One Less Problem Without You (10 page)

So far, so good.

“Go on,” Prinny said.

Chelsea shot her a look, then cleared her throat and moved into the microphone. “For good luck in all areas, press lucky number eight.” She looked at Prinny. “Isn't seven supposed to be lucky?”

“Everyone has a different lucky number.”

“You sure?”

Prinny nodded, and so Chelsea fanned herself with her hands, then raised her chin and went on.

“For protection and hex reversal, press nine.”

Prinny cringed at that one because it was such a damaging lie. Plenty of people used it, of course; they acted all tough on the outside, then revealed that they thought they were cursed, their crops were dying, their wives were straying, their
codpieces
weren't operating according to the original manual.

Each of these cases needed to be treated individually.
Very
individually. Anyone who thought they were cursed tended to be at least somewhat open to the reversal. All that was required was their belief that the hex was gone and—poof!—the hex was gone.

So Cosmos was off to a damn good start in determining where their biggest customer market was. That was Prinny's idea behind the specific radio differentiation; she knew that much could be snuck in and out, yet not all the sneaking would be tolerated.

Finally Chelsea—who was gathering her things to leave, even as she spoke into the microphone—said, “If you need further help, please press zero. If anyone is here to assist you, they will pick up. Otherwise, please leave your name, problem, and the number of livestock your family possesses at this time.”

“Very funny,” Prinny said. “Just leave it at press zero, okay?”

She nodded.

Chelsea started replaying the recordings, doctoring the levels, and loading them onto the voice mail system.

“That was good,” Prinny said to her.

“Good of ye to say so,” she said, tipping an imaginary hat to her. And Prinny just
knew
it was a green top hat. Probably with a sarcastic shamrock poking out of it.

“Don't bring the Irish back here.”

“How about the blonde from India?” It had to be said, her accent was pretty spot-on.
Simpsons
worthy.

Chelsea did this all the time. Tried her accents out, too often with actual customers at the cash register, to see if she could fool them into thinking they were authentic. But when she tried the Indian accent on an actual Indian customer, or the Mandarin Chinese accent (she was very specific) on an Asian customer, it grew very awkward.

To Prinny's eternal frustration, all the actual workings of this already-insane metaphysical shop were her responsibility.

She needed to consult with Alex.

Not that he had to give her permission for anything she wanted to do. They both knew that. It was just a game they played, where she'd present some harebrained idea and he'd question her on it, which was lucky because he'd stopped her from wasting a lot of money on more than one occasion. She needed to be able to retire someday; she
needed
to not lose her nest egg on an idea that
seemed
great in one mood but was actually nuts to the rational public.

Alex saved her from those decisions.

Alex was a perfect man with a perfect job and a perfect family, in what was undoubtedly a perfect Northern Virginia house. He was married to a perfectly coiffed blond socialite named Britni Spencer-McConnell.

Isn't that cute? Alex and Britni.

It would be just great if Prinny wasn't in love with Alex.

 

CHAPTER EIGHT

Chelsea

It felt like the moment Chelsea's eyes drifted shut, her alarm blasted like Reveille. It was actually “Chop Suey!” by System of a Down.

She shot up out of bed like a cartoon character in an ejector seat, then shut off the alarm and lay in bed for a few moments, doing breathing exercises to calm her pounding heart. Next, she refreshed her browser on the casting Web site she used, as had become her routine before bedtime, in the morning, and at other random points throughout the day.

“Audition Results to Come…,” it still said. No matter how many times she refreshed the page, the results were still
to come
.

Letting out an audible groan, she threw the blanket and sheet off and made her
Walking Dead
way to the bathroom, putting on her morning playlist. She connected her phone to Bluetooth, so that she had no choice but to be immersed in loud, rousing sound. “Off to the Races” by Lana Del Rey blasted through the room.

Hair up.

Wash face.

Brush teeth.

She decided to leave her hair up in a top bun because she just didn't have a shower in her. One look at the tub and she couldn't think of anything she wanted less than to be soaking wet, especially with water that might or might not get cold today. Even if it would wake her up more, it just didn't feel like it was worth the gamble.

So she set about her makeup routine and hoped for the best.

Make Up for Ever foundation, Too Faced Better Than Sex mascara, perfect MAC liner cat eye, and Lime Crime's Red Velvet lipstick. That was her standard look. It wasn't a cheap drugstore routine, but it was simple and so, in its way, economical.

She didn't do the clown contouring that had been so popular a couple of years ago. Well, no one
called
it clown contouring, but that's how just about everyone who tried it looked. Including Chelsea herself; as much stage makeup as she'd done in her life, she found subtle but distinct makeup much more effective.

It was the same with brows; people didn't seem to be able to do their brows without ending up looking overdone. (Or if they did, they did it so well that she didn't notice.) Thankfully, Chelsea didn't have that worry, as she was blessed with good brows. Well, blessed might be an exaggeration—more like she had a mother who didn't inform her that she needed to pluck them when she was young. The downside of that was that she spent a good portion of high school looking about half an inch shy of Frida Kahlo. The upside was that now, she was in a much better position than a lot of girls to rock the Cara Delevingne look.

Next, she had to get the clothes right. She had a standard audition outfit. One that she always felt good in. Stretchy scarlet tank that was tight enough to show off her body—
Look how easily you could dress me, I'm practically a paper doll!
and also
I have just enough breast to push up, and just enough to strap down!

Tight, deeply dyed jeans—
Look, I have a thigh gap and trendy high-waisted pants, plus I can successfully pull them off!

A black blazer, sleeves rolled halfway up the forearm.

It was just enough ballerina, just enough business, and just enough every-girl to have as a standby. You never wanted to go in looking like a character, even if you thought you had a pretty good idea about the one you were auditioning for. You could be spot-on and get the role, or you could be way off and have made a bad move.

Then she began her healthy breakfast routine. The one that was a huge pain but, she told herself, would be worth it when she got discovered (or found someone to discover her) and had healthy, glowing skin, shining hair, and the svelte body that was soooo important for acting.

One Ziploc of preselected, precut veggies into the juicer. Beets, carrots, apple, broccoli, cauliflower, ginger, and celery. Pound the glass like a pledge at a frat party chugging Natty Lite. Recover while scrubbing each of the five pieces of the juicer. She had it down to a five-minute science.

Then a Cali Shot, a shot of apple cider vinegar mixed into eight ounces of water with the juice of half a lemon. That and a protein powder + appetite curber + maca powder + chai tea + vanilla almond milk to take along in a blender bottle and she'd be set until lunch … which she packed herself so as to avoid the temptation of Chipotle when she was starving in a couple of hours. Because this breakfast was healthy but it wasn't quite as filling as the carb-heavy brunch of pancakes, eggs Benedict, omelet, and strawberries and cream she would always,
always
prefer.

Everything else she needed was by the door. She slid into her boots—and started her commute.

Every time she sat on the Metro she felt like she might just be the person happiest to be there. Her routine was so jam-packed, and her schedule, too, that she was simply happy not to have to drive. She got to lean back and be carried to work through a dark network of tunnels under D.C. That was a relief.

The night before had been rough. She'd been out far later than she had planned to be with her friend Andrew, an eccentric playwright who was having “an utter breakdown.” They had been friends in high school, and though they hadn't always been best friends—he could be exhausting (witness current exhaustion)—they had always remained in touch. Since he'd moved to the city, they were each other's lifesaver in the water that was D.C. He had rubbed shoulders with a lot of people that she would give anything to be in a room with, and he loved having her on his arm for his own image. Apart from just really liking each other, they were the perfect professional pair.

Struggling playwright and struggling actress. How dramatic the pair of them were.

Andrew was the kind of person you'd find yourself up all night with—going through a couple of bottles of wine and mental breakthroughs—before you knew it. So when he'd called the night before at eleven thirty complaining about the utter breakdown, in his usual overdramatic way, she had not felt quite like going over, even though he was only one Metro stop away. Tired as she was, though, she was left with no option. It wasn't exactly because he needed her—if she went over every time that happened, she would live there—but he was writing a script for a local director who had moved from Manhattan in an effort to boost the theater scene in D.C., and thus perhaps
she
needed
him
.

Of course, she agreed to go over.

She put on a swingy white tank top, black harem pants, and her red lipstick. On went the wool hat that went perfectly with the O
h, I was just off to bed when the fashion police showed up knocking at my door!
look.

It was an outfit she would wear anywhere. Coffee shop. Beach boardwalk. City sidewalks. But when she looked at herself in the mirror, something stopped her.

It was too bare. This wasn't a date. At this rate she didn't know if she'd ever date again.

She pulled on a black hoodie and left without glancing at her reflection again.

She walked down to the Metro in her costume of anonymity, knowing at least that she would have the excuse of the late hour to lean on if he criticized her “thuggish look.”

But he didn't, because she hung the hoodie on her purse before he opened the door.

Her fashion choices had the desired effect. Andrew, diminutive and performing from second one, rested the Marlboro Red in his lips (Chelsea just knew he enjoyed the dichotomy of his diminutive appearance and his “cowboy cigarette”) and exclaimed, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, girl, you always look like you stepped off the pages of French
Vogue
.” His observant gaze glanced downward before he turned back around. “Ew, except that hooded sweatshirt. Throw that away.”

His living room was one of those minimalist types that didn't have a piece of furniture that wasn't selected on purpose and at great cost. Andrew was the type not to have a sofa at all, for example, until he found the Perfect Sofa. Which is why on past nights, she had perched on cushions that were slightly too small and thin to be floor cushions instead of on the firm gorgeous sectional she now reclined on.

They had a bottle of Chardonnay, something probably hard to get that she probably didn't appreciate half as much as any of his other friends did, and she breathed in secondhand drama and secondhand smoke until three in the morning.

“If I could get past this stupid”—he made a spiraling motion in front of his forehead—“
block
that I have. It's the perfect time. People are paying attention to my writing. They're
listening
right now. And of course, it's the driest time of my life.”

“Almost.” She smiled and gave a warning gesture at the glass of wine sloshing in his hand, although somehow he never spilled it, no matter how much he gesticulated.

He rolled his eyes, a smile playing at his lips, and took the last swig of it. “I've got to find something. I've got to find something to write.”

This was
not
her wheelhouse. She wasn't sure what to say, even though this wasn't the first—or last—time they'd have this conversation. “Well, what do you want to do this time? Comedy?”

He shook his head. “That was a disaster last time. I mean, I involved an actual
rubber chicken
. And the rest of it wasn't ironic enough to support that. Why didn't you stop me?”

She raised her eyebrows and jutted her chin forward to ask if he was kidding her.

“Okay, fine,” he said. “I wasn't listening.”

She nodded. “Tragedy? Dramedy? Stage horror?”

He bit his tongue and then leaned forward, tilting his head thoughtfully. “Hm.”

“Which one?” she pressed.

“Dramedy.”

“There you go, that's a start, right?”

“Tragic hero.”

“Or—”

“Or
heroine
!” He slapped his forehead. “God, I haven't done a female lead in ages.”

She looked around the room, not sure if trying to act like she didn't think of herself as an option was the right choice. But he wasn't paying attention anyway.

“Dramedy. Heroine. Something scandalous. Something big. Scary. Taking the classic ‘let's make light of this in a slightly terrifying way' thing, but taking it darker.”