“Do not mention rehab or anything related to those things. Please.”
Elly stared back silently. She saw a slice of true panic in Gemma’s eyes. Ah, perhaps she wasn’t a robot after all. “Promise,” Elly mouthed silently.
Gemma stood up straight. “Are the cameras ready?” she shrieked in her British accent. There was a moment of silence and the cell phone on Gemma’s belt lit up. She looked down at it. “She’s here. I’ll ask again, are we ready?” The camera operators nodded.
Elly took a deep breath and took a step onto the blue X marked with tape on the floor. Here we go, she thought. I wish Keith was here. She couldn’t even think about their little argument last night. She couldn’t think about Dennis, or Keith, or the new store, or anything else. All she had to think about was … the door swung open, and in walked Lola Plumb.
Lola Plumb. Lola Plumb. Lola FREAKING Plumb. Elly kept repeating the name over and over in her mind as she stood frozen in place. Lola Plumb was standing in Posies. Lola Plumb, right in front of her. She was surprisingly short, and was just under Elly’s height, even wearing towering pink heels. A tight-fitting dress made of broad rainbow stripes and black ribbon accents clung to her almost emaciated form. Mounds of thick reddish-blond hair cascaded over her shoulders and across her forehead. Gigantic sunglasses sat perched on her upturned nose, and there was a stout white Chihuahua tucked snugly under her arm, where a purse would normally be. Lola Plumb, in all her infamous California beauty, was standing right in front of Elly. Lola Plumb was not a B-list celebrity. Everything she knew about Lola Plumb she had gathered from a number of her tabloid subscriptions and a steady diet of E! News. Once a famed child star, known for her stint as the golden girl on Still Life, a long-running sitcom about divorced parents, she had risen to fame in the indie film Violet Saturday. The film, which went on to win Best Picture at the Oscars, set Lola on what seemed to be ideal trajectory for A-list movie star status. That was, until she had met Chloe Britt, a reality star turned pop musician. A friendship that was at first endearing in the public eye soon turned dangerous—together, the girls circled through endless Hollywood soirees, crashing studio functions and promotional parties in their matching miniskirts and silver flasks. They loved the paparazzi almost as much as the paparazzi loved them. If you Googled “Lola Plumb,” the screen would quickly fill up with wardrobe malfunctions, pictures of the girls kissing random men (or each other), and drinking (and then throwing up) copious amounts of liquor. Lola and Chloe had also shoplifted two designer bags from a store in New York, which had declined to press charges against two of their most-valued customers. Chloe had crashed her car into a children’s clothing store, which landed her in prison, and then finally, rehab. She had emerged a different person: self-assured, beautiful, and put together. She was currently hosting a popular fashion show on Bravo, and had publically dismissed Lola as being a “bad influence upon her life.” Lola hadn’t taken the news well. She had gone on a three-day drinking binge with the members of Rude Doctrine—a popular alternative band—and ended up passed out the under the Hollywood sign, wearing nothing but lacy pink panties. She had been arrested for public intoxication and her mother, who was a vulture-like fame seeker, had taken control of her assets and upbringing.