Petty in Pink

by Compai

  “Oh my God…” She flicked some water off her fingers, rolling her eyes.

  “See? You can’t even take me seriously.”

  “Dude!” she sputtered, and—before she could think it through—pushed his shoulder. “It’s my earlobes that are dominant. Not my entire being.”

  “Yeah, well… you’re wrong.”

  “You actually think I dominate you,” she said with a self-conscious smirk, like, Thanks for making me say the stupidest thing in the world, and bobbed her eyebrows, cuing him to respond. But he just looked at her. And this time she didn’t look away. In the corner of her eye, she saw him rubbing his knee, wiping off miniscule grains of gravel. Her mouth twitched, begging for a joke, for something to say—but then his hand left his knee, and she forgot how to think. He was brushing back a strand of her hair; he was hooking it gently behind her ear. Tiny thrills branched across her face and neck, electrifying her veins. She’d never felt so awake. She’d never felt so completely out of it. She’d dreamed of this moment a million times—to have a boy brush her hair from her face, to hook it gently behind her ear; it was the most romantic thing in the world, even more than kissing because it required nothing from her: she wouldn’t be able to mess it up. He did it again, and this time lingered at her ear, slowly tracing the edge, his brow furrowed with boyish concentration. At last, he found it—the softest part—compressing it gently between his forefinger and thumb. She willed herself to look at him, to actually sustain eye contact, but, except for that one time, didn’t have the courage. Instead, blushing into her lap, she thought about the big bang—how a tiny speck of nothing became an infinite everything—not only stars and planets but, like, time. And light. And space. It had always seemed so impossible; now, it made perfect sense. The mystery was something else. The mystery was when.

  How do you choose your moment to explode?

  And then she looked up. For no reason at all. Except, she found out, to kiss him. So, they were kissing.

  They were kissing.

  The Gangsta: Seedy Moon

  The Getup: Eat it or wear it

  They were kissing. Y’all see that? Everything cool. Never mind it felt about as natural as kissing a coatrack. Or his cousin Malaika in the second grade. But if he could get through a kiss, then things were all right. That seaweed ingredient? Just a coincidence. Vee wasn’t Swamp Thing, she was Miss Thang. Which was why, in just a few minutes, in front his family, friends, and Tila Tequila, he was gonna get up and say so. Everyone else had made their damn toasts, why shouldn’t he?

  Vivien squeezed his hand and turned, disappearing into the scintillating crowd.

  “Hey!” He beckoned to a passing server, flashing a winning smile. The server, a jowly older dude with a jutting lower lip, hairy-ass forearms, and big ol’ baby head, sauntered over with his tray. Huh, Seedy thought. So much for L.A. waiters all being hot-to-trot actor types. “Let me at that champagne, brother,” he laughed, reaching for a glass.

  Baby Head did not laugh back.

  “Not really into this shizz,” the rapper explained to the server’s evident boredom (were his eyebrows that permanently raised type, or what?), “but I gotta make this toast, so, you know, got to clink my fork on something.…” He finally trailed off, surrendering to the server’s religiously unamused stone-face. What was with this dude? “Man,” he ventured, scratching his shaved head. “You all right?”

  The server shrugged. “Is there anythin’ ailse I can ch’elp?”

  “Nah.” Seedy took a swig of champagne and shook his head slowly. “I’m cool.”

  The server nodded; he and the champagne flutes continued on their way. Sliding a polished fork off a nearby table, Seedy watched after him.

  He’d have to look into this catering company.

  Clattering his fork to the side of his glass, he greeted the glittering crowd, walking backward. “Spuh-eech!” Tiombé, the backup vocalist on Lil’ Miss Chang, cried out, raising her fist. Within seconds, every guest was his, hooting and hollering and calling his name.

  “See-dy! See-dy! See-dy!”

  “Ah, ha-ha!” He beamed his appreciation, mounted the polished marble stairs that led to the next room, and scanned the hundreds of gleeful, shining faces. “Vee,” he bellowed in a mock-authoritative baritone, eliciting an inevitable high-pitched whooooo!!! followed by a cackling round of applause. By the wall of rose curtains, Vivien hid her face in her hands, shaking her elaborately coiffed head. “Get up here, baby!” Seedy warned, and she lowered her hands to her mouth, gazed at her friends with bright, embarrassed eyes, and then surrendered, lifting up her pink chiffon mermaid skirt and trotting gaily through the crowd. In seconds, she was at Seedy’s side, bowing with laughter and clapping her hands.

  “As y’all know by now!” Seedy began, and then smiled, waiting for his audience to simmer down. “As you all know!” He began again, and this time the volume took a dip. “I am a songwriter.”

  A smattering of laughter convulsed through the room. Of course they knew. He was Seedy Moon! The hip-hop giant took a deep breath and cleared his throat. The crowd was pretty quiet now—just a sea of expectant faces. A sea, you know. Like where seaweed was from. No, wait. That wasn’t right.

  “We rhymers be trippin’!” he continued, soliciting another round of laughter—a little quieter this time. He rubbed his chin and frowned. Had he forgotten a line, or…? Looking up, he noticed his daughter—she was standing by the piano, her forehead furrowed with worry. Beside her, Lena squeezed her shoulder and, suddenly aware of his attention, nodded once, encouraging him to go on.

  “As y’all know…”

  “Baby!” With an embarrassed smile to her audience, Vivien linked his arm and leaned in close, hissing through her teeth. “What do we all know?”

  Lightly twisting free from her arm, Seedy stepped back, searching her familiar face. “Did you…,” he began in a low voice. “Did you do it?”

  “Do what?” she whispered, nervously aware of the crowd, now burbling with curiosity and concern.

  “Melissa’s contest,” he replied, still searching her face.

  “What are you talking about?” she frowned, dropping his arm. “Are you messin’ with me?”

  “LIAR!” A voice boomed, and sent seismic swells of wrath across the room. The multitude of guests turned to the back of the room. Miss Paletsky gasped in horror.

  “Yuri!” she cried, gaping at a squat, barrel-shaped cater-waiter stationed at the other end of the piano. “What are you doing ch’ere?”

  “You think I don’t find out? You think I am byeaz oom yets? YOU!” He whirled on his heel, pointed a trembling, hairy-knuckled finger up at Seedy, and glared across the room. “You think you can ch’ave double life, eh?” He spat on the floor. “Why don’t you face me like man?”

  “Gloopei slepits!” Lena erupted, flushed with mortification. “What do you think?” she warned, and inexplicably clutched her pink nano. “I don’t call police?”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Seedy interrupted loudly but clearly, and then, with his hardest gangsta glare, stepped down the stairs. One by one, his people moved aside, parting for him like the Red Sea, and Yuri hacked a noisy cough, pressing a napkin to his moistened, unimpressed lips. Beads of sweat glistened on his skull and dampened the buttoned white shirt that strained, against all odds, to contain his pendulous gut. In contrast, Seedy was compact, svelte—a muscle-bound machine. The Russian crumpled his pink napkin into his fist, dropped it on the floor, and faced him with a down-turned mouth. Seedy had to give him some respect. For a dude in his shape, he was balls-to-walls crazy.

  “Say chaas!” he barked, snapping his fingers. A few unlucky guests yelped as Yuri’s Bratva, disguised this whole time as servers and valets, emerged from within the crowd and roughly shouldered them aside, among them Nikolai Mogilevich, Melissa’s steely-eyed stool bearer, and Boris “Bobo” Balagula, otherwise known as Baby Head. The men revered Yuri; in Moscow, he belonged to the Vory v zakone, an eli
te band of criminals existing in Russia since the days of the Tsar from whom Yuri was also (he’d emphatically declared over lunch at Canter’s Deli, a shred of sauerkraut quivering on his lip) directly descended. Now, since 1991, he continued his shady dealings at the Copy & Print store on Fairfax, selling black market plasma screens, cell phones, Louis Vuitton, Prada, and purebred baby dogs out of a storage basement. All his men were in on it, except, of course, for Nikolai, whom he’d hired to work the copy machine.

  As soon as Seedy became aware of Yuri’s encroaching entourage, he jerked back his chin, exhaling sharply through his nostrils. Within seconds, the rapper was flanked by his main Moon men: Harlem, G-Nugz, Reginald, and the Man from K-Town who, with a heavy sigh, reluctantly put down his half-eaten Peeps.

  Now, they were locked into a face-off: thug against thug, posse against posse.

  “You wanna do this thing?” Seedy flared, folding his extremely cut arms across his broad chest. Young Nikolai turned to Yuri with beseeching ice blue eyes.

  “What kind of night shift is this?” he complained in Russian. “I want to work Xerox, not get my ass kicked by a bunch of gang members.”

  “The boy has a point, Yuri,” Baby Head grumbled, also in Russian. “Maybe twenty years ago… but now?” He shook his head. “I am too old.”

  “Cowards,” Yuri muttered, but you could see it in his face: he too had given up. Turning to Seedy, he pushed out his lower lip.

  “We will not fight.”

  “Good,” Seedy stonily replied, still folding his arms. “My man Reg’ll escort y’all outside.”

  “Right thith way,” gap-toothed Reginald lisped, ushering them to the door. Again the crowd parted (Miss Paletsky turned to the wall, closed her eyes, and pressed her knuckles to her mouth) and the four men shuffled by, staring at the floor, enduring their Walk of Shame. As they passed a table, Yuri noticed for the first time a platter of Richart truffles. In the shadow of the platter, lying on the table, another truffle, half eaten, tilted on its side. The sight of it lying there mutilated, rejected, filled him with something like compassion. Gently, he picked it up.

  “You better put that back,” Reginald cautioned—and it was all the Russian could take. His steely eyes flashed.

  “Oigah!”

  Seedy’s henchman flinched, flew a hand to his stung forehead, and wiped off a smear of chocolate. “Fool,” he looked up from his chocolate-stained fingers in disbelief. “You juthst bean me?” The Russian licked his lips, readying his response, and Reginald frowned, reaching for a heavy crystal bowl. Yuri roared as an arsenal of hard pink candy hearts hailed down on his hard pink head, clattering hysterically to the hard marble floor. Reddening with rage, Baby Head palmed an enormous double-layered pink-frosted coconut cake, grunted a small step forward, and smashed it into Reginald’s unsuspecting face.

  Needless to say, all chaos broke loose.

  A jaw-clenched Seedy Moon raced through the crowd and, at the last possible moment, lunged, thudding his full weight into Lena’s portly tormentor; the crowd collectively gasped as together they careened across the overdressed table. Seedy hapkido-pinned his struggling opponent into place, grinding fistfuls of strawberry shortcake into his sputtering, ruddy face. With a flap of his burly arms, Yuri scooped frosting into his thick hands, clapping it explosively to his rival’s ears. The table tipped over with a crash, tumbling the two men to the floor, burying them both in an avalanche of crushed cakes, finger sandwiches, silverware, and plates. All around them, people pushed and shrieked, desperate to evade a fatal dry-cleaning bill. At another table, Baby Face and G-Nugz went at it, wrestling in an oozing swamp of pink caviar, stuffing icy shrimp down their shirts, shrieking like two girls at a pool. Young Nikolai ducked for cover, cowering behind a potted indoor tree, firing sour cherry meringues like grenades. A slimy slice of smoked salmon slapped Vivien across the face and she screamed, clawing for the ballroom door. At the relatively pristine piano, Melissa consoled a sobbing Tila Tequila (who’d just been Carrie’d in chilled strawberry gazpacho), surreptitiously wiping her salmony fingers on the MySpace diva’s convulsing back. As Miss Paletsky grabbed her hand, pulling her toward the poolside exit with everyone else, pink parakeets panicked, screeching inside their cages, watching in horror as their Peeps brethren scattered across the floor, crushed in moments by the stampede of heels.

  And all the while, as the situation spiraled out of control, Jules watched curiously from a relatively quiet corner of the expansive room. I do not think this would happen in Switzerland, he frowned as the now decapitated Cupid lurched through the air and crashed through the rose-draped window, chased by a flock of shrimp projectiles. Something hard skidded across the floor, thwacking to a stop at his shiny dress shoe. He bent to his knees, picking it up. A tiny pink candy heart. He looked up, observing again this impossible American pandemonium. He abhorred food fights; they were worse than boorish; they flew in the face of basic humanity. Hundreds of thousands of people going hungry in the world, he thought, flicking from his cheek a gob of pale pink frosting. How do they justify it? And yet, there with the miniature heart’s weight in his palm, he couldn’t deny the tiniest urge to throw it. He sighed, disturbed by this new development—it was so unlike him. But maybe that was precisely the point. His heart was broken, and, well, he wanted to do something as unlike him as possible, to get away from himself—if only for a moment. He scanned the horde for Charlotte, and finding her nowhere, sighed. Closing his eyes, he pressed the hard, sweet heart to his lips.

  With all his might, he threw it.

  www.MoonWalksOnMan.com

  * * *

  December 13, 3:42 p.m.

  Fellow Winstonians, Fashionistas, and Fabulazzi:

  Unless y’all be livin’ under a twenty-six-carat rock, you heard what went down at my crib the other night. Well, as someone who was there, not to mention a central player, I’d like to set the record straight. Everything you heard so far?

  Is true.

  Our family thanks you for respecting our privacy during this difficult time.

  Hahahahhahaha!!!! Just kiddles, ma bibbles!

  NOW FOR THE MOTHER MCMUFFIN FACKS:

  1. Vivien Ho, my dad’s soon-to-be-very-ex-fiancée, stands accused of sabotaging the Poseur contest. (Do not even get me started on this!)

  2. Sometime during our off-the-chain Russian mafia food brawl (I’m thinking we hold one every year, haha), Gabrielle Good passed out cold—had her fancy-pantz straight up ambulanzed to Cedars—where (along with enough Adderalic beverage to TKO a T-Rex) doctors discovered the teensiest bump on her precious head. Further examinating revealed a tiny but mighty heart-shaped candy caught up in her hair extensions. Now she’s claiming foul play, like, “I was attacked!” Whatever. The only thing attacking that girl’s the e-g-o-zilla. Which is a good thing because…

  3. The Treater’s along for the ride! Not to beat a dead clotheshorse, but ever since Lady GaGo’s incident (and the fameulous photo that goes with it) our baby bag’s been all over People, Us, Perez, the LA and New York Times, and (coming soon!) NYLON. Look for us in Feb’s “Fashion and Features,” y’all! Oh, and if you still haven’t gotten a Treater, best light some fire under your Fendis and get with the showgram. Ted Pelligan’s sayin’ the waitlist’s “longer than Isabella Blow’s front tooth.” Yah, we dunno what that means neither, but we think he’s saying…

  Fashion history is in the making, bébés! We can feel it.

  Yours with a cherry on top,

  Melissa, Janie, Charlotte, Petra

  In the words of Vladimir Fabokov,

  “Think like a genius, dress like a rock star,

  and speak like a child.”

  So what do you dress like, anyway?

  You can be a Janie, a Charlotte, a Petra, or a Melissa… or even a crazy combination of all four. (Hm… are you an Ottelissaniepet?)

  Whatever you design, turn the page and make their looks your own. New York City fashion label Compai shows you how. It’s easier tha
n one, two, um… spree!

  CHARLOTTE’S TOTE BAG

  You’ll need:

  1 piece of pink cotton canvas measuring 15.7 in. x 36.2 in.

  Pins

  Needle and thread

  2 heart-shaped buttons

  2 black satin ribbons, measuring 1.5 in. x 15.7 in.

  1 piece of zebra-printed silk, measuring 6 in. x 15.7 in.

  1 black satin ribbon, measuring 0.5 in. x 16 in.

  1. Cut canvas into one piece measuring 9.4 in. x 36.2 in., two pieces measuring 4.7 in. x 13.4 in., and two pieces measuring 4.7 in. x 5.5 in. Hem all raw edges.

  2. Pin smaller square pieces to rectangular pieces, then top stitch bottom and sides, creating patch pockets. Decorate with heart-shaped buttons.

  3. Fold larger piece in half and pin rectangular pieces to the sides, making sure pocket openings are facing upward. Stitch sides together.

  4. Pin one wide ribbon 2 in. from left side seam and 2 in. downward from top hem. Repeat on opposite side and stitch in place.

  5. Repeat on other side with remaining wide ribbon, making sure the straps are even, and stitch in place.

  6. Tie zebra-printed silk in a big bow and stitch knot and corners of bow to the center front of bag.

  7. Pin and stitch your thin ribbon carefully to the bottom corner of the bag, forming the word “amour” for a French touch.

  JANIE’S DRESS

  You’ll need:

  2 large identical T-shirts in contrasting colors

  Fabric chalk, to mark where to cut

  Pins

  1 sewing machine (or needle, thread, and patience)

  1. Lay both T-shirts flat and mark a line with your chalk straight through the center.