She Sins at Midnight (2 page)

Jilly laughed, “I know, I know. But Jack sounded so cute when he said it that it just sort of stuck.”

“Yes, well, remember when Jack couldn’t say fire truck and would just yell out FUCK every time he heard one? That was cute too but you didn’t let him keep doing it.”

“I know, you’re right. We’ve been trying out other nicknames. It’s just that Betty sounds like a fifty-five year old church lady and Tina sounds like a bimbo.”

“So,” Lila ventured, “Why not just call her Betina? You know, with it being her actual name and all?”

As always, Jilly was delighted by her friend’s wit and begged, “Oh, Lila, I miss you so much, please come home.”

Without anymore encouragement than that, Lila agreed. She secretly wanted to go anyway. She had amassed at least fifty vacation days that she never took because Josh swore the agency would crumble without her. Translation: “My wife might discover what a philandering pig I am if you aren’t here to run interference for me.” This was the reason that Lila only went on vacation when Josh did and Josh had no plans to vacate any time soon. But after talking to her best friend in the whole world, Lila realized that she could use a couple weeks in the bosom of her friends and family. She desperately needed a normal Midwestern perspective on life. Too much time in La La Land was starting to seriously mess with her equilibrium.

The buzzing intercom interrupted her conversation and Lila told Jilly that she would call her later. Hitting the button on the other line, she inquired, “What’s up Josh?”

“Did you send Tibber’s script to DreamWorks yet?”

“About twenty minutes ago. They should have it in another ten.”

“Good, good. What about my reservation at the Ivy? Is everything all set?”

Lila nodded her head, “Yep, 2 o’clock, table on the patio so the paparazzi can get great shots of Melinda.” Melinda Forrester was one of Josh’s hot young clients. At twenty-six she had just received an Oscar nomination for her depiction of a drug addicted hooker/college student, who beats the habit and becomes an Olympic track star, only to discover that she’s contracted AIDS from her hooking days.

It never ceased to amaze Lila that scripts like that got made into feature films. What didn’t amaze her though was how Melinda acquired the starring role. She assumed that the actress got the lead in the same way that she snagged Josh as her agent. The Hollywood rumor mill had it that Melinda spent copious amounts of time on her knees and this just in, she wasn’t the religious type.

Lila held Melinda in such low regard that the star had become the prototype for many of the scheming sluts in her stories. Melinda had morphed into such characters as Wanda Toolmaker, street walker extraordinaire turned blackmailer; Lucy Gosling, scheming housemaid and most recently Isabelle, Countess of Trent, whorish actress who was desperately trying to sleep her way into the upper echelon of society.

Lila was always solicitous and pleasant to Melinda in person. She truly didn’t set out to dislike her. But Melinda, being Melinda, simply made it impossible for Lila to do anything but despise her. Melinda was by far the most viscious, calculating celebrity Lila ever had the misfortune of dealing with. That was a pretty damning statement when you considered the magnitude of the egos that paraded through Amalgamated’s doors every day.

Lila picked up her reunion invitation and absentmindedly tapped it on her desk. She wished she could show up and share her real accomplishments with her old friends. Yet that wasn’t possible. Jilly would die of shock if she knew what was in the letter safely locked in her desk. And if Jilly would be shocked, her mother and father would probably disown her! No, Lila was raised to be a lady. She was from good stock and she wouldn’t risk everyone’s disappointment by telling them the truth. She would simply show up single and childless and face the pity of her peers, her success safely hidden away from discovery.

In the midst of her reverie, Lila heard a buzzing noise. She tried to block it, but it just kept getting more insistent. When she finally realized that it was the intercom, she picked up the phone and none too gently demanded, “What!”

In a screechy voice, Josh demanded, “What do you mean, what?! I’ve been buzzing for five minutes. Is that anyway to talk to me?”

Lila rolled her eyes as she had always been professional and a tad subservient to Josh. After all, he was her boss and it was her job to orbit around him like a faithful satellite. But at that moment she had enough. So she informed him, “Look Josh, I’m having a period from hell, I haven’t had lunch yet and I’m sitting here with an invitation to my fifteen year high school class reunion. If you want something from me, you had better just tell me because I don’t have the stamina to pry it out of you today, okay?” There was silence on the other end so she demanded, “What do you want?”

In shock, Josh replied, “Lila?”

“Yes Josh, it’s me. Now what do you want?”

He stammered, “Um… nothing.” When he hung up, Lila started to fantasize about getting fired. If Josh cut her loose, she could take some time off, go on unemployment and get on with the business of finding a real life. Sadly, she knew that the only way she would ever leave The Triple A was if she got canned. It was just too steady a paycheck to turn her back on otherwise. While not her dream career, her job did supply her with enough money to live on. It also offered excellent health insurance and a pension plan. How could she walk away from that kind of stability? Maybe it was just her hormones, but Lila was currently so disenchanted with her life that she was torn between banging her head on her desk and bursting into an emotional tear storm, the likes of which would have put El Niño to shame.

That’s when she heard the clicking of stiletto heels heading her way. Then there was an impatient, “Ahem…” Lila looked up to find Melinda standing before her, size two Melinda, with the most remarkable set of flotation devices this side of the Mississippi, Melinda. Lila briefly flashed sixty years into the future to a vision of the movie star lying in a casket with her enormous missiles standing at attention. The mourners torn between saluting and just plain relieved that the wicked witch was finally dead. Melinda smiled sweetly (or rather her non-award-winning attempt at such) and asked, “Lila, are you okay?”

Lila glanced up, “I’m just a little under the weather today, Melinda. Thanks for asking.”

Undeterred in her glee, the actress announced, “Well, I have the BEST news for you! I read in ‘In Style’ of all places that fat girls are making a come back and I immediately thought of you. Isn’t that great?”

Lila had no idea how she was to respond to such an asinine question. First of all, she wasn’t fat. She was tall and curvy. She studied the lip injected face of the young starlet and couldn’t for the life of her figure out what had caused her to become such an infernal bitch. After all, Melinda was Hollywood skinny, considered beautiful by most, and she was worth millions. Why did she always go out of her way to be so nasty to a lowly assistant?

The only answer that occurred to Lila was that Melinda must simply loathe people who didn’t drop to their knees to worship the ground she walked on. Of course, there was the time that she walked into Josh’s office unannounced and caught Melinda worshipping at the ground that Josh walks on. It was such a horrific sight, that Lila wasn’t sure an exorcism would be powerful enough to erase the ungodly image from her mind.

Lila opted to ignore Melinda’s enthusiasm and hit the button on the phone that connected her to her boss’s office, “The Queen of Oral Pleasure is here for your lunch date, Josh.”

Her other line buzzed immediately and when she picked it up, she heard the boss man (or the Big B.M. as she secretly thought of him) yell, “Jesus, Lila, you can’t say that! What has gotten into you today?”

Instead of conjuring a response, Lila opted to simply hang up on him. Then she smiled at Melinda and relayed, “Josh will see you now, your Highness.”

Melinda gasped, threw her shoulders back (woe be to any dwarfs in the area, lest they lose an eye as her silicone boobies thrust forward so violently) and stomped into Josh’s inner sanctum in total and complete outrage. Lila shook her head at Melinda’s dramatic display and declared, “I have had enough of her crap. I have had E-N-O-U-G-H!!!”

As soon as the bitch stormed away, Lila picked up her purse, grabbed the invitation to her reunion, checked to make sure her desk drawer was safely locked and headed toward the agency’s dining room on the third floor. Maybe she was suffering from a bout of low blood sugar and that’s why she had less patience than normal. Either way, she was going to sit down and enjoy every single simple carbohydrate in sight. Healthy be damned, she was in the market for comfort.

Her best L.A. friend, Cynthia, was already in line at the buffet when Lila walked in. As soon as she spotted her friend, Cynthia pointed to an empty table near the window. After filling her plate with a tantalizing assortment of culinary pleasures, Lila snaked her way through the maze of chairs and joined her.

Cynthia took one look at the heaping bounty on Lila’s tray and asked, “Hungry?”

Lila sighed, “Today my friend, I’m eating for a variety of reasons, the least of which is actual hunger.”

Cynthia raised her perfectly arched eyebrow, “Uh oh, what’s going on?” A year younger than Lila, Cynthia Flynn was 5’1’ and her size 2’s sagged on her. As such, she was the epitome of all that Hollywood held dear. She was pretty in that “I can afford the best products” kind of way and she was a barracuda of a business woman. Having been an agent in her own right for seven years, she was also one of the Wunderkind movers and shakers in The Land. The reason that she and Lila were such good friends was because she was also one of the nicest, sweetest, most sincere people Lila had ever met, although this persona was as heavily guarded as Fort Knox. Most of The Industry regarded Cynthia as a cold-blooded man-eater. Grown men actually feared her and she loved it.

Lila didn’t answer her friend right away as her mouth was already full of buccatini drenched in a heavenly cream sauce. So in lieu of talking, she slid the invitation across the table with a look that said, “See for yourself.”

Cynthia made a grab for the missive and almost before the engraved card stock was out of the envelope, she groaned, “Shit. There’s nothing as scary as a high school class reunion.” She actually had every right to fear them, as unlike Lila, Cynthia went to her ten year and made a spectacular display of herself. In her own words, she got drunker than an Irish skunk on St. Patrick’s Day and proceeded to tell anyone and everyone what she really thought of them. Then she threw up all over the dance floor. She claims to have forgotten what happened after that, but Lila just assumed that it was something so spectacularly awful that Cynthia chose amnesia as the best way to recoup her dignity. Still transfixed by the invitation, Cynthia demanded, “You’re not going are you?”

With a new mouthful of noodles, Lila nodded her head in response.

“Holy shit, Lila, why? Why would you do that to yourself?”

Lila answered, “Believe it or not Cyn, I actually have some great memories of high school. And as much as I’m embarrassed by the fact that I am neither a wife nor mother, I would much rather spend time with people from my childhood, than say, Melinda Forrester and Josh.”

Cynthia’s radar immediately went up, “Josh is a perpetual prick, so there must be something up with Melinda.”

Lila relayed the scene that just took place in the office. She ended the tale with, “So I’m pretty sure Josh is going to fire me when he gets back from lunch.”

Cynthia started to laugh so hard that she actually shot diet coke out of her nose. “You’re making that up! Tell me that you didn’t really call Melinda the Queen of Oral Pleasure right to her face.”

“Sorry,” Lila answered, “Can’t tell you I didn’t when in fact, I did.”

“Lila, my friend, I have more respect for you now than ever before. And don’t worry about Josh sacking you. After seven years, you know where all the bodies are buried. He’s not about to take the chance of your talking. In fact, this may be the perfect time to ask for a raise.”

Lila mulled over that suggestion for a couple of bites before deciding that Cynthia might be right. After all, she secretly wanted to get fired, so what did she have to lose? No matter how she looked at it, this was a win/win situation. She started to feel a shift of power and for about a nanosecond she actually felt a little sorry for Josh. Then she remembered who she was talking about and the feeling passed.

Unfortunately, Lila didn’t get the chance to confront the big B.M. with her new list of demands until the following morning, as Melinda accompanied him back to the agency to continue their “meeting” after lunch. When the star finally left, her hair was mussed and her shirt was mis-buttoned. As she passed Lila’s desk, she bestowed her nastiest smile and sneered, “Poor Lila, you know you’ll never amount to anything.”

Lila wanted to unlock her drawer and pull out her secret letter and yell, “Never amount to anything, huh? Well look at this you hussy! I bet you’ll never accomplish something like this!” Unfortunately, she couldn’t do that so she responded, “You might want to floss Melinda, there’s something dangling between your front teeth.” Lila felt like she had unleashed her inner Jasmine as the things she had been saying that day were much more in keeping with her alter ego than her own. She decided to have that talk with Josh before banishing her racier side. After all, she concluded, she could use the extra chutzpah.

Lila finally confronted her boss at 7:32, the morning after her starlet induced personality shift. Feeling extra confident and daring, she stepped off the elevator onto the fifth floor, breezed past the receptionist, and strode purposefully down the hall through the imposing double doors that led to the super-agent’s offices. After dropping her purse on her meticulously organized desk, she forged into Josh’s inner domain without a knock, buzz, or even psychic communication that she was on her way in. She didn’t fear a replay of the Melinda incident (the one where she received her title), as Melinda would be in bed for hours yet and probably not alone either as she was currently dating Hollywood Legend, Oscar Solomon.