Petty in Pink

by Compai

  At the same time, he wished he could strip them of privacy completely—broadcast quiet moments like this to the world. Maybe then people would see the side of Vee he saw: the tender side, the real side, the side he saw the day they met, on the set of Lord of the Blings. It had been his first day back to work after his mother died. Pancreatic cancer. Diagnosed, and gone in three months. Needless to say, the whole music-video thing had seemed a little pointless; that is, until Elijah, his director, trotted out a pack of background dancers. There she was — towering over everyone else, violet-eyed, raven-haired, curvy as duck— and everything just snapped into focus. Hadn’t his mom always been on him to date Korean? Every time he had woman problems: You no have problem with Korean girl! Korean girl take care of man! Man, it was annoying. It wasn’t like he’d set out not to date Korean. Just hadn’t worked out that way. The last thing he wanted was to turn into one of those dudes who was always like, “Man, you ever been with a black chick? You ever been with a Mexican chick? You ever been with a quarter-Portuguese quarter-Swedish half-Chinese chick?” Like they was trying out ice-cream at 31 Flavors. Like they was ticking off boxes on a list.

  Gave him the heebie-jeebies.

  But then Momma Moon died, and he missed her tiny, junk-yard-dog-mean, disappointed-as-all-hell face so much he couldn’t breathe, and—like he said—he looked up and there she was, standing by the wind machine, secret smile on her face, shining, wavy dark hair, like some kind of bootylicious Botticelli bomb-shell, and he just felt his momma smiling, like a warm ray of sunshine closing round his neck, and he knew, he just knew: she was the one. And he was right. Not only was the woman hot, but she was fun and smart, exciting but chill—and she made him feel like the only brother in the room. Yeah, as he got to know her, she’d kind of revealed a high-maintenance side. And she and ’Lissa didn’t get along—that was distressin’. But, you know — that was just them learning to share space (not to mention him), and combine that stress with planning this off-the-hook engagement party? There was bound to be some tension. Once all the jangle passed and he and Vee sealed the deal at City Hall, the dust would settle and they’d start getting along. They had to.

  After all, they were the two lights of his life.

  “Seedy, baby?”

  At the sound of her beckoning voice, he padded his ratty Bugs Bunny slippers across the polished bamboo floor and pushed the heavy oak bathroom door open. A whirling wall of lemon sugar-scented steam parted to reveal his six-foot-tall violet-eyed queen. She stared into the mirror, raven hair swept into a pink towel turban thing, one long, long leg propped on the dark gray marble sink, swirled her polished-red fingertips into a smallish tub of white cream, and dotted dollops on her thigh, knee, calf, and ankle.

  “Did you put this on?” she asked, referring to the delicate piano music wafting from the built-in shower speakers.

  “Yeah.” Seedy grinned, watching her massage the dollops of cream into her perfect, tanned skin. “It’s that CD I asked Lena to burn, remember? So I could learn to appreciate classical music…” He wrapped his arms around her waist and closed his eyes, breathing in the steamy scent of her shoulders. “Like you.”

  “Uh-huh,” Vivien shrugged, lowering her moisturized left leg to the polished slate floor. “Who’s Lena?”

  “Who’s Lena?” Seedy laughed as she lifted her right leg to the sink. “The pianist we hired for the engagement party? Because you insisted on classical music?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Vivien giggled, dotting her bare leg with more dollops.

  “What the heck is this dippity-doo?” Seedy grimaced, plunging his finger into the pot of cream.

  “Seedy.” Vivien’s jaw dropped in dismay. “That is Crème de la Mer!”

  “Crème de la Nair?” he frowned, sniffing his finger. “What?”

  Vivien grabbed his hand by the wrist and rubbed the cream off his finger and onto her face. “Do you even know how much this stuff costs?”

  “Okay, okay… ” Seedy chuckled. Hard to take her seriously with shiz on her face. She looked like some crazy crack-lady attempting a Got Milk ad. “How much?”

  Clutching the tub to her chest, Vivien narrowed her violet eyes. “One thousand three hundred and ninety dollars.”

  The laughter died on Seedy’s lips. “Excuse me?”

  “And worth every penny,” she breathed, massaging the cream into her face and neck.

  “You think so, huh?” Seedy snatched the tub from her hand and dartingly escaped into the shower, quickly snapping the door shut.

  “Seedy!” His fiancée couldn’t help but laugh, smacking the corrugated glass.

  “Better be made of pureed dodo droppings for that price,” his baritone voice echoed as he scrutinized the label. “Let’s see . . okay, here we go.”

  Holding her breath, Vivien creaked open the shower door and lunged for the jar. “Ha-ha!” she cackled, taking possession. “You snooze, you lose!”

  After a strained pause, Seedy cleared his throat. “You bet.”

  “You bet?” Vivien repeated, mocking the vanilla phrase. And then, noticing the somber expression on his face: “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” he puckered his brow. “Just…” he winced his eyes shut, pushing a thumb and forefinger into the closed lids. “Got a sudden headache, that’s all.”

  “Well, lie down, would you?” Vivien admonished him, kissing him loudly on the cheek. “The last thing I need is you getting sick on our big day.”

  With a little salute, Seedy exited the bathroom, shuffling his shabby Bugs Bunny slippers toward the ebony platform bed. After so much humidity, the bedroom air kind of chilled. He stretched out on the tautly tucked-in onyx satin coverlet, sank his shaved head into the cool silk pearl gray pillow, and tilted his face toward the row of dark, double-pane windows. Half-moon was still there, but he wasn’t smiling. Bed was still king-size, but he was no king. The first ingredient in Crème de la Mer?

  Seaweed.

  The Girl: Melissa Moon

  The Getup: Sheer pink mesh Jewel babydoll chemise with ruffle-lace trim by Cosabella, black silk-satin and pink rhinestone Not Tonight sleeping mask by Mary Green

  Melissa was an early riser, but on Saturday mornings, in the name of beauty sleep, she forced herself to stay in bed — not waking until seven thirty, even eight a.m.

  The morning of her father’s engagement party proved the exception.

  All night, she replayed her disastrous phone call with Ted Pelligan in her head — the meeting had gone perfect, and it’s not like they’d all spoken since then, so then what? How in Brand’s name had they gone and messed this up? When finally, fretfully, she fell asleep, she dreamed about it. No answers there either. “Poseur is over,” the fashion tyrant intoned, and transitioned into cruel chant. “Poseur… oveur… Poseur… oveur…” With a whimper, she wrenched awake, swiped away her pink-and-black satin sleeping mask, and whipped aside her sheets, burying Emilio in a 400-thread-count avalanche. It could not have been later than five a.m. (but for patches of moonlight on the ceiling and walls, darkness cloaked the room), and yet she couldn’t fathom going back to sleep. Quietly, she slipped out of bed. The blanket mound quaked, and Emilio joined her, tumbling to the floor. Had calling Miss Paletsky been a total exercise in futility? Melissa squeezed her hands and began to pace. What on earth made her think a mousy high school teacher in pleated pants and plastic pearls could possibly influence the founder of Los Angeles’s most fashion-forward store?

  Unless the overwhelming scent of drugstore hairspray stunned the man into a state of submission, Miss Paletsky had no chance.

  And what about her colleagues? When she called to share the disastrous news, she’d been considerably more pulled together than she’d been with Miss P. “I’ll take care of it,” she told them breezily. “Just go on like everything’s normal and don’t call me. I’ll call you.” Ugh. How confident she’d sounded. How self-assured!

  Melissa curled up on the floor just left of her gold-trimmed champagne prince
ss desk and whimpered in despair. Nothing left to do but pray, she realized as her tan-and-white Pomeranian yawned, flopping into the warm crook behind her knees. But pray for what?

  “Please…,” she murmured, fluttering her worried eyes shut. “Just give Miss Paletsky the power to make Mr. Pelligan change his mind.”

  The Gent: Ted Pelligan

  The Getup: White calf leather Parigi moccasins by Salvatore Ferragamo, watermelon pink-and-white-striped organic cotton long johns pajama suit from Hanna Andersson

  After a day and a half’s hesitation, Mr. Gideon Peck quietly suggested to Mr. Pelligan that he come up to the roof garden to rest and relax, and Mr. Pelligan, quick to condemn his assistant’s “relentless, shameless harassment,” nevertheless obliged. He’d spent all of yesterday slumped behind his massive mahogany desk, stabbing his Pimm’s Cup with a cucumber spear, and glowering into space; something had to be done.

  Gideon tucked his superior into a white wicker wheeled chair and creakingly pushed him outside, refusing — despite Teddy’s protests—to leave him in the shade. “It might behoove you, sir,” he advised, unfolding a pair of green tortoiseshell cat-eye sunglasses and fixing them to the seated man’s jowly pink face, “to get a little sun.”

  “Oh yes,” Mr. Pelligan muttered, still clutching his Pimm’s on his blanket-covered lap. “Don’t you fret, Giddy. I’ll be on my very best behoovior.”

  With a concerned sigh, Mr. Peck headed for the ivy-draped exit, leaving Teddy to bitterly resign himself to the “loathsome task” of communing with nature. On either side of the stylish tycoon, purple pansies trembled in their pots. Their delicacy and nervousness annoyed him. He preferred the topiary—hardy little shrubs pruned into pretty, manageable shapes—or the miniature Greek statues—steadfast tributes to beauty, youth, and physical perfection. Contrary to his earlier admonishments, he also preferred the sun—how it warmed his cheek like a Marc Jacobs muff, how it sparkled inside his Pimm’s like a Bob Mackie Oscars gown. He never realized it before, but, for a distant ball of burning gas, the sun had impeccable style. Ah, he mused, settling into his white wicker wheeled chair. If only it were possible to take yonder Great Star under my wing. To mold that raw talent into something graspable, something grand. Why, under my care, the sun could be fashion’s next big thing!

  The idea tickled him, and he chuckled to himself, swirling the ice in his Pimm’s—but a moment later the feeling passed. The sun had ducked behind a gathering of clouds, chilling the garden in its absence. Of course. The smile withered upon his exfoliated and moisturized lips. As soon as you put your faith in people, pffft! They disappear.

  Why should the sun be any different?

  “Sir?”

  “Yes, Giddy,” he murmured, not bothering to turn around. A quiet moment passed, and he felt the weight of his assistant’s hand on the back of his chair.

  “You have a visitor,” Mr. Peck informed him in a sympathetic tone.

  “I’m afraid I’m like Zac Posen’s fall collection, Giddy.” He grimly stared ahead. “Not meant to be seen.”

  “A distraction might do you good,” his assistant insisted, wheeling him around. At the rooftop’s ivy-bordered door, a diminutive brunette dressed in what could only be described as a poly-fester nightmare (among its atrocities, the shapeless rhubarb sack included a ruffled chiffon turtleneck, shoulder cutaways, and an asymmetrical hemline) offered him a tremulous smile.

  “Why is she wearing that?” he whispered, tugging Gideon’s sleeve.

  “She’s on her way to the Pink Party,” he replied flatly. As if that made any sense!

  “Ch’ello!” The nightmare moved her painted mouth. “I am Lena Paletsky, Special Studies adviser at Winston Prep.”

  Noticing Teddy’s bewildered expression, the solemn assistant explained. “I believe she mentors the young ladies of Poseur, sir.”

  “Acch!” The older seated man flinched, then recovered with a glare. “I told you never to say that word,” he trembled. “Impale my ear with this cucumber spear, why don’t you?”

  “Please, excuse him.” Mr. Peck returned to the peculiar-looking visitor and apologized. “He and, er… the girls had a bit of a falling out.”

  “A falling out?” Teddy scoffed, fishing an ice cube from his cup and pressing it to his nearly nonexistent throat. “That’s what you call the most traitorous event since the age of Benetton Argyle?”

  “Benedict Arnold, sir,” Giddy corrected him.

  “Those pretty little turncoats were seen lunching at Neiman Marcus!” He quaked, pitching the ice cube into the manicured grass under his small white-moccasin-clad feet. Miss Paletsky, who hadn’t yet worked up the nerve to venture from the doorway, flinched, and Mr. Peck sighed, surrendering himself to the inevitable. Every two hours or so since the incident, Teddy launched into the same speech, speaking as though his words had just sprung to mind and his listeners had yet to hear them.

  “Long ago,” Mr. Pelligan addressed Miss Paletsky, “Neiman Marcus was chaired by Stanley Marcus, my very closest friend… at the time.”

  “They met at the annual League of Moguls conference,” Mr. Peck explained.

  “We had so much in common!” he declared. “Both heads of elite department stores, both Harvard men.”

  “Of course, Mr. Marcus actually attended the university,” his assistant reminded him.

  “Yes!” Teddy sighed. “He always was so conventional. In any event,” he returned to Miss Paletsky. “Stannie invited me to New Mexico where he and his wife—horrible woman—shared an estate. He was an avid art collector, and obsessed with these primitive statues, religious icons, if you will, sold by ghastly National Geographic types in their dusty pueblos. Stanley bought their baubles for a few dollars, a bead necklace perhaps… and years later they appreciated tens of thousands of dollars.”

  “The most valuable of all was the Holy Child of Atocha,” Gideon, who had by this time committed Teddy’s wearisome tale to memory, cut to the chase. “Atocha, if you’re fortunate enough not to know, is the patron saint of travelers who risk capture by non-Christian enemies.”

  “The last time I saw Stannie,” Mr. Pelligan, too swept up in the memory to acknowledge Gideon’s impudence, pressed on. “He was very sick. Every night, he took Saint Atocha to bed like a doll. ‘My most cherished little statue,’ he told me with a smile, reaching for my hand. ‘I leave to you. Teddy Pelligan. My most cherished of friends.’ ” He removed his cat-eye sunglasses and frowned, pinching the bridge of his small, bulbous nose. “And can you guess,” he sighed, “who he left it to, in the end?”

  From the door, Miss Paletsky glanced at Gideon, betraying her utter loss.

  “HE LEFT IT TO ELTON JOHN!” the small man erupted, clutching the arms of his white wicker chair and rocking in his seat (the passage of time did little to quell the pain). “That tiny dancer,” he spewed in contempt. “That rocket man!”

  “It was quite the scandal,” Giddy admitted, and then — unknowingly explaining why Jocelyn Pill-Brickman recalled the incident while the Poseur girls did not — “in 1991.”

  Miss Paletsky gaped between the two men in absolute befuddlement. “And this…,” she paused, attempting to wrap her mind around it, “this is why you refuse to work with the girls? I don’t understand. What do they ch’ave to do with this?”

  Gideon sighed. He sympathized with her confusion—it was all so ridiculous—and yet, he was an assistant—a good one, if solemn—and understood his duty. “They were seen eating at Mariposa… the Neiman Marcus restaurant.”

  “The very same as spitting in my face!” Teddy sputtered, spitting into the air.

  “I don’t believe it,” Miss Paletksy murmured after a pause, frowning at her feet. There was a word for this. Once, when Yuri was watching View, Barbara told Elizabeth this word. “Petty,” she remembered quietly, looked up, and found Mr. Pelligan’s pale gray eyes. In a strong voice, she declared, “You are being petty!”

  “What did she say?” Mr. Pelligan elb
owed Giddy in the hip. The assistant cleared his throat, resisting a smile.

  “She believes you are being petty, sir.”

  “My dear woman!” he guffawed in shock, jiggling the ice in his glass. “I have been called many things. Delusional. Bipolar. Machiavellian. Homosexual. But, petty!”

  “But this is true,” she insisted, abandoning the ivy-bordered doorway at last and venturing boldly onto the landscaped roof. “You want to ch’ave real problem? My parents—dead. I ch’ave no one. And because I refuse to marry man who eats toenails? Oigah!” In his seat, the well-preserved man cowered. “Back to Russia,” she cried. “Cold, miserable, Land of No Opportunity Russia. Where streets are not paved in gold, but regular asphalt.”

  “You can’t go back!” Birdie, who’d been eavesdropping from the fire escape, suddenly wailed, her right eye lolling to the sky.

  “But I can,” Miss Paletsky—who didn’t have the time to be startled—contradicted, resolute. Mr. Pelligan watched the Russian teacher with wide eyes as she slowly approached him. “And you want to know why?” she asked, gazing down with the fierceness of Atocha himself. “Because at least I accomplish something. So, I cannot ch’ave American dream. At least I bring together four girls who can.”

  Young Birdie clasped her hands.

  “Please,” the young teacher continued, softening her tone. “Put this silly grudge behind you. Do not be like Elizabeth Hasselbeck.”

  Ted Pelligan leaned back in his seat, his gray eyes still wide with wonder. Everyone waited: Gideon with his slender hand on the back of his chair, his daughter, still brimming at the fire escape, and the visitor, watchful behind her octagon eyewear.

  “To be perfectly frank,” he replied hoarsely, pausing to clear his throat. “I haven’t heard a word you’ve said.”

  Birdie covered her face. Gideon gasped. “Sir!”

  “You’re surprised?” He craned his round neck to squint up at his assistant. “I’m supposed to listen with that tremendously loud outfit of hers caterwauling at me like a cat in heat?”