She Sins at Midnight Excerpt

Chapter 1

Lila Montgomery sat at her desk dreaming about the two things that always brought her thoughts into sharper focus; namely, piping hot carbs and soft melting fat. She drooled at the thought of grilled cheese on white bread, so perfectly gooey that upon first bite she would be immediately transported back to the innocent days of childhood. Back to time before she gave a fig if the button on her size 12 white jeans gave way and inadvertently took someone’s eye out. Of course she wasn’t currently in her white jeans so there was no immanent risk of rendering an unsuspecting co-worker blind.

Absently, Lila petted the sleeve of her ever-so-stylish and sleek Donna Karan suit. She always paired the elegant ensemble with the same white silk blouse. The neckline plunged so low it looked like her girls were trying to escape. That particular outfit was worn she was feeling “that time of the monthish,” or in a word: bloated. Even though the suit cost an entire paycheck, it more than worth it as it covered a multitude of sins. And as she knew only too well, sins should always be covered, kept in the closet, or safely locked in one’s attic.

The day she bought the blouse, Lila eyed her cleavage and laughingly declared, “With everyone’s eyes trained on ‘Team Montgomery,’ my curvy bottom and poochy tummy are the last things that this skinny crazed town will notice.”

Her friend Cynthia laughed, “Lila Montgomery, you’re gorgeous! I say good for you that you’re not a carrot stick away from certain death.”

Lila raised an eyebrow, “Says the size 2 woman in front of me…”

Cynthia interrupted, “Who is nearly 9 inches shorter than you are.”

Lila’s statuesque build of 5’9” and a size 12 would be coveted by the majority of women in the country. But in La La Land it was deemed overweight; especially if you worked in “The Industry.” They (those alien creatures in the film business who held American women’s self esteem in their grubby little hands) considered anything above a size 4 an emergency candidate for gastric bypass. If one more metro sexual Hollywood type told Lila what a pretty face she had, she was going to smile graciously and kick the back-handed-compliment-giver right in the balls! Why didn’t these men understand that “you have such a pretty face” isn’t a compliment? Just because they don’t speak the rest of the thought out loud, (too bad about the rest of you…) doesn’t mean that it goes unheard.

Lila moved to Los Angeles right after college in hopes of becoming the next Julia Roberts. Getting the assistant’s job at The Amalgamated Artists Agency was her first step in accomplishing that dream. Amalgamated, or the Triple A, as it was referred to by Hollywood insiders, was THE talent agency in Tinseltown. Lila’s plan was to get her foot in the door of the posh establishment, casually announce that she graduated at the top of her class as a theater major, and then POW!!! steal all of Julia’s work.

That outcome didn’t occur for a variety of reasons. The first being that even at her skinniest, Lila was ordered to lose ten pounds stat! In Hollywood’s rather miniscule attention span for young starlets (and as she was twenty-two at the time) she was clearly running out of time. After all, thousands of brand spanking new eighteen-year-olds got off the bus everyday with the same hopes and dreams of stardom.

Sadly, the task of losing an unnecessary ten pounds became an impossibility as Lila’s love affair with the taboo carbs and seductive fats had already manifested in all its glory. Not to mention that she was told this back in the “Pretty Woman” days when a size 6 was all the rage. Now that goal was to achieve a size 0 or 2, she recognized that she’d have to be dead for eighteen months before she had decomposed to the current standard of fashion. Letting out a depressed laugh, she realized that her first movie review would read, “Freshly dug up for the role… Lila Montgomery wows then as the heroine of Night of the Living Dead XXII!!!”

The second, more dominant reason that stardom wasn’t in her future was that Lila had a deep seated aversion of trading sexual favors for career advancement. She was aware that not all successful actresses got their start between the sheets (take Meryll Streep for instance), but from what she witnessed first hand at The Triple A; quite a lot did. And the sad truth was that when you weighed the odds of being discovered by virtue of your talent against your willingness to put out, well, there really was no contest. Putting out was the way to go.

Lila sat at her desk and contemplated the outcome of her almost thirty-three years on the planet. She thought about all the time she had spent tottering around her childhood home in high heels, swathed in feather boas pretending to be either Linda Carter or Grace Kelly, sort of Princess Wonder Woman if you will. When those dreams faded, her next ambition was to write the great American novel; an historical epoch along the lines of North and South. Yet every time she sat at her computer, some inner vixen took over and began creating volumes of racy fantasies instead of historical intrigue. The fantasies happily filled the gap in her social life but did nothing for her dreams of becoming a celebrated novelist.

Consequently, the serious historical events that she had set out to portray always turned into alarming bodice ripping incidents. The gallant young officer, who urgently set out to delivery a top secret message, was inevitably delayed by a lush bosomed young thing bent on seduction. What was a red-blooded young man to do?

At first, Lila fought against her tendency to write trash. After all, she wanted to be nominated for a Pulitzer one day. She wanted respect. But after years of struggling to compose a serious narrative she gave up and let her alter ego (who was alarmingly named Jasmine Sheath) have her way. Now, Lila, a.k.a. Jasmine, spent all of her free time at her computer orchestrating de-flowerings, seductions, and all sorts of bawdy goings on.

As her mind continued to wander, Lila’s eyes fixated on the two letters sitting on her desk. One filled her with a pure rush of excitement and pride. The other filled her with dread. She set aside the envelope full of happy tidings knowing full well that she could never share its contents with anyone else. In fact, she thought, the news was so private that she had best lock it in her desk drawer for safe keeping.

Once she accomplished that task, she picked up the other envelope and let out an audible sigh. In her hands was that bit of correspondence, that depending on what you had accomplished in your life, you either anticipated like Christmas morning or dreaded like a bad case a poison ivy on your private parts. It was the invitation to her fifteen year high school class reunion. It cordially invited the graduate and his/her spouse to the gala affair that was being held at The North Hills Country Club; the very same establishment where half of her classmates were already members.

Lila didn’t begrudge them their memberships to the club, having spent much of her early days treading those same hallowed grounds. In fact, had she never left Bentley, she would probably be teeing off with the Ladies Junior Golf League every Wednesday morning while the next generation learned to doggy paddle in the kiddie pool. What Lila envied were their spouses and children. She longed for similar domestic bliss. After all, she had worked at least as hard as they had and what did she have to show for it? A twenty-two hundred dollar rent payment on an apartment that she didn’t own and a five year old Mitsubishi. No husband, no babies.

Three decades had come and gone and Lila finally realized that what she really wanted was the life she grew up with. She didn’t need an academy award. She didn’t even need a Pulitzer. She just wanted to have someone to love and someone that would love her back. Was that to much to ask?