Poseur #3: Petty in Pink: A Trend Set Novel (8 page)

“The Trick-or-Tritterer,” she began, winced, and darted a worried eye toward her father. But he was already absorbed by his
phone call, oblivious to her blunder. “The
Trick-or-Treater
,” she breathed a sigh of relief, starting again, “if handled well—and we at Ted Pelligan handle
everything
well—will positively
shake
the fashion industry. But before the big shake, we need the
shimmies
. Fashion
foreshocks
, if you will. How, you ask? We’d like to propose a
celebriteaser
.” Noting their baffled expressions, she paused. “Are you, um, familiar with that term?”

Janie, Petra, and Charlotte glanced Melissa’s way. She
was
their Director of Public Relations, after all; wasn’t it
her
responsibility to know?

Melissa arced a cocky eyebrow, and cleared her throat. “Eeyea… no.”

“Wow,” Birdie breathed, grinning at the floor. She wasn’t used to knowing
more
than other people. It made her feel funny inside. “Don’t worry.” She looked up, still grinning. “Celebriteaser is an easy
one. It’s just, like, famous people—that’s the
celebrity
part—who show off the latest whatever-it-is
before anyone else
—that’s the
tease
part. Take Kate Moss,” she suggested, getting into her stride. “When she appeared in a pair of wide-leg vintage Chloé jeans—and
this at the
height
of skinny jean popularity—everyone
had
to know:
What
are they?
Where
are they? And importantly, how soon can
they
be
mine
?”

“I bought a pair,” Charlotte admitted, omitting the small detail that she never wore them (they totally gave her elephant
butt). “I couldn’t resist.”

“Me too,” Petra confessed.

“Oh, Miss I-Never-Buy-Designer,” Melissa chided her.

“They’re
vintage
!” Petra blushed, but she knew as well as Melissa: the excuse was pretty weak. “I don’t know what it is,” she moaned. “Kate
Moss has this, like,
power
over me.”

“I know,” Birdie intoned, widening her good eye. “She has that power over everybody. When Kate wears a Ted Pelligan original,
our sales spike through the roof. But fashion-wise, she’s entirely independent—can’t be bought, won’t do favors.
Believe me,
I’ve tried.” The Pelligan marketing director sighed, clasping her hands. “Once, I prayed.”

“
That’s
our promotion strategy?” Melissa worried aloud, still clutching the Treater to her lap. “Praying to Kate Moss?”

“Heavens, no.” Birdie wonked her eye open. “Kate Moss is the exception, but
most
celebrities have a price. And we at Ted Pelligan are willing to pay it.
Your
bag on the
right
starlet’s arm?” She clucked her tongue, and smiled. “Poseur could be the biggest P since Prada.”

Janie, Melissa, Charlotte, and Petra shivered with excitement, grinning with anticipation. It
was
Prada, after all, who’d all but banned them
for life
from their Rodeo store (okay, so they’d happened to host a launch party that got the
teensiest
bit out of control). That Ted Pelligan was going to carry
one thousand
Treaters was freakin’ crazy
enough.
But snagging Prada’s crown as fashion’s reigning Queen P?

It was almost, like, too P to picture.

“I think I speak for the rest of us that a celebriteaser is the right way to go,” Melissa blurted, breaking the dream-filled
silence.

“Do you know who it’s going to be?” Janie turned to Birdie, almost too thrilled to speak. Quickly, she checked her dorktastic
enthusiasm, pursing her lips like the poor man’s Posh.

“We’re working on that,” Birdie assured her, checking in with Mr. Pelligan. Noticing her inquisitive glance, he raised a well-buffed
hold-a-moment finger.

“Darling,” he said into the phone. “I say this with
absolute
love—white is
not
your color. Yes, I know it was your wedding. Well, you looked positively
contagious
. Yes. Yes. Well, you’ll know better next time, won’t you? All right. Love you, too. Kiss-kiss. Ciao-ciao. Ciao.”

He clattered the old-fashioned ivory receiver into the polished gold cradle and wiped his hand on his lavender pant leg, eyeing
the phone with disdain. “Yicchh!” he lamented. “An absolute
nightmare
!”

Birdie beamed, always thrilled by her father’s ire (as long as it wasn’t directed at her). “Jessica?” she guessed.

“Messica,”
he groused in reply. Gideon chuckled softly to himself, crouched to the floor, and pinched a pink paper crane into his lap.
The girls, meanwhile, surged with curiosity.
Jessica who?
Jessica Alba? Jessica Simpson? Jessica Biel? Or maybe, due to Mr. Pelligan’s nasty industry habit, her name wasn’t Jessica
at all. Oh,
who was it
? And most important…

Was
she
their celebriteaser?

“So,” Mr. Pelligan launched his ergonomic chair backward and swiveled around. “Birdie’s apprised you of our plan for takeoff?”

“They want to know
who
,” his daughter jumped in before they could respond. “I said I’d have to check with you first.”

“We’ll make our decision in precisely one week.” Mr. Pelligan got to his feet and stretched. “Friday, as they say, is
fly
day. We’ll have to secure the right
stage
, of course.”

“Stage?” Melissa piped up, eyes shining. As with any exhibitionist, the word “stage” had a near physical effect on her. Like
saying “open bar” to an alcoholic or “playground” to Michael Jackson.

“Of
course
a stage!” Mr. Pelligan harrumphed. “If Kate Moss had worn her Chloés in the privacy of her own
opium den
, do you think we would have ever known the difference? Of course not! Celebriteasers need to get out,
out
. Into the public
eye
—and by eye, of course, I mean
lens
.”

“Paparazzi,” Birdie explained, succumbing again to that funny, secret feeling. “That’s what a stage is. Any place with paparazzi.”

“No stage but the
world
stage will do,” Mr. Pelligan emphasized. “I won’t rest until the Treater’s featured in every magazine from
US Weekly
to
Bosnian Vogue
!”

“Omigod!” Melissa gasped, clapping a manicured hand to her mouth. “Sorry, but… I have the
perfect
event.” Belting it out like Oprah, she exclaimed, “My dad’s
engagement partyyyyy
!”

“Your”—Ted Pelligan fluttered his silver lashes in abject distaste—“
dad
?”

“It’s not like that,” Charlotte assured him in the blasé tone of a girl whose
own
actor/director/producer dad, Hollywood icon Bud Beverwil, all but out-famoused the world. She widened her pool green eyes
and tried to sound impressed. “Her dad is Seedy
Moon
.”

“No.”
Mr. Pelligan melted into a smile. “You mean that angry-looking chap with the tattoos and the gold chains—Giddy, what
do
they call these newfangled urban bards?”

“Rap stars, sir.”

“Rap stars,” he rhapsodized, once again trilling his
r
’s. “You mean to say,” he addressed Melissa, “in addition to
profane
and
rudimentary
verse, these ‘
rrrrap
stars’ produce
daughters
? And one of these daughters is you?”

“That’s right,” she happily confirmed, crossing her legs.

“Tut-tut, my sweet,” he stopped her, reached into a file, and retrieved a perfectly trimmed newspaper clipping. Holding it
as far away from his face as possible, he blinked behind his rimless rectangular eyewear and gazed down his small, rounded
nose. “ ‘In honor of his fiancée’s favorite
color
, hip-hop mogul Seedy
Moon
will host an all-night Pink Party at his Bel Air
estate
, scheduled for the first Saturday of
December
. The budget, rumored to have surpassed the two-million-
dollar
mark, has divided fans into two
camps
. “It’s the American Dream, right?” laughs Benita Baker, a grocery clerk in Echo Park. “He came from nothing, just like me.”
“Pathetic,” argues Duck Meaney, a self-described Columbia dropout sipping a four-dollar cappuccino outside Mäni’s Bakery in
Venice Beach. “This is a country humbled by economic crisis. The people should rise up and storm his Bel Air estate with torches.”
Mr. Moon, however, makes
no
apologies. “What can I say,” he grinned at reporters. “I’m in love. I out-Diddy’d myself.” ’ ”

“That was the
L.A. Times
.” Melissa beamed, uncrossing and recrossing her long, legging-clad legs. “Did you see the write-up in
Vanity Fair
? They mention me in that one.”

“Of all the most
delightful
coincidences.” Mr. Pelligan lowered the clipping to his polished mahogany desk and removed his glasses. “You must know… I
keep a file for ideal stages, and your father’s engagement party made the top five.”

“I already
asked
,” Birdie blurted in a panic, her left eye lolling toward her nose. If her father found out she’d forgotten to make the call,
he’d take away her riding privileges! “
Four
times,” she elaborated her lie. “Mr. Moon’s assistant told me if I called again he’d have me arrested!”

“
Jerome
told you that?” Melissa gaped.
That cornrowed clown declined a call from
Ted Pelligan
? Was he
looking
to get fired?
Darting worried black eyes toward Mr. Pelligan, Melissa quickly shook her head. “Please, don’t listen to that fool, Mr. Pelligan.
My dad would be
honored
to work with you. For real.”

“Hear that,
Buttercup
?” Mr. Pelligan arced an eyebrow at his deceitful daughter, pointedly evoking her pony’s name. “Mr. Moon would be…
honored
.”

As Birdie retired to her chair to glumly fold another piece of pink paper, Mr. Pelligan escorted the four girls to the door.
“Well, my fashionista fledglings, I
did
have several stages swimming about, but if the Moon fete is what you
want
, the Moon fete is what you
get
. In the meantime, if you’ll just allow me to put on my
chapeau à penser
, I’ll choose the
perfect
celebriteaser. And she
must
be perfect! You are official protégées
Pelligan
, my lovelies, and if
I
get the best,
you
get the best.
Bon!
” The silver-haired tycoon clapped his hands together, tipping into a brisk bow. “I hope this meeting was as
gorgeous
a pleasure for you as it was for me.”

“Completely,” Charlotte assured him, extending her small hand. “We cannot wait until Friday, Mr.… um…” She repressed a smile.
“Mr.…”

“Oh!”
Petra leapt to her friend’s assistance, only to cover her mouth and frown. “
You
know.” She tapped her foot. “
Agh
, it’s
totally
on the tip of my tongue.”

“Something with a
P
?” Melissa suggested.

“I think it was a
D
,” Janie contradicted.

“Oh, Mr.
Dunderplotzer
!” Charlotte blurted, daring to meet Mr. Pelligan’s eye; to her relief, it twinkled back—so proud!

“My dear little understudies,” he declared, hoarse with emotion. “Together we will go so far!”

The Girl: Vivien Ho

The Getup: Sapphire blue Akiko silk top, Hudson shiny black skinny jeans, metallic-gold jeweled thong sandals by Manolo Blahnik,
white patent tassled hobo by Ho Bag

By the time Melissa dropped Petra off at her pillared peach Beverly Hills estate on Lexington Road, filled her tank with premium
gas, told the gas attendant to “
get
that
squeegee
outta my
face
,” and made it back to her glass-glinting cliff-side Bel Air estate, it was already after seven o’clock. Spotless white vans
and black town cars crowded the circular drive, declaring their intentions in various calligraphic fonts: Wolfgang Puck Catering,
Paradise Gardens Landscaping Design, Rex Covington Ice Sculpture, Ben Stanton Lighting Design, Rita Flora Flower Arrangements,
Fireworks by Orlando Special Effects. Melissa wasn’t impressed. Not only did navigating the Lexus through this pre-party obstacle
course add an
extra
five minutes to her commute, but
one
of these four-wheeled jokers—a bright pink Mini-Pooper, of course—had the
nerve
to jack her spot.
Yvette
—the white adhesive letters pranced across the back windshield—
Professional Romantician
. Melissa crinkled her nose.
Romantician?
What the
eff
was that? And did “Yvette”
not
see the polished brass
Reserved for M. M.
plaque on the wall, or was “Yvette” plain
blind
?

But, no—deep breath—she was too happy to be mad. The meeting with Ted Pelligan had actually surpassed her high expectations.
True, he was kind of a freak, but wasn’t that precisely the point? This was
fashion
!
All
the major players were freaks: Karl Lagerfeld with his untakeoffable black terminator shades, Donatella Versace with her
trout mouth and radioactive blond Barbie hair, Marc Jacobs with his on-and-off addictions to cocaine and Scottish plaid skorts,
Naomi Campbell, um… hello?