That must have terrified him. I tried not to laugh.
Everyone started talking at once and trying to one-up each other on who had the best line when they met Dante. Nobody listened to anyone else and nobody stopped talking, either.
“I’m a little afraid,” Genesis whispered. “What’s going on with all of these women?”
“Dropped on their heads as babies?”
She giggled, and we walked over to a couch to wait for everyone else to arrive and to chat without the harpies at the window judging us.
“You look so comfortable. I’m so jealous.”
I had actually been feeling a bit out of place in my jeans and jersey, but Genesis was right. I was comfortable. “But your dress is so pretty.”
She was wearing a dark green dress with princess cap sleeves and a poufy skirt. “It isn’t mine. The stylist had to sew me into it. I just want to take it off and put on some sweats. Same for these stupid fake eyelashes. I feel like somebody glued spiders to my face.”
“You’ve never worn them before?”
She shook her head. “That’s not really me.”
Another new arrival walked in the room, and every eye went to her. She had honey-blonde Disney princess hair—the kind that fell in perfect waves down to the middle of her back—and soft brown doe eyes. She wore a skirt so tight and short I could see her religion. I felt like I should scour my eyeballs.
“I know her!” Genesis whispered to me in shock. “She’s a British actress on that soap opera, East and West, which is one of my favorite shows ever. I used to follow her on Twitter!”
“Used to?” The actress seemed to glide across the room to the bar, pouring herself a drink while looking both refined and flawless. I wondered who did her PR. Since I had a grand total of one client so far, this might be my chance to network with her before I got kicked off at the Heart Celebration.
Genesis’s voice broke into my train of thought. “She totally blocked me! She took over this longstanding role and started misspelling her character’s nickname on purpose, and I corrected her to help her out because it was making people upset on this message board I belong to, and she publicly called me out and said something about people changing and reinventing themselves as they grew and having the freedom to be whoever they wanted, and then she blocked me. Then a bunch of her other followers started ganging up on me. It was not fun.”
She said it in one quick breath, and I narrowed my eyes at the actress. Genesis seemed like such a sweetheart that I couldn’t imagine anyone being mean to her for any reason.
Although sometimes I was too quick to judge. Maybe the actress got a lot of flak on Twitter and used her block button liberally. She might be really nice. I should give her the benefit of the doubt. Especially if it would help my little fledgling company to succeed.
She walked over to us, and Genesis fell silent.
“Hello. I’m Abigail Morris-Mansey.” She had a smooth, posh, upper-class British accent. She held her hand out limply, and I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to grab it. So I shook her fingers.
“I’m Lemon, and this is Genesis. Nice to meet you.”
“Beg your pardon? What did you say?”
Confused, I glanced over at Genesis. She looked like she wished she could just shrivel up and disappear. “I said, I’m Lemon, this is Genesis.”
“Very sorry, but I simply can’t understand a word you’re saying. You have an extremely thick accent. Excuse me.”
My accent was not that thick and I knew she’d understood me just fine. I’d lived with women long enough to know that she was playing a mind game and trying to intimidate me. Too bad for her—I didn’t intimidate easily. Abigail walked outside toward the pool, carrying a drink in one hand and smoothing down her hair with the other. A cameraman followed after her while she looked out at the horizon, as if thinking deep thoughts.
So much for her ever becoming a client.
“That’s her! That’s the girl who told production I had an eating disorder!” I heard a woman screech. I turned back to the window to see somebody in a hideous tangerine getup pointing a finger at the window, and I craned my neck to see who was coming in. The new girl had just stepped into the room when the tangerine woman stalked over to the new girl and slapped her.