by Bionic Gloves

  In Theodore Pluto Pelligan the IV’s humble point of view, luxury retailers existed not merely to clothe souls, but to alter them. Which was to say, even if a customer entered his store and left buying nothing, he or she should still feel ineluctably changed. A store’s ambience—the lighting (tasteful), the prices (wasteful), the staff (unsmiling), the music (beguiling), the scent (a bouquet-stuffed boudoir), the attitude (make luxury, not war)—was as important, if not more important, than the objects it sold. He compared the experience to his own—many years ago, now—at Harvard; he was there for ten glorious minutes, left with nothing (save a Polaroid of Mother on the steps of Widener Library), and yet, he’d been forever transformed. The true worth of Harvard, he decided, was rooted in ambience—not the paltry degree it peddled.

  So formative was his experience, he designed his flagship Melrose store with the university in mind: an impressive building, bordered by pathways of venerable red brick, and absolutely covered—from the lip of the sidewalk to the tip of the two-story roof—in gorgeous green ivy. Of course, in places his leafy creepers had to be (ah! his favorite word) pruned; that is, cleared away to better showcase the window displays, not to mention his name, which appeared on the wall in alternating blue and crimson letters. He hoped Ted Pelligan, like Harvard, would one day become synonymous with “crème de la crème.”

  And it had.

  HARVARD + TED PELLIGAN: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

  Common Peasant: Where did you go to college?

  Someone Fabulous, Like You: In Cambridge.

  Peasant: Where in Cambridge?

  You: Oh, um… Harvard.

  Peasant: Really? Wow. Harvard. Well, tra-la-la, Little Miss Fancy-Pants!

  You (lying): It’s not really like that.

  Common Peasant: Omigod! Where did you get that top?

  Someone Fabulous, Like You: On Melrose.

  Peasant: Where on Melrose?

  You: Oh, um… Ted Pelligan.

  Peasant: Really? Wow. Ted Pelligan. Well, tra-la-la, Little Miss Fancy-Pants!

  You (lying): They were having a sale.

  But the two institutions’ affinity wasn’t meant to last. In the 1980s, when Harvard removed their ivy due to apparent wall deterioration and steep labor costs, it stung, to be quite frank, like a spank in the face. Beside himself with grief, racked by betrayal, Ted did what any self-avenging citizen would do: angrily, he wrote them a letter.

  Dear Harvard,

  I, for one, valeu my ivy, and as for stepe labre costs, I trimm the stuff myself.

  Disgustidly,

  T.P. 1

  “Teddy?” His assistant, Gideon Peck, who spoke in the low, respectful tone of a funeral director even when ordering pizza, pushed open the polished wood door, ducking his solemn young face into the large, stately office. Discovering the brass-studded burgundy leather wing chair empty, he heaved his hangdog gaze to the opposite side of the vast room. As expected, his silver-haired superior crouched catlike by one of four dormer windows, an enormous pair of steel shears in hand. A tiny green tendril of ivy, having stealthily unfurled in the dead of night, peered through the open window, quivering in the breeze.

  “Just look at it, Giddy,” he murmured in his unplaceable accent, like a 1930s film star’s, and squinted behind his rimless rectangular glasses. “Brazen as a Peeping Tom.”

  The assistant stepped into the room. “Sir…”

  “Just a moment.” Mr. Pelligan hushed him, quietly crept forward, and wet his pale lips with the tip of his tongue. The shears flashed—snippity-snip! Exhaling, he retreated a step, stooped, and pinched the tender green sprig between his fingers. As he marched it toward his desk, Gideon bowed his head, clasping his hands.

  “His green seraglio has its eunuchs too,” Mr. Pelligan intoned, beautifully trilling his r’s. His silver-gloved fingers parted, and the sprig fell soundlessly into a waiting brass bin. “Lest any tyrant him outdo.”

  A moment of silence.

  “Yes?” He turned suddenly, sweeping his rimless eyewear from behind his smallish pink ears and fluttering his silver lashes. “What is it?”

  “Your four o’clock, sir.” Gently, Gideon wrested the shears from his superior’s small, garden-gloved hand and carried them to the antique maple highboy behind the desk, cleaning the blade with a brisk motion across his sleeve. “The young ladies of Poseur,” he droned, taking care with his pronunciation as he slid open the second-to-top maple drawer.

  “Ah!” his superior exclaimed, yanking the squared fingertips of his garden gloves one by one. “My sweet damsels in design. My most darling of discoveries. Allez!” He freed his hand and wiggled his plump, bejeweled fingers. “Send them in.”

  Gideon cracked a small smile. Teddy loved nothing more than to hatch new talent, and he always could spot a good egg. His prodigies included Chloë Sevigny, Vikki Beckham, Stella McCartney, and, of course, Miss Ashley
and Miss Mary-Kate. “When I found them they were just a couple of impossibly thin, identically pouted billionaires with all their Tiffany hearts could desire!” he was fond of recounting. “But they had pluck, Giddy, and I could tell… these girls were going places. I took them under my wing. I said, ‘I know what you’re going through. The world seems a warm, friendly place… you feel so happy it’s a damn miracle you make it out of bed! But, my lovelies, you have got to move on.’ ‘How?’ they asked. Can you imagine? The darlings! ‘I know it’s easier done than said,’ I told them, ‘but… why not start a fashion line?’ The looks on their faces, Giddy. Like I’d just opened a door into a world of privilege exactly like the one they were already in!”

  The Olsen girls went on to create two industry-respected luxury labels, The Row and Elizabeth & James, and then flew the nest, making a permanent home of New York. The move was only natural—it was New York, after all, not its yoga-panted West Coast cousin, where fashion names were made. Nevertheless, the transition was difficult for Teddy; on more than one occasion, Gideon had discovered him at his massive mahogany desk, stabbing his Pimm’s Cup with a cucumber spear and staring into space. He absolutely needs a new project, noted his concerned assistant. This much was clear.

  The question was who?

  Stepping lightly downstairs, the attentive assistant swept into the reception area, where two girls, one dark, the other fair, looked up from twin green-and-gold silk jacquard seats, their hands placidly folded on their crossed knees, their eyes alight with excitement.

  “Mam’selles,” he greeted them gravely.

  Bing! Behind him, the gilded elevator doors shuddered to a halt. “Wait!” twittered a high-pitched, panicked voice. Their operator, Mr. Finch, unlatched the ornate brass gate, sliding it open with a clattering bang. Two girls, one tall, the other small (with lapis lazuli for eyes, noted Gideon) burst from the lift like crazed canaries.

  “Sorry we’re late,” panted the silky-bobbed taller of the two. “We—”