“Acch!” The older seated man flinched, then recovered with a glare. “I told you
never
to say that word,” he trembled. “Impale my ear with this
cucumber
spear, why don’t you?”
“Please, excuse him.” Mr. Peck returned to the peculiar-looking visitor and apologized. “He and, er… the
girls
had a bit of a falling out.”
“A falling out?”
Teddy scoffed, fishing an ice cube from his cup and pressing it to his nearly nonexistent throat. “
That’s
what you call the most traitorous event since the age of Benetton Argyle?”
“Benedict Arnold, sir,” Giddy corrected him.
“Those pretty little turncoats were seen lunching at Neiman Marcus!” He quaked, pitching the ice cube into the manicured grass
under his small white-moccasin-clad feet. Miss Paletsky, who hadn’t yet worked up the nerve to venture from the doorway, flinched,
and Mr. Peck sighed, surrendering himself to the inevitable. Every two hours or so since the incident, Teddy launched into
the same speech, speaking as though his words had just sprung to mind and his listeners had yet to hear them.
“Long ago,” Mr. Pelligan addressed Miss Paletsky, “Neiman Marcus was chaired by Stanley Marcus, my very closest friend…
at the time.
”
“They met at the annual League of Moguls conference,” Mr. Peck explained.
“We had so much in common!” he declared. “Both heads of elite department stores, both Harvard men.”
“Of course, Mr. Marcus actually attended the university,” his assistant reminded him.
“Yes!” Teddy sighed. “He always was so
conventional.
In any event,” he returned to Miss Paletsky. “Stannie invited me to New Mexico where he and his wife—
horrible
woman—shared an estate. He was an avid art collector, and
obsessed
with these primitive statues, religious
icons
, if you will, sold by
ghastly
National Geographic types in their dusty
pueblos
. Stanley bought their baubles for a few dollars, a bead necklace perhaps… and years later they appreciated
tens of thousands of dollars
.”
“The most valuable of all was the Holy Child of Atocha,” Gideon, who had by this time committed Teddy’s wearisome tale to
memory, cut to the chase. “Atocha, if you’re fortunate enough
not
to know, is the patron saint of travelers who risk capture by non-Christian enemies.”
“The last time I saw Stannie,” Mr. Pelligan, too swept up in the memory to acknowledge Gideon’s impudence, pressed on. “He
was very sick. Every night, he took Saint Atocha to bed like a doll. ‘My most cherished little statue,’ he told me with a
smile, reaching for my hand. ‘I leave to you. Teddy Pelligan. My most cherished of friends.’ ” He removed his cat-eye sunglasses
and frowned, pinching the bridge of his small, bulbous nose. “And can you guess,” he sighed, “who he left it to, in the end?”
From the door, Miss Paletsky glanced at Gideon, betraying her utter loss.
“HE LEFT IT TO ELTON JOHN!” the small man erupted, clutching the arms of his white wicker chair and rocking in his seat (the
passage of time did little to quell the pain). “That tiny dancer,” he spewed in contempt. “That
rocket
man!”
“It was quite the scandal,” Giddy admitted, and then
—
unknowingly explaining why Jocelyn Pill-Brickman recalled the incident while the Poseur girls did not
—
“in 1991.”
Miss Paletsky gaped between the two men in absolute befuddlement. “And this…,” she paused, attempting to wrap her mind around
it, “
this
is why you refuse to work with the girls? I don’t understand. What do they ch’ave to do with this?”
Gideon sighed. He sympathized with her confusion—it was all so ridiculous—and yet, he was an assistant—a good one, if solemn—and
understood his duty. “They were seen eating at Mariposa…
the Neiman Marcus restaurant
.”
“The very same as spitting in my face!” Teddy sputtered, spitting into the air.
“I don’t believe it,” Miss Paletksy murmured after a pause, frowning at her feet. There was a word for this. Once, when Yuri
was watching
View
, Barbara told Elizabeth this word. “Petty,” she remembered quietly, looked up, and found Mr. Pelligan’s pale gray eyes. In
a strong voice, she declared, “You are being petty!”
“What did she say?” Mr. Pelligan elbowed Giddy in the hip. The assistant cleared his throat, resisting a smile.
“She believes you are being
petty
, sir.”
“My dear woman!” he guffawed in shock, jiggling the ice in his glass. “I have been called many things. Delusional. Bipolar.
Machiavellian. Homosexual. But,
petty
!”
“But this is
true
,” she insisted, abandoning the ivy-bordered doorway at last and venturing boldly onto the landscaped roof. “You want to ch’ave
real
problem? My parents—dead. I ch’ave no one. And because I refuse to marry man who eats toenails?
Oigah!
” In his seat, the well-preserved man cowered. “Back to Russia,” she cried. “Cold, miserable, Land of No Opportunity
Russia
. Where streets are not paved in gold, but
regular asphalt
.”
“You can’t go back!” Birdie, who’d been eavesdropping from the fire escape, suddenly wailed, her right eye lolling to the
sky.
“But I can,” Miss Paletsky—who didn’t have the time to be startled—contradicted, resolute. Mr. Pelligan watched the Russian
teacher with wide eyes as she slowly approached him. “And you want to know why?” she asked, gazing down with the fierceness
of Atocha himself. “Because at least I accomplish something. So, I cannot ch’ave American dream. At least I bring together
four girls who can.”
Young Birdie clasped her hands.
“Please,” the young teacher continued, softening her tone. “Put this silly grudge behind you. Do not be like Elizabeth Hasselbeck.”
Ted Pelligan leaned back in his seat, his gray eyes still wide with wonder. Everyone waited: Gideon with his slender hand
on the back of his chair, his daughter, still brimming at the fire escape, and
the visitor
, watchful behind her octagon eyewear.
“To be perfectly frank,” he replied hoarsely, pausing to clear his throat. “I haven’t heard a word you’ve said.”
Birdie covered her face. Gideon gasped. “Sir!”
“You’re surprised?” He craned his round neck to squint up at his assistant. “I’m supposed to listen with that tremendously
loud outfit of hers
caterwauling
at me like a cat in heat?”
“I understand,” Miss Paletsky surrendered, nodding. “You ch’ave said no.”
“Yes, yes, for
now
,” he replied, tugging again at his assistant’s starched sleeve. “Giddy,” he instructed, “take this poor woman into my store,
give her a blowout, find her a dress—something that won’t devastate my eardrums—and then return her here.”
“But,” the young teacher began to fret, “I can’t…”
“If she
must
wear pink,” Mr. Pelligan blithely ignored her, instructing Gideon, “then…
ah!
The strapless Charles Chang Lima with the lovely little pleats and sweetheart neckline. Yes, that will work wonders for her.
With the fuchsia lizard-embossed platform Dior pumps, don’t forget. And chisel off that kabuki paint while you’re at it. Make
her up in something subtle. Chanel Luminous Satin Lip Color in Darling should do. Or perhaps Voluptuous. Oh, try them both
and see what works. Use your
judgment
, Giddy. Maybe then I’ll know what she’s blabbing on about.”
“You don’t understand,” the increasingly anxious Miss Paletsky seized her window. “I cannot afford…”
“No, no, I can’t
hear
you!” Mr. Pelligan interrupted, cupping his hand to his ear. Only then did she catch the merry light in his eyes. Only then
did she know.
It was on him.
“Now go change your dress before I go deaf!” he blustered, fishing another ice cube from his tumbler of Pimm’s.
Giddy offered his arm with a gallant smile.
The Girl: Janie Farrish
The Getup: To be determined…
In addition to sunshine, Ted Pelligan’s rooftop garden provided spectacular views of the Hollywood Hills. From a distance,
the winding canyon roads appeared veinlike or invisible, hidden as they were behind eruptive plant-life; sprawling cliff-side
homes were no larger than birdhouses, their daunting gates and wall-to-wall windows reduced to dewlike glints. One of these
birdhouses belonged to the Beverwils, one of those glints to Charlotte’s bedroom window, and behind that glint, microscopic
as a speck of dust, Janie Farrish regarded her reflection in an ornately gilded, full-length mirror. From
her
perspective, of course, the Beverwil Estate was more than lifesize—it was larger than life—and Ted Pelligan’s rooftop was
the negligible smudge, just one of thousands in the broad city landscape below.
“What do you think?” she asked in a hesitating voice, shaking the pink gossamer skirt of one of eight cocktail affairs Charlotte
suggested she try on. The dresses belonged to Georgina Malta, Charlotte’s knockout of a mother, who (if little else) shared
Janie’s willowy, slender build. Most of the dresses were two, three decades old, relics of her Paris runway days, “wearable
memories,” she’d sigh, pressing a deep red velvet hanger to her collarbone, smoothing the dangling gown against her waist,
and gazing into the mirror. Around the time Charlotte turned fourteen, Georgina gave her permission to borrow them: “Whenever
you like, darling.” Yeah, right. Charlotte was
far
too runty to wear those clothes, and her two-faced mother knew it; her generosity somehow
required
it—always extended to those bound to say no.
She once fixed a salad for the cat.
C’est la vie
. Charlotte made do with what meager pleasures there were to be had dressing Janie, who, as it happened, was waiting on her
all-important opinion.
“I don’t know…” she trailed off, reclining into her mint green velvet chaise longue and wrinkling her nose. Janie glanced
back at her reflection and hoped her warming cheeks wouldn’t betray her wounded pride (Charlotte’s “I don’t know” carried
all the punch and sting of “You look hideous”). The dress, a foamy confection of polka-dotted petal pink chiffon, gathered
at the waist and held up by whispery halter straps, was gorgeous. More than gorgeous: it was
Valentino
. If Charlotte had a problem, Janie decided, it wasn’t the dress.
It was her in it.
“Dojo?” piped the pretty piranha, fluffing the ruffled tulle of her new pale pink-and-black slip. “What do
you
think?”
Don John, busy pressing Charlotte’s choice for the evening—a rather modest belted Madonne dress by Dior—turned toward Janie
and sighed, momentarily dispersing a cloud of vapor. With his handheld steamer, gelled streaky-blond pompadour, and exaggeratedly
bored expression, he resembled the caterpillar in
Alice in Wonderland
. Of course, Janie hardly imagined Lewis Carroll’s caterpillar wore Elizabeth Arden bronzer and MARC by Marc Jacobs heart
flip-flops. She also doubted he said things like…
“Oh, please. Can we say Valenti…
no
?”
“Fine,” she laughed in defeat, impressed by his seemingly endless store of shock and outrage. She also laughed because she
was beginning to like him (unlike
some
people, he seemed to blame the badness on the
dress
, not her) and wanted him to like her too. “I’ll take it off.” She schlumped off to the bathroom to change. Even though Janie
envied girls who could strip down in a locker room and keep talking to their friends like their boobs weren’t, you know,
right there
(and isn’t that the curse of the flat-chested? It’s impossible to act like your boobs aren’t “right there” when they really
aren’t
?), she wasn’t about to pretend she was one of them. Which brings us to the second reason she liked Don John: he gave her
a good excuse to change in private.
He
was
a boy, after all.
“Ooo… try on the Escada!” his Texas twang enthusiastically commanded from behind the cracked bathroom door. “That thing is
so eighties, it makes its own Michael Jackson noises.”
“Omigod, I
know
,” Janie cackled in delight. A minute later, she bounded outside in a beaded fuchsia shoulder-padded sheath.
“Check. It. Out.”
“Oh honey… ” Don John clapped his hand to his mouth and briskly shook his head. “How many Corys were killed to make that dress?”
“It’s nice to see you two still have your sense of humor,” Charlotte scowled, flouncing from her velvet seat as the two collapsed
into giggles. “Considering we’re in a
crisis
.”
At that, the tittering duo fell into cowed silence. Dressing up had been so fun they’d forgotten all about the Ted Pelligan
debacle. Last night, Nikki set up an emergency conference call, and Melissa broke the devastating news. Pelligan was out—no
contract, no celebriteaser, and—adding insult to injury—no explanation.
But,
their Director of Public Relations had assured them,
she was on the case.
Obviously, there’d been some kind of misunderstanding. All she had to do was get to the bottom of it to build them back up
to the top. Janie, who’d been waiting to hang up the phone so she could dissolve in a flood of tears, had taken a breath,
instantly fortified. If Melissa could sound so calm and confident, then things
definitely
weren’t as bad as they sounded.
Unless she’d been bluffing?
“Maybe we should call Melissa,” Janie blurted, a flutter of panic returning to her heart.
“No…” Charlotte frowned, smoothed her frothy slip, and floated like a blossom across her polished maple-and-walnut-checkered
floor. “She said she’d call us, remember?”
“But it’s already three forty,” Janie noted as, with the efficiency of an army general, Charlotte scanned her marbled-topped
Art Nouveau vanity and, from the artfully arranged assortment of gleaming perfumes, plucked an amber bottle of Serge Lutens
A La Nuit. She
really
wasn’t one to brood on a crisis—she’d only mentioned
the debacle
to disrupt the disconcerting bond brewing between her two friends (would they discover they had more in common with each
other than they did with her? The idea bruised Charlotte’s heart). But now, with Don John’s focus returned to steaming her
heavy crepe dress and Janie’s returned to her, she felt she could return to the subject at hand.