Every rose has its thorn.
“Who
was
that?” the popular brunette pricked, eyeing the retreating Cadillac. “Your
pimp
?”
Laila Pikser and Kate Joliet dissolved into rapturous laughter, clapping their manicured hands to their cawing mouths. Behind
her bronzer, Nikki blushed. Every nerve begged her to flee. But
no
, she commanded them.
Stand your ground
. True, she’d
accidentally
kissed Jake Farrish while he and Charlotte were still together. But she’d paid her penance and
enough was enough
. Gritting her teeth, she propelled her bronze metallic platforms toward the Jaguar
—
an act of bravado that caused Kate and Laila to a) look at each other in numb surprise, and b) sputter a second round of
laughter.
Charlotte, however, remained unamused.
“Can I help you?” she snipped as her gorgeous international boyfriend sidled in next to her, folded her into his lavender
cashmere-clad arms, and pressed his curving lips to her temple.
“Um,
yes,
actually.” The younger girl struggled to keep the tremble out of her voice. “Can you tell me why you haven’t rsvp’d to the
Poseur power lunch?”
“Um,
yes,
actually.” Charlotte mimicked, pursing her lips into a poisonous pink bud. “Because this is the first I’ve
heard
about it.”
“B-b-but…,” Nikki stammered, incredulous. “That’s impossible. I left you, like,
six
messages.”
Charlotte reached into her black patent Chanel shopper and took out her glossy white iPhone. “Hm… the only missed calls I
have are from Icki Prositutti,” she observed, arching her eyebrow like a weapon. Presenting the screen, she added: “And I
never take her calls.”
Before Nikki could respond, Jake Farrish, in all his grinning, boyish glory, loped up to the Jaguar. He was wearing a faded
redand-black-plaid shirt, old Levis, beat-up black Converse, and his gray United States of Apparel hoodie with the Amnesiac
pin; he pretty much wore the same thing every day, which Nikki now realized was a smart thing to do, considering if
she’d
been wearing what
she
pretty much wore every day, he might have recognized her sometime before standing two feet away from her.
“Oh,” he croaked in horror, realizing too late who she was. He glanced at his super-hot ex-girlfriend, who’d all but grafted
herself into Jules’s cavernous man-pit, and pushed his hair into a mussed thatch on top of his head. It was awkward enough
dealing with the two of them—but the two of them plus the girl he’d
accidentally
kissed enabling the two of them to
happen
? “Hey…,” he laughed weakly, returning his gaze to Nikki, and awkwardly punched the air, “you.”
Old Nikki would have fluttered her eyelashes, melting at a cute sophomore’s attention. But New Nikki ignored him, to quote
her revered mentor, “like a used pair of Spanx.”
“Okay.” She looked at Charlotte, pursing her Juicy pout. “Then I’ll just tell Melissa you’re not coming to hear her secret
announcement.”
“Wait.” The older girl stopped her with a haughty tilt of her china-cup chin. Everyone knew “secret announcement” was, like,
the
oldest bluff in the book. And yet. “Fine, I’ll come.”
“But…” Jules peeled off his girlfriend and furrowed his dusky brow. “Today is the one-month anniversary of our first lunchtime
together. I thought we would spend it together, no?”
Charlotte fluttered her soot-black eyelashes and smiled, debating how to respond. She
really
didn’t want to miss out on the mysterious Poseur lunch. On the other hand, she didn’t want to blow off her anniversary,
especially
in front of Jake
—
who might get the impression her feelings for Jules were
blow-off-able
. Which they
weren’t.
Right?
“It’s up to you, but…” Nikki cleared her throat, regaining Charlotte’s begrudging attention. She’d spent all of seventh grade
and most of eighth studying the popular sophomore’s every move, and could read her face like a book (except better, because
she wasn’t
really
into books). When Charlotte was genuinely excited about something—for example, when she first told Laila and Kate her parents
had given their permission for her to attend lace-making school in Brugge, or when she informed Adelaide Dallas that her father
had ordered a pair of original Manolo Blahnik silk brocade heels (modeled on the ones worn by Kirsten Dunst in
Marie Antoinette
) for her fifteenth birthday—her smile became crooked, and the very tip of her tongue showed between her teeth. But when she
was
fake
excited about something—for example, when she’d congratulated Bronywn Spencer on becoming a merit scholar (an honor Charlotte
missed by one math question)—she smiled in this broad, perfectly symmetrical way, and her eyelashes fluttered, exactly as
they just had with Jules. If Nikki had even the
smallest
chance of
beginning
to fix things with her fashionably formidable foe, her opening was now. “Melissa
did
say this lunch was mucho importanté.” Now she addressed Charlotte’s pouting pirate of a boyfriend, widening her cornflower
blue eyes. “Maybe the most romantic thing you can do for your anniversary is, like, you know… support Charlotte’s career?”
The popular sophomore gazed at Nikki with cool contempt. How
dare
she put her in a position where she might actually have to
appreciate
her?
“I see,” Jules nodded. If his favorite television series,
Sex and the City
(he owned the six-season DVD set dubbed in Italian) had taught him one thing, it was this: never come between American women
and their career. “Perhaps, then, we can reschedule.” Tucking a coiling lock of his girlfriend’s dark hair behind her fragrant
ear, he whispered, “Dinner tonight?”
“Can’t,” Jake, who was leaning against the Jag’s fender, intervened. On his private list of cruel and unusual punishments,
listening to Charlotte and Jules plan their “lunchtime anniversary” ranked right around watching porn with his grandmother.
But it was all worth it for the opportunity to say:
“We have plans.”
“To study,”
Charlotte quickly clarified, shooting him a dark look. Returning a modified gaze to Jules, she explained. “Ms. McGovern’s
having one of her epic SAT vocab quizzes.”
Jules nodded, attempting a smile. Noticing the disappointment in his face, Charlotte winced with guilt. After all, she knew
those vocabulary words backward and forward. And Jules was her
boyfriend.
Her boyfriend who,
unlike Jake,
raced his own yacht off the south of France coast every summer. Her boyfriend who,
unlike Jake,
could tell her she looked ravishing in six languages. Her boyfriend who,
unlike
Jake, would never cheat on her in a hundred, hundert, cento, cent, cem, ciento
years
.
“Forget it,” she glanced up at him lovingly. “We’ll have dinner.”
Jake wheezed out a laugh. Um… had she
completely
forgotten this whole “study session” had been
her
idea? That she’d practically
begged
him?
That he’d passed her stupid Ferrari-pants butt-boy the ball?
“I don’t know, Char,” he warned with a bob of his eyebrows. “I mean… do you really want to show up tomorrow not knowing the
meaning of
bovinoplasia
?”
Jules narrowed his lion eyes in suspicion. “H’watever you just say is not a h’word.”
“Um.” He looked scandalized. “
Yes
. It is.
Bovinoplasia
refers to the uncontrollable urge to lean out car windows and yell ‘moo!’ every time you pass a telephone pole.”
As Kate and Laila dissolved into a predictable fit of cackles, Charlotte set her jaw, determined not to smile. It wasn’t that
she didn’t think Jake was funny. That was the problem. Humor was the
one
thing missing in her relationship with Jules, and every time she convinced herself it didn’t matter (what her British-Italian
boyfriend lacked in wit, he more than made up for in maturity, intellect, compassion, and a Ferrari), Jake would make her
laugh, and suddenly all Jules had to offer meant nothing.
To make matters ten sizes worse, he’d started to get a clue. Like, if she so much as
tittered
at one of Jake’s jokes, Jules got all quiet and pensive. Then later, when they were alone, he’d touch her shoulder. “Why
is the math book so unhappy?” he once ventured, a hopeful smile on his chiseled face. “Sorry?” she’d replied, baffled. “Why
is the math book so unhappy?” he’d repeated as she continued to look perplexed. “Because!” He laughed a little, preparing
her for what she was in for.
“It is full of problems.”
Valiantly, she smiled, but it was the same kind of smile her grandfather offered, late in life, after he’d lost his hearing
and couldn’t follow conversation. A vague smile, like something submerged, trying and failing to show its shape under a shifting
surface. And she guessed it was the smile that pushed him to ask, “Are you happy with me?”
She knew what he was really asking: Do you still like me? And she
did.
How could she not with that beautifully sad, worried expression on his face? “Of course,” she’d assured him, flooded with
tenderness. If only he hadn’t believed her! She wouldn’t have had to watch the expression disappear. And her tender feeling
might have lasted, instead of slowly and secretly ebbing away.
Leaving her with no feeling at all.
“Of course we’ll go to dinner,” she chimed again, shaking off the memory. Reaching into her black patent Chanel shopper, Charlotte
removed a tidy stack of pale pink flash cards bound in silk ribbon from Tiffany’s and handed them to Jake. “Sorry I’m bailing,”
she apologized sincerely. “But…”
“Nah.” He shook his tousled head and pulled the end of the ribbon. The pretty bow grew smaller, smaller, and broke apart.
“It’s cool.”
“Those flash cards are pretty much all you need anyway,” she assured him, forcing herself to turn toward her devoted boyfriend.
When she did, Jules’s face melted with gratitude.
She kissed him then. So she wouldn’t have to see it.
The Girliatric: Jocelyn Pill Brickman
The Getup: Laguna flared jeans by True Religion, turquoise twill Love Hunt vest by Nanette Lepore, shocking pink Paradiso
embroidered slingbacks by Dior, bubblicious boobage by Dr. Robert Greene
Every luxury Beverly Hills department store has a companion restaurant, a place for patrons to check their afternoon purchases,
kick up their Sergio Rossi heels, and unwind over conversation, consommé, and credit. At Café SFA, Saks Fifth Avenusiasts
indulge in coconut peekytoe crab salad; at Barney Greengrass, Barnistas sample bagels flown in that morning from New York;
and finally, at Mariposa, Neiman Marcusites cut filet mignon into bite-size morsels, pinch the pieces between manicured fingertips,
and feed them to the quivering purebred dogs stuffed into their oversize Fendi purses.
As far as Beverly Hills department store lunch establishments go, Mariposa’s decor met the standard—well, assuming you consider
anything in Beverly Hills “standard” (if you attend Winston Prep, fyi:
you do
). The heavy square tables are dressed in the usual crisp white linens and polished white plates and topped with clusters
of white and yellow irises. Behind plates of glass, original Calder tapestries decorate the walls—all bold colors and repetitive
patterns that can hypnotize, given one looks too long. No one ever does. At Mariposa, lunching ladies pooh-pooh fine art for
something greater: each other. Tossing glances to neighboring tables, they estimate the worth of
that
one’s Malibu home versus
that
one’s Malaysian nanny,
that
one’s anniversary diamond versus
that
one’s divorce settlement. They gasp, giggle, gush, and guffaw—until, inevitably, there’s nothing left to say. No matter.
Widening their navy Dior mascara–encrusted eyes, tilting frosted glasses toward collagen-cushioned mouths, they knock back
Prozac with Pinot and smile. Tiffany diamonds melt down their bony knuckles like ice.
Today, however, just as conversation dried up and sugarplum visions of green-and-white capsules danced about their ash blond
heads, five young teenage girls sailed into the elegant restaurant, saving them from silence.
At last!
They breathed a collective sigh of relief.
Something new to talk about
. Teenagers were tolerated (albeit begrudgingly) on weekends, but at one p.m. during the
workweek
? Unheard of. And yet here they were, prancing around like they owned the place, crop dusting the tables in noxious clouds
of junior fragrance, and dispelling in one glance—in one heady
whiff
—the comforting mass delusion women of a certain type cling to like lifelines.
They hadn’t aged a
day
since high school.
“Ladies,” Melissa Moon assumed her seat at the head of the table, tucking from sight (to the near audible relief of the Botoxed
barracuda behind her) her enviable, high-water booty. With what she considered “regal” patience, she waited for Charlotte
and Janie to slide into the plush beige banquette to her left, for Petra to settle into the opposite chair, and her new protégée,
Nikki Pellegrini, aka Nikkeesha Kool (in the tradition of Beyoncé’s Sasha Fierce, Melissa had encouraged the intern to adopt
a bolder, sassier
persona
) to occupy the chair to her immediate right. “I’m sure,” Melissa breathed, commencing the speech she’d rehearsed to Emilio
Poochie the previous night, “y’all are wondering why, of all restaurants in Beverly Hills, I chose Mariposa to host our first
Poseur power lunch.”
“Actually,”
Charlotte tipped toward Petra with an appalled sniff, “I’m wondering why Petra reeks of”—the stale scent of chlorine, Old
Spice, and hangover stung her delicate nostrils—
“Disneyland
.
”