2. Los Angeles, 2019-1
406 Words
2
LOS ANGELES, 2019
Clara stopped her Maserati at the studio gate, smiling at the slouching guard on duty. He straightened and lifted his cap to her, bowing at the waist as if she were the Queen of England.
“Go right through, Miss Daniels.”
Clara let her voice find its lowest register. “Thank you, Derek.”
She drove too fast around the huge barn-like studio buildings, playing a game of tag with herself. How close could she come to a producer before he would move? Some even shouted at her and waved a fist, before seeing who she was and falling silent. She left the working schlubs alone.
Her music was loud, but she could still pick up a few stray thoughts as she drove past them. Most were murderous, until they saw her face.
She stopped her car in the space painted with her name. She turned off her music reluctantly and steeled herself for the ordeal to come.
Clara stepped out of her car, and there was a lackey waiting for her. A young woman in sloppy shorts and a stained t-shirt with the name of a TV movie written on it.
“Miss Daniels, Mr. Willoughby is expecting you.”
Clara didn’t smile. “All right.”
She reached into her bag for a cigarette, striding towards the stucco office building on her left. The woman trotted beside her, her face a mask of embarrassed misery.
“Miss Daniels, can I get you anything?”
“No.”
Clara stopped long enough to light her cigarette, but before she could strike a flame from her lighter, the woman extended a match. Clara really saw her for the first time and looked behind her eyes. In spite of years with the studio, in spite of the fact that her every working day was full of humiliation and misery, this woman worshipped Clara as a goddess on the earth.
The woman didn’t move, and the match burned lower. Clara knew she would allow her fingers to burn off before she would put the match out. Clara leaned down slowly, almost casually, and lit her cigarette from the fire at the woman’s fingertips. She blew the flame out just before the woman’s fingers got burned.
Clara smiled then, the slow smile she was famous for. The woman blinked as if dazzled by the sun. She fished into the woman’s mind and found her name.
“Thanks for the light, Peg.”
The woman stood silent as Clara moved past her into the studio building where Bob Willoughby waited in his office on the fourth floor.
- Writer
