BECOMING THE FABULOUS MISS C

By Angel Sentier and Lady Parsley

Chapter Four

"Will you stop swiveling your head like that?" said Teri as she and Chloe took their seats inside the lavish movie theater that had been scrubbed and polished for the event. "You look like an owl."

Chloe ignored her friend's less than flattering observation. "I'm looking for Ginger. They're seating all of the industry people together; she's bound to see me! I should leave..."

She grabbed Chloe's arm in a vice-like grip. "You're not going anywhere, Mr. Hughes." Dipping into the goodie bag she'd been given at the door, she pulled out a sweatshirt and baseball cap with the logo of the production company emblazoned across the front of them. "Here. Put these on and she'll never see you. It's not like you stick out like a sore thumb, Chloe. You're like all the normal, regular thumbs."

"Where do you get these analogies?"

"It's a gift. Now, sit down, shut up, and we're going to watch this movie."

Forty-five minutes later...

"We know your husband was harboring information on our group, now tell us where to find the disk!"

"I don't know anything! Alexei will save me from you!"

"Ha! Let's see how talkative you become now..."

"Nooooooo!"

A smash cut to Alexei inside a men's bathroom, cutting the wires of a bomb that's slowly counting down to zero. His head snaps up and he gasps dramatically.

"Nancy! She's in trouble!"

"This movie sucks, Teri."

"Yes. Yes, it does."

"If I had paid for my ticket, I'd be asking for my money back."

"You got a sweatshirt and a hat out of the deal."

"This movie sucks so bad, it's going to put Hoover and Dyson out of business."

"Didn't you think Philip Carter Grayson is cute? You own his version of Hamlet on DVD," Teri needlessly reminded her.

Chloe shook her head. "You cannot compare this movie to Hamlet, not by any stretch of the imagination. And yeah, he's cute; I met him when he came to Ginger's office."

"Is he that cute in person?"

"No, in person he's hyper-cute. I, on the other hand, was a sobbing mess and prefer not to relive the memory. But, with apologies to Mr. Grayson, 'cute' is not nearly enough to carry this movie."

"You've got me there."

"Shhh!" hissed some guy behind them.

Teri turned to look at him. "What? It's not like you're missing anything."

The man paused and conceded her point with a shrug. The two women watched Philip, as Alexei, engage in a car chase for about one minute before Chloe groaned.

"I'm going to the bathroom. Don't bother to tell me what happens when I get back."

"Don't worry. I doubt it'll be anything memorable enough for me to recap."

Even the trip to the upstairs restroom was uneventful. She didn't really have to go; she just wanted a break from the incredible stink-bomb that was the movie going on below. As she washed her hands in the sink, a heavy sigh was wrenched from her.

"Maybe I should just call a cab and go home," she muttered to herself. "I've already lost forty-five minutes of my life that I'm never going to get back."

She backed out of the bathroom, held the door open with her behind, took aim, and tried for a three-pointer with her wad of used paper towel.

"Yeah! Nothing but trash can!"

She turned to head back to the theater and, of course, as a result of not paying attention to where she was going, bumped right into someone coming out of the opposite facing men's bathroom. The bill of the baseball cap crashed directly into the guy's chest and fell off her head.

"Oops, sorry!" she said, bending to pick it up.

"Sorry about that," he said at the same time. Unfortunately, he also bent down to retrieve the hat, and they ended up bonking foreheads.

"Ow!" they cried in concert. Forgetting the hat momentarily, they both straightened back up, each rubbing their sore spot with the heel of one hand.

He recovered first and gave her a smile. "Again, sorry. If I hadn't been watching your shot, I would have moved out of the way." He bent down, picked up her hat, and extended it to her.

Chloe's eyes had gone wide. The hat in his hand completely gone from her mind, she pointed at the man she hadn't ever expected to see again after that horrible day at the office. "You're Philip Carter Grayson."

He laughed lightly. "Yes, I am."

"Your movie sucks."

At that, he laughed loudly and honestly. "Yes, I'm well aware. I'm sorry you've had to sit through this much of it."

"Why are you out here and not in there?"

"It's not obvious? I'm looking for an escape. Isn't that what you're doing?"

Her face reddened a bit. "Well... Yeah."

He checked his watch. "There's still plenty of time." He looked at her. "Want to go get a drink?"

She blinked. "A drink?"

"Yeah. I saw a bar across the street."

A thought for Teri flitted through her mind, but, with a mental apology to her friend, she shrugged. "Sure. After forty-five minutes of that movie, I believe I'm owed that much."

He laughed again and settled the baseball cap on his own head. "Is it okay if I borrow this for now?"

"Knock yourself out. I was using it to hide, too."

He gave her a strange look. "Okay... Let's go."


When Chloe's sweet, frilly pink drink had been set before her, she turned to Philip and raised her glass. "What should we drink to?"

He pondered for a moment. "Let's drink to the last shred of hope I have that this movie won't tank my career."

"Amen." She touched her glass to his. "So, tell me why in God's name you would make this movie. You won an Academy Award. You shouldn't need to sell yourself out to crappy movies."

"That's the thing," he said, after taking a long sip of his Amaretto Sour. "I made this movie before the one that got me the award. This movie wasn't going to be released. It was never supposed to even leave the can. But now that I've got some sort of notoriety, the guys behind it think they can make some money off me. The sad part is, they're probably right, and there are going to be a lot of people wondering why they paid nine dollars to waste two hours of their life."

She shook her head. "Try to be optimistic. It might end up becoming a cult classic. Every actor has crappy movies in their closet. Just don't put it on your resume. Maybe they'll forget." She gave him a sympathetic look. "If nothing else, you've got your looks."

He laughed self-consciously. "Heh, sure."

"I have to tell you, it's really hard to sit here and not freak out."

"Why?"

Her face reddened and she took a gulp of liquid courage. "I've seen just about every stage show you've been in. Even the non-equity one you were in illegally."

He laughed again, clearly pleased and very embarrassed. "Really?"

"Yep. I may look calm on the outside, but on the inside I'm going, 'OhmyGodohmyGodohmyGod!'" She demonstrated this last in a high pitched squeal, arms flapping like a crowing rooster, before perfectly composing herself once again and presenting him with a blithe smile.

He shook his head, still laughing. "Well, thank you. I hadn't realized it was so exciting to be in my presence."

She tilted her head at him, incredulous. "You honestly have no idea how attractive you are, do you?"

"Careful. Your fan-girl is showing."

She made a show of looking for it, glancing all around and checking under her barstool. She grinned at him when he shook his head again.

"So, why isn't your girlfriend here tonight? Or did you ditch her in the theater?"

He groaned lightly and rolled his eyes, taking another long drink. "She's not here. She informed me recently that she's going to be unavoidably detained for the next fifty or sixty years."

"Ouch... Was it the name thing?"

"Name thing?"

"It's fairly common knowledge that you can't remember anyone's name. Which is why, I'm guessing, you haven't asked me for mine." It was already plain to her that he didn't remember meeting her at Ginger's office, or he would have said something. She was fine with that and didn't remind him. She had no desire to be known as 'the crying secretary.'

"Oh... Right." He looked mildly embarrassed again, with the air of someone who knows he's done something wrong, but couldn't help it. "That might have been part of it, but we were never especially close to begin with. No real chemistry, besides our physical relationship."

"I sympathize. In fact, I empathize." She extended her left hand and showed him the tan line her missing engagement ring had left behind.

"Were you broken up with by fax, too?"

She winced. "Ow... No, he did it in person. But it was five days before the wedding."

"Ding, ding! We have a winner!" he said in a deep, cheesy announcer's voice as he raised his hand toward the man behind the bar. "Bartender, another round!" He turned back to her, his brow furrowing sympathetically. "So, what was the reason? Do you have a 'name thing,' too?"

She laughed lightly, but decided against telling him the 'we-ness' story. "No. Actually, Jason used to treat me really decently, which was why I agreed to marry him. But he was... different, after we got engaged. Still, I thought things would be better after we got married. Now I'll never get to find out. I guess it's for the best, though."

He looked at her very seriously. "Let me tell you something... I know that most women believe in the strange and magical restorative powers of marriage, but in complete and utter honesty, we men don't change when we get married. We only get worse. Don't ever marry someone thinking things will change for the better, okay? Because more often than not, you will be very disappointed. And you're way too good of a person to end up stuck with an asshole like that guy sounds to be."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "You've known me for less than an hour."

"My first impressions are usually correct."

She thanked the bartender as their second round was brought to them. Raising her glass, she said, "Well, here's to the Lonely Hearts Club and its two newest members."

"Cheers," he said, touching his glass to hers. "We should get tattoos."

She looked scandalized. "On this body?" she said, indicating her own.

"What's wrong with it?"

She blinked. "Okay, let me put it to you this way... A friend of mine got a little kitten tattooed on her butt back in high school. And then, over the years, it became this big tiger."

He pondered that for a moment, and then snickered. "That would actually be kind of cool."

She laughed, shaking her head. "You know, the more I talk to you, the more I realize you're really just a normal, regular guy."

He tilted his head at her. "Thank you?"

"You're welcome," she said, grinning, and took another sip of her drink. "My name's Chloe, by the way."

He made a face. "Ah, damn! Now you've told me, I'll never remember."

"You seriously can't remember a name to save your life, can you?"

He placed one hand to his heart. "If I was standing on the edge of a cliff and my last girlfriend had a shotgun pointed at my chest and she told me to speak her name, I would be a dead man. It took me the first seven years of my life to learn my own mother's name."

"Yeah? What is it?"

"Mummy."

"You have got to be faking this."

He held both hands in the air. "I swear on my mother's name, whatever it is, that I'm not. Look..." He squinted at the ceiling, twisting his mouth to one side. "My last girlfriend's name was... Elaine."

"No."

"Damn..." He squinted at the ceiling again. "Ella?"

"Strike two."

"Damn!" His brow furrowed. "It does begin with an 'E,' right?"

"No wonder she broke up with you."

"I think it had more to do with the fact that her chauffer looked like Vin Deisel."

"You can remember Vin Deisel's name and not your own mother's?"

"I've never met Vin Deisel. But rest assured that if I ever do, I will instantly forget what his name is."

"I don't get it. How can you memorize the entire script for Hamlet in three days, and yet be this way? Ophelia, Horatio, Rosencrans and Guildenstern, they all fell trippingly on the tongue, didn't they?"

He smiled with some self-derision. "I can remember fake names without any problem at all. It's a person's real name that will fly in one ear and out the other."

She shook her head. "Were you dropped on your head as a child?"

"I've suspected, but it's never been proven. I've also looked into the possibility of having lived near power lines or if I might have eaten lead paint chips."

She laughed. Chloe was enjoying herself so much by then, that she almost forgot who she was with. Time slid away as they continued to talk and when he happened to glance at his watch, he started visibly.

"Damn... The movie will be ending in just a few minutes," he said, bringing them both down to reality. He looked at her apologetically, which surprised her. "I'm sorry. I have to go. They'll all be expecting me at the after party to get my ass kissed." His face lit with sudden inspiration. "Will you be going?"

She almost said yes instantly, but then remembered herself. "Ah... I can't. My boss will be there and if she sees me, it's my ass on a platter. I'm not really supposed to be here."

"Oh, so that's who you were hiding from." Evidently reminded, he took off the baseball cap and handed it back to her. "Well, if you change your mind and think you could manage to sneak in, please come." The look he gave her then was heart-stoppingly grateful. "This is actually the first time I've really laughed in about a month."

"I'll... think about it," she said, not really wanting to say no.

"All right. I'll give the doorman your name."

Doubtfully, she raised an eyebrow at him.

He nodded. "Yeah, I don't think that will work either." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a card of some kind. "Give this to whoever's at the door. That should get you in."

The slip of paper he had handed her looked a lot like the ticket Teri had given her earlier to get into the movie, only this one was bright yellow rather than white, and had 'VIP' stamped across it. She realized this ticket must have been meant for Emily Hodges... had she not broken up with him.

He shook her hand warmly. "In case I don't see you... Thank you for rescuing me. This was a lot more fun than sitting through that flick."

"Likewise," she said. "Though I think almost anything would have been more fun."

"Not at all," he assured her. "At the moment, I'd much rather be here getting soundly drunk with you than go to a party where everyone will tell me how great that crappy movie was." His smile became somewhat thoughtful. "You're different, you know? You're..." Whatever he might have said seemed to escape him as he glanced once more at his watch. "You're going to make me late. Once again, a pleasure."

"The pleasure's all mine," she said under her breath as he took his leave.

She sat there for a moment and looked at the card in her hand. An absurd urge to sing I've Got A Golden Ticket from the Gene Wilder movie suddenly popped into her head, but she resolutely shook that away.

This is not the time, Chloe, she thought. Besides, you can't go. Ginger will be there. Her hand tightened on her glass. Staci will probably be there. JASON might be there. And you do NOT want to see him while wearing a baseball cap and sweatshirt from Allegory Pictures, Inc. You had a nice time with Mr. Grayson, just leave it at that. You can't go.

"You know, you really ought to go," said a slightly familiar voice as someone slid onto Philip's vacant barstool.

She turned to see who it was and her eyes nearly bugged straight out of their sockets. "D-Denise? What are you doing here?"

She raised a rum and coke delicately in her manicured hand. "What does it look like?" She wagged a finger at Chloe. "You never called me, by the way. We were supposed to have coffee."

"Oh... Sorry."

She waved that away. "Don't even think about it. We'll have our drink now. So, tell me... Why didn't you take that delicious man up on his offer? He invited you, you should go. It's only polite."

"My tyrant of a boss is going to be there, most likely along with Jason and the bitch he's currently screwing. So, I'd get into trouble as well as be horribly embarrassed."

"I'm not sure I follow, entirely. What would be embarrassing about going to a premiere after party on the arm of the guest of honor?"

"Well, it's not like Mr. Grayson invited me as his date..."

"It looks like he gave you his date's ticket."

Chloe shoved the yellow paper into her pocket. "He might say hi to me, but that'd be it, trust me. He'll have a ton of gorgeous women around him the whole night. Besides, if by some miracle I was on his arm, wouldn't it be a little obvious to my boss that I'm there?"

Denise smiled, revealing her perfectly even, pearly white teeth. "Dear, if she thinks you might be there, she'll be poking her nose into every dark shadow she finds. The trick is to be right out in the open, shining so brightly that you blind her." She winked. "And, judging from Jason's behavior on the night you saw us, you might guess that I have some experience in this field."

Chloe giggled. "I suppose so." Her face fell a moment later. "It doesn't matter, though. I don't shine. I'm not dressed for an after party. I don't think I even own anything that would be remotely appropriate."

"Let me guess... Your boss lets you wear sweats to work." At Chloe's nod, Denise shook her head disappointedly. "What if I told you that it could be taken care of?"

"What? Are you going to wave a magic wand and suddenly fix my appearance?"

She gave Chloe a small, feline smile. "Come with me."


The ride to Denise's salon was surprisingly short. Chloe barely had time to tell her what size pants she wore before Denise whisked away to a different room and returned almost instantly with an armful of clothing. Chloe was pushed into a large bathroom and told to get changed. She was certain the clothes wouldn't fit, Denise couldn't possibly have had something all ready to go like that for her, but when she put them on, the cut was remarkable; like they had been tailored for her.

The dark blue jeans actually fit her, a feat in and of itself. Chloe usually bought her jeans a few sizes too big to save herself the trouble of breaking them in. The silk and lace blouse was of a red jewel tone and it flattered her figure by cinching in her waist and draping across her chest, outlining her cleavage to its fullest advantage, but the effect was more tantalizing than explicit. Denise had even provided new underwear for her, a matching set in the same red as the shirt, with the bra pushing her breasts up to where they were supposed to be.

Finally, she picked up the most expensive-looking pair of shoes she'd ever been given to wear; strappy rhinestone heels. Sure enough, the label was a very exclusive designer's who only distributed through one factory. She thought they might be ridiculous paired with the outfit, but a look in the full-length mirror told her differently. She looked, for lack of a better word, stunning.

There was a sharp knock at the door, startling her out of her reverie. "Are you done in there? We still have your hair to attend to!"

Since any sort of chemical process Denise might have attempted would take hours, she merely brought out a wig and a hairpiece in a lovely caramel blond, highlighted with a few lighter shades and low-lighted with a rich chocolate color. Everything that Denise did to her was very quick and efficient. Chloe thought briefly that the job on her hair and makeup would probably look rushed, but as the chair she was sitting in spun around to face the mirror, her jaw fell slack.

"Is that me?" Since the reflection also said the same thing, she followed this with, "I guess so... Oh, my God, wow! I've never looked this good!" She turned her head in a few directions and watched as the blond wig artfully followed the movements. Her green eyes were huge and luminous, her lips looked full and utterly kissable. "I'm... I'm hot!"

"You say that like you didn't think so before."

"Well, it's not like I'm the best looking girl out there... I'm not elegant or anything, like you." Her face reddened, feeling embarrassed for having voiced such an opinion.

Denise smiled, though, looking quite pleased with the compliment. "Thank you. But you have an elegance all your own, Chloe. It's different for me, obviously. Unlike you, I can't just go around without makeup or my hair done. My elegance is, in a very big way, manufactured. You're a natural."

Chloe felt a spark of regret growing within her chest. "I'm sorry," she said.

"What for?"

"You're being so nice to me. I feel bad... for kind of using you to get back at Jason."

Denise shrugged. "Don't worry about it. I knew he was a jerk when I agreed to have dinner with him."

"If you knew, then why did you do it?"

"Sweetheart," she said with a grin. "You're talking to a man in a dress. I have my reasons for what I do, even if few understand them." She glanced at the clock. "Now, you need to get out of here. Be back by midnight."

"Midnight? Why?"

"You have to get up for work, don't you?"

"Yeah..."

"Well, midnight is the magic hour, darling. Leave before that and you're being rude. Leave after that and you've overstayed your welcome. Midnight is perfect. Besides," she added, pointing at the rhinestone heels. "Those are 'one hour shoes.' A couple of hours in those and you will be dying to get home and take them off."

Chloe shrugged. "Okay." She turned to go. As she opened the door, a taxi pulled up in front of her. She looked back at Denise who smiled.

"I called a cab while you were changing." She made shooing motions with her hands. "Go, go."

She smiled. "Thanks!"

Safely inside the yellow cab, Chloe waved at Denise as she sped off into the night.

To be continued...