“Were you glued into this?” I heard Mr. Delgado murmur to me.

I put both hands up to cover the spill over. It wasn’t a reflex I had developed over time, I had to invent it right then and there. I clamped my teeth shut on my squeal, too.

No one laughed. Mr. Delgado shed his coat and stepped close to wrap it around me while Mr. Harrelson, the AD, put himself in the way of any stares, his back to me. He shook his head. I couldn’t see his face but I imagined him smiling, still, he didn’t laugh.

“Somebody find Amanda,” I heard him tell one of the gaffers who had been setting up the bounce shields to catch and reflect the sun. The man glanced and grinned at me but took off in a hurry toward the wardrobe building.

“Were you glued into this?” I heard Mr. Delgado murmur to me.

I nodded. Hair fell across my eye. I shook my head to try to move it because I didn’t want to use my hand. My face must have been technicolor red and I remembered that the wardrobe mistress commented that I blushed all the way down to my navel. Which had been on display even before the malfunction.

“Need stronger glue,” Mr. Delgado commented with maybe just the hint of a chuckle in his voice. “I think this costume was designed for someone a little less generous than you, honey. Or Hallie, I mean.”

In the costume heels, I stood an inch or two taller than the man and I had the oddest impulse to try to shrink myself. He was a big investor, potentially in a movie I had a good chance of being in. Did I want to be in a movie wearing this costume?

Well, yeah, I did. I was in a production of a musical version of Harvey once (adapted by our director) and played the rabbit. (Yeah, I know, the rabbit is not usually cast.) It was almost as embarrassing as the space babe costume since it involved ears, whiskers and a powder puff tail. I did that part almost entirely in mime, a voice, not mine, heard only when not on stage. Lots of mugging and cavorting, maybe the most fun I ever had on stage. And I got to sing. A singing mime. It was that kind of production.

This costume was different (part of it wouldn’t come off!) but acting was acting, and that’s what I wanted to do with my life, so… no problem? No problem.

I thought this all through very quickly. The runner left at speed to fetch the wardrobe mistress, Mr. Delgado and the AD were shielding me from the crowd, most of whom were paying very little attention to what we were doing.

That wasn’t right. I didn’t like it. I glanced around a bit and liked it even less—it wasn’t that people weren’t watching, it was that they deliberately weren’t looking at me. I didn’t like that at all.

I stopped holding Mr. Delgado’s coat against me, letting him hold it up for a moment, before I pushed a bit past him. “Introducing Hallelujah Jones,” I said loudly.

Then I strutted out from between my two protectors, holding my top in place myself. “Dah-dah-da-a, dah-dah-da-aa!” I crooned. I glanced at Mr. Delgado and moved my hand as if I were about to let something show.

Instead I resumed my strut, shaking my shoulders and wiggling my ass. “Dah-dah-daa, dah, dah, daaa.” I turned and winked at Mr. Delgado and he cracked up. “Ta-dum, ta-dum, ta-da-da-da-dum!” I opened my hand and almost let go of holding the failed bra closed. He waggled his eyebrows. I kept smiling as a sort of heat seemed to build up somewhere inside me.

Everyone was looking at me now, smiling and laughing. Some of them were blowing kisses! I grinned as wide as I could and sashayed toward a golf cart that had stopped nearby. I guess my intention had been to somehow escape to the wardrobe building where Amanda could repair my malfunction. The golf cart would have helped me get there quicker but someone else had already commandeered it.

But the driver stopped, almost right in my path and indicated the seat beside him. I nodded while keeping up the scat. “Da-da-dee, d-da-da-do!” He held out a hand to help me into the vehicle.

My excitement peaked about then as I switched which hand I was holding my top closed with so I could take the offered help, and this time I really did give just a glimpse of more of me than I had intended too. But I shrugged that off, climbed into the cart with the offered help then turned to give the crowd a little girly-type finger wave. Mr. Delgado was looking right at me, so I blew him a kiss as we accelerated away. I suppressed a squeal by bursting into giggles.

I put my free hand over my face and tried to contain a continuing attack of giggles, looking between my fingers at the driver of my getaway vehicle. I sort of recognized him, a beefy male star of some of Mr. Delgado’s finest productions—Douglas Ragnar. He grinned at me and I grinned back, knowing my face must be red.

But the guy was immense! His biceps were probably bigger than my waist! I giggled even more and felt heat from my face spread throughout my body. It wasn’t unpleasant, kind of like the thrill of being onstage and feeling the audience is with you. But it was unexpected and left me feeling a little giddy.

“You need a trip to wardrobe, am I right?” he rumbled at me. I nodded. My hair had fallen across my right eye again but he was sitting to my left, so I could still see him. If I wanted to look. I wasn’t sure about that, my glance at him before had impressed on me his size and maleness.

His voice did peculiar things to me, too, and I doubted I could speak. What the heck was going on with me? I could guess but I wasn’t sure I wanted to think too much about the implications of that, either.

The electric cart made almost no noise and we motored smoothly toward toward the building labeled Costuming and Wardrobe. My driver kept looking at me sideways, flashing his big grin while I tried to keep one hand on the damaged top part of my costume.

“I’m Doug,” he said. “I think we’re going to be co-stars.” His grin flickered like a strobe light in an old time disco, but he was looking me in the face, not at my chest or the specious condition of my costume top. A gentleman in Hollywood, could it be?

“Um, Hallie,” I said. “I’m Hallie.” I murmured. The whine of the electric cart was quiet enough that he probably heard me but I felt the need to amplify. “Hallelujah Jones. That’s me.”

He laughed, a sound of sure enjoyment. “I heard you introduce yourself earlier, before your little dance.”

“Jeez!” I complained. “I don’t know why I did that.”

“I do,” he said. “You wanted people to look at you.” He pulled into one of the parking stalls outside of Wardrobe. “You want to be a star, and no one ignores a star, even if she’s having costume problems.”

“Huh,” I said. He was right, of course. That was why I did it. And Billy Jones might have been easy to ignore but Hallelujah, I didn’t have to put up with that. I grinned at him while reaching up to push hair out of my face again.

He motioned toward the door. “Welcome to Space Force X, Hallie.”

“What?” He’d confused me. I glanced at the door just as Amanda appeared carrying a sewing kit.

“The name of the movie,” he explained and repeated it. “Space Force X.”

“I thought it was called Space Babe?” I murmured, looking at Amanda for confirmation.

Doug laughed again, enjoying it all. “Well, maybe it will be. You’ve got the right diva attitude to claim it!”

I laughed too, but what the heck? Maybe I could get them to change the name.