Poseur
Page 7
“I’m sorry.” He arranged his features into a “sad clown” face. In retaliation, Janie flipped him off. Jake widened his eyes, touching the tip of her middle finger with the tip of his.
“Friend,” he croaked in his best E.T. voice.
Janie withdrew her hand. The corners of her mouth twitched, but she stopped herself. If she cracked a smile, Jake won. She gritted her teeth. “How is it everyone in school knew about your big Summer of Love before I did?”
“Would you stop calling it that?” Jake groaned. “All we did was chill.”
A rueful laugh escaped her lips.
“Look. Charlotte and I spent twenty-four hours a day for three weeks on a movie set in the middle of nowhere. It’s weird. You’re, like, cut off from the world, in this artificial yet real place. It’s pretty intense. Charlotte’s like . . . she’s like my army buddy.”
Janie looked at him as if he’d confessed to public urination.
“I’ll do it.” She nodded after a long pause. “I’ll drive you to her place.”
“Thank you.”
“Where did you say she lived?”
“On Mulholland,” Jake sat up in his seat. “Just east of Beverly Glen.”
“Okay, but just so you know” — she flipped the blinker — “I’m gonna tell her you fart in the car.”
Jake looked stricken. “No, you are not.”
Instead of answering, his sister turned the radio up and bopped her head like a demented metronome. Jake stared. The grin on her face was seriously unsettling.
“You’re not,” he repeated with feigned confidence. Nevertheless, he — and his butt — stayed quiet the rest of the ride.
The Girl (sort of): Don John
The Getup: Vince plaid Bermuda shorts, yellow Lacoste polo, blue Burberry frill scarf, Gucci sandals, blue plastic headband from Target
Ask Charlotte Beverwil to describe her bedroom in one word and she would answer parfait, the French word for “perfect,” and the American word for “pastry.” She fit her four-poster mahogany bed, imported from a luxury store in Martinique, with a silk coverlet of meringue white and lemon yellow brocade. Her pillowcases, made from the finest Egyptian cotton, were the color of mint. A centuries-old shoji screen from Kyoto was placed, half-unfolded, beside her tiny fireplace. When the fire was lit (she made sure it almost always was), the delicate pattern of cherry blossoms lit up and flickered like stars. As a final touch, she hung a line of vintage slips all along her floor-to-ceiling bay windows. The sheer lingerie floated and filled with sunlight, an effect, Charlotte decided, that was quintessential parfait: pastry-sweet, picture-perfect, and undeniably Français.
But that afternoon, as she clung for dear life to her mahogany bedpost, the word of the day was pain. Behind her, his foot against the bed frame, Charlotte’s friend Don John strained with the laces of her jade-green corset, cinching her already tiny waist to an excruciating degree.
In addition to being the Beverwils’ next-door neighbor, eighteen-year-old Don John was also Charlotte’s true confidant. His round face, with its eternally flared nostrils and bulging “Bette Davis” eyes, was unremarkable, and his endless devotion to Tweezerman, salon hair products, and Guerlain self-tanner made the situation ten times worse. Nevertheless, Don John was convinced: his was a face that would take Hollywood by storm.
Six months ago, Don John ran away from Corpus Christi, Texas, changed his name (from the spirit crushing Dee Jay), and moved into the adobe guesthouse next door, a poolside affair belonging to the Beverwils’ ancient wheelchair-bound neighbor, an ex-Hollywood producer who went by the name “Mort.” In exchange for “light housework, meal preparation, and stimulating conversation,” Don John got to live at Mort’s rent-free. Charlotte had no idea how he managed to fulfill his duties to Mort and spend nearly twenty-four hours a day with her, but he did. If she so much as mentioned his real job, Don John clucked his tongue and said, “Oh, the old bean can wait.” Who was Charlotte to argue? She needed Don John. Don John was the best personal stylist a girl could ask for.
Or so she thought until this afternoon.
“I can’t possibly wear this!” Charlotte cried once the corset was in place. She turned toward one of her many gilded mirrors. “I look like a Moulin Rouge background dancer!”
“And?” Don John cocked his head, perplexed. What kind of girl didn’t want to look like a Moulin Rouge background dancer?
“Just, get it off! Get it off!”
“Yes, Miss Charlotte,” Don John grumbled like Mammy in Gone with the Wind. Gone with the Wind was Don John’s favorite movie. Moulin Rouge was a close second.
“Why does everything make me look like I’m trying so hard?” Charlotte complained.
“Because you are,” Don John replied, sitting on the edge of her bed. “You need to relax. It’s not like you’re getting married.”
“I know,” she sighed with a dreamy smile. What if she and Jake did get married? Stranger things were possible.
“Okay, okay, okay!” Don John snapped his freshly buffed fingers in front of her face. “What’s your mantra?”
“Clothes before bros,” she replied. But she’d never believed it less. Charlotte peeled the loosened corset from her waist and, like a true chipie, threw it against wall. Don John was not pleased.
“Just look what you did to Dylan Leão!” he scolded.
Technically the corset was by the British designer Vivienne Westwood — but Don John never called clothes by their maker. He had a whole other method, one he imposed on Charlotte like a military commando. Per his instruction, she must a) keep a journal with a strict record of every outfit she ever wore for every boy she ever kissed, and b) if the guy got so far as to actually remove something, name that garment in his honor. In addition to “Dylan Leão,” Charlotte christened her lavender Chloé halter “Henry Fitzgibbon,” her Nanette Lepore bolero “Max Bearman,” and her fringed Missoni mini-dress “Gopal Golshan.” And then, of course, there was Daniel Todd, the gorgeous nineteen-year-old photographer she met on the Côte d’Azur last spring. For their final night together, Charlotte paired a shrunken cashmere cardigan with a Dolce & Gabbana skirt, the back of which came together in a thrilling row of hook-and-eye clasps. Most guys would be daunted (isn’t undoing a bra enough of a challenge?), but Daniel Todd managed — hook by hook, eye by eye — until, finally, the skirt lay on the floor of his room, empty as a book jacket (and just as easy to read). Moments later, Charlotte rewarded his efforts with her virginity. Which made “Daniel Todd” the most important outfit in her closet.
“Most important outfit does not mean most important guy!” Don John reminded her when, three weeks after the event, Charlotte lay crumpled in a sobbing heap at his feet. She’d been back in L.A. for three weeks and Daniel had not called. Even though she gave him her flower.
Even though she gave him the entire bouquet.
“You know what this man is?” Don John had snipped. “A cheap trend! Something you try on, take off — then pfoo! You throw him away!”
“But why?” Charlotte moaned in despair.
“Because he is out of style!”
“Are you sure?” she whimpered. “I mean, how can you know?”
“How can you know?” he repeated for his invisible audience. Returning his focus on Charlotte, he posed the ultimate question: “Charlotte. Who decides what’s in style?”
“Vogue?”
“No, not Vogue! You! You decide what’s in style!”
From that day forth, Charlotte Beverwil reformed. Never again would she let a guy mean more to her than the latest accessory — the stupid trinket you pick up as an afterthought only to forget about in the car ride home from Neiman’s. Guys were no more than that thing you wear on impulse, only to later reexamine in photographs and ponder, What the hell was I thinking? Once you see guys that way, it’s so much easier to get involved. Which is to say not involved. For months Charlotte went on this way. For months, she had it all figured out.
And
then she met Jake Farrish.
Just the thought of him made her feel soft and sweet and gooey, like a Cadbury egg left in the sun. To think she’d once ignored him. To think she’d been so clueless! It seemed impossible now, and yet — who could have known that underneath the pimple lived a prince?
As Don John disappeared into her closet, Charlotte returned to the idea of marriage. The more she thought about it, the more inevitable it seemed. She and Jake would fall in love, date through high school, and, because of outside pressure, break up before college. Charlotte would attend La Sorbonne in Paris, consume nothing but coffee and cuticles, and begin a destructive affair with a handsome but cruel professor of . . . botany. Meanwhile, Jake would inherit the craft service business, take up fishing, start drinking, and date a simpleminded wardrobe assistant named Charlene. Five years later, Jake and Charlotte would run into each other (perhaps at a gas station in Cherbourg, France?), look deeply into each other’s eyes, and . . .
“This is it!” Don John pranced from her closet, pinched the corners of a red DVF skirt, and snapped it out like a bullfighter. “Am I right?”
Charlotte sighed. “I don’t think so.”
“Okay, who is this guy?” He threw the skirt to the walnut and maple chequerboard floor. “Orlando Bloom?”
She collapsed across her bed. “Imagine the one guy in the world who never goes out of style.”
“Oh, sweetie. Everything goes out of style.”
“Not everything.”
“Name one thing,” Don John challenged. “Besides this boy, I mean. And Orlando Bloom.”
She furrowed her brow in thought. There had to be something. And then in a flash it came to her. “That’s it!” She bolted upright.
“What? What’s it?”
Charlotte faced her dear confidant with an expression so bright, he actually winced. She clapped her hands like a baby seal.
“I figured out what to wear!”
The Girl: Blanca (last name unknown)
The Getup: Gray wool fishbone knee-length skirt, gray button-down collared cotton shirt, white apron, Naturalizer black loafer pumps, rattlesnake tattoo on lower back (top secret)
Blanca, the Beverwil’s dame de la maison (French for “lady butler”), let the twins in with a small nod. As far as nods go, Blanca’s was top-notch: inviting yet scornful, deferential yet superior, polite yet withering. She was tall and severe and dour. Her hair, black and streaked with gray, was pulled into a bun the size of a bullet. Her skin — the color of leather, but thin as paper — revealed a spastic blue vein at her temple. Her heavily lidded eyes gleamed with what looked like slicks of Vaseline. Her mouth was thin and wide like a frog’s, and so firmly clamped as to render it airtight and impenetrable. Could a mouth like that speak? Eat? Could it laugh?
Could it even breathe?
Jake and Janie didn’t dare ask. They followed the lady butler through the black wrought-iron Beverwil gates with the quiet reverence of fairy-tale orphans.
Chateau Beverwil looked like your basic Hollywood manor on growth hormones. The main house was an 8,000-square-foot Spanish Colonial with classic Honduran mahogany windows and exterior doors. Upon entry, however, old-fashioned gave way to ultra-modern. Everything, from the bold abstract art to the high-concept furniture, ran in straight, neat lines. Even the beams of sunlight, which streamed in from pristine windows and skylights, seemed thought-out, controlled, designed. Jake and Janie had never seen anything like it. It was like entering the Apple Store of the Gods.
Blanca shut the door with a solid thud. Janie held her breath as two doves lifted into the air. A moment later, the doves returned to the exposed ceiling rafters, turned to one another, and softly cooed.
Then they crapped all over the floor.
Without missing a beat, Blanca yanked a cloth from within the folds of her light gray skirt and kneeled to the floor. Janie made a motion to help, but Blanca blocked her with a small, waxen hand. Janie stepped aside, allowing Blanca to wipe the mess with one of her patented mixed-expressions (this time: repugnance and pleasure.)
“Hey!” a voice fluttered from above. The twins turned from the spectacle of Blanca vs. Birds to the crest of a wide, sweeping staircase. Charlotte stood — one hand on the wrought-iron banister, the other on her angular hip — and smiled. She was wearing the most perfect little black dress Janie had ever seen. It was the kind of little black dress Audrey Hepburn might wear. The kind of little black dress every girl was supposed to own, but no girl ever did. It was the little black dress of myth. The little black dress of dreams. The little black dress that stays in style. Forever.
“Thanks for stopping by.” Charlotte stepped lightly downstairs. “If I don’t take care of these things right away, I never take care of them. Know what I mean?”
They didn’t.
“You mean I didn’t tell you?” Charlotte touched her hand to her forehead. (Why was she acting like a bad actress?) “Jake, um, you left something in my car.”
“I did?” He continued to look perplexed.
Charlotte turned to Janie with a trembling smile. If Janie didn’t know better, she could have sworn she was nervous. But girls like Charlotte didn’t get nervous.
Did they?
“Can you hold on for just a sec?” Charlotte asked. And then she went upstairs — more swiftly than she came down — hips swaying, butt bouncing, feet slipping from their black kitten-mule heels. Jake couldn’t help but stare.
Janie couldn’t help but stare at him staring.
Once she was out of sight, Charlotte bolted down the hall and knocked on her older brother’s bedroom door with all her might. She loved an excuse to knock with all her might. Her bony little knuckles were harder than brass.
“What?” He appeared at last, his face a plaster of annoyance. She’d interrupted a crucial set of sit-ups, but Charlotte didn’t care. She yanked the iPod wire from his ear like a weed.
“You need to help me. Now.”
“Um . . . no,” he replied, attempting to close the door.
“It’s important!” Charlotte stopped the door with her lightning-quick size-six foot. Her brother groaned.
“Don’t you have Bonbon for this sort of thing?”
“Don John,” she corrected, “is walking Mort.” She pushed her way into his room, shutting the door behind her. She leaned up against it and her breast heaved with urgency. “There’s a girl downstairs,” she informed him in a harsh whisper.
“What?”
“You need to distract her.”
“Why? Who is she?” he asked, growing suspicious. Charlotte took a deep breath, readying herself for a lengthy explanation. Her brother stopped her like a crossing guard. “Wait! Wait! Never mind!” he ordered. She closed her mouth. “Okay,” he continued once he was safe. “All I wanna know is, is she hot?”
Charlotte squinched her nose at the word “hot.” She knew it was in her best interest to say yes, but she was feeling a little stingy. She had made a real effort to be nice to Janie — she’d even said hello — and Janie had narrowed her eyes like a viper. True, Charlotte teased her in the ninth grade, but that was, like, a year ago. Janie Farrish should know better. Grudges are the pastime of old ladies and gang members, not attractive young girls. Attractive young girls obsess over themselves, not other people.
Could it be Janie didn’t quite know she was attractive?
After all, her transition from Ignorable to Adorable came at mind-bending warp speed, and identity-switches that quick can screw with the system. But while Jake handled his with unparalleled cool, Janie was completely freaking out. Charlotte guessed she suffered from an acute Ugly Duckling Complex, or “UDC.” Charlotte was concerned — not because she cared about Janie, but because she cared about her future with Jake. As long as his sister’s UDC went untreated, Janie would continue her grudge, which meant she might do or say anything to turn Jake against her.
Charlotte wasn’t about to let that happen.
“Well?” Evan prompt
ed. “Is she hot or not?”
“She’s . . . okay,” Charlotte managed to admit. Her brother raised his eyebrows with interest. He knew his sister too well. Charlotte insisted her friends — who looked like hairless dogs in makeup — were “cute.” Only the very hottest girls earned the resentful “she’s . . . okay.”
“ She’s okay, huh?”
Charlotte smiled. She knew her brother too well. Nothing excited him more than a “she’s . . . okay.” Now Evan would flirt his head off, Janie’s UDC would be gone in half a heartbeat, and Jake would finally belong, truly and completely, to Charlotte.
“So?” Charlotte repressed a smug smile of triumph. “Will you do it or what?”
He pulled a fresh t-shirt over his cherished abs and grinned. “Do it.”
Evan could not believe his truly excellent luck. Not only was the girl downstairs hot, she was that hot girl. The hot girl with the dress. Or was that green thing a skirt? Like any self-respecting guy, he could never remember the difference.
Since their salsa bar encounter, he’d decided to ask around about a girl named “Jane”; no one seemed to know who on earth he was talking about. There wasn’t a chance of their crossing paths in class (Evan was a senior and Jane, he guessed, was a junior or a sophomore), and the next Town Meeting wasn’t for another two days. He loitered around Baja Fresh, but she never showed again. Weird. Winston was a fairly small school. Could a girl like that just disappear?
And then, just as mysteriously, reappear in his parents’ foyer?
Evan tramped downstairs in his bare feet and greeted her with his best hot guy grin. “Whattup.”
“What,” Janie stammered. “Um, hi.” Her foot turned toward her ankle, like it always did when she was discombobulated. Heath Ledger Boy was Charlotte’s brother? She couldn’t believe it. If her foot turned a fraction of a degree more, her ankle might snap.
“I was beginning to think you were abducted,” he joked.
“What?” Janie felt her cheeks grow hot. “Why would you . . . ? Ha. Abducted. No.”