There's No Business Like It
Lying in her cold, hard motel bed that night, Cordelia had stared at the ceiling and weighed up her options.
Idaho would be safe. It would be boring - but it would be safe. She would still be with her mom, she was guaranteed a roof over her head; not a bedroom of her own, mind - but at least a roof free of charge. And she had got the job at April Fools no problem, and now she had retail experience. She could get another little job just like it - maybe save up for a place of her own, maybe go back to school in the future.
But that would be it. Her entire life. That was all she would be: a girl working some dead end job in some dead end town - no friends, no life, not much money, no real home and nothing much to look forward to.
It was one thing to take a job in a shop while she was still at school, in order to pay for her prom dress. She still had other things going on. She was still a student, she had plans - she was more than just a shop girl, more than just a minimum wage drone. But if she kept on doing that after graduation?... and not even somewhere nice and high end, but some backwater chicken feed store - dressed in overalls and serving men without teeth... And that would be all she was. Forever.
It was too much of a come down. The thought of people in Sunnydale finding out she lived on her aunt's couch and worked in some five and dime and that was what she had done with her life … she couldn't bear it. They'd laugh. They'd say it served her right - that she thought she was so much better than them, that she had treated them like she was so much better than them … and just look at her now.
No - her mom could go to Idaho. Cordelia would go someplace else. Do something else. And do it somewhere a hell of a lot more exciting than North West Nowheresville.
But that meant she had to decide where it was she wanted to go. She wasn't sticking around Sunnydale, there was nothing there but demons and bad memories, she needed to get away.
At first she thought of going to New York. She had been planning on going to Columbia - out of all the great schools which had accepted her - she was supposed to be moving to New York right now. There was nothing stopping her from going there anyway … nothing except money. A plane ticket would eat up way too much of her trust fund, especially if she was headed to somewhere as expensive as New York was. And if she wasn't going to school, she had no idea what it was she was going to do there for money. New York might be one of the most vibrant cities in the world - but it probably wasn't all that great if you were stuck working in Starbucks.
Perhaps it was better to head somewhere a bit closer … she had always wanted to live in L.A. And - if she lived in L.A … her heart began to be at faster. OK maybe she was just being silly here but … didn't people from all over head to L.A every day to become famous movie stars? And some of them made it. And none of them would be as hot or as determined as Cordy.
And that would be something worth shooting for, and something she wouldn't mind people back home knowing she was doing. OK sure, she probably wouldn't break Hollywood right away - there would be work in commercials and then maybe a soap opera and some daytime movies. The kind of stuff they would show in years to come on 'before they were famous' shows, and she would laugh self deprecatingly. Yeah, she really had been in a breath mint commercial, yeah - that disease of the week movie was really bad and her hair was really flat in it. But just look at her now...
It would take a while to really break the big leagues - but even when she was working towards superstardom, telling people she was an aspiring actress sounded way more successful than telling people you worked in the local Walgreens. So that was what she would do.
Feeling like her future was settled, and maybe she didn't have that much to worry about after all, she finally fell asleep. And in the morning, she told her mom she wasn't going to Idaho, she bought a bus ticket for L.A for the following day and then spent her last ever night in Sunnydale watching the clock, waiting for it to be time for her to escape.
...
She had so few clothes left that she only had one duffel bag to clutch to herself as she sat on the bus. She and her mom had parted ways at the station - her mom's bus bound somewhere further away, but considerably less exciting.
And now Cordy was out on her own, an adult, off to become an actress. She grinned to herself, as she stared out of the window - watching the familiar streets and houses flash past. She clutched her duffle bag in excitement when she passed the 'now leaving Sunnydale' sign. This was the first day of the rest of her life. She was on the cusp of something big, about to meet her destiny - she could just feel it.
...
Her excitement was a little dampened by the time she got to L.A. the bus had taken nearly three hours, the ride had been hot and sticky, there was at least one crazy person sitting near her … and the L.A bus station, when she finally reached it, was bigger but no less depressing than the Sunnydale one.
Nevertheless, she was a woman of substance. She was Cordelia fricking Chase and she wasn't going to let these slight setbacks dim her spirits or get her down. She had a plan - sort of - a vague idea, and she would work really hard to finalise it, get everything in order and then conquering Hollywood would just be a matter of time. But not too much time.
She stopped off at a payphone and pulled out the phonebook, skimming through to the 'H' section to find hotels. Much as she wanted to stay in the fanciest and the most expensive one she could find, she knew she mustn't. She was lucky to have her trust fund, but she had to live on that until the acting jobs started rolling in.
She had to economise - besides, telling the story of how she had turned up to L.A on a bus and had to live on shoestring would make a much better story on the chat show circuit than her turning up and lounging by the pool in some five star boutique hotel. People would think she'd earned her success, really worked for it, be more impressed by her achievements, if she could tell them how she had started out poor. Plus it was all about relatability. When she was a massive star she would need to have that common touch, the 'see - I'm still like you' sparkle that would make all the ordinary people love her. A background of poverty would give her that. This was all this was - a temporary embarrassment in finances which would enable her to go on to even greater success and give her an experience that would allow her to be a better and more humble person.
She found a reasonable looking hotel in the Yellow Pages, rang them up to book a room and then hailed a cab to take her there.
...
Within less than an hour of arriving in L.A, she was checked in to her new home. It was nice - and clean. There was a computer with an internet connection in the lobby that guests could use, and free iced tea on the counter. Her room here was larger than the one she shared with her mom back in Sunnydale, It had one big bed just for her, a robe in the closet and a little kitchenette area with a microwave and minifridge. Oh yeah - this would definitely do until she could afford something better.
The hotel was in Hollywood itself, just a couple of blocks from the boulevard, the walk of fame, the Chinese theatre… right in the centre of the new kingdom she was coming to rule.
After a shower to wash off the stink of the bus, she wandered out into the town, buying an iced mochachino at the Highland centre Starbucks and sucking at it through a straw as she walked down the street, taking in all the famous sights. Tomorrow - tomorrow the work would start, but today she was just letting herself enjoy being in the big city after so long in the backwater that was the hellmouth.
...
That night she slept very well. Her bed was much softer and more squishy than the one back at the Sunnydale Motorlodge, she felt like she was drowning in pillows - but in a good way.
And after a decent night's rest she eyed up the computer in the lobby nervously, took a deep breath and then connected to the net to start looking up how to become an actress. It turned out she would need to sign with an agent - she couldn't imagine they wouldn't all snap her up - and to sign with an agent she would need to get some headshots. OK - she could do that.
...
The price of the headshots made her wince. She was really eating into that trust fund. It wasn't like the hotel came all that cheap. Plus she needed food. But this was important - you had to speculate to accumulate - or whatever. She couldn't be an actress without the headshots - so she needed to get headshots, no matter what the cost. But still … she felt every penny.
Though it was totally worth it once she had them - and she looked at the glossy photographs, with her own face beaming back out at her. Or the ones where she pouted all sultry and seductive. She had made sure she showed off her full range for the camera.
Then came a day of traipsing around agents trying to get them to sign her. That went surprisingly worse than she thought it would. She had blithely assumed the first agent she tried would want her - who wouldn't want her? Look at her. She had star power written all over her. But the first agent turned her down - and so did the next, and so did the next.
It was the fifth agency she tried, which was in a dim and badly lit office with air conditioning that was on the fritz and a greasy little man smoking a cigarette, that finally agreed to represent her. He barely looked at her headshots, just glanced up and down at her - his eyes lingering on her chest for longer than was comfortable - and then nodded his assent. Sure - he'd take her. He took the photos from her and then sent her out to go and fill in forms with his secretary.
Although she was a bit unsure whilst was inside the building, it didn't seem the most … reputable, or successful of places - she felt better once she stepped back out into the street. That was a real break, getting signed up. She realised now she had maybe expected it to be easier than it was - that she had been a little naive. Agents saw new people every day - maybe hundreds of them, she should have realised some of them would be too overwhelmed with new faces to spot her potential. Still - their loss. And now the hard part was over. She had representation - someone who would be scouring the casting calls of all of Hollywood looking for just the right project for her.
All she had to do now was sit tight in her hotel room and wait for the phone calls.
