Poseur #3: Petty in Pink: A Trend Set Novel (16 page)

Miss Paletsky sighed to her feet.

“Where you go?” he grumbled distractedly, not taking his eyes from the TV.

“To the bathroom.” What did he want from her? A hall pass?

“Good.” He grunted. “Remember to bring me Icy Hot.”

With contained exasperation, Miss Paletsky disappeared down the hall. The bathroom, with its flamingo pink sink and toothpaste
turquoise tiles, hadn’t changed since the ’30s, when it hosted the primping rituals of countless aspiring starlets. She tried
not to think about them (it chilled her dread), but then: the tea-brown water stain on the ceiling, the hairline cracks along
the grout, the sun in the window.

What were they if not a plea to remember?

“Here.” She returned from the bathroom and plunked the ancient-looking Icy Hot on the glass table by Yuri’s meaty elbow. He
grimaced, transfixed by the plasma screen, and fumbled for the three-ounce tube of ointment. Nothing short of a private meeting
with President Putin or Carmen Electra could distract him from
The View
.

“Go back to graveyard, Barbara!” he shouted at the TV, unscrewing the tiny cap. “Stewpid peasant.”

As he rubbed the ointment into his furry hump of a back, the future Mrs. Grigorovich resumed her place at the piano, wobbly
with grief. Not to say she wasn’t by now accustomed to practicing with Yuri barking in the background.

But it was Friday
.

The day she looked forward to all week.

The day of
the extra hour.

Did he
have
to take
that
from her
too
?

On top of the upright piano’s closed lid, her soap-size plaster bust of Beethoven glowered down at her. Before she quite knew
what she was doing, she swiped the sullen composer from his perch, squeezed him hard in her hand, and, with a screech seldom
heard outside Kung Fu movies, hurled him against the wall.

“Oigah!” Yuri’s arms flew to his face as the tiny statue smashed to smithereens. “You crazy?”

“I need to practice!” she cried, leaping up from the rickety bench.

Still peering through the slats of his fingers, he gaped.
“So?”

“Alone! Alone! I need to practice
alone
.”

With a dismissive hand gesture, he brushed her off, returning to the television. “Shut up, Whoopie,” he muttered, pointing
the remote and raising the volume a notch. “Why don’t you look for your eyebrows?”

Miss Paletsky stalked across the room, rooted herself in front of the plasma screen, and gritted her teeth.

“Ch’ello!” Yuri raised his arms like a sorcerer conjuring a spell. “I am watching
View
!”

“Yuri,” the young teacher declared, “I cannot marry you.”

“We talk about this later,” he replied, gesturing for her to get out of the way.

“There will be no more talking!” She clenched her fists, stomping her foot. “Engagement is
nyet
.”

“Nyet?!”
Yuri scoffed in indignation. “But you will be sent back to Russia!
Like a dog
.”

“Dah, dah!” She clapped her hands once and laughed. “I am dog. I am bear. I don’t
care
.” Behind her octagon-shaped Lens-Crafters, her brown eyes narrowed. “I would rather be
any
animal in Russia than woman to
you
!”

With a pensive grunt, her scorned suitor gripped the remote and thumbed the mute. “So,” he intoned as all around them, silence
hummed. “There is someone else?”

Miss Paletsky’s brow furrowed with confusion.
“What?”

“Another man!” Yuri slapped the arm of his chair. “Tell me I am wrong,” he challenged.

His fiancée could only laugh, covering her face with her hand.

“So, I am right!”
He heaved himself out of the black leather chair, knocked into the table, and scattered its contents to the floor. Of
course
he is right! Why else does he come home an hour early, eh? To catch her! To catch her
and
him. But they are too quick! Too clever.

“Tell me!” He gripped his knee, limping forward. Under his naked foot, the toppled tube of Icy Hot gasped, splooging all over
the rug.
“Who is this man?”

“You are crazy,” she insisted, shaking her head. “There is no man.”

“LIES!” he roared from the opposite side of the room.

“There is no man!” she insisted again, this time bursting into tears.
If only there were another man,
she thought. Yuri sank to the floor and sighed, cradling his cranium in his stubby hands.

He hadn’t meant to make her cry.

“Lenochka.” He looked up, eyes red with regret.

But she was already out the door.

The concrete hardened under her feet as she ran, stinging her every step. But the pain was a friend—it ran with her—down the
sidewalk, past the steady hush of sprinklers and peach bungalow apartments behind water-stained adobe walls, past the woman
unloading groceries from her beat-up Saab, past the trio of Orthodox Jews, teenage boys in long black coats, wide-brimmed
hats, on their way to services, past the hissing hydrant, the dog behind the chain-link fence, and the fallen palm frond,
splayed like a broken fan in the gutter.

Finally, clutching her ribs, she leaned against a rough cinder-block wall and caught her breath. Across the alley, its deep
coral pink walls dusky with twilight, the landmark Formosa café appeared to watch her from behind green-and-white-striped
awnings. As the half-moon shone through clustered banana trees and valets darted around lumbering cars, a back door swung
open, releasing a burst of chatter. Two girls—real shriekers—in skinny jeans, baby-doll blouses, and heels ventured into the
night air.
Maybe I’ll go inside,
thought Miss Paletsky, watching them dig into their purses. Take a seat at the bar. Have a drink, maybe. Something new—like
fuzzy martini. Wait—was that the name?
Nyet.

Dirty navel?

Minutes later, grinding their cigarettes under their heels, the girls headed back to the bar. There was a second burst of
chatter, and then the back door swung shut, leaving Miss Paletsky in silence. She blinked down at her outfit: olive green
pleated slacks, navy pleather pumps, dusty rose stretch-lace turtleneck—a scraggly run in the sleeve from snagging her watch—and
classic navy blazer. She
liked
this outfit, and yet…

A tinny gypsy waltz spiraled thinly into the night air, halting her thoughts. She sighed, digging her cell phone from her
hip pocket. The last thing she wanted to do was talk to him, but she must. If she wanted a place to sleep—not to mention a
place to wash and dress for tomorrow night—then she would have to make
some
kind of peace. She scowled at the flashing face of her phone, bracing herself for the toxic displeasure that accompanied
reading his name. Christopher Duane Moon.

Wait
—
who?

She frowned at the screen, waiting for the letters to rearrange into the order she expected. They did not. The melody repeated.
The name remained the same. She swallowed, lifting the phone to her ear.

“Ch’ello?”

“Miss Paletsky?” a small voice warbled from the other end. The young teacher’s frown deepened. He sounded so… feminine. “Something
really
bad has happened,” the voice went on. “Like, the worst thing
ever
.”

Miss Paletsky exhaled, gripping her forehead. “Melissa.”

“I know,” Christopher Moon’s daughter confirmed. “And I swear I wouldn’t call you if it wasn’t an absolute emergency.”

“Where are you?” Miss Paletsky took command of her senses. “Why are you whispering?”

Melissa hesitated. In order to get her Special Studies teacher’s personal home number, she’d had to sneak into her dad’s office—right
next door to his bedroom and strictly off-limits—and nab it from his Rolodex. To make matters ten times trickier, she’d left
her damn cell in her bedroom, forcing her to either use her dad’s office phone or risk sneaking into the office all over again.
Needless to say, Option Office Phone won out, because if she did
not
take care of this situation
as soon as possible
—as in
now
—she might seriously die of a heart attack, which was—uh-uh—
not
okay considering she’d already planned to die
in
her sleep,
in
her nineties,
in
an ivory satin La Perla nightdress, with Marco and/or Pharrell at her side.

Of course, Miss Paletsky didn’t need to know that.

“I lost my voice,” she whispered, cupping the mouthpiece with her hand. “I always lose my voice in times of severe emotional
distress, Miss Paletsky.”

“I don’t understand.” The pretty Russian paced along the sidewalk. “What’s going on?”

“He called it off!”

“Who?”

“Ted Pelligan,”
she whimpered, strangled by the words. “The contract, the celebriteaser.
Everything!
”

“Oh, Melissa,” Miss Paletsky fluttered her eyes shut. “I…” “I was like, ‘Why?’ and he was like, ‘Don’t insult me,’ and I was
like, ‘What? What do you mean?’ and he was, like, ‘Ha! Please hold for Mr. Tone,’ and I was, like, ‘Who’s Mr. Tone?’
and he hung up on me
.”

“All right, calm down.”

“But the party’s tomorrow night! Miss Paletsky, you
have
to talk to him. I don’t even know what we did!”

“You can’t ask your father?” Her eye winked in suspicion. If Melissa couldn’t ask her father, then there was probably something
a little underhanded going on.

“Daddy’s too busy with the party,” Melissa replied, neglecting to mention that if her father talked to Ted Pelligan, then
he’d find out she’d never canceled the celebriteaser to begin with, and it’d be off with her head—yet
another
way she would
not
allow herself to die.

“I don’t know…” Her teacher hesitated. She was getting very strong adult-versus-teenager vibes, to borrow a California word,
and she wasn’t about to play for the wrong team, no matter
how
supportive she was.

“You don’t understand,” Melissa insisted, gasping every word. “Some fool sabotages my contest, and all the Man in K-Town’s
got on him is ‘seaweed.’ Emilio loves the housekeeper more than me. My dad’s marrying Vivien Ho. Oh, Miss P!” The letter
P
proved too much for her: Dior-stained tears slalomed down her cheeks; her breath caught in her throat. “Poseur
has
to happen,” she squeaked. “It’s the only good thing in my life!”

A small smile flickered across Miss Paletsky’s face. Against her nobler instincts, Melissa’s bratty objection to her father’s
fiancée filled her with affection. She shook her head, disapproving of herself, and sighed.

“I will see what I can do.”

The Gangsta: Seedy Moon

The Getup: Ed Hardy black tiger knitted velour lounge pants, 18-karat yellow-gold chain by Cartier, carved Korean jade medallion
from Momma Moon

Friday night, and Seedy Moon felt like his polished ebony platform bed:
king
-size. Everything was perfect: big half-moon grinning outside his double-paned bedroom windows, daughter tucked into bed,
his woman in the bathroom doing woman things… no cares in this world. Tomorrow night
—
with five hundred fineass people plus God as his witness
—
he would formalize their engagement. Had a whole speech planned and everything. “As y’all may know by now, I’m a songwriter.
Yeah… that means I rhyme for a living. When it comes to settlin’ down, lemme tell you—we rhymers be
trippin’
. (Pause for laughter.) Engaged? Rhymes with
caged
. Married? Rhymes with
buried
. Now, with a lot of women you meet—
y’all know who I’m talkin’ about!
—those rhymes make perfect
sense
. But then someone like Vee comes along. (Pause to smile at Vee.) You be singin’ a different tune. With her on my arm? I’m
the
opposite
of buried. With her in my heart? I’m the
opposite
of caged. If y’all want to know the truth (pause to take Vee’s hand), I’m walkin’ on air. I’m
free
.”