Poseur #4: All That Glitters Is Not Gucci by Rachel Maude Read Free Book Online

Like
     a Vee.” Melissa sighed with concern. Not to say she wasn’t
super
down with Daddy dumping that bitchass Botoxed barracuda like he did (she was
down
to the can-I-kiss-it
ground
). And not to say she didn’t fully support his soaring rise to worldwide chart domination (she was the wind beneath his
bling
). But, still. Him moping around in those raggedy-ass gray sweats day after
day
? Subsisting on nothing but Mountain Dew, melba toast, and misery?
    Nuh-uh. Not cool.
    And so, in what
some
might deem a rare burst of selflessness and domesticity, Melissa pitched her Juicy CoutureCheetah Day Dreamer to the immaculate white Berber carpet and padded with purpose to their ultramodern kitchen. After the
     requisite blowout with Mr. Thang, their nasty, totalitarian cook, she whipped her daddy up some
personalized
macaroni and cheese. It was the best mac on the planet, which was a good thing, seeing as it was the only thing she knew
     how to make herself.
    “Daddy!” she sang, softly clunking upstairs in her Dolce & Gabbana denim platform wedges and the hideous hippie smock Petra
     designed for her to wear to Poseur’s launch party (she’d taken to using it as a makeshift apron). She leaned against the airtight,
     opaque black glass door of Seedy’s studio, balancing the mac on her hip. “Daddy! Open up. I brought you a
present
.”
    “Is it a gun?” he inquired, a note of hope in his voice. He sounded like gravel and rusty chains.
    “Um, no…” Melissa smiled at the door, straining with cheer. “But I’ll give you a hint, okay? It starts with
m
.”
    “Machete?”
    “Daddy,” his daughter huffed, shifting the mac on her hip. “Just open the door, okay? Tray’s getting heavy!”
    She heard something like a shuffle, and stepped back. Seedy cracked open the door and peeked out. Melissa pressed her lips
     together in disapproval. Here he was—the Kimchi Killa, the Lord of the Blings, the illest hip-hop artistin
history
—and what? He looked like butt. Gone was the fun-loving sparkle in his eyes. Gone the cleanly shaved head, fragrant and gleaming
     with coconut oil. His eyes were now bloodshot, sunken, and dull. And as for his head,
Lord
.
    Looked like he was wearing George Clooney’s
face
for a
cap
.
    “Delivery!” Melissa chimed, as if she could combat the foul rankness of the airless studio through sheer force of pep. She
     floated her simmering tray (along with the mac, she’d added an origami napkin swan, a novelty silver spoon, and a bottle of
     VitaminWater (Rescue flavor)) into the dark, keyboard-stuffed room. “Ta-da!”
    “No!” Her father waved aside a Gruyère-scented puff of steam. “Melissa, I told you I cannot
eat
.”
    “I know what you told me,” Melissa assured him, landing the tray on top of a high-end Yamaha amp and brushing her hands. “You
     can’t eat. You can’t sleep. You can’t move….” She regarded her father with steely-eyed reserve, and then—quick like a Band-Aid—threw
     open the velvet blackout curtains.
    “Aaagh!” Seedy flinched, and attempted to combat a sunbeam with a hapkido hand strike. “The
light
.”
    “That’s right.” Melissa bobbed her eyebrows. “That light is full of the vitamin D you need for such D-related activities as
     bein’ top
dawg
, not to mention bein’ my
daddy.
Sostop with the woe-is-me whining, and
bake
it till you
make
it, a’ight?
Damn
.”
    Plopping down on the plush white leather couch, she folded her arms, bolting her father with her very sternest, do-not-mess-with-me
     stare. Seedy sulked his way around the room, listless as a neglected goldfish, and then surrendered, flopping into his ergonomic
     seat. He stared at his synthesizer, pushing some air between his lips. “D,” he murmured, poking the corresponding key. Squeezing
     his dark eyes shut, he poked it again, singing with pained passion:
Duck
all those kisses, they didn’t mean
jack
.
Duck
you, you
ho
. I don’t want you
ba-a-ack
.”
    “Okay, Daddy?”