Catwalk (60 page)

I wake up to the sound of my mother yelling in the living room. My bedroom is dark and I’m sprawled across my bed, fully dressed. I strain my eyes to see what time it is on the cat clock across the room. Ten o’clock. Rubbing the crust out of my eyes, I remember the afterglow of floating on the subway, encased in my pinkalicious bubble in Zeusland—until I came home and was hit with the sight of Chenille in drab gray. I barked at her, “Where are my shoes? I know
you
hid them!”

But now that I’ve been rudely awakened, in more ways than one, I try to drown out who my mother is yelling at in another room; it’s obviously someone on the phone, because the heated exchange is limited to her booming voice.

I prop myself on my fifty pink velvet and paisley pillows, gazing peacefully at Fabbie Tabbie, who is perched in the chair at my desk, gazing at the computer screen, where the Catwalk blog is still up. I was reading the blog because I was paranoid that there would already be rumors about my Zeus rendezvous posted online, but I
drifted over to the bed, daydreaming about said rendezvous, before I passed out. Now I realize how silly that is—not the daydreaming part, but indulging in paranoia as a pastime. Or maybe not? Good thing Fabbie Tabbie is keeping tabs for me.

“You’d better keep up, Fabbie Tabbie,” I mutter in approval. “Because in fashion, one day you’re in—furballin’ with the Fendis—and the next day you’re out with the kitty litter.”

Fabbie Tabbie slowly turns her head, gazing at me with those
Avatar
smoldering eyes. I still don’t move. Not yet. I’m determined to languish in my daydreams about Zeus until I’m forced to face my dreary reality, but I can’t wait to give Fifi a finger-lickin’ report tomorrow at school—and to see Zeus and fall down the rabbit hole all over again. I’m also bringing Fabbie Tabbie to school tommorow for the Pet Pose Off. “You have to look
purrfecto
,” I coo to Fabbie Tabbie. We’ve been practicing prancing together for months in the courtyard. I don’t understand why Nole Canoli is putting my paws to the fire on this one. He doesn’t even let Countess Coco’s paws touch the ground, let alone those of his two cats, Penelope and Napoleon. How does he think Penelope is going to maneuver on a runway? “
Mañana
, we’re gonna knock Penelope back on her haunches.”

Right now there’s a soft knock on my bedroom door,
but I don’t answer. I’m still not in the mood to deal with Chenille, who probably wants help with her
holas
—or maybe this time it’s her English homework.

“Pashmina?” my mom calls out, entering my bedroom without waiting for a response.

I sit straight up, noticing that her eye makeup is smudged so she looks like a raccoon. Clearly my mom is rattled about something. I just hope it has nothing to do with me.

“Fabbie Tabbie—go to bed!” orders my mom. Fabbie hops off the chair and scampers to her bed. Now Mom turns her stern attention to me. “I called you earlier, but you didn’t answer. Why didn’t you pick up your phone?”

“Oh, I turned it off. What’s wrong?”

My mom slowly sits in the chair, folding her purple satin bathrobe across her legs like a trained geisha. “Can you show me how to use that Facebook thing?” She dabs at the corner of her eyes in a feeble attempt to remove the smudges without looking in the mirror.

“I tried to show you how to do Facebook before, remember? It’s really easy. Even you can learn it. Sorry, I didn’t mean to say that,” I apologize, rising from my bed.

“Not now,” she insists.

“What’s wrong, Mom?” I ask again. I plop back down against the pillows on my bed. She’s got me spooked.

Slowly, my mom starts in on her tale of woe. “You
remember Aradora, who worked with me but I had to let her go because, um—” My mom stops. Obviously she’s too rattled to talk. She starts massaging her forehead, like she’s trying to formulate her scrambled thoughts.

I decide to help her. “You had to let her go because she was scratching herself all the time—like she was a victim of the current bedbug epidemic?”

“That’s right. You remember. And I brought Lonni over to her house once to play cards with Aradora and her husband,” she continues. Lonni is one of my mom’s girlfriends; she runs a dance studio in Brooklyn—the Dancing Diablo. “Actually, Aradora was supposed to come over here to play cards. Remember that time we were playing cards and you came in with that guy to fix your computer?”

“Yes, Chris Midgett.” I don’t want to think about him now and feel guilty. I just want to think about Zeus.

“So anyway, that time I brought Lonni to Aradora’s house was the only time they ever met,” my mom explains carefully.

“I got you, Mom. Go ahead,” I say, nodding.

“Aradora called me today and told me that Lonni contacted her on Facebook, trying to add her as a friend.”

“Yeah, that’s what you do—you can contact any member on Facebook and ask them to add you as a friend.”

“Well, that doesn’t make any sense—someone is either your friend or they’re not,” my mom says.

“It’s just a social networking thing, Mom,” I explain, wondering where the story is headed.

“All right—whatever. So Lonni is saying to Aradora on this Facebook thing, ‘Let’s get together for drinks, girl, and you can meet my new boyfriend.’ So Aradora was like, ‘I thought you were married.’ Lonni responds, ‘No, I’m separated and I have this new boyfriend—and I’m in love.’ ”

I nod for my mom to continue.
In love
. That’s exactly how I feel about Zeus after tonight, but I realize that now is not the time to tell my mom that tiddy.

“So Aradora was asking Lonni about the boyfriend and Lonni said he’s really handsome—Dominican and Jamaican—and a fabulous interior designer. So Aradora is thinking, That’s funny, isn’t Vivian’s boyfriend Dominican and Jamaican? It’s not like you hear that combo platter every day of the week. So anyway, she asks Lonni what is her new boyfriend’s name, and where did she meet him? And Lonni was acting all cagey and cryptic with that information, so that’s how Aradora knew something was ‘frying in fish town.’ That’s what she said,” my mom says, letting me know she thinks Aradora’s phrasing is corny.

“Go ahead.”

“So Aradora tries to milk Lonni for more information, like do you have a photo of him up on Facebook? Lonni says she did have some photos up, but she took them down because she’s trying to be sensitive to other people’s feelings. So Aradora thought maybe she meant the ex-husband, but something didn’t feel right, so she contacted me and told me the whole story. And she asked me to go on Facebook and she would show me the stitches of what Lonni said—or something like that—which I didn’t understand.”

“You mean, the thread of the conversation?” I probe.

“I guess so,” my mom says, crumbling. “I told her I didn’t go on any Facebook thing, but I appreciated her letting me know.”

“So what do you think is going on?” I ask, even though I dread the answer.

“Lonni hasn’t said anything to me about having a new Dominican Jamaican boyfriend, or one from the hinterlands, for that matter.”

Suddenly, I remember that time when Lonni was here playing cards, so was Ramon. There was something about the way Lonni winked at Ramon. I saw the exchange. But I thought Lonni was just being Lonni—kinda wild and in your face. After all, that’s what Mom has always liked about her. Lonni used to be a customer
at the Forgotten Diva before she lost fifty pounds from dance classes and then started working at the dance studio where she now teaches hip-hop.

“So you think Lonni is, um, seeing Ramon?” I ask, shocked.

“Well, I tried to reach him all day to find out. And I called her, too. She finally picked up the phone and brushed me off, denying it. Said she couldn’t talk because she was busy,” my mom says, choking back her tears. “That was him on the phone just now. He said you can’t own people, and he is a grown man and what he does is his business.”

“So in other words, he was saying he is, um, seeing Lonni?” I ask, puzzled.

“That’s what it sounds like to me,” my mom says, defeated. “I just can’t believe it. Interior decorator? He ain’t nothing but a handyman who works at a Queens hardware store. She’ll get hers. Lies always catch up to you. Always.”

Suddenly, I shriek. “Omigod, Ice Très! I forgot I made a date with him to watch his wheelies at the skating rink—I mean, the duck pond.” I jump up and get my purse to turn my cell phone on. Sure enough, there are five text messages from Ice Très.

“Why did you forget?” my Mom asks.

“Because I ended up, um, hanging out with Zeus—the model, deejay, and graphic designer on my Catwalk
team,” I explain carefully. Now is not the best time to tell Mom that our relationship has progressed. Embarrassed, I pick up a pillow from my bed to cover my face. “What a sham. That’s what I am! Ice Très is never going to stop quacking about this!”

Suddenly, my precious missing kitten heels fall from behind one of the pillows. “Oh,” I say, surprised.

“Well, I guess the other shoe has dropped after all,” my mom observes. “Go apologize to Chenille.”

“Right,” I say sheepishly. I completely forgot that I had hidden my heels from Chenille in the first place. Fretting, I ask my mom, “So, what should I do about Ice Très?”

“Well, whatever you do, tell him the truth. I can’t take any more liars around me. Never again,” my mom says, getting up from the chair. She tightens the sash on her purple robe as if she’s tying up loose ends. “I’m going to bed. You’d better go ahead and call that boy back.”

“No, I’ll see him tomorrow at school,” I say, like a coward.

My mom glares at me.

“Okay, I’ll call him now.”

“I think maybe you’re taking on too much. You always do that,” my mom warns me.

“You think that’s what the dream was trying to tell me?” I shriek. “That I’m going to fall on my face?”

“So you told Shalimar, I take it?” my mom asks.

“Yes, I confronted her—or I should say, she confronted me and turned it into a showdown at the okie-dokie—right on camera!” I inform her. “Should I apologize to her?”

“That would be a good idea,” my mom advises me.

“Oy, I hate groveling.”

“Don’t we all.”

I send Shalimar a text: “Sorry about the shoe mix-up. Please accept my sincere apologies. Pashmina.”

“So what are you going to do about the shoes?” my mom asks, concerned.

“Oh, I’ll tell Fifi I found them. She was pissed, too.”

“That’s not what I meant. I meant the shoes for your fashion show.”

“Oh, right.” I take a deep breath. “Well, we still don’t have any.”

“You’ll figure it out—you can do anything you put your mind to …,” my mom says, her voice trailing off. I can tell she just got a bolt of inspiration. “You know what? I’m calling Ramon back. You can’t fault someone for telling you the truth—but enough with the lies already.”

My mom closes my bedroom door. I’m haunted by what she said: “You can’t fault someone for telling you the truth.” It reminded me of what Ice Très said to me outside school today. He was telling me the truth about
the Shalimar situation, even if he was embarrassed. “She dangled, he angled.” I smile, thinking about Ice Très’s goofy smile and how much I relate to him. I’m just as desperate as he is to make it—big-time. But right now, I can’t think about Ice Très because it’s all about Zeus. My mom is right. Enough with the lies.

I pick up the phone and dial Ice Très’s number, hoping he doesn’t answer. But he does.

“Where you been?” Ice Très asks, concerned.

“I got caught up in the Catwalk meeting,” I quaver, losing my courage to be honest. I blather about the Diamond drama before I blurt out the truth. “Then afterward I went with Zeus to the Barbiecue Hut.”

There is silence before Ice Très responds. “Oh, so you can go out with him, but you can’t go out with me?”

Now I feel guilty. “Okay, I can.”

“Let me take you to the Lipstick Lounge, this new—”

“I know all about it,” I interrupt. “But this isn’t going to be a repeat of Native, is it?”

“I knew you would say that,” he moans. “No, there will be no repeat of the Native no-show. Just give me the chance for us to sit down and talk. That’s all I’m asking. If after that, you don’t want to have anything to do with me, I won’t ask you again, not even for a soda pop in the Fashion Café, okay? Do we have a deal?”

“In principle,” I say, stalling. Now I feel guilty for different reasons, like I’m doing something behind
Zeus’s back. But that’s ridiculous. I owe Ice Très this much for standing him up tonight.

“Okay, we have a deal. And a date. But if you stand me up this time—then we will really be even!”

“You won’t regret this, boo kitty. I promise.”

I hang up the phone and sigh. I hope I won’t. One thing is for sure: I don’t regret my date tonight and how sparkly Zeus makes me feel inside.

If I had known how quickly my sparkles were going to fade, I would have bottled the sensation. The next day, Shalimar Jackson wastes no time in flaunting my apology in my face. “Thanks for the ‘heartfelt’ apology. Don’t you wonder—how did cowards communicate before there was texting, huh?”

My cheeks are burning, but I keep my mouth clamped shut.