Catwalk (37 page)

Chris shifts gears quickly, as if he thinks he hurt my feelings with his polite posturing: “Actually, call me by my nickname. Everybody else does.” Then he hesitates, like he has revealed too much.

“Um, what is it?” I ask, gently.

“Panda,” he says, looking embarrassed.

“Oh, of course,” I say, politely, then realize my response doesn’t make any sense. What I want to say is
Dalmatians and pandas, oh, my! Enough with the animal kingdom already—just fix my computer
, purr favor!

I watch curiously as Chris fiddles with the switches on my computer, then checks the electrical outlets, firmly securing the wires into the outlets.

“I checked that,” I say, feebly.

He nods, trying to reboot my computer. For a second a light flickers on the screen.

“Yippee!” I scream, prematurely. Okay, so I’m nervous.

“No need for yippee yet,” he says, an anxious edge creeping into his voice. After hitting a few keys on the keyboard and watching various shades of blue, then black flash on my screen, he asks me a question, nervously, like my dentist did when I was five years old and had eight cavities one winter after chomping on candy compulsively.

“Um, have you downloaded any attachment files?”

My mind freezes just like my computer. Blankety blank. “Um, yeah,” I blurt out like he asked me a bozo question.

“From senders you don’t know?”

“Um, no,” I respond, like bozo question number two just blew my way.

“Well, that doesn’t matter. The real sender could have been using a Trojan anyway,” he explains, taking his wire-rimmed glasses off and rubbing his eyes.

“You mean like the horse someone sent Helen of Troy as a gift but there were enemy soldiers inside ready to pop out and perpetrate an ambush?” I ask, puzzled.

“Well, yes. That reference fits exactly. Someone can send you a virus hiding behind a fake e-mail address—probably one that you recognize—but the e-mail didn’t really come from that person,” he further explains. He stares up at me without his glasses. I notice the dark
circles around his eyes and suddenly feel guilty. He is probably kicking it 24-7 with his cyber chores.

“Oh,” I respond, humbly, finally catching Chris’s creepy drift. “You mean that’s what froze my computer?”

“Could be. I’ll do a virus scan, which will probably take a while.”

“Un-freakin’-believable!” I say, revving up for a rant. “I mean, what is the point of that stupid warning that flashes when you get an attachment ‘If you don’t know who sent this e-mail, be cautious when opening this file’? You either download the file, or you don’t, hello! It’s not like you can curtsy before you hit the cursor and that’s gonna prevent the stink bomb from exploding in your computer!”

“I know. And because of the tricky Trojan method, most viruses are sent hiding behind the e-mail address of someone you know, otherwise the average recipient wouldn’t risk downloading the file in the first place.”

While Chris runs the scan, I babble nervously about my situation. “I have to complete the hookup list for my next Catwalk meeting, then type up my assignment, which will accompany the sketches for the Design Challenge—which I have to hand in—and then the Catwalk competition itself is in June, so I can’t believe this situation is happening with my computer, cuz I will be fried French toast if my circuits are burnt.”

“You’re funny,” Chris says, nodding like he understands. “I heard about the Catwalk competition.”

“Good—because there is nothing else like it,” I declare. I bet all the Dalmation tekkies wish they had a front-row seat at the Catwalk competition. Keep dreaming.

After ninety minutes, Chris finally announces, “You definitely have a virus. And you’re gonna lose some of your files. But don’t worry, I can do a cleanup. You’ll be up and running in about a year.”

“One whole year?” I ask in disbelief, blinking my eyes to fight back the tears.

“Actually, a cat year, to be exact,” Chris says, straight-faced.

I burst into tears, trying to cover my face with the sleeve of my pink hoodie.

Chris’s tired, bloodshot eyes bulge in disbelief. “I was just joking, Pashmina,” he says, apologetically.

“About the virus?”

“No, unfortunately, that’s real. It’s a nasty one, too—sent by an amateur,” he explains, hastily. “But it won’t take a year. I can clean it up in a few days—and reinstall Windows for you.”

I’m so embarrassed. I wipe my eyes on my sleeve. “Who would do something like send me a nasty virus?” I wonder, twirling my hair furiously. Suddenly, I wake up and smell the catnip: since my appointment to
house leader, enemy forces have been circling in cyberspace while I’ve been too busy tiptoeing through the tulips. “That’s it—this is sabotage to ensure that I’m out of commission!”

Thanks to my excellent intel, Chris snaps out of his bleary-eyed bluster and becomes like my second-in-command: “I can look at the document history in the hard drive and see which file contained the virus, then see which files I can recover that have already been damaged,” he advises.

“Execute,
pronto
,” I order, getting steamed. And to think that I download files every day—from jokes to fashion forecasts and runway show photos. Who could be the culprit?

He scans through my files and e-mails carefully. “I see you get a lot of those annoying urban myth e-mails, too,” he says, matter-of-factly.

“I do?” I ask, squeamishly.

“Yeah—like this one claiming that Microsoft and Bill Gates are gonna send you a refund if you forward this e-mail to twenty people within the next twenty-four hours.”

“Geez—I was counting on that refund,” I say, disappointed.

Chris cracks a smile, then reports, “This is the corrupted file—the one you downloaded with the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week designer contact list.”

“Really?” I say, trying to figure out who sent it to me, then shaking my head. “Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week contacts—is nothing sacred?”

“Not in cyberspace,” Chris informs me.

“Yeah, I remember now. That was a few weeks ago. Aphro sent me that e-mail with the attachment.”

Chris goes into my Internet history and retrieves the e-mail from [email protected].

I read the message in the e-mail:
Wish we were there. In the meantime, here is the designer contact list for invites for all the shows! Felinez got it from Ruff Loner and told me to forward it to you, so you can forward it to everyone in our crew “with
besos.
”

“Wow, I remember now. I didn’t get around to forwarding the contact list to everybody yet, because I was waiting to finish the hookup list,” I say, realizing that this wasn’t just a sneak skirmish; it was a full-frontal attack to shut down my whole operation. Could the Dax hair grease be seeping into Aphro’s brain cells from overuse? “I’m gonna kill her,” I say, sweating. “That’s why she kept trying to dissuade us from heading to D.T. for computer help—she wanted to shut me down!” I plop into the chair, tapping my foot. “I’d better consult with Felinez first. She’s my best friend, and she’s an intern at the Ruff Loner showroom,” I explain to Chris. I pick up my pink Princess phone and dial her house. She
answers. “Fifi, did you send Aphro the contacts for the designers showing at Bryant Park next spring?” I ask.

“What happened?” Felinez responds. That’s her pat response when she doesn’t know the answer to something or is nervous. I fill her in on the cyber crisis. “I never sent her an e-mail with that,
mija
,” she squeaks.

“Nobody at the showroom gave you this list—and you didn’t give this to Aphro to give to me?” I say, trying to jog her memory.

“Nobody gives me anything at work—except a headache. You know that!” shrieks Felinez.

Felinez is right. I
do
know that. “Do not start with the riff—Pink Head is being paranoid, okay? I think Aphro is out to get us,” I confess to her.

“She has been acting weird—but I thought it was about the job,” admits Felinez. “But she’s our best friend. Maybe it was Liza? She is always sucking up to Willi Ninja, Jr., even though he doesn’t give her the time of a twirl. But maybe that’s why she’s been, well, acting flaky!”

“You’re right. She blew off a Catwalk meeting!” I shriek, then hesitate. “But, no, Aphro was acting weird before the job interview. When she went with me uptown, she was already chewing on gristle and wouldn’t tell me what it was,” I explain.

Chris waits patiently while Felinez and I continue
to hash out the horror in disbelief. “Are you gonna ask them?” squeaks Felinez.

“I’m gonna do more than that,” I retort.

After I hang up the phone, Chris reiterates, “If she says she didn’t send you that e-mail, she probably didn’t, since she’s your friend and all. Someone just used her e-mail address as a Trojan to get you to feel safe enough to download the attachment with the virus.”

“I know that. But I think the other so-called friend did. Or a missing member of my house. I can feel it. What a sham-o-rama,” I utter in disbelief.

Chris squints. “Sham-o-rama?” he repeats.

“Oh, it’s Catwalk code,” I explain absentmindedly. “It’s the one place that’s always open for business in the urban jungle: everywhere you turn, there is a jackal on Jump Street—ready to pull the acrylic over somebody’s eyes in the name of getting ahead. What I can’t believe is that that someone is supposed to be an ally in my Catwalk camp!”

“Wow. You have a very interesting take on things,” Chris says, looking at me intently.

“Well, you have to—if you plan on surviving and thriving in the fashion jungle,” I explain, waving off his admiration.

While Chris works on unfreezing my computer, I obsess about Aphro or Liza sending me a virus. I dial Angora. She’s good at clues, but this time she offers a
dim take: “Well, if either one of them did send it, they’re going to deny it.”

“No kidding, Inspector Chérie,” I sigh, freaking out. I start sniffing my underarms while cradling the phone in my right ear. “I’ve got a flood again.”

“What?” she asks.

I whisper about my armpits again while darting my eyes in Chris’s direction. His back is turned to me as he works intently on my computer. “I’m sweating like a soccer mom!”

“Is he making you nervous?” Angora asks, amused.

“No, Inspector Chérie—someone putting a plague in my portal makes me nervous!” I say.

“I do remember something,” she says, then pauses. “Liza lives by Willi Ninja, Jr., in Queens.”

“Boy, that’s a borough that’s sure getting around these days,” I hiss. “I didn’t know that. Why didn’t you tell me this before!”

“Because what did it matter? He is down with Dulce—and she can’t stand Liza, so no way did she stand a chance of getting in his house,” says Angora.

“Well, maybe she finally figured a way in—to sabotage me for him!” I shriek. “This can’t be happening. Tell me it can’t be happening.”

“It’s not happening,” Angora says, obliging me. “Really, Pash, you don’t know anything yet, so don’t get yourself so, um, sweaty.”

“Easy for you to say, cool, collected blue beret. A computer crisis plus a Catwalk competition times a date with Ice Très on Friday equals sweat squared in the armpits!” I say, driving my point home to Bunny Land.

Angora gets the message and hops off. Chris keeps staring at me between mysterious boot-ups and CD removals from the C drive.

“Sorry about that, but I’m really gagulating,” I offer as an apology.

He looks at me, his eyes twinkling. “That’s another very interesting word.”

“Yes, it, um, means ‘past freaked out,’ ” I explain, nervously. “Did you always like computers?”

“Did you always like modeling?” he counters.

“I’m about more than modeling, though,” I say.

“I’m sure,” he says, but I don’t know quite what he means.

Nonetheless, I continue informing him of my vision for being a modelpreneur.

“Well, you sound like you have a clear-cut vision,” he says. I can tell he’s impressed.

“Yes, I do. Do you?”

“I think so. I wanna be an Internet entrepreneur. Don’t think the bubble has burst on I-commerce like everybody says,” he explains to me.

“Bubbles don’t have to burst,” I say, wistfully.

“No, they don’t,” Chris says, like he really agrees.
He turns and looks at me intently again. Angora is right. He does make me nervous. “I know you’re busy on Friday,” he says, carefully.

I look at him like he’s Je’Taime’s crystal ball cousin before I recall what I said. “Oh, right, you heard me on the phone?”

“I wasn’t listening—just heard that part,” he assures me. “But, um, you know, there is a Cyber Chic exhibit at the I-commerce trade show at Javits. I’m going on Friday and Saturday and Sunday … if you wanna go with me?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I say, tongue-tied because I don’t know what to say.

“You don’t know what?” asks Chris. He runs his hand over his pants leg like he’s smoothing out an imaginary crease. I can just see his room—everything labeled in neat drawers and storage options maximized to percentages, like disk-operating space on a computer drive.

I want to shriek,
I don’t know anything!
Now I feel stupid. How can I squirm my way out of going out with him on Saturday when he’s been so downloading with me? Just because he’s too short—and his clothes are too Eddie Bow-wow—I mean, Bauer—for me.

“Um, I’m busy on Saturday, too,” I say, telling a fiberoni with no finesse.

Despite Chris’s almond-brown complexion, I can
tell that he’s blushing because he knows that I’m lying. “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow, anyway, round five,” he says, wincing.

“Oh, right,” I say, embarrassed.

Luckily, his cell phone rings with the old-school tune “Super Freak,” by the late Rick James.

“I don’t know if you should dance, or answer it,” I say, guffawing too loudly. Now I sound like Aphro!

“You’re funny—you know that?” Chris says, staring at me.

“Aren’t you going to answer it?” I counter, embarrassed again but pleased that he has taken notice of my extensive vocabulary instead of telling me how pretty I am. Maybe he was just being nice before. I mean, why would he want to be with a girl a foot taller than him, anyway?