“Helmet?” I said. “Which one is the helmet?”

 
Unless you’re a musician or a rodeo rider, if you want to make your living as a performer in America, you need to live near either Hollywood or Broadway. Of course, those names are just shorthand for the communities that have grown up around the original industries in those locations.

And to be sure, there are others, like Las Vegas, Nashville, even Branson and Orlando. But for actors, Hollywood and Broadway are definitely where most of it’s at. ‘It’ being regular work at paying jobs.

I was lucky that the studio where I worked was so near to where I lived, and luckier still that Jack was available to give me a ride since it would still be a half our by bus. Jack bought coffee and a cruller in the drive-thru at Jason’s on the way, too.

I sipped Mocha-Java with one sugar and heavy cream while happily munching on a Krusty Kruller, Jason’s specialty, all the way down Wilshire to where we zagged through side streets to end at Melrose Film and Sound Studios front gate.

We’d hardly spoken on the drive over, though Jack had grinned over at me several times without saying anything. Okay, he leered, but in a friendly way. Jack was being Jack, charmingly insufferable.

I was surprised when we drove through the studio gate with only a nod from the gate guard. “You’ve got a studio tag on this car?” I asked.

“Yup,” he said. “Studio head is my ex-quasi-father-in-law. I did a big favor for him and he let me keep the studio parking tag after I broke up with Mellisandra.” He looked pleased with himself, as if he had pulled off a clever con on Mr. Devon Gower.

One thing about actors, no one considers any sort of connection in the industry to be underhanded or cheating. You use whatever mojo you can muster to get a job. You have to treat people decent or face some nastiness, but an inside track with an executive is fair. I glared at him. “You’ve got leverage with the head of the studio and you never mentioned it?”

“It ain’t fungible,” he grinned.

Huh? I’d have to look that one up. I hoped it was spelled the way it sounded. “What did you do for him?”

“I didn’t marry Mel when she proposed,” he said with an even bigger grin. “It’s kind of an embarrassing story, I’ll tell you some time. And I don’t think he knows I still have a studio pass.”

I laughed. Typical Jack explanation, unlikely and frustratingly vague. I shrugged it off, he’d either tell me the truth sometime or an even more entertaining lie. “Fungible, huh?” Had I said it right?

“Non-fungible, actually. Words I learned when I almost got my MBA. Convertible or non-convertible.” He did offer some explanation on that at least. I wouldn’t have to break out the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Edition, after all.

I decided to try out a dumb-blonde line. I looked the part now, why not? “Like your car?” I said innocently in my squeakiest voice.

He was still chuckling when he stopped at Costuming to let me out.

*

“I’m supposed to wear that?” I protested. ’That’ was about a square foot or so of material, kind of like a girl’s one-piece bathing suit. I had trouble imagining what I would look like in it but there would be a lot of skin on display.

Amanda, the wardrobe lady, grinned. “There’s more to the costume than just a leotard: a skirt, hose, heels and a helmet.” She gestured at the other items laid out on a table. “Gloves, too,” she added.

“Helmet?” I said. “Which one is the helmet?”

She pointed at a stiff piece of silvery cloth, something like a futuristic nurse’s cap. “Enough stalling. You act like you’re not going to be in this picture just for your looks.”

“Huh?” I wanted to protest.

She gestured toward the changing alcove. “Put it on and we’ll see how it fits. Don’t forget the boots.”

I made a face at her but she just grinned. I took the ‘costume’, and the boots (a pair of glass-and-stainless platform heels that would probably put my height well over six feet), and went behind the curtain to change.

She commented while I got undressed. “Remember it was a little ol’ fur bikini in a B-grade picture that made Raquel Welch a star.”

“Yabbut,” I said, stalling, “I think her bikini was warmer. This thing has too much metal in it.”

That made her laugh.

I stripped off behind the curtain, even taking off my new underwear. Amanda had provided me with a pair of thong panties that would not show above, below or through the costume bottom that was a sort of demi-bikini with a semi-transparent skirt-like thingie. Yeesh! There was no way to wear the thing without feeling it was trying to crawl up inside me. And it was flesh-colored, too!

And there was no way to wear my bra (did I really think ‘my bra’?) with the attached top either. It took me a bit of struggle to figure out how it was supposed to fit without my tits hanging out in a too-generous underboob situation. Sideboob exposure was almost as bad, I could be not much more than an inch from getting arrested!

No one was going to doubt I was female wearing the outfit, though. Even the ‘helmet’, really a stylized femme take on a baseball cap added to the effect. Most of my midriff and back were bare. The boots were more of the same with four-inch blocky heels, and the gloves, ditto. The parts that didn’t look metal were transparent.

I took a last disbelieving look at myself in the mirror, deciding that I looked like a tinfoil-and-cellophane version of the comic book character Vampirella.

“What the heck is this movie called?” I asked before peeking through the curtain to see who else might be in wardrobe before emerging. Fortunately, only Amanda could see me.

“Get out here, honey, we need to see if it needs any alterations,” she ordered.

“Uh,” I stepped out to the indicated area and did a twirl when she asked.

“You blush all the way down to your navel,” she commented while checking the fit.

“I’m not surprised,” I said. “This is embarrassing. I thought we were just doing some, I dunno, establishing shots?”

“I’m going to use a little glue here,” she said, indicating where she meant, along my side and under the straps.

“That’s cold!” I protested. But good for her thinking of that. I’d been worried about my heifers escaping the corral if I did anything strenuous, like breathing.

“Be glad I’m not having to fill your cups with my silicone boobies, those things are like ice when they come out of the box.” She grinned at me. “You don’t need them, and you don’t have any tan lines I have to cover up. Saves a lot of time this morning.”

I hadn’t really noticed the lack of tan lines, but I was a more or less even warm toast color all over—another special effect from the magical camera that had transformed me. Wait. Did this mean I would have to maintain a tanning schedule to keep from showing lines? That could get either expensive or risky. What I really needed to do was find that camera and get changed back.

Of course, it looked like Hallie Jones was going to have a career. I sighed. “What’s the name of the picture?” I asked again.

“Sit over here, I’ll start your make-up and Julia will finish it when she gets here.”

I sat in the chair indicated. I had worn make-up for the stage and some student films before, but not as my new self, Hallelujah Jones.

“I think it’s just called Space Babe on the schedule,” Amanda said as she started applying a base.

“Huh?”

“The picture,” she said. “I think they’re still trying to raise money to start filming. I don’t even know if they have a script yet, let alone a title.”

I rolled my eyes. Well, I’d be getting paid scale today, at least. Was I supposed to be helping to sell the idea with this skimpy costume? I thought of Jane Fonda in Barbarella and Dorothy Stratton in Galaxina. Hoo boy.

Would I be expected to vamp it up like those two? Could I do that? I had a suspicion that this was not going to be an A-grade movie. How far down the alphabet was it likely to be?

“Are we in Ed Wood territory?” I asked when Amanda had moved away from my mouth.

She laughed. “Well, I hear that Jesse Delgado is one of the investors at the studio today.”

I didn’t groan but I wanted too. Delgado, famous or infamous in his own way, owned a bunch of second and third run theaters out-of-town, and even out-of-state, and probably out of the country, too. In the past, he had bankrolled or produced such gems as Sorority Vampire Party and How to Seduce a Cowboy, just to have cheap movies for his bargain basement screens.

Amanda stepped back to get a view of the whole effect so far. “Hmm. I think you’re going to be able to open ol’ Jesse’s checkbook, honey.” She grinned. “Here comes Julia to do your eyes and lips, and Maria will do your hair.”

I stayed where I was, in the make-up chair. I didn’t know whether to cringe at thinking about working for the King of Sleazy Movies, Ed Wood 2.0, or just squeal in excitement that I was really working in the industry now.

I settled for a nervous, squeaky giggle.