by Compai
“Oh,” he croaked in horror, realizing too late who she was. He glanced at his super-hot ex-girlfriend, who’d all but grafted herself into Jules’s cavernous man-pit, and pushed his hair into a mussed thatch on top of his head. It was awkward enough dealing with the two of them—but the two of them plus the girl he’d accidentally kissed enabling the two of them to happen? “Hey…,” he laughed weakly, returning his gaze to Nikki, and awkwardly punched the air, “you.”
Old Nikki would have fluttered her eyelashes, melting at a cute sophomore’s attention. But New Nikki ignored him, to quote her revered mentor, “like a used pair of Spanx.”
“Okay.” She looked at Charlotte, pursing her Juicy pout. “Then I’ll just tell Melissa you’re not coming to hear her secret announcement.”
“Wait.” The older girl stopped her with a haughty tilt of her china-cup chin. Everyone knew “secret announcement” was, like, the oldest bluff in the book. And yet. “Fine, I’ll come.”
“But…” Jules peeled off his girlfriend and furrowed his dusky brow. “Today is the one-month anniversary of our first lunchtime together. I thought we would spend it together, no?”
Charlotte fluttered her soot-black eyelashes and smiled, debating how to respond. She really didn’t want to miss out on the mysterious Poseur lunch. On the other hand, she didn’t want to blow off her anniversary, especially in front of Jake — who might get the impression her feelings for Jules were blow-off-able. Which they weren’t.
Right?
“It’s up to you, but…” Nikki cleared her throat, regaining Charlotte’s begrudging attention. She’d spent all of seventh grade and most of eighth studying the popular sophomore’s every move, and could read her face like a book (except better, because she wasn’t really into books). When Charlotte was genuinely excited about something—for example, when she first told Laila and Kate her parents had given their permission for her to attend lace-making school in Brugge, or when she informed Adelaide Dallas that her father had ordered a pair of original Manolo Blahnik silk brocade heels (modeled on the ones worn by Kirsten Dunst in Marie Antoinette) for her fifteenth birthday—her smile became crooked, and the very tip of her tongue showed between her teeth. But when she was fake excited about something—for example, when she’d congratulated Bronywn Spencer on becoming a merit scholar (an honor Charlotte missed by one math question)—she smiled in this broad, perfectly symmetrical way, and her eyelashes fluttered, exactly as they just had with Jules. If Nikki had even the smallest chance of beginning to fix things with her fashionably formidable foe, her opening was now. “Melissa did say this lunch was mucho importanté.” Now she addressed Charlotte’s pouting pirate of a boyfriend, widening her cornflower blue eyes. “Maybe the most romantic thing you can do for your anniversary is, like, you know… support Charlotte’s career?”
The popular sophomore gazed at Nikki with cool contempt. How dare she put her in a position where she might actually have to appreciate her?
“I see,” Jules nodded. If his favorite television series, Sex and the City (he owned the six-season DVD set dubbed in Italian) had taught him one thing, it was this: never come between American women and their career. “Perhaps, then, we can reschedule.” Tucking a coiling lock of his girlfriend’s dark hair behind her fragrant ear, he whispered, “Dinner tonight?”
“Can’t,” Jake, who was leaning against the Jag’s fender, intervened. On his private list of cruel and unusual punishments, listening to Charlotte and Jules plan their “lunchtime anniversary” ranked right around watching porn with his grandmother. But it was all worth it for the opportunity to say:
“We have plans.”
“To study,” Charlotte quickly clarified, shooting him a dark look. Returning a modified gaze to Jules, she explained. “Ms. McGovern’s having one of her epic SAT vocab quizzes.”
Jules nodded, attempting a smile. Noticing the disappointment in his face, Charlotte winced with guilt. After all, she knew those vocabulary words backward and forward. And Jules was her boyfriend. Her boyfriend who, unlike Jake, raced his own yacht off the south of France coast every summer. Her boyfriend who, unlike Jake, could tell her she looked ravishing in six languages. Her boyfriend who, unlike Jake, would never cheat on her in a hundred, hundert, cento, cent, cem, ciento years.
“Forget it,” she glanced up at him lovingly. “We’ll have dinner.”
Jake wheezed out a laugh. Um… had she completely forgotten this whole “study session” had been her idea? That she’d practically begged him? That he’d passed her stupid Ferrari-pants butt-boy the ball? “I don’t know, Char,” he warned with a bob of his eyebrows. “I mean… do you really want to show up tomorrow not knowing the meaning of bovinoplasia?”
Jules narrowed his lion eyes in suspicion. “H’watever you just say is not a h’word.”
“Um.” He looked scandalized. “Yes. It is. Bovinoplasia refers to the uncontrollable urge to lean out car windows and yell ‘moo!’ every time you pass a telephone pole.”
As Kate and Laila dissolved into a predictable fit of cackles, Charlotte set her jaw, determined not to smile. It wasn’t that she didn’t think Jake was funny. That was the problem. Humor was the one thing missing in her relationship with Jules, and every time she convinced herself it didn’t matter (what her British-Italian boyfriend lacked in wit, he more than made up for in maturity, intellect, compassion, and a Ferrari), Jake would make her laugh, and suddenly all Jules had to offer meant nothing.
To make matters ten sizes worse, he’d started to get a clue. Like, if she so much as tittered at one of Jake’s jokes, Jules got all quiet and pensive. Then later, when they were alone, he’d touch her shoulder. “Why is the math book so unhappy?” he once ventured, a hopeful smile on his chiseled face. “Sorry?” she’d replied, baffled. “Why is the math book so unhappy?” he’d repeated as she continued to look perplexed. “Because!” He laughed a little, preparing her for what she was in for. “It is full of problems.”
Valiantly, she smiled, but it was the same kind of smile her grandfather offered, late in life, after he’d lost his hearing and couldn’t follow conversation. A vague smile, like something submerged, trying and failing to show its shape under a shifting surface. And she guessed it was the smile that pushed him to ask, “Are you happy with me?”
She knew what he was really asking: Do you still like me? And she did. How could she not with that beautifully sad, worried expression on his face? “Of course,” she’d assured him, flooded with tenderness. If only he hadn’t believed her! She wouldn’t have had to watch the expression disappear. And her tender feeling might have lasted, instead of slowly and secretly ebbing away.
Leaving her with no feeling at all.
“Of course we’ll go to dinner,” she chimed again, shaking off the memory. Reaching into her black patent Chanel shopper, Charlotte removed a tidy stack of pale pink flash cards bound in silk ribbon from Tiffany’s and handed them to Jake. “Sorry I’m bailing,” she apologized sincerely. “But…”
“Nah.” He shook his tousled head and pulled the end of the ribbon. The pretty bow grew smaller, smaller, and broke apart. “It’s cool.”
“Those flash cards are pretty much all you need anyway,” she assured him, forcing herself to turn toward her devoted boyfriend. When she did, Jules’s face melted with gratitude.
She kissed him then. So she wouldn’t have to see it.
The Girliatric: Jocelyn Pill Brickman
The Getup: Laguna flared jeans by True Religion, turquoise twill Love Hunt vest by Nanette Lepore, shocking pink Paradiso embroidered slingbacks by Dior, bubblicious boobage by Dr. Robert Greene
Every luxury Beverly Hills department store has a companion restaurant, a place for patrons to check their afternoon purchases, kick up their Sergio Rossi heels, and unwind over conversation, consommé, and credit. At Café SFA, Saks Fifth Avenusiasts indulge in coconut peekytoe crab salad; at Barney Greengrass, Barnistas sample bagels flown in that morning from New York; and f
inally, at Mariposa, Neiman Marcusites cut filet mignon into bite-size morsels, pinch the pieces between manicured fingertips, and feed them to the quivering purebred dogs stuffed into their oversize Fendi purses.
As far as Beverly Hills department store lunch establishments go, Mariposa’s decor met the standard—well, assuming you consider anything in Beverly Hills “standard” (if you attend Winston Prep, fyi: you do). The heavy square tables are dressed in the usual crisp white linens and polished white plates and topped with clusters of white and yellow irises. Behind plates of glass, original Calder tapestries decorate the walls—all bold colors and repetitive patterns that can hypnotize, given one looks too long. No one ever does. At Mariposa, lunching ladies pooh-pooh fine art for something greater: each other. Tossing glances to neighboring tables, they estimate the worth of that one’s Malibu home versus that one’s Malaysian nanny, that one’s anniversary diamond versus that one’s divorce settlement. They gasp, giggle, gush, and guffaw—until, inevitably, there’s nothing left to say. No matter. Widening their navy Dior mascara–encrusted eyes, tilting frosted glasses toward collagen-cushioned mouths, they knock back Prozac with Pinot and smile. Tiffany diamonds melt down their bony knuckles like ice.
Today, however, just as conversation dried up and sugarplum visions of green-and-white capsules danced about their ash blond heads, five young teenage girls sailed into the elegant restaurant, saving them from silence. At last! They breathed a collective sigh of relief. Something new to talk about. Teenagers were tolerated (albeit begrudgingly) on weekends, but at one p.m. during the workweek? Unheard of. And yet here they were, prancing around like they owned the place, crop dusting the tables in noxious clouds of junior fragrance, and dispelling in one glance—in one heady whiff—the comforting mass delusion women of a certain type cling to like lifelines.
They hadn’t aged a day since high school.
“Ladies,” Melissa Moon assumed her seat at the head of the table, tucking from sight (to the near audible relief of the Botoxed barracuda behind her) her enviable, high-water booty. With what she considered “regal” patience, she waited for Charlotte and Janie to slide into the plush beige banquette to her left, for Petra to settle into the opposite chair, and her new protégée, Nikki Pellegrini, aka Nikkeesha Kool (in the tradition of Beyoncé’s Sasha Fierce, Melissa had encouraged the intern to adopt a bolder, sassier persona) to occupy the chair to her immediate right. “I’m sure,” Melissa breathed, commencing the speech she’d rehearsed to Emilio Poochie the previous night, “y’all are wondering why, of all restaurants in Beverly Hills, I chose Mariposa to host our first Poseur power lunch.”
“Actually,” Charlotte tipped toward Petra with an appalled sniff, “I’m wondering why Petra reeks of”—the stale scent of chlorine, Old Spice, and hangover stung her delicate nostrils—“Disneyland.”
“Get away from me,” Petra pushed Charlotte’s shoulder and giggled, leaning back in her chair. Charlotte waved a hand in front of her nose.
“My pleasure.”
“If you want to know why I chose Mariposa,” Melissa boomingly interrupted, thoroughly unamused by her colleagues’ evident ADD; as the four sets of eyes brightly refocused, she exhaled, posing with her hands on her hips. “I provided a clue in my outfit.”
Charlotte, Petra, and Janie perused Melissa’s outfit with merry intrigue. Her white Versace stretch-silk dress, cinched into place by a gold Prada butterfly-clasp belt, boasted a pattern of purple butterflies, her Hanae Mori Butterfly–scented earlobes sported pink-and-gold Juicy Couture butterfly studs, and perched upon her smooth, center-parted, raven-haired head, a pair of raspberry plastic Prada butterfly frames shone like a crown. The three older girls shared a surreptitious eye roll.
Either the clue was butterfly, or Melissa was in the grip of Mariah Carey mind control. 2
Tucking the toe of her hot pink patent Doc Marten behind the wooden chair leg, Janie screwed her face up in mock concentration. “Is the clue, butter… face?”
“No, no, it’s butterfly,” Nikki corrected her explosively. The three older girls glanced at one another a second time, stifling their smirks. “Mariposa means butterfly in Spanish!”
“Fine.” Petra tucked her teal bra strap under the torn sleeve of her faded black Bikini Kill t-shirt. (Since when was Petra into punk? Janie wondered.) “What do butterflies have to do with Poseur?”
Melissa bitch-slapped the table with both hands, nearly divaporizing an approaching server. “Do you even remember,” she squawked as the waiter cringingly dropped a basket of freshly baked popovers on the table, “where you people were three months ago?”
“Daddy’s vineyard?” Charlotte sighed nostalgically.
“I don’t mean where were you geographically,” Melissa groaned as the waiter scampered away. “I mean metaphorically.”
Except for Nikki, who was busy taking the minutes, the Poseur collective regarded their Director of Public Relations with confusion.
“Caterpillars,” she sighed, answering her own question. “Except, of course, worse than caterpillars. We were couture-pillars.”
A moment of humble silence.
“That’s why I decided to hold a lunch here,” she explained, pouring a tall glass of Pellegrino. “To remind us of what we were. Of what we are. And most importantly…”
“What we can become,” Janie finished her thought.
With a bob of rigidly gelled eyebrows, Melissa raised her slender water glass. “What we will become.”
Gripping their own glasses, the colleagues craned across the table. The Pellegrino sparkled and hissed, catapulting into the air the occasional glinting droplet—like flares on a sinking ship, Janie mused before retracting the comparison. This was a toast, after all, and of all images to have in mind, “sinking ship” wasn’t ideal. Still, just before she struck the image from her mind and replaced it with something optimistic (Sasha Obama sliding down a rainbow into a field of four-leaf clover?), the four glasses clinked together. She winced, overcome by superstitious guilt.
She hadn’t just cursed them, had she?
As if in response to her question, an ominous shadow angled across her friends’ cheerful faces. “Exactly what is going on here?” honked an outraged female voice. Without lowering their glasses, all four girls glanced upward. Jocelyn Pill Brickman—thirty-something ex-wife to studio mogul Bert Brickman, former Miss December and Playmate of the Year and author of the almost bestselling The Afterwife: You’re Divorced (Not Dead!)—folded her Clarins-slathered arms across the rock formation she called breasts and glared like the world’s meanest bus driver. Every Friday, she and her two BFF’s, Pepper and Trish, piled into Trish’s enormous glossy black Range Rover, rocked out to Jane’s Addiction and/or the Beastie Boys, and cougared on down to Neiman Marcus where, after buying fresh sets of lingerie for the upcoming weekend, they gathered at Mariposa to cackle loudly over white Zinfandel and truffle Parmesan French fries. Because yes, some things had changed since high school—they’d since traded in cafeterias for cafés and raspberry Crystal Light for Cabernet—but the rules remained the same. They were still Pepper, Trish, and Joss, the leanest, meanest, homecoming queen-est, I-guess-we-were-just-blessed-with-superior-genes-est bitches around. And, um, hello.
“This is our table,” aqua-eyed Jocelyn informed them with a toss of her Locklear locks.
“Really?” Petra eyed their intruder’s puffed-up piehole in disgust. Nothing grossed her out more than plastic surgery, mostly because it provided scumbag Doctor Daddy with a living. She leaned an elbow on the table, tilting her face at a sarcastically innocent angle. “I thought your kind belonged in caves.”
Melissa, Janie, and Charlotte exchanged a look of pure shock. So now Petra not only dressed punk rock, but she was also dishing out the snaps? What kind of alternate universe was this? From either end of the restaurant, the lunching ladies appeared to share the sentiment, albeit for a different reason: no one had ever stood up to Jocelyn Pill, the former Mrs. Brickman.
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This was going to be good.
“Excuse me?” piped up Pepper, an aspiring Christian pop singer whose self-proclaimed feisty personality lived up to her name (of course, she kept her original name, Mavis, strictly under wraps). “What did you say, you insignificant little diaper stain?”
“Forgive my colleague,” Charlotte breathed, rescuing Petra from a catfight she was in no way equipped to handle. But before she could follow up with “normally she respects her elders,” Trish—a redheaded gym rat with a thing for dating X-Gamers—butted in.
“Colleague?” she guffawed, and hip-bumped Jocelyn. Assuming a singsong baby voice, she asked. “Did we inter-wupt a meeting?”
“Wait…,” Jocelyn gasped, widening her aqua eyes in awe. “Are you guys the Baby-sitters Club?”
As the three women brayed with laughter and gave each other high fives (High fives? thought Janie. Who does that? And what in God’s name was the Baby-sitters Club? thought Nikki), Melissa calmly unzipped her pink Marc Jacobs satchel, extracted a multicoloredon-white Louis Vuitton Murakami card case, and snapped it open.
“Here,” she said, pinching out a newly minted pink, black, and gold business card. “I want y’all to keep this. ’Cause you see, next season when our label be blowin’ up? And the lines outside Ted Pelligan—”
“Avec whom we have an exclusive handbag deal,” interjected Charlotte.
“Are around the block?” Melissa resumed. “Y’all can contact me,” she advised, slapping the card on the table with the authority of a Las Vegas blackjack dealer, “to apologize.”