Poseur

by Compai

  “Really?” Charlotte looked perplexed. “Why?”

  “Because . . . ,” Jake continued after a soulful pause. “I missed you.”

  Charlotte raised her eyes from the ground and, for the first time during their conversation, looked directly into his. All she wanted to do was trust him. To bury her face into the soft cotton of his faded plaid cowboy shirt and breathe in until her lungs were full and her heart was bursting. But she was scared. Just when she’d gotten over him, here he was — reeling her back in. It wasn’t fair.

  Jake pressed the gray Sweet Tart into the palm of her hand. “Here.”

  “What is this?”

  “It’s, um, a Russell Crowe pill.”

  Charlotte rolled the little disk between her finger and thumb. “It’s a Sweet Tart, Jake. A really gross, really old Sweet Tart.”

  “It’s a Russell Crowe pill,” he cried out with mock severity. She cracked a small smile. “If you take this pill,” he instructed, “I promise you — I’ll go away. I will disappear into the ether. Just like Russell Crowe’s Australian roommate dude.”

  “ British roommate,” she corrected.

  “British roommate dude. Whatever.”

  Charlotte looked at Jake for what felt like a long time. And then, with a small but significant bob of her perfect, arched eyebrows, she popped the pill into her mouth. She touched him on the arm, turned on the hard, brown heel of her L’Autre Chose boot, and walked away. Jake watched her go, stunned. There was nothing he could do. Nothing he could say.

  He had lost.

  But then he had a thought.

  “You didn’t swallow!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.

  A crew of passing skaters slowed their boards. A nearby basketball game called time-out. Two ninth-grade girls shared a glance. Everyone was thinking it: Drr-rama!

  Charlotte shot Jake her best how-dare-you look. “Yeth, I didth!” she replied.

  Which was all the evidence he needed. In three swift steps he was at her side, pulling her to him. He wasn’t sure if he felt like a baller or a total doofus, but he crossed his fingers for baller and went in for the kill. He took her small, sweet face in his hands and he kissed her. He kissed her until the whole world shrunk to the size of a laundry room and the laundry room became the whole world.

  The Showroom erupted into whoops and hollers. “Get a room!” some guy yelled.

  “ That’s original!” some girl replied.

  “Yeah, you’re face is original!” the guy shot back.

  Embarrassed, Jake and Charlotte broke apart and started walking toward Assembly Hall. “By the way,” he said, pulling on one of her curls. “You’re a really bad liar.”

  “I am?” She looked up. She was still a little dazed.

  Jake opened his mouth. The stolen Sweet Tart stuck to his tongue like a button. “Ew,” Charlotte laughed, realizing what he’d done. He crunched down on the candy and chewed. His chews were loud, grotesque — triumphant. “You’re disgusting,” she declared. Jake dropped his arm across her shoulder and beamed.

  They walked to Town Meeting together.

  The Dog: Emilio Poochie

  The Getup: Blue rhinestone-encrusted Louis Vuitton collar

  At three and a half months of dating, Melissa informed Marco she refused to have sex until marriage. Marco respected her decision, especially since it had to do with Jesus, and Marco respected Jesus. “We can do other stuff though, right?” He had to ask.

  “Of course,” she replied, smiling in a way Marco found promising. They were lying in bed and talking. After a few minutes, talking turned to kissing. And then, just as he got his hands on the piranha-like hooks of Melissa’s double-D bra, she pulled away.

  “Would you just look at him?” she gasped. Slowly, reluctantly, Marco turned around. Sure enough, there he was: Melissa’s dog. Emilio Poochie propped himself up on his hind legs and peeped his head over the edge of the overstuffed mattress. He smacked his lips.

  “He misses us!” Melissa crooned with a pouty face.

  Before Marco knew what was happening, Emilio Poochie was in bed with them, sandwiched between their bodies like a fuzzy burger. “Who’s my little badabing?” Melissa gurgled as Emilio pushed his butt into her cooing face. Emilio stared at Marco with his black button eyes. Marco stared back.

  “ I’m her badabing,” Emilio Poochie gloated, sticking out the tip of his pink tongue. (More and more Marco found he could read Emilio’s thoughts.)

  Marco turned over on his back and blinked at the ceiling. Emilio Poochie’s room was just sixteen feet down the hall. And yet. His miniature princess bed, with its impossibly tiny floral comforter and candy-striped sheets, had yet to be slept in. The éclair-shaped, pink-frosted dog treats were still on the pillows. His gold-framed flat HDTV screen, with copies of such dog-friendly classics as Homeward Bound and Lady and the Tramp in the built-in shelves, remained unwatched. His Christmas present, a stroller-sized treadmill with a built-in recording of Melissa’s voice (“Emilio, come! Good boy, Emilio!”) remained unwrapped. And yes, he even had his own bathroom. Emilio’s salle de bain came with bowl-sized sinks, a ten-gallon porcelain tub with baby claw feet, a mini crystal chandelier, a flushable toy toilet, and a matching set of pink towels with embroidered gold crests. The two-foot-high vanity (with ruffled skirt and heart-shaped mirror) was fully stocked with a complete set of travel-sized BIG SEXY HAIR products. It was all a two pound ball of fluff could ask for, and Emilio had never so much as stepped inside. Why would he? Melissa’s room and his were exact replicas of each other — except Melissa’s was, in comparison, huge. Emilio was no fool. He knew the rules. And what’s the number one rule of livin’ it up?

  BIGGER IS BETTER.

  “Baby” — Marco squeezed Melissa’s smooth hand — “I’ve been thinking. Maybe it’s time Emilio slept in his own room.”

  “What?” Melissa clutched Emilio close. “Why?”

  Marco sighed. What could he say? That Emilio Poochie was slowly but surely ruining their (everything but) sex life? That Emilio beamed evil dog–thoughts into Marco’s brain twenty-four-seven? Could Marco say he was sick of leaning in for a kiss and coming up with a mouthful of fur? That he was beginning to wonder if his girlfriend’s virginity had less to do with God, and more to do with . . . Dog?

  “Melissa,” he began, working up his nerve, “it’s just, sometimes I feel . . .”

  “Oh baby,” she cut him off. Her phone was alerting her to an Unknown Caller. “Will you see who that is? I don’t want to move Emilio.”

  “It’s Charlotte,” Marco groaned, reaching for the phone.

  “Pick it up, pick it up!”

  “Melissa!” he repeated. “I am trying to communicate!”

  She pushed Emilio from her lap and leaped across the bed, snatching the phone from Marco’s hand. “Hello?” she answered. Marco shook his head in slow disbelief. Melissa rolled her eyes, pressed the phone to her chest and hissed, “It’s business.”

  “Hey, Melinoma,” sang a melodious voice on the other line. “Comment allez-vous?”

  “Did you ask your mom about Prada?” Melissa burbled in reply. During her blow-out with Vivien, Melissa had behaved as though Prada was a done deal. In fact, in the heat of the moment, she’d believed it was a done deal. Only in recent days had it occurred to her: she’d never had Prada confirmed.

  Charlotte flopped across her mint and yellow pastry bed and yawned. She’d just returned from ballet and was dead fatiguée.

  “Do you know the painting, Le Petit Déjeuner sur l’Herbe?” she asked.

  Melissa frowned. “What?”

  “It’s a famous painting of a picnic,” Charlotte explained, fingering a small hole in her tights. “The guys have their clothes on, but the girl they’re with? Completely naked.” She smiled dreamily. “Don’t you just love picnics?”

  “Sorry . . .” Melissa looked at her phone and scowled. “What does this have to do with Prada?”

  “Oh yeah. Prada,” Charlotte said.
“My mom put in a call.”

  “And?”

  “They’re happy to do it.”

  “Omigod, YES!” Melissa screamed. Emilio dipped his head and flattened his ears. “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!”

  After the third “yes,” Marco’s jaw dropped. He’d never seen Melissa this excited. In fact, up ’til then, he’d pegged his girlfriend as a non-yessing kinda girl. But he was wrong. Defeated and demoralized, he pointed to the door and mouthed I’m out.

  Melissa didn’t notice. She was too busy taking in a new, less promising piece of news.

  “No, no, no, no, no,” she moaned into the phone, sitting on the edge of her bed and switching her phone to a fresh ear. “What do you mean ‘there’s a catch’?”

  “It’s no big thing.” Charlotte pulled her peach nylon-clad knee to her nose and stretched. “You just need one more person’s approval.”

  “Who?”

  Charlotte slid her legs apart, fell into a perfect split, and grinned. “Moi.”

  “You?” Melissa grimaced. “I thought I had your okay.”

  “And you do. Assuming you give me something in return.”

  “Okay. What do you want?”

  “When I was in Paris,” Charlotte began, “I saw this couple sitting in a park. I forget which one. Le Jardin des Tuileries? Anyway. They were having a picnic. Sitting under a tree on a checked blanket. The whole clichéd spread: baguette, brie, blueberries . . . but the best part had to be the water guns. They filled them with champagne. I’m not joking. I saw them do it. They sat there, squirting each other for hours. They were having so much fun. I just thought . . . that has to be it. That has to be love. I swore one day, when I met the right guy, I’d have a picnic like that. Except better. ’Cause me and my boyfriend would be cuter.”

  “Okay,” Melissa replied, swallowing her frustration. She hated conversations like this — you ask someone what time it was, and they answer with a detailed explanation of the weather. “So . . . what is this about?”

  “Well, according to Cribs, your father bid on a case of 1990 Cristal Brut Millennium 2000 at Sotheby’s last year, and I was thinking . . .”

  “No.” Melissa paced a small circle in the middle of her white Berber carpet. “You want my dad’s Cristal?” Melissa shook her head at the impossibility of the request. “Those bottles are worth, like, seven thousand dollars each!”

  “Really?” Charlotte tsked with fake sympathy. “The water guns are only a dollar ninety-five.”

  Melissa swallowed. Not only were those bottles worth seven thousand dollars each, her father was saving them for his wedding. I do this and I’m dead, she realized, a great bubble of panic bursting in her gut. But then, just as suddenly, she imagined launching her label at the park instead of at Prada. She imagined the paper plates, the plastic cups, the stupid bouncing balloons. The horrible, smug look on Vivien’s face.

  Probably her father wouldn’t notice if one bottle was missing?

  “Fine. I’ll do it.”

  “Formidable,” Charlotte gushed into the phone. “You won’t regret it, Melissa. The Prada store on Rodeo is amazing this time of year.”

  Melissa clicked off the phone, sat on the edge of her bed and stared numbly into space. “Marco?” she called. “Marco?”

  Whenever she needed him most, Marco was gone. Emilio Poochie bounded into her lap and nuzzled into her stomach. “At least I have you,” she whispered into his ear. Emilio lapped her nose in agreement.

  The Girl: Barney’s mannequin

  The Getup: “Carcass Fantasia”

  Rodeo Drive begins at the world famous Beverly Wilshire Hotel and extends to Santa Monica Boulevard at a gentle incline, like the first half of a bridge. The sidewalks are bleach white and dinner-plate clean. Well-groomed camellias and elegant palms divide the street. Hundred-thousand-dollar cars glide by like floats in a parade: Ferrari, Porsche, Lamborghini, Aston Martin, Bentley. People stare at them and they stare back — except the Rolls Royce Phantom, which sneers with perceptible contempt (if you think the grill’s resemblance to an upturned nose is accidental, think again). Men sport deep tans and designer active wear. Women flash white teeth and four-inch heels. They emerge from plush leather drivers’ seats, frown into cell phones, and slam doors behind them. They take off down the street at the vigorous pace of the treadmill-trained. And they never stop to feed the meters, preferring to dangle handicap placards from their rearview mirrors instead.

  After Melissa’s relentless petition, Miss Paletsky granted The Trend Set leave for an “educational field trip” to Beverly Hills’ most famous street. The girls had a ton of ground to cover in a short amount of time, and — to Melissa’s endless frustration — Petra kept slowing them down. At the first sign of silicone, saline, Botox, or collagen, she stopped and stared — not because the sight surprised her, but because she had a duty. A duty to communicate disgust.

  “Petra!” Melissa stamped her foot. “Sometime today, puh-lease!”

  At the moment, Petra could not take her eyes off the white mannequin in the Barney’s department store window. The mannequin wore a camel-hair skirt with darts at the hips, glossy alligator skin knee-high boots, a wide patent-leather belt with gold buckle of interlocking Cs, and a black cashmere sweater with fox fur collar and cuffs. The collar was so huge it resembled a platter — like a serving plate for decapitated heads.

  In Petra’s humble opinion, decapitation was exactly what this mannequin deserved.

  “I refuse to go in there,” she informed the other girls.

  “What?” Melissa snapped. For Melissa, the world was pretty much divided between two drives: sex and Rodeo. But while sex drive referred to the overriding impulse to bonk (an urge Melissa couldn’t, for the life of her, understand), Rodeo Drive referred to the overriding impulse to spend (an urge Melissa lived for.) So far, Petra’s low-level Rodeo was serious cause for concern. Melissa wondered if she was some kind of pervert.

  Petra paused to do a quick tally in her head. “Do you realize that mannequin is wearing a total of FIVE animals on her body?”

  “Pet, darling,” Charlotte rolled her eyes. “ That’s why they call it the Rodeo.”

  “It’s disgusting and it’s cruel!”

  “You wanna know disgusting and cruel?” Melissa slapped her notebook to her knee. “Keeping us out in eight-hundred-degree heat, when we could be enjoying ourselves in something called air-conditioning.” In addition to air-conditioning, Barneys carried a wrap-around Ella Moss dress in a purple and black leopard print that Melissa had to have. She’d seen it in her fall issue of Teen Vogue: “Forget About Prince Charming,” read the headline. “Fall in Love with Charming Prints!”

  “I’m goin’ in,” she announced.

  “Go ahead,” Petra folded her arms. “Shop until you drop dead. Like one of those poor, innocent animals.”

  “I can not believe you just said that.” Melissa cringed, her hand on the brass door handle. “We are not shopping. We’re researching.”

  “Oh please.”

  “When I bought my Dolce & Gabbana heels, did I not find out they have a better marketing strategy than Lanvin? Whose heels I did not buy?”

  “Yes.” Charlotte lit up her second Gauloise of the afternoon. “And I found out certain consumers prefer trashy trends to plain good taste.”

  “See?” Melissa agreed, oblivious to the insult. “Research.”

  “Well, I’m with Petra,” Janie interrupted from her seat on a nearby marble fountain.

  “Sorry” — Melissa knit her eyebrows together — “was someone talkin’ to you?” Under normal circumstances, Melissa’s knit eyebrows were Janie’s cue to mumble an apology and move on. But today Janie had greater concerns than Melissa’s fluctuating mood, like the fact that she and Amelia hadn’t talked for a record three days. While the other girls tried on sunglasses and sucked down smoothies, Janie walked around in a stupor of sorrow and regret. She hadn’t said a single word all day, not that anybody had noticed. They’d
long grown accustomed to her quiet. What Melissa, Petra, and Charlotte didn’t know was, outside the world of The Trend Set, Janie wasn’t shy at all. Imagine their surprise when, instead of the repentant whisper, Janie launched into a full-fledged rant.

  “We’re about to throw some huge launch party for a label that exists why?” she bounded to her feet. “Because we say it does? Do you realize how incredibly lame that is?! It’s like NASA announcing the launch of a space shuttle and then everyone shows up and they like, fly a paper airplane! Except, wait. We don’t even have a paper airplane. We don’t have anything!”

  The three girls stared at Janie with a mixture of awe and disbelief. She was like a magic lamp, ignorable until you rubbed her the wrong way. By then a genie was released: an explosive, unpredictable, step-back-before-I-beat-your-ass genie. Charlotte glowed with admiration. Crazy Genie Janie was a major improvement to Mousy Suck-up Janie. Crazy Genie Janie was someone she could actually learn to respect. Which was convenient because, since she and Jake had gotten back together, Charlotte had renewed her vow to be nice.

  “Janie has a point,” Charlotte nodded.

  “ Yeah, I have a point!”

  “Okay, fine,” huffed Melissa. “But what are we supposed to do? The party is this Saturday and don’t even ask me to reschedule. You have no idea how much work I put into this.” She narrowed her eyes at Charlotte. “Not to mention champagne.”

  Charlotte raised an invisible glass. “Chin Chin!”

  “Okay . . .” Janie took a deep, calming breath. “How much are you guys planning to spend on new outfits for the party?”

  “Do we have to discuss money?” Charlotte asked with wincing sweetness. “It’s a little gauche.”

  “You wear Chanel sunglasses and drive a Jag,” Petra scoffed. “If that’s not ‘discussing money’ I don’t know what is.”

  “Sorry, what was that?” Charlotte feigned incomprehension. “I don’t speak hippie.”

  “Okay, stop!” Janie flared. She tore through her army green canvas tote and fished out the crumpled twenty she made babysitting the Longarzos. “This is what I plan on spending.”