Chapter 1 :
The Toilet, the Mistress & the Wardrobe
Once upon a time, in a far, far away land known as Beverly Hills, lived a twenty-some year-old girl named Cinderella, who earned a living as…well, a maid. While there was certainly nothing disrespectful about this profession (it certainly beat stripping at a night club or gyrating around a pole), there was something distinctly morbid about scrubbing the thousand-dollar Royal Doulton toilets of hoity-toity celebrities, and even worse, self-aggrandizing heiresses. Indeed, while some preferred the term 'housekeeper' or 'maintenance crew', Cinderella chose the simplest, bluntest term that described her achievements, and this took shape in the monosyllabic word, 'maid'.
It came as to no surprise that she spent her days dusting and scrubbing and washing away—after all, her mother struggled as an illegal immigrant, working off a fake passport and identity. Her father, on the other hand, was an entirely different story. J.J. Cummings, a self-made billionaire notorious for his womanizing ways, had sprinkled the seeds that would one day blossom into the fruit of his loins. This happened one lazy afternoon, when he strolled into his wife's enormous walk-in-closet and smacked a bottom that did not belong to dear Mrs. Cummings. This uncouth, barbaric behaviour startled the bottom's owner, a housekeeper posing as U.S. resident, Marietta Consuelo. Her name, however, was not a subject brought into question, as J.J. Cummings only delighted in his discovery of a new mistress. Scum ball though he was, one thing that all his mistresses, past and present, would reluctantly admit, is his undeniable magnetism, unbeatable charm and yes, unparalleled bank account. Unplanned though the affair, Marietta was an ordinary woman without unique beauty, wit or grace that distinguished her from any other. Perhaps it was by luck or, some may say, misfortune that she'd stooped to align Mrs. Cummings' extraordinary collection of Jimmy Choos one minute, only to assume the same crude position with Mr. Cummings the next.
Fear of being deported, fear of losing her minimum-wage job, fear of refusing a powerful man, she sold out her romantic ideals for a mere few thousand dollars over the course of J.J. Cummings' Latina fever. Nevertheless, juicy tabloids hit the stands, reporting headlines of the hotshot Hollywood producer's wife expecting a visit from the stork. This was news to Marietta, who proceeded to shatter an expensive jar of Beluga caviar on the Cummings' Italian marble floor. Short-lived though the affair had been, a vivid pink line on a stick told Marietta Consuelo that she'd soon be expecting her own bundle of joy. Floods of tears overwhelmed the housekeeper, as the prospect of raising a child as a single, now unemployed mother, seemed a likely plotline for her favourite telenovela.
You may wonder how this is all relevant to dear Cinderella, and it is in fact, the irony of her history that initiated a series of events to transpire as a catalyst towards the course of her destiny. Indeed, young Cinderella had grown up in the outskirts of Los Angeles, reading the battered copies of fairy-tale stories borrowed from her school library, imagining her life to someday magically evolve into something extraordinary. She waited each night for her fairy godmother to appear, for little mice to weave her ball gown for the prom, for a Prince Charming to sweep her mother off her feet. Instead, the unimaginable occurred.
At age seventeen, just three days short of her public school graduation, Cinderella received a phone call from the police that informed her of her mother's tragic death. In a common hit-and-run incident, Marietta Consuelo suffered a concussion and consequent brain hemorrhage—the result of an heiress' second D.U.I. Social workers offered therapy and counseling, even foster homes, though the first two seemed grossly expensive options and the latter too ridiculous for a college-bound girl her age. Cinderella, however, was far from a brilliant academic student, withdrawing to herself in classes that involved math and computations, relishing instead in the imagination of English Lit and the consolation of whispering the popular girl's lines in every school play from the very back of the auditorium.
So it came to be that on her twenty-first birthday, she kneeled on all fours, scrubbing vomit off a certain socialite's delicates by (gloved) hand, the result of a wild night of heavy partying and boozing. The stain in question refused to budge, no matter how many cups of Tide she used, nor whether she ran the faucet with boiling hot or frigid cold water. Sighing, Cinderella wished she'd remembered her mother's mutterings of stain removers, from the splashes of red wine (or was it white?) to remove table-cloth stains or apple vinegar to scrub off greasy pans. Somehow, she didn't think the Madame would take too kindly to her popping open a vintage 1856 Merlot for such a thing.
Throwing down her yellow gloves in defeat, she left the stain-removing for later and turned to the brand-new self-flushing toilet recently installed in the master bathroom, and, as she remembered, 9 other bathrooms in the mansion. Madame had informed Cinderella that morning that she was to be extremely careful with the ten-thousand dollar toilets, as they were très, très expensive, and worth far more than Cinderella herself. It seemed odd, really, to have to clean the bowl of such an expensive toilet (surely it had some built-in feature that allowed it to routinely maintain its glossy white exterior?), but Cinderella merely nodded as Madame filed her red-lacquered claws, babbling away in a grand mélange of English and French.
At the moment, with the absence of an instructional manual, she stared hesitantly at the new-fangled Royal Doulton toilet that even Brad Pitt supposedly coveted. Hesitantly, Cinderella searched around the toilet for a button of some sort, but was met with endless white porcelain instead. Pouring a generous amount of Clorox, she poked and prodded the interior with a rainbow-hued toilet brush. Unfortunately, the toilet still refused to flush, leaving streaks of blue liquid dribbling down to the now blue-tinged water. Crap. She hastily ducked and swiveled one knob or another against the pipes, relieved to find a slow trickling of water gurgling into the toilet bowl. The trouble was, it now refused to stop. The water continued to trickle in without actually going anywhere, and as a result, reached the brim of the toilet bowl threateningly before overflowing. This happened in a matter of seconds.
Soon, the shiny marble floor was flooded with a rapidly-spreading puddle of blue water, soaking and staining Madame's cream bath mats. Even worse, the toilet now bubbled, emanating an odd whirring sound that grew louder and louder, until at last, it spewed a brilliant spattering of water like the fountain it wasn't. Oh god.
It occurred to Cinderella, as she mopped the floor vigorously, that the telltale omen of misfortune was cast that morning, when a dozen rejection letters arrived in the mail, courtesy of twelve different casting agencies that informed her, in identical automated responses, that they appreciated her enthusiasm for the film industry, but that it was most difficult to represent a low-wage employee with absolutely no experience as an actress. It didn't help that the month-old box of cornflakes produced a scampering fat grey rat wobbling out of its new home, or that her dingy bathroom provided a dance floor for a pair of enormous, scuttling cockroaches. This, added to the spattering of mud upon her faded white sneakers on the way to the mansion, should've screamed 'Stay in bed!', but Cinderella refused to budge, wiping away the stain with her bare hand for the $ 800 salary she'd receive at the end of the day. $ 800, she remembered, that would sadly be deposited in her landlord's mailbox in its entirety, in opposed to purchasing a fancy dinner for one. She was, of course, accustomed to low-key birthdays spent baking a batch of vanilla-frosted Betty Crocker cupcakes for herself, watching prime-time television on the semi-mouldy couch she'd inherited from her mother.
One could even consider her lucky in some respects, for she had no mouths to feed (other than her own), no relatives to support (that she knew of), and essentially, few worries besides performing her housekeeping duties as instructed. Cinderella, however, found this quite tragic. With the idyllic dreams of marrying a handsome Prince Charming far behind her, she discovered what it meant to be independent, self-reliant, but at the same time, alone. Always one to shy away from social situations in fear of the catty girls' remarks on her hand-me-down clothes or her crushes' blind ignorance concerning her existence in high school, she never had a proper best friend…or any friend at all. She was polite to the cashier at her local grocery store, respectful to her landlord, and obedient to her employer, Madame Beverly Cummings. Yes, had she known her mother's history with J.J. Cummings, Cinderella would have knocked on David E. Kelley's door instead, (wasn't he casting for his new pilot?), but her innocence on the matter allowed her to dutifully arrive at seven a.m., Mondays to Fridays, to ensure that the Cummings' huge estate glittered in all its glory. The irony of picking up after her step-sisters, Vanessa and Vivienne Cummings, whose business, it seemed, revolved around table-dancing and club-hopping, failed to amuse Cinderella. Indeed, it was merely the idea of survival that forced her to grit her teeth and tidy the immense bedrooms of the twins, whose walk-in shoe closet stood bigger than her apartment. Christian Louboutins flung here and there, Missoni bikinis tangled in heaps with Diane Von Furstenberg wrap dresses and Versace haute couture, it was Cinderella's duty to match each strappy espadrille with its counterpart, and to send each rumpled clothing to dry-cleaning.
Had she possessed the emaciated twins' size-zero figures, she would've rejoiced in their daily wardrobe clean-outs. Unfortunately, her own size-six figure was frowned upon in the Cummings' home, and she chose to swallow Madame's drawls of "Do vatever you vant vith it—geev it to your theen seester or somethink," and shrewdly sold the once-only worn clothes on E-Bay, keeping the occasional Marc Jacobs It-Bag or baggy Burberry trench coat to herself. The twins' mile-high heels were out of the question—two sizes too small, too high, and would, in all accounts, snap in an instant or give her the appearance of a clown-on-stilts.
After a half-hour of scrubbing industrial-strength solution onto the marble floor, Cinderella was relieved to find that though the stuff nearly burnt through her rubber gloves, it managed to coax the Italian marble to glisten with its pearl-like glory once again. The toilet, even, seemed to have satisfied its erratic burbling and even flushed itself three times—events which startled Cinderella each consecutive time, accidentally spraying the nozzle full-blast on herself instead of the shower wall. Still dripping wet from the recent hosing-down, she tiptoed to the Jacuzzi bath to scrub it down, only to hear the doorbell via the intercom. Again. And again.
Her heart beating rapidly, Cinderella's mind ran through all the possibilities—surely Madame couldn't be back yet? A quick check of her watch told her that it was only 10:30. Was it the postman? DHL? Adrien Brody? The last option popped in her head out of nowhere—obviously Adrien Brody had far better things to do than stroll up to the Cummings' doorstep to see if the twins were around. Wasn't he promoting his latest Oscar-buzzed film at Cannes or something? Besides, Adrien was far classier than that…or at least, she hoped so. Shrugging off her nonsensical thoughts, she returned to the Jacuzzi, only to hear the infernal thing chime again and again.
Throwing down the sponge, Cinderella hurried out the door, racing down the grand, Persian-rugged staircase. This had better be the man of her dreams.
Author's Note: I took a chance and figured that if I didn't actually use them as talking characters, references to real actors would be acceptable to the Fanfiction overlords. Reviews are always greatly appreciated. )