Susan Phillips - Glitter Baby

She hung up the telephone and walked over to the hotel window where she pushed back the drapery to gaze down on the wet Glasgow street. A jogger dodged a taxi in the rain. She remembered when she’d been a dedicated runner like that, going out regardless of weather. The bravest, the fastest, the strongest…Now she doubted she could run a city block without stopping to catch her breath.

“Hey, Fleur, you seen Kyle?” It was Frank, a can of Budweiser already opened at nine o’clock in the morning. Fleur grabbed her parka and brushed past him. She rushed out into the hallway, into the elevator, through the well-dressed crowd of businessmen in the lobby.

The rain was an icy January drizzle, and by the time she reached the corner, it had trickled off the stubby ends of her hair and under the neck of her parka. As she crossed the street, her feet squished in her cheap wet sneakers. They had no cushioning, no thick padding to support her arches and protect the balls of her feet.

She pulled her hands out of her pockets and gazed up at the steel-gray sky. One long block stretched before her. Just one block. Could she make it that far?

She began to run.

Kissy’s apartment sat above an Italian restaurant in the Village. The interior decorating looked just like her: lollipop colors, a collection of stuffed teddy bears, and a poster of Tom Selleck taped to the bathroom door. As Kissy was showing Fleur how the makeshift shower worked, a bright pink lip print on the poster caught Fleur’s eye. “Kissy Sue Christie, is that your lipstick on Tom Selleck?”

“So what if it is?”

“You could at least have aimed for his mouth.”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

Fleur laughed. Kissy had taken the fact that Fleur would be her roommate for granted, and Fleur was more than grateful. Despite her success with Neon Lynx, her self-confidence was shaky at best, and she was plagued with doubts about her decision to return to New York.

Parker begrudgingly gave her a week to get settled before she had to report to work, and she forced herself to leave the safe haven of the apartment and get reacquainted with the city she’d once loved. It was early February, and New York was at its worst, but she found it beautiful. Best of all, no one recognized her.

She ran every morning that week, only a few blocks before she had to walk to catch her breath, but each day she felt stronger. Sometimes she passed a place she and Belinda had visited together, and she felt a sharp, bittersweet pang. But there was no room in her new life for misplaced sentimentality. She was carving out her own future, and she wouldn’t take any dirty laundry from the past with her. She tested herself by sitting through an Errol Flynn retrospective, but she didn’t feel anything for the dashing swashbuckler on the screen.

The day before Fleur had to start work, Kissy threw out all her clothes. “You’re not going to wear those vile rags, Fleur Savagar. You look like a bag lady.”

“I like looking like a bag lady! Give me my clothes back.”

“Too late.”

Fleur ended up trading in her old jeans for ones that fit her slimmer shape and bought a supply of funky tops to go with them-a Mexican peasant shirt, an old varsity letter sweater, and some turtlenecks. Kissy frowned and left a copy of Dress for Success conspicuously displayed on the coffee table.

“You’re wasting your time, Magnolia Blossom,” Fleur said. “I’m working for Parker Dayton, not Xerox. The entertainment world has a more casual dress code.”

“There’s casual and there’s dowdy.”

Fleur could peel away only so many layers at a time. “Go kiss Tom Selleck.”

It didn’t take her long to discover Parker wanted his pound of flesh for the generous salary she’d forced him to pay. Her days blended into nights and spilled over into the weekends. She visited Barry Noy’s purple-painted Tudor in the Hamptons to console him on his loss of Kissy. She wrote press releases, studied contracts, and fielded calls from promoters. The business, finance, and law classes she’d sat in on immediately began to pay off. She discovered she had a talent for negotiation.

She’d known she couldn’t remain anonymous forever, but by dressing inconspicuously and staying away from anyplace connected with the fashion world, she avoided attracting attention for almost six weeks. In March, however, her luck ran out. The Daily News announced that former Glitter Baby Fleur Savagar was back in New York working at the Parker Dayton Agency.

The phone calls started coming in, and a few reporters showed up at the office. But all of them wanted the Glitter Baby back, signing perfume contracts, going to marvelous parties, and talking about her rumored affair with Jake Koranda. “I have a new life now,” she said politely, “and I won’t be making any further comments.”

Try as they might, she refused to elaborate.

A photographer appeared to capture the Glitter Baby’s whirling cloud of streaky blond hair and couture fashion. They got baggy blue jeans and a Yankees cap. After two weeks, the story died of boredom. The fabulous Glitter Baby was yesterday’s news.

Over the next three months, Fleur learned who the record producers were and managed to keep track of the television executives as they played musical chairs at the networks. She was smart, dependable; she honored her commitments, and people began to ask for her. By midsummer she’d fallen in love with the entire business of making stars.

“It’s great to pull other people’s strings instead of having my own pulled,” she told Kissy one hot Sunday afternoon in August as they sat on a bench in Washington Square eating dripping ice cream cones. The park held its usual colorful complement of characters: tourists, leftover hippies, skinny kids with ghetto blasters hoisted on their shoulders.

After six months in New York, Fleur’s hair swung in a jaw-length blunt cut that shimmered in the summer sun. She was tan and too slim for the shorts that sat on her hip-bones. Kissy frowned over the top of her ice cream cone. “We are getting you some clothes that aren’t made out of denim.”

“Don’t start. We’re talking about my job, not fashion.”

“Wearing something decent won’t turn you back into the Glitter Baby.”

“You’re imagining things.”

“You think looking good will somehow ruin everything you’re building for yourself.” She adjusted her red plastic barrettes, which were shaped like lips. “You hardly ever look in a mirror. A few seconds to slick on lipstick, another couple of seconds to run a comb through your hair. You are a world-class champion at avoiding your reflection.”

“You look at yours enough for both of us.”

But Kissy was on a roll, and Fleur couldn’t distract her. “You’re fighting a losing battle, Fleurinda. The old Fleur Savagar can’t hold a candle to the new one. You’re going to be twenty-four next month, and your face has something it didn’t have when you were nineteen. Even those disgusting clothes can’t hide the fact that you have a better body now than when you were modeling. I hate to be the bearer of tragic news, but you’ve turned from boringly gorgeous into a classic beauty.”

“You Southerners do love your drama.”

“Okay, no more nagging.” Kissy circled the double-decker mound of raspberry ripple with her tongue. “I’m glad you love your job. You even seem to love the ugly parts, like having Parker for a boss and dealing with Barry Noy.”

Fleur caught a dab of mint chocolate chip before it dropped on her shorts. “It almost scares me how much. I love the wheeling and dealing and the fact that something is always happening. Every time I head off another crisis, I feel like one of the nuns just pasted a gold star next to my name.”

“You’re turning into one of those awful overachievers.”

“It feels good.” She gazed across the square. “When I was a kid, I thought my father would let me go home if I could be the best at everything. After it all fell apart, I lost faith in myself.” She hesitated. “I think…maybe I’m starting to get that back.” Her self-confidence was too frail to hold up for examination, even from her best friend, and she wished she hadn’t been so open. Fortunately Kissy’s thoughts took a different path.

“I don’t understand how you can’t miss acting.”

“You saw Eclipse. I was never going to win any Academy Awards.” Unlike Jake and his screenplay.

“You were great in that part,” Kissy insisted.

Fleur made a face. “I had a couple of good scenes. The rest were barely adequate. I never felt comfortable.” In deference to Kissy’s feelings, she didn’t mention that she also found the whole process of filmmaking, with all the standing around, boring beyond belief.

“You put your heart into modeling, Fleurinda.”

“I put my determination into it, not my heart.”

“Either way, you were the best.”

“Thanks to a lucky combination of chromosomes. Modeling never had anything to do with who I was.” She drew in her legs to save them from amputation by a skateboard. One of the drug dealers stopped talking to stare. She gazed off into space. “The night Alexi and I played out our smutty little scene, he said I was nothing more than a pretty, oversized decoration. He said I couldn’t really do anything.”

“Alexi Savagar is a whacko prick.”

Fleur smiled at hearing Kissy dismiss Alexi so inelegantly. “But he was also right. I didn’t know who I was. I guess I still don’t, not entirely, but at least I’m on the right path. I spent three and a half years running from myself. Granted, I acquired a world-class university education along the way, but I’m not running anymore.” And she wasn’t. Something had changed inside her. Something that finally made her want to fight for herself.

Kissy pitched the end of her cone into the trash. “I wish I had your drive.”

“What are you talking about? You’re always juggling your schedule at the gallery so you can get your hours in and still hit the auditions. You go to class in the evenings. The parts will come, Magnolia. I’ve talked to a lot of people about you.”

“I know you have, and I appreciate it, but I think it’s time I face the fact that it’s not going to happen.” Kissy wiped her fingers on her very short pink shorts. “Directors won’t let me read for anything other than comic sexpots, and I’m terrible in that kind of part. I’m a serious actress, Fleur.”

“I know you are, honey.” Fleur put all the conviction she could muster behind her words, but it wasn’t easy. Kissy-with her pouty mouth, pillowy breasts, and smudge of raspberry ripple on her chin-was a perfect comic sexpot.

“I got a raise at the gallery.” She made it sound as thought she’d gotten a terminal disease. “Maybe if I had a more disagreeable job, I’d push myself harder. I should never have gotten my minor in art history. It’s turned into my security blanket.” Her eyes automatically slid over a good-looking college student walking past, but her heart wasn’t in it. “I can only take so much rejection, and I’ve just about had my fill. I do a good job at the gallery, and I get recognized for it. Maybe that should be enough.”

Fleur squeezed her hand. “Hey, what happened to Miss Positive Thinking?”

“I think I’m thunked out.”

Fleur hated the idea of Kissy giving up, but with her own history, she wasn’t in a position to criticize. She rose from the bench. “Let’s go. If we play our cards right, we can catch the beginning of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid on television before we have to get dressed for our dates.” She dropped the remainder of her cone and napkin in the trash.

“Good idea. How many times will this make?”

“Five or six. I lost count.”

“You haven’t told anybody about this, have you?”

“Are you nuts? Do you think I want the whole world to know we’re perverts?”

They left the park walking side by side, a dozen pairs of male eyes following them.

Fleur’s daily runs had firmed her muscles, and as the extra pounds melted away, her sexuality emerged from its long hibernation. The flow of water over her body in the shower, the slide of a soft sweater on her skin-everyday acts became sensual experiences. She wanted to be held by someone who shaved, someone with biceps and a hairy chest, someone who cussed and drank beer. Her body was starved for male contact, and as part of her self-improvement campaign, she began dating a personable young actor named Max Shaw, who was appearing off-off-Broadway in a Tom Stoppard play. He was Hollywood handsome, a rangy blond whose only drawback was a tendency to use phrases like “practicing my craft.” They had fun together, and she wanted him.

She donned jeans and the black tank top she’d bought on the clearance table at Ohrbach’s for their date the night of her twenty-fourth birthday. They’d planned to go to a party, but she said she’d had a tough week and suggested they skip it. Max wasn’t stupid, and half an hour later, they found themselves in his apartment.