Cat's Meow
Authors: Melissa de la Cruz
SCRIBNER PAPERBACK FICTION
Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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New York, NY 10020
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2001 by Melissa de la Cruz
Illustrations copyright © 2001 by Kim DeMarco
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
SCRIBNER PAPERBACK FICTION
and design are trademarks of Macmillan Library Reference USA, Inc., used under license by Simon & Schuster, the publisher of this work.
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Designed by Colin Joh
Set in Goudy Old Style
Manufactured in the United States of America
5 7 9 10 8 6 4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
De la Cruz, Melissa, 1971-
Cat’s meow : a novel / Melissa de la Cruz ; illustrated by Kim DeMarco.
p. cm.
1. Young women—Fiction. 2. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction. 3. Fashion—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3604.E43 C38 2001
813′.6—dc21 2001020467
ISBN 0-7432-0504-9
ISBN: 978-0-7432-0504-7
eISBN: 978-1-439-14333-9
For Mike Johnston
This book would not be possible without the following people: my wise and patient editor, Doris Cooper; my fabulous co-conspirator, Kim DeMarco; my tireless agent, Stacey Glick at Jane Dystel; the indomitable Hint party patrol: Lee Carter, Horacio Silva, and Ben Widdicombe.
I would also like to thank Airié Dekidjiev, Jessica Jones, Todd Oldham, Tim Blanks, Tom Dolby, Simon Doonan, Michael Musto, John Strausbaugh, Andrey Slivka, Geoff Kloske, Kathleen Cowan, Liza Sciambra, Amy Larocca, Jennie Kim, Mindy Schultz, Caroline Suh, Ellen Morrissey, Thad Sheely, Gabriel Sandoval, Ruth Basloe, Alicia Carmona, Peter Edmonston, Andy Goffe, Gabriel de Guzman, Tristan Ashby, and Tyler Rollins for their friendship and enthusiasm.
Last, I extend heartfelt thanks to my family: Bert and Ching de la Cruz, Francis de la Cruz, and Steve and Christina Green, whose love and support have been invaluable.
You’re a slave to fashion and your life is full of passion … But you keep asking the question One you’re not supposed to mention When will I, will I be famous?
—Bros, “When Will I Be Famous?”
I’ve learned a tremendous amount from maids in my life.
—Diana Vreeland, DV
1 Introducing the Quixotic Cat
4 Bankruptcy, Barneys, and Public Humiliation?
5 Charity Begins at Home: The China Syndrome
8 Three Plans and an Unexpected Coincidence
14 Motherhood: The Latest Urban Affectation
19 Thanksgetting and a Proposal
25 The Return of the Park Avenue Princess
avant le déluge
1.
introducing the quixotic cat
M
y name is Cat McAllister. Tonight I will celebrate my twenty-fifth birthday for the fourth time. Things I like: birthdays. Things I don’t like: liars.
I’m the kind of girl who laughs loudly, smokes incessantly, and appears to be hell-bent on destroying herself, but
stylishly
. Really, I should have tragically overdosed by now. Or else succumbed to some harrowing disease brought on by vodka tonics and Tic Tacs. So the least I can do is
refuse
to age gracefully—to defy it every step of the way, just like Melanie Griffith.
I used to be famous—well, maybe famous is too strong a word. I began my career as the smiling baby on the side of the Pampers box, an auspicious beginning considering Jodie Foster started out as a bare-bottomed Coppertone kid. But unlike Jodie, whose preeminence in Hollywood began through roles in movies like
Taxi Driver, Freaky Friday,
and
Stealing Home
(a rare stumble), and who ultimately garnered double-fisted Academy Awards, I auditioned for the role of Gertie in E.T. but ended up the poor man’s Punky Brewster. My specialty was variations on orphan roles: on
Miami Vice
I played a spunky street urchin, on
Growing Pains
the Seavers’ stray before Leonardo diCaprio usurped my role with that bowl haircut and dimple of his, and on
Webster
, where I became lifelong friends with Emmanuel Lewis. The apex of my career came when I starred in my very own network vehicle. I played the precocious adolescent adopted by Pat Morita and Dyan Cannon, but our little “dramedy” failed after one season. Apparently the world wasn’t ready for
Party of One
.
As a teenager, I was set to reign as the Gisele of the day—the ruling model of Paris, London, and Milan—but instead I became an Asahi beer calendar girl in Tokyo. In fact, I’m the sixth Spice. I tripped on my five-inch platforms on the way to the MTV shoot and missed out on the taping of the “Wannabe” video. I’m stuck in that seventh circle of celebrity hell where I’m just recognizable enough that people think they know who I am but on second thought can’t place me for the life of them.
Oh, well.
Maybe the reason I turn twenty-five every year is that I feel like I’m in a holding pattern. Because while I’ve done
almost
everything and been
almost
everywhere and I know
almost
everybody in New York, I’m nowhere on the
New York Observer’s
yearly sociopopularity index. My one consolation is that I own the appropriate wardrobe should Annie Lebowitz ever come calling—a closet full of designer labels, ostrich feathers, fox stoles, tulle underwear, silk kimonos, sequin shifts, and cigarette holders. I even own the pink dress Marilyn Monroe wore in
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
(Madonna has a
knockoff
).
Things you
won’t
find in my closet: shoulder pads, tie-dye, wash-and-wear.
My life just wasn’t supposed to be so … stagnant. Everyone who’s anyone has certainly moved on from the impromptu-striptease-on-the- dance -floor stage—now either glowingly pregnant and happily married while launching their own clothing line or making their directorial debuts at Sundance or overseeing billion-dollar
cosmetics companies—the jet set is simply so
talented
now (days of lolling about in chair sedans decidedly over)—but the only thing I seem to have accomplished is the ability to shop while blindfolded. How utterly humiliating to realize that I still haven’t made a handsome match while saving the world with a cure for cancer, or at least hosting a benefit for the cause.
It’s terribly unfair, because I was
made
for paparazzi stalkers and tabloid headline notoriety. After all, I was born on Park Avenue and baptized just down the street from the holy temple of Bergdorf Goodman. Daddy was an up-by-his-bootstraps kind of guy, a self-made businessman from Queens whose success bought prime beach-front acres in East Hampton. Mummy was a woman of devastating beauty and outlandish charm—she was a flight attendant. They met over first-class cocktails sometime in 1970. Back then Mummy wore a smart little Yves Saint Laurent uniform made of blue polyester with orange trim, but she soon graduated to Saint Laurent couture. Yet for all her efforts to penetrate the Mortimer’s-American Ballet Committee-Rockefeller Foundation crowd, Mummy was always too
nouveau
even for the
nouvelle,
who saw her as a vulgar interloper (this was before the eighties, mind). When my father lost a sizable amount of his net worth through a series of bad investments—million-dollar restaurants that never gained more than one star in a
New York Times
review, waterfront property for a baseball stadium that never materialized, a controlling interest in Betamax—she stopped trying to fit into New York society altogether.