Catwalk (71 page)

“Oh, that’s fierce!” exclaims Stellina, gazing at hers, which says
I’M FELINE GROOVY
.

I’m struck by another idea. “As you pass each other on the runway, you cross paws, okay?” I show them the Catwalk handshake. Even Tiara giggles.

“Do we have to do that?” groans Juanito, obviously disappointed he won’t be doing any ninja poses.

“Yes, you have to do it, Juanito!” exclaims Fifi.

“Awright. I’ll do your stupid boring handshake.”

“Juanito, we worked really hard on your outfits. The least you can do is appreciate it!” screams Fifi.

Like a mother hen, Mrs. Cartera zooms from the kitchen with a spatula in hand.
“Que paso?”
she asks, her heels clacking on the wooden floor.

“
Nada
. Nothing,” I pipe up. “It’s time to eat!”

Fifi cracks a smile. I hug her and we all sit down at the big dining room table. The doorbell rings and I jump up to get it. The rest of the troops have arrived. I glare at Aphro like
Where were you when we needed you?

“What’s up with you?” she snarls.

“Fifi is having a cheddar cheese meltdown—so please, be nice to her,” I warn Aphro.

“I’m always nice to her,” she responds bluntly.

“Oooh, good, I’m hungry,” says Fallon, following her nose to the dining room table. She sits down and dives in.

Elgamela is equally happy with the feast. “Oh, Mrs. Cartera,” she coos. “The food is so good. I’ve never eaten anything so delicious!”

Mrs. Cartera beams with pride and explains in detail how she prepares the
fritanga
. If there is anything she loves more than dressing up, it’s cooking and eating. Like mother, like daughter, because after Fifi polishes off the
platanos
, she regains her sweet nature. That is, until Juanito asks the wrong question.

“Is Papi coming to the fashion show?”

“No, he is not,” barks Mrs. Cartera.

“But I want him to see me on the runway!” Juanito says in protest.

Fifi starts bawling again and jumps up from the table. Now Aphro’s eyes soften, like she finally gets why I was fretting. She jumps up and follows Fifi. The rest of us eat our lunch in silence.

After we finish, Fifi and Aphro come back out so we can finish our agenda: the fittings. I figure it’s best to get Fallon’s fitting out of the way first. I hand her the pink bustier to put on, and just like we imagined, she has a
hissy fit at the sight of her abundant cleavage, which isn’t even spilling over. “I told you I do not want to leave my tatas on the runway!” she exclaims.

“Fallon, I’m adding a ruffle at the
top
of the bustier—you’re not going to see anything,” I assure her. “This is just a fitting—the bustier is
not
finished!”

“It better not be—or you can let Fabbie Tabbie shake her tail feather in this one, okay?” she hmmphs.

I smile sweetly and keep pinning Fallon, because I’ve learned my biggest lesson as a house leader: when others fret, keep your lips sealed. Fallon loves getting the last word in edgewise and otherwise.

Alas, it’s a lesson that Aphro hasn’t caught on to yet. “Miss Fallon, no one is interested in ruffling your feathers,” she adds.

“Oh, so now I have feathers like
Big Bird
?” she asks defensively. “You don’t know what it’s like to wear a size 40D bra and have guys staring at your tatas.”

“I know what it’s like,” counters Fifi. “I hate it!”

“Oh, awright,” Fallon says, giving in. “Just don’t start crying again, please.”

Fifi giggles. “I won’t if you’re happy with your outfit.”

“Delirious,” snaps Fallon.

“Awright, you’re up, supermodel,” I coo to Aphro. “I have to fit you for the faux-leather skirt. I’m so excited. When others said I would fail, I went faux and pulled it off!”

Fifi shoots me a look.

“I didn’t mean you, Fifi—I meant Nole!”

“Oooh, don’t y’all get me caught up in any catfight,” warns Aphro as she slips into the skirt.

“We won’t, trust,” I assure her, ogling my handiwork. The skirt fits Aphro like a glove. “I admit the brainstorm was a late entry—but the faux-leather miniskirts instead of chiffon ones was a good call, no?”

“But I love the chiffon,” says Angora, the Southern belle.

“Yes, for the evening skirts—but we don’t have to OD on the flimsy, do we?” I ask.

“Nor the flimflam,” points out Aphro.

Fifi darts her eyes over at us—again. Every sound bite spreads suspicion about her parents’ separation. I feel for her. Everyone in her five-story building is buzzing about it—thanks to the clothes flying out the window.

Left to Fallon, the chiffon ball skirts could fall by the wayside, too. “This doesn’t make my hips holla?”

Now Fifi frets. She examines the waist like a forensic scientist. “We could take out some of the gathering.”

“No, I like it—it’s very Marie Antoinette,” I say with conviction.

“Who is that?” asks Fallon bluntly. “And why don’t you let her wear it?”

I refrain from filling Fallon in about the former
queen of France and focus on the ball skirt. “Fallon, can you trust me—the poufiness is really flattering.”

Flustered, Fallon rolls her eyes. Now Mink and Angora step into their chiffon ball skirts. Fallon eyes her slimmer counterparts slipping into the same silhouette. Surprisingly, she likes what she sees. “Oh, it is cute, kinda princessy,” she relents.

“And wait till people see the three of you swooshing down the runway in a princess procession,” I add quickly.

“We love princesses!” giggles Mink.

“Now it’s your turn,” Angora says, excited. She’s referring to the feline fatale ensemble I’m wearing for my one memorable turn on the runway with Fabbie Tabbie—the furbulous finale. I’m determined to cast aspersions on Dame Leeds’s doubts. “This has to be the ultimate sendoff.”

Aphro agrees with me. “Trust—you are saving the best for last.”

“You’re not jealous, I hope,” I query seriously.

“Get over yourself. Just because you’re going to the Lipstick Lounge …,” swipes Aphro.

“You are?” Elgamela asks, excited.

“Thanks for letting the cat out of the bag.”

“Spill the refried beans, already!” coaxes Elgamela.

“Ice Très invited me to the Lipstick Lounge to hear this singer, Alyjah Jade, perform,” I say, smiling.

“Wow, I so want to go to that place!” coos Mink Yong. “Sil Lai told me all about it! She’s going!”

“Oh, right,” I say, like I didn’t remember that Sil Lai and Mink Yong are friendly—and part of the Asian clique at our school. “Um, I thought Sil Lai said she still had classes left at Barbizon and can’t go?”

“Oh, right,” Mink Yong says, like she forgot that tiddy. “She’s not sure yet.”

“What does Sil Lai go to Barbizon for?”

“She’s training to become a Barbizon model instructor. She wanted to be a model really badly, but she’s too short. So if you can’t be one, you can teach them,” Mink explains matter-of-factly.

“Oh, right,” I say, finally grasping the reason why Sil Lai shows me shades of Gucci Envy.

Bluntly, Aphro voices what I’m thinking. “So she’s just another shortie in the model haterade convention?”

My cell phone rings. I pull it out of my purse to answer it. “It’s Diamond Tyler,” I mouth to Aphro and Angora. The rest of the models remain quiet while I speak to the touchy animal activist. I tell her about our evening-gown fitting and she calmly replies: “See, I knew you could pull this off without me.”

“I need a favor from you, Diamond,” I admit, desperate to contain this situation. “I need for you to keep this drama between us—can you do that and not let on to the Catwalk office?”

“Yes,” says Diamond. “I’ll be at the fashion show—I’ll help as a dresser.”

“Well, I was thinking—I have a far more important task for you and your design talents.”

“I told you, I can’t handle the designing stuff,” she balks.

“I know, I know. That’s not it. Would you mind attending the other fashion shows and reporting back to us at the run-through what you saw? We’re not going to get to attend the other four fashion shows, but we at least want to know what they’re doing,” I stress, appealing to Diamond’s SOS sensibility. “Please, come to our rescue?”

“Oh, I would love to do that,” Diamond says humbly. “But I thought Ruthie Dragon wanted to?”

“She does, but I want you to be my eyes and ears at the other fashion shows because you’re a designer at heart,” I say, selling it hard. “Ruthie is better suited for manning the Heels on Wheels cart in the lobby instead.” Of course, what I haven’t told Diamond is that my fiery assistant doesn’t know about her Wild Card assignment.

“Oh, okay, I’ll do it,” Diamond says, like she’s trying her best to be agreeable since she has us caught in her crosshairs.

“Purrfecto,” I sigh, super relieved. “I knew we could find a mutually agreeable task. We’re a team. And I want it to stay that way. If word of another defection got
out, the House of Pashmina would be fried, finished, and flotsamed!”

I hold my breath for a second, secretly hoping Diamond will just jump back into the fashion fray, but after a few more seconds of steely silence I realize we’ve passed that stop at Petticoat Junction.

“You’re so funny, Pashmina. I’ll be at the fashion shows, then come to the run-through. I promise,” she says, referring to the term used for those precious few and highly frenetic hours in which we rehearse before the actual show.

“I thank you in the name of the rumba, the mambo, and the cha-cha-cha,” I say, relieved.

Diamond chuckles. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It’s the highest order of thank-you from the Fritanga dynasty,” I jest.

“What do you think Ruthie Dragon is gonna say when she finds out you dumped her for Diamond?” Aphro asks.

I balk. “Do you know what an honor it is to man the Heels on Wheels cart?”

Leave it to Aphro to squash my schemes and dreams. “Well, I sure hope she thinks so.”

“Never mind,” says Fifi, who is anxious for me to try on my purrlicious pink creation for my fitting. After
washing her hands, she pins me into the fuchsia tattersall skirt with matching bustier.

Stellina’s eyes pop. “I wish I could wear
that.
”

“You are definitely the Princess of Pink now,” confesses Aphro.

Everyone beams at me while Fifi pins me in all the right places into my pinkness. I stare back at my reflection in Fifi’s living room mirror. “The Princess of Pink. I could get used to that title!”

I definitely dig SoHo, the artistic downtown section south of Houston Street in New York City, where the most feline fatale designers in the galaxy, like Anna Sui, Tarina Tarantino, and Betsey Johnson, have their flagship boutiques. Within these five square blocks of prime Manny Hanny real estate lies a veritable design mecca where I hope the flagship boutique for my dream retail chain, PURR UNLIMITED, will also be in the mix one day. I can dream, can’t I?

The grooviest restaurants and clubs are also in SoHo, and right now I’m headed to the tartiest new addition: The Lipstick Lounge on Broome Street. Even though it’s coming down to the wire for my Catwalk team and our fashion show, I had to put this on my checklist so I can make things right with Ice Très. At least, that’s what I’ve been telling myself. But with Diamond Tyler acting skittish, like a sheep with a USDA clip hanging on her ear; shady Shalimar setting her sights on a serious sabotage mission; and cuckoo Chintzy Colon on the loose like a rogue CIA agent, I can’t risk any more negative energy ricocheting around
the House of Pashmina until the winner of the Catwalk competition is chosen and goes home with a Big Willie trophy.