Catwalk (31 page)

Aphro isn’t the only one who doesn’t want to go home. What else could explain why I’m slouching my shoulders and dragging my feet instead of “representing” in the courtyard of my building complex? We live in the Amsterdam Gardens, on West 114th Street, which I’ve nicknamed Chicken Little Central because it seems like the ceiling is always on the verge of collapsing. All it takes, however, to snap me back into Catwalk sashay mode is a shrill salutation from the rear. “Hey there, supermodel!” shouts Mrs. Watkins, one of my neighbors. Everybody in Building C knows that I’m going to be a model, so they’re always calling me out.

Turning around, I straighten my shoulders and flash the on-camera smile that I learned in Modeling 101. Ms. London’s instruction still echoes in my ear:
Widen your eyes and stretch the corners of your mouth, but not too far like the Joker!

“Hi, Mrs. Watkins,” I say, cheerfully.

“The jackpot is up to seventy-three million today. Yes
indeed
!” she exclaims. Mrs. Watkins buys a Lotto ticket every week—and by the way she talks about
it, she makes you feel this could be her lucky day, or yours.

“Well, I hope you hit the big time,” I say, secretly wishing the same for myself. Then I share an international tidbit that Felinez told me: “The El Gordo lottery in Madrid is three billion dollars!”

“I wish I lived in Spain, but I’d better be winning something here. Shoot—been buying these tickets for twenty years. My number’s gotta come up sometime,” she professes, tightening her grip on the shopping bags she’s hoisting in both hands. Mrs. Watkins works across the street at Piggly Wiggly supermarket and is always loaded with bags brimming with bulky items. I open the door for Mrs. Watkins, and she walks into the lobby.

“I sure hope we have heat up in here,” she says, wishfully.

“I know,” I second, looking around for our landlord, Mr. Darius.

“He better had done something, cuz that trifling boiler has been fixed more times than the New York State lotto!”

Nodding in agreement, I follow Mrs. Watkins inside, but turn to see if anybody else is coming so I can hold the door. Alas, I spot Mrs. Paul, another neighbor, who lives across the hall from me. I wish Mrs. Paul would play the Lotto, because maybe she’d feel lucky enough to smile sometime. I wait patiently while she
barrels toward me like a bulldog, with a cute, curly-haired boy wearing a dingy green plaid shirt and high-water brown tweed pants.

As if reading my mind, Mrs. Watkins says in a hushed voice, “Heard her daughter went back to Georgia. Left her son up here. What on earth she got him wearing? Poor child.”

I nod but keep my eye on Mrs. Paul, who finally barges through the door. I smile, but experience has taught me not to be too chirpy or she’ll give me the evil eyeball.

Sure enough, Mrs. Paul glares at me, swinging her vintage black vinyl purse like she’s about to whack me.

“Hi,” I say quietly to the boy as he whisks by.

The dimples set in his face as he beams at me.

“Come on, Eramus,” commands Mrs. Paul.

“Eramus. What a cool name,” I say, involuntarily. He beams at me again as we walk toward the elevator bank.

“So who is that you got there?” asks Mrs. Watkins, even though she obviously knows that Eramus is Mrs. Paul’s grandson.

“Never mind all that,” Mrs. Paul shoots back at Mrs. Watkins.

“Well, hold on to your hot sauce.
She
actually spoke to those less worthy,” Mrs. Watkins mumbles under her breath. “Today must be my lucky day, indeed.”

I feel a giggle come on, but I instinctively squelch it, since Mrs. Paul is not above tattling to my mother. Last summer, she scolded my mother for letting me wear Juicy sweatpants. She thought the Juicy logo plastered on my butt was “false advertising.” (We’re still not sure if she meant that the word was too suggestive or that my butt is too skinny to be considered “juicy.”) The four of us crowd into the empty elevator and Eramus stares up at me again, his big brown eyes twinkling.

“How old are you?” I ask him.

“Eight,” he answers.

The elevator opens onto Mrs. Watkins’s floor. “Good night, all,” she says, making a point of brushing her big shopping bags against Mrs. Paul’s nubby wool vintage black coat.

Mrs. Paul bristles at the contact, but Eramus and I say, “Good night!” in unison. Then we giggle.

When we get to my floor, Mrs. Paul marches down the hall to her apartment with Eramus. He turns and stares at me, and I’d swear his eyes are pleading, “Help me!”

Shaking my head, I go inside my apartment. Ramon is sitting at the dining room table, reading a Home Depot catalog, which is like his Bible. I wish Ramon was equally obsessed with computers, but no such luck. “She’s in the bedroom,” he says, his eyes darting in that direction. The dim spotlight above the dining alcove
reflects off Ramon’s skin, which resembles undercooked bacon. My mother does not refer to Ramon as her boyfriend but I guess you could say he is. They broke up over the summer, but two weeks ago he resurfaced and hopefully so will the dilapidated bathroom, if you catch my drift.

“Okeydokey,” I say, then duck into my room quickly, because I’ve got to get the hookup list ready pronto. Unfortunately, I’m not quick enough to avoid my sister, Chenille. She waddles down the hallway with a frosted blond wig on a white Styrofoam head in her hand. “Is that Mom’s?” I ask in disbelief. I know that the Beverly Johnson shag wig is the jewel of her wig collection.

“Yup. Gotta get it ready for wig class tomorrow. No point in using one of their ratty ones when I can do Mom’s,” Chenille says, showing off. It’s bad enough my younger sister is already clocking ducats aplenty from her burgeoning press-and-curl clientele in our building complex, but now even my own mother has succumbed to her styling shadiness.

“Geez, now I’ve seen it all,” I mutter out loud.

“No, you haven’t seen it all,” counters Chenille with that stupid smirk on her face.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask.

“Well, let’s just say I saw more in the hair annex today than wig heads. These heads were attached to
bodies—and they were whispering about
the House of Pashmina
!”

“Why would I listen to someone—over the age of five—who hoards Halloween candy under their mattress?” I say, realizing that Chenille is probably pulling a
“Psych!”
We do it to each other all the time, but she’s just not as good at it as I am.

“You’d better stay out of my room,” warns Chenille, trying to mask her blushing cheeks.

“Puhleez. I was looking for my flat iron—cuz I know you stole it!”

“You’re lucky I’m not holding it in my hand right now,” Chenille says, glaring at me.

“It figures that would be your weapon of choice!” I say, sneering all the way to my room.

Slamming my bedroom door shut, I turn on my computer and stare at the screen, waiting patiently for it to turn that beautiful shade of sky blue that Angora adores.
Please, Cyber God, crank it up!

As I wait, I decide to try Angora again. Luckily, she picks up the phone.

“Bonsoir!”
she coos.

“Where’ve you been?” I ask.

“Oh, Je’Taime’s here,” she says, apologetically. Angora lives on the Upper West Side with her father. Je’Taime is her dad’s psychic from Baton Rouge. I can just see the head-wrapped high priestess with the long
false eyelashes and acrylic tips on her fingernails coddling Angora and her dad with her crystal ball predictions and motherly gumbo. Angora adores Je’Taime as much as she despises her mom, the manners maven behind Ms. Ava’s Etiquette and Charm School in Baton Rouge.

“
She
called today to tell me that she is now to be referred to as an international protocol consultant,” Angora says, exasperated. Angora never refers to Ms. Ava as her mom.

“That sounds very Inspector
Chérie
,” I giggle in my French accent.

“I know
she
was really checking up on
us
. She should just stick her fingers in her garden in Hysteria Lane instead of my business. I mean, it’s not like she really cares about me.”

“You sure she doesn’t care about you?” I ask in disbelief.

“The only thing Ava Le Bon cares about is money—and manners, in that order,” claims Angora. “And I sure don’t want her money, or manners like hers,
merci.
”

While Angora is talking, my manners abruptly go AWOL. I can’t hear a word of her angst, because I’m too busy pondering the tiddy Chenille just dropped on me like a think bomb. “Have you heard anything—about me?” I ask, interrupting her family flow with my
paranoia, and repeating Chenille’s foreboding verbatim. “Aphro is spooking me and suddenly Chenille is peeping intel about, um, my organization?”

“I’m not sure what is going on with Aphro, I noticed it, too, but I think Chenille just wants your attention. That’s why she provokes you,” Angora advises me. “If you would just see her potential. I mean she really is talented, Pash.”

“Okay, that’s a wrap and a falafel on that style-free subject,” I say, curtly.

But now Angora is like a dog with a bone: she just won’t leave it alone. “You should be an only child and see what it feels like.”

“Sign me up
—pronto
!” I insist.

“
C’est la vie
. Can I hear about your visit to the Lynx Lair,
s’il vous plaît
?” pleads Angora.

“Oh, right,” I say, remembering she is hyped to hear about the Design Challenge. I break it down. “Benjamin beckons.”

“
Absolument
. Things you see every day?” repeats Angora, mulling over the challenge. “That would be all the rabbits overrunning my apartment!”

“Oh, no!” I counter. “We’re not featuring the animal kingdom on the runway, okay? Please think
feline, chérie
. Feline! Not lions and tigers and rabbits, oh, my!”

“Okay, you don’t have to get testy,” Angora says. She gets so easily offended by my Boogie Down bluster.
I try to tone it down for her, but I guess I’m always bringing my Bronx ways. “Sorry,” I whisper.

“Okay,
chérie
,” Angora says, back to her peaceful blue aura. Then she hops on another Funny Bunny alert. “Dad is waiting for his first net profit statement, which means the royalties are gonna make us like royalty!” she squeals in her bouncy Baton Rouge accent. “That means he’s gonna give me money for our fashion show supplies!”

I feel a twinge of jealousy, but I let it go like disco and focus on the finance. “So what is a net profit statement?” I ask. I learned about licensing agreements in my fashion merchandising class. Basically, a Big Willie fashion designer or a celebrity slaps their name and design philosophy on a product that they don’t really make. In exchange, the designer gets a percentage of the action from the company that is manufacturing and distributing the product to consumers.

“Well, in Hollywood they do things differently than the fashion biz. The person who created the idea gets a percentage of what’s left over
after
the film studio’s expenses, so that’s what ‘net’ means, as opposed to ‘gross’—which is
before
expenses.”

“Well, that sounds ‘gross’ to me. I mean, who’s to say what the studio’s expenses are? The sky could be the limit, no?” I counter.

“We’ll see when it comes,” Angora says, sighing.
“So speaking about expenses—how much did we get for the Catwalk budget?”

“Enough to buy fabrics as soon as we get the sketches in,” I reply, excitedly.

“Oh, I’m definitely in the
Mood
to go shopping,” squeals Angora. Mood Fabrics is the place to be. After every season, all the major design houses, from Versace to Betsey Johnson, sell their fabric remnants to Mood, the premier designer outlet, located on Fortieth Street. Mind you, these remnants are not run-of-the-mill. They’re sublime fabrics that were designed exclusively for the designer by a prestigious textile mill in Europe or the Far East. “And how was the job interview,
chérie
?”

I sense a tinge of embarrassment in Angora’s voice. I know she feels guilty because she doesn’t have to look for a part-time job, thanks to the Funny Bunny gravy train that is about to spill over.

“Well, it wasn’t exactly what I expected, but I think I got it,” I say, trying to convince myself.

“I bet you did,” Angora says, reassuringly.

While talking to Angora, I press the Documents icon on my desktop, but it doesn’t budge. Angora senses that something is wrong. “I can’t believe it,” I say, freezing, just like my computer screen. “I
hate
this. The last thing I need right now is to have to buy a new computer!”

I start banging the computer tower to see if I can get it to work.

“What are you doing?” asks Angora.

“Sometimes banging the thing gets it to work!”

“Well, now that you have a check for three hundred dollars, you can buy a new one,” Angora says, giggling.

“That’s not funny-bunny!” I hiss at her. Even the thought of misappropriating Catwalk funds and facing Ms. Lynx’s wrath makes me shudder.

“Okay, listen. I’m going to send an e-mail to all our members about the Design Challenge so everyone will come prepared to the meeting. And hop over here in the morning and we’ll type the hookup list here, okay?” suggests Angora.

“Great. Now I have to get up an hour earlier. I’m totally psyched!” I gripe, jokingly. Really I’m grateful to Angora for being one of my best friends. When I hang up the phone, I grab Fabbie Tabby’s furry cinnamon body and hold her close to me, collapsing like a soufflé onto the pinkified bed. Whenever I feel frightened, her warm body and heavy breathing remind me that somebody does care about me. She surrenders to my grip and flops down on her pudgy side, defeated. She knows she can’t get away from my needy paws when I’m in a state like this. I don’t even bother to get up and take my clothes off. Lying there, I fall into a deep dream and see myself, Angora, Felinez, and Aphro as our alley
cat alter egos, homeless and looking for something—anything—to eat. Aphro warns me not to stick my nose into a discarded can of tuna. “There’s something foul in there,” she warns me. Somehow I know she’s talking about something else. I spend the rest of my dream attempting to figure out what she’s really trying to tell me. But she just stares at me, her piercing brown eyes squinting and the fur of her black coat rising. I try to swipe her with my paw, but even as a cat she runs faster than me. “You’ll never catch me,” she taunts me, climbing magically to the top of a tenement building. “And you should stop spending so much time chasing after your own tail.”