Read Poseur #4: All That Glitters Is Not Gucci for Free Online Page B

free. Of course, “assistant” seemed a scandalously loose term
     for the flip-flopping fop’s primary activity: languishing poolside whilst telling Charlotte how “fierce” she looked. But whatever.
     With an array of candy-colored Bermuda shorts heaped on his lap and a dreamy-soft smile on his wrinkled, pink face, Mort seemed
     more than content.
    “Is Charlotte here?” Janie asked, glancing back to the fitting room after he and Amelia were introduced.
    “Well, she is in body but not in spirit,” he clucked, already absorbed in a nearby mirror and sucking in his cheeks. “Oh,
     Looocccie!” he sang toward the fitting rooms. “Would you please stop this interminable conversation with that silly, silly
     boy? We got company.”
    The door to the mystery dressing room finally opened then, and Charlotte emerged in a painfully chic camel-colored Chloé suit.
     The expertly tailored jacket and playfully scalloped shorts exuded the perfect balance between classic beauty and flirty sex
     appeal. It was seriously so envy-inducingJanie almost clutched Amelia’s arm for support.
    “I’ll call you back,” the petite brunette bombshell murmured into her iPhone, immediately laying eyes on Janie. She dropped
     her cell into her glossy black Chanel shopper and released an airy laugh. “Janie!”
    “Hey!” Janie tossed her hair and attempted to act natural. She hated to admit it, but she was one person with Amelia, and
     another with Charlotte. Was she really supposed to be both at the same time? “
Quel
is up?” she chirped, before catching Amelia’s horrified eye. “Ha!” she laughed thinly.
    “What’d you think?” The salesgirl, who’d completed Janie’s app in record time, swept away from the register and beamed.
    “
Hids
,” Charlotte sniffed, and stuffed a lacy wad of discarded lingerie into her outstretched hands. “Cut for a drag queen.”
    “I’m so sorry,” she gasped, as Don John peered over her shoulder, examining the rejects with new interest.
    “Hello,” the pretty ice queen smiled at Amelia, magnanimously extending her hand as Don John disappeared with the salesgirl.
     “Charlotte Beverwil.”
    “Charlotte’s the head seamstress for Poseur,” Janie babbled inanely as they limply shook hands. “Amelia goes to LACHSA. She’s
     in a band. Creatures of Habit, actually, you know them! They’re playing Friday and you should
totally
come, I mean, obvi.”
    “Oh,
obvi
.” Amelia eyed her friend in thinly masked disbelief.
    “
Trés
cool,” Charlotte oozed. “Well, great to see you two, but I have got to return this call.” Fishing her iPhone from her shopper,
     she confided, “Don’t want to be rude.”
    The two girls followed her tiny, ticktocking hips with their eyes as she confidently headed for the all-glass double door
     exit. And then, just as she’d turned to Amelia with an apologetic little sigh, the French wench’s melodious voice rang brightly
     in her ear.
    “Evan?”
    The blood drained from Janie’s face. Wait, so, she’d been talking to
Evan
? That
entire
time? About kissing? Wait a minute….
    Paranoia donkey-kicked her heart.
    Did that mean
she
was Dogfish?
    “Wait for me, you mangy minx!” Don John cried, sweeping Mort free of garments and wheeling him toward the exit. The salesgirl
     flashed Janie’s freshly used platinum Pellicard and sang.
    “Enjoy your top!”

The Guy: Seedy Moon
    The Getup: Mourning garb: coffee-stained gray sweats, Bugs Bunny slippers, black silk Korean flag bathrobe, no shirt, gold
     chains, gold rings, ink for days
    Melissa returned to her über-modern glinting glass Bel Air estate to find her father exactly where she’d left him at eight
     in the morning: holed up in his second-floor studio, tinkering away at yet another sad and pensive, soon-to-be-voice-modulated
     (his voice was terrible) song about Vivien.
    This one, from what she could gather from the obsessively repeated chorus, was titled “Float Like a Butterfly, Sting